But there is a method and mad dash of hope in this formula of once-a-month tributes to hard work, that is, highlighting the hard work of “heroes” in this hard land of penury and disaster and predatory (retaliatory) capitalism.

Today’s piece in my local rag (5/21) is emblematic of my own proof that we can fight the surge of shallow thinking and even shallower writing.

Here, just heading home from assisting at the 60+ Center (senior adult center), I caught this show, on the radio station where I broadcast my own Wednesday show, Finding Fringe. 6 PM, PST, streaming live on kyaq.org.

Hard work of reporting: Thirsting for Justice: East Orosi’s Struggle for Clean Drinking Water (Encore)

East Orosi hasn’t had safe drinking water in over 20 years. The water is full of nitrates, runoff from industrial agriculture, which is harmful to human health. The community has taken action to find a solution, from lobbying at the state capital to working with neighboring towns.

And they may finally have one. New California laws, passed  in the last five years, have opened up funding to build water infrastructure in small towns like East Orosi. But even as laws and funding develop, implementation has been challenging.

We visit East Orosi and talk to Berta Diaz Ochoa about what it’s like living without clean drinking water and the solutions on the horizon in part one of a two part series. — Listen.

Learn More:

• Community Water Center
• Self Help Enterprises
• State Water Resources Control Board

So, imagine, a sound bite around the issues of field workers pulling up crops that are destroying healthy water systems, forcing them to have to drink that toxic water or paying for bottled water to survive. Is water a human right? In California is it.

So, take ANY community, not just the fenceline ones, the communities that are in the sights of the perveyors of criminal capitalism because they are poor and probably BIPOC, and then find how infrastructure and services and even bloody retail enterprises like pharmacies or grocery stores are being gutted by Capitalism, pre-Trump/post-Trump.

You have any axes to grind? You live in a flyover state or rural community?

Here,

Stop trying to save Rural America.

Efforts to write it off as “disappearing” are complicated by the 60 million Americans who call a rural community home.

We must recognize that innovation, diversity of ideas and people, and new concepts don’t need to be imported to rural communities – they’re already there. Rural entrepreneurs and community leaders have always, by necessity, been innovative.

Rural communities have faced some harsh realities in the last generation: they’ve seen manufacturing move overseas, farming monopolized by big outfits with only 5% of rural residents working in agriculture, generational migration to bigger cities, school consolidation, and the absence of basic community resources such as health care and broadband, and, more recently, threats to the lifeline that is the U.S. Postal Service. This, and the pandemic.

Every brightly lit corporate store on the edge of town is a monument to a system that does not build community or advance a healthy entrepreneurial ecosystem.

And before the super out-of-touch elite from err, New York City call us bumkins, get over it: Don’t Blame Rural Residents for a Broken Political System

While noting the decades of gerrymandering to enhance the power of rural officials, New York magazine author Ed Kilgore concludes, “Underlying it all are real differences in outlook between different parts of the country, made more important by the distinct institutional features of a constitutional system designed to protect the interests of small, largely nonmetropolitan states.”

Sorry, Ed; the values of citizens of rural areas have as much to do with school violence and immigration resistance as do video games. In fact, Kilgore undermines his own argument by citing Ronald Brownstein’s analysis in the Atlantic of the red-blue divide. Alas, the same Ronald Brownstein reported on CNN just one week later that a prosperity gap was the source of the split between Democrats and Republicans. “Observers in both parties agree that the sense of economic displacement in recent years has intensified the long-standing movement toward the GOP among small-town and rural communities initially rooted in unease over cultural and demographic change.” It’s fair to observe that gun-loving nativists did not create the dismal economic prospects that drove them to vote for candidate Trump.

It is true that after years of civic disengagement, rural voters turned out in record numbers to elect the only coastal elitist who showed up in their communities and asked for their votes. So, Trump won and Clinton lost. Beyond that, any generalization about the impact of rural citizens on national politics is just horsepucky. Rural citizens didn’t create the electoral system that permits unlimited campaign donations to state officials who draw Congressional districts to favor entrenched wealth. In fact, rural citizens are the victims of gerrymandering as much as any disenfranchised cohort that ends up in a noncompetitive legislative district.

Alas, here’s the Google Gulag AI response to “all the problems in rural America”:

Rural communities face numerous interconnected challenges that can be described as “broken systems” due to a combination of historical disinvestment, geographic isolation, and economic shifts.

Here’s a breakdown of some key broken systems in rural communities:
1. Healthcare:

Limited Access: Rural areas often have a shortage of healthcare providers, specialists, and hospitals, forcing residents to travel long distances for care.

Hospital Closures: Rural hospitals are closing at an alarming rate due to financial difficulties and staffing shortages, further limiting access to care.

Lack of Services: Rural areas may lack crucial services like mental health care, substance abuse treatment, and specialized medical care.

2. Economic Systems:

Job Losses: Rural communities have experienced significant job losses due to the decline of manufacturing and agriculture, leading to higher unemployment and poverty rates.

Limited Opportunities: A lack of diverse industries and businesses can limit economic opportunities for residents, particularly young people.
Brain Drain: Young, educated individuals often leave rural areas for better opportunities in urban centers, further weakening the local economy.

3. Infrastructure:

Poor Broadband Access: Many rural areas lack access to reliable, high-speed internet, hindering economic development, education, and access to telehealth.

Inadequate Transportation: Limited public transportation options can isolate residents and make it difficult to access jobs, healthcare, and other essential services.

Aging Infrastructure: Rural areas may have aging infrastructure, including roads, bridges, and water systems, which require significant investment to repair and upgrade.

4. Education:

School Consolidation: Rural schools have been consolidated, leading to longer commutes for students and the loss of local schools as community anchors.

Funding Challenges: Rural schools often face funding challenges, which can impact the quality of education and available resources.

Teacher Shortages: Rural schools may have difficulty attracting and retaining qualified teachers, impacting student outcomes.

5. Social Systems:

Social Isolation: Geographic isolation and limited social opportunities can contribute to social isolation and mental health challenges for residents.

Lack of Community Resources: Rural areas may lack access to essential community resources such as libraries, childcare facilities, and recreational opportunities.

It’s important to note: These “broken systems” are interconnected and often exacerbate each other. The challenges faced by rural communities vary depending on location, demographics, and economic conditions.
Addressing these challenges requires a multi-faceted approach involving government, businesses, non-profit organizations, and community members.

+–+ Here is May 21st’s piece.

Identify, Diversify, and Harmonize How We Think this May

By Paul Haeder/Lincoln County (Oregon) Leader
One may wonder how the heck did we get all these national and international days of celebration. It is a feature of Homo sapiens to celebrate accomplishments and honor causes and individuals who make the world, well, theoretically a better place.

