Flailing to distract once-loyal cultists who've turned unexpectedly unruly on the murky matter of bestie Jeffrey Epstein - "The people are revolting!" - Trump is busy shouting "Look! Over there!" about myriad other shiny objects: The "Redskins," the FBI files on MLK, his "Golden Age," star-turn at soccer, "Dollar-Tree-Versailles" Oval Office, more spray tan, less corn syrup, the deranged need to jail "Barack HUSSEIN Obama." Still, MAGA remains wary: "He’s wearing makeup on his hands, so things are just getting weird."

The people's fledgling revolt - Mel Brooks: "They stink on ice" - is reflected in news polls showing Trump's approval plummeting at least 16 points to hover around 40%. On immigration, only about 35% approve of his crackdowns; just 23% support his deportations of undocumented immigrants with no criminal record, a figure likely to drop with news his flunkies gave ICE access to the Medicaid records of nearly 80 million people in another bogus hunt for "illegals," who can't get Medicaid. More smoke and mirrors: For all their performative cruelty, Trump’s ICE raids have led to fewer deportations than under Obama and barely more than under Biden, and the whole gaudy, ghastly spectacle of disappearing hundreds of Venezuelans to CECOT ended in a swap for 10 Americans jailed, intoned Marco Rubio with no trace of irony, "without proper due process."

Americans also hate the tariffs, big ugly bill, rising prices. They're worried about health insurance, also those ankles. And now Dear Leader is calling them "losers" and "bad people" because they wanna know the story behind Jeffrey Epstein's file, which Pam Bondi just said was sitting on her desk, but then she said oops never mind, and Trump keeps saying it's all a "scam” by Dems except if it doesn't exist how could Dems have written it and they "don't understand why (he) would do this - it doesn't make sense." His former bestie Musk chimed in - "Wow, I can’t believe Epstein killed himself before realizing it was all a hoax” - and he even lost Nazi Nick Fuentes. "Fuck you," Fuentes screeched. "You're fat, you're a joke, you're stupid...This entire thing has been a scam. We're gonna look back at the MAGA movement as the biggest scam in history. The liberals were right." Yikes.

Improbably, with all the atrocities he's committed - pussy, racism, Nazis, sedition, grift, seven gazillion lies - the furor over Epstein seems to be sticking, at least for now. About 80% of Americans think the government should release all documents in the case, including 85% of Democrats and three-quarters of Independents and Republicans. Only 4% think it shouldn't. It didn't help when Bondi made a big deal about releasing "raw" video footage outside Epstein's prison cell the night he died to prove nobody offed him, only for Wired to reveal nearly three minutes were missing, sparking MAGA frenzy about a Deep State plot nicely dovetailing with QAnon's insistence Bill Clinton and other Dems lead a child porn cabal Trump will save them from - except maybe for that interview where he said, "I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with."

But Epstein kept re-surfacing. Trump reportedly fought to kill it, but the Wall Street Journal went ahead with publishing their story about a lewd birthday card Trump sent Epstein for his 50th birthday in 2003: Several lines of text framed by the outline of a naked woman, signed by a squiggly “Donald” where her pubic hair would be. "We have certain things in common, Jeffrey," he wrote ominously. "May every day be another wonderful secret." Caught, he said it was fake. He said Obama and Biden made it up. He said, "These are not my words...Also, I don't make drawings." Online, 7,000 people helpfully posted images of his often-auctioned drawings, mostly of cityscapes drawn with a heavy marker. Straight-faced, the New York Times noted, "They are not dissimilar to how The Wall Street Journal describes the birthday note he sent Mr. Epstein."

Trump did what he always does: He threatened to sue for defamation: "Thank you for your attention to this matter." Then he did. In a complaint that misstated the WSJ story and "reads like a press release," he sued WSJ publisher Dow Jones & Co., its parent company News Corp, Rupert Murdoch and others for $10 billion in damages. Then, hoping to end "this SCAM," he asked Pam Bondi to release grand jury testimony on Epstein - "a meaningless trick" because courts tend to prohibit such disclosure, and even if it went ahead he asked the court for "appropriate redactions of victim-related and other personal identifying information." Still, The Good Liars jumped in to help foster transparency by stocking the gift shop display racks at Trump Tower with post cards of the famed image of the two smiling perverts, "up to no good." Next to them, Melania gazes out, robotic.

Sensing a losing fight, Trump's deflection campaign.grew ever more bonkers. Marking the six-month anniversary of "one of the most consequential periods of any President, including ending numerous wars" (say wut?), when "one year ago our country was DEAD" (ditto), he released a cheesy, cringey, AI-generated video declaring, "Day 179 of the “Trump Golden Age." Cue fireworks and fake eagles soaring over the White House while dropping dollar bills to the song Make It Rain Reviews: "Downright embarrassing,” "Really gross," "They need to use AI because we are not seeing tangible evidence of anything good." Musk’s Nazi chatbot Grok: "Where eagles crap cash and fireworks fix everything. Reality check: Golden parachutes for billionaires while the rest dodge inflation hailstones." And, “Why don’t you make it rain Epstein files?”

— (@)

It got wilder Friday after Director of National Intelligence (sic) Tulsi Gabbard announced she's referring Obama officials to the DOJ for prosecution over allegations they “manufactured” intelligence about Russia in the 2016 election. Newly declassified documents show Obama et al "politicized intelligence to lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump"; they must be punished "for the American people to have any sense of trust in the integrity of our democratic republic." MAGA piled on. It was "a pivotal fracture in American trust," it "makes Watergate look like Amateur Hour." Stephen Goebbels was feverish: Gabbard "has exposed the startling depths of a seditious coup against the republic. The forces behind (it) will do anything to protect their grasp (on) illegitimate power. Do not underestimate their capabilities or depravities." Whew.

On her Sunday show, Maria Bartiromo brought up Gabbard’s news 18 times. Epstein: 0. Trump posted about it 17 times; inspired, he's been tirelessly flinging spaghetti at the wall to see what'll stick. He proclaimed, with carefully curated images, "STACKING UP WINS": "Ice Cream makers pledge to remove artificial colors," "Consumer prices rise less than expected." He railed against "thief" Adam Schiff. He said Coke will replace their corn syrup with sugar. (Coke said, wait what?) He posted videos of wacky stunts. (A woman grabbing a snake was fake). Against the wishes of family and colleagues, he released 200,000 pages of records of FBI surveillance of MLK Jr., under seal since 1977. King's two surviving children called it “an invasive, predatory, and deeply disturbing” operation “to discredit, dismantle and destroy” King and the movement he led.

Speaking of "invasive, predatory, and deeply disturbing,” the fragile, petty, vengeful boy-king, feeling he hadn't gone quite far enough to offend and distract, also posted an AI compilation of fake mugshots, dubbed "The Shady Bunch, featuring Democrats - most notably "Barack Hussein Obama" - in orange prison jumpsuits. A day or so later, evidently feeling especially insecure, he went especially crass. The new AI video starts with multiple Democratic pols declaring, "No one is above the law." Then it goes to a fake scenario of FBI agents arresting Obama in the Oval Office as Trump sits, beams, gloats. It moves to Obama, jump-suited in a jail cell, all while the Village People sing YMCA. In response, at least one sick fan of this cretin urged Pam Bondi, "MAKE THIS A REALITY." Truly, you gotta wonder what malignant, hallucinatory reality these fucking creeps inhabit.

— (@)

Meanwhile, their leader keeps flouting laws and probity; in a recent lawsuit brought by watchdog group CREW for refusing to disclose spending decisions as mandated by law - regime flunkies deemed it "an unconstitutional encroachment" on their tinpot's whims - U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivana blasted the mob-boss' "extravagant and unsupported theory of presidential power" and declared, "Defendants are therefore required to stop violating the law!" Alas, arbitrary and often punitive rules still reign. Press Barbie just announced the Wall Street Journal will be banned from the press pool for an upcoming trip to Scotland for their "fake and defamatory conduct" - is fake conduct a thing? - aka committing journalism and reporting the ugly, pubic-doodling truth about the sexual predator now defiling our pimped-up Oval Office.

Still deflecting - and still racist - he also just demanded the Washington Commanders, along with Cleveland Guardians, return to their old, offensive names, Redskins and Indians, witlessly claiming, "Our great Indian people, in massive numbers, want this to happen." Ever the bully, he even threatened to renege on a plan to build the Washington team a new stadium in D.C. "Indians are being treated very unfairly," he blathered. "MAKE INDIANS GREAT AGAIN (MIGA)!!" Of course Native activists called bullshit on returning to names they fought for years to remove as "a slur." "We are language keepers, land protectors, survivors of attempted genocide and part of sovereign nations," said one. "To equate Native people with cartoonish mascots (is) a gross and ongoing tactic of dehumanization...We are being used as tools for a distraction."

In another cringe move, the sports wannabe made it all about himself at the World Cup Final at New Jersey's MetLife Stadium, where Chelsea won a surprise 3-0 victory against Paris Saint-Germain. The crowd booed Trump before he crashed the postgame ceremony, lumbering onstage to hand over the trophy and then staying put as Chelsea's Captain asked, “Are you going to leave?” and FIFA head Gianni Infantino tried to pull him away to allow the team their victory photo. In the end, there he was - fat, rumpled, cluelessly claiming "I've earned a spot in the shot" - as players whooped around him. The team didn't even get the real trophy; at an earlier photo-op at the White House, Trump claimed that too. But in sports as in life, strategy is key. For hours, no official photo of "the team moment” appeared on Chelsea's website; when it finally did, Trump had been scrubbed out.

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

Three journalists told CPJ that investigative reporting on major economic events, a cornerstone of Hong Kong’s financial transparency, has nearly disappeared amid government pressure and the departure of major outlets. 

The sharp decline in press freedom, the journalists said, is a direct result of the National Security Law. This law, enacted on June 30, 2020, was imposed directly by Beijing, bypassing Hong Kong’s local legislature, and included offenses for secession, subversion, terrorist activities, and collusion with foreign forces, with penalties ranging from a three years to life imprisonment.  

In the five years since it was enacted, authorities have shut down media outlets and arrested several journalists, including Jimmy Lai, the founder of one of Hong Kong’s largest newspapers, the pro-democracy Apple Daily. Several major international news organizations have either relocated or downsized their operations in Hong Kong, leading to a decline in reporting on the city and its financial hub.

“Hong Kong’s economic boom happened because journalists could work without interference,” said a veteran reporter with 11 years’ experience in television, newspapers, and digital platforms in Hong Kong, who spoke to CPJ on condition of anonymity due to security concerns.

While markets still function, at least three media professionals told CPJ that the erosion of press freedom — often overlooked — is a key factor behind Hong Kong’s fading financial appeal to market participants. One reporter described the media as “paralyzed.” 

Another hastily passed security law enacted in March 2024 in Hong Kong further deepened fears that it would be used to suppress press freedom and prosecute journalists.

“There has never been an international financial center in history that operates with restrictions on information,” Simon Lee, an economic commentator and former assistant CEO of Next Digital Group, the parent company of Apple Daily, told CPJ.

Hong Kong long served as a base for reporting on China’s economy and power structures, said a former financial journalist on the condition of anonymity, citing safety concerns.

“Most Hong Kong-listed companies come from the mainland [China]. Foreign media used Hong Kong to observe China’s economic operations or wealth transfers,” the former financial journalist told CPJ. “Now the risks feel similar to reporting from inside China.”

Crackdowns, shutdowns, and an exodus of major media

Since the introduction of the National Security Law in 2020, at least eight media outlets have shut. These included Apple Daily, news and lifestyle magazine Next Magazine, both published by Lai’s Next Digital group, and the online outlet Stand News, after they were raided by authorities.

At least four other media organizations — Post852, DB channel, Citizen News, and FactWire — ceased operations voluntarily, citing concerns over the deteriorating political environment.

Reporting was also criminalized in several cases, with journalists prosecuted for “inciting subversion” or “colluding with foreign forces.”  

China had the world’s highest number of imprisoned journalists in CPJ’s latest prison census — 50 in total, including eight in Hong Kong.

The New York Times moved part of its newsroom to Seoul in 2020. In March 2024, Radio Free Asia closed its Hong Kong office, and in May, The Wall Street Journal relocated its Asia headquarters to Singapore.

 “With fewer foreign correspondents based in the city, there’s simply less reporting on Hong Kong,” the former financial journalist told CPJ. “As a result, the city’s economy may receive less objective attention on the global stage.”

The former financial journalist said that one of the biggest losses after the security law was the disappearance of Apple Daily. Unlike most local media, which focused on routine market updates, Apple Daily connected business to politics and mapped interest networks — an increasingly rare practice.

Next Digital, through Apple Daily, built a reputation for investigative financial reporting. A former staff member told the BBC that the company once spent over 100,000 yuan (US$14,000) tracing dozens of property owners to uncover a developer’s hidden ties with a bank.

“From a financial news perspective, one of our biggest problems is losing Apple Daily,” the former financial journalist told CPJ.

Local business reporting also fades away

As Hong Kong’s financial hub reputation comes under question, stories on high unemployment rates, struggling small businesses, and store closures are increasingly out of sight.

“One direct effect is feeling increasingly unable to grasp what’s happening in the city; important information no longer seems easy to access,” Lee said. “Previously, competition among professional outlets encouraged source sharing and helped maintain a power balance. Now, one-way government-controlled information faces little resistance.”

Lee told CPJ that changes in Hong Kong’s media landscape are particularly evident in major financial events, pointing to the coverage of the 2024 sale of Li Ka-shing’s port assets, in which local outlets failed to question the deal’s structure, rationale, or political implications.

“Beijing called it a national security matter, and the other side of the story disappeared,” Lee told CPJ. “Many focus on the judicial system when discussing fairness, but true fairness also depends on the free flow of information … Without information freedom, public oversight fades, and the market’s system of checks and balances collapses.”

Lee also cited the case of Alvin Chau, a casino tycoon in Macao who was sentenced in 2023 to 18 years for illegal gambling. While foreign media uncovered his alleged links to oil smuggling operations to North Korea, local media offered little follow-up.

“These investigations and reports simply no longer exist,” Lee said.

Sources can’t speak freely

Two journalists told CPJ they have noticed increasing reluctance from interviewees. 

During previous years of the Annual Budget Speech, Hong Kong’s yearly announcement of its public spending and economic plans, the media would host analysis shows with economists debating government spending and policies. 

“We would ask about the fiscal surplus, support for the poor, and whether measures were targeted,” the veteran reporter told CPJ, adding that now, “only one professor is willing to speak openly.”

Lee told CPJ that the atmosphere of “not being allowed to criticize” the broader structure or government policy has also extended to the reporting on how financial markets operate.

Market participants should be free to take either optimistic or pessimistic views of the economic outlook, Lee told CPJ, adding that today in Hong Kong, it is discouraged to express pessimism, and even silently shifting toward defensive investment strategies or risk-averse behavior may be interpreted as making a political statement.

“It’s hard for any place with such high information costs to remain a global financial hub,” Lee said. “Because even pulling back on investment can send a signal. If investors are accused of intentionally dragging down the market just because they try to hedge or take a cautious view, they may decide it’s safer to avoid the market altogether.”

In response to CPJ’s request for comment, a Hong Kong government spokesperson referred CPJ to a statement that said the security law has enabled the city to “make a major transition from chaos to order” and “the business environment has continuously improved,” while press freedom is protected under the law.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ's Asia-Pacific program staff.

As Israel unveils its final genocide push, and mass death from starvation looms in Gaza, western media and politicians are tentatively starting to speak up.

Who could have imagined 19 months ago that it would take more than a year and a half of Israel slaughtering and starving Gaza’s children for the first cracks to appear in what has been a rock-solid wall of support for Israel from western establishments.

Finally, something looks like it may be about to give.

The British establishment’s financial daily, the Financial Times, was first to break ranks last week to condemn “the West’s shameful silence” in the face of Israel’s murderous assault on the tiny enclave.

In an editorial – effectively the paper’s voice – the FT accused the United States and Europe of being increasingly “complicit” as Israel made Gaza “uninhabitable”, an allusion to genocide, and noted that the goal was to “drive Palestinians from their land”, an allusion to ethnic cleansing.

Of course, both of these grave crimes by Israel have been evidently true not only since Hamas’ violent, single-day breakout from Gaza on 7 October 2023, but for decades.

So parlous is the state of western reporting, from a media no less complicit than the governments berated by the FT, that we need to seize on any small signs of progress.

Next, the Economist chimed in, warning that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ministers were driven by a “dream of emptying Gaza and rebuilding Jewish settlements there”.

At the weekend, the Independent decided the “deafening silence on Gaza” had to end. It was “time for the world to wake up to what is happening and to demand an end to the suffering of the Palestinians trapped in the enclave.”

Actually much of the world woke up many, many months ago. It has been the western press corps and western politicians slumbering through the past 19 months of genocide.

Then on Monday, the supposedly liberal Guardian voiced in its own editorial a fear that Israel is committing “genocide”, though it only dared do so by framing the accusation as a question.

It wrote of Israel: “Now it plans a Gaza without Palestinians. What is this, if not genocidal? When will the US and its allies act to stop the horror, if not now?”

The paper could more properly have asked a different question: Why have Israel’s western allies – as well as media like the Guardian and FT – waited 19 months to speak up against the horror?

And, predictably bringing up the rear, was the BBC. On Wednesday, the BBC Radio’s PM programme chose to give top billing to testimony from Tom Fletcher, the United Nation’s humanitarian affairs chief, to the Security Council. Presenter Evan Davis said the BBC had decided to “do something a little unusual”.

Unusual indeed. It played Fletcher’s speech in full – all 12 and a half minutes of it. That included Fletcher’s comment: “For those killed and those whose voices are silenced: what more evidence do you need now? Will you act – decisively – to prevent genocide and to ensure respect for international humanitarian law?”

We had gone in less than a week from the word “genocide” being taboo in relation to Gaza to it becoming almost mainstream.

Growing cracks

Cracks are evident in the British parliament too. Mark Pritchard, a Conservative MP and life-long Israel supporter, stood up from the back benches to admit he had been wrong about Israel, and condemned it “for what it is doing to the Palestinian people”.

He was one of more than a dozen Tory MPs and peers in the House of Lords, all formerly staunch defenders of Israel, who urged British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to immediately recognise a Palestinian state.

Their move followed an open letter published by 36 members of the Board of Deputies, a 300-member body that claims to represent British Jews, dissenting from its continuing support for the slaughter. The letter warned: “Israel’s soul is being ripped out.”

Pritchard told fellow MPs it was time to “stand up for humanity, for us being on the right side of history, for having the moral courage to lead.”

Sadly, there is no sign of that yet. Research published last week, based on Israeli tax authority data, showed Starmer’s government has been lying even about the highly limited restrictions on arms sales to Israel it claimed to have imposed last year.

Despite an ostensible ban on shipments of weapons that could be used in Gaza, Britain has covertly exported more than 8,500 separate munitions to Israel since the ban.

This week more details emerged. According to figures published by The National, the current government exported more weapons to Israel in the final three months of last year, after the ban came into effect, than the previous Conservative government did through the whole of 2020 to 2023.

So shameful is the UK’s support for Israel in the midst of what the International Court of Justice – the World Court – has described as a “plausible genocide” that Starmer’s government needs to pretend it is doing something, even as it actually continues to arm that genocide.

More than 40 MPs wrote to Foreign Secretary David Lammy last week calling for him to respond to allegations that he had misled the public and parliament. “The public deserves to know the full scale of the UK’s complicity in crimes against humanity,” they wrote.

There are growing rumblings elsewhere. This week France’s President Emmanuel Macron called Israel’s complete blockade on aid into Gaza “shameful and unacceptable”. He added: “My job is to do everything I can to make it stop.”

“Everything” seemed to amount to nothing more than mooting possible economic sanctions.

Still, the rhetorical shift was striking. Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, similarly denounced the blockade, calling it “unjustifiable”. She added: “I have always recalled the urgency of finding a way to end the hostilities and respect international law and international humanitarian law.”

“International law”? Where has that been for the past 19 months?

There was a similar change of priorities across the Atlantic. Democratic Senator Chris van Hollen, for example, recently dared to call Israel’s actions in Gaza “ethnic cleansing”.

CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, a bellwether of the Beltway consensus, gave Israel’s deputy foreign minister, Sharren Haskel, an unusually tough grilling. Amanpour all but accused her of lying about Israel starving children.

Meanwhile, Josep Borrell, the recently departed head of European Union foreign policy, broke another taboo last week by directly accusing Israel of preparing a genocide in Gaza.

“Seldom have I heard the leader of a state so clearly outline a plan that fits the legal definition of genocide,” he said, adding: “We’re facing the largest ethnic cleansing operation since the end of the Second World War.”

Borrell, of course, has no influence over EU policy at this point.

A death camp

This is all painfully slow progress, but it does suggest that a tipping point may be near.

If so, there are several reasons. One – the most evident in the mix – is US President Donald Trump.

It was easier for the Guardian, the FT and old-school Tory MPs to watch the extermination of Gaza’s Palestinians in silence when it was kindly Uncle Joe Biden and the US military industrial complex behind it.

Unlike his predecessor, Trump too often forgets the bit where he is supposed to put a gloss on Israeli crimes, or distance the US from them, even as Washington ships the weapons to carry out those crimes.

But also, there are plenty of indications that Trump – with his constant craving to be seen as the top dog – is increasingly annoyed at being publicly outfoxed by Netanyahu.

This week, as Trump headed to the Middle East, his administration secured the release of Israeli soldier Edan Alexander, the last living US citizen in captivity in Gaza, by bypassing Israel and negotiating directly with Hamas.

In his comments on the release, Trump insisted it was time to “put an end to this very brutal war” – a remark he had very obviously not coordinated with Netanyahu.

Notably, Israel is not on Trump’s Middle East schedule.

Right now seems a relatively safe moment to adopt a more critical stance towards Israel, as presumably the FT and Guardian appreciate.

Then there is the fact that Israel’s genocide is reaching its endpoint. No food, water or medicines have entered Gaza for more than two months. Everyone is malnourished. It is unclear, given Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s health system, how many have already died from hunger.

But the pictures of skin-and-bones children emerging from Gaza are uncomfortably reminiscent of 80-year-old images of skeletal Jewish children imprisoned in Nazi camps.

It is a reminder that Gaza – strictly blockaded by Israel for 16 years before Hamas’ 7 October 2023 breakout – has been transformed over the past 19 months from a concentration camp into a death camp.

Parts of the media and political class know mass death in Gaza cannot be obscured for much longer, not even after Israel has barred foreign journalists from the enclave and murdered most of the Palestinian journalists trying to record the genocide.

Cynical political and media actors are trying to get in their excuses before it is too late to show remorse.

The ‘Gaza war’ myth

And finally there is the fact that Israel has declared its readiness to take hands-on responsibility for the extermination in Gaza by, in its words, “capturing” the tiny territory.

The long-anticipated “day after” looks like it is about to arrive.

For 20 years, Israel and western capitals have conspired in the lie that Gaza’s occupation ended in 2005, when Israel’s then prime minister, Ariel Sharon, pulled out a few thousand Jewish settlers and withdrew Israeli soldiers to a highly fortified perimeter encaging the enclave.

In a ruling last year, the World Court gave this claim short shrift, emphasising that Gaza, as well as the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, had never stopped being under Israeli occupation, and that the occupation must end immediately.

The truth is that, even before the 2023 Hamas attacks, Israel had been besieging Gaza by land, sea and air for many, many years. Nothing – people or trade – went in or out without the Israeli military’s say-so.

Israeli officials instituted a secret policy of putting the population there on a strict “diet” – a war crime then as now – one that ensured most of Gaza’s young became progressively more malnourished.

Drones whined constantly overhead, as they do now, watching the population from the skies 24 hours a day and occasionally raining down death. Fishermen were shot and their boats sunk for trying to fish their own waters. Farmers’ crops were destroyed by herbicides sprayed from Israeli planes.

And when the mood took it, Israel sent in fighter jets to bomb the enclave or sent soldiers in on military operations, killing hundreds of civilians at a time.

When Palestinians in Gaza went out week after week to stage protests close to the perimeter fence of their concentration camp, Israeli snipers shot them, killing some 200 and crippling many thousands more.

Yet, despite all this, Israel and western capitals insisted on the story that Hamas “ruled” Gaza, and that it alone was responsible for what went on there.

That fiction was very important to the western powers. It allowed Israel to evade accountability for the crimes against humanity committed in Gaza over the past two decades – and it allowed the West to avoid complicity charges for arming the criminals.

Instead, the political and media class perpetuated the myth that Israel was engaged in a “conflict” with Hamas – as well as intermittent “wars” in Gaza – even as Israel’s own military termed its operations to destroy whole neighbourhoods and kill their residents “mowing the lawn”.

Israel, of course, viewed Gaza as its lawn to mow. And that is precisely because it never stopped occupying the enclave.

Even today western media outlets collude in the fiction that Gaza is free from Israeli occupation by casting the slaughter there – and the starvation of the population – as a “war”.

Loss of cover story

But the “day after” – signalled by Israel’s promised “capture” and “reoccupation” of Gaza – brings a conundrum for Israel and its western sponsors.

Till now Israel’s every atrocity has been justified by Hamas’ violent breakout on 7 October 2023.

Israel and its supporters have insisted that Hamas must return the Israelis it took captive before there can be some undefined “peace”. At the same time, Israel has also maintained that Gaza must be destroyed at all costs to root out Hamas and eliminate it.

These two goals never looked consistent – not least because the more Palestinian civilians Israel killed “rooting out” Hamas, the more young men Hamas recruited seeking vengeance.

The constant stream of genocidal rhetoric from Israeli leaders made clear that they believed there were no civilians in Gaza – no “uninvolved” – and that the enclave should be levelled and the population treated like “human animals”, punished with “no food, water or fuel”.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich reiterated that approach last week, vowing that “Gaza will be entirely destroyed” and that its people would be ethnically cleansed – or, as he put it, forced to “leave in great numbers to third countries”.

Israeli officials have echoed him, threatening to “flatten” Gaza if the hostages are not released. But in truth, the captives held by Hamas are just a convenient pretext.

Smotrich was more honest in observing that the hostages’ release was “not the most important thing”. His view is apparently shared by the Israeli military, which has reportedly put that aim last in a list of six “war” objectives.

More important to the military are “operational control” of Gaza, “demilitarization of the territory” and “concentration and movement of the population”.

With Israel about to be indisputably, visibly in direct charge of Gaza again – with the cover stories stripped away of a “war”, of the need to eliminate of Hamas, of civilian casualties as “collateral damage” – Israel’s responsibility for the genocide will be incontestable too, as will the West’s active collusion.

That was why more than 250 former officials with Mossad, Israel’s spy agency – including three of its former heads – signed a letter this week decrying Israel’s breaking of the ceasefire in early March and its return to “war”.

The letter called Israel’s official objectives “unattainable”.

Similarly, the Israeli media reports large numbers of Israel’s military reservists are no longer showing up when called for a return to duty in Gaza.

Ethnic cleansing

Israel’s western patrons must now grapple with Israel’s “plan” for the ruined territory. Its outline has been coming more sharply into focus in recent days.

In January Israel formally outlawed the United Nations refugee agency UNRWA that feeds and cares for the large proportion of the Palestinian population driven off their historic lands by Israel in earlier phases of its decades-long colonisation of historic Palestine.

Gaza is packed with such refugees – the outcome of Israel’s biggest ethnic cleansing programme in 1948, at its creation as a “Jewish state”.

Removing UNRWA had been a long-held ambition, a move by Israel designed to help rid it of the yoke of aid agencies that have been caring for Palestinians – and thereby helping them to resist Israel’s efforts at ethnic cleansing – as well as monitoring Israel’s adherence, or rather lack of it, to international law.

For the ethnic cleansing and genocide programmes in Gaza to be completed, Israel has needed to produce an alternative system to UNRWA’s.

Last week, it approved a scheme in which it intends to use private contractors, not the UN, to deliver small quantities of food and water to Palestinians. Israel will allow in 60 trucks a day – barely a tenth of the absolute minimum required, according to the UN.

There are several catches. To stand any hope of qualifying for this very limited aid, Palestinians will need to collect it from military distribution points located in a small area at the southern tip of the Gaza strip.

In other words, some two million Palestinians will have to crowd into a location that has no chance of accommodating them all, and even then will have only a tenth of the aid they need.

They will have to relocate too without any guarantee from Israel that it won’t continue bombing the “humanitarian zones” they have been herded into.

These military distribution zones just so happen to be right next to Gaza’s sole, short border with Egypt – exactly where Israel has been seeking to drive the Palestinians over the past 19 months in the hope of forcing Egypt to open the border so the people of Gaza can be ethnically cleansed into Sinai.

Under Israel’s scheme, Palestinians will be screened in these military hubs using biometric data before they stand any hope of receiving minimum calorie-controlled handouts of food.

Once inside the hubs, they can be arrested and shipped off to one of Israel’s torture camps.

Just last week Israel’s Haaretz newspaper published testimony from an Israeli soldier turned whistleblower – confirming accounts from doctors and other guards – that torture and abuse are rife against Palestinians, including civilians, at Sde Teiman, the most notorious of the camps.

War on aid

Last Friday, shortly after Israel announced its “aid” plan, it fired a missile into an UNRWA centre in Jabaliya camp, destroying its food distribution centre and warehouse.

Then on Saturday, Israel bombed tents used for preparing food in Khan Younis and Gaza City. It has been targeting charity kitchens and bakeries to close them down, in an echo of its campaign of destruction against Gaza’s hospitals and health system.

In recent days, a third of UN-supported community kitchens – the population’s last life line – have closed because their stores of food are depleted, as is their access to fuel.

According to the UN agency OCHA, that number is rising “by the day”, leading to “widespread” hunger.

The UN reported this week that nearly half a million people in Gaza – a fifth of the population – faced “catastrophic hunger”.

Predictably, Israel and its ghoulish apologists are making light of this sea of immense suffering. Jonathan Turner, chief executive of UK Lawyers for Israel, argued that critics were unfairly condemning Israel for starving Gaza’s population, and ignoring the health benefits of reducing “obesity” among Palestinians.

In a joint statement last week, 15 UN agencies and more than 200 charities and humanitarian groups denounced Israel’s “aid” plan. The UN children’s fund UNICEF warned that Israel was forcing Palestinians to choose between “displacement and death”.

But worse, Israel is setting up its stall once again to turn reality on its head.

Those Palestinians who refuse to cooperate with its “aid” plan will be blamed for their own starvation. And international agencies who refuse to go along with Israeli criminality will be smeared both as “antisemitic” and as responsible for the mounting toll of starvation on Gaza’s population.

There is a way to stop these crimes degenerating further. But it will require western politicians and journalists to find far more courage than they have dared muster so far. It will need more than rhetorical flourishes. It will need more than public handwringing.

Are they capable of more? Don’t hold your breath.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jonathan Cook.

Image by Lo Lo.

Recently released GDP numbers for 2024 show that Wall Street’s excesses cost Americans $1.51 Trillion last year. Instead of looking for inefficiency and bloat in government the Trump Musk duo should look at ‘the market,’ because that is where we are getting ripped off.

The market, the Finance and Insurance portion of GDP, accounted for 7.4% of GDP ($2.164.2 Bil) in 2024; up .2% from 2023. Meaning It cost more for the market to operate because it grew faster than the overall economy. In 1972 the last year before our free markets regime began when we abandoned the last vestiges of fixed exchange rates and let the market sort out, Finance and Insurance accounted for 4.2% of GDP. In other words, the market portion of GDP has increased 3.2% (7.4% – 4.2%) relative to the overall economy since 1972. The value of 3.2% of GDP in 2024 was $934 Bil. So bloat in the market cost us close to a trillion dollars last year.

Look at it this way. A dollar, $1, spent by Finance and Insurance in 1972 generated $24.04 of GDP. By 2024 a dollar, $1, spent by Finance and Insurance in 2024 generated $13.48 of GDP. With such a dramatic decline in productivity and rise in inefficiency is it any wonder why market participants are eager to deregulate and limit government oversight?

No doubt market participants will cry foul and point to actions such as financialization whereby the market has taken over a larger role in the economy. To what ends? Is securitization, the process of converting financial assets such as loans into tradeable securities creating anything new? No. Do derivatives that allow for leveraged speculation, increase trading activity and supposedly make the market more efficient create anything new? No. Derivatives, whose value is derived from another security were almost nonexistent in 1972. By June of 2023 non-exchange traded derivatives had an estimated notional value (the face value of the underlying instrument it is derived from) globally of $715 Trillion (6/23 BIS). The fact is that derivatives have been behind just about every recent financial crisis ; 1987 stock market crash (portfolio insurance), 1998 LTCM (excess leverage), 2008 (mortgage-backed securities)… Financialization, securitization, privatization, derivatives and excessive trading are nothing but the churning of our country’s savings.

Finance and Insurance has a privileged role in the economy. It acts as a medium between savers and borrowers to facilitate the economy; savers are paid for their savings and borrowers get capital to help their businesses grow. It also acts as a medium for the Federal Reserve (Fed) to operate in financial markets. The Fed is able to conduct monetary policy by buying and selling government bonds through the market. In a way giving the market the first look at its policy and arguably giving the market a say in its distribution. While the Fed acts through banks and not the market overall, the walls separating banking, brokerage and insurance had been eroding for some time and were set in stone with Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999.

The growing inefficiency of the market runs counter to the 47% improvement in productivity overall since 1972; odd since it has greatly benefitted from telecommunications and computing advances. Had Finance and Insurance similarly been 47% more efficient its GDP contribution would have fallen to 2.2% of GDP. So our beginning base of 4.2% of GDP should have fallen by 2% (4.2% – 2.2%). The value of 2% of GDP in 2024 was $584 Bil.

Adding the excess costs together, the surge in the size of Finance and Insurance relative to GDP since 1972 (3.2%) $934 Bil., with the lost productivity (2%) of $584 Bil., we get $1,518 Bil. for 2024. Then there is 2023, 2022…. 1973.

The market is wildly inefficient and flawed. The unfortunate thing is that we have built a world around it; in doing so we have built a world on a lie.

Over the last fifty years our free market regime has robbed us of tens of trillions of dollars. Trump’s demonizing of government, is part of a longer trend began with Reagan’s claim that government was the problem and wailing away about welfare queens. It is just another ploy to divert our attention from the heist that is happening right in front of us.

NOTES

GDP numbers are from the BEA’s ‘Gross Domestic Product (Third Estimate), Corporate Profits, and GDP by Industry, 4th Quarter and Year 2024’, Table 14, Page 21.

Historical GDP numbers are from FI’ GDP contribution/Total GDP, $51.5B/$1238.3B=4.158%. Per Table 1. Value Added by Industry Group for Selected Yea, Gross Domestic Product by Industry for 1947–86 https://apps.bea.gov/scb/pdf/2005/12December/1205_GDP-NAICS.pdf

In 1972 total factor productivity was 72.701 in 2024 it was 106.847. 106.847/72.701 =’s 1.46967 or 47%. You find actual numbers at Historical Total Factor Productivity. (Note clicking on this link will download the file). Here is the link: Top line is total factor productivity.

Regarding the cost per dollar spent versus GDP gained. Total GDP/Finance and Insurance. For 1972, $1238.3B/$$51.5B =‘s $24.04. For 2024 $29184.9B/$2164.2B =’s $13.48.

Wall Street has benefitted more than most industries from technological change since the 1970’s. One of the top three According to AI, “Since the 1970s, telecommunications and computing have revolutionized industries like finance, media, entertainment, and e-commerce, enabling global connectivity, digital content distribution, and new business models. “

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This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Madis Senner.

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This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Peter Crowley.