May is no exception, and of course, the International Workers’ Day is May 1. In this time of rampant hatred of so many professions by Trump and Company, it goes without saying that his shallow but deeply narcissistic persona just will never grasp the value of the worker.

His entire raison d’être is about tearing down and imploding institutions and attacking individuals for which he deems “the enemy.”

The billionaire classless cabal sees workers as the enemy. And the goals of the International Workingmen’s Association in 1864 were clear: Shorter work hours; safer work environment; fair wages; elimination of child labor; the ability for the state to regulate labor conditions.

Ironically, I was in Ashland on International Firefighters Day, talking to two captains in the city’s two fire stations. I was told that a few years ago firefighters responded to 1,600 calls annually. Last year, Ashland’s stations went out over six thousand times.

Aging in place and lack of family and support precipitates many of the EMT calls. And a fire engine they are waiting for is still four years out, to the tune of $2 million once it’s completely outfitted.

If you watch the milquetoast mainstream media, you will have recalled the Accused Sexual Predator Trump made a mockery of National Teacher Day by laughing at all the cuts to the hundreds of educational initiatives smart and reasoned individuals over decades had initiated for the betterment of society through the intellectual progress of our youth.

Another group of workers in the bulls eye of Musk, Thiel, Stephen Miller and Vance/Trump is nursing professionals. We see the almost total breakdown of nursing and doctoring in Lincoln County because of the hard reality of a for-profit health care system putting profits over patients. Add to that the lack of affordable housing, and rural counties throughout the land are suffering massive nursing and doctor shortages.

Which then brings us to National Day of Reason, where groups of people see the value in enlightened thinking. You know, valuing the separation of church and state, which for all intents and purposes under this fascist regime has been imploded into a crusade against reasoned thinkers who do not see prayer or faith as central to their lives.

Humanists and Secularists created this National Day in response to the national day of prayer.

Celebrations have taken the form of blood drives, secular events and activities, and in some cases, protests against the National Day of Prayer. Imagine Trump and Company having the wherewithal to wrap their heads around this celebration – the Secular Week of Action when people volunteer to make the world a better place.

Two not necessarily different international recognition days in May include World Day for Cultural Diversity and International Day for Biological Diversity. Did you get the memo yet that Trump-Vance are on the attack against affirmative action and ecological health.

In fact, on the biodiversity front, Trump and Company have “redefined” harm as it is applied to the Endangered Species Act. This pinhead thinking is just the tip of the iceberg of clownish but dangerous moves.

Defenders of Wildlife explains:

“Trump administration is hell-bent on destroying the ESA  to further line the pockets of industry. The vast majority of imperiled wildlife listed as endangered or threatened under the ESA are there because of loss of habitat. This latest salvo to redefine ‘harm’ to eliminate protection for wildlife from habitat destruction, if successful, will further imperil threatened and endangered species. We will fight this action and continue to protect the wildlife and wild places we hold dear as a nation.”

Are you seeing the pattern carried out by billionaires such as Miriam Adelson, Larry Fink and Larry Ellison? Given the fact half of American cities are under air advisories, we have International Asthma Day to lend pause to how destructive these executive actions have been and will continue to be decades from now.

‘Harm’ is what unchecked air pollution in many forms continues to do to young and old. Harmful air advisories come in daily, and the fear is that Trump will just ban the notifications as a way to say, “See, I have cleaned up the air since there are no more warnings.”

Maybe we can pray the polluted air away.

The backers of Trump’s ideal America will see our “secular humanist” society based on science and reason destroyed. The Ten Commandments will form the basis of the legal system.

Finally, we have World Press Freedom Day. If you have any deep regard for the so-called Fourth Estate, then shivers should be running up your spine under this anti-journalist regime.

Mickey Huff of Project Censored states press freedom succinctly:

“We have to remember that it’s the independent media that is often the grassroots voice of the people. It is often the independent press that is operating on ethical standards and principles, and it is the independent press that is reporting in the public interest, not the corporate media.”

Diversify your news media diets. Find independent outlets, and for journalists, we need to reform the media and create better avenues for news reporting, including better accuracy and what we call “solutions journalism,” which creates truly constructive dialogue in our communities.

*****

Footnote: And not one mention of the genocide in Gaza, the trillions stolen from Arab nations’ populations, the trillions stolen from citizens of Canada, EU, USA, for the starvation and immolation and rape of a people.

There are no other topics to write about with the same amount of importance that Palestine conveys, from every aspect of War Terror of the Capitalists of both Jewish and Goyim descent.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Paul Haeder.

It’s not that it became less relevant or less important to me. It’s just that I can’t control what I write about. I wish I could, but in this moment in time, I was going through too much personally to control what was coming out in songs. I did have to have a little sit-down with myself where I realized that the album was just what it was, and I couldn’t change that. But I don’t think it’s not topical. Everything one writes has a personal and collective resonance. Things are in the collective unconscious, and they show up in songs, and you’re not always sure where they came from.

Where did sitting and having a conversation with yourself come from? What led you to that moment?

I experienced a falling apart—a breaking of kinds—of the self, or of what I thought I knew about everything. Which is a horrible experience, but it’s a thing that happens. It was difficult to figure out how much to represent that or whether to represent it, but I did represent the outlines of it. There is a theme of falling apart, disintegration, and reintegration on [Humanhood] that feels really relevant to me now… I’m kind of surprised at how complete the album feels. It came together in the end. Writing it from the place I was in was extremely difficult, and I did feel like my capacity was a fraction of what it should have been, could have been. But somehow, it did turn into a really interesting record anyway.

When you talk about not having full capacity, it makes me think of the fact that you brought in a full band and improvised a lot. Can you tell me about the improvisational process and why it appealed to you?

For the most part, I had songs with chord structures. I didn’t always know how many verses there were going to be, or I was rewriting a lot of chord structures in the room. I remember on “Mirror,” I rewrote the chord structures of the choruses as we were recording, and on the arrangement level, I wanted to go in with a more open framework. When we made Ignorance, for example, “Robber” was just a loop. There wasn’t much there, and the band really shaped that song, so I wanted to leave room for that. I could feel the band—they’re such good musicians—starting to solidify. I was like, “Now we can record.” That moment where a band is finding something is so exciting to listen to.

I tried to set aside time at the end of the day to improvise a little bit, and some of that [snuck onto] the record. The creativity of the musicians is very visible for me on the record. I can hear everyone’s spirit, and there’s moments where everyone shines and I can hear their creative impulses. I feel like my role was very curatorial, like, “This here, that there.” Paring it down. It ended up being a very joyful recording experience.

Was that your first time working in a curatorial capacity?

That’s what I’ve been doing the whole time. It’s just that I think I get better at it with every record. Ignorance and How Is It That I Should Look at the Stars were both very similarly curatorial. But for Ignorance, what we were listening back to in the studio was closer to the final recording. And there was definitely, on [Humanhood], a lot more playing with the sounds and manipulating things, though there are songs that are very close to what was recorded.

How do you know a song is done?

It’s very difficult. With a record like this—there wasn’t a genre, there were no guardrails, there were very few parameters—it was a bit too open at times. If there hadn’t been a deadline, it would never have been finished. But at a certain point, the mix date was approaching, so things had to be finished, but I was editing and re-recording vocals up until the song was recorded. We were mixing, and then on the weekend, I was recording still. If it wasn’t for other people coming in, I think it would’ve been one of those records that never was complete.

Some people I’ve interviewed for The Creative Independent have said that, with the editing process, you can just keep going, you might never actually stop. Do you truly feel that if there was no deadline, you would just keep going?

I think you need guardrails; you need some kind of parameter. You need someone else, a deadline, a reason why it has to be finished, or else it’s very easy to endlessly edit. This record was dangerous because I gave myself a lot of time and resources, and that usually leads to a bad record, because when you start working things, you tend to overwork them and you tend to make the song worse. The best records are usually alive, vibrant—boom, you’ve got it, that’s it. But I really wanted to make this studio record with a lot of sound manipulation, so I put myself in this position to drive past the exit.

The mix process was when I started to see the shape of it. I was like, “All this work has been worth it.” We did, in the end, make the right decisions. I have a lot of fine lines I’m trying to walk. With this record, it was, “I still believe in approachable music. I still believe in melody.” I want to be understood and I want my music to be accessible, but I’m trying to bring in these elements of brokenness and disintegration—just the right amount that you can still relax into it, but there’s a little bit of confrontation.

Early Weather Station music was just you, and later Weather Station music has been you and the band. How has not overworking your songs differed in solo versus band settings?

I think it’s the same. It’s interesting, I’ve been taking a painting class the last couple of weeks. It’s not structured, it’s just “sit down and paint a still life in two hours.” I’m finding it’s the same process no matter what I’m doing. Even if I’m painting a tiny canvas of flowers—and I’m not a painter—I start with this joy and this open, expansive possibility, and then I start to refine and get really perfectionist. In the last 10 minutes, I look at it and realize that, despite all the perfectionism, it’s not saying the thing I want it to say.

It’s the same thing with writing a song, too… For the most part, songs appear with all this beauty and meaning, and then, there’s this editing and perfectionist phase. And then there’s this final phase where [the songs] start to have joy again, start to make sense again. Whether it’s writing, recording, performing with a band, picking a tracklist, it’s all the same. I have the same mind no matter what I do.

All Of It Was Mine was a response to my first record, The Line, which took me four years to make. I had to teach myself how to do everything. I needed to rebel by just making a record in 10 days that was pretty live. It’s been this long journey back… For a while, I didn’t know how to work through the perfectionism. Honestly, I could see myself going back to folk after this. Who knows.

There’s something you said at one point about joy emerging on the other side of the editing process. Is reaching that joy one of your main motivations to keep at it?

There’s a falling into place when something is finished where it’s very joyful and it’s very satisfying, where the things that have been left behind are left behind, the things that have been included are included. There’s a pain in it that I think has taken me a long time to get over. When something’s almost done and you have to say goodbye to all the things it could have been, that’s where most artists who have a perfectionist streak get lost. With every record, I have a moment—or sometimes months, or sometimes a year—where I can’t stand the record because I’m so upset at all the things it’s not. But when you get through that, you can see all the things it is. You’re like, “A lot made it through the fire.” With this record—because I’m aware now of how it goes—I was able to move through that process in three months instead of a year.

As you listen back to your previous work, how do you feel that your creativity has changed? Are there any elements that you feel have evolved?

Last year, I did this thing where I played all my records live in three nights. I did two records a night, which is insane. I wasn’t thinking about it in terms of how it would affect me. I was just thinking of it as a nice show to put on, and a lot of people had requested, over the years, me playing All Of It Was Mine, so I thought this was a good opportunity to do that and a couple other things I wanted to do. I did have to go back and deeply listen to my old records, many of which I hadn’t listened to in years. I thought I knew what they were like, and I went back and listened and I was like, “These are different than I thought.”

In some cases, the narrative I had about a record was wrong. Even in the folk records, I’m surprised at how much my lyrics haven’t changed. The things I’m writing about are still the same. I was finding songs that were recorded but didn’t make the records, and I performed those as well. I was like, “I’m still trying to write this song.” I’ve been thinking about the same things the whole time because I’m the same person. I was struck by how similar they felt, even though if you put on Ignorance and then All Of It Was Mine, it doesn’t feel like the same person.

In your songs’ narratives, you’re often venturing out into nature. Getting out into nature can be a way of resetting one’s creative flow, taking a break, preventing burnout. Assuming that overlaps with your experience, can you talk about that?

I grew up in the woods, so I spent a lot of time outside as a kid. I remember walking around and singing in the woods, so it’s very formative to my relationship to everything. Even though I am a perfectionist and an over-thinker in most aspects of life, I have this comfortable relationship to my voice that I think is formed outside. The place I’ve always felt the safest, the most free, or the most myself is in the woods. If no one can see or hear me, I feel very free. When I write about the natural world, which I do on every record and often every song, it’s returning to the source or connecting back to the deepest thing for me.

A small part of why I ended up writing about my climate feelings was because I couldn’t reconnect to nature, couldn’t touch it. On the self-titled record, there’s a pain in it. I had to work through that, and that meant facing climate reality because I couldn’t enjoy being in nature, and that is where I feel most comfortable. To me, it’s the other world—there’s the human world and there’s the natural world. There are all the same forces and the same elements, but it’s like slipping into another dimension.

A lot of people have pointed out that on Humanhood there’s a lot of water. I swim, and I like getting into water… There’s such a strong instinct for me to connect to the fact that we are natural creatures. If I think of the human world, I’m thinking of politics, society, culture, and all of these things.

Is there anything more you wanted to say about creativity?

I’ve spent a lot of time working with songwriters and helping them find their way, and it’s funny, because I can help other people, but I can’t help myself. When something is complete and it falls into place, that’s when you realize what it is instead of what it isn’t. That’s also the key, I find, when people bring me a song they don’t like—you have to figure out what to say “yes” to. It’s not about saying “no,” it’s about, “What is the quality that’s trying to appear?” Finding the “yes” is often how to complete something.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Max Freedman.