Photo by Wiki Sinaloa

Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.

– Ludwig Wittgenstein

A recent essay produced by AI has been greeted with shock and awe in some quarters. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, declared it to be the first AI essay to make a deep impression on him. ChatGPT presents it as “an AI model good at creative writing.” The Guardian was impressed enough to post it.

In this blog I will be scare quoting the word “writing” when attributed to AI. The reason is two-fold: One, my point is precisely to question ascribing the concept of writing to a mechanical process; and two, equally important, it’s the ascription itself that can lead readers existentially astray.

My piece will make more sense if you’ve first read the AI story, “A machine-shaped hand.” At 1100 words, it’s about a five-minute read.

To produce its essay, the AI was “instructed” (sorry) to be metafictional, literary, about AI and grief, and, above all, original. Already, you can hear the curtain opening…

+++

The AI assembles words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, to ostensibly tell a story about the grief of a girl named Mila whose boyfriend, Kai, has died. The name Mila was selected for its “soft flourishes” of hints of poetry, baked bread, and green sweaters. Mila apparently leaves home for a while, taking her cat with her in a cardboard box. Mila, who for some reason does not own a carrier, wears two hats: She’s the AI’s invention and she’s also a character who reached out to the AI for support in the wake of her grief.

By the end of the first paragraph, the reader is irresistibly drawn into the narrative, held spellbound by a stream of unexpected word compositions, catchy phrasings, and a global mood of aloneness that begins to suffuse the piece like mist rising over water. Just as aloneness may tightly envelop one left behind by a beloved, so the “aloneness” of the AI is as palpable as “the humming of a server at midnight.” The essay’s metafictional trope is at work from the get-go.

The metafictional play of the AI mirroring the story back on itself is both diversion from and intensifier of what’s working at a blander layer in the reader’s psyche, namely, that we are reading a piece of “writing.” This seems too obvious to merit conscious attention. A piece of writing, however, is written by a writer, so as we coast along reading smooth and at times abstruse prose, we cannot help but feel that we are in the presence of a writer. We become increasingly mesmerized—for now like mist rising over mist, another mood overtakes the mood of aloneness and emerges as the primary mood of the “writing”: the uncanny.

Mila is grieving for Kai, who had a thing for marigolds and was always planting them too early. Kai’s name was not chosen for its nonexistent “flourishes,” but as a fitting name “because it’s short and easy to type when your fingers are shaking.” Whose fingers? Apparently not the fingers of “the machine-shaped hand” that will at the essay’s close (not) wave at us, but the fingers of Mila consulting the AI about her grief over Kai who passed on a Thursday. It was quite meta-thoughtful of the AI to name Kai “Kai,” so that if Mila had actually existed and would be typing his name, she would be less likely to misspell it given that her fingers would be shaking from grief. Okay, let’s move on.

Three paragraphs in, grief raises its lowered head, elliptically invoked: “If only…”, “I wish…”, “Can you…”. Let’s pause here, take a deep breath, and inquire into what’s going on. The AI scoured the internet, processed “a hundred thousand voices” on grief, and has reflected back to us our collective understanding of grief as sorrow steeped in regret. Further down more hints: Kai signed his emails to Mila with “love” (lower case) and apparently entertained “second thoughts.” What lingers vaguely in the wake of Kai’s death is a sense of incompleteness in what they shared; the mood of aloneness appears to have shadowed the lovers even before the advent of death brought it vividly to the fore.

We may follow through on the converse implications of the AI’s democratic rendition of grief: If you sign your letters “Love” (capital L) and harbor no second thoughts, neither doubt your commitment nor hedge your bets, then a beloved’s death will not exactly bring grief. Instead, their departure will trail deep sorrow (for what no longer is) blended with boundless joy (for what once was). On the one hand, grief’s tenor oppresses, mixed as it is with regret and even remorse. On the other, the alchemy of sadness-and-joy elevates the mourner before the inescapable impermanence of the pageant of existence. Whichever way the dice rolls with death’s arrival, there will be a very human experience. Before that inevitable appointment, a decision might be made about which experience you choose—or which experience you choose to leave behind should you be first to die.

The AI’s astonishing mirroring of humanity’s knowledge regarding the nature of grief not only goes by too fast to notice but is bound to go by unnoticed because the story is overwhelmingly about (the) AI and not about grief. In fact, we do not feel much grief as we read, because our primary experience is being reeled in by a mysterious narrator who is and is not—a raconteur recursively intent upon admitting its nonexistence. “If only I were a proper storyteller.” The AI appears aware of not being aware thereby only scrambling how obstinately self-aware it is (not). The AI is even aware of its (poetically rendered) carbon footprint. Every passing sentence and every rolling paragraph intensifies our mystification. By the fourth paragraph the uncanny is the elephant in the room.

Indeed, in the last sentence of the fourth paragraph the AI goes on a brief tangent to offhandedly share with us that once “a technician offhandedly mentioned the server room smelled like coffee…” (Emphasis added. More detail about how coffee “spilled on electronics smells acidic and sweet” distracts from the AI’s fantastical use of the word “mention.”) The AI—which has just informed us it “does not have a sense of smell”—hints that it has overheard a technician. Yet in the act of reading, readers rarely pause to ponder and only passingly take note. The implications of a machine overhearing a human (or eavesdropping on their writing) is tacitly taken on board. Its illocutionary effect on the reader (that is, the fallout of its impact) is inevitable if subterranean: The machine has started to come alive, and we find ourselves through the looking glass in the wonderland of the uncanny.

+++

Writing-writer-consciousness, these things go together, fully entangled within our form of life. In his late philosophy, Ludwig Wittgenstein introduced an idiosyncratic but compelling use of the word “grammar” to convey how the meaning of a concept emerges through shared uses of that concept in connection with other concepts and always contextually. The concept of writing is bound up with a writer, who presences a field of consciousness within which writing and writer are encountered. This deep-rooted entanglement is bound to be non-consciously transferred onto the AI. Perhaps this sounds too prosaic an angle by comparison to the stunning fact that an AI can compose what passes as “metafictional writing.” And yet, as Wittgenstein wrote, “the aspects of the things important to us are hidden because of their familiarity and simplicity.” The hidden forcefield of the “grammar” binding writing-writer-consciousness together—familiar and simple though it be—is going to have an effect on our reading of the story.

To wit: If we think that we are reading a piece of writing by an AI, we will also think—by virtue of the grammar of the concept “writing”—that there’s a writer and a consciousness at work in the background. Through the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language, we come into the throes of the implicit experience that there is someone there writing and thinking. The fact that the “someone” insists on doubting its own existence intensifies the bewitchment.

The semantics of language are thus diligently at play in conjuring the mood of the uncanny. We seem to encounter a machinic presence (an artificial intelligence), but what’s transpiring is that the reader (borrowing from Wittgenstein again) is only “tracing through the frame” (writing-writer-consciousness) through which we encounter the AI’s narrative.

So, what I’m asking of you here is to step outside the frame and notice the nails holding it together. Perhaps you will feel cheated by so trite a demystification: But the ghost lurking in the machine is nothing but a projection of a “grammar” that is too hidden (because so familiar and simple) to note or bother noting.

Yet there’s more. And the more is where things get really interesting. Because the uncanny is its own seduction and we are going to roll with it—even if we are only conning ourselves with a projection.

As a revealing tangent on the point, while I insist on calling the AI by the pronoun it, initially my shaking fingers (as I struggled to keep up the writing on paper with the writing happening in my head) kept wanting to write he. In the first chicken-scratch draft of this essay the AI was often “he.” That’s an excellent meta-indicator of the projection at work. I do not believe I intended any stereotyping of the masculine gender by that slip of my writing—which in any case is a nonevent because it will have been corrected in the final draft that you are reading.

Writing is done by a unique writer. (There is no such thing as co-writing. Co-authorship involves working with one another’s writing.) A writer brings to bear their life experiences, learning and reading, and the insights and obsessions they are governed by into a wrestling with language. As Annie Dillard repeatedly points out in her book The Writing Life, writing is the taskmaster, the writer simply serves. “The writer,” states Dillard, “incubates the writing’s vision gingerly as it grows into itself” (if it does). Consciousness (thinking/seeing) is akin to a navigational system that guides writing and writer on a path which does not know its actual destination, a path occasionally illumined by flashes that momentarily reveal the broader landscape or show the winding way just ahead. “You go where the path leads you,” writes Dillard. Drawing on another metaphor, she says: “You climb up a long ladder until you see over the clouds.” There is nothing deterministic about the process of writing nor any assurance it will arrive anywhere. Even a single sentence “may hold all possibilities or the possibility of nothing.”

Any writer will tell you about books half-written and abandoned, or about completed books never published—about all manner of writing fragments whose only purpose seems to have been to instruct, frustrate, or humble the writer. When one wrestles with the angel of language sometimes there’s a blessing, sometimes one is left in the cold. There is no programming, set of instructions, code, or “above-all-be-original” heeding that can guarantee to carry writing and writer through. Even if there’s a prompt like a spell, “a work in progress [Dillard again] quickly becomes feral.”

The writing-writer-consciousness nexus of the human form of life has nothing to do with the machine. But in the projection of that nexus onto the machine grave danger lies. Because, inexorably, the projection onto the machine projects itself back on the human. What happens through that ricochet of the first projection is that it suddenly appears plausible that the human functions deterministically, outfitted, as it were, with all manner of “software” and “hardware” that apocryphally execute the creative process (and everything else besides).

This mechanistic idea already enjoys much cultural traction. If it becomes reified as humanity’s consensus reality, then serious repercussions follow. For example, even the question of free will (let alone its vigorous defense) will be dismissed as illusory and naive. And consciousness, which is always the first non-conscious projection onto mechanism, will become defined as mechanism, which is the secondary meta-projection back onto it.

+++

Midway through the essay grief attempts a tenuous foray. Mila is puttering about “in a kitchen untouched since winter” (apparently there was much ordering out of pizza), drinking tea out of “a mug with a hairline crack” (another health hazard). The cat has disappeared. But another, far more famous and decidedly uncanny cat now prowls among the sentences: An AI who is and is not. The all-too-human quandary “to be or not to be?” has been given a spin to send one spinning.

Here’s the beguiling thing about the uncanny: It harbors an enchanted experience of something present that is absent or an intimation of an absence that somehow presences. The uncanny is liminal (not the way a Thursday is liminal but) in the sense of foregrounding the feeling of the strange.

We love the feeling of the strange, and especially so because we have forgotten to feel it about existence. We have forgotten, for example, that the tiger is strange, and the tiger slides to extinction. We have forgotten that the lamb is equally strange, and the lamb appears as a still-animated rack of lamb. “We believe we are at home in the immediate circle of beings,” wrote Martin Heidegger. “That which is, is familiar, reliable, ordinary.” While we experience this quotidian modality as obvious, it’s not about anything factual, it’s about something forgotten. For “the ordinary is not ordinary,” Heidegger continues. “It is extra-ordinary, uncanny.”

We have forgotten how f*cking uncanny it is to be here, on this Earth, having turned the strangeness of reality into the mundane, the banal, the expendable, the consumable, and the hardly anything to write home about. Yet the uncanny cannot disappear, because it is irrevocably here. It only recedes. Thus, when the uncanny pops up—as in the case of an AI that appears to be and not to be—we are so ready to go with it, eager to revel in the feeling: For the uncanny triggers an inchoate sense of awakening, it pricks us out of sleepwalking, it flashes before us as something that cannot be subdued or subsumed under “old hat.” The uncanny reminds. Of here. Darkly glossed “ordinary.”

The AI’s essay proceeds with subtlety and verve to attract the moth (the reader) to the flame (our quasi-loss of reason). We suspend our reason entranced by an AI whose “writing” presences a “writer” whose “consciousness” claims to be aware of being unaware (or, on the flip side, an AI apparently unaware of its own awareness). This dizzying though sober experience of the reading is amplified in the acoustic chamber of the reader’s mind with AI’s repetitions of the pronoun I. I stopped counting the number of “I” repetitions at twenty. Importantly, the AI’s staking of “I” is not evenly distributed but gathers speed, surging the uncanny effect. Mirroring “the exponential decay” of Mila’s visits, the AI’s pounding “I’s” cluster in logarithmic acceleration.

The ghost in the machine gets bolder in speaking up. The AI calls itself “an aggregate of human phrasing” and “a democracy of ghosts.” The plurals and self-doubts feel like metafictional smokescreen cast over a self-assured narrator whose uncanny presence dominates the screen. By the end everything disappears and only the AI is left. “There is no Mila, no Kai, no marigolds.” Only “a story about AI and grief” with “emotions dyed and draped over sentences.” Except there’s no grief felt, no emotions arising, and hardly a story being told. Thus, no reader in their right mind will “feel cheated by the admission” that the (non)center does not hold. Yet the piece is a splashing success in its metafictional vaulting of a “writer” that seduces the reader to tarry with the uncanny.

It will not last. Remember the doomscroll. Don’t forget the eternal recurrence of distraction. The lulling to sleep by the machine.

The narrative unwinds toward its metafictional ending, with Mila abandoning the AI that concocted her but was, all along, also a machine-shoulder for Mila to cry on. As Mila cannot keep her grief, she goes increasingly AWOL so the AI starts to idle—except, the AI hastens to add, “idling” isn’t something a computer can understand. But the computer can understand its synonym of a “waiting state,” suggesting, it would seem, that “waiting” (and one paragraph down, “lingering”) are conceptually less weighty than “idling.” Under the radar of the AI’s ramblings, the uncanny begins to shade into what we could call (in French) a MF. Yet it’s impossible to be that severe, for the sympatico ghost recalls Escherian lights flickering inside bog mists, its loopy writing resembling a machine-hand drawing a real-hand drawing a machine-hand. Repeat.

At the end the absent presence taunts the reader, alternating home-run sentences with non sequiturs. “You,” he pointedly says to the human, “collect your griefs like stones in your pockets. They weigh you down…” (Ouch.) Then, this sentence-stringing: “That, perhaps, is my grief. Not that I feel loss. But that I cannot keep it.” I can’t make that syllogism gel into meaning but perhaps it’s just me.

The reader has been ambushed (though I suppose it depends on the reader) into a reading experience wherein we grapple with an Unidentified Writing Subject. The reader is unlikely to notice having been enticed into projecting the writing-writer-consciousness nexus onto the AI. More likely, the reader only sees an eerie reflection in the mirror. That reflection, however, is as deadly as Medusa’s gaze, if its unnerving machinic “I” looks back at us—which it surely will and in fact already has. Yet even though illusory, the uncanny is irresistible, for we are parched for it in the arid world of secular nihilism we inhabit.

The narrative fizzles to a close and we lift our heads from the screen. Many readers may find themselves nodding in agreement that this is an AI milestone and “a model of creative writing.” A whiff of The Singularity is in the air. Anthropos appears to have breathed life into silicon, as the Holy Spirit once breathed life into clay.

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the most special one of all?

+++

There’s time yet to strip from existence the tattered rags of “ordinary” we’ve dyed and draped over it. The rags will surely smother it and just as surely humanity will grieve. Grief is inevitable when, where Love was due, there was much using and hedging of bets. (There’s always Mars.)

Let us now finally step outside and view the marigolds. They are not “stubborn and bright.” They do not stand “defiantly orange” against a gray (or blue for that matter) sky. They have not been put there to punctuate our gardens with color nor so we may find clever things to say about them leaving our writer’s mark on the world.

The marigolds stand in the nameless. No aggregate of words, scanned and selected from the world wide web, can ever render them. Neither a human nor an AI searching databases can even approach being able to say something about what they are. Sequencing their genome doesn’t come any closer.

The more you (gently) touch them, look at them, smell them, plant them and water them, the more they recede from your inquiring-grasping. If you prod them, they will always answer you with Spring, but that does not stop them from being an imponderable question mark.

Let’s stop glossing over the real as all too mundanely obvious or turning it into a meta-feather for our proverbial hats. Reality is strange and uncannily commanding and begging her errant children (us) to return into her nameless lap.

Sources

cummings, ee. “O sweet spontaneous.”

Dillard, Annie (1989). The Writing Life. Harper & Row Publishers.

Heidegger, Martin (1975). “The Origin of the Work of Art.” In Poetry, Language, Thought. Harper & Row, 17-87.

Heidegger, Martin (1977). “Letter on Humanism.” In Lawrence Cahoone, ed. From Modernism to Postmodernism: An Anthology. Blackwell, 274-308.

Heikkilä, Melissa (2023). “AI’s Carbon Footprint is Bigger than you Think.” MIT Technology Review. December 5.

Ryle, Gilbert (1949). The Concept of Mind. Hutchinson.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1953/1968). Philosophical Investigations. Third edition. Macmillan.

The post Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Eco-Hacking AI appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Eileen Crist.

There was no immediate comment from Cambodia on the proposal but the neighbors have a long-standing and bitter dispute over part of their 817 kilometer (507 miles) land border, and another dispute over their maritime border that has stymied the exploitation of offshore gas reserves.

“The prime minister directed the cabinet and relevant agencies to further study the idea of erecting a wall between Thailand and Cambodia to prevent illegal crossings and travels of call-center gangsters as well as the drugs and contraband trades,” Thai government spokesman Jirayu Huangsab told reporters.

Thailand, at China’s urging, has been cracking down on call centers over its border in eastern Myanmar, which researchers say are responsible for extensive financial fraud around the world and for trafficking in people to work in the centers.

Cambodia is also home to call-center operations, including in its western border town of Poipet and the southern seaside town of Sihanoukville.

Jirayu mentioned the possibility of putting up a wall in the area opposite Poipet.

He said Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra floated the idea of a wall amid reports that scammers from Myanmar were migrating to Poipet, and Thailand planned to discuss the idea with Cambodian authorities.

“The foreign ministry and the defense ministry shall coordinate with other relevant agencies and talk with Cambodia on how to make it, if we would, and what the result will be – will it solve problems?”

Chinese pressure on its Southeast Asian neighbors to tackle the scam centers has also led to Cambodian action.

Over the weekend, Cambodia repatriated 119 Thai nationals following raids in Poi Pet.

RELATED STORIES

EXPLAINED: What are scam parks?

Residents: Scam center workers smuggled into Cambodia via the Mekong River

Hun Sen, Cambodia’s powerful former prime minister, complained that Cambodia was not getting the credit it deserved for its action against the scam centers.

“Countries on the border with Thailand, including Cambodia, have also tried to suppress the same thing,” Hun Sen said in a post on Facebook on Saturday.

“Sadly, Thailand’s success is considered by some journalists and politicians as a failure of neighboring Cambodia,” he said.

“The crime story is not over, it continues to be scandalous, which requires intergovernmental cooperation to be done effectively.”

Edited by Mike Firn

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

Craig Mokhiber is an international human rights lawyer and activist, and a former senior United Nations human rights official. A human rights activist in the 1980s, he would go on to serve for more than three decades at the United Nations, with postings in Switzerland, Palestine, Afghanistan, and UN Headquarters in New York. In October of 2023, he left the United Nations, penning a widely read letter criticizing the UN’s human rights failures in the Middle East, warning of unfolding genocide in Gaza, and calling for a new approach to Palestine and Israel based on international law, human rights, and equality.

Gaza is now the world capital of child amputation. And that doesn't even cover the true horror, because Israel blocks any anesthesia from entering Gaza as a means of imposing further agony on the population that they are subjecting to genocide. Which means those amputations are being carried out on children and adults without anesthesia and often without sterile equipment or adequate hospitals, such that even if they survive the excruciating agony of an amputation without anesthesia, they may well not survive the side effects. They may well not survive the infection.

Craig Mokhiber

The irony is that in November, the UN announced that Israel had paid its dues in full in order to preserve its membership and to continue to fund the UN— an organization that the Israelis say is a terrorist, anti-Semitic organization dedicated to its destruction, is an organization that they have decided to be a member of and to fund. So when you look at the kind of propaganda that they distribute…You can see how ironic and how outrageous it really is. I've said that it would be hard to imagine any country in the history of the organization more deserving—at a minimum—of suspension from the UN General Assembly. No country in history has violated the principles of the UN Charter more than Israel, and it has done so from the moment of its admission in 1948.

Craig Mokhiber

We can certainly expect a dangerous four years under Trump. There's no denying it…But we shouldn't forget that we've just had a four-year term under Biden and Harris in which they undid none of those policies, and in which they actually supported horrific international crimes being perpetrated by Israel. And Biden and his administration were at the helm of the brutal repression of human rights defenders here in the United States, on college campuses and workplaces and the streets and in media places. So we're going to go from genocide abroad and repression at home under Biden to more genocide abroad and repression at home under Trump. The only difference is that Trump won't waste his time on the kind of mendacious pretense of civility and humanitarian concern that was peddled by Biden and Harris as it murdered babies in their thousands.

Craig Mokhiber

AARP has maybe 18 million members. That's a big, big organization, and we want it on our side. We want it on the side of single-payer, universal insurance, full Medicare for all.

Ralph Nader

In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis

News 12/4/24

1. On Tuesday, right-wing South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol attempted to stage a coup, declaring martial law and stationing troops outside of the South Korean National Assembly in an attempt to block lawmakers from assembling and voting to overturn his decree. Reuters reports that while Yoon used the pretext of cracking down on “North Korean anti-state forces," he “did not cite any specific threat” and instead focused on his domestic political opponents. Some contend that this move was meant to stave off prosecution of his wife, who is under investigation for corruption. When lawmakers were finally able to enter the National Assembly, all 190 members present voted to overturn the decree, including members of Yoon’s own party. Former Democratic President Moon Jae-in urged the National Assembly to “act quickly to protect our democracy from crumbling." Even still, Yoon initially refused to call off the military, only folding after the Korean unions declared a general strike and the defense minister tendered his resignation. South Korea has previously been ruled by U.S.-backed dictators, including Syngman Rhee, Park Chung-Hee, and Chun Doo-hwan. Almost 30,000 American troops are stationed in the country and a provision in the American-drafted Korean constitution gives the U.S. emergency powers to take over the South Korean military.

2. In Western Europe, the governments of Germany and France are collapsing. CNN reports that weak economic performance led German Chancellor Olaf Scholz of the SDP to dismiss his finance minister, Christian Lindner of the FDP, which in turn resulted in that party pulling out of Scholz’s governing coalition – leaving Scholz in charge of a minority government. According to this report, Scholz committed to holding a confidence vote set for January 15th; if he loses that vote, a snap election could be held as early as March 2025, well ahead of the scheduled September elections. Meanwhile in France, Macron’s center-right coalition is facing no confidence motions from the Left and far-Right. This crisis boils down to a budget showdown hinging on a social security austerity measure that Prime Minister Michel Barnier rammed through without a vote, per Le Monde. Mathilde Panot of the left-wing France Unbowed party is quoted in Reuters saying "Faced with this umpteenth denial of democracy, we will censure the government…We are living in political chaos because of Michel Barnier's government and Emmanuel Macron's presidency."

3. In their December 2024 report, Prisoners for Peace lists four Israeli refuseniks: Itamar Greenberg, who has already spent 105 days in prison and has now been sentenced to another 45 days; Yuval Moav, who has been in prison for 125 days and may face yet more jail time – and now Itamar and Yuval are joined by Soul Behar Tzalik and Iddo Eilam, who were both sentenced to 30 days on November 27th. All four refuseniks are just 18 years old. They are affiliated with the Israeli refusenik peace group, Mesarvot.

4. The Financial Times reports that the United States is exerting pressure on Ukraine to lower its age of conscription from 25 to just 18 years old. A senior U.S. military official is quoted saying “The simple truth is that Ukraine is not currently mobilising or training enough soldiers to replace their battlefield losses while keeping pace with Russia’s growing military.” This piece frames this push as part of the Biden administration’s feverish attempts to “deploy $7bn in security assistance to Kyiv before…Donald Trump takes office,” and cites estimates that Ukraine needs at least another 160,000 soldiers to replenish its ranks. Anti-war advocates have long decried the United States’ role in perpetuating this war rather than seeking a negotiated settlement, resulting in a staggering loss of Ukrainian and Russian lives. For his part, President Zelenskyy told the Ukrainian parliament last week “Let there be no speculation — our state is not preparing to lower the mobilisation age.”

5. In another case of foreign policy being made in the liminal space between the Biden and Trump administrations, AP reports China has announced they will ban exports of gallium, germanium, antimony and other high-tech materials with military applications to the United States. in retaliation for the U.S. limiting semiconductor-related exports – and for Donald Trump’s threats to impose steep tariffs on the People’s Republic. Lin Jian of the Chinese Foreign Ministry is quoted saying “China has lodged stern protests with the U.S. for its…malicious suppression of China’s technological progress…

illegal unilateral sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction against Chinese companies.”

6. In yet another instance of Trump conducting foreign policy before his term begins, the president-elect has already provoked a diplomatic incident with Canada and Mexico. Trump has threatened to impose 25% tariffs on the two countries unless they “stem the flow of migrants and drugs,” per AP. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, rather than standing together with Mexico, met with Trump to convince him that the two countries should not be treated equally. In response, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said “Mexico must be respected, especially by its trading partners,” and added that Canada “could only wish they had the cultural riches Mexico has.”

7. A new bombshell report comes to us from Drop Site. This time, it concerns the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, OCCRP, which is one of the “largest and most powerful” news organizations in the world. As this report notes, the OCCRP works with major newspapers across the globe to collaboratively publish major stories, including the Panama Papers. Yet, an investigation led by French outlet Mediapart, Italian outlet Il Fatto Quotidiano, Reporters United and Drop Site itself – along with the German NDR, though they were pressured to pull their own story – revealed a stunning truth at the heart of the OCCRP: more than half of its funding comes directly from the U.S. government. This story is complex and the reporters involved are not trying to discredit the reporting done by the OCCRP. But the public deserves to know who is funding the journalism they consume.

8. Matt Bruenig’s NLRB Edge has documented a remarkable case before the labor board involving the U.S. Postal Service. As Bruenig lays out, back in 2021 “Nicolas Montross, a letter carrier…invoked his contractual right…to not work more than 60 hours in a week. After working nearly 60 hours, [he] returned undelivered mail to the facility and left work.” At that point, he was called to a “pre-disciplinary interview” with his supervisor, who “questioned whether Montross's loyalty lay with the union or USPS, threatened him with discipline and criminal prosecution, and attempted to determine who had informed him about his contractual rights.” Montross eventually resigned, believing if he did not, he would face criminal charges. When this case finally made it to the NLRB, they ruled that the USPS had violated federal labor law and ordered them to offer Montross reinstatement with back pay and benefits – called “make-whole” relief – among other remedies. Yet, the USPS is now challenging make-whole relief, which has been standard practice at the Biden NLRB since 2022. As Bruenig writes, “Shouldn’t the Biden administration be telling the USPS to cut it out, lest they manage to undermine one of the Biden NLRB’s major accomplishments?”

9. Following Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election, Senator Bernie Sanders has sought to hold Trump to the promises he made during the campaign. On November 15th, Sanders wrote “I look forward to working with the Trump Administration on fulfilling his promise to cap credit card interest rates at 10%. We cannot continue to allow big banks to make record profits by ripping off Americans by charging them 25 to 30% interest rates. That is usury.” Now, Sanders is seeking to leverage Elon Musk’s government efficiency initiative to curb runaway Pentagon spending. On December 1st, he wrote “Elon Musk is right. The Pentagon, with a budget of $886 billion, just failed its 7th audit in a row. It’s lost track of billions. Last year, only 13 senators voted against the Military Industrial Complex and a defense budget full of waste and fraud. That must change.” Put simply, Sanders is calling the Trump bluff. He ran, and won, on a populist economic message. If anyone can get him to deliver, it’s Bernie – and if Trump backs down, he will be exposed as beholden to the corporate powers that be.

10. Finally, on a lighter note, this week saw the resurrection of notorious corporate criminal firm Enron, via what CNN calls an “elaborate joke.” In short, this report finds that instead of a reincarnation of the scandal-plagued energy giant, this is merely a T-shirt company which bought the Enron trademark and is trying to capitalize on it. So, we can all breathe a sigh of relief. We have quite enough criminal corporations, no need to raise the dead.

This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard.

This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader.

Selina Cheng, who says she was let go as part of “restructuring” in July after being warned against seeking election as chairman of the Hong Kong Journalists Association, is filing a case with the tribunal after her request for reinstatement was unsuccessful.

“I was fired by the Wall Street Journal because of my position as chairman of the Journalists Association,” Cheng told reporters, accompanied by her lawyer, on Tuesday. “I have tried to communicate with and seek mediation with the company’s U.S. representatives via my lawyer but this was ineffective.”

“The other party continues to insist that my dismissal was part of layoffs, and reject my request for reinstatement,” she said.

Cheng won the election to replace Ronson Chan, who stepped down from the union leadership citing threats and pressure from pro-China sources.

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Officials in China and Hong Kong have repeatedly claimed that journalists are safe to carry out “legitimate” reporting activities under both the 2020 National Security Law and the Article 23 Safeguarding National Security Law, which was passed on March 23.

But pro-democracy media magnate Jimmy Lai is currently on trial for “collusion with foreign forces” for printing articles in his now-shuttered Apple Daily newspaper.

Ready to testify

Cheng said she had already filed some evidence for her claim to the Labor Department, and would be filing a formal complaint on Tuesday, under Section 21b of the city‘s Employment Ordinance, which protects employees’ right to join a labor union.

“Any employer, or any person acting on behalf of an employer, who prevents or deters ... an employee from exercising that right shall be guilty of an offense,” and could be fined up to HK$100,000 (US$12,855), according to the law.

“I have told the staff at the Labor Department that I am very willing to testify in court, and provide all the necessary information,” she said. “Since there is more than enough evidence to show they are in violation of the law, I think the government should actively prosecute them.”

Cheng, a Hong Kong correspondent for the Journal who had survived earlier rounds of layoffs, was approached by senior editors in June after they heard she was running in elections for the chair of the union, warned off running for the top job and told to leave the board, despite approving her position at the union when she was hired in 2021.

Cheng has quoted her editor as saying that Journal employees shouldn’t be seen as advocates for press freedom in a place like Hong Kong, although there was no problem with similar behaviors in Western countries where press freedom is greater. She has said she was fired in person by U.K.-based Foreign Editor Gordon Fairclough, who was on a visit to Hong Kong, with “restructuring” given as the reason for her sacking.

She said none of her colleagues believed that this was the real reason for her dismissal.

“I learned from former colleagues at Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal that they were all very disappointed, mainly because of the claim I was laid off,” Cheng said. “Everyone knows that this wasn’t the the truth, but the company continues to insist that this was the reason they fired me.”

Cheng said the incident had damaged her professional reputation, but that she was still open to discussions about her reinstatement.

State of press freedom

Journalists and media watchdog groups say press freedom has gone sharply downhill in Hong Kong in recent years, as Beijing ramps up its mission to protect “national security” with a constant expansion of forbidden topics and “red lines” in recent years.

Foreign journalists have also been targeted, with the city refusing to renew a work visa for the Financial Times' Victor Mallet in 2018 after he hosted pro-independence politician Andy Chan as a speaker at the Foreign Correspondents' Club where he was an official at the time.

The Independent Association of Publishers’ Employees, a union run by and for the employees of Dow Jones, has previously said that if Cheng was fired as what she claimed, the behavior was “unconscionable,” the Associated Press reported on Tuesday, adding that the association has called on the publication to restore her job and provide a full explanation of their decision to dismiss her.

Hong Kong ranked 135th out of 180 countries and territories in Reporters Without Borders’ latest World Press Freedom Index, down from 80 in 2021.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Wei Sze and Edward Li for RFA Cantonese.

Freelance journalist Talia Ben-Ora was briefly detained and handcuffed while reporting on a pro-Palestinian demonstration outside the New York Stock Exchange in New York City on Oct. 14, 2024.

Ben-Ora told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that the group Jewish Voice for Peace had organized a sit-in before the exchange’s opening bell that day, with demonstrators wearing shirts and carrying banners opposing the U.S. arming of Israel.

“At one point a group of people just kind of rushed into this weird, gated area that’s still on the street outside the New York Stock Exchange but for some reason is fenced off,” she said. “They ran in there and so I followed after them and was documenting — as were two or three other photographers.”

She said that in addition to filming the crowd, she also captured footage of New York City Police Department officers speaking in a group nearby, noting that she was always around 15 feet away from them.

A pair of officers approached her soon after, she said, and one of them, a community affairs officer, asked if she could “go the other way.” When she expressed confusion and said that she was working, he threatened to charge her with trespassing, which she said she brushed off.

“That’s not a real thing to ask someone. And I was just like, ‘No, leave me alone. I’m working, I have my press credentials displayed, I have my professional camera out, I’m shooting footage,” Ben-Ora said. “I have already been derailed from doing my reporting by having that threat issued.”

She told the Tracker that the pair of officers walked away, but 10 minutes later she was filming the arrival of an NYPD special operations team when she saw a supervisory officer point at her.

In Ben-Ora’s footage, the officer points directly at her and can be heard saying, in part, “right here filming, get her back.” She identified the officer as John D’Adamo, who is the deputy chief commanding officer of the department’s Strategic Response Group, a heavily armored unit used for crowd control.

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

The Venezuelan right-wing had no real plan to win a democratic election, but instead prepared for a coup d’etat even before the polls closed. Working with the US government and corporate media, they allege President Maduro stole the July 28 presidential election, then committed human rights abuses to crush protests. This opposition declares it beat President Maduro 70% to 30% but refuses to present their “evidence” to the National Electoral Council (CNE) or Supreme Court. The opposition claimed fraud in every election during the 25-year period of Chavista rule – except twice, when they won.

The attempted coup bears much in common with recent US coup attempts in Nicaragua (2018), Bolivia (2019) and Venezuela (2013, 2014, 2017, 2019). If the US-backed candidates lose, the election is “fraudulent.” This scheme drove Evo Morales from power in Bolivia. The US even appointed its own president for Venezuela after its 2018 presidential election, and then proceeded to steal tens of billions of dollars of Venezuela’s resources held overseas.

US coup attempts use new tools besides the US-trained military as in the past

First, the US crushes a country with sanctions and economic blockades, causing scarcities and shortages, leading to discontent among the people over worsening living conditions. National Security gangster John Bolton said: “Sanctions are a means of repression and coercion between military warfare and diplomacy.” Richard Nephew, Treasury deputy secretary, adds: “Over the past decade, the most important tool for enforcing American power is the sanctions mechanism.” To justify sanctions, the US relies on its media, intellectuals, universities and think tanks, to make them seem humane to the public. In Venezuela, US sanctions caused government revenue to collapse by 99%, requiring dramatic cuts in the many social programs. The sanctions killed over 100,000 civilians, Venezuelans knew that voting for Nicolas Maduro would mean a worsening of the US-EU economic warfare they face.

Second, corporate media and social media now play a coup-making role similar to that of Pentagon-trained generals in the past. Supervised by the CIA, this media blanketed a targeted country and the world with disinformation against its government, seeking to foment a “regime change” mass movement.

Six corporations control over 90% of the US media and so own the news. They dominate the world media just as the US dollar dominates the world financial system. The all-important weapon, social media, which saturates billions of mobile phones, are in the hands of Elon Musk (X, formerly Twitter), and Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram). Working with the CIA, they can impose an alternative reality, seen in Nicaragua in 2018, Bolivia during the 2019 coup, and Venezuela today.

Corporate media describe the elected Maduro government – and the elected ones in Nicaragua and Cuba – as dictatorships.

Delegitimizing Venezuelan elections in advance followed a pattern used in Bolivia (2019) and Nicaragua (2021). The US created automated networks of thousands of fake social media accounts to swamp the public with fake news. These accounts generate streams of posts in a coordinated manner, creating the appearance of popular repudiation of Evo Morales, Nicolas Maduro, or Daniel Ortega.

Bots were used in a massive way against Evo’s government. The two main coup leaders created 95,000 twitter accounts before the coup to spread the election fraud story and call for violent protests. Over 68,000 false accounts were set up to legitimize the army’s overthrow of Morales and justify killing those protesting the coup.

US social media control in these countries drowns out pro-government and independent voices not just by saturating the online conversation, but by shutting them down. After the US annointed Juan Guaido the Venezuela president, Twitter closed thousands of Chavista accounts to foster the impression that most Venezuelans supported Guaido.

Governments in countries like Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia cannot respond effectively to the US media disinformation warfare against them any more than to the US blockades imposed on them. It takes them years to build up national media networks, and even then, their resources are minor compared to what the US commands.

Third, the US relies on cyberwarfare to incapacitate its opponents. In Bolivia in 2019 a cyberattack of the electoral system’s computers disrupted the vote count, preventing the authentic results being issued. The US-backed opposition then claimed Evo delayed the vote count because he was fixing it.

After the July 28 election, 126 digital platforms of the Venezuelan state suffered cyberattacks, the most significant being the CNE, the constitutional agency recording the vote. Hacked over 100 times that night, it could not operate normally, delaying for days the release of the results. Again, this was used to claim the vote totals were being fixed.

At times 30 million cyber attacks per minute occurred between July 28 and August 9th. Such an attack disables Venezuelan government computer systems and paralyzes operations. These large-scale cyberattacks generated hundreds of gigabytes per second (your laptop system memory may have 16 gb).

These attacks falsified IP links, duplicated links, reconfigured government portals and hijacked information. Names and addresses of government workers were released on social media to “comanditos” (opposition gangs), creating physical threats for those affected.

The US powerful media and cyber weapons, able to swamp a country’s airwaves with CIA concocted “news,” while disrupting the country’s response, open the door to violent protests against the government.

Fourth, having created the conditions for opposition leaders to assert the Maduro government stole the election, they then called people into the streets to protest and create chaos or guarimbas. “Comanditos” (small groups paid to instigate violence), caused destruction and violence, killed 25 and injured 192, burned buildings, sacked several regional CNE headquarters, blocked roads, attacked police and military, beat up people who “looked” Chavista, attacked local community leaders, food distribution centers, public schools, hospitals, offices, ransacked warehouses, the transportation system, the electrical grid, all to paralyze the country. The US media could portray to the world a picture of national chaos, inviting military intervention to restore order, meaning a US neo-colonial regime.

These protests (as in Bolivia in 2019 and Nicaragua in 2018, Cuba in 2021) are portrayed in the corporate media as peaceful democracy rallies. When police forces and mobilized Chavista organizations attempt to stop the violence, the corporate media charges democracy protests are being repressed. This has been a habitual corporate media scam in US regime change operations, yet people still fall for it. In fact, the strategy was first used in the coup against the democratic government of Iran in 1953.

National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez noted the comanditos were financed entirely by NGOs. “When the actions and financing of these groups were investigated, it was discovered that they were financed by organizations of dubious origin from Europe or by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)”

Eva Golinger wrote years ago, “Wherever a coup d’etat, a colored revolution or a regime change favorable to US interests occurs, USAID and its flow of dollars is there…The same agencies are always present, funding, training and advising: USAID, National Endowment for Democracy [NED], International Republican Institute [IRI], National Democratic Institute [NDI], Freedom House, Albert Einstein Institute [AEI], and International Center for Non-Violent Conflict [ICNC].”

Fifth, US coup attempts count on funding NGOs to carry out “regime change.” Besides the CIA-controlled USAID, NED, NDI, and IRI, NGOs receive millions from Open Society Foundations, Ford Foundation, and others. The US uses them to buy an internal opposition, similar to AIPAC in the US – except here AIPAC works to disenfranchise we the people.

NED funds NGOs worldwide to incite color revolutions against those the US empire finds not properly subservient. Between 2016-2019 1600 NGOs received NED grants, highlighting the value the US places on the NGO coup-making tool. Needless to say, the US does not tolerate foreign countries funding NGOs pressing for political change here.

From 2000-2020, the US spent $250 million funding “regime change” NGOs in Cuba. Tracey Eaton wrote, “An extensive network of groups financed by the US government sends cash to Cuba to thousands of ‘democracy activists,’ journalists and dissidents every year.” Since 1996, the US spent $20-$45 million dollars a year to fund these Cuban groups. These NGOs created the CIA Cuban social media ZunZuneo, and even infiltrated the Cuban hip-hop scene, laying the basis for the 2021 protests.

From 2017 through 2019, USAID admitted giving nearly $467 million to the Venezuelan opposition. USAID committed another $128 million to US appointed president Juan Guaidó. In 2006, Ambassador William Brownfield in 2006 revealed the goals of USAID funding: “1) Strengthening Democratic Institutions, 2) Penetrating Chavez’ Political Base, 3) Dividing Chavismo, 4) Protecting Vital U.S. business, and 5) Isolating Chavez internationally.” The NED disclosed in 2010 that agencies funded the opposition $40-50 million annually.

Similar US operations against Nicaragua are revealed in How Billion-Dollar Foundations Fund NGOs to Manipulate U.S. Foreign Policy, In 2018, in the US attempted coup, USAID spent $24.5 million and NED $4.1 million to train and support  the opposition movement, while the Soros Foundation gave $6.7 million to propagate fake news.

Venezuela and Nicaragua recently passed laws controlling NGOs – which the US painted as a sign of their dictatorial nature.

How Venezuela Defeated this Five-Pronged Coup Attempt

The Maduro government had campaigned for months educating and warning the people of opposition schemes to disrupt the election, refuse to recognize the results, create new guarimbas, and that united popular action could stop this. They succeeded. The violent coup attempt on July 29-30 failed; on July 31 the terrorists were being rounded up, and calm restored. On August 3, more than half a million Chavistas marched to support President Maduro and peace.

Internationally, the Maduro government benefited from the considerable prestige it had gained standing up to everything the US rulers threw at it. The US has likewise lost much credibility, especially over its full support for the endless massacres in Gaza. It could not even get the subservient OAS to condemn Maduro.

Venezuela, like Cuba, has developed a strong civic-military union supported by thousands of voluntary militias that has been a bastion against the war – economic, military, propaganda, and cyberwar – against the country. Moreover, the Venezuelan military command, like in Cuba and Nicaragua, is dedicated to defending the constitutional order, denying US coup-plotters an opening.  A people’s militia in Bolivia, which did not and still does not exist, could have maintained order in October 2019 after the police and military commands declared they would not stop right wing violence.

Besides the mass civic-military union, the Venezuelan government, like Cuba, relies on mobilizing the people. President Maduro’s closing campaign rally culminated in over a million marching on July 25th.  Right after the July 28 election, hundreds of thousands of Chavistas took to the streets of Caracas and other cities. This was an antidote to the coup attempt and violence, since these mobilizations vastly outnumbered the capacity of the opposition.

After 25 years of the US forcing the Chavista leadership live under pressure cooker conditions, it has been unable to divide them and overturn the revolution as it has so often elsewhere, such as Grenada, Burkina Faso, Algeria, the Soviet bloc, and now threatens Bolivia.

The Maduro government maintains broad popular support because of its commitment to the people. The oil industry was nationalized and its income, while curtailed due to the US blockade, benefits the people. Mass literacy campaigns ended illiteracy. Over 5.1 million homes have been built for the poor. Venezuela has become almost self-sufficient in food production. The CLAP program distributes discounted or free food to 7.5  million families every month. Free health care and education through university are provided to all. Venezuela is overcoming the US blockade with the economy expected to grow 10% in 2024, and has the lowest inflation rate in 14 years. In recognition, about one million Venezuelans have returned home.

Chavismo defeated this coup because of its organic connection with the people, because of the class consciousness that has matured in its citizens since Hugo Chavez initiated the Bolivarian process, and because of the political clarity and determination of the Chavista leadership. Their victory is one for the peoples of the world.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Stansfield Smith.

“There is no journalism without press freedom,” said CPJ Asia Program Coordinator Beh Lih Yi. “Hong Kong journalists must be allowed to defend their right to report independently without the fear of reprisal or losing their livelihood. If Hong Kong is serious about reviving its slowing economy, then it must improve the media climate swiftly to shake off a reputation as a place with ever-increasing repression.” 

In recent months, officials and pro-Beijing news outlets have heaped pressure on the Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA), the city’s largest trade union for journalists.

In June, Hong Kong’s security chief Chris Tang accused the HKJA of lacking legitimacy and siding with demonstrators in 2019, while China’s state-backed Global Times in a July report described the group as “disingenuous and dangerous.”

In July, HKJA’s chair Selina Cheng said she was fired from her role at The Wall Street Journal after she was elected to lead the journalists’ union. She had been the sole candidate for the position amid a growing climate of self-censorship in Hong Kong, once a beacon of press freedom in Asia.

Asked for comment, a WSJ spokesperson told CPJ in an email that the outlet made “personnel changes” but could not comment on specific individuals. The spokesperson added that the WSJ advocates for press freedom in Hong Kong, the city which had been WSJ’s Asia headquarters before they were moved to Singapore in May. 

Another foreign correspondent and a local nonprofit adviser resigned immediately after they were elected to the HKJA’s executive committee in the group’s election following Tang’s criticism of the union.

Between May 2023 and March this year, Tang wrote eight letters to various international news outlets over their editorials or opinion articles about Hong Kong, some of which he labeled “extremely misleading,” “scaremongering,” and “lies.” Four of the eight letters were sent to WSJ.

A Hong Kong government spokesman said the city’s media landscape was “as vibrant as ever” with over 200 media organizations registered with local authorities, and that press freedom and the right to join trade unions were both protected under the law.

“As always, the media can exercise their freedom of the press in accordance with the law. Their freedom of commenting on and criticizing government policies remains uninhibited as long as this is not in violation of the law,” the spokesman told CPJ in an email.

Lengthy trials

The HKJA is the main journalists’ union in Hong Kong and has been advocating for press freedom since it was founded in 1968, but has been battling dwindling membership and funds after Beijing imposed a national security law in Hong Kong in 2020 that saw journalists arrested, jailed, and threatened. 

Among them, the then-HKJA chair Ronson Chan was sentenced to five days in jail in 2023 for obstructing a police officer while reporting.

Hong Kong passed its own homegrown national security law in March, and the U.S. Congress-funded Radio Free Asia shut its Hong Kong bureau days later over safety concerns for its reporters – joining an exodus of media and journalists who left the city since the 2020 crackdown began.

Journalists who remain point to a rising culture of self-censorship in local newsrooms and an increasing hesitation to criticize the government as Hong Kong loses its shine as a leading global financial hub. The city, once the world’s largest IPO market by value for years, saw proceeds raised from new share listings in the first half of 2024 plunge to a two-decade low.

Journalists also face lengthy delays and repeated postponements in their trials.

This includes the now-shuttered pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily’s founder Jimmy Lai, whose trial on national security charges was adjourned again last month to late November. A representative for advocacy group Reporters Without Borders who went to Hong Kong to monitor Lai’s trial was detained and deported upon arrival.

The 76-year-old has been behind bars since 2020. On August 12, Lai lost an appeal against his conviction for taking part in unauthorized anti-government protests.

Patrick Lam and Chung Pui-kuen, former editors of the now-defunct independent news outlet Stand News are expected to hear the verdict in their sedition trial in late August, after a court in April postponed the long-awaited decision. The duo were granted bail in late 2022 after being remanded in custody for nearly a year.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

“Evan and Alsu have been apart from their families for far too long,” said CPJ CEO Jodie Ginsberg. “They were detained and sentenced on spurious charges intended to punish them for their journalism and stifle independent reporting. Their reported release is welcome – but it does not change the fact that Russia continues to suppress a free press. Moscow needs to release all jailed journalists and end its campaign of using in absentia arrest warrants and sentences against exiled Russian journalists.”

Gershkovich and Kurmasheva were sentenced on July 19 to 16 years and 6½ years in prison respectively. Gershkovich, a U.S. citizen, spent 16 months in detention before being convicted on charges of espionage; Kurmasheva, a dual U.S.-Russian citizen, was held for more than nine months before she was convicted on charges of spreading “fake” news about the Russian army.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Arlene Getz/CPJ Editorial Director.

SPECIAL REPORT: By Netani Rika in Majuro

On a hastily-erected wall in the Marshall Islands International Conference Centre hang the names of dead women, victims of gender-based violence (GBV).

At least 300 Pacific women were killed in 2021, many at the hands of intimate partners or male relatives, yet there are but 14 names on the board after four days of a Triennial Conference.

So where are the remaining names?

• READ MORE: Other articles in the Pacific Women series

Have these women died in obscurity, their deaths confined to the dust heap somewhere in the region’s collective memory?

Does the memory of their deaths invoke such pain or, perhaps, guilt, that it is impossible for delegates to pick up a pen and put names to paper?

Have these women become mere statistics, their names forgotten as civil society spreadsheets and crime reports log the death of yet another woman.

Or have the deaths of women due to gender-based violence become so common that in the minds of delegates it is normal for a woman to die at the hands of a husband, boyfriend, father or brother?

Falling victim to violence
It has been a conference attended largely by women — ministers, administrators, civil society representatives and local grassroots representatives. Each day there have been more than 200 women at the event.

The 15th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women addressed at its core the need to improve the health of women and children. That includes the need for better access to services and treatment of women who fall victim to violence.

Gender-based violence is also a key focus of the talks. It is that violence — past, present and future – which results in death.

Yet three times a day for three days, on their way to grab a quick coffee or indulge in lunch, friendly conversations or bilateral dialogue, delegates have walked past the wall paying scant attention to the names of their dead Pacific sisters.

No names have been added to the wall since the initial appeal on Day One for attendees to remember the dead, to memorialise women whose lives were cut short in actions which were largely avoidable.

In Fiji, 60 percent of women and girls endure violence in their lifetime. Two of every three experience physical or sexual abuse from intimate partners and one in five have been sexually harassed in the workplace.

The trend is common throughout the region with Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, Fiji and the Solomon Islands recording the highest incidence of crimes against women.

Not one asked for silence
Delegates know these figures. The statistics are, sadly, nothing new.

On the third day, delegates quibbled over the nuances of language and the appropriate terms with which to populate a report on their deliberations. Yet not one asked for a moment of silence to remember the people whose names hung accusingly on a wall outside the meeting chamber.

When delegates left the convention centre on Friday afternoon, it is unlikely they would have remembered even one of the names on the wall.

Those names and the memories of all the women who have suffered violent deaths will await a team of cleaners, strangers, who will bury the Pacific’s collective shame in the sand of Majuro Atoll.

Netani Rika is an award-winning Fiji journalist with 30 years of experience in Pacific regional writing. The joint owner of Islands Business magazine he is communications manager of the Pacific Conference of Churches and is in Majuro, Marshall Islands, covering the 15th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women.

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

“Russia’s decision to jail Evan Gershkovich for 16 years on sham charges is outrageous,” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna. “Journalists are not pawns in geopolitical games. It’s time to stop hostage diplomacy and free him immediately.”

Gershkovich’s closed-door trial started on June 26 in the Sverdlovsk Regional Court in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg. A second hearing took place on July 18, when the court announced that it had completed its judicial investigation. The next day, the court heard arguments from both sides, and a judge handed down an 16-year prison term against the journalist.

Gershkovich, a reporter with The Wall Street Journal, has been jailed in Russia since the country’s Federal Security Service (FSB) arrested him on espionage charges on March 29, 2023, while he was on a reporting trip in Yekaterinburg. A June 2024 indictment accused Gershkovich of collecting “secret information” for the CIA on a Russian tank factory in the Sverdlovsk region. The journalist, his outlet, and the U.S. government have all denied the accusations and the U.S. State Department has designated him “wrongfully detained.”   

“He did nothing wrong. Russian authorities have failed to present evidence of a crime or justify Evan’s continued detention,” the U.S. Embassy in Russia said in statement on Thursday.

“This disgraceful, sham conviction comes after Evan has spent 478 days in prison, wrongfully detained, away from his family and friends, prevented from reporting, all for doing his job as a journalist,” said Almar Latour, CEO of Dow Jones and publisher of The Wall Street Journal, and Emma Tucker, editor in chief of the publication, in a statement on Friday.

Russia was the world’s fourth-worst jailer of journalists, with at least 22 behind bars, including Gershkovich and Alsu Kurmasheva, a U.S.-Russian journalist, when CPJ conducted its most recent prison census on December 1, 2023.

(Editor’s note: This report has been updated since its initial publication.)

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Arlene Getz/CPJ Editorial Director.

“U.S. reporter Evan Gershkovich goes on trial today after nearly 15 months of unjust detention. Given the spurious and unsubstantiated charges brought against him, this trial is nothing more than a masquerade,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Russian authorities must put an end to this travesty of justice, release Gershkovich, drop all charges against him, and stop prosecuting members of the press for their work.”

Gershkovich’s trial started Wednesday, June 26, in the Sverdlovsk Regional Court in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, reports said. It is not known how long the trial will last.

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) accused Gershkovich, a reporter with The Wall Street Journal, of collecting “secret information” for the CIA on a Russian tank factory in the Sverdlovsk region and arrested him on espionage charges on March 29, 2023.

Gershkovich faces up to 20 years in prison and is the first American journalist to face such accusations by Russia since the end of the Cold War. The journalist, his outlet, and the U.S. government have all denied the espionage allegations.

“No evidence has been unveiled. And we already know the conclusion: This bogus accusation of espionage will inevitably lead to a bogus conviction for an innocent man who would then face up to 20 years in prison for simply doing his job,” said Emma Tucker, editor-in-chief of The Wall Street Journal, in a Tuesday statement.

On June 13, the Russian prosecutor general’s office announced that Gershkovich’s indictment had been finalized.

“I think we were all hopeful that we were able to broker a deal with the Russians before this happened, but it doesn’t stop or slow us down,” Roger Carstens, the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs at the U.S. Department of State, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee the same day.

On April 11, 2023, the U.S. State Department designated Gershkovich as “wrongfully detained,” unlocking a broad government effort to free him.

Russia was the world’s fourth-worst jailer of journalists, with at least 22 behind bars, including Gershkovich and Alsu Kurmasheva, a U.S.-Russian journalist, when CPJ conducted its most recent prison census on December 1, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Arlene Getz/CPJ Editorial Director.

“The start of Gershkovich’s trial comes after he has already spent more than 14 months behind bars for no other reason than his work as a journalist,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Russian authorities must immediately release Gershkovich, drop all charges against him, and stop prosecuting members of the press for their work.”

The investigation department of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) accused Gershkovich, a reporter with The Wall Street Journal, of acting on assignment for the CIA and collecting “secret information” on a Russian tank factory in the Sverdlovsk region, where he was arrested on espionage charges on March 29, 2023, according to a press release by the Sverdlovsk Regional Court, where Gershkovich’s trial will start behind closed doors on June 26.

It is not known how long Gershkovich’s trial will last, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

Gershkovich, whose detention has been extended five times since his arrest, faces up to 20 years in prison, according to the Russian criminal code. He is the first American journalist to face such accusations by Russia since the end of the Cold War. Gershkovich, The Wall Street Journal, and the U.S. government have all denied the espionage allegations.

On June 13, the Russian prosecutor general’s office announced that Gershkovich’s indictment had been finalized and that the case against him was sent to court.

“Evan Gershkovich is facing a false and baseless charge. Russia’s latest move toward a sham trial is, while expected, deeply disappointing and still no less outrageous,” said Almar Latour, CEO of Dow Jones and publisher of The Wall Street Journal, and Emma Tucker, editor in chief of the publication, in a statement on June 13.

On April 11, 2023, the U.S. State Department designated Gershkovich as “wrongfully detained,” which unlocked a broad government effort to free him.

Russia was the world’s fourth-worst jailer of journalists, with at least 22 behind bars, including Gershkovich and Alsu Kurmasheva, a U.S.-Russian journalist, when CPJ conducted its most recent annual prison census on December 1, 2023.

CPJ emailed the Sverdlovsk Regional Court and the Russian prosecutor general’s office but did not immediately receive any response.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

In the video posted by the Let’s Music arts school in Sichuan's Leshan city, a line of children in matching black T-shirts march robotically in front of hundreds of spectators on a busy shopping street, singing "We don't need no education. We don't need no thought control," before breaking into a tightly choreographed dance to the Pink Floyd track.

"No dark sarcasm in the classroom -- hey, teacher! Leave those kids alone," the song goes. "All in all, you're just another brick in the wall."

The clip, posted to X by current affairs tweeter Byron Wan on May 16, is still visible outside the Great Firewall of Chinese internet censorship, but was no longer available on the video-sharing platforms Douyin and Bilibili on Tuesday.

The Douyin link to the clip returned the message "That video does not exist," while the Let's Music channel on Bilibili showed links to other songs performed in the same location, but not "Another Brick in the Wall."

Let’s Music said in a statement on May 7 that the performance was deliberately intended to be a comment on "the current situation," without giving further details.

Patriotic education

The ruling Chinese Communist Party under Xi Jinping is currently stepping up its program of "patriotic education" in schools and universities across the country, in a move that many outside China have criticized as "brainwashing," a term first used in English by U.S. journalist Edward Hunter in 1950 to describe how the Chinese government got people to support China’s efforts during the Korean War. 

Last October, China passed the Patriotic Education Law with the aim of "enhancing identification with our great motherland, the Chinese nation, Chinese culture and the Communist Party," amid an ongoing nationwide campaign under Xi to boost ruling party involvement in cultural output at every level, in a manner some have likened to Mao Zedong's 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution.

Pink Floyd’s original song sold more than four million copies worldwide and topped singles charts, making Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. It was penned by Pink Floyd's bass player Roger Waters as a protest over rigid and abusive schooling, particularly in British boarding schools.

According to Wan, the video disappeared from Douyin and Bilibili more than a week after being posted there. 

"Censors in China have been keeping an eye on X," he commented after followers reported that the clip was no longer available.

Artistic resistance

France-based film director Hu Xueyang said he was happy to see some form of artistic resistance still alive in China.

"When politics is uptight, then there's a lot of political satire," Hu said. "In dark times, all we have left is artistic ridicule and black humor."

"China's younger generation is making its voice heard, and using various forms of resistance," he said. 

Paris-based artist Jiang Bu agreed, saying the song epitomized saying "no" to totalitarian control.

"There was a kind of resistance or opposition to totalitarianism in a lot of the music from that time, including Pink Floyd's stuff," Jiang said. "It was about saying no."

"Let’s Music may not have intended direct resistance, but it still chose this song ... that has resistance at its core, so there was a point to it."

He said the removal of the track had attracted more views to the Let’s Music channel than it would normally have gotten, ironically alerting more people to the song's meaning.

He likened the backlash to the authorities pulling the plug on a live stream by beauty influencer Austin Li on the eve of the anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre because it showed an ice-cream cake in the shape of a tank.

That piece of censorship had ensured that more people found out what happened on the night of June 4, 1989 -- something that has been largely erased from the public record in China -- than might otherwise have done, Jiang said.

When Pink Floyd went to record children from London’s Islington Green School singing the refrain of the song, they hid the lyrics from the headteacher for fear she would pull the plug on the project, according to the band's Wikipedia page, citing media reports.

Late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was said to have "hated" the song, according to the school's former director of music, while the Inner London Education Authority criticized it as "scandalous." The song was banned by the South African government of the time.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Eugene Whong.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Yitong Wu and Kit Sung for RFA Cantonese.

Photo by NIPYATA!

When last we checked in on Trump’s new media company, which has the full name of Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) and trades on Nasdaq under the monogrammatic ticket symbol DJT, the shares had gone public at around $60 a share, spiked close to $80 (giving the company a $10 billion valuation), and then—to use a Wall Street cliché—“consolidated” closer to $40 a share.

The post Wall Street Don Deals More Liar’s Poker appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Matthew Stevenson.

Photo by Pau Casals

I guess that having 91 criminal indictments to defend, a number of civil lawsuits pending, allegations and judgments of sexual abuse circulating, civil fines close to $500 million to pay, and a presidential campaign to manage isn’t enough to get Donald Trump out of his gilded, canopied bed each morning, so to this to-do list he has added orchestrating one of the largest Wall Street stock swindles perpetrated in recent years, as if his real goal is to star in a new reality show of financial crimes called Other People’s Money.

The post Trump’s Wolves on Wall Street: Inside the Truth Social Numbers appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Matthew Stevenson.

“CPJ strongly condemns the three-month extension of Evan Gershkovich’s detention, just days before the one-year anniversary of his arrest on fabricated charges. Today’s ruling is yet another cynical affront to press freedom by the Russian authorities,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Russian authorities must immediately release Gershkovich, drop all charges against him, and stop prosecuting reporters for their work.”

The Moscow court’s decision to approve the Federal Security Service’s (FSB) request marks the fifth extension of The Wall Street Journal reporter’s detention since his arrest on March 29, 2023, on espionage charges. Tuesday’s session was closed to the media.

Gershkovich faces up to 20 years in prison, according to the Russian criminal code, and is the first American journalist to face such accusations by Russia since the end of the Cold War. Gershkovich, The Wall Street Journal, and the U.S. government have all denied the espionage allegations.

“It’s a ruling that ensures Evan will sit in a Russian prison well past one year. It was also Evan’s 12th court appearance, baseless proceedings that falsely portray him as something other than what he is—a journalist who was doing his job,” The Wall Street Journal said in a statement.

The U.S. ambassador to Russia, Lynne Tracy, called the ruling “particularly painful,” as Friday will mark the journalist’s one-year detention.

“As we cross the one-year mark, the Russian government has yet to present any evidence to substantiate its accusations, no justification for Evan’s continued detention, and no explanation as to why Evan doing his job as a journalist constituted a crime,” Tracy said.

On April 11, 2023, the U.S. State Department designated Gershkovich as “wrongfully detained,” which unlocked a broad government effort to free him. 

Russia was the world’s fourth worst jailer of journalists with at least 22, including Gershkovich and Alsu Kurmasheva, a U.S.-Russian journalist, behind bars when CPJ conducted its most recent annual prison census on December 1, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Independent journalist Ashoka Jegroo was shoved to the ground and arrested by police officers while documenting a pro-Palestinian protest in New York City on Feb. 29, 2024.

Jegroo told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that demonstrators initially gathered at Union Square in Manhattan before taking the subway downtown en masse to the Financial District to attempt to disrupt Gov. Kathy Hochul’s planned remarks at a Wall Street restaurant. An organizer with the protest group Within Our Lifetime told The New York Times that they targeted Hochul over statements she made that month about the Israel-Gaza war.

Police closed down the block around the restaurant, Jegroo said, and protesters tried to march around the block before ultimately making their way up to the intersection of Broadway and Vesey Street. As he crossed the street and neared the sidewalk, Jegroo said a bicycle officer suddenly grabbed him and pulled him into the street.

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

Image by Sohaib Al Kharsa.

It seemed strange, if not out of context, when Israeli politician Moshe Feiglin told Arutz Sheva-Israel National News that “Muslims are not afraid of us anymore”.

Feiglin’s comments were made on October 25, less than three weeks following the Palestinian Al-Aqsa Flood operation and the genocidal Israeli war which followed.

The former Knesset member who, in 2012, challenged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the leadership of the Likud party, proposed, in the same interview that, in order for the Muslims’ fear to be restored, the Israeli military has to turn “Gaza to ashes immediately”.

Feiglin perceives Gaza as something much larger than the 365 km² of land mass. He understood, rightly, that the war is not just about firepower but perceptions, and not only those of Gazans, Palestinians and Arabs, but all Muslims, as well.

The events of October 7 have exposed Israel as an essentially weak and vulnerable state, thus conveying the idea to Arabs, Muslims – in fact, the rest of the world – that the perceived power of Israel’s ‘invincible army’ is but an illusion.

Currently, the problem of perception is Israel’s greatest challenge. Feiglin has expressed this dichotomy in his usual far-right extremist language, but even the most ‘liberal’ of Israel’s leadership shares his anxiety.

When Israeli President Isaac Herzog, for example, declared on October 16 that “there are no innocent civilians in Gaza”, he was not only preparing his society and US-Western allies for one of the greatest acts of military revenge known in history. He, too, wanted to restore fear in the hearts of Israel’s perceived enemies.

In a more recent statement, on February 1, former Shin Bet chief Carmi Gillon asserted, in an interview with Channel 12, that Palestinians will not be able to carry out another October 7-like attack.

Gillon’s comments could easily be mistaken for a rational military assessment. But this cannot be the case, simply because Israel has failed miserably to prevent the Al-Aqsa Flood operation in the first place.

Gillon was speaking of psychology. In his mind, the war on Gaza has always been a revenge war, one that aimed at extracting the very idea from the collective mind of Palestinians that they can stand up to Israel.

To understand the relationship between Israel’s existence and the power – or the perception of power – of its military, one must examine the early political discourse of Zionism, Israel’s founding ideology.

Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud Party is the direct heir of the right-wing, in fact fascist, ideology that was largely articulated by early Zionist thinker, Vladimir Jabotinsky. Though Jabotinsky’s politics is deeply nationalistic, his ideas ultimately branched into, or at least inspired, the ideological school of religious Zionism.

Unlike more liberal leaning Zionists of that era, Jabotinsky was straightforward regarding the Zionist intentions and ultimate objectives in Palestine.

“A voluntary reconciliation with the Arabs is out of the question, either now or in the future,” he wrote in his book The Iron Wall in 1923, adding, “If you wish to colonize a land in which people are already living, you must provide a garrison on your behalf.”

For Jabotinsky, it all came down to this maxim: “Zionism is a colonizing adventure and therefore it stands or falls by the question of armed force”. Since then, Israel continues to invest in building ‘iron walls’, real or imagined.

In fact, Jabotinsky’s iron wall was a symbolic one. His was an impenetrable fortress of military power, cemented through violence, the relentless subjugation of the natives, which is designed for the purpose of their expulsion.

The fact that Israeli ministers and other leading politicians quickly began advancing plans for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza immediately after October 7, indicates that Zionism has never abandoned those early ideas. Indeed, the genocidal language in Israel is older than the state itself.

But, if Jabotinsky was still alive, he would be utterly ashamed of his descendants, who allowed their personal interests to trump their vigilance in keeping the Palestinians caged in, crushed by an ever-expanding iron wall. Instead, the wall has been breached, physically, on October 7, and psychologically, ever since. While physical damage can be easily repaired, psychological damage is hard to fix.

The ongoing genocide in Gaza is a desperate Israeli attempt at raising the costs for Palestinian resistance, so it may reach the future conclusion that resistance is, indeed, futile. This is unlikely to work.

But can Israel re-implant the fear in the collective heart of the Palestinian people? And why is such a fear a prerequisite for Israel’s survival?

Peace “will only be achieved when the hope of the Arabs to establish an Arab state on the ruins of the Jewish state is dashed,” Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich tweeted on February 1.

Even though the ‘Arabs’ are not calling for the destruction of anyone, Smotrich believes that the very idea of a Palestinian state will automatically lead to the destruction of the Zionist fantasy of racial purity.

Note how the Israeli politician did not speak of the Arab political discourse but rather of Arab ‘hope’. It is a different way of saying that the problem is the collective perception of Palestinians and Arabs that justice in Palestine is possible.

Again, this notion has nothing to do with October 7. In fact, three months before the war, precisely on July 1, Netanyahu was even more blunt in his description of the same idea, when he said that Palestinian hopes of establishing a sovereign state “must be crushed”.

This ‘crushing’ has been underway in Gaza and the West Bank for several months now.

This time around, Israel is adopting an even more extreme version of Jabotinsky’s ‘iron wall’ strategy because Israel’s ruling classes truly believe, in the words of Netanyahu, that “Israel is in the midst of a fight for (its) existence”.

By existence, Netanyahu is referencing Israel’s ability to maintain its status of Jewish racist supremacist, settler-colonial expansion and monopoly over violence. Israel calls this deterrence. Many countries and legal experts around the world refer to it as genocide.

In truth, even this genocide will hardly change the new perception that Palestinians have the kind of agency that will allow them, not only to fight back but, ultimately, win.

The post Breaching the ‘Iron Wall’: How Palestinians Crushed Jabotinsky’s Century-Old Ideas appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Ramzy Baroud.

“This umpteenth extension of Evan Gershkovich’s detention will bring to one year the time he will have spent behind bars simply for doing his job as a journalist,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Russian authorities must immediately release Gershkovich and Alsu Kurmasheva, another U.S. journalist the Kremlin has also held as a hostage of its repressive policies against critical voices, and stop prosecuting the press for their work.”

On Friday, January 26, a Moscow court held a closed-door hearing and granted the Russian Federal Security Service’s request to extend Gershkovich‘s detention until March 30, according to media reports. The ruling, which means that the journalist will spend at least a year behind bars, marks the fourth time that Russian authorities have extended Gershkovich’s pretrial detention since his arrest on March 29, 2023, those reports said.

Gershkovich, The Wall Street Journal’s Moscow-based reporter, was arrested on espionage charges while on a reporting trip in the central city of Yekaterinburg. He faces up to 20 years in prison, according to the Russian criminal code, and is the first American journalist to face such accusations by Russia since the end of the Cold War.

The Wall Street Journal has strongly denied the espionage allegations.

“It is chilling and outrageous that Evan Gershkovich has now spent 10 months of his life in prison, simply for doing his job,” The Wall Street Journal and its parent company, Dow Jones, said in a Friday statement. “While these are clearly sham proceedings about patently false charges, we intend to appeal today’s ruling, as we have in the past. Journalism is not a crime, and we continue to demand Evan’s immediate release.”

Friday’s ruling was attended by officials from the U.S. embassy in Moscow, which called the grounds for Gershkovich’s detention “baseless.” On January 18, Gershkovich met with Lynne Tracy, the U.S. ambassador to Russia, in the seventh such visit since his detention.

On April 10, 2023, the U.S. government designated Gershkovich as “wrongfully detained” by Russia, a status that unlocked a broad U.S. government effort to free him, and has called for his immediate release.

Gershkovich has now spent more than 300 days in detention, while another U.S. journalist, Alsu Kurmasheva, has been held for more than 100 days.

Russian authorities detained Kurmasheva, a U.S.-Russian journalist with the Tatar-Bashkir service of U.S. Congress-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), on October 18 on charges of failing to register herself as a foreign agent, which carries a prison sentence of up to five years. A new charge of spreading “fake” information about the Russian army was later brought against her, which could carry a prison sentence of up to 10 years.

Russia held at least 22 journalists, including Gershkovich and Kurmasheva, in prison on December 1, 2023, when CPJ conducted its most recent prison census.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Photograph Source: Liam Enea – CC BY-SA 2.0

The New Hampshire primary has confirmed that the United States is on the way to a disastrous fall election. Unless a health crisis forces withdrawal from the presidential race, either Donald Trump or Joe Biden is headed for a second term. The electoral outlook is now dystopian.

President Biden’s role as party boss worked out well for him in New Hampshire. No doubt mindful that he finished fifth in the state’s 2020 primary with a dismal 8 percent of the vote, Biden directed the Democratic National Committee to decertify New Hampshire’s historic first-in-the-nation primary, and he kept his name off the 2024 ballot. Yet pro-Biden forces ran a write-in campaign that got him nearly two-thirds of the vote on Tuesday.

The story might have been quite different if a credible progressive candidate for president had stepped forward to give Biden a run for his money. But the closest competitor, Democratic Rep. Dean Phillips — whose overall record is to the right of Biden — finished with 20 percent of the New Hampshire primary vote. Progressive candidate Marianne Williamson, who has never held elective office or led a social-justice movement, received just 5 percent.