In a prayer ceremony for victims of Monday’s earthquake in Tibet, the Dalai Lama told listeners that because it was a natural disaster and “not caused by political tensions,” there was no reason to be angry with Chinese authorities.

The magnitude 7.1 quake left 126 people dead and destroyed 3,600 houses, according to Chinese officials — although Tibetans inside Tibet say the death toll probably exceeds 200.

“Even though it is in our human nature, do not feel dispirited or doomed by such disasters,” the Dalai Lama told more than 12,000 Buddhist clergy members gathered for a ceremony in southern India on Thursday. “It helps to think that events like earthquakes are natural disasters and not caused by political tensions.

“There is no reason to show anger or hatred towards China,” he said. “Hence, Tibetans inside and outside Tibet should develop a kinder, more compassionate heart.”

Still, Tibetans are disturbed that Chinese authorities have called off search-and-rescue operations, promoted the government’s official relief work, and banned them from sharing photos or videos about the quake on social media.

The earthquake was centered around Dingri and Shigatse, close to the border with Nepal, in the southern part of the Tibetan Autonomous Region, controlled by China.

‘Meditate upon compassion’

The Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, who is visiting the South Indian town of Bylakuppe — which has the largest Tibetan settlement in the world outside Tibet — counseled Tibetans not to lose heart in the face of the natural disaster.

Instead, he urged them to transform this tragedy into a condition for the practice of compassion and spiritual growth and enlightenment.

(Niranjan Shrestha, Niranjan Shrestha/AP)

He spoke at the Tashi Lhunpo Monastery, the principal monastery in Shigatse founded by the First Dalai Lama, Gyalwa Gendun Drup, and the former seat of the Panchen Rinpoches that was re-established in South India.

“Even for me, seeing the pictures of ruins of Dingri after the earthquake encourages me to meditate upon compassion and emptiness and pray to Chenrezig, the Buddha of Infinite Compassion,” the Dalai Lama said. “It empowers us to take adversities in our stride and not be crushed by them. That is our advantage as religious people.”

Tibetans in Dharamsala, North India — the residence of the Dalai Lama and the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile — held a candlelight vigil and prayer service on Thursday for those affected by the quake.

On Wednesday evening, four NGOs — the Tibetan Youth Congress, Tibetan Women’s Association, Students for a Free Tibet and the National Democratic Party of Tibet — jointly organized a candlelight vigil from the Dharamsala suburb of McLeod Ganj to the Tsuglagkhang Temple, followed by a prayer service.

They said they were holding the vigil was to show solidarity with Tibetans inside Tibet and to demand transparency from Chinese authorities about the disaster.

Search and rescue

Inside the Tibet Autonomous Region, or TAR, Chinese officials announced the end of search-and-rescue operations to focus on the resettlement of those who now are homeless.

(Tenzin Choejor/AP)

But Tibetans continued to conduct their own rescue efforts in villages on Thursday, two sources in Tibet’s capital Lhasa told Radio Free Asia.

A third source told RFA that Chinese authorities stopped operations to recover bodies from the ruins, even as the general public continued to retrieve them from the rubble on Thursday.

Most of the casualties were elderly people and children because many young people were away at work when the temblor struck, the source said.

Li Ling, deputy director of the TAR’s Special Disaster Investigation Office, attributed the earthquake to tectonic plate movement and blamed the high casualty numbers on poorly constructed traditional buildings.

The Shigatse government has ordered residents not to post earthquake-related photos and videos on social media, saying it would harm rescue efforts and threatening severe punishment for violators, the two Lhasa sources said.

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Chinese authorities are restricting documentation of the actual situation and local rescue efforts while heavily promoting official government relief operations, they added. They are also preventing people from taking photos or sharing information about casualties and damage.

One of the sources reported that after three days, some remote areas still hadn’t received government assistance.

Many villagers are sleeping in damaged building compounds without food, a source from the quake-affected region said.

In Dingri’s Dramtso village alone, over 20 people died, and the Dzongphug Nunnery suffered severe damage, killing two nuns and injuring many others. Residents still had not received aid by the Wednesday afternoon, said one of the Lhasa sources.

The Dewachen Monastery in Dingri’s Chulho township was completely destroyed, he added.

Translated by RFA Tibetan. Edited by Tenzin Pema for RFA Tibetan, and by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

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

Public Citizen health experts issued the following statements:

“The United States has been a leader in the global fight to eradicate polio, which is poised to become only the second disease in history to be eliminated from the face of the earth after smallpox,” said Public Citizen Campaign Director for Global Vaccines Access Liza Barrie. “Undermining polio vaccination efforts now risks reversing decades of progress and unraveling one of the greatest public health achievements of all time.”

"Trump’s pick for FDA-head, Dr. Marty Makary, recently tried to dismiss RFK Jr.’s dangerous position on vaccines as a thing of the past.” said Public Citizen Senior Health Researcher Michael T. Abrams. “This reporting on the Trump transition strategy suggests that threat from RFK Jr.'s positions is clear and present.”

Public Citizen calls on the Senate to reject Kennedy’s confirmation and ensure that our federal health leadership is grounded in science and truly dedicated to protecting public health.

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

Policymakers and advocates predicted that taxpayers — not the oil companies themselves — would ultimately have to pay billions for remediation once those oil and gas operations ran dry. Unplugged wells emit climate-warming methane and pose long-term hazards to soil and groundwater.

But a new law may finally be slowing the so-called well shuffling, state data shows.

Since the start of this year, companies have proposed selling 766 wells in the state. But before the wells can change hands, purchasers are now required to request an estimate for a bond to plug the wells from the California Geologic Energy Management Division (CalGEM), the agency that regulates drilling. 

The requirement is part of a new law passed last year to ensure that someone — not taxpayers — is forced to put up the money to clean up the wells before they can be sold.

Read Next

Inside a California oil town’s divisive plan to survive the energy transition

Jake Bittle

The state quoted bond amounts totaling $80.5 million for those hundreds of wells. Most of that money was for a bond to eventually plug 729 wells in Kern County that Vaquero Energy Inc. wanted to buy from Aera Energy. 

The remaining 37 wells are scattered across Santa Barbara, Orange, Kern, Fresno, and Los Angeles counties and are owned by two dozen companies. The majority of those wells were idle, and nearly all were marginal — producing less than 15 barrels of oil a day, enough to produce just 472 gallons of gas.

But after the state determined how much it would cost to bond those wells, all 37 of the proposed sales fell through. The California Geologic Energy Management Division directed questions about the failed transactions to the involved companies.

To Rob Schuwerk, the executive director of Carbon Tracker’s North American office, it means that the law is working as intended: Companies are no longer passing off marginal wells to operators who lack the financial means to plug them.

“The law has stopped some of the bleeding,” Schuwerk wrote in an email to Capital & Main.

Capital & Main reached out to all of the operators involved in the proposed sale of wells. Most did not respond to emails and phone calls. 

Read Next

Controversial measure overturning oil well restrictions won’t be on California ballot

Julie Cart, CalMatters

Chad Hathaway, the owner of Hathaway LLC, wanted to buy 14 wells from Kern River Holding LLC. The state required that he file a $2.6 million bond to complete the transaction. His company in the Mount Poso oil field in Kern County specializes in refurbishing and reactivating marginal wells.

In an email to Capital & Main, Hathaway wrote that California “places such high costs on abandonment and remediation that it makes the transfers impossible, unaffordable, and economically unfeasible to bond.” He noted that the state’s bonding estimates run much higher than his company’s internal estimates.

That sentiment is shared by other operators. Signal Hill Disposal LLC, a wastewater disposal company based in Southern California, responded with “shock and awe” after the California Geologic Energy Management Division said it needed to obtain a $651,820 bond to acquire a single well in Los Angeles County, according to division emails obtained by Capital & Main.

The quoted amounts to plug wells are, however, in line with and even a little below figures included in a Sierra Club idle wells report released in December 2023 that is frequently cited by some lawmakers in Sacramento. That report put total cleanup liabilities for all unplugged wells in California at $22.9 billion.

A Carbon Tracker report from 2023 estimated that the costs of decommissioning all those wells would be more than double the projected cash flows for all oil-producing companies in California given how much oil is left in the ground. 

Going forward, Carbon Tracker’s Schuwerk said, California needs “to increase financial assurance on all entities,” which he said could be accomplished through bonds or sinking funds, which can be dedicated to cleanup costs and which oil operators pay into over time.

Read Next

States want to clean up leaky oil wells. Well-intentioned laws are getting in the way.

Naveena Sadasivam

But any plan to clean up oil fields through bonds alone faces a major hurdle: Bond sellers have become reluctant to work with California oil operators, said Mark Karr, a senior account manager with SuretyBonds.com.

“Out of all the bonds we sell, this is one of the highest risk industries,” Karr said. “A lot of surety companies think it’s not even worth it because we’ve had to pay out so many times” to the state after oil operators reneged on promises to use their own money for plugging wells.

The state’s largest operators, including Chevron, may be best positioned to set aside cleanup money, considering their still very profitable global operations. But actions by driller Aera Energy, which recently merged with California Resources Corporation to become the state’s largest well operator, show how challenging it can be to make companies put up a sufficient bond.

In one proposed transaction this year, Aera asked the California Geologic Energy Management Division for a bond estimate to sell 11 wells to an unidentified company. In another, where Aera wanted to sell 729 wells to Vaquero Energy, it’s not clear which company initiated the transaction. 

The bond amounts for the two transactions would have totaled $75.3 million, but neither moved forward. Neither Aera or Vaquero responded to requests for comment. 

And months before its shareholders voted in June to acquire Aera, California Resources Corporation told state regulators that its stock transfer acquisition of Aera meant no wells were actually changing hands. The California Geologic Energy Management Division agreed with the company’s interpretation of the law, and did not force California Resources Corporation to file a bond for acquiring Aera’s wells.

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Biden administration announces $660 million to plug abandoned wells

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California Resources Corporation estimated in financial statements filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission that its long-term costs for cleaning up all of its unplugged wells after the merger — about 38,000 — amounted to $1 billion. By contrast, the Sierra Club estimated that the two companies’ liabilities to plug their idle wells amounted to $3.5 billion combined.

California Resources Corporation filed a $30 million bond for cleanup costs with the state in December 2023, the maximum amount under the law at the time. 

Meanwhile, the state is taking more steps to hold companies financially liable for their wells. In September, Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill into law to charge companies thousands of dollars per idle well annually unless they start plugging them. 

Despite President-elect Trump’s desire to promote domestic oil production, the federal government may find it difficult to intervene in matters related to drilling on state lands. 

“It does not in any immediate way intersect with federal law or implicate federal interests,” said Ann Alexander, an environmental attorney and policy consultant who advocated for the oil well bonding law.

The bonding law is a step in the right direction, but California needs to continue finding ways to make oil operators pay for cleanup, Alexander said. Other industries could serve as a model, such as the nuclear power sector, in which plant operators are required by federal regulations to put money into a sinking fund for decommissioning.

“No matter how much people want to keep [California’s oil drilling] industry alive, it is fundamentally on the wane,” she said. 

Copyright 2024 Capital & Main

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline There’s a reason oil well sales are collapsing in California: Cleanup costs on Nov 30, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Aaron Cantú, Capital & Main.

Pulp mill along the Willamette River, Oregon. Photo: Jeffrey St. Lair.

What follows is not addressed to the right and its supporters (economic, social and other) who – unfortunately – are doing their job very well. What follows is addressed above all to the left, which – unfortunately – is not doing its job at all well…

Here’s what we wrote this time last year, just after the terrible floods in Thessaly, in an unfinished and unpublished text:

“The shock of the two successive “Mediterranean hurricanes” Daniel and Elias was strong enough to cause the first strong tremors in the climate-skeptical beliefs of the Greeks. Of course, these are only the first cracks, which will only widen if there is the follow-up that circumstances demand from the only political force that can, potentially, not only scientifically explain the climate catastrophe but also act massively and concretely to deal with it.”

Of course, this “only political force that can, potentially, not only scientifically explain the climate catastrophe but also act massively and concretely to confront it” must be the left. Yet, one year on, with the spectre of water shortage looming larger than ever over Athens and its four million inhabitants, with new extreme droughts, new devastating mega-fires, new successive historical temperature records and new even worse heatwaves, this left is still invisible, still absent from the frontline of the galloping climate catastrophe. And what’s worse, it continues to denounce the neoliberal right in government not for its refusal to act in time against this climate disaster, but for its insistence on invoking it to cover up its sins!