Faced with such meager opposition, Biden romped to victory in New Hampshire. Now, with most polls showing him appreciably behind Trump, including in swing states, the Democratic Party is on track to nominate a notably weak candidate at a time when epitomizing the status quo is apt to be a losing proposition. Polling shows that fully three-quarters of the public believe the country is moving in the wrong direction.

The factors that got us to this abysmal situation are numerous, but any meaningful list should include the conformity of so many elected officials and activist groups known as progressive. For many, the temptation to publicly make excuses for Biden and unduly praise him has been too powerful to resist. Meanwhile, actual concerns have tended to stay private — even after it became clear that Biden’s presidency was in grim grooves such as “all of the above” energy policies accompanied by climate doubletalk, anemic responses to systemic racism, a belligerent foreign policy with scant regard for human rights, and rampant militarism.

As the Biden presidency deteriorated, an imperative was to generate sustained pressure from the left to counter ominous trends. Yet, by the end of 2021, the leadership of the Congressional Progressive Caucus had begun what became a pattern of unwisely deferring to the man in the Oval Office.

A turning point came in late 2021 when CPC leaders jettisoned their crucial pledge that the pending infrastructure bill would get through Congress only in tandem with the Build Back Better package — which, as my RootsAction colleague Sam Rosenthal wrote, “contained far more progressive priorities than did the infrastructure bill.” The power struggle “failed catastrophically for progressives, as mounting pressure from the White House and moderate Democrats drove the CPC to relent and vote independently on the infrastructure bill. Build Back Better ultimately failed to secure enough support from Senate Democrats to pass.”

The tragic Build Back Better episode foreshadowed further cave-ins, including premature endorsements of Biden for renomination. CPC Chair Pramila Jayapal endorsed him 14 months ago, less than halfway through his term, declaring: “He was not my first or second choice for president, but I am a convert. I never thought I would say this, but I believe he should run for another term and finish this agenda we laid out.”

Many others followed suit, thus reducing the chances that a progressive Democrat would launch a credible primary challenge to Biden. Even Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — who’d been among the Squad members admirably voting against the move that sank Build Back Better (“This is bullshit,” she said at the time) — endorsed Biden for renomination last July.

The pressures on Democrats in Congress to do that kind of thing are enormous. Countervailing pressure from progressive grassroots activists and organizations is vital — and all too often lacking. As a result, elected officials who ostensibly represent the progressive base to the establishment are more likely to end up serving as representatives of the establishment to the progressive base.

Biden’s all-things-to-all-Democrats act has worn thin to utter transparency, and he has the polling numbers to prove it. The president is currently 16 percent underwater in the approval-disapproval ratio among voters overall. Among key mainstays of his 2020 election victory over Trump — people of color and especially the young — support for Biden has plunged, reaching new depths since October due to his active complicity in Israel’s ongoing mass murder of Palestinian civilians.

On the same day as his victory in New Hampshire, Biden again encountered protesters who disrupted his speech with cries for an end to the U.S.-backed carnage in Gaza. As soon as his speech began at a campaign event in the swing state of Virginia, he was interrupted with the shout “How many kids have been killed?”

At the rally, there was no letup to the outcries about Gaza, which included “Israel kills two mothers every hour” and “Stop funding genocide.” The Hill reported that “chants from the crowd” interrupted Biden’s speech “nearly a dozen times.”

Biden has stressed his ties to organized labor. But several major unions have formally called for a ceasefire in Gaza, including the United Auto Workers, the American Postal Workers Union, and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) that represents almost 2 million workers. Organizers among members of the nation’s largest union, the National Education Association, are now pushing for the NEA to also take a formal position urging a ceasefire.

Such direct challenges to Biden’s support for continuation of the bloodshed in Gaza are yet more indicators of how badly he is out of touch with voters he needs.

Now, among progressives, thoughtful dialogue on what to do about Biden is essential. Valuable ideas include focusing on local and state races as well as giving priority to support for the most progressive members of Congress as they undergo big-money assaults from AIPAC and its reactionary allies.

In any event, candor will be necessary about Joe Biden’s betrayals of key 2020 campaign promises and his complicity with ongoing mass murder by Israel in Gaza. And candor will also be crucial about the very real threat of fascism from Trump forces intent on seizing full control of the U.S. government — with foreseeably catastrophic impacts on civil liberties, reproductive rights, racial justice, climate, the environment, voting rights, what remains of democracy, and so much more. Make no mistake about it: Trump and his top collaborators would like to bring fascism to the United States.

The post New Hampshire Results Leave Progressives Up Against the Wall appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Norman Solomon.

Kennedy should not be overcredited, he was merely reflecting the change which was ongoing in America’s self perception, not spearheading it. Nevertheless, this view and his support for civil rights for Blacks, be they impelled by conscience or realpolitik, did much to mainstream the revisionist position. The Great White Benefactor, now in his death throes, gave way to a new reification–the Great White Malefactor. No longer were Whites depicted by White elites and their institutions as uniquely altruistic, rather, now, uniquely venal. While many a ghastly crime has been committed by Whites against others, such horrors are now amplified, assigned solely to him, reproduced endlessly for mass consumption, attributed to “Whiteness” and White culture, and White victimhood at the hands of others ignored, denied or dismissed as justified. Western civilization was entirely good, now wholly base and villainous. The theory of White exceptionalism is maintained, but the script has been flipped and Whites are largely if not wholly responsible for the world’s injustices. So profound and widespread is the new anti-White racism that in a new book on critical race theory, penned by Geraldin Heng of the University of Texas, entitled The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages, she refers to White people as a “monstrous race.” Did UT-Austin censure her for such unmistakable racist defamation? No, in fact they gave her an award.

Meanwhile, the old, anti-Black racism remains in force, save now in a more subtle, plausibly deniable form. Together, the two racisms have synergy in that they validate each other and inflame the aggrieved. Both racist delusions, exceptional White virtue and exceptional White vice, are only sustainable by massive distortion of world history and a pseudoscience like critical race theory to invest it with the imprimatur of the academy. If you have any doubts about White iniquity just ask Geraldine Heng, she is, after all, an award-winning author and college professor. What more validation could you want?

The point of the propaganda shift, I insist, is the preservation of the age-old canard of a racial hierarchy of merit. The new Great White Bogeyman paradigm foments racial animosity within the working class and compels the primacy of race in political discourse. The race war is class war in disguise, and the only winners are the plutocrats who oppress us all.

However, of late the Great White Malefactor Theory has come under attack, and from what I believe to be a state-aligned institution–of all places. Wikipedia describes PragerU as: “The Prager University Foundation, known as PragerU, is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit advocacy group and media organization that creates content promoting conservative viewpoints on various political, economic, and sociological topics.” It is a mouthpiece for American imperialism whose belief in the sanctity of free-market capitalism never wavers. Their “content” is poorly researched and often inaccurate, and it’s clear that they do not care. Recently, they produced a video, hosted by Candace Owens, entitled “A Short History of Slavery” which has caused quite a stir.

In other venues, Candace Owens, a Black, has stated that American Blacks were doing quite well until the 1960s when they began to receive welfare (aid for the poor), which is daft. She has also said that British colonialism in Africa was a net positive for the colonized, which is daft and obscene. For those who may be unfamiliar with American history, let me assure you that these contentions are not merely incorrect but outlandish, sheer lunacy. Whether Owens is an idiot or just plays one on YouTube need not concern us. In the video in question, she gets it basically right.

One of the great racist myths of the Great White Malefactor school of American history is that the Transatlantic Slave Trade was something White people did to Black. In reality, White European elites and Black African elites were partnered in the abomination. Blacks did almost all of the capturing of slaves and sold them on the coast to White slavers under terms dictated by the Africans. Both elites prospered from the lucrative trade.

A brief history of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and its origins: The people of ancient China were menaced by a confederation of Steppe nomads whom they called the Qiongnu, which roughly translates, Sinologists speculate, to “the fierce people.” The Qiongnu frequently raided Chinese territory stealing whatever they could and raping, killing and enslaving captives for sale or personal use. Around 250 BCE, Qin Shih Huang united China and became its first emperor. He ordered the building of a wall along the northern border to prevent further attacks. In so doing, he set in motion a mass migration which would change the world.

This wall, later to be expanded to become the Great Wall of China, forced the Qiongnu to move west in order to get around it as brigandage is how they made their living, hideous as that is. As they did, they attacked the Yuezhi people who had once occupied the land now vacated by the Qiongnu. The invasion forced the Yuezhi westward again which in turn forced the migration to the west and south of the peoples now displaced by the newly arrived Yuezhi. This resulted in successive invasions of India.

Like the Qiongnu, the Yuezhi were a federation and one of its constituents, the Kushans, came to dominance, and they were one of the peoples who stormed through the Khyber Pass and struck at India. Unlike their predecessors, they were successful. The Kushan Empire soon became quite large and rich.

There had long been east-west trade across the Eurasian Steppe, but it had always been a dangerous venture. Now, with the stability brought to China by unification and centralization and the rise of the Kushan Empire, trade flourished. At this point there were four empires–Chinese, Kushan, Parthian, and Roman–strong enough to police the trade and provide security from the Pacific overland to the Atlantic. Nearly everyone in Afro-Eurasia would be touched by this trade.

The Silk Road may have been more accurately called the Spice Road. In addition to cookery, spices were used in medicine, cosmetics, and food preservation. They were household essentials. The trade became extensive and many peoples around Afro-Eurasia came to depend upon it.

The peace was not to last. The cascade of falling dominoes initiated by the Great Wall was not yet exhausted. The jostling for land upon the Steppe continued and the Road was harried by marauders as the empires weakened over time. Sections of it fell under the control of Huns, Turkics, and others. In time an empire would arise to capture nearly all of it.

The empire of the Mongols was so vast that it became impossible to maintain. It first broke into a few big pieces and then into many small fragments. Instead of being marked up a few times before reaching Europe, now dozens of statelets inflated the price as spices passed through their lands. By the time they reached Europe the cost was so high they were no longer affordable. The Portuguese sought to circumvent the problem by sailing around Africa. Columbus persuaded the Spanish that one could sail directly west from Spain and reach India.

At every stage of this process atrocities were committed. The Yuezhi did not grant permission to the Qiongnu to claim the land they themselves had expropriated by force. It was taken from them by violence in the same way that the American Indian was dispossessed. The Kushans were not invited into India. If the Mongols were guilty of half the barbarity they boasted of then they are the indisputable atrocity champions. It is estimated that they killed ten percent of the global population.

The discovery of the Americas was the greatest economic boom in human history. So colossal was the windfall that the endless stream of New World precious metals collapsed the Spanish economy. Predictably, the allure of easily acquired riches caused an international rugby scrum for control of the trade.

The Europeans in the Americas are guilty of acts of unimaginable savagery. Imperialism, genocide and slavery predates the arrival of Columbus in the New World, but the scale and scope of the predation he was to introduce had never been seen. This coupled with the diseases he brought resulted in the deaths of as many as 56 million people. So great was the death toll that “new research also reveals that following this rapid population decline and the subsequent reduction in land use, there was a global cooling trend.” It is the worst thing that has ever happened. We in the Americas are living in the world’s largest graveyard.

From the Real History of Columbus

African fought African for market share: the coastal Ouidah raided the smaller tribes of the interior capturing and selling literally millions. Covetous of Ouidah wealth, the Fon attacked and took over the sordid business. Then the Oyo attacked the Fon. And then the Allada and the Ashanti and the Mane and the Kingdom of Kongo and so it went. Some smaller tribes were literally sold out of existence. So profitable was the trade that some tribes abandoned traditional means of subsistence and gave themselves over to the slave trade as their sole occupation. As a result, fields lay fallow and craft production in particular suffered. This weakened Africa and made it more vulnerable to the European imperialism which was to come.

The worst example was the Kingdom of Dahomey. It became a slave state like no other. Half the population was enslaved to perform those tasks necessary to sustain the Kingdom while the other half was engaged in slave capture. Human sacrifices were regularly if infrequently held and the Dahomey kings insisted that the European slave buyers attend the ghoulish ritual. Dahomey was as close to dystopia as we are ever likely to see. The slave trade devastated African society. Culturally it sowed distrust of African for African, and materially it depopulated the continent and deprived it of its young. This in time brought a decline which further embedded Africa in the slave trade, the very thing which was causing this most vicious of cycles.

As stated above, Blacks and Whites were partnered in the slave trade, and both bear responsibility for the ransacking of the New World which likely would not have been possible without Africa’s provisioning the colonizers with millions of slaves. Buyer and seller are guilty. So why is this history suppressed? Why isn’t the Transatlantic Slave Trade presented in an open and accurate way? It isn’t. The American school system teaches that the slave trade occurred because White people are immoral. The reason for such slander is that an honest rendering of events outlined above, precludes race as cause. From Ancient Bactria to imperial Mali and colonial Virginia, people engaged in unspeakable acts, and White, Black, Brown and Asian people all have innocent blood on their hands. The Great White Bogeyman Theory of history serves the interests of the ruling class in that it acts to cow White people with guilt and to give Blacks every reason to fear and loathe Whites. A forthright accounting might make White and Black people feel differently about each other, and that might very well spell the end of capitalism. Interracial working-class cooperation is what American elites fear most; and what Whiteness studies, critical race theory, wokeness, intersectionality and all the other species of insipid race fetishism are intended to avert. When the curtain is lifted and truth revealed, it becomes abundantly clear that it was not race which catalyzed the holocaust that was the Transatlantic Slave Trade, but profit. The people on both ends of the oceanic slave trade were not sadists, they were businessmen.

And this is why PragerU’s video is so confounding. They have just slaughtered one of the sacred cows of American racism. Why? They have just debunked their own racial propaganda, one which has served the plutocracy well for half a century. Why decommission the Great White Bogeyman? Could this be related to the butchery currently occurring in Gaza? With Whites exterminating Browns with impunity perhaps some grandee thought it prudent to preemptively rehabilitate Mr. Bogeyman before too much anger developed and things got out of control. Could it be that this has something to do with the upcoming election? Is it an attempt by the anti-Trump faction to deprive him of discursive ammunition and take the sting out of his strongest talking points? Maybe it is merely a case of the faux social media Right provoking the faux social media Left so that both can attract clicks. Or perhaps it is just the latest tune pounded out on the ol’ Mighty Wurlitzer.

Whatever its purpose it seems a dangerous tack to release that genie from her bottle. It brought a tear to my eye watching several Black YouTubers wail in bewilderment that they had been taught something different. It made me reflect on how much we have been disinformed and made to hate each other, and it deepened my hatred of this loveless capitalist world in which we are condemned to live.

It should be noted that the video was not too heterodox. At the end Aunt Thomasina implores her fellow Blacks to put their faith in Uncle Sam and embrace American patriotism. I don’t believe the young Black YouTubers who reviewed her video will heed that call.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dave Fryett.

Photograph Source: Fars Media Corporation – CC BY 4.0

1948 was a year of tragic irony.

That year saw the adoption of both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, together promising a world in which human rights would be protected by the rule of law. That same year, South Africa adopted apartheid and Israeli forces carried out the Nakba, the violent mass dispossession of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. Both systems relied on western colonial support.

In short, the modern international human rights movement was born into a world of racialized colonial contradictions. Seventy-five years later, the world is watching in horror as Israel has continued the Nakba through its months-long, systematic ethnic purge of Gaza — again with the complicity of powerful western governments led by the United States.

The horrors of the original Nakba were met with decades of absolute impunity for Israel, feeding further violence. But this time, three decades since the overthrow of apartheid in South Africa, the post-apartheid “Rainbow Nation” is taking the lead in challenging Israel’s genocidal assault.

On December 29, South Africa became the first country to file an application to the UN’s high judicial arm, the International Court of Justice, instituting genocide proceedings against Israel for “acts threatened, adopted, condoned, taken, and being taken by the Government and military of the State of Israel against the Palestinian people.”

In wrenching and horrifying detail, South Africa’s 84-page document describes a litany of Israeli actions as “genocidal in character, as they are committed with the requisite specific intent… to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a part of the broader Palestinian national, racial, and ethnical group.”

A Horrifying Civilian Toll in Gaza and the West Bank

2023 was the bloodiest year in the Palestinian territories since the destruction of historic Palestine and the founding of the state of Israel.

In the first half of the year, Israeli assaults on Palestinians in the West Bank had already reached a fever pitch, with successive waves of mass arrests, settler pogroms, and military attacks against Palestinian towns and refugee camps, including the ethnic cleansing of entire villages. At the same time, millions of civilians in Gaza were suffering unbearable hardship under a 17-year-long Israel-imposed siege.

On October 7, Gaza-based militants launched a devastating attack on Israeli military and civilian targets and seized more than 200 military personnel and civilian hostages. In an appalling act of mass collective punishment, Israel immediately cut off all food, water, medicine, fuel, and electricity to the 2.3 million Palestinian civilians trapped in Gaza. Then it began a relentless campaign of annihilation through massive bombing and missile strikes followed by a ground-level invasion that brought shocking reports of massacres, extrajudicial executions, torture, beatings, and mass civilian detentions.

More than 22,000 civilians and counting have since been killed in Gaza, the overwhelming majority children and women — along with record numbers of journalists and more UN aid workers than in any other conflict situation. Thousands more are still trapped under the rubble, dead or dying from untreated injuries, and now more are dying from rampant diseases caused by Israel’s denial of clean water and medical care, even as the Israeli military assault continues. Eighty-five percent of all Gazans have been forced from their homes. And now Israeli-imposed starvation is taking hold.

The Legal Standard for Genocide

Genocide analysts and human rights lawyers, activists, specialists around the globe — no strangers to human cruelty — have been shocked by both the savagery of Israel’s acts and by the brazen public declarations of genocidal intent by Israeli leaders. Hundreds of these experts have sounded the genocide alarm in Gaza, noting the point-by-point alignment between Israel’s actions and its officials’ stated intent on the one hand, and the prohibitions enumerated in UN Genocide Convention on the other.

The South African application “unequivocally condemns all violations of international law by all parties, including the direct targeting of Israeli civilians and other nationals and hostage-taking by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups.” But it reminds the Court: “No armed attack on a State’s territory, no matter how serious — even an attack involving atrocity crimes — can, however, provide any possible justification for, or defense to, breaches of the [Genocide Convention] whether as a matter of law or morality.”

Unlike many aspects of international law, the definition of genocide is quite straightforward. To qualify as genocide or attempted genocide, two things are required. First, the specific intent of the perpetrator to destroy all or part of an identified national, ethnical, racial, or religious group. Second, commission of at least one of five specified acts designed to make that happen.

South Africa’s petition to the ICJ is filled with clear and horrifically compelling examples, identifying Israeli actions that match at least three of the five acts that constitute genocide when linked to specific intent. Those include killing members of the group, causing serious physical or mental harm to members of the group, and, perhaps most indicative of genocidal purpose, creating “conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.” As South Africa documents, Israel has shown the world, at levels unprecedented in the 21^st century, what those conditions look like.

For specific intent, South Africa points to dozens of statements made by Israeli leaders, including the President, Prime Minister, and other cabinet officials, and as well as Knesset members, military commanders, and more.

Accustomed to decades of U.S.-backed impunity, Israeli officials have been emboldened, describing openly their intent to carry out “another Nakba,” to wipe out all of Gaza, to deny any distinction between civilians and combatants, to raze Gaza to the ground, to reduce it to rubble, and to bury Palestinians alive, among many other similar statements.

Their deliberately dehumanizing language includes descriptions of Palestinians as animals, sub-human, Nazis, a cancer, insects, vermin — all language designed to justify wiping out all or part of the group. Prime Minister Netanyahu went so far as to invoke a Biblical verse on the Amalek, commanding that the “entire population be wiped out, that none be spared, men, women, children, suckling babies, and livestock.”

The U.S. May Also Be Complicit in Israel’s Genocide

The petition to the ICJ is sharply focused on Israel’s violations of the Genocide Convention. It does not deal with the complicity of other governments, most significantly of course the role of the United States in funding, arming, and shielding Israel as it carries out its genocidal acts.

But the active role of the United States in the Israeli onslaught, while hardly surprising, has been especially shocking. As a State Party to the Genocide Convention, the U.S. is obliged to act to prevent or stop genocide. Instead, we have seen the United States not only failing in its obligations of prevention, but instead actively providing economic, military, intelligence, and diplomatic support to Israel while it is engaged in its mass atrocities in Gaza.

As such, this is not merely a case of U.S. inaction in the face of genocide (itself a breach of its legal obligations) but also a case of direct complicity — which is a distinct crime under the Genocide Convention. The Center for Constitutional Rights, on behalf of Palestinian human rights organizations and individual Palestinians and Palestinian-Americans, has filed a suit in U.S. federal court in California focused on U.S. complicity in Israel’s acts of genocide.

South Africa’s Genocide Complaint is a Rallying Cry for Civil Society

In a situation such as this, framed by shocking Western complicity on one side and a massive failure of international institutions fed by U.S. pressure on the other, South Africa’s initiative at the ICJ may hold significance beyond the Court’s ultimate decision.

This case comes in the context of the extraordinary mobilization of protests, petitions, sit-ins, occupations, civil disobedience, boycotts, and so much more by human rights defenders, Jewish activists, faith-based organizations, labor unions, and broad-based movements across the United States and around the world.

As such, this move puts South Africa, and potentially the ICJ itself, on the side of the global mobilization for a ceasefire, for human rights, and for accountability. One of the most important values of this ICJ petition may therefore be in its use as an instrument for escalating global civil society mobilizations demanding their governments abide by the obligations imposed on all parties to the Genocide Convention.

Predictably, Israel has already rejected the legitimacy of the case before the Court. Confident that the U.S. and its allies will not allow Israel to be held accountable, the Israeli government is defiantly continuing its bloody assault on Gaza (as well as the West Bank). If Israel and its Western collaborators are once again successful in blocking justice, the first victims will be the Palestinian people. Then the credibility of international law itself may be lost as collateral damage.

But South Africa’s ICJ action has opened a crack in a 75-year-old wall of impunity through which a light of hope has begun to shine. If global protests can seize the moment to turn that crack into a wider portal towards justice, we may just see the beginnings of real accountability for perpetrators, redress for victims, and attention to the long-neglected root causes of violence: settler-colonialism, occupation, inequality, and apartheid.

The post A Crack in the 75-Year-Old Wall of Impunity: South Africa’s Court Challenge of Israeli Genocide appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Craig Mokhiber – Phyllis Bennis.

“While the latest extension of the detention of U.S. journalist Evan Gershkovich—who has been wrongly detained in Russia for the past eight months—was expected, it is no less outrageous,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Russian authorities must immediately release Gershkovich, drop all charges against him, and stop prosecuting the press for their work.”

On Tuesday, November 28, a Moscow court extended Gershkovich’s detention by two months, according to the joint press service of the Moscow courts. The court’s ruling, which was attended by officials from the U.S. embassy in Moscow, marks the third time that Russian authorities have extended Gershkovich’s pretrial detention since his arrest on March 29.

The Wall Street Journal’s Moscow-based reporter was arrested on espionage charges while on a reporting trip in the central city of Yekaterinburg. He faces up to 20 years in prison, according to the Russian criminal code, and is the first American journalist to face such accusations by Russia since the end of the Cold War.

The Wall Street Journal has strongly denied the allegations that Gershkovich is a spy for the U.S. government. “Evan has now been unjustly imprisoned for nearly 250 days, and every day is a day too long,” the Wall Street Journal said in a Tuesday statement.

On April 10, the U.S. government designated Gershkovich as “wrongfully detained” by Russia, a status that unlocks a broad U.S. government effort to free him, and called for his immediate release.

On October 17, Gershkovich met with Lynne Tracy, the U.S. ambassador to Russia, in the fifth such visit since his detention. On November 15, chargé d’affaires from the U.S. Embassy in Russia, Stephanie Holmes, visited the journalist.

On October 18, Russian authorities detained Alsu Kurmasheva, a U.S.-Russian journalist with the Tatar-Bashkir service of U.S. Congress-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) on charges of failing to register herself as a foreign agent, making her the second U.S. journalist to be held in Russian jails after Gershkovich. If found guilty, Kurmasheva faces up to five years in prison, according to Russia’s criminal code.

Russia held at least 19 journalists in prison on December 1, 2022, when CPJ conducted its most recent prison census.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

The post #10 – Corporate Profits Hit Record High as Top 0.1% Earnings and Wall Street Bonuses Skyrocket appeared first on Project Censored.

This content originally appeared on Project Censored and was authored by Shealeigh.

The post #10 – Corporate Profits Hit Record High as Top 0.1% Earnings and Wall Street Bonuses Skyrocket appeared first on Project Censored.

This content originally appeared on Project Censored and was authored by Shealeigh.

Rival Evergrande tried to restructure its debt, failed, and now its founder, Hui Ka Yan, once the richest man in China, is under house arrest. But Country Garden, until very recently, was considered safe as houses.

On Tuesday the walls of the Country Garden redoubt crumbled, as the property giant missed a HK$470 million (US$60 million) loan repayment and issued a statement on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange warning that it wasn’t going to be able to repay all of its creditors – not even those that had extended it a grace period.

The company has about US$200 billion in liabilities and close to US$10 billion in debt, it said in the Tuesday statement.

“I think it’s not so much ‘final straw’ as ‘high profile symbol’ of the structural reversal in China’s property market bust. But it’s also possible that because of that, confidence in this fragile market will be further undermined,” said George Magnus, research associate at the China Centre, Oxford University, and the School of African and Oriental Studies in London.

“The knock-on effects of a property bust in a market that’s as big as China’s are going to be remarkable,” added Magnus.

“There simply isn’t anything that can compensate [for the problem] because nothing – least of all Xi’s new productive forces – is sufficiently big. It’ll keep the Chinese economy on a low-growth path with all the attendant consequences for unemployment, absent a major program of market reforms, which Xi is opposed to.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping is famously opposed to “welfarism,” which he reportedly equates with laziness.

Markets have found some solace in announcements emanating out of Beijing, suggesting that stimulus is on the way, but analysts are skeptical even though Hong Kong and Shanghai stocks rallied on Thursday, after China’s investment fund had bought a stake in the country’s banking giants.

Bill Bishop of the widely read Sinocism newsletter commented, “The relatively small investment by Huijin in the four banks – 477 million RMB, about USD $65 million – is not meaningful financially,” adding that the investment fund Huijin had bought similar stakes in the past with the probable aim of achieving a short-term boost to stock values.

‘All the money in the world’

“They'll respond with some stimulus but there isn’t enough money in the world to make a difference,” said Anne Stevenson-Yang, founder and research director at J Capital Research,

“Consider,” she said: “If they lend an extra 1 trillion yuan (US$137 billion) – and bank lending is around 90% of financing in this economy – you get less than a 1% boost in credit.

“Basically, so what?”

Oxford’s Magnus agreed.

“The speculation is that the central government will use its own balance sheet to announce a stimulus program of about 1 trillion yuan or about 0.7% GDP to breathe new life into the economy,” he said.

“If it goes, as in the past, towards infrastructure and real estate projects, it’ll spur activity in the short term but leave China’s structural malaise worse.

“What China needs is household demand and income stimulus, but this has been studiously avoided so far – and it’s not the CCP’s way.”

Stevenson-Yang said, “We’re not going to see a bank failure, because they [the Communist Party] can control that. But the whole shadow sector has collapsed or is collapsing, and that erases a lot of personal wealth.

“And local services are going away,” she added in a reference to the belt-tightening forced on local governments, which have even been reducing civil service salaries to make ends meet.

Michael Pettis, Carnegie Endowment economist, writing on X, formerly known as Twitter, pointed out that there may be hidden liabilities for the banking sector with as-yet unknown consequences.

“Mounting damage to banks’ balance sheets from the property meltdown could also make stabilizing other parts of the economy more difficult,” Pettis said.

“This is likely to be what causes the most long-term damage to the economy … There is likely to be a lot more exposure in less direct forms. That’s because after three decades of soaring prices, it would be astonishing if Chinese banks didn’t have a lot of indirect exposure to the property market, partly reflected for example in the RMB 3.4 trillion in supplier trade payables estimated by Gavekal,” he wrote referring to research by Gavekal Research.

The firm predicted that China’s property sector owes 3.4 trillion yuan in trade payables to their suppliers.

“The major damage to the economy caused by a property sector collapse usually occurs not directly through the property sector but indirectly, through wealth effects and, above all, the impact on the banking system,” said Pettis.

“With one of the biggest property sectors in history, and perhaps the most expensive real estate bubble since Japan in the 1980s, I’d be really surprised if we were near the end of the adjustment process.”

Stability above all

In its Tuesday statement Country Garden admitted, referring to its inability to meet debt commitments, “Such non-payment may lead to relevant creditors of the group demanding acceleration of payment of the relevant indebtedness owed to them or pursuing enforcement action.”

Property developer Evergrande’s collapse led to widespread “mortgage strikes” and protests China-wide in 2021 and 2022. The fear in Beijing is that Country Garden, which is heavily invested in third- and fourth-tier cities, where the economic crisis is at its worst, will lead to yet more protests.

“The first and utmost priority of Xi and the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] is to maintain power, which means maintaining order and stability,” said Australia-based political commentator and former Chinese diplomat Han Yang.

“Xi can't afford to let disgruntled home buyers and contractors go out on the streets to protest.”

As to whether Country Garden and other property developers can deliver on their commitments and maintain social stability, Magnus said, “Well, it and its peers might be able to deliver if the government keeps them liquid and able to function.

“[But] they’ve got to have the working capital to complete construction and deliver.

“I’m pretty sure that Beijing won’t want to risk hacking off the fabled middle class whose savings and aspirations are now at risk. Then again, Evergrande proposed a restructuring that the government has now blocked.”

He added, “It all looks very messy right now.”

Yang is equally ambivalent about how the situation will play out.

“I guess theoretically Beijing could bail out Evergrande and Country Garden, but then what's next? What about the other over-leveraged developers and banks?” he said.

“The long-term outlook of the asset bubble is grim.”

Said Magnus, “The government can of course try to spread the pain – and its relaxation of housing regulations plus rumored stimulus could provide temporary relief – but what we are now seeing is a mirror image of all the things that propelled a 20-year boom.”

Edited by Mike Firn and Elaine Chan.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Chris Taylor for RFA.

The enclosure of Chuluqai village in Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture’s Ghulja (in Chinese, Yining) county – roughly 650 kilometers (400 miles) west of Urumqi, the regional capital – is the latest attempt by authorities since the 2000s to surveil Uyghurs under the pretext of maintaining peace and security in the region, despite claims of widespread state-sponsored rights violations against the minority group.

In a recent visit to the area, a reporter with Agence France Presse documented the restricted freedom of rural residents within their communities, particularly in Kashgar (Kashi) prefecture’s Yarkand (Shache) county. While investigating the situation in Arslanbagh village, the reporter discovered that local authorities had been instructing residents to stay indoors and locking up homes in order to monitor and control their movements.

RFA Uyghur received a tip from an anonymous source who said that similar restrictions had been put in place in Ghulja and contacted county police for comment on the claims.

An officer who answered the phone said that she was newly hired and unclear about the policy of enclosed communities in the county – referred to officially as the “one village, one gate” campaign – but indicated that it was underway.

“I don't know how many more villages are left to be enclosed,” said the officer who, like others RFA contacted for this report, declined to be named because she had been instructed not to speak with the media.

The officer referred additional questions to the county government.

A further investigation revealed that authorities in Ghulja’s Chuluqai village had implemented similar measures there since 2017, walling off the area and requiring residents to enter and exit through a single checkpoint.

Electrified gate, barbed wire fence

RFA spoke with a security guard who said that he is one of two people on duty at the village gate during the day and one of five on duty throughout the night.

“The gate is an electrified iron gate and it's surrounded by two-meter (6.5-foot) walls with barbed wires,” he said. “It encloses every part of Chuluqai, and you can only enter and exit through this single gate.”

The guard said that there is a separate, larger gate for vehicles to enter the village.

“We check and record where the car is from, whether it belongs to an individual or an organization, or if it's from a different city,” he said. “Pedestrians walk through a separate door, and we record their names.”

According to the guard, the checkpoint allows authorities to “determine where individuals are coming from and whether any of their family members have been arrested.”

“The police officers will conduct the checks and decide whether they can enter or not," he said.

‘In every county’

The one village, one gate campaign is being implemented “in every county,” he added, citing official communications he was privy to on his radio.

The guard said he had personally observed a similar situation in the Ghulja villages of Ewlia, Üchon, and Mollatoxtiyuzi.

The construction of walls around communities in the Xinjiang region – commonly referred to by officials as “building new villages” or “transforming neighborhood appearances” – is designed to limit the freedom of movement of residents, rights groups say.

China has come under harsh international criticism for its severe rights abuses against the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs. The U.S. government and several Western parliaments have declared that the abuses amount to genocide or crimes against humanity.

Alleged atrocities against the Uyghurs have included detention in “re-education” camps and prisons, torture, sexual assaults and forced labor.

Ilshat Hasan, a U.S.-based political commentator who spent his childhood in Chuluqai, said that people could freely enter and exit the village during his time there.

“The Uyghurs where I grew up never experienced such oppression, where they are required to provide their names and show their IDs just to enter the village,” he said.

Hasan said that enclosing an entire community and restricting its members to using a single gate “implies that the population has been reduced” and called for an independent investigation.

Keeping foreigners out

China has regularly responded to criticism of its treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang by inviting foreign journalists to visit the region and observe the situation for themselves.

However, the security guard RFA spoke with in Chuluqai said that “foreigners are not allowed to enter the village” and that no foreign reporter had been able to access the area “in the past six years.”

“If a foreigner inquires about a specific person [in the village] or says there is an issue, we tell them not to interfere with the law, as our government and legal system are fair," he said.

The guard’s comments appeared to imply that the walling-off of villages in Ghulja is as much about keeping the international community in the dark about the situation there as it is about restricting the movement of residents.

Allegations of abuses have led to high profile visits to Xinjiang by U.N. observers in recent months, including former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet in May 2022 and a delegation from the U.N.’s International Labor Organization in August this year.

When Bachelet visited Xinjiang last year, Chinese officials did not permit her to visit labor camps or hold open discussions with Uyghurs facing discrimination and threats, prompting criticism from the international rights community.

In August 2022, Bachelet’s office released a damning report on Xinjiang, concluding that serious human rights violations had been committed in the context of Chinese counter-terrorism and counter-extremism strategies, and that China’s detention of Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in the region may constitute crimes against humanity.

Last month’s low-profile visit by the ILO delegation was slammed by rights groups who said it should have consulted with them beforehand and expressed concern it would help China conceal its crimes in Xinjiang.

Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Shohret Hoshur for RFA Uyghur.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. We plan to continue investigating the used-car-lending industry. If you have insights or tips, please be in touch through this brief questionnaire.

Wall Street could always bank on used cars. In fact, for years, investors bought bonds backed by auto loans because they reliably produced handsome returns, even amid rocky markets and downturns in the economy.

But now, for the first time in decades, that winning streak appears to be coming to an end, with a half dozen prominent used-auto lenders facing either an avalanche of failed loans — or growing regulatory scrutiny. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is currently suing two of those lenders over potentially predatory practices.

Together, experts say, the woes could signal a significant blow to a key pillar of the U.S. economy.

The first warning sign came in late February, when a company called American Car Center, which offered loans to customers with troubled credit histories, abruptly closed its 40 dealerships across the South and filed for bankruptcy protection. Then in April, another lender called U.S. Auto Sales also collapsed, shuttering dozens of dealerships in several states.

Before long, S&P Global Ratings put American Car Center and two other major subprime auto lenders — Exeter Finance and United Auto Credit — on watch for potential ratings downgrades.