So here’s how we continued our text from last year, trying – in vain – to convince people that it’s urgent to mobilize « those from below » because our country is literally in the eye of the climate catastrophe storm:

“Let’s talk about the climate catastrophe and our country, since the intensity and volume of rainfall from the two “Mediterranean hurricanes” (medicanes) that hit it consecutively in the space of three weeks (!), confirm the scientific conclusions, that the Mediterranean and in particular its eastern basin and … Greece constitute a hot spot, i.e. a point of high intensity and danger of climate crisis. More precisely, the 889 mm of rain – at least – received by Zagora and the 886 mm received by Portaria on Mount Pelion on September 5, not only far exceed any precedent in our country, but are 3 and 4 times greater than those that fell in Libya on the day of the deadly floods a few weeks later. Similarly, the 1235 mm of precipitation received by Makrinitsa last September set a European record for monthly rainfall, while the terrifying intensity of the Elias “medicane” downpour that subsequently hit northern Euboea was, together with the increasingly frequent gigantic fires, heatwaves and galloping desertification, another indication that our country is indeed a hot spot for global climate catastrophe “for decades to come”.

And we concluded with these words:

“What does this mean? According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and several other scientific organizations, it means that “the temperature increase observed in the Mediterranean is higher than the global average”. In other words, “the planet is warming up, and the Mediterranean is doing so a little faster”! The consequences are not only foreseeable, they have already been empirically established: among many other things, such as rising sea levels, we have increasingly frequent, longer and more intense heatwaves, increasingly frequent and monstrously destructive forest fires, unprecedented rainfall and flooding, but also a drastic reduction in precipitation, with the consequence of growing water shortages, droughts, galloping desertification of ever larger areas, reduced agricultural productivity, etc. In other words, we are facing the most serious threat to the quality of life and very existence that the inhabitants of what we now call the Greek territory have ever had to face. And as is obvious, all the other problems of the Greek population, but also of the world population, are directly affected and subordinated to what is their greatest existential problem…”

And the Greek left? Where are its demonstrations, strikes and occupations against the climate policies of the Greek governments, the European Union and the capitalists? Where are its reflections and its production of ideas, analyses and programmatic proposals and measures to be taken as a matter of urgency? Where is its participation in the major international youth mobilizations and other struggles against the climate catastrophe and those who cause it, which go permanently unnoticed in our country? Where is its fight against the obscurantist and conspiracy theories on the climate crisis that are taking the Greek population by storm? Where is his conception of the radical change in our societies and our lives required to effectively combat climate catastrophe (see For an Ecosocialist Degrowth)? And above all, where is its mobilization against the root of the evil, the oil and gas multinationals, the car manufacturers and all those involved in fossil fuels, which are responsible for the overwhelming majority of greenhouse gas emissions?

Instead of all this, the Greek left prefers to accuse Mitsotakis and his government of “ mere misdemeanors, compared to the real crime he is committing when he not only does nothing about the climate crisis, but actually makes it worse through his policies.]”. And from time to time, she prefers to indulge in quixotic battles against the imperialists who covet “our” (non-existent, by the way, )… oil deposits, which would miraculously become… clean fossil fuels because… “Greek”. Or to mock and vilify the young Greta Thunberg, who inspires the most massive and radical international youth movement against the climate crisis. Or, worse still, to welcome into its ranks “people of the left” who relentlessly continue to call climate change… “the greatest imperialist fraud”!

The conclusion is tragic: when international big business, and consequently the capitalist system, responsible for the climate catastrophe, have such left-wing enemies, they don’t need friends! They can sleep soundly when these leftists – in Greece and around the world – denounce everything and anything except the real criminals, and with them their bosses, their local subsidiaries, their mouthpieces, their political representatives, in other words their capitalist system. Like, for example, “the Top Twenty companies which have collectively contributed 480 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide and methane, chiefly from the combustion of their products, equivalent to 35% of all fossil fuel and cement emissions worldwide since 1965” (see table below).

Conclusion: the great tragedy of the climate crisis is that eight billion human beings are forced to pay dearly – at the cost of their health, their lives, the health and lives of their descendants, the destruction of nature and an increasingly degraded planet – for the greed of a few dozen polluting multinationals that continue to make monstrous profits.

Worse still, at least part of our left repeats and disseminates, often word for word (!), the “climate-negationist” propaganda produced by the veritable propaganda factory of these giant polluting multinationals. And, as a sign of the importance these multinationals attach to undermining and denigrating scientific theses on the climate crisis, just five of them have spent over the last decade at least $200 million a year promoting their fossil fuel propaganda and misinformation (see the corresponding table for the year 2018).

A typical case of this kind of propaganda is the article entitled “Climate crisis: religious belief or scientific truth? “ by Islamophobic former minister Andreas Andrianopoulos, who left the New Democracy party because he didn’t think it was… neoliberal enough. The fact that Mr. Andrianopoulos was an “advisor” to Mr. Putin and Azerbaijan’s president (for life), Mr. Aliyev, obviously has nothing to do with the delusional content of his “climate-negative” articles. Nor does it have anything to do with the statements and articles by other famous “advisors” to Mr. Putin, such as former German Chancellor Schröder or former French Prime Minister Fillon… but also less famous leftists – Greek and foreign – known for their support of the Kremlin’s tenant.

Of course, this is no mere “coincidence”. Mr. Putin and his friends around the world – Trump, Orban, Bolsonaro, Milei, etc. – are all fanatical “climate skeptics”, as are their far-right and neo-fascist supporters around the world. And of course, it’s no coincidence that all these good people, aided by international big business, which has a vested interest in perpetuating the fossil fuel economy, generously fund armies of climate deniers of all kinds, whose sole aim is to prevent the adoption and, above all, the implementation of measures to tackle the climate catastrophe….

Consequently, since the climate crisis, which – unfortunately – will intensify and soon reach tipping points, is now taking on existential dimensions for humanity, and since there is no one but us to fight it, the conflict with those and their interests who have created it and are fuelling it, by stubbornly refusing to prevent it, can only be a conflict of life and death. Now, more than ever, is the time for the Left to justify its existence by making the fight against climate catastrophe its absolute priority and its first militant task…

The post A Left That Doesn’t Take the Lead in the Fight Against the Climate Crisis Has No Reason to Exist appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Giorgos Mitralias.

Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te said the island can take advantage of its semiconductor industry not only to promote the development of the economy but also as a key reason for the world to protect the island. 

Commenting on a rumor circulating in the U.S. that Taiwan’s semiconductor industry could be the very reason for China to decide to attack Taiwan, Lai said he would try his best to protect the island’s security. 

“Since TSMC’s operating system is very complex, not any group of people could just take it and continue to operate it,” he said during a televised interview on Sunday. 

TSMC, or Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, is a Taiwanese multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company.

In the first quarter of 2024, TSMC recorded a market share of 61.7% in the global semiconductor foundry market, while its closest competitor, South Korea’s Samsung, occupied 11%.

Since controlling semiconductor production and distribution can reshape global economics and trade as well as establish a new technological order, Taiwan’s semiconductor industry has become crucial in the strategic competition between the U.S. and China. 

Lai said the purpose of any Chinese invasion of Taiwan would not be about acquiring more territory, but rather about the desire to change the “rules-based world order” in order to achieve hegemony.

Counting on the international community’s support for Taiwan, the Taiwanese President said the Taiwan Strait issue was “not only a Taiwan-China issue, but also an Indo-Pacific issue, and even a world issue”. 

This echoes remarks made last month when Lai urged the world’s democratic countries to come together and act to prevent China from expanding authoritarianism.

“China has even weaponized trade. Using various pressures and threats, it’s politically manipulating not just Taiwan, but also Japan, Korea, Australia, Lithuania, Canada, and other countries,” said Lai last month. 

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China regards Taiwan as a renegade province that should be reunited with the mainland, by force if necessary. The democratic island has been self-governing since it effectively separated from mainland China in 1949 after the Chinese civil war.

Regarding a rumor about his visit to the U.S., Lai said during the Sunday interview that he had no plans to do so, stressing that there were already “very good” channels of communication between Taiwan and the U.S.

Edited by Mike Firn.

This story has been updated to clarify a translation of Lai's remarks.

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

The data, included in a United Nations report released Wednesday, also reveals something surprising: As global crises continue to deepen, issues like hunger, food insecurity, and malnutrition no longer stand alone as isolated benchmarks of public health. In the eyes of the intergovernmental organizations and humanitarian institutions tracking these challenges, access to food is increasingly entangled with the impacts of a warming world. 

“The agrifood system is working under risk and uncertainties, and these risks and uncertainties are being accelerated because of climate [change] and the frequency of climate events,” Máximo Torero Cullen, chief economist of the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization, or FAO, said in a briefing. It is a “problem that will continue to increase,” he said, adding that the mounting effects of warming on global food systems create a human rights issue. 

Torero calls the crisis “an unacceptable situation that we cannot afford, both in terms of our society, in terms of our moral beliefs, but also in terms of our economic returns.” 

Of the 733 million or so people who went hungry last year, there were roughly 152 million more facing chronic undernourishment than were recorded in 2019. (All told, around 2.8 billion people could not afford a healthy diet.) This is comparable to what was seen in 2008 and 2009, a period widely considered the last major global food crisis, and effectively sets the goal of equitable food access back 15 years. This insecurity remains most acute in low-income nations, where 71.5 percent of residents struggled to buy enough nutritious food — compared to just 6.3 percent in wealthy countries. 

Climate change is second only to conflict in having the greatest impact on global hunger, food insecurity, and malnutrition, according to the FAO. That’s because planetary warming does more than disrupt food production and supply chains through extreme weather events like droughts. It promotes the spread of diseases and pests, which affects livestock and crop yields. And it increasingly causes people to migrate as they flee areas ravaged by rising seas and devastating storms, which, in turn, can fuel conflict that then drives more migration in a vicious cycle. 

“What happens if we don’t act, and we don’t respond?” said Torero. “You have more migration … it will empower more conflicts, because people in hunger have a higher probability to be in conflict, because they need to survive. And that will trigger also a bigger frequency of conflicts.”

Earlier this year, the African countries of Zambia and Zimbabwe declared a state of disaster because of an ongoing drought. Mercy Lung’aho, a food research scientist at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, said she witnessed long lines of people waiting to buy food, with quotas on how much they could buy. “Imagine not being able to know when, or if, you will eat. That’s the impact of climate change,” said Lung’aho.

Although governments, nonprofits, and other organizations spend vast sums each year to solve these problems, no one can offer anything more than inconsistent estimates of just how much is spent or what impact it is having. One reason for that, the U.N. report notes, is because there is little clarity into how this money is used, or even how these funding strategies are defined. (That also is true of multinational funding pledges to address these issues.) The authors of the report call for adopting a universal definition of financing for food security and nutrition that includes public and private resources aimed at not just eradicating hunger, but everything from strengthening agrifood systems to mitigating drivers like climate shocks. 

As it stands, the world is assuredly not on track to reach all seven global nutrition targets governments set for 2030 under the Sustainable Development Goals they adopted in 2015. But experts on the issue have long argued that such measures have always been more naive than realistic, with “over-ambitious and impossible” targets that include the eradication of hunger and malnutrition for all people, and doubling the agricultural productivity and income of small-scale producers, among other goals. 

Nemat Hajeebhoy is the chief of nutrition for UNICEF Nigeria, which has the second-largest population of malnourished children in the world. Unless governments, NGOs, and the private sector come together to address the underlying causes of hunger, food insecurity, and malnutrition, she said, vulnerable women and children worldwide will bear the brunt of that inaction. “What keeps me up at night is the numbers I’m seeing,” said Hajeebhoy. “As human beings, we have to eat to live. And if we cannot eat, then the consequence is sickness and death.” 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline One in 11 people went hungry last year. Climate change is a big reason why. on Jul 29, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Ayurella Horn-Muller.

On June 3, a court in the southwestern city of Brest convicted Tsimashchuk of discrediting Belarus, “incitement to racial, national, religious, or other social hostility or discord,” and participating in an extremist formation, according to the banned human rights group Viasna, and the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ), an advocacy and trade group operating from exile. The court sentenced Tsimashchuk to five years in jail and a fine of 46,000 Belarusian rubles (US$14,000), those sources said. CPJ was unable to determine whether Tsimashchuk plans to appeal her sentence.

There is no information regarding the grounds for the charges against Tsimashchuk, those reports said. Her trial started on May 31, BAJ reported. She is currently held in pretrial detention center No. 7 in Brest, according to Viasna.

“In just four days and two hearings, a Belarusian court sentenced journalist Alena Tsimashchuk to five years’ imprisonment on unknown grounds,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Authorities should immediately disclose the reasons behind the charges brought against Tsimashchuk and ensure that no journalists are jailed for their work.”

Tsimashchuk is a freelance journalist who has worked with several local outlets in the Brest region, according to BAJ. A BAJ representative who spoke to CPJ anonymously, citing fear of reprisal, said that the date of Tsimashchuk’s detention was unknown, but that it most likely occurred in late 2023.

CPJ emailed the Belarusian Investigative Committee and the Brest Regional Court for comment on Tsimashchuk’s case but did not receive any response.

Belarus was the world’s third worst jailer of journalists, with at least 28 journalists behind bars 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.

The Ukraine aid package still faces delays, thanks to MAGA, and will have to go back to the Senate before it reaches President Biden’s desk. The Trump-proposed changes, of structuring some of the aid as a loan, can be forgiven by the President, including partial loan forgiveness by Biden on his way out, should he lose the election. If Trump wins, he could force Ukraine to repay what’s left of the loan and refuse to send ATACMS, the long-range missiles that have made Ukraine effective at blowing up Russian planes and other military targets that slaugher civilians. The compromise in this aid package, far less than what Ukraine actually needs to win the war, adds to the urgency to ensure Trump loses the electoral college. It’s going to be a nailbiter, for America and the world. 