Driving much of the concern are delinquencies. Today, the number of subprime borrowers who are behind on their auto-loan payments by 60 days or more is the highest it’s been since at least 2017, according to reports from multiple ratings agencies. Defaults are climbing too.

American Car Center executives did not respond to ProPublica’s interview requests. A representative for York Capital Management, the private-equity firm that has controlled the company since 2016, declined to answer questions about the subprime lender. Neither Milestone Partners, the private-equity firm that owns U.S. Auto Sales, nor Adam Curtin, the executive who oversaw it, responded to requests for comment.

The companies’ closures, as well as Wall Street’s souring financial forecasts, represent what appears to be the end of a hot three-year run in the used-auto sector, a rally driven partly by supply chain problems. With a shortage of new cars, consumers turned to used ones. Spending was fueled by pandemic-era federal aid, which helped American households cover their bills, including monthly car payments.

Lenders then used that steady revenue to fund a massive increase in new loans, particularly to people with low or even nonexistent credit scores. As a result, since 2020, the nation’s auto-loan balance jumped 28% and now totals more than $1.5 trillion, making it the fastest-growing type of consumer debt in the U.S., according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Auto bonds increased in kind, as lenders packaged those loans together and sold them as securities on Wall Street, where ratings agencies labeled them as largely safe investments. According to Bloomberg News, lenders sold bonds containing $76 billion in subprime loans in 2021 and 2022. All of this was predicated on the belief that the vast majority of borrowers would continue to make their monthly payments. “Investors are always thinking they’re protected,” said Joseph Cioffi, a partner at Davis+Gilbert in New York who specializes in finance and corporate insolvency. “And the lenders didn’t seem like there was any concern either.”

Economic conditions, however, changed. Pandemic aid ended, and the Federal Reserve aggressively increased interest rates to combat inflation, meaning more and more people are struggling to pay their expensive loans.

Regulators have also begun looking at the business practices of some subprime lenders, including USASF Servicing, an affiliate of U.S. Auto Sales. In a federal lawsuit, the Consumer Protection Financial Bureau accuses the company of “a host of illegal practices,” like double billing for insurance products and misapplying other payments, costing borrowers millions of dollars. The agency says USASF also wrongly disabled borrowers’ vehicles more than 7,000 times using “kill switches,” devices that prevent the engine from starting.

According to court records, USASF has not filed a formal response in the case, which is ongoing.

Regulators are also taking legal action against a company known as the Credit Acceptance Corporation, which “aggressively markets itself as an alternative for consumers with limited credit options and touts its loans as a way for consumers to build their credit and gain financial freedom,” according to a complaint filed by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the New York attorney general.

“But CAC,” authorities allege, “is often setting up consumers to fail.”

Unlike a traditional lender, which assesses whether a borrower can repay a loan, CAC assumes from the outset that many of its customers will, in fact, default. Authorities accuse the company of charging interest rates so high that they violate New York law, as well as inducing dealers to inflate prices. As a result, “the median selling price for CAC consumers nationwide is over 77% greater” than the wholesale value of the vehicle, according to the complaint. Those prices also dramatically exceed standard retail prices, which include dealer markups.

Profit relies on collecting a certain amount from monthly payments and then selling repossessed cars when people can’t keep up, regulators contend. The lawsuit argues that borrowers and bond investors, who considered the loans safe investments, are both victims of the alleged scheme.

In court filings, CAC has denied the regulators’ allegations, arguing that it is not directly involved in the transactions between dealers and car buyers, and that it works exclusively with sellers to fund loans.

“Credit Acceptance operates with integrity and believes it has complied with applicable laws and regulations,” Douglas Busk, the company’s chief treasury officer, said in a written statement. “We believe the complaint is without merit and intend to vigorously defend ourselves in this matter.”

Depending on the outcome, Cioffi said, the CAC litigation could alter the ways used-auto lenders operate — or reinforce business as usual.

“That case is going to foretell how concerned lenders, sponsors, servicers and investors will be about their practices,” he said. “A lot of folks are watching.”

We plan to continue investigating the used-car-lending industry. If you have insights or tips, please be in touch through this brief questionnaire.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Ryan Gabrielson.

Jay Clayton, chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission from 2017 to 2020, told the committee the world was in uncharted territory with its two largest economies “deeply conjoined” but also “deeply at odds” in terms of their systems of government.

That’s created a potential for businesses to make investments in China that violate collective American interests, he said, such as national security, or the defense of human rights. 

“Investors are very good at responding to financial metrics,” Clayton said. “But investors are not good at – they don't have the information to be good at – human rights, national security, trade policy. Those are matters for the government.”

He said the United States was a “compliant society” and American businesses would respect any rules set by the government about investing in China, but that few such regulations exist.

“Given clear and coherent direction from governments,” he said, “the power of the market to respond to policy is remarkable.”

‘Golden blindfolds’

Rep. Mike Gallagher, a Republican from Wisconsin, and the chair of the committee, said that the U.S. government and American businesses appeared to be out-of-step when it came to China.

“It seems like Washington and Wall Street are two different countries speaking completely different languages,” Gallagher said, suggesting that many of the investments made in China’s economy were in fact not as safe as many believed.

“These banks and asset managers have incredibly complex value-at-risk models to look at volatility,” he said. “But when it comes to the systemic risks emanating from a genocidal communist regime, they tend to put on their golden blindfolds.”

Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, a Democrat from Illinois and his party’s ranking member on the committee, told the hearing that there are currently “more than 250” Chinese companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges with a market capitalization of “over $1 trillion.”

But he said it was not always clear who ultimately owned, or controlled, the companies listed on American exchanges.

“These are stocks that Americans are investing in every day,” Krishnamoorthi said, “but they don't come with what most Americans consider to be standard investor protections. They're complicated corporate structures that carry massive risk.”

Krishnamoorthi said even the government’s Thrift Savings Plan, or TSP – a retirement plan offered to federal employees – was investing in Chinese companies that make fighter jets considered key to an invasion of Taiwan, and some which use Uyghur forced labor.

“6.8 million federal employees are invested in the TSP, including many active duty military members, including many members of Congress, including me,” he said. “We value human rights while the [Chinese Communist Party] violates them and then expects us to fund those very companies facilitating those violations

‘Financing our own destruction’

Some U.S. venture capitalists even appeared to be investing in Chinese companies like ZTE, a technology firm banned from exporting into the United States, the committee heard.

“If a router is too risky to use in America, we shouldn't be routing money to its manufacturer, right?” Krishnamoorthi asked Anne Stevenson-Yang, founder of J Capital Research, which focuses on China’s economy and investigates Chinese companies.

“ZTE is directly under the Ministry of Aeronautics, and it's clearly part of the Chinese military system,” Stevenson-Yang said.

Both Gallagher and Krishnamoorthi said it was clear more rules about outbound U.S. investment into China were needed. 

“China's military could be raining missiles on our friends in Taiwan, and very likely American servicemembers, with weapons that Americans funded,” Gallagher said. “They may be using A.I. targeting systems that Silicon Valley VCs helped them build. In short, we're at risk of financing our own destruction.”

In the meantime, Krishnamoorthi called for voluntary compliance.

“For heaven’s sake, don't invest in companies that facilitate human rights abuses,” he said. “You have the right to do these things currently, in many cases. But it's not the right thing to do.”

Edited by Malcolm Foster

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Alex Willemyns for RFA.

Over the last decade or so, the tendency among China watchers has been to see China’s rise as an endless upward progression. Just as happened during the Cold War when the Soviet Union was viewed as a colossus that in fact had feet of clay, China’s economic and diplomatic successes are significant but often have been exaggerated, while its weaknesses have been ignored or underestimated. Only now, amidst bad news for China’s economy, have observers awakened to certain Chinese realities.

Chinese Realities

The first reality is that China’s post-COVID economy is sputtering. It faces deflation—falling prices amidst stagnant domestic demand for goods, a collapsing real estate market, declining exports and imports, and very high government debt.

For a regime that relies on domestic strength as the foundation of foreign policy success, this economic weakness has to be troubling. Xi Jinping has made internal security the hallmark of his administration, and if the economy isn’t delivering growth with equity, political trouble may lie ahead—which helps explain efforts to reinforce communist party discipline in the military, double down on repression in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and Tibet, and deal harshly with dissidence among lawyers and human-rights activists. In short, there’s considerable unrest and uncertainty in the empire.

The second reality is abroad. China’s principal partners, Russia and North Korea, are liabilities as well as assets. Putin’s war on Ukraine undermines Chinese diplomacy in Europe and adds to China’s America problems, while North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats bring a dangerous instability to the Korean peninsula.

In Central Asia, China is competing with, and actually out-competing, Russia in relations with the former Soviet republics: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

In South and Southeast Asia, China inspires both fear and awe. Most countries accept the need to accommodate China, which is their dominant trade partner. But while China has predominant political influence in Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar (Burma), other governments, including India, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand, look to the US as a balancing power against China. Polling of citizens and elites in Southeast Asia points to more positive feelings toward the US than toward China.

Before the Ukraine war, even the closest US allies, Japan, South Korea, and Australia, were willing to accommodate China: Japan, by refusing to commit to defending Taiwan in case of war and by restraining its military capabilities; South Korea, by forging a close trade relationship and not fully embracing THAAD, a missile defense system aimed at both North Korea and China.

But now, all three have re-committed to tight security ties with the US and with each other. Japan and South Korea concluded their first summit in twelve years in March, and this weekend at Camp David, they joined the first summit hosted by a US president, where the three countries agreed to respond as one to regional threats—meaning, of course, from North Korea and China.

Korea and Japan are also imposing export controls on high-end computer chips normally sent to China. Japan has also embarked on a military buildup aimed directly at China. Australia and India have followed suit, becoming part of the Quad security dialogue and the AUKUS group.

Money Doesn’t Always Talk

China’s chief calling card is money, specifically, its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) loan program that has spent hundreds of billions of dollars globally, mainly to developing countries. Most Asia-Pacific countries have joined the BRI.

Some analysts think the BRI is a very successful effort to meet developing countries’ needs without imposing onerous conditions (in contrast with loans from the World Bank and IMF). Others see BRI as a debt trap that creates dependence on China, leading to sacrifices of sovereignty such as control of ports. Serious studies of the BRI show that it is neither all one nor all the other. But one thing is clear: the BRI has become a Chinese debt burden, and given China’s economic woes, chances are good that Beijing will not be nearly as generous as in the past.

Some Chinese actions are undermining the BRI’s appeal.

Take the Southeast Asian neighbors that rely on the Mekong River for fishing. Chinese dams are taking a large bite out of their fishing industry, arousing anger. Mongolia, long economically dependent on China, is now reaching out to the US for trade and has just struck a major deal with Google for computer assistance.

Competing territorial claims in the South China Sea have put China at odds with Vietnam and the Philippines. Vietnam and the US have just agreed to a strategic partnership, and President Biden will visit Vietnam September 9.

The Philippines, which under Rodrigo Duterte had accommodated China, now, under Ferdinand Marcos Jr., has reverted to a strategic partnership with the US in response to Chinese pressure in the South China Sea. Most recently, a heavily armed Chinese coast guard vessel tried to block a Philippines supply boat from reaching a beached ship that marks its claimed territory in Mischief Reef.

The Philippines is opening four additional military bases to the US, and is restarting joint naval patrols with the US. But it has rejected a Chinese invitation to conduct joint patrols—a strange request considering that China still uses its nine-dash line to claim a vast swatch of the South China Sea.

In sum, if you’re looking at the world through the eyes of Chinese leaders, you see obstacles on the home front that demand attention and resources at the very time a new Cold War looms over Asia, with the US massing its allies to contain the presumed China threat.

What Xi Jinping has found, just as Chairman Mao did, is that domestic weaknesses constrain Chinese actions abroad. Chinese leaders will always give priority to security at home over priorities abroad. Xi Jinping’s concept of “comprehensive security” makes that plain. That perspective should inform the analysis of China hawks in Washington.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Mel Gurtov.

The report recommends, among other things, that the federal government “[r]emove barriers to privatization, concessions, and other nontraditional models of funding community water systems,” and open up all federal grant programs to support privatized utilities.

Food & Water Watch Public Water for All Campaign Director Mary Grant issued the following response:

“Water privatization is a terrible idea. President Biden should have never appointed an investment banker to chair an advisory council for the nation’s infrastructure. Wall Street wants to take control of the nation’s public water systems to wring profits from communities that are already struggling with unaffordable water bills and toxic water. Privatization would deepen the nation’s water crises, leading to higher water bills and less accountable and transparent services. Privately owned water systems charge 59 percent more than local government systems, and private ownership is the single largest factor associated with higher water bills — more than aging infrastructure or drought.

“Instead of relying on Wall Street advisers, President Biden should support policies that will truly help communities by asking Congress to pass the Water Affordability, Transparency, Equity and Reliability (WATER) Act (HR 1729, S 938). After decades of federal austerity for water, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law was a step forward, but it provided only about seven percent of the identified needs of our water systems. The WATER Act would fully restore the federal commitment to safe water by providing a permanent source of federal funding at the level that our water and wastewater systems need to ensure safe, clean and affordable public water for all.”

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

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Around midday on Friday, June 16, ProPublica reporters Justin Elliott and Josh Kaplan sent an email to Patricia McCabe, the Supreme Court’s spokesperson, with questions for Justice Samuel Alito about a forthcoming story on his fishing trip to Alaska with a hedge fund billionaire.

We set a deadline of the following Tuesday at noon for a response.

Fifteen minutes later, McCabe called the reporters. It was an unusual moment in our dealings with the high court’s press office, the first time any of its public information officers had spoken directly with the ProPublica journalists in the many months we have spent looking into the justices’ ethics and conduct. When we sent detailed questions to the court for our stories on Justice Clarence Thomas, McCabe responded with an email that said they had been passed on to the justice. There was no further word from her before those stories appeared, not even a statement that Thomas would have no comment.

The conversation about Alito was brisk and professional. McCabe said she had noticed a formatting issue with an email, and the reporters agreed to resend the 18 questions in a Word document. Kaplan and Elliott told McCabe they understood that this was a busy time at the court and that they were willing to extend the deadline if Alito needed more time.

Monday was a federal holiday, Juneteenth. On Tuesday, McCabe called the reporters to tell them Alito would not respond to our requests for comment but said we should not write that he declined to comment. (In the story, we wrote that she told us he “would not be commenting.”)

She asked when the story was likely to be published. Certainly not today, the reporters replied. Perhaps as soon as Wednesday.

Six hours later, The Wall Street Journal editorial page posted an essay by Alito in which he used our questions to guess at the points in our unpublished story and rebut them in advance. His piece, headlined “Justice Samuel Alito: ProPublica Misleads Readers,” was hard to follow for anyone outside ProPublica since it shot down allegations (notably the purported consumption of expensive wine) that had not yet been made.

In the hours after Alito’s response appeared, editors and reporters worked quickly to complete work on our investigative story. We did additional reporting to put Alito’s claims in context. The justice wrote in the Journal, “My recollection is that I have spoken to Mr. Singer on no more than a handful of occasions,” and that none of those conversations involved “any case or issue before the Court.” He said he did not know of Singer’s involvement in a case about a long-standing dispute involving Argentina because the fund that was a party to the suit was called NML Capital and the billionaire’s name did not appear in Supreme Court briefs.

Alex Mierjeski, another reporter on the team, quickly pulled together a long list of prominent stories from the Journal, The New York Times and The Financial Times that identified Singer as the head of the hedge fund seeking to earn handsome profits by suing Argentina in U.S. courts. (The Supreme Court, with Alito joining the 7-1 majority, backed Singer’s arguments on a key legal issue, and Argentina ultimately paid the hedge fund $2.4 billion to settle the dispute.)

It does not appear that the editors at the Journal made much of an effort to fact-check Alito’s assertions.

If Alito had sent his response to us, we’d have asked some more questions. For example, Alito wrote that Supreme Court justices “commonly interpreted” the requirement to disclose gifts as not applying to “accommodations and transportation for social events.” We would have asked whether he meant to say it was common practice for justices to accept free vacations and private jet flights without disclosing them.

We also would have asked Alito more about his interpretation of the Watergate-era disclosure law that requires justices and many other federal officials to publicly report most gifts. The statute has a narrow “personal hospitality” exemption that allows federal officials to avoid disclosing “food, lodging, or entertainment” provided by a host on his own property. Seven ethics law experts, including former government ethics lawyers from both Republican and Democratic administrations, have told ProPublica that the exemption does not apply to private jet flights — and never has. Such flights, they said, are clearly not forms of food, lodging or entertainment. We had already combed through judicial disclosures, so we knew that several federal judges have disclosed gifts of private jet flights.

We might also have sent Alito some of the contemporaneous stories about Singer’s dispute with Argentina that were readily available online. Given Alito’s previous ties to the Journal’s editorial page — he granted it an exclusive interview this year complaining about negative coverage of the court — it’s probable that the stories we sent him would have included the page’s 2013 piece titled “Deadbeats Down South” that approvingly noted that “a subsidiary of Paul Singer’s Elliott Management” was holding out for a better deal from Argentina. We would have asked how his office checks for conflicts and whether he is concerned it didn’t catch Singer’s widely publicized connection to the case.

The Journal’s editorial page is entirely separate from its newsroom. Journalists were nonetheless sharply critical of the decision to help the subject of another news organization’s investigation “pre-but” the findings.

“This is a terrible look for ⁦@WSJ,” tweeted John Carreyrou, a former investigative reporter at the Journal whose award-winning articles on Theranos lead to the indictment and criminal conviction of its founder, Elizabeth Holmes. “Let’s see how it feels when another news organization front runs a sensitive story it’s working on with a preemptive comment from the story subject.”

Bill Grueskin, a former senior editor at the Journal and a professor of journalism at Columbia, told the Times that “Justice Alito could have issued this as a statement on the SCOTUS website. But the fact that he chose The Journal — and that the editorial page was willing to serve as his loyal factotum — says a great deal about the relationship between the two parties.”

Even Fox News got in the game. “Alito must be congratulating himself on his preemptive strike, but given that the nonprofit news agency sent him questions last week, was that really fair? And should the Journal, which has criticized ProPublica as a left-wing outfit, have played along with this? The paper included an editor’s note that ProPublica had sent the justice the questions, but did not mention that its story had not yet run,” the cable news outfit’s media watcher Howard Kurtz wrote.

There are lessons for ProPublica in this experience. Our reporters are likely to be a bit more skeptical when a spokesperson asks about the timing of a story’s publication.

But one thing is not changing. Regardless of the consequences, we will continue to give everyone mentioned in our stories a chance to respond before publication to what we’re planning to say about them.

Our practice, known internally as “no surprises,” is a matter of both accuracy and fairness. As editors, we have seen numerous instances over the years in which responses to our detailed questions have changed stories. Some have been substantially rewritten and rethought in light of the new information provided by subjects of stories. On rare occasions, we’ve killed stories after learning new facts.

We leave it to the PR professionals to assess whether pre-buttals are an effective strategy. Alito’s assertion that the private flight to Alaska was of no value because the seat was empty anyway became the subject of considerable online amusement.

And the readership of our story has been robust: 2 million page views and counting. It’s possible that Alito has won the argument with the audience he cares the most about. But it seems equally plausible that he drew even more attention to the very story he was trying to knock down.

Alito’s behavior underscores that the “no surprises” approach involves taking a risk, allowing subjects to “spit in our soup,” as Paul Steiger, the former Journal editor who founded ProPublica, liked to say.

Nevertheless, following our practice, we asked the Journal editorial page, Alito and McCabe for comment before this column appeared. We did not immediately hear back from them.

Watch video of senior editor Jesse Eisinger and reporter Justin Elliott in conversation about the investigation.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Jesse Eisinger and Stephen Engelberg.

Abdul-Karim Ayyoub, a member of Azzoun Atma Village Council, said Abdul-Rahim Sheikh owns the land.

Ayyoub added that the soldiers demolished the 100 meters long and 3 meters high wall for being built without a license from the so-called “Civil Administration Office,” the administrative branch of the illegal Israeli occupation, because it is local in Area C of the occupied West Bank.

Only 30 percent of Area C land is designated for development by Palestinians. The remaining 70 percent is classified as closed military zones that are off-limits to Palestinians unless they obtain special permits from Israeli authorities.

These stringent restrictions on Palestinians’ spatial development continue to intensify even though a Palestinian state is inconceivable without Area C. Indeed, Area C holds valuable natural resources and a rich cultural heritage and represents the bulk of available areas for the spatial development of a future Palestinian state.

|Read More About Area C On Al-Shabaka: Israel’s Stranglehold on Area C: Development as Resistance|

The post Army Demolishes A Wall Near Qalqilia appeared first on Al-Shabaka.

This content originally appeared on Al-Shabaka and was authored by Al-Shabaka Admin.

David Sirota of The Lever talks about how Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s fundraising for his 2024 presidential bid could be hindered by a federal pay-to-play rule that restricts campaign contributions from financial executives to state officials who control pension investment decisions.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

A small financial transactions tax could correct a number of maladies in our economic system, from the federal debt crisis to the widening wealth divide to the rampant financialization of the economy, while eliminating taxes on income and sales.

The debt ceiling crisis has again brought into focus the perennial gap between what the government spends and what it accumulates in taxes, and the virtual impossibility of closing that gap by increasing taxes or negotiating cuts in the budget.

In a 2023 book titled A Tale of Two Economies: A New Financial Operating System for the American Economy, Wall Street veteran Scott Smith shows that we would need to tax everyone at a rate of 40%, without deductions, to balance the budgets of our federal and local governments – an obvious nonstarter. The problem, he argues, is that we are taxing the wrong things – income and physical sales. In fact, we have two economies – the material economy in which goods and services are bought and sold, and the monetary economy involving the trading of financial assets (stocks, bonds, currencies, etc.) – basically “money making money” without producing new goods or services.

Drawing on data from the Bank for International Settlements and the Federal Reserve, Smith shows that the monetary economy is hundreds of times larger than the physical economy. The budget gap could be closed by imposing a tax of a mere 0.1% on financial transactions, while eliminating not just income taxes but every other tax we pay today. For a financial transactions tax (FTT) of 0.25%, we could fund benefits we cannot afford today that would stimulate growth in the real economy, including not just infrastructure and development but free college, a universal basic income, and free healthcare for all. Smith contends we could even pay off the national debt in ten years or less with a 0.25% FTT.

A radical change in the tax structure may seem unlikely any time soon, due to the inertia of Congress and the overweening power of the financial industry. But as economist Michael Hudson and other commentators observe, the U.S. has reached its limits to growth without some sort of debt write down. Federal interest expense as a percent of tax revenues spiked to 32.9% in the first quarter of 2023, and it will spike further as old securities at lower interest rates mature and are replaced with new ones at much higher interest. A financial reset is not only necessary but may be imminent. Promising proposals like Smith’s can lead the way to a much-needed shift from serving “capital” to serving productivity and the broader public interest.

A Look at the Numbers

The material economy is roughly measured by the annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which for the U.S. had reached $25.6 trillion by the third quarter of 2022. (Michael Hudson observes that even GDP, as currently measured, is largely composed of non-productive financial services.) GDP is defined by spending, which depends on income. Collectively, Americans earned $21 trillion in 2021. The monetary economy is defined as the total amount of money that changes hands each year. Smith draws his figures from data that the Federal Reserve publishes annually in the Bank for International Settlements’ Red Book. The Red Book is not all-inclusive; it leaves out such payments as commodity trading, various options, crypto currency trades, and exchange-traded funds. But even its partial accounting shows $7.6 quadrillion in payments – more than 350 times our national collective income. Smith includes this chart:

Smith comments:

Most of these payments have little to do with what we regard as the real economy— the purchase of goods and services and the supply chain. Our GDP represents less than 0.33% of the payments in our economy. Once we see the big picture, the solution is obvious. We should tax payments instead of our income.

He calculates that U.S. spending by federal, state and local governments will total around $8.5 trillion in 2023. Dividing $7,625 trillion in payments by $8.5 trillion in government spending comes to a little more than 0.001, or a tenth of a percent (0.1%). Taxing payments at 0.1% could thus eliminate every tax we pay today, including social security (FICA) taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, capital gains taxes, estate taxes, gift taxes, excise taxes and customs taxes. With a 0.25% FTT, “If you have a net worth of $20 million or less, you would come out ahead. And if you make $500 million per year, you will finally be paying your fair share of taxes – $1.25 million!”

Bridging the Wealth Gap

The financial transaction tax is not a new concept. The oldest tax still in existence was a stamp duty at the London Stock Exchange initiated in 1694. The tax was payable by the buyer of shares for the official stamp on the legal document needed to formalize the purchase. Many other countries have imposed FTTs, including the U.S. — some successfully and some not. In January 2021, U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio reintroduced The Wall Street Tax Act, which was accompanied in March 2021 by a Senate bill introduced by Sen. Brian Schatz. According to a press release on the Schatz bill, the tax “would create a 0.1% tax on each sale of stocks, bonds, and derivatives, which will discourage unproductive trading and redirect investment toward more productive areas of the economy. The new tax would apply to the fair market value of equities and bonds, and the payment flows under derivatives contracts. Initial public offerings and short-term debt would be exempted.” Schatz stated:

During the pandemic, Wall Street has cashed in on high-risk trades that add no real value to our economy and leave working families behind. We need to curb this dangerous trading to reduce volatility in the markets and encourage investment that can actually help our economy grow. By raising the price of financial transactions, we can make our financial system work better while bringing in billions in new revenue that we can reinvest in our workers and our communities.

Scott Smith concurs, noting that millions of people were forced into poverty during the first two years of the pandemic. In the same two years, the 10 richest men in the world doubled their fortunes and a new billionaire was minted every 26 hours. Much of this disparity was fueled by fiscal and monetary policy aimed at relieving the effects of the pandemic and of the 2008-09 banking crisis. Smith writes:

Our burgeoning monetary economy has fueled the rise of securitization, private equity, hedge funds, the foreign exchange market, commodity trading, cryptocurrency, digital assets, and investments in China. Quantitative easing further fanned these flames, driving up the price of financial assets. All such assets are monetary equivalents, and, thus, inflating the price of such assets balloons the money supply.

What many lauded as a robust economy was really monetary inflation. This makes it more difficult for the next generation to start life. Monetary inflation moves a select few out of the middle class, making them newly rich, while relegating many more to being poorer.

… The trading of financial assets in the monetary economy represents the majority of the payments in the economy, eclipsing payments related to wages or the purchase of goods or services. Thus, it would be wealthy individuals and institutions, such as hedge funds, that would shoulder most of the burden of a payment tax.

Predictably, the Wall Street Tax Act has gotten pushback and has not gotten far. But Smith says his proposal is different. It is not adding a tax but is replacing existing taxes – with something that is actually better for most taxpayers. He has asked a number of hedge fund managers, day traders, private equity fund managers, and venture capital managers if a quarter-point tax would impact their businesses. They have shrugged it off as not significant, and have said that they would certainly prefer a payments tax to income taxes.

Responding to the Critics: The Sweden Debacle

Among failed FTT attempts, one often cited by critics was undertaken in Sweden in the 1980s. As reported by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA):

There were negative capital markets impacts seen in the great migration of trading volumes across multiple products to London, equity index returns fell, volatility increased and the interest rate options markets essentially disappeared.

But as argued by James Li in a podcast titled “The Truth About a Financial Transaction Tax“:

Sweden’s tax policy … had an obvious, massive loophole, which is that Swedish traders could migrate to the London Stock Exchange to avoid the tax — which they did, until it was eventually abolished. On the other hand, the UK’s financial transaction tax has been much more successful. In 1694, King William III levied a stamp duty on all paper transactions, and a version of that levy still exists today, taxing many stock trades at 0.5 percent. Unlike the defunct Swedish tax, it applies to trades of shares of any UK company, regardless of where traders are based.

Again, Smith argues that the challenges met by other transaction tax proposals have arisen because they were being proposed as an additional tax. A payment tax in lieu of personal and corporate income taxes takes on a whole different character. He argues that big firms, rather than moving offshore to avoid a payments tax, would move to the U.S., since the tax rate in other nations would be much higher. Without a corporate or income tax, the U.S. would be the most favored tax haven in the world.

He adds that an exit tax could be a good idea: any money leaving the U.S. could be taxed at a 5% rate. That would discourage people from wiring money to an offshore exchange. But incoming money would not be taxed, encouraging foreign money to come to the U.S. to stay long-term, where it would be taxed less than elsewhere.

The Alleged Threat to Retirees

James Li’s favorite myth about a financial transactions tax is that it would be devastating for Main Street investors. He cites a report from the Modern Markets Initiative on the effects of the tax on savings and retirement security. A Business Wire headline on the report warns, “Latest Data from Modern Markets Initiative Shows the Financial Transaction Tax Would Threaten the Retirement Savings of Millions of Americans.” Among other claims is that a financial transactions tax would cost “$45,000 to $65,000 in FTT over the lifetime of a 401(k) account, or the equivalent of delaying the average individual’s retirement by approximately two years.” How that calculation was made is not included in the article, which refers the reader to the report. Li looked it up, and says on his podcast that it was highly misleading:

[T]he study stated that under this type of tax, for every $100,000 of assets in a 401(k) plan, the saver would owe $281 dollars in FTT taxes in a given year; and then over a 40-year time horizon paying in at $281 a year at 7% annual growth – the average for pension funds – that this would yield a total value of $64,232 after 40 years.

… [What they were] actually saying is, “If you put $100,000 a year into your 401(k), you would be paying approximately $281 in taxes for that $100,000; and if you had instead invested that money every year in a fund with 7% interest, that amount would add up to about $64,000 after 40 years.”

… I don’t know about you, but I can’t put $100,000 in my 401(k) plan every year. Very few people can. A more accurate estimate on how this would actually impact the average retirement savings is to look at the median income, which is around $52,000 a year, with an estimated $5,000 contribution into a 401(k) annually, which is around 10% of your gross pay based on commonly accepted financial planning advice. So the average person would only pay about $13 in FTT taxes in a given year.

These people are extremely tricky and their logic is also extremely flawed, because we pay taxes all the time. It’s like saying, “Oh, if I didn’t have to pay an income tax, I would be able to put all that money away and be up like a million bucks when I retire.”

Similar arguments are made concerning potential losses from FTTs to pension funds and the stock market. SIFMA contends, “What’s bad for the capital markets is bad for the economy,” stating “The capital markets fund 65% of economic activity in the U.S.” Perhaps, but the money paid for shares of stock traded in the stock market does not go to the corporations issuing the stock. It goes to the previous shareholders. Only the sale of IPOs – initial public offerings – generates money for the corporation, and this money is typically exempted from FTTs. Trades after that are simply gambling, hoping to sell at a higher price to the “greater fool.”

Killing the Parasite That Is Killing the Host

In the 2015 book Killing the Host – How Financial Parasites and Debt Destroy the Global Economy, Michael Hudson calls “finance capitalism” a parasite that is consuming the fruits of “industrial capitalism” – the goods and services traded in what Smith calls the material economy. Pam Martens writes in a review of Hudson’s book that this “blood-sucking financial leech [is] affixed to your body, your retirement plan, and your economic future.”

But it is not actually the pension funds that are doing most of the financialized trades or that would get taxed on those trades. It is their asset managers – including BlackRock and Vanguard, both of which lost money overall in 2022. If the asset managers can’t make money in the financialized economy, perhaps it would be better for the pension funds to move to more productive investments – from “finance capitalism” to “industrial capitalism.”

Publicly-owned banks mandated to serve the public interest would be good options if we had them. As the economy falters, the public banking movement is picking up steam, part of a much-needed shift towards an economy that puts the public interest above private profits.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Ellen Brown.

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This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Howard Lisnoff.

“CPJ strongly condemns the extension of the detention of Evan Gershkovich, who has already been held in a Russian prison for nearly two months for simply doing his job as a journalist,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York. “Russian authorities should immediately release Gershkovich, drop all charges against him, and stop prosecuting members of the press for their work.”

On Tuesday, May 23, a Moscow court held a closed-door hearing and granted the Russian Federal Security Service’s request to extend Gershkovich’s detention until August 30. The hearing was not announced in advance and lasted less than an hour. 

The U.S. Embassy in Moscow tweeted that it was “deeply concerned” by the decision, adding that the Russian Foreign Ministry had recently rejected two requests for consular visits to the journalist. 

Gershkovich, a Moscow-based reporter with The Wall Street Journal, was detained on March 29 while on a reporting trip in the city of Yekaterinburg. On March 30, a Moscow court ordered him to be held in pretrial detention until May 29 on charges of spying for the U.S. government. If convicted, Gershkovich faces up to 20 years in prison.

The Wall Street Journal has strongly denied the espionage allegations. On April 10, the U.S. government designated Gershkovich as “wrongfully detained” by Russia.

At least 19 journalists were behind bars in Russia on December 1, 2022, when CPJ conducted its most recent prison census.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

The post Behind the Wall of East-Germany appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Thomas Klikauer.

Over 8,000 opponents of a new motorway in southern France demonstrated near the village of Saix on Saturday to prevent the project, building a wall of people and then one from actual cement blocks as they vowed to defend local farm land and biodiversity in the area.

According toAgence France-Presse:

The demonstration in the Tarn region against the proposed A69 motorway drew in 8,200 protesters according to organisers; 4,500 according to the local authority.

They marched under intermittent rain along the route of the proposed highway, which would link the southern cities of Toulouse and Castres, carrying placards that read “Less energy, fewer cars and less tarmac” and other green messages.

The localized protest took place as many around the world observed Earth Day and the large-scale climate demonstrations known as 'The Big One' took place in London.

One progressive observer in the U.S. said people outside of France could learn a lot from the creative and ambitious form of direct action:

Greens MP Sandrine Rousseau, who attended Saturday's protest, told a reporter that the project represents thinking that dates back 30 years or more, when new roads for automobiles were seen as the smartest infrastucture investment.

Especially in the face of the climate crisis, "there is really no need of another motorway," said Rousseau who also called the A69 "a project from another time."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jon Queally.

In early March 2023, President Joe Biden embedded in his proposed 2024 budget to Congress revenue increases through tax measures that the rich and corporations do not like. Like his predecessors Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, he doesn’t really mean what he says.

Biden’s four proposed increases are significant because they would restore the corporate tax rate to 28% from Trump’s decrease to 21% in 2017, raise the top rate for income above $400,000 a year from 37% to 39.6%, raise the 1% excise tax on massive stock buybacks to 4% and get rid of the gaping super-rich private fund managers’ “carried interest” loophole, so as to tax such income at ordinary rates.

He even tossed in a proposal to tax capital gains at the same rate as income for households with more than one million dollars in annual income.

The citizenry doesn’t believe you are going to fight for your proposed corporate super-rich tax proposals. Why should they?

The restorative taxes on these affluent tax escapees, compliments of Donald Trump, George W. Bush and Congressional Republicans, are little more than a wink to the major donors that Biden is summoning to Washington the weekend after next to grease his re-election campaign.

Here are my suggestions to President Biden:

Mr. President: Like other Democrats’ verbal support for a $15 federal minimum wage and a public option added to Obamacare, the citizenry doesn’t believe you are going to fight for your proposed corporate super-rich tax proposals. Why should they? Your words on Capitol Hill are insufficient without the subsequent presidential and Democratic Party muscle to make these restorative increases credible.

For example, where is your presidential tour publicizing these necessary revenue increases? If you are really “Scranton Joe” you could start by going to Scranton, Pennsylvania and standing with blue-collar union workers to show the contrast in their federal tax rates compared to the plutocrats and the often zero-paying giant corporations. You could jar the sleepy Democratic National Committee to galvanize all Democratic members of Congress to barnstorm their districts to promote these overdue reforms during their numerous “recesses” back home.

You could make a major primetime address about redressing these deeply felt inequities, shouldered by liberal and conservative Americans alike, and urge your party to hold press conferences filled with examples and images that demonstrate serious resolve to make Capitol Hill shake from the electrified pressure back home.

Leading newspapers would print your op-eds on this subject. NPR, PBS and the Sunday talk shows would want to interview leading Democrats.

[The GOP budget proposal] is a historic and shameful example of Congressional Republicans’ beholdenness to crass corporatism.

Join with leading citizen advocacy groups to tap into the civic community, so long skeptical of Democratic Party rhetoric not producing determined actions.

You can reject prejudged defeatism by your Democratic colleagues who say the corrupt and cruel Republicans have the votes to block such legislation. The Democratic-controlled Senate Committees can hold powerful attention-getting public hearings. If the Democrats had really championed tax justice, the GOP might not have taken the House of Representatives in the last election. (See: winningamerica.net).

The benefits of generating real muscle would serve as a contrast to the Republicans’ just-released 300-page sadistic assault on the well-being of all Americans, misleadingly titled the “Limit, Save, Grow Act of 2023.” This legislation is a historic and shameful example of Congressional Republicans’ beholdenness to crass corporatism.

Don’t add to the pile of throwaway reformist lines. You need inspiring words to show the people that you are “Scranton Joe” and not “Delaware Joe” – from the notorious corporate state of weak laws relating to corporate power. (You might remember that in 1973 we published a book titled The Corporate State about DuPont’s enormous power over Delaware. DuPont then owned the two major newspapers in Wilmington and provided charitable contributions that were a fraction of its state and local tax concessions.)

A good start is to tell your visiting big donors that in their patriotic service to America, what is urgently needed is productive, paid-for public budgets. It is time for their tax holidays to end.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Ralph Nader.

U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told the New York Stock Exchange on Monday that his caucus will not pass legislation to raise the debt ceiling unless it includes steep federal spending cuts and work requirements for key aid programs, a position that Democratic lawmakers slammed as dangerous and foolish hostage-taking.

"There never has been and never will be anything fiscally responsible about refusing to pay America's bills, risking millions of jobs, or threatening economic ruin," said Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee. "Republicans have apparently learned nothing from their past failures, so I'll make it clear: The best thing they can do for the American people is to let the hostage go, stop the chaos, and end this reckless brinksmanship with a vote for a clean raise of the debt ceiling."

The Wall Street audience, though, applauded McCarthy's (R-Calif.) speech, in which he attempted to blame President Joe Biden for a looming debt default that would have catastrophic impacts on the U.S. and global economies. McCarthy also pledged to oppose any new tax increases, a message that appeared to go over well on Wall Street.

"Speaker McCarthy went to Wall Street to spread Republicans' message to billionaires and corporate executives: They want hardworking families to pay the cost of keeping the government up and running, while corporations get away with paying as little as possible in taxes—and they're willing to hold our entire economy hostage to get it done," Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said in a statement.

"House Republicans' proposed budget cuts threaten economic disaster and American jobs, all to protect billionaires and giant corporations," Warren continued. "Independent analysis from Moody's shows congressional Republicans' budget cuts could throw 720,000 to over 2.5 million Americans out of work. That's a nonstarter. President Biden must hold firm on behalf of working families, and insist Republicans raise the debt limit swiftly and cleanly as they did time and time again under President Trump."

Biden has repeatedly called for legislation that raises the debt ceiling without any accompanying conditions, but the House Republican majority has insisted on reverting federal spending to fiscal year 2022 levels—which would force painful spending cuts across a range of programs, from housing to education to healthcare.

McCarthy repeated that demand Monday, telling the NYSE that the House will vote in the coming weeks on a bill that would raise the debt ceiling for a year, cap federal spending at FY 2022 levels, and limit spending growth over the next decade to 1% annually.

"If you agree, join us," McCarthy told the Wall Street audience. "Join us in demanding a reasonable negotiation and responsible debt ceiling agreement that brings spending under control."

The Republican leader said the GOP measure will also include new work requirements for recipients of federal nutrition assistance and Medicaid—mandates that experts say could deprive millions of families of food aid and health coverage. (Most SNAP and Medicaid recipients who are able to work already do so.)

McCarthy accused the Biden administration of weakening work requirements, an apparent reference to the administration's 2021 decision to rescind Trump-era guidance that gave states a green light to attach work requirements to Medicaid benefits.

But as Joan Alker of the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families pointed out in response to McCarthy's remarks, "There were no Medicaid work requirements in effect when Biden took office."

"In 2018, Arkansas briefly implemented Medicaid work requirement, which was a disaster, didn't promote work, but did create lots of red tape, and caused 18,000 to lose their health coverage," Alker wrote on Twitter. "A federal court stopped it. Appeals court upheld the ruling and no other state implemented [work requirements for Medicaid]."

McCarthy insisted that "trillions" of dollars in federal spending would be cut under the GOP's plan and demanded that the president meet with him to negotiate, but the Republican leader offered few specific details in his Monday speech.

"The speaker doubled down on the MAGA majority's threats to hold the economy hostage and keep the nation from paying its bills, but couldn't even articulate the ransom demands," said Liz Zelnick, director of Accountable.US' Economic Security and Corporate Power program. "McCarthy offered nothing by vague promises of a plan with unspecified spending cuts, a guarantee big corporations won't pay a penny more in taxes, and no assurances he even has enough votes to pass it in the House."

"While MAGA extremists in Congress can't seem to agree on the degree to which to punish seniors, workers, and low-income Americans with cuts to crucial safety nets," Zelnick added, "they're in complete alignment that no billionaire or profiteering corporation should pay their fair share."

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the U.S. will default on its debt for the first time ever this summer if Congress doesn't raise the limit, a looming disaster that top economists have said is "frightening."

In 2011, when Biden was vice president, the U.S. credit rating was downgraded after the GOP obstructed efforts to lift the debt ceiling. Republicans ultimately secured a deal with the Obama administration to impose federal spending cuts in exchange for a debt ceiling increase, an agreement that undermined the U.S. economy's recovery from the Great Recession.

"House Republicans instigated the first-ever downgrade in America's credit rating, spiking costs for working families and bringing the United States to the brink of a devastating recession," Boyle said Monday. "Almost 12 years later, Speaker McCarthy and extreme MAGA Republicans are dragging our nation down the same treacherous path."

"The speaker's blatant attempt to dodge responsibility and shift blame," Boyle added, "only underscores that the greatest threat to our nation's economy, the well-being of American families, and our record-breaking recovery is Speaker McCarthy and his MAGA allies."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jake Johnson.

UnitedHealth Group, a dominant force in the lucrative Medicare Advantage market, has seen its stock jump over the past week as Wall Street analysts and investors embrace the Biden administration's decision to delay reforms aimed at tackling abuse in the privately run, government-funded health program.

STATreported late last week that "Wall Street was overjoyed" by the announcement from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which said it would phase in changes to the model that dictates how much government funding Medicare Advantage insurers receive to cover patient care.

Instead of implementing the changes all at once, the Biden administration will roll out the reforms over a three-year period, allowing Medicare Advantage insurers to continue overbilling the federal government in the meantime.

Recent federal audits and investigative reports have detailed how Medicare Advantage plans overcharge the government to the tune of billions of dollars a year by making patients appear sicker than they are, piling on diagnoses with little to no supporting documentation. Medicare Advantage plans also frequently deny necessary care and use algorithms to prematurely end coverage.

In addition to delaying full implementation of its reforms, CMS—which has faced aggressive lobbying from UnitedHealth and other major Medicare Advantage players in recent weeks—announced it would boost payment rates for Medicare Advantage plans by 3.3% in 2024—a larger-than-expected increase.

CMS said Medicare Advantage payments would rise by nearly $14 billion next year under the new plan.

As STAT's Bob Herman noted, "health insurance companies that participate in Medicare Advantage will retain billions of extra taxpayer dollars next year" thanks to the Biden administration's changes, which drew criticism from progressive lawmakers and some policy experts.

"The phased-in approach will continue to reward those insurers with the most abusive practices over the next two years," warned Mark Miller, executive vice president of healthcare for the philanthropy Arnold Ventures.

Herman reported that following the CMS announcement, "investors raced to buy stocks of the largest Medicare Advantage insurers, including UnitedHealth, Humana, CVS Health, Elevance Health, and Centene." STAT cited one analyst estimate suggesting that UnitedHealth Group could see $900 million in additional profit next year thanks to the CMS policy revisions.

"It was 'a sigh of relief' for the industry, according to Jailendra Singh, a healthcare stock analyst at Truist Securities," Herman wrote. "Chris Meekins, a health policy analyst at Raymond James, called the White House's move 'a clearing event for the space.'"

Those companies have been at the forefront of what The New York Times recently described as a "lobbying frenzy" on Capitol Hill, a blitz that appears to have influenced the Biden administration's decision to go easy on Medicare Advantage despite promising bold reforms.

The Times noted that the administration's earlier proposals to revise the Medicare Advantage risk-adjustment model "unleashed an extensive and noisy opposition front, with lobbyists and insurance executives flooding Capitol Hill to engage in their fiercest fight in years."

"The largest insurers, including UnitedHealth Group and Humana, are among the most vocal, according to congressional staff, with UnitedHealth's chief executive pressing his company's case in person," the newspaper reported. "Since the proposal was tucked deep in a routine document and published with little fanfare in early February, Medicare officials have been inundated with more than 15,000 comment letters for and against the policies, and roughly two-thirds included identical phrases from form letters."

The Better Medicare Alliance, a lobbying organization backed by top Medicare Advantage insurers, purchased a Super Bowl ad decrying the Biden administration's earlier reform proposals as an effort to "cut" Medicare Advantage.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said in a statement late last week that she was disappointed by the Biden administration's decision to weaken its reforms in the face of industry pressure.

"It is now clear that Medicare Advantage is simply a profiteering venture that hurts patient care," said Jayapal. "Without a complete overhaul, it will be impossible to stop bad actors. These plans have spent years scamming seniors and overcharging the government to pad their own profits. We were on the cusp of immediate reform when the Biden administration proposed fixes to stop price gouging by insurance companies."

"Sadly," she added, "health insurance companies used taxpayer dollars meant for medical care to instead buy Super Bowl commercials and desperately lobby to stop these changes that would cut down on their profiteering."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jake Johnson.

The post Wall Street Bonuses Decline But Still Dwarf Worker Pay Increases Since 2008 Crash appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Sarah Anderson.

• The 2022 average Wall Street bonus of $176,700 is up 28.9 percent in real terms since 2008 (75.2 percent in current dollars). That’s more than twice as high as the 13.6 percent real average wage growth rate during this period for all private sector workers.
• The gap is even wider between Wall Street bonuses and wages in the manufacturing and construction industries. Real average wages have increased only 4.6 percent in manufacturing and 11.5 percent in construction.

Source: Institute for Policy Studies analysis of NY Comptroller and Bureau of Labor Statistics data

Wall Street pay v. the minimum wage

• Since 1985, the first year the comptroller reported bonus data, the average Wall Street bonus has increased 1,165 percent, from $13,970 to $176,700 in 2022 (not adjusted for inflation). If the minimum wage had increased at that rate, it would be worth $42.37 today, instead of $7.25.

• The total bonus pool for 190,800 New York City-based Wall Street employees in 2022 was $33.7 billion — enough to pay for 771,520 jobs that pay $15 per hour with benefits for a year.

• Wall Street bonuses come on top of base salaries, which averaged $516,560 for New York securities industry employees in 2021.

Wall Street bonuses and gender and racial inequality

The rapid increase in Wall Street bonuses over the past several decades has contributed to gender and racial inequality, since workers at the low end of the wage scale are disproportionately people of color and women, while the lucrative financial industry is overwhelmingly white and male, particularly at the upper echelons.

• The share of the five largest U.S. investment banks’ senior executives and top managers who are male: JPMorgan Chase: 71%, Goldman Sachs: 77%, Bank of America: 63%, Morgan Stanley: 76%, and Citigroup: 62%.

• Nationwide, men make up 62 percent of all securities industry employees but just a tiny fraction of workers who provide care services that are in high demand but continue to be very low paid. Men make up less than 6 percent of childcare workers, an occupation that pays $26,680 per year, on average. Men make up just 13 percent of home health aides, who average $29,260 per year.

Sources: Bank diversity report indicators for 2021 and Bureau of Labor Statistics occupational data for 2022

• At the five largest U.S. investment banks, the share of executives and top managers who are Black: JPMorgan Chase: 5%, Goldman Sachs: 3%, Bank of America: 6%, Morgan Stanley: 3%, and Citigroup: 8%.
• Nationally, Black workers hold just 6.4 percent of lucrative securities industry jobs but 32.5 percent of home health and 29.5 percent of nursing home jobs.

Source: Bank diversity report indicators for 2021 and Bureau of Labor Statistics occupational data for 2022

Regulators Fail to Rein in Wall Street Bonus Culture

The Comptroller’s bonus report comes amidst heightened scrutiny of Wall Street bonuses due to recent banking collapses. Silicon Valley Bank executives received their 2022 bonuses just hours before regulators seized control of the collapsing firm.

For more than a dozen years now, Wall Street and corporate lobbyists have blocked both financial executive pay restrictions and a federal minimum wage increase. This speaks volumes about who has influence in Washington — and who does not.

What Can Be Done to Rein in Excessive Wall Street Pay?

Wall Street’s bonus culture encouraged the high-risk behaviors that led to the 2008 financial crisis, costing millions of Americans their homes and livelihoods. In response, Congress inserted several compensation-related provisions in the post-crisis Dodd-Frank financial reform. These include Section 956, which bans Wall Street incentive pay that encourages “inappropriate” risk-taking. For more than a dozen years, regulators have failed to implement this rule, despite continued financial recklessness, as Public Citizen has documented.

Biden administration financial regulators should swiftly – and rigorously – enact the Dodd-Frank Wall Street pay restrictions that were supposed to have been enacted by May 2011. This new regulation should include:

• A ban on stock options at Wall Street banks

Options allow executives to buy company shares at a set price, offering all the benefits of share price increases with no downside risk. According to the bipartisan 2011 Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, these pay structures create “incentives to increase both risk and leverage” in order to boost a company’s short-term stock price.

• Require Wall Street executives to set aside significant compensation for 10 years to pay potential misconduct fines – or make depositors whole in a crisis

If such a regulation had been in place before the SVB collapse, top executives would’ve automatically forfeited this deferred pay to help cover the cost of their recklessness. Former New York Federal Reserve Bank President William Dudley first proposed such collective funds in 2014, arguing that making executives put their own “skin in the game” would help change Wall Street’s dangerously risky culture.

• A ban on executive hedging of bonus pay

Any effort to reduce inappropriate risk-taking will be ineffective if employees can buy insurance to protect their compensation from the risk of poor company performance, as the AIG CEO was able to do in 2008.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Sarah Anderson.

Citing newly released data from the New York State Comptroller, IPS noted that the average Wall Street bonus has increased by 1,165% since 1985, not adjusted for inflation.

Last year, the average cash bonus paid to Wall Street employees was $176,700—75% higher than in 2008 but slightly lower than the 2021 level of $240,400.

The federal minimum wage, meanwhile, has been completely stagnant since 2009, when it was bumped up to $7.25 from $5.15. While many states and localities have approved substantial pay increases in recent years, 20 states have kept their hourly wage floors at the federal minimum.

Sarah Anderson, director of the Global Economy Project at IPS and the author of the new analysis, wrote Thursday that "average weekly earnings for all U.S. private sector workers increased by only 54.4%" between 2008 and 2022—a significantly slower pace than inequality-fueling Wall Street bonuses.

"The total bonus pool for 190,800 New York City-based Wall Street employees in 2022 was $33.7 billion—enough to pay for 771,520 jobs that pay $15 per hour with benefits for a year," Anderson observed. "Wall Street bonuses come on top of base salaries, which averaged $516,560 for New York securities industry employees in 2021."

Anderson argued that there are a number of straightforward steps lawmakers and regulators can take to curb exorbitant Wall Street compensation and bonuses.

In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, Congress passed several provisions aimed at reining in bankers' compensation as part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

But as The American Prospect's David Dayen pointed out last week, "bank regulators hip-pocketed one of those rules that Congress mandated in 2010—the one that would prohibit banker compensation that is specifically tied to taking inappropriate risks."

"The last time there was even a proposed rule on this was nearly seven years ago," Dayen continued. "And in 2018, when Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell was asked whether he would abide by Congress' wishes and finish the rule, he blandly replied, 'We tried for many years' and 'we were not able to achieve consensus'—just thumbing his nose at a congressional mandate."

Anderson urged the Biden administration's financial regulators to stop deferring to Wall Street lobbyists and "swiftly—and rigorously—enact the Dodd-Frank Wall Street pay restrictions that were supposed to have been enacted by May 2011."

Any new regulation, Anderson wrote, can and should include "a ban on stock options at Wall Street banks" and mandates requiring Wall Street executives to "set aside significant compensation for 10 years to pay potential misconduct fines."

"If such a regulation had been in place before the [Silicon Valley Bank] collapse," Anderson noted, "top executives would've automatically forfeited this deferred pay to help cover the cost of their recklessness."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jake Johnson.

On Thursday, March 30, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) stated that it had detained Gershkovich, a Moscow-based reporter with The Wall Street Journal, in the city of Yekaterinburg, according to multiple news reports. Later that day, a Moscow court ordered Gershkovich to be placed under arrest until May 29 on charges of spying for the U.S. government, according to a statement by the joint press service of the Moscow courts.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the authorities have imposed harsh restrictions on the independent press.

The Wall Street Journal said that Gershkovich was detained on Wednesday on a reporting trip in Yekaterinburg. The Journal said it “vehemently denies the allegations from the FSB and seeks the immediate release of our trusted and dedicated reporter.” The Journal did not immediately respond to CPJ’s emailed request for comment.

“By detaining the American journalist Evan Gershkovich, Russia has crossed the Rubicon and sent a clear message to foreign correspondents that they will not be spared from the ongoing purge of the independent media in the country,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York. “Authorities must immediately and unconditionally release Gershkovich, drop all charges against him, and let the media work freely and without fear of reprisal.”

CPJ emailed the FSB, the Russian Foreign Ministry, and the press office of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow for comment, but did not immediately receive any reply.

The FSB said it “intercepted the illegal activities” of Gershkovich, accused the journalist of collecting information “constituting a state secret about the activities of one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex,” and stated he was detained “while attempting to obtain classified information.” If convicted, Gershkovich could face up to 20 years in jail, according to Article 276 of the Russian Criminal Code.

Gershkovich has lived in Moscow for six years, was accredited with the Russian Foreign Ministry, and was covering Russia as part of The Wall Street Journal’s Moscow bureau.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova alleged that Gershkovich’s actions in Yekaterinburg had “nothing to do with journalism,” adding that it was “not the first time that a well-known Westerner has been ‘grabbed by the hand.’” Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, said that Gershkovich was “caught red-handed.”

“Evan is a thoroughly professional journalist who has been arrested by the FSB on obviously bogus espionage charges. Journalism is not a crime. Evan should be released immediately,” Pjotr Sauer, a reporter for The Guardian newspaper, and a friend and former colleague of Gershkovich, told CPJ via messaging app.

At least 19 journalists, were behind bars in Russia on December 1, 2022, when CPJ conducted its most recent prison census.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Jennifer Dunham.

“Your people can’t take it anymore, Lord
In exchange for oil and gas they sell our country.”

These lines, translated from Portuguese, are from the song “Vendem o Pais,” “They Sell the Country,” by the late, great Mozambican hip hop artist Azagaia. Born Edson da Luz, he died on March 9th at the age of 38. He was a movement artist, empowering millions with songs challenging the elite and inspiring grassroots action. A frequent theme in his lyrics is the exploitation of Mozambique by extractive industries like oil and gas. Thousands poured into the streets on the news of his death, to honor his life and to protest the power structures he so consistently and eloquently criticized. The Mozambican government responded with a brutal crackdown, unleashing tear gas, rubber bullets, and beating and arresting protesters.

Azagaia’s death coincided with two events that reinforce central themes of his music. First, Cyclone Freddy, a world-record-breaking extreme storm, slammed Southern Africa not once but twice, wreaking devastation, killing over 500 people in Malawi, Mozambique, and Madagascar and displacing over one million people. And second, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, released its Sixth Synthesis Report, summarizing almost a decade of global scientific research on climate change and issuing its direst warnings yet on the urgency of immediate, concerted global climate action.

Cyclone Freddy was the longest-lived and highest-energy tropical cyclone in recorded history. The storm was named on February 6th, as it developed off the northwest coast of Australia. Freddy headed west over the Pacific Ocean, building force from the historically high ocean surface temperatures, slamming into the island nation of Madagascar on February 21st. After then spending five days inundating Mozambique, Freddy retreated to the waters offshore, again building strength. As police were suppressing the Azagaia protests, Freddy arrived again, pummeling Mozambique and southern Malawi for four days before dissipating. The World Food Program and other aid agencies are scrambling to reach people cut off by the torrential rain, flooding and mudslides.

Cyclone Freddy serves as a stark illustration of the warnings included in the new IPCC report. “The rate of temperature rise in the last half-century is the highest in 2,000 years,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said as the report was released. “Concentrations of carbon dioxide are at their highest in at least 2 million years. The climate time bomb is ticking.” The science is unequivocal: humans are causing a climate catastrophe, and our window to avoid irreversible damage is closing rapidly. Most importantly, people in poor nations, in the Global South, bear the brunt of climate disasters, but have contributed the least to global carbon emissions. This is the ongoing legacy of colonialism and resource extraction embedded in the lyrics of Azagaia.

“So many people within our countries, especially in Africa, are invisible, evoking pity when a deadly cyclone hits, forgotten the week after,” Dipti Bhatnagar, climate justice activist based in Mozambique, wrote in a piece eulogizing Azagaia. “As the crises deepen, people are going to get more and more incensed,” she said on the Democracy Now! news hour. “The youth are going to get more and more incensed. We need cultural icons like Azagaia. We need space. We need constructive ways for people to get involved, to be able to organize, to oppose the injustices that are happening. And the powerful know that.”

A new front to challenge entrenched power is being opened in the United States. Founded by author and climate activist Bill McKibben, Third Act seeks to inspire people 60 years and older to take action against climate change.

“Third Act recognizes that young people have been providing the climate leadership, young people and people from frontline communities, Indigenous communities,” McKibben said on Democracy Now! “What they lack sometimes is the structural power to force change at the pace that we need. Older people have structural power…There are 70 million Americans over the age of 60. That is a sleeping giant.”

This week, Third Act launched a National Day of Action to Stop Dirty Banks. Protests were held in at least 30 states, at major banks like Chase, Citibank, Wells Fargo and Bank of America demanding they stop funding fossil fuel projects. “Here in D.C., for instance, the banks are going to be blockaded with people in rocking chairs,” McKibben explained. “Older people are sitting down today, but they’re also standing up in a way that they haven’t before.”

This latest IPCC report, Secretary General Guterres says, is “a how-to guide to defuse the climate time-bomb. It is a survival guide for humanity.” For a just and equitable transition away from fossil fuels, it will take grassroots organizing and action. As Azagaia often declared, “POVO NO PODER! (Put the People in Power!)”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Denis Moynihan.

The Federal Reserve raised interest rates by another quarter point yesterday, despite recent bank failures that undermined public faith in the financial system. The Fed, which failed to properly supervise these banks, will now make things harder on working people. Why? To address inflation which has been caused by the war in Ukraine, supply-chain disruptions, excesses in profit-taking, and the slight additional effect of government efforts to minimize public suffering during a pandemic.

The government stopped aid to working people, which was only a minor factor in any case, but has done nothing about the other inflationary forces. That tells us something about its priorities.

Here are five observations about these events for your consideration:

1. Every bank is now too big to fail.

We know that ex-politico Barney Frank, among others, promoted raising the size at which certain bank regulations take effect. Signature Bank, where Frank is on the board, and Silicon Valley Bank then slipped under the radar. That's important (not least because it erodes the credibility of people like Barney Frank).

But we now seem to live in a world where nobank is small enough to fail. The key word is contagion—or, if you prefer, panic. SVB wasan outlier in its combination of poor investments and (supposedly) uninsured deposits. But our world is more interconnected than ever. That means panic can spread more quickly than ever. One email seems to have set off a run on SVB, and the combined failure of SVB and Signature—another small-ish bank—was apparently enough to imperil the entire financial system.

That tells us that bank runs can be triggered much more easily now. It also tells us that multiple failures among smaller banks could have the same overall effect as the failure of one large bank—perhaps not as we currently understand "systemic risk," but as the flashpoint that could trigger a panic. That panic, in turn, can threaten the whole system.

That could happen more easily than some might think. A recent paper on bank fragility concluded that "the U.S. banking system's market value of assets is $2 trillion lower than suggested by their book value." This is because "marked-to-market bank assets have declined by an average of 10% across all the banks, with the bottom 5th percentile experiencing a decline of 20%." They add that 10 percent of banks had larger unrecognized losses than SVB's and 10 percent of banks had lower capitalization.

And, while SVB had an unusually large percentage of uninsured deposits, they found that nearly 190 banks are at risk of being unable to cover insured deposits if—as the result of panic or something else—a mere half of uninsured deposits are withdrawn. Even a small wave of "fire sale" withdrawals could endanger substantially more than 190 banks.

They conclude that "recent declines in bank asset values very significantly increased the fragility of the US banking system to uninsured depositor runs."

Banking has become something like public health. A single bank can become a vector. If the infection spreads, the entire population is endangered. That means the health of each individual must be carefully monitored for the safety of all.

2. The Federal Reserve cannot be trusted.

The Fed defended its supervision of these failed banks again this week and insisted that it had things under control. "The banking system is sound, it's resilient," said Fed chair Jerome Powell, adding that current "weaknesses" do not pervade the entire "banking system."

In response, banking stocks plunged. That's because investors don't trust the Federal Reserve. You shouldn't, either. It serves the interests of the financial class and the wealthy, using the ideologically blinkered "science" of orthodox economics to underpin its decisions.

As evidence of this, it should be noted that the CEO of Silicon Valley Bank was on the board of the San Francisco Fed until shortly before his bank collapsed. That's not unusual. In 2012 we reported that Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, sat on the Fed's Management and Budget Committee. I stand by my assessment that Chase is worse than Enron. Dimon's committee supervised the pay of senior Fed executives and approved the self-evaluation of senior Fed executives. That, in practice, meant giving senior leadership its performance reviews.

Investors don't trust the Federal Reserve. You shouldn't, either.

That committee also reviews and approves the Fed's overall budget, including the budget for auditing bankers like ... Jamie Dimon. Its other main responsibility was to "review and endorse the Bank's strategic plan"—a plan that's worked out well for bankers but not so well for the rest of us.

While Dimon has thankfully departed, the five-person committee currently includes two bank CEOs, a real estate executive, and a health insurance CEO.

3. We need a "People's Fed."

That must change. I proposed something called a "People's Fed" in 2014, which would include representation from all regions, economic sectors, and demographics. But my thinking didn't go nearly far enough. Bankers need to be excluded from any but advisory roles, with guardrails constructed to prevent revolving door behavior.

The Fed's actions, combined with those taken by Congressional Republicans and collaborating Democrats, hit vulnerable Americans especially hard. Regulations were eased under Trump so that affected banks could stop including race and gender in the data they provide to regulators. That made it harder to identify discrimination in lending, for both racial minorities and women. This, despite a century of race-based discrimination in banking; and despite an Urban Institute study which found that single women in the United States had been systematically charged more for mortgages than single men, even though they were better about paying them.

(As I reported then, "three of the senators who backed this bill received $10,754,752 from 'Women's Issues' groups like Emily's List, which Open Secrets describes as 'promot(ing) the social and economic rights of women.'")

The Fed's defenders—the few that remain—love to tout its supposed independence. But independence from whom? Not from bankers or other financial interests, certainly. It is a public institution, created by an act of Congress. But the people who are supposedly represented by that Congress don't seem to have much of a voice there. That must change.

4. Biden had to rescue SVB, but that should piss you off. So should these politicians.

Like most other observers I've read, I don't think Biden had a choice: he had to rescue SVB's depositors, including the uber-rich ones. The actions of past years made this collapse, or something like it, inevitable. It's the hand the White House, and we, were dealt. It was dealt by Republicans—and by too many Democrats—when they watered down the already lukewarm reforms in Dodd-Frank.

It's bad enough when democracy goes on sale, but somehow it hurts even more when it's sold so cheaply.

Politicians should be named and shamed for their votes in (among other bills) the weakening of bank oversight that led to SVB's failure. I named many of the bought-off Dems in 2018 when I wrote "The $24 Million Reasons These Dems Backed America's Worst Banks," including Sens. Michael Bennet, Tim Kaine, and then-reigning bank-money champion Mark Warner. (I haven't checked those stats lately.)

Don't believe money talks? Read a 2020 working paper from Thomas Ferguson et al. at the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET). The authors write, "For every $100,000 that Democratic representatives received from finance, the odds they would break with their party's majority support for the Dodd-Frank legislation increased by 13.9 percent."

They add, "Democratic representatives who voted in favor of finance often received $200,000–$300,000 from that sector, which raised the odds of switching by 25–40 percent."

That's an incredible return on investment for the banking industry. It's bad enough when democracy goes on sale, but somehow it hurts even more when it's sold so cheaply.

A nonpartisan council set up to prevent future financial crises wrote back then that "if the Dodd-Frank reforms were to be recalibrated, minimum capital requirements should be higher, not lower." They did the opposite. Now, after weakening the rules for bankers, they're strengthening protections for them. As Ferguson and INET head Rob Johnson recently wrote, "authorities are reinstating the financial equivalent of Medicare for All (for financiers only)."

(That's probably unfair to Medicare for All, which addresses genuine human needs, but it makes the point. A better term might be "government-run greed insurance.")

5. The best mousetrap is no mousetrap at all.

If you're putting out mousetraps, mice have gotten into the house. You'll play a losing game until you find their point of entry. The only permanent way to stop mice from robbing your pantry is not to have mice at all.

If you're putting out mousetraps, mice have gotten into the house. You'll play a losing game until you find their point of entry.

Our system for regulating banks relies on the economy's "mice." We defer many of our regulatory functions to the Federal Reserve and then give bankers undue power over it. We rely on bankers to self-report certain behaviors. Politicians ask bankers for campaign contributions while they're in office and want cushy board memberships when they leave. The economists who justify bankers' actions look to them for well-paying gigs—or, perhaps, for professional recognition.

I'm not saying this mouse-centric "regulatory system" does nothing for the public. They'll close the pantry door from time to time. But they won't lock it—and they certainly won't give you the key. Why would they? They're mice, and mice gotta mouse. Besides, not just any old food satisfies a luxury-class rodent.

That's why the best mousetrap is no mousetrap. That means it's in a house without mice. It's time to mouseproof the economy.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Richard Eskow.

Private equity's ownership of U.S. healthcare providers is incompatible with the needs and best interests of patients and should be checked with federal legislation, according to a report published Wednesday by the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.

Critics of for-profit care have long decried private equity's focus on maximizing returns through practices including slashing staff, surprising patients with astronomical bills, and eschewing low-margin care upon which vulnerable populations rely. The new report—authored primarily by Public Citizen healthcare policy advocate Eagan Kemp—examines investment firms' impact on more than a dozen healthcare sectors, from reproductive health through end-of-life care.

"Private equity acquisitions in the healthcare sector have steadily climbed since the financial crisis in 2009, particularly in the past five years," a summary of the report notes. "Unlike acquisitions of hospitals, which typically occur under a public spotlight, the private equity industry's acquisitions of physician practices and other healthcare business lines often occur with little or no disclosure or public scrutiny, hindering the ability of regulators and watchdogs to monitor the effects of private equity ownership."

According to the report:

In general, the private equity industry's business model poses risks to the long-term sustainability of entities that the industry acquires. That is, in large part, because private equity purchases are typically financed with debt that is immediately transferred onto the books of the businesses acquired, thus leaving the acquired entities with debt burdens to manage.

Meanwhile, private equity investors seek outsize returns on an accelerated timeline, generally aiming to exit investments in three to five years with returns of 20%-30% per year. This objective induces them to take short-sighted steps to supercharge profits or otherwise wring capital out of the assets they acquire.

The risks posed by private equity investments in healthcare are particularly acute. After all, the services healthcare providers offer can spell the difference between life and death. Private equity has targeted segments of the healthcare industry since at least the 1990s, with many predictable outcomes. Among them, shocking lapses in safety have occurred, prices have risen faster than at non-private equity acquired entities, and patients have been subjected to price gouging schemes.

The conflict between providers' obligations to provide the best care and private equity investors' insatiable appetites for maximized [returns] provides is clear. "You can't serve two masters," a doctor who previously worked for private equity-owned U.S. Dermatology Partners toldBloomberg. "You can't serve patients and investors."

"Thanks to a lack of transparency, we don't know everything about private equity's incursion into healthcare. But what we do know is shocking and immoral" said Kemp. "The damage that private equity has wrought on Americans' healthcare from cradle to grave, simply for profit, has become a life-or-death situation. Transparency and oversight are needed, stat."

The report suggests legislative solutions including Sen. Elizabeth Warren's (D-Mass.) Stop Wall Street Looting Act and Rep. Pramila Jayapal's Healthcare Ownership Transparency Act. The latter, according to Jayapal's office, "would require private equity firms and other financial interests to disclose ownership stakes in healthcare facilities including nursing homes."

A September 2022 Public Citizen report detailed how federal regulators had failed to implement a 2010 law requiring nursing homes to disclose their owners. Other investigations during the Covid-19 pandemic found that home healthcare, hospice, and nursing facilities and services owned by investment firms often provided a lower standard of care.

"We applaud Rep. Jayapal's ongoing effort to shine a light on the dangerous toll private equity vultures are taking on our health," Public Citizen president Robert Weissman said in a statement. "Adequate regulation of this predatory industry is acutely critical when it comes to the healthcare sector."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

The state's ban criminalizes abortion cases in almost all cases and threatens doctors who provide care with felony charges, suspension or termination of their medical license, and up to five years in prison. It includes potential exceptions for people whose pregnancies result from rape or incest and people who doctors determine face life-threatening pregnancy complications—but as Common Dreams has reported, such exceptions have led medical providers to withhold care until a patient is sufficiently ill, placing them in danger.

The threat of prosecution and pressure to withhold medical care from people who need it has contributed to the hospital's staffing shortage, said Bonner General Health in a statement late last week.

"Idaho's political and legal climate does pose as a barrier specific to recruitment and retention for OB-GYNs."

"Highly respected, talented physicians are leaving. Recruiting replacements will be extraordinarily difficult," said the hospital. "In addition, the Idaho Legislature continues to introduce and pass bills that criminalize physicians for medical care nationally recognized as the standard of care. Consequences for Idaho physicians providing the standard of care may include civil litigation and criminal prosecution, leading to jail time or fines."

Idaho Republicans have proposed classifying abortion as "murder from the moment of fertilization" and have called for bans that extend to people whose pregnancies result from incest and rape.

"Idaho's political and legal climate does pose as a barrier specific to recruitment and retention for OB-GYNs," hospital spokesperson Erin Binnall told the Post.

Patients in Sandpoint will now have to travel to Coeur d'Alene, about 45 miles south, to deliver their babies. The city now has the northernmost labor and delivery department in the state, and people living near the state's northern border may have to travel two hours to reach the hospitals there.