This week’s bonus show includes reports that Paul Manafort is back to help Trump (and Russia) win the 2024 election. Russian mafia expert Olga Lautman and analyst Monique Camarra of the Kremlin File podcast join Andrea to discuss Manafort’s dark arts and how they may help Trump and Russia illegally hijack our democracy once again.

Ari Berman of Mother Jones stops by Gaslit Nation next week to discuss his new must-read book Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People—and the Fight to Resist It. Ari will share his insights on how we got here and what must be done to save our democracy.

Want to hear the full episode? Join a community of listeners and get bonus shows, all episodes ad free, submit questions to our regular Q&As, get exclusive invites to live events, and more by subscribing at the Truth-teller level or higher on Patreon.com/Gaslit! 

Thank you to everyone who supports the show – we could not make Gaslit Nation without you! 

Show Notes:

Johnson’s plan to send aid to Ukraine moves closer to reality “Democrats will not be responsible for this bill failing,” one Democratic lawmaker pledged on Thursday morning. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/04/18/johnson-plan-send-aid-ukraine-moves-closer-becoming-reality/

Putin Ally Declares Mike Johnson 'Our Johnson' https://www.newsweek.com/putin-ally-declares-mike-johnson-our-johnson-1890071

Europe is already planning for what happens if Ukraine loses. It’s ugly A newly energized Russia is already escalating grey-zone operations in Eastern Europe, says Estonia’s defense minister. https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2024/04/europe-already-planning-what-happens-if-ukraine-loses-its-ugly/395715/

Why Did U.S. Planes Defend Israel but Not Ukraine? There are lessons for other nations in the events of the past few days. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/04/ukraine-israel-war-comparison/678077/?gift=hVZeG3M9DnxL4CekrWGK3zBTrwyTVOGzmWK5yps1Kck&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

U.S., NOT ISRAEL, SHOT DOWN MOST IRAN DRONES AND MISSILES American forces did most of the heavy lifting responding to Iran’s retaliation for the attack on its embassy in Damascus. https://theintercept.com/2024/04/15/iran-attack-israel-drones-missiles/

How Israel and allied defenses intercepted more than 300 Iranian missiles and drones https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/04/14/middleeast/israel-air-missile-defense-iran-attack-intl-hnk-ml

To be clear, if someone does trigger a motion to vacate -- anyone, MTG or Massie -- it would be incredibly perilous for Johnson. But remember: the first step is a motion to table. And Democrats could vote to table, and that's that. https://twitter.com/JakeSherman/status/1780240955196539137

Why Israel’s attack on Iranian consulate in Syria was a gamechanger Peter Beaumont and Emma Graham-Harrison A war long fought through proxies, assassinations and strikes outside Israel has spilled into the open https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/14/why-israel-attack-on-iranian-consulate-in-syria-was-a-gamechanger

Video Shows Ukrainian Plane Being Hit Over Iran The New York Times has obtained video of the moment a Ukrainian airliner was hit minutes after takeoff from Tehran. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/09/video/iran-plane-missile.html

The Great Oligarchs Escape: ‘The Ground Is Trembling. They Will Stream Into Israel' As Ukraine war rages and the West tightens the screws on Russian oligarchs, many of them look to Israel to escape. Some hold Israeli citizenship, exactly for these kinds of circumstances. Billionaires will benefit from Israeli law, allowing them to hide sources of income for a 10-year period https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2022-03-10/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/the-great-oligarchs-escape-the-ground-is-trembling-they-will-stream-into-israel/0000017f-f2d9-df98-a5ff-f3fd182d0000

EXCLUSIVE: Ukrainian President @ZelenskyyUa said he spoke to lawmakers and the president about Ukraine’s urgent need for wartime aid and stressed “please just make a decision,” during an interview with @IAmAmnaNawaz. Stream more tonight at 6 ET online: https://to.pbs.org/3MzB3rB https://twitter.com/NewsHour/status/1779985953966219589

This content originally appeared on Gaslit Nation and was authored by Andrea Chalupa.

NBC created a stir when it announced on Friday that it had hired former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel to be a paid on-air contributor. After three days of vocal pushback from star employees across the company’s outlets, the company heeded the criticism and let McDaniel go. While it’s a positive course correction, the tale as a whole is an inauspicious sign for how corporate media will deal with Donald Trump as the pivotal 2024 presidential election nears.

McDaniel, hand-picked by Trump to lead the RNC after his 2016 election, and ousted at his behest earlier this month (AP, 2/13/24), supported Trump’s false 2020 election claims and frequently attacked the legitimacy of the press corps, including NBC and MSNBC journalists (CNN, 3/22/24).

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow (Rolling Stone (3/26/24) criticized her employers for “putting on the payroll someone who hasn’t just attacked us as journalists, but someone who is part of an ongoing project to get rid of our system of government.”

Those kinds of anti-democracy, anti-journalism positions apparently didn’t strike NBC leadership as any sort of obstacle to their own mission. “It couldn’t be a more important moment to have a voice like Ronna’s on the team,” explained NBC News senior VP Carrie Budoff Brown in an internal memo announcing the hiring (Fast Company, 3/27/24), touting McDaniel’s “insider’s perspective on national politics and on the future of the Republican Party” (Washington Post, 3/23/24).

McDaniel made her first appearance as a paid contributor in an interview on NBC‘s Meet the Press (3/24/24) that had been booked before her hiring. Host Kristen Welker pressed McDaniel repeatedly on her past false claims, asking, “Why should people trust what you’re saying right now?” Subsequent shows on both NBC and MSNBC featured top anchors eviscerating their bosses’ hire, an unusual sight on corporate news.

By Tuesday night, NBC announced its reversal. “No organization, particularly a newsroom, can succeed unless it is cohesive and aligned,” wrote NBCUniversal chair Cesar Conde (Rolling Stone, 3/26/24). “Over the last few days, it has become clear that this appointment undermines that goal.”

False principle of ‘balance’

It’s heartening that the pushback from NBC journalists forced management’s reversal, but it’s shameful that the network made the hiring decision in the first place. And Conde’s mea culpa suggested the company’s decision was fundamentally about quelling a workplace rebellion rather than recognizing a baseline journalistic standard of not rewarding liars with airtime.

Politico (3/25/24) reported that NBC executives liked McDaniel since she helped them “land a Republican presidential debate