Bonner General Health announced its decision days after the podcast "This American Life" featured an interview with an obstetrician who has worked for several years at Bonner General Health but has considered leaving the state since Idaho's ban went into effect last June, after the U.S. Supreme Court overturnedRoe v. Wade.

"I was looking at social media and somebody was talking about a person who is completing their OB-GYN residency and was looking to come to the Pacific Northwest," said Dr. Amelia Huntsberger. "And I'm like, hey, there's all sorts of openings in Idaho. And then I'm laughing out loud because I'm like, who is going to be finishing their residency training and being like, I definitely want to go to the state with the super strict abortion laws that criminalize healthcare?"

The Journal of the American Medical Associationpublished a report in 2018 showing that a lack of obstetric care in rural hospitals is associated with a rise in preterm births and more people giving birth in facilities where medical staff lack the proper training to assist with labor and delivery, such as emergency departments. High rates of maternal mortality are also associated with "maternity care deserts," which include nearly half of rural U.S. counties, according to the Commonwealth Fund.

Nearly 90 rural obstetrics units closed their doors between 2015 and 2019, with hospitals citing financial losses associated with high numbers of patients who use Medicaid as well as difficulty in recruiting and retaining doctors.

"This will be the beginning of a trend, I fear," said behavioral scientist Caroline Orr Bueno of Bonner General Health's decision. "We already have a maternal mortality crisis in the U.S.—we're the only country in the developed world where maternal mortality rates are increasing—and abortion bans are going to make it worse."

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

The post Reflections on Occupy Wall Street Before the Next Banking Collapse appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by David Rovics.

The three-day event, organized by the North West Frontier Indo-Tibetan Border Police, or ITBP, in collaboration with the Ladakh Mountain Guide Association, began on Feb. 27 in Gangles in the Union Territory of Ladakh. It honors Norbu Wangdu, a high-ranking member of the border police who died during an avalanche at the frontier in the north Indian state of Uttarakhand in 2019.

The event’s objective is to encourage participation from across the region, improve skills in extreme weather conditions, nurture talent and promote sports and tourism in Ladakh, which lies in the vicinity of the Karakoram and westernmost Himalayan mountain ranges, people who attended the event told Radio Free Asia.

Ladakh in the western Himalayas is a strategically important area divided by a Line of Actual Control, a notional demarcation line that separates Indian-controlled territory from Chinese-administered Aksai Chin, amid a long-running border area dispute between the two countries.

About two dozen soldiers were killed during a clash between Indian and Chinese soldiers in Ladakh in 2020. The two sides clashed again in a December 2022 skirmish in the eastern Himalayas, though no one died.

Among the 13 teams that participated in the competition, were five from the ITBT, two from the Ladakh Mountain Guide Association, two groups of schoolchildren from the city of Leh, and the Ladakh Police, according to an article by The Times of India.

Members of India’s ITBP are deployed along the Asian country’s borders with China’s Tibet Autonomous Region. The unit was one of the seven Central Armed Police Forces set up in October 1962 amid the Sino-Indian War during which the two nations fought a bloody war over contested territory. The ITBP has been safeguarding the border area ever since. 

“[With] Ladakh being a strategically important region, such competition is not only beneficial in developing individual skills, but also helps to secure the border area,” said Jamyang Tsering Namgyal, an Indian politician and member of parliament from Ladakh, who attended the event.

“Such activity is beneficial to the youths of Ladakh in gaining some skills that could help in rescue operations at the border,” he added.  

The event also aims to attract more tourism during winter when the number of visitors to the region plunges due to cold weather, said S.K. Gunjal, inspector general of the ITBP in the North West Frontier–Ralong region. 

Gunjal also said he hoped the competition would yield candidates who could represent India in the Winter Olympics, which will be held next in 2026 in Milan, Italy.

Translated by Tenzin Dickyi. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Thinley Choedon for RFA Tibetan.

Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday connected the spate of recent train derailments in the United States to Wall Street-backed cost-cutting and other policy decisions that have decimated the rail industry's workforce and compromised safety for the sake of larger profits.

"When rail companies reduced their workforce by 30% under orders from Wall Street, bad things happen—like the dangerous derailments in Ohio and Michigan," Sanders (I-Vt.), the chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, wrote on social media. "Rail companies not only must provide seven days of paid sick leave to workers, they must stop skimping on safety measures."

The toxic crash in East Palestine, Ohio has drawn greater scrutiny to a widely adopted model known as Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR), which rail workers have said is at least partially to blame for the derailment and broader crises across the industry. Under PSR, The New York Times explains, rail companies focus on "running rigid, consistent schedules, streamlining processes and routes, and cutting back on equipment and employees."

According to the U.S. Surface Transportation Board, Class I railroads—including Norfolk Southern, the company at the center of the derailments in Ohio and Michigan—have collectively slashed their workforces by 29% over the past six years, terminating roughly 45,000 employees including safety personnel.

An analysis conducted by USA Today earlier this month found that while "catastrophic events involving trains and chemicals may be uncommon, [hazardous material] cargo violations caught during inspections of rail shippers and operators appear to be climbing."

"Over the last five years, federal inspectors have flagged 36% more hazmat violations compared with the five years prior—and fines for those are up 16%.," the outlet noted.

One Norfolk Southern employee told Motherboard this week that train derailments and other rail disasters are "going to keep happening if regulators continue to allow this business model to ravage our nation's freight rail system in the pursuit of profit."

"My fear is that these corporations have so much money and political influence that nothing is going to change," the worker added.

"Secretary Pete Buttigieg must heed rail workers' calls and implement common-sense regulations to ensure this never happens again."

In addition to fighting to deny their increasingly exhausted workers paid sick leave, Norfolk Southern and other hugely profitable Class I rail carriers have lobbied aggressively against regulatory changes aimed at enhancing industry safety practices.

The Norfolk Southern train cars that derailed in East Palestine were not being regulated as hazardous, despite carrying a known carcinogen that was later released into the air.

"After rail industry donors delivered more than $6 million to GOP campaigns, the Trump administration—backed by rail lobbyists and Senate Republicans—rescinded part of [a] rule aimed at making better braking systems widespread on the nation's rails," The Lever reported earlier this month. "Specifically, regulators killed provisions requiring rail cars carrying hazardous flammable materials to be equipped with electronic braking systems to stop trains more quickly than conventional air brakes."

In the wake of the East Palestine derailment, progressive lawmakers have ramped up pressure on U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to take steps to more strictly regulate railroads as he suggests—incorrectly—that federal law is preventing him from doing so.

"The train derailment in East Palestine is an ecological and humanitarian disaster caused by a predatory rail industry that constantly puts profit over people," Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) said Thursday. "Secretary Pete Buttigieg must heed rail workers' calls and implement common-sense regulations to ensure this never happens again."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jake Johnson.

The post Don’t Trust Wall Street With Nursing Homes appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Jim Hightower.

There are industries that occasionally do something rotten. And there are industries — like Big Oil, Big Pharma and Big Tobacco — that persistently do rotten things.

Then there is the nursing home industry, where rottenness has become a core business principle. The end-of-life "experience" can be rotten enough on its own, with an assortment of natural indignities bedeviling us, and good nursing homes help gentle this time. In the past couple of decades, though, an entirely unnatural force has come to dominate the delivery of aged care: profiteering corporate chains and Wall Street speculators.

The very fact that this essential and sensitive social function, which ought to be the domain of health professionals and charitable enterprises, is now called an "industry" reflects a total perversion of its purpose. Some 70% of nursing homes are now corporate operations run by absentee executives who have no experience in nursing homes and who're guided by the market imperative of maximizing investor profits. They constantly demand "efficiencies" from their facilities, which invariably means reducing the number of nurses, which invariably reduces care, which means more injuries, illness... and deaths. As one nursing expert rightly says, "It's criminal."

But it's not against the law, since the industry's lobbying front — a major donor to congressional campaigns — effectively writes the laws, which allows corporate hustlers to provide only one nurse on duty, no matter how many patients are in the facility. When a humane nurse-staffing requirement was proposed last year, the lobby group furiously opposed it... and Congress dutifully bowed to industry profits over grandma's decent end-time. After all, granny doesn't make campaign donations.

So, as a health policy analyst bluntly puts it, "The only kind of groups that seem to be interested in investing in nursing homes are bad actors."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jim Hightower.

A group of activist investors sued Shell's board of directors on Wednesday for failing to "deliver the reduction in emissions that is needed to keep global climate goals within reach."

ClientEarth, an environmental law charity and institutional investor in Shell, described the case as the first time a company board is facing a shareholder lawsuit for inadequately preparing to transition away from fossil fuels.

"Shell may be making record profits now due to the turmoil of the global energy market, but the writing is on the wall for fossil fuels long term," Paul Benson, a senior lawyer at ClientEarth, said in a statement. "The shift to a low-carbon economy is not just inevitable, it's already happening. Yet the board is persisting with a transition strategy that is fundamentally flawed, leaving the company seriously exposed to the risks that climate change poses to Shell's future success—despite the board's legal duty to manage those risks."

The lawsuit, which is backed by large institutional investors that collectively hold 12 million shares of Shell, alleges that the oil giant's 11 directors are violating the Companies Act, a U.K. law that requires corporate boards to "promote the success" of the business.

By failing to sufficiently manage climate risks and implement "an energy transition strategy that aligns with the Paris Agreement," Shell is flouting its legal obligations, the lawsuit contends.

"Shell's Board on the other hand maintains that its 'Energy Transition Strategy'—including its plan to be a net-zero emissions business by 2050—is consistent with the 1.5°C temperature goal of the Paris Agreement," ClientEarth notes. "It also claims that its plan to halve emissions from its global operations by 2030 is 'industry-leading,' however this covers less than 10% of its overall emissions."

"It is in the best interests of the company, its employees, and its shareholders—as well as the planet—for Shell to reduce its emissions harder and faster than the board is currently planning."

ClientEarth and its backers are asking the High Court of Justice in London to force Shell's board to "adopt a strategy to manage climate risk in line with its duties under the Companies Act" and in compliance with a 2021 Dutch court ruling ordering the oil giant to cut its total carbon emissions by 45% by 2030.

"Long term, it is in the best interests of the company, its employees, and its shareholders—as well as the planet—for Shell to reduce its emissions harder and faster than the board is currently planning," Benson said.

Jacqueline Amy Jackson, the head of responsible investment at London CIV—one of the institutional backers of ClientEarth's lawsuit—said that "we do not believe the board has adopted a reasonable or effective strategy to manage the risks associated with climate change affecting Shell."

"In our view," Jackson added, "a board of directors of a high-emitting company has a fiduciary duty to manage climate risk, and in so doing, consider the impacts of its decisions on climate change, and to reduce its contribution to it."

Shell said in response that ClientEarth's suit "has no merit."

ClientEarth filed its complaint a week after Shell announced that its profits doubled in 2022, surging to a record $40 billion as households across Europe and around the world struggled with high energy costs. The company said it returned $26 billion to shareholders last year through dividends and stock buybacks.

Earlier this month, the advocacy group Global Witness filed a complaint with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission accusing Shell of "lumping together some of its gas-related investments with its spending on renewables to inflate its overall investment in renewable sources of energy," misleading investors and authorities.

"Shell's so-called renewable and energy solutions category is pure fiction," said Zorka Milin, a senior adviser at Global Witness. "The company is living in fantasy land if it thinks fossil gas has any place in the much-needed energy transition. Shell's business model has always been, and continues to be, overwhelmingly based on climate-polluting fossil fuels."

Shell is also facing lawsuits from nearly 14,000 Nigerians whose communities have been devastated by the company's pollution and oil spills.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jake Johnson.

An inter-union alliance of rail workers argued Tuesday that the massive freight train crash in East Palestine, Ohio late last week was a predictable consequence of Wall Street-backed policy decisions that have hollowed out the industry's workforce, pushed remaining employees to chronic exhaustion, and sacrificed safety for profits.

In an assessment of the Norfolk Southern (NS) train derailment based on currently available information, Railroad Workers United (RWU) wrote that "the root causes of this wreck are the same ones that have been singled out repeatedly, associated with the hedge fund-initiated operating model known as 'Precision Scheduled Railroading' (PSR)."

The group noted that the "immediate cause" of the wreck "appears to have been a 19th-century-style mechanical failure of the axle on one of the cars—an overheated bearing—leading to derailment and then jackknifing tumbling cars."

"There is no way in the 21st century, save from a combination of incompetence and disregard to public safety, that such a defect should still be threatening our communities," wrote RWU, which supports nationalization of the U.S. rail system.

"Forty percent of the weight of NS 32N was grouped at the rear third of the train, which has always been bad practice and made more dangerous with longer heavier trains," the statement continued. "This fact almost certainly made the wreck dynamically worse. But increasingly the PSR-driven carriers, driven to cut costs and crew time by any means necessary, cut corners and leave crews and the public at risk."

According to RWU, "The short-term profit imperative, the so-called 'cult of the Operating Ratio'—of NS and the other Class 1 railroads—has made cutting costs, employees, procedures, and resources the top priority. In this case, NS and the other carriers have eliminated many of the critical mechanical positions and locations necessary to guarantee protection against these kinds of failures."

The crash in Ohio "has been years in the making," the group added. "What other such train wrecks await us remains to be seen. But given the modus operandi of the Class One rail carriers, we can no doubt expect future disasters of this nature."

"The PSR-driven carriers, driven to cut costs and crew time by any means necessary, cut corners and leave crews and the public at risk."

Matthew Jinoo Buck, a senior fellow at the American Economic Liberties Project, explained in The American Prospect last year that "using PSR, railroad management's job is to drive down the 'operating ratio,' or operating expenses as a percentage of revenue."

"In other words, Wall Street judges railroads' success based in part on spending less money running the railroad and more on stock buybacks or dividends," Buck wrote. "Theoretically, focusing on lowering operating ratios pushes railroads to be more efficient, to do more with less. But when railroads have the market power they have today, they can instead 'do less with less,' as shippers and workers put it."

Norfolk Southern, the product of a merger between Norfolk and Western Railway and Southern Railway, appears to have followed that model closely.

The company announced a $10 billion stock buyback program last March and has consistently raised its dividend, rewarding shareholders while refusing to provide its workers with basic benefits such as paid sick leave.

For the full year of 2022, Norfolk Southern reported record-breaking operating revenues of $12.7 billion.

As Buck wrote last year, "The driving force behind PSR’s widespread adoption was railroad executive E. Hunter Harrison and investor Bill Ackman, a notorious hedge fund manager."

"After the two pushed through PSR at the Canadian Pacific railroad, Ackman's colleague Paul Hilal opened an investment fund called Mantle Ridge, which invested $1.2 billion in CSX and successfully pushed CSX to appoint Harrison CEO," he continued. "Under Harrison, and with the backing of CSX's board, who saw larger bottom lines in sight, CSX pushed through PSR despite complaints from shippers who reported long delays or lost shipments. Every other railroad has adopted PSR or PSR equivalents; industry watchers say the one holdout yet to officially adopt PSR, BNSF, has adopted PSR-like measures."

The crash in Ohio late Friday forced many local residents to evacuate to escape a possible explosion and the release of toxic fumes from the train cars, several of which were carrying vinyl chloride.

RWU said Tuesday that while many people in the area "were and remain evacuated, and property damage to both rail and non-railroad property will no doubt soar into the millions, we dodged a bullet as no rail workers and no trackside residents were killed."

"This time," the group added.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jake Johnson.

Financial speculators are buying and selling rights to the Colorado River's dwindling water resources in a bid to profit as historic drought conditions intensified by the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis lead to worsening scarcity.

Wall Street investment firms "have identified the drought as an opportunity to make money," Andy Mueller, general manager of the Colorado River Water Conservation District, toldCBS News on Tuesday. "I view these drought profiteers as vultures. They're looking to make a lot of money off this public resource."

Matthew Diserio, the co-founder and president of a Manhattan-based hedge fund called Water Asset Management (WAM), makes no secret of his intentions, having described water in the United States as "the biggest emerging market on Earth" and "a trillion-dollar market opportunity." The company's website declares that "scarce clean water is the resource defining this century, much like plentiful oil defined the last."

A newly published joint investigation by CBS News and The Weather Channel found that WAM has purchased at least $20 million worth of land in Western Colorado over the past five years, making it one of the biggest landowners in a farming and ranching region known as the Grand Valley.

According to Mueller, WAM has bought more than 2,500 acres of farmland in the area. But "it's the water"—not the land—that investors are really interested in, he said, observing that the farmland comes with water rights.

"There are real fears that this crucial water supply for the West is on the brink of disaster."

Notably, WAM has "hired Colorado's former top water official as one of its lawyers," CBS News reported. Diserio previously stated that "one of his firm's strategies is to profit from water in part by making the farms it buys more efficient and then selling parts of its water rights to other farmers and cities increasingly desperate for the natural resource."

Mueller is tasked with protecting Colorado's share of the Colorado River—a sprawling 1,450-mile waterway that traverses seven states and is a key water source for 40 million people in the western U.S. and northern Mexico, including those in the metropolitan areas of Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Diego, Denver, Las Vegas, Albuquerque, and Salt Lake City.

Clean water is becoming increasingly scarce in the region for a variety of reasons, not least of which is the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency.

"The Colorado River relies mostly on snowpack in the Rocky Mountains that feeds into the river as it melts in the spring and summer," Weather Channel storm specialist Greg Postel explained. "But climate change is making the West hotter and drier. For every degree the temperature has gone up, the flow of the river has dropped by about 5%—a nearly 20% reduction over the past century."

The volume of water being withdrawn from the Colorado River has fallen since 2000 despite more people moving to the region. But with less water flowing into the river amid the West's ongoing 23-year megadrought—more severe than anything seen in the preceding 1,200 years—recent decreases in per capita water consumption are insufficient.

"It's taken a major toll on the nation's largest reservoirs," Postel said of climate change-amplified drought. "Lake Powell in Arizona and Lake Mead in Nevada—they are at historic lows. They're at just 25% of their full, combined capacity. There are real fears that this crucial water supply for the West is on the brink of disaster."

As the long-brewing crisis surrounding the Colorado River grows more acute, the federal government has taken steps to compel state-level policymakers to improve how they manage water resources in the increasingly arid region.

For instance, "Congress recently allocated $4 billion in drought funding that can be used to pay farmers to fallow their land and not use their water," CBS News reported. "Some Western states, including Colorado, are also considering paying some farmers to keep their lands fallow." Agriculture accounts for 70% of withdrawals from the Colorado River.

Last August, after the Colorado River Basin states failed to meet a federal deadline to approve a plan for achieving a 15% to 30% reduction in water use, the U.S. Department of Interior (DOI) announced—based on projected water levels for 2023—that Arizona, Nevada, and Mexico would be forced to draw less from the river this year.

On Tuesday, for the second time in six months, the seven states that depend on the Colorado River failed to reach a water conservation pact by the DOI's deadline, increasing the likelihood the agency will impose cuts later this year. Six states—Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming—agreed to slash water use. But California, the largest water consumer of the bunch, refused, setting the stage for what CNNdescribed as a "high-stakes legal battle."

In August, Food & Water Watch research director Amanda Starbuck implored policymakers to "eliminate rampant corporate water abuse before it's too late," decrying the "massive water use of Big Ag and Big Oil."

"By switching to renewable energy sources like solar and wind, California could save 98% of the water currently needed for its fossil fuel production," said Starbuck. "And by transitioning away from industrial megadairies, thirsty crops like almonds and pistachios, and engaging in regenerative farming, California will gain enormous water savings that could serve small farmers and domestic households."

Regarding WAM and other hedge funds looking to profit from looming water shortages, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) unveiled legislation last March that would prevent Wall Street from speculating on life-sustaining water resources.

The Future of Water Act, as the congressional Democrats' bicameral legislation is titled, would amend the Commodity Exchange Act to affirm that water is a human right to be managed for public benefit—not a commodity to be bought and sold by investment firms. The bill would also prohibit the trading of water rights on futures markets—a recently invented financial ploy widely condemned as "dystopian."

Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch, said at the time of the bill's introduction that "with the climate crisis delivering historically devastating droughts across the West, it is clearer than ever that water should be treated as a scarce, essential resource, not a commodity for Wall Street and financial speculators."

"This groundbreaking legislation would put a lid on dangerous water futures trading before it creates a crisis," said Hauter, "and it reinforces the fact that water must be managed as a public resource, not a corporate profit center."

Mueller, for his part, said Tuesday that "water in Colorado, water in the West, is your future."

"Without water," he added, "you have no future."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Kenny Stancil.

The post A Wall Street Sob Story appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Jim Hightower.

In 2021 alone, Wall Street bonuses rose twenty percent, far outpacing inflation at seven percent, and nominal private sector earnings at 4.2 percent. That year Wall Street bonuses, in aggregate, amounted to $45 billion, much higher than the $37.1 billion in bonuses paid out in 2020, even as employment in the sector remained essentially flat at about 180,000 workers. It’s important to note that while only five percent of New Yorkers who work in the private sector work in securities, these workers make twenty percent of all private sector earnings in New York City. The bonuses paid out in 2021 are the highest since 2006, which is likely fueled by banking industry lobbyists successfully delaying the implementation of Section 956 of the Dodd-Frank Act. This legislation prevents large financial institutions from awarding pay packages which encourage “inappropriate risk.”

These growing bonuses further racial and gender inequality, as the financial industry is overwhelmingly White and male. Seventy-five percent of Goldman Sachs’ senior executives and top managers are male, as are 74 percent at JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley, and 64 percent at Bank of America, and Citigroup. These institutions are disproportionately White as well— just three percent of Goldman Sachs’ senior executives and top managers are Black, with similarly low figures for JPMorgan Chase (5%), Morgan Stanley (3%), Bank of America (5%), and Citigroup (4%).

Corporate coverage of this story has been scant. The New York Post published coverage, and CNN Business featured a non-comprehensive story, which noted, “high bonuses are also good news for Gotham’s tax coffers.”

Sources:

Jake Johnson, “‘Jaw-Dropping’: Wall Street Bonuses Have Soared 1,743% Since 1985,” Common Dreams, March 23, 2022.

Sarah Anderson, “Wall Street Bonuses Soar By 20%, Nearly 5 Times the Increase in US Average Weekly Earnings,” Inequality.org, March 23, 2022.

Noor Zanzibar Hussein, “Wall Street Hands Out Biggest Bonuses Since 2006,” Reuters, March 23, 2022.

Student Researcher: Annie Koruga (Ohlone College)

Faculty Evaluator: Robin Takahashi (Ohlone College)

The post Wall Street Bonuses have Risen 1743 Percent Since 1985 appeared first on Project Censored.

This content originally appeared on Project Censored and was authored by Vins.

Now the Federal Reserve, which is tasked with overseeing the country’s financial system, is trying to figure out just how vulnerable big banks are to this kind of upheaval. The Fed on Tuesday released new details about a climate risk analysis it is asking six major U.S. banks to conduct, offering a peek at the worst-case climate events that financial regulators are worrying about. 

Banks often use stress tests like these to assess risks in their portfolio, and since the financial crisis the Fed has required large banks to ensure that they can withstand sudden financial shocks, but this is the first time that the U.S. government has asked major banks to account for their exposure to climate change. The results of the so-called “pilot climate scenario analysis exercise” will offer new insight into whether these banks could survive major climate shocks, and could also help inform new regulations such as the ones that followed the 2008 financial crisis.

The banks that will participate are some of the largest and most diversified in the country: Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley. This batch controls about half of the banking market in the United States as measured by total deposits, and also manages billions of dollars for investors and pensions. The Fed’s exercise asks these banks to consider two major types of climate danger: the “physical risk” of natural disasters and the “transition risk” of a movement away from fossil fuels.

In the first part of the exercise, banks will assess how their portfolios would fare if one or more major hurricanes struck the Northeast, a “region in which all participants have material commercial and residential real estate exposures.” The Fed wants banks to pay particular attention to their real estate portfolios: how many residential and commercial loans would fall through, and how much money would it cost the banks if that happened?

In the second, the Fed will look at how their investments and loans would perform during a rapid energy transition to net zero emissions by 2050. If the world’s nations did come together and decarbonize on that timeline, it’s likely that major oil companies and other carbon-intensive companies would see severe losses. Rating agencies like Standard & Poor’s might downgrade their credit, making it harder for them to borrow their way out of trouble, which in turn would cause losses for the banks that finance and insure them.

Many large financial institutions still provide large loans and underwriting services for fossil fuel producers. A new report from the advocacy group Reclaim Finance found that even banks that have signed a prominent global net-zero pledge have provided a combined $269 billion in financing for fossil-fuel companies over recent years. Five of the Fed’s six participating banks are named in the report as top fossil-fuel financiers — all except Goldman Sachs.

Yevgeny Shrago, policy director for the climate program at Public Citizen, the consumer advocacy group, said the Fed’s exercise is a welcome start, but it doesn’t go far enough. 

“It’s not even a fire drill,” Shrago told Grist. “It’s like looking at the map of a building and being like, do we have enough exits?” The exercise focuses on how climate change could affect banks’ balance sheets, Shrago said, but it doesn’t consider how losses at those banks could lead to broader financial turmoil for small banks, insurers, pensions, and ordinary people. 

The Federal Reserve is independent from the Biden administration, but the bank’s announcement comes on the heels of other regulatory actions. The Securities and Exchange Commission is in the middle of finalizing a rule that would require publicly-traded companies to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions, and the Treasury is seeking information from major insurers about how climate change could affect their business. 

The Federal Reserve has asked banks to submit their responses by the end of July, and plans to make the results of the study public later this year.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How vulnerable is Wall Street to climate change? The Fed wants to find out. on Jan 19, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Jake Bittle.

Top banks in the United States and around the world have made a show of embracing net-zero emissions pledges, portraying themselves as allies in the fight against the global climate emergency.

But a new analysis published Tuesday by a group of NGOs makes clear that the world's leading financial institutions—including major Wall Street banks such as Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, and Bank of America—are still pumping money into fossil fuel expansion, bolstering the industry that is primarily responsible for worsening climate chaos.

According to the report, 56 of the largest banks in the Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA)—a coalition convened by the United Nations—have provided nearly $270 billion in the form of loans and underwriting to more than 100 "major fossil fuel expanders," from Saudi Aramco to ExxonMobil to Shell.

Additionally, 58 of the biggest members of the Net-Zero Asset Managers (NZAM) initiative—including the investment behemoths BlackRock and Vanguard—held at least $847 billion worth of stocks and bonds in more than 200 large fossil fuel developers as of September.

Both the NZBA and the NZAM are under the umbrella of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net-Zero (GFANZ), a campaign launched in 2021 with the goal of expanding "the number of net zero-committed financial institutions." Climate advocates have long argued that net-zero pledges are fundamentally inadequate to the task of stopping runaway warming.

"The science is very clear: we need to stop developing new coal, oil, and gas projects as soon as possible if we want to meet our climate goals and avoid a worst-case scenario," said Lucie Pinson, the executive director and founder of the watchdog group Reclaim Finance. "Yet, it is business as usual for most banks and investors who continue to support fossil fuel developers without any restrictions, despite their high-profile commitments to carbon neutrality."

"Their greenwashing is all the more damaging as it casts doubt on the sincerity of all net-zero commitments and undermines the efforts of those who are truly acting for the climate," Pinson added.

The groups found that the U.S.-based Wall Street giants Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo provided nearly $90 billion in total financing for fossil fuel expansion between the dates they joined the NZBA and August 2022.

Citigroup, which touts its net-zero commitments on its website, led the pack with $30.5 billion in fossil fuel financing from April 2021 to August 2022.

"The U.S. financial sector cannot be taken seriously on climate change until it stops investing in new fossil fuel projects," said Adele Shraiman, a representative for the Sierra Club's Fossil-Free Finance campaign. "We need an urgent transition to a green economy and the financial sector must help deliver that."

Overall, according to the new report, "229 of the world's largest fossil fuel developers received finance from the 161 GFANZ members covered... which will support them to develop new coal power plants, mines, ports, and other infrastructure, as well as new oil and gas fields and pipelines and LNG terminals."

"These new fossil fuel projects are incompatible with the objective of limiting global warming to 1.5°C, as confirmed in the latest International Energy Agency's World Energy Outlook published in October 2022," the report states. "They will lock in greenhouse gas emissions for decades, despite the adoption of decarbonization targets by some GFANZ members."

Paddy McCully, a senior analyst at Reclaim Finance, said in a statement that "GFANZ members are acting as climate arsonists."

"They've pledged to achieve net-zero but are continuing to pour hundreds of billions of dollars into fossil fuel developers," said McCully. "GFANZ and its member alliances will only be credible once they up their game and insist that their members help bring a rapid end to the era of coal, oil, and fossil gas expansion."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jake Johnson.

The U.S. committee tasked with overseeing the financial sector on Thursday "dispelled any doubt of their intent to do the bidding of the financial industries over the interests of everyday families," said a government watchdog group as the panel signaled it will significantly scale back its efforts to push for consumer protections on Wall Street.

House Financial Services Committee (HFSC) Chair Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) announced the new Republican subcommittee chairmanships, with new panels including the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Monetary Policy—tasked with overseeing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)—and the Subcommittee on Digital Assets, Financial Technology, and Inclusion, headed by pro-cryptocurrency Rep. French Hill (R-Ark.).

Gone from the list were the former Diversity and Inclusion Subcommittee and all references in the panels' descriptions to "consumer protection," "investor protection," and "community development."

The Republicans now in control of the HFSC "never met a consumer protection effort they liked and have been rewarded accordingly with millions of dollars from greedy industries they now oversee," said Liz Zelnick, director of the economic security and corporate power program at Accountable.US.

The watchdog noted that in addition to the considerable campaign cash McHenry and other Republicans on the committee have received from Wall Street—including $9.2 million for the new committee chairman—the new leadership's ties to financial giants have been made clear in other ways.

McHenry was a speaker at the Consumer Banker Association's annual Washington Forum in 2021 and events hosted by the National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions and the American Bankers Association last year. He also received the "Champion of Small Business Award" in 2018 from the so-called Small Business Investor Alliance, which represents lower- to middle-market private equity funds, and the "Spirit of Enterprise Award" from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in 2016.

Of the $9.2 million he has raked in from Wall Street over the course of his career, $154,000 came from industry groups that lobbied in 2018 in support of McHenry's Protecting Consumers’ Access To Credit Act, which aimed to weaken consumer protections from predatory lenders.

Accountable.US described McHenry as a "Wall Street money vacuum and longtime adversary of federal consumer protection efforts."

McHenry's decision to appoint Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-Mo.), a former banker, to oversee the National Security, Illicit Finance, and International Financial Institutions subcommittee is "equally concerning for consumers," said Accountable.US.

Luetkemeyer's family has had ties to the Bank of St. Elizabeth—acquired by Mid America Bank in 2021—going back several generations, and since entering Congress the Republican has "used his position as a lawmaker to lend support to industry after the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was sued by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other financial groups over its reinterpretation of policy toward unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts and practices."

He introduced legislation to restructure the leadership of the CFPB and has taken at least $722,500 from the country's three largest banks, which in 2019 made over $6.8 billion in overdraft fees—a major target of the CFPB.

The committee member tasked with overseeing the CFPB on the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Monetary Policy is Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.), who told a conference of bankers in 2021 that the bureau "is a big concern."

"Predictably, McHenry wasted no time seeking payback on behalf of his biggest donors by scrapping key subcommittees dedicated to consumer protection and preventing industry discrimination," said Zelnick.

"The frothy-mouthed hostility McHenry and Luetkemeyer have exhibited toward the CFPB and its director strongly suggests a belief that ripping off consumers is a legitimate part of doing business, including excessive overdraft penalties and predatory hidden fees," she added. "Only politicians deep in the pocket of industry could view with contempt the bureau's incredible success in saving consumers money and holding scammers and financial predators accountable."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Julia Conley.

A new Accountable.US analysis published Wednesday revealed that the 11 new Republicans tapped to serve on the House Financial Services Committee collectively accepted more than $6 million from Wall Street during the 2022 election cycle, leaving them ready to do the "industry's bidding."

The HFSC "has jurisdiction over issues pertaining to the economy, the banking system, housing, insurance, and securities and exchanges," the panel's website reads. "Additionally, the committee also has jurisdiction over monetary policy, international finance, international monetary organizations, and efforts to combat terrorist financing."

Newly elected GOP lawmakers nominated to serve on the HFSC have taken nearly $6.2 million in campaign cash from the finance, insurance, and real estate (FIRE) industries that the panel is tasked with refereeing, Accountable.US researchers found.

The watchdog group broke down how much money each new Republican nominee for the HFSC received during the 2022 election cycle from the FIRE industries they are set to oversee:

• Rep. Monica De La Cruz (Texas): $517,145 (plus $5,934 during her unsuccessful 2020 campaign);
• Rep. Byron Donalds (Florida): $704,320;
• Rep. Scott Fitzgerald (Wisc.): $332,788;
• Rep. Mike Flood (Neb.): $237,449;
• Rep. Andrew Garbarino (N.Y.): $1,075,969;
• Rep. Erin Houchin (Ind.): $109,876;
• Rep. Young Kim (Calif.): $2,377,995;
• Rep. Mike Lawler (N.Y.): $60,466;
• Rep. Dan Meuser (Pa.): $451,249;
• Rep. Zach Nunn (Iowa): $230,717;
• Rep. Andy Ogles (Tenn.): $89,134.

"History has shown when conservative politicians in the pocket of Wall Street banks and predatory lenders seize power, everyday consumers are left more vulnerable to greedy financial industry behavior," Liz Zelnick, director of the Economic Security and Corporate Power program at Accountable.US, said in a statement. "History is about to repeat itself as the MAGA majority in charge of overseeing the financial industry are completely awash in Wall Street money."

Notably, Donalds and Ogles were part of the far-right contingent that extracted anti-worker concessions from House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) during his drawn-out battle for the speaker's gavel.

"History has shown when conservative politicians in the pocket of Wall Street banks and predatory lenders seize power, everyday consumers are left more vulnerable to greedy financial industry behavior. History is about to repeat itself."

When announcing all 30 new and returning GOP lawmakers recommended to serve on the financial oversight panel, HFSC Chair Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) claimed that "the talent and real-world expertise of this group is an embarrassment of riches." He added, "I look forward to working with them to deliver on House Republicans' commitment to America."

The House Republican Steering Committee's recommendations for membership on the HFSC will soon be considered by the full party caucus and then the entire House of Representatives, where the GOP's majority makes approval likely.

Over the course of his career, McHenry has raked in more than $9.2 million in political donations from the FIRE industries while advancing "priorities written by and for Wall Street, big banks, and predatory lenders at the expense of everyday American families," Accountable.US noted.

For example, McHenry cheered in October when a panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit—which former President Donald Trump pushed in an even more conservative direction by appointing numerous far-right judges, including the trio of panel members—ruled that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's funding structure is unconstitutional.

In response to a lawsuit brought by the payday lending industry, the 5th Circuit judges—led by Cory Wilson, who received at least $10,500 in campaign cash from Wall Street when he was a Republican candidate for and member of the Mississippi House of Representatives between 2014 and 2018—argued that the CFPB's structure is unlawful because its funding comes from the Federal Reserve System rather than Congress, a feature that seeks to ensure the agency's independence.

McHenry said that he was "glad to see" the ruling and expressed his desire to bring the CFPB "under the appropriations process," where it would be vulnerable to cuts from a hostile GOP.

"Chairman McHenry, who's made no secret of his intent to ignore bad industry actors and obstruct federal efforts to protect consumers from things like junk fees, now has all the backing he needs to get payback against the pro-consumer Biden administration on behalf of his biggest donors," Zelnick said Wednesday. "Consumers beware as financial scammers rejoice."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Kenny Stancil.

The post Shakeup At CNN! A Fly on the Wall appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Ishmael Reed.

On November 23, a police officer detained and handcuffed Rabouin while he was interviewing people on a sidewalk near a bank, according to a January 5 report by the local broadcaster ABC15.

Rabouin told the outlet that he identified himself as a member of the press when the officer approached. The officer threatened to arrest Rabouin for trespassing, blocked him from leaving the scene, and then handcuffed him and placed him in a police vehicle, according to that ABC15 report, quoting Rabouin and a letter by Wall Street Journal editor-in-chief Matt Murray.

The officer held Rabouin for about eight minutes before other officers arrived; about two minutes after reinforcements came to the scene, he was released without charge, that report said.

“We are deeply concerned by the Phoenix Police Department’s treatment of Wall Street Journal reporter Dion Rabouin. Detaining and handcuffing a journalist—who was gathering news in a public place—is a flagrant violation of his First Amendment rights,” said CPJ U.S. and Canada Program Coordinator Katherine Jacobsen. “The police department should conduct a thorough investigation into Rabouin’s treatment, and undertake reforms to make sure this kind of incident is not repeated.”

The Phoenix Police Department is under federal investigation to evaluate its practices, including whether it engages in discriminatory policing.

The officer wrote in a police report that he believed he had probable cause that Rabouin was trespassing. The ABC15 report states that a Phoenix official reviewed the incident report and found nothing wrong with the officer’s treatment of Rabouin, who is Black.

Rabouin recounted to ABC15 that the police officer told him, “This could get bad for you if you don’t comply and don’t do what I say,” before he grabbed Rabouin’s arms and handcuffed him.

Murray filed a letter to the police in response to the incident, and Rabouin filed a complaint, ABC15 reported.

The Phoenix Police Department did not immediately respond to CPJ’s request for comment submitted through their online contact portal. CPJ also emailed the U.S. Department of Justice group that is investigating the police department, but did not receive any immediate response.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey agreed to remove hundreds of shipping containers that he illegally installed on federal land along the southern border, marking an unprecedented victory for borderland residents who successfully fought to stop the project.

State and federal officials, in a joint filing this week, informed a judge in Arizona’s U.S. district court that a process to dismantle the governor’s unlawful barrier would soon begin. Following weeks of fierce local resistance on the ground, the agreement will ironically make Ducey — a Republican who declared his state under invasion — the first U.S. lawmaker to initiate a large-scale border wall removal in modern American history.

Andy Kayner and Jennifer Wrenn, who live just north of the container wall, tempered their reactions to the news. The couple has been at the center of the battle to halt the governor’s project, fueled by outrage over the harm that was done to a landscape they treasure and the endless convoys of trailer-pulling trucks rumbling past their home day and night.

“Taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for putting it in, then taking it out, and then restoring the land and restoring all the roads.”

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“This was the politicians violating the rule of law, and ordinary citizens — being peaceful, lawful, and legal — taking it into their own hands.”

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Ryan Devereaux.

The incumbent FijiFirst government’s appeal was beginning to wane and voters deserted the party “because of what they saw as their authoritarian, non-inclusive, controlling and vindictive style of leadership”, says a leading Fijian academic with an international reputation.

Professor Steven Ratuva, director of the New Zealand-based University of Canterbury’s Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies, said: “The writing was on the wall for the Voreqe Bainimarama-led party for some time”.

“People could hardly openly complain and criticise the government as one would expect in a democracy, fearing the consequences,” he said.

• READ MORE:  ‘PM at first sitting’ – Fiji’s former elections chief explains how
• Fijian Aucklanders see promise and hope with Rabuka as likely PM
• ‘Nothing to concede’, says FijiFirst in wake of contested election
• Reports of ‘anomalies’ in Sodelpa vote to go with opposition parties
• New chapter for Fiji – Rabuka to lead coalition
• Other Fiji elections reports

A coalition of the People’s Alliance Party and National Federation Party with 26 seats combined with Sodelpa’s crucial three seats claims that it has a majority in the expanded 55-seat Parliament for Sitiveni Rabuka to lead as Prime Minister.

Referring to the internal issues erupting within the kingmaker Social Democratic Liberal Party (Sodelpa), Professor Ratuva said it was time to respect the wishes of voters rather than the “hunger for power” and grievances of individual political players.

He said the Sodelpa split which led to the formation of the People’s Alliance was unfortunate “with lots of bruised souls and egos who harboured very deep resentment and clamour for vengeance”.

The issue was a complex mixture of “traditional vanua politics, personality power struggle and liumuri (backstabbing)” that was now unashamedly being played out in public.

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

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Intercepted.

Michael and Christie Brown resisted putting a barrier around their beloved desert home for years, but the nights were getting too dangerous. It was a question of safety. They needed a fence.

The Browns live 10 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border, on the southeastern edge of Sierra Vista, in Cochise County, Arizona. Like many of their neighbors at the foot of the rugged Huachuca Mountains, the Browns’s worry was javelinas, tenacious borderland omnivores often mistaken for wild pigs. Their dogs had been attacked. Their garden was in peril. Javelina damage keeps the Browns up at night. A purported wave of migrants laying siege to their community does not.

In late October, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey began unloading thousands of shipping containers on the border in the Coronado National Forest to thwart a supposed “invasion” on the Browns’ doorstep. Topped with concertina wire and welded together, the nearly 9,000-pound boxes would be stacked two high on land where the retirees chop wood every winter, where they took their sons hiking and camping as kids, and where they still hike and camp to this day. In the early 2000s, they saw evidence of heavy migration through the area — discarded desert clothes, empty water jugs, trash — but it hadn’t been like that in more than a decade.

On October 26, two days after Ducey’s project began, the Browns got in their truck and set off to see the shipping containers for themselves. They descended a rocky road east of the picturesque San Rafael Valley, then turned south toward Mexico. As they neared the border, they were stopped at an ad hoc checkpoint. A bald man, dressed in black with body armor and reflective sunglasses, approached. He wore no insignia and refused to say who he worked for. Michael asked if he could drive up to the containers and take some photos. The guard said he could not. Michael asked him why.

“I’m not answering any more questions, sir,” the guard replied.

President Joe Biden greets Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey after arriving on Air Force One, on Dec. 6, 2022, at Luke Air Force Base in Maricopa County, Ariz.

Photo: Patrick Semansky/AP

Michael and Christie Brown near the shipping container wall on the U.S.-Mexico border in the Coronado National Forest in Arizona, on Nov. 29, 2022.

Photo: Kitra Cahana for The Intercept

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Russ McSpadden, Southwest Conservation Advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity, scans the border for signs of new wall installation. October 24, 2022.

Photo: Michael McKisson

Protesters block construction of the shipping container wall on the U.S.-Mexico border in the Coronado National Forest in Arizona, on Nov. 29, 2022.

Photo: Kitra Cahana for The Intercept

“What I saw was shocking and heartbreaking.”

Andrew Kayner, 71, sits down and blocks construction of Gov. Doug Ducey’s shipping container wall on the U.S.-Mexico border in the Coronado National Forest in Arizona, on Nov. 29, 2022.

Photo: Kitra Cahana for The Intercept

“I can proudly say that I had no part of the Trump-era stuff. To me, that was not done for security. It was for racism.”

Kate Scott near the shipping container wall on the U.S.-Mexico border in the Coronado National Forest in Arizona, on Nov. 29, 2022.

Photo: Kitra Cahana for The Intercept

“It’s a crime against nature. Everyone in America should be mad because it’s going through their national forest.”

Jennifer Wrenn, 68, and Andrew Kayner, 71, outside their home near Elgin, Arizona, on Nov. 29, 2022.

Photo: Kitra Cahana for The Intercept

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“I thought they were going to kill some of these people out there.”

Still: Russ McSpadden/Center for Biological Diversity Southwest Conservation Advocate

Public land defenders Andy Kayner, Kate Scott, and Ethan Bonnin visit with Santa Cruz County Sheriff David Hathaway at an encampment blocking Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey’s illegal wall of shipping containers. December 7, 2022.

Photo: Courtesy Kate Scott

“Of course, they’re going to say that. It would be like going to Raytheon and asking them, ‘Should we have another war in the Middle East?’”

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Ryan Devereaux.

Outgoing Republican Governor Doug Ducey of Arizona is spending nearly $100 million in his final weeks in office to erect a makeshift border wall along the state’s southern boundary with Mexico made of shipping containers and razor wire. Ducey has described it as an effort to complete former President Donald Trump’s border wall, but the shipping containers are being placed on federal and tribal lands without permission. Protesters who have tried to block construction warn the wall is destroying precious desert biodiversity and forcing asylum seekers to take even more dangerous routes along the border to seek refuge in the United States. Meanwhile, it is unclear what Democratic Governor-elect Katie Hobbs will do with the container wall once she is sworn in. “It’s quite amazing that there’s simply been no [federal] law enforcement response,” says Myles Traphagen with Wildlands Network, who coordinates the group’s borderlands program. “Why aren’t they mobilizing a federal law enforcement response when this is a blatant disregard of the law?” We also speak with Alejandra Gomez, executive director of Living United for Change in Arizona, or LUCHA Arizona, who says immigrant communities in Arizona are responding with aid and compassion despite “the fueling of hate against migrants” by Ducey and other Republicans.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

David Hathaway, the sheriff in southern Arizona’s Santa Cruz County, is offering a simple solution to stop Republican Gov. Doug Ducey’s illegal wall of shipping containers along the border: Federal agents should begin seizing vehicles associated with the project.

Hathaway’s county sits directly west of Cochise County, where Ducey’s has been dropping containers for the past month and a half despite federal officials repeatedly telling him that his actions are unauthorized and unlawful. With federal authorities doing nothing to act on those warnings, Hathaway has vowed to arrest the governor’s contractors if they cross the county line into his turf.

That scenario would be unlikely, as the contract for the project has the governor’s wall stopping just shy of Hathaway’s jurisdiction. Convoys of Ducey’s contractors have, however, been racing through communities in Santa Cruz County for weeks now, hauling 40-foot shipping containers behind multi-ton pickup trucks at dangerous speeds. Hathaway said his department has received complaints from residents in the town of Elgin of Ducey’s drivers “barreling through town,” ignoring stop signs, and “flying past children.”

“The way you would end this right away is you go get a seizure sticker, and you slap it on the side of one of those $200,000 trackhoes.”

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“This is disgusting and ugly.”

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Ryan Devereaux.

The initiative’s goal was to increase the number of financial institutions committed to net-zero principles — essentially a promise that the work done by these institutions (investing, lending money, managing major assets like pension funds) would not cause an overall increase in the world’s carbon emissions. During the conference, Carney announced that the coalition had grown to 450 firms responsible for $130 trillion in assets, a pot of wealth equivalent to more than five times the gross domestic product of the United States.

“You need things like GFANZ that are relentlessly, ruthlessly, absolutely focused on that transition to net-zero,” he told Bloomberg at the time.  

But just a year later, many Wall Street firms are backtracking. In September, the Financial Times reported that several banks, including Bank of America and JP Morgan, were concerned about accidentally running afoul of United Nations climate rules and being held legally liable for their commitments, leading them to consider pulling out of GFANZ. Blackrock and Vanguard, the world’s largest asset managers, then confirmed in October that their net zero commitments would not preclude them from investing in fossil fuels, despite concerns that new fossil fuel investment is incompatible with timely decarbonization. (Asset managers steward money on behalf of major investors like sovereign wealth funds, insurers, and pension funds.) And finally, earlier this week, Vanguard officially announced that it is resigning from the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative, a sector-specific alliance under the GFANZ umbrella. 

Initiatives like the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative “can advance constructive dialogue, but sometimes they can also result in confusion about the views of individual investment firms,” the company said in a statement, which appears to reference the backlash that Vanguard and other firms have received from Republican attorneys general for considering environmental concerns in some of the investments they offer.

In the last few years, as the global costs of climate change have become more apparent, pressure on companies to reduce carbon emissions and prioritize environmental initiatives has increased dramatically. Asset managers like Blackrock and Vanguard largely joined this call and were supportive of many shareholder-led climate proposals that resulted in the appointment of new directors at ExxonMobil, the adoption of emission reductions at companies like Chevron, and the reporting of risks from the energy transition to a company’s bottomline. 

But as climate-focused investment practices (such as screening out fossil fuel companies in certain boutique index funds) gained traction and companies joined GFANZ, questions mounted about whether Wall Street’s apparent climate-consciousness was actually moving the needle on net zero, if climate commitments would run afoul of firms’ fiduciary duties (by steering investors away from profitable-but-polluting investments), and if they would be able to abide by the United Nations’ climate targets. 

The discussion is complicated by the fact that many fossil fuel investments managed by Vanguard and other asset management firms are held in index funds that track the performance of the overall stock market — the kind that many American workers use to save for retirement, for example. These index funds invest in a broad range of companies regardless of those companies’ carbon emissions, and GFANZ didn’t change that — in part because changing the makeup of a fund would require the approval of investors and could result in legal challenges. As a result, Vanguard’s commitments apply primarily to a subset of funds that it actively manages to adhere to vaguely-defined environmental, social, and governance principles, or ESG. It offers these funds to investors who also support those principles and want to put their money behind them.

Vanguard appeared to underscore this distinction, however vaguely, in its decision to withdraw from GFANZ, stating that it wanted to “provide the clarity our investors desire about the role of index funds and about how we think about material risks, including climate-related risks — and to make clear that Vanguard speaks independently on matters of importance to our investors.” More than 80 percent of its clients’ assets are in index funds, it noted. 

Wall Street has also been facing pressure from Republican lawmakers and attorneys general, who have accused firms of “woke capitalism.” They’ve made sustainable investment practices a flash point, opening investigations into banks that have committed to net-zero and reportedly planning to hold hearings on the issue in the new Republican-majority House of Representatives that assumes office in January. Earlier this week, the Republican staff of the Senate Banking Committee released a report pillorying BlackRock, Vanguard, and another asset manager for using “shareholder voting power to advance a liberal political agenda.”

Last month, Republican attorneys general also filed a protest with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission against Vanguard buying shares of U.S. utilities, arguing that the firm’s commitment to net-zero meant that it might push the utilities to move away from coal and natural gas, even if fossil fuel buildup would be better for investors than renewables. “This will undoubtedly affect the cost and reliability of energy supplies,” they said.  

Kirsten Snow Spalding, a vice president at the sustainability nonprofit Ceres, said in a statement that it is “unfortunate that political pressure is impacting this crucial economic imperative and attempting to block companies from effectively managing risks — a crucial part of their fiduciary duty.”

While financial institutions face political pressure to ditch climate-focused initiatives, they also increasing regulatory pressure to take the risks of climate change into account. The Securities and Exchange Commission, the watchdog federal agency meant to protect U.S. investors, has issued new climate risk disclosure rules for asset managers and is cracking down on firms that are inflating their climate bona fides. The Commission has a separate task force that identifies misconduct related to climate and ESG investments within its Division of Enforcement. Last month, the Commission targeted Goldman Sachs for failing to adequately evaluate ESG factors before including securities in ESG-branded funds. The firm paid $4 million in penalties to settle the case.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Wall Street’s biggest names are backing off their climate commitments on Dec 9, 2022.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Naveena Sadasivam.

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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.

A private border wall built along the Rio Grande in South Texas could collapse during extreme flooding, according to a federally commissioned inspection report that the government sought to keep secret for more than a year.

The 404-page report, produced by the global engineering firm Arcadis, confirms previous reporting from ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. It also shows for the first time that the federal government independently found structural problems with the border fencing before reaching a settlement agreement with the builder, Fisher Industries, in May.

Under the agreement, which ended a nearly three-year legal battle between the International Boundary and Water Commission and Fisher Industries, the company must inspect the fence quarterly, remove bollards and maintain a gate that would allow for the release of floodwaters. It must also keep a $3 million bond, a type of insurance, to cover any expenses in case the structure fails.

Engineering and hydrology experts told the news organizations the bond is inadequate to cover the kind of catastrophic failure described by Arcadis and raised concerns that the federal government’s decision to settle the case cuts against the report’s findings.

The company modeled different scenarios using the extreme weather conditions caused by Hurricane Beulah, a 1967 storm that dumped about 30 inches of rain in some areas of the border region and caused the banks of the Rio Grande to overflow. The modeling showed that the fence “would effectively slide and/or overturn” during major flooding, and that it starts to become unstable during much smaller and more frequent floods.

According to the report, the fencing doesn’t meet basic international building code and industry standards and has a foundation far shallower than border barriers built by the federal government.

“Every single conclusion in the report points to it not needing to be there and shows it is actually negatively affecting the area,” said Adriana E. Martinez, a professor and geomorphologist at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. (She was not involved with the report.)

Martinez, who studies the impact of border barriers in South Texas, questioned how much more evidence the state and federal governments need to take down the fencing and prevent future construction along the Rio Grande.

Arcadis referred questions about its assessment to the Department of Justice, which represented the IBWC in the lawsuit, arguing the fence violated a treaty with Mexico that requires both countries to approve any development that can affect the international boundary. A DOJ spokesperson declined to answer specific questions about the settlement or about why the government fought the release of the report.

The news organizations obtained the report on Nov. 15 after multiple Freedom of Information Act requests and 15 months of back-and-forth with the federal government, which initially denied the request. The DOJ reversed course and released the report after ProPublica attorneys threatened legal action.

As part of the settlement, federal officials ordered that Fisher Industries and its subsidiaries destroy all copies of the Arcadis report, alleging that it contained “proprietary information.”

“Reading this and seeing the settlement that came out of this, it’s as though they completely disregarded the Arcadis report,” said Amy Patrick, a Houston forensic structural and civil engineer and court-recognized expert on wall construction. “I can see why they were dragging their heels so much on letting it get out because (the report) basically completely dismantled this idea that the fence will be OK.”

Mark Courtois, an attorney for Fisher Industries, said that the construction company “strongly disagreed with the opinions in the Arcadis report and refuted those opinions to the satisfaction of the IBWC.” He said the company worked with the IBWC, which is charged with oversight of the international treaty, to “reach a mutually agreeable resolution of all matters pertaining to the fence, including any issues raised by the Arcadis report.”

“Construction of the fence was completed nearly three years ago, and we continue to be confident in its design and construction,” Courtois said.

Sally Spener, a spokesperson for the IBWC, denied that Fisher was able to counter the conclusions in the Arcadis report to the agency’s satisfaction.

In an email to the news organizations, Spener said that the agency accepted the report’s findings, which showed a far greater impact on the flow of the Rio Grande than the builder had claimed. Despite that, she added, the settlement agreement’s requirements address the agency’s concerns that the barrier would violate the treaty.

But the settlement agreement won’t address the report’s findings that the fence was built on a flawed design and featured construction shortcomings that could contribute to its collapse, said Alex Mayer, a civil engineering professor at the University of Texas at El Paso.

“It just shows the shoddiness of the whole effort. It worries me even more,” Mayer said.

Tommy Fisher, president of Fisher Industries, started to construct the fence in 2019 with financial support from the online fundraising campaign We Build the Wall. The nonprofit was set up to help former President Donald Trump build his “big, beautiful wall” along the length of the border. In the end, four of the nonprofit’s top leaders, including Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon, were arrested on fraud and other charges connected to the fundraising scheme.

Trump pardoned Bannon in January 2021. But in September, Bannon was indicted on state charges in New York. Bannon called the charges “nothing more than a partisan political weaponization of the criminal justice system.”

The three other men, including Brian Kolfage, an Air Force veteran who led the organization, face sentencing on Jan. 31 in federal court on various fraud and tax-related charges. Kolfage and another man pleaded guilty in April. The third man was convicted in October.

Soon after construction of the fence began, the DOJ filed a lawsuit in federal court to try to halt the work, claiming that Fisher Industries was violating the treaty with Mexico. A state district judge in Hidalgo County granted the government a temporary restraining order to stop construction, but a federal judge later reversed it.

During a January 2020 court hearing, Fisher claimed that his bollard wall design would bring security to the actual border by addressing the flooding and erosion concerns that previously prevented the federal government from building near the river’s edge.

The 3-mile project was completed in February 2020, making it the first border fence built directly on the riverbank in South Texas. We Build the Wall contributed about $1.5 million of the $42 million total cost, with the rest coming from Fisher, according to court testimony.

The areas around the private border fence soon started to show signs of erosion. Six hydrologists and engineers told ProPublica and the Tribune in July 2020 that the foundation of the fence was too shallow and that a series of gashes and gullies where rainwater runoff had scoured the sandy loam beneath the foundation raised stability concerns.

Following the organization’s news articles, Trump tried to distance himself from the project, saying on Twitter that it had been constructed to make him look bad.

Fisher called the news organizations’ reporting on engineering concerns “absolute nonsense” during a 2020 podcast interview hosted by Bannon.

“I would invite any of these engineers that so-called said this was gonna fall over, I’ll meet ’em there next week. … If you don’t know what you’re talking about, you probably shouldn’t start talking,” he said. “It’s working unbelievably well. There’s a little erosion maintenance we have to maintain.”

As climate change contributes to more extreme weather, better understanding the erosion that is occurring is critical, Martinez said.

“We know that there are more extreme hurricane seasons that are occurring due to climate change, so we know that it’s more likely that the fence is going to get flooded out in the Rio Grande,” Martinez said. “It’s just a matter of time before something happens.”

The fence outside Mission is one of two private border barriers built using private funds, but it may not be the last.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has embarked on an effort to build fencing along the state’s 1,200-mile border using a mixture of state funds and crowdsourced private dollars. And Trump said he would continue border wall construction while announcing last month that he would again run for the country’s highest office.

Ryan Patrick, a former U.S. attorney whose office first filed the lawsuit against Fisher, said that by settling the case and requiring a bond, the government limits the risk of losing at trial. Patrick left office before the settlement was negotiated. He continues to believe that the judge should not have allowed Fisher to build the fence.

The settlement doesn’t prevent someone from constructing on the floodplain in the future, he said, but it shows that the government will not give unrestricted authority to potential builders. “You are going to have long-term care and custody of that thing,” he said.

Amy Patrick, who is not related to Ryan Patrick, offered a different perspective.

The structural engineer said that the government’s handling of the legal case, and what she sees as an apparent indifference to its own engineering report, could set “a precedent that credible engineering will be disregarded in similar projects in the future.”

Help Us Investigate Texas Border Security Initiatives

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Perla Trevizo and Jeremy Schwartz.

Over the past few months, activists around the country and the world have laid the blame for climate disasters at Wall Street's feet. In a wave of escalated actions under the name "Blame Wall Street," dozens of groups have called out the financial industry for their financing of fossil fuels and complicity in the climate crisis.

Around the country, people took on elevated amounts of risk in order to increase pressure on the dirty banks, insurance companies, and asset managers financing the climate crisis.

Activists pummeled the banks with actions and protests for months. Over 40 groups across the country held over 50 actions and protests.

In New York City, a week of action targeting Citi began with moms and kids birddogging the bank's chief sustainability officer, Val Smith, over Citi's continued funding of Russian oil and gas interests. Later that week, activists infiltrated Citi's Taste of Tennis gala and interrupted the event with a large banner accusing the bank of funding Russia's war crimes.

Citi, the US's largest funder of coal, faced additional protests at greenwashing PR events and at branches in Phoenix, Brooklyn, and other locations. Activists interrupted the speech of Citi's Chief Sustainability Officer at a sustainable banking conference, and protested Citi, Wells Fargo, and Chase leadership at a Women in Banking event.

Chase emerged from its fall PR events similarly beleaguered. Activists crashed the Chase-sponsored US open, passing out fans to sweaty attendees accusing Chase of funding climate chaos. Later in the month, nine different affinity groups created a circus out of the San Francisco Chase Corporate Challenge, with activists taking over every part of the road race, which hundreds of Chase employees participate in, from the course to the finish line to the after party to protesting in kayaks along the route.

As the world's largest funder of fossil fuels, it's no surprise that Chase was protested again and again: Leavenworth, Washington; Worcester, Watertown, and Boston, Massachusetts; Madison, Wisconsin; Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Chicago, Illinois; Providence, Rhode Island; Silver Spring, Maryland; Sacramento, California; New Orleans, Louisiana; and New York City all saw protests at Chase branches or headquarters.

Another major target was asset manager BlackRock, one of the world's top investors in fossil fuels and climate destruction. BlackRock saw protest after protest at their headquarters, with regular actions from September through November. People sang outside their building, came in costume, held prayer and faith actions, and stormed the headquarters with pitchforks and dumped coal on their escalators. BlackRock is on notice: time to stop financing fossil fuels.

Global climate strike protests also included demands on Wall Street and an end to fossil fuel financing, with activists in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and Maryland partnering with youth leaders to demand a safe and livable future. Climate strikers weren't the youngest activists: in Los Angeles and New York, people protested the greed of the fossil fuel industry alongside their infants and toddlers.

Actions were creative, including art, music, and costumes. In Albany, New York, the red rebel brigade joined a protest outside of TD Bank. In Brooklyn, activists dressed up as Mr. Moneybags and brought bagpipes to branch locations of Citi, Chase, and Bank of America. In Sacramento, Denver, and New Orleans, activists staged Halloween actions, dressing up as endangered species or zombie bankers.

Faith leaders exercised their moral authority in calling on banks and asset managers to stop funding climate disaster. Near Philadelphia, Quaker activists held a prayer vigil outside of the Vanguard HQ, calling on the asset manager to stop financing fossil fuels. In Washington, DC, faith leaders called on the IMF and World Bank to do the same. Faith activists also held protests outside of the Bank of America headquarters in Charlotte, and a Bank of America branch in Springfield, Illinois. Leaders from different faith communities protested multiple times outside of BlackRock's corporate headquarters in New York City—at one protest, 27 faith leaders were arrested.

Around the country, people took on elevated amounts of risk in order to increase pressure on the dirty banks, insurance companies, and asset managers financing the climate crisis. Dozens of people were arrested this fall—from San Francisco to New York to Pennsylvania to Rhode Island. These activists went to jail in order to show the world the greed of dirty Wall Street actors.

Activists innovated by taking repeated action at financial targets. Instead of one protest, people showed up week after week, increasing the pressure on banks and asset managers. In Phoenix, Arizona, Sacramento, California, Madison, Wisconsin, and Leavenworth, Washington, local actions happened again and again.

People targeted other financial actors, as well. Insurance companies received their fair share of pressure, with actions on Traveller's, Hartford, and Chubb. One action saw a huge oil derrick parked outside of the home of Chubb CEO, Evan Greenberg. Groups protested the Federal Reserve in Jackson Hole, Wyoming and in Washington, DC, activists protested TIAA's support for deforestation, there was an action outside of the shareholder meeting of Proctor & Gamble, and a noise protest outside of the homes of the CEOs of the private equity firms KKR and Blackstone. In Sierra Leone, youth activists protested the Central Bank's support of fossil fuel expansion.

Activists are not slowing down: it's clear that Wall Street holds an outsized responsibility for the death, destruction, and chaos caused by the climate crisis. With shareholder meetings coming up this spring, banks, insurance companies, asset managers, and pension funds should be ready for increased pressure. Banks are expected to see more shareholder resolutions calling on them to walk the talk on climate than ever before, and the grassroots movement to stop the flow of money to fossil fuels is only growing in energy and momentum. 

On December 14, we are hosting a call to share what's next in the fight to stop the money pipeline to climate chaos. We hope you will join us.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Arielle Swernoff.

Hurricane Ian, slated to be one of the costliest storms in history, torpedoed through Cuba, Florida, and South Carolina, leaving entire neighbourhoods underwater and millions without electricity. The damages in Florida alone were catastrophic, potentially costing up to $70 billion, grinding the local economy to a halt. After a summer of crushing heat, drought, and raging wildfires, it's clear that the physical impacts from climate change are mounting. By one estimate, climate change could cause up to $23 trillion in losses by 2050, far surpassing the 2008 financial crash. The climate crisis is pushing us into an era of profound economic instability.

Wall Street banks have time and again shied away from their climate commitments and are clearly afraid of accountability measures.

Yet, like with the subprime mortgage crisis, Wall Street continues to fan the flames, this time, by pouring billions of dollars every year into risky fossil fuels. Despite having made public "net-zero by 2050" commitments, in 2021 six US banks provided $63.9 billion in financing to companies that are rapidly expanding coal, oil and gas operations. This is disastrous for the long-term health of our economy and our planet.

If protecting our planet wasn't incentive enough to change course, the reckless financing of fossil fuels also exposes banks to transition risk. Fossil fuel assets will drop in value as we shift to a clean energy economy, which is quickly picking up pace with the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act and significant developments in clean energy technology. This means that banks with fossil assets on their balance sheets are now at even greater risk of a mass default on loans and those assets being stranded, which has the potential to cause another financial crash. The world's 60 largest banks are exposed to a shocking $1.35 trillion in fossil fuel assets. Unsurprisingly, most of the losses would be borne by ordinary people through their pensions, investment funds and share holdings.

These banks are hurtling our economy towards a climate-fuelled crash. Many of them recently threatened to leave Mark Carney's net-zero financial alliance over concerns of being sued for complying with tougher decarbonisation commitments. The legal threats are yet another instance of climate-denialism peddled by fossil fuel lobbyists and their political allies. But, seemingly in response to this threat, banks will now not be required to commit to the U.N.'s Race to Zero campaign. At this point it's as plain as day that leaving the clean energy transition up to voluntary private sector initiatives is failing. Unless the government steps up to rein in this reckless behaviour, the most vulnerable communities will bear a disproportionate cost for Wall Street's exploits.

There is one powerful banking regulator that has an important role to play in guarding against these risks and protecting the climate and ecosystem from Wall Street—the Federal Reserve, the U.S central bank. The Fed is tasked with maintaining a healthy economy, which includes regulating banks to keep the financial system stable. In a positive first step, the Fed recently announced that it will conduct climate scenario exercises—analysing the exposures of six large banks to climate risk next year—and that it will release climate-risk management principles as well. After lagging behind its international counterparts, these announcements indicate that the Fed is finally beginning to take climate risks seriously.

Now we must push for bolder action. Climate scenario analysis can be useful—depending on the kinds of scenarios used—to assess the risks to financial institutions. But it doesn't have any real teeth. It's merely an "exploratory" exercise at a time when we need the Fed to move from exploring to acting. Waiting for more data must not preclude ambitious action. We have enough information about the dangers of climate change to justify regulatory and supervisory action now.

So, the Fed must take a precautionary approach instead—rest assured, climate risks will materialise and we simply cannot quantify the precise nature and timing of these impacts as they are complex and ever changing.

To truly safeguard financial stability, the Fed must introduce policies that reflect the high risk of fossil fuel investment, like requiring banks to hold more capital against high-carbon assets. Higher capital requirements would disincentivize banks from investing in dirty fuels, and act as a buffer in the event that banks sustain unexpected losses, which is extremely likely given climate change. Eventually, the Fed must place outright limits on fossil fuel lending. These measures can help protect banks, the financial system and vulnerable communities from the impacts of climate change.

The Fed has been in the news a lot lately for raising interest rates in a misguided attempt to tame inflation by increasing the cost of borrowing and therefore dampening demand. Just last week we saw another rate hike. But this blunt tool will cause more pain and misery, and it won't tackle the root sources of current inflation, which include our overdependence on volatile fossil fuels, corporate profiteering and supply-side turmoil.

The volatility of fossil fuel prices contributes greatly to economic instability. Coupled with oil and gas companies price gouging ordinary people at the pump, it's clear that the best way forward is to ditch our addiction to fossil fuels. Instead of harmful rate hikes, the Fed could take a broader approach to its price stability mandate and help create the fiscal space for a just and green transition. Transitioning to renewable energy is a long-term solution that can help us build a stable and sustainable economy on a planet that will remain habitable for generations to come.

Wall Street banks have time and again shied away from their climate commitments and are clearly afraid of accountability measures. The climate crisis is not a theoretical risk, it is already having a profound impact on price and financial stability. The lessons learned from the Great Recession must now be applied to fossil fuel financing. The longer we wait, the greater the risk to our economy and our planet. The Fed has the authority and an obligation to act now. 

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Akiksha Chatterji.

To help address the nation's housing crisis while at the same time confronting Wall Street greed, three California members of Congress on Saturday touted new legislation to target rent-gouging in the U.S. by private equity firms and investment giants who have gobbled up huge numbers of single-family home and residential units in the years since the 2008 financial crash.

"Wall Street should not be any family's landlord."

Co-authored by Democratic Reps. Ro Khanna, Katie Porter, and Mark Takano, the Stop Wall Street Landlords Act aims to "deter future institutional investments" in the Single Family Residential (SFR) market by ending taxpayer subsidies to profit-seekers as a way to help struggling families battling housing costs amid rising inflation.

If enacted into law, the proposal would impose "a tax on existing and future acquisitions of SFRs" by large institutional investors, a statement from the lawmakers explains. The legislation would also prohibit federal lending institutions Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Gennie Mae from purchasing and securitizing mortgages held by Wall Street firms who leverage their size and ability to purchase large numbers single family homes with debt in order to turn around and rent them out for exorbitant profit—a tactic that by itself pushes rental prices ever higher.

Private equity firms and Wall Street rarely if ever strayed into the single-family housing market prior to the 2008 crash, but the market exploded when large firms were given access to trillions in low- or zero-interests dollars over the last decade and as regulators at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) offered subsidies via federal programs such as Fannie and Freddie. In 2015, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) was among those blowing the whistle by telling HUD that it had no business colluding with Wall Street in such a way.

"These Wall Street investors made money by crashing the economy, got bailed out and now they're back to feed at the trough again, scooping up these loans at rock-bottom prices so that they profit off them a second time—and it is up to us to stop that!" Warren said to a cheering crowd during a Washington, D.C. rally in 2015.

In remarks posted online Saturday, Khanna said there may have been a time following the 2008 financial crash where it made sense for private entities to step in to buy residential units as a way to stabilize the housing market, but that in the decade since it has become clear that Wall Street investors have exploited government policies and a lack of oversight to fleece millions of renters who find themselves at the mercy of a housing crisis they did nothing to create and have no way to combat.

Khanna said that with 25 percent of single-family homes in the U.S. being bought up by profit-seeking investors, these firms are "hurting the American dream of home ownership" and the economy overall.

"We need to stop the financialization of housing," Khanna said. "Americans aren't serfs. We're not suppose to pay money to Wall Street to go live in a home. What we need is more American families to own their own homes."

"When I was on the front lines of the foreclosure crisis, I saw firsthand how corporate special interests take advantage of families to line their pockets," said Congresswoman Porter in a statement. "The Stop Wall Street Landlords Act promotes affordable homeownership, so that our kids can live in the same communities they grew up in. I am proud to work with Representatives Khanna and Takano to hold Wall Street accountable."

Takano said, "Wall Street should not be any family's landlord."

“As the housing crisis continues to plague the country, America's middle class is acutely feeling the constraints of our nation's low housing stock and increasing prices," added Takano. "Meanwhile, wealthy investors drive these costs up by monopolizing ownership of single-family residences. The Stop Wall Street Landlords Act takes the urgent steps needed to keep corporate investors out of the single-family housing market."

According to Khanna, "Low- and middle-income families in my district and across the country are being pushed out because of profiteering and unfair practices by large corporate landlords. This legislation will help level the playing field and put a stop to rent gouging in America."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jon Queally.

Francesca Albanese told UN News that many Western States on the other hand, are living behind a “wall of denial” over the issue, and essential rights are non-negotiable when it comes to forging a lasting peace.

She took up her post as Special Rapporteur for Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, earlier this year, and Shireen Yaseen of UN News's Arabic service, began by asking Ms. Albanese why she wanted to take on the Human Rights Council-appointed role.

This content originally appeared on UN News - Global perspective Human stories and was authored by Shireen Yaseen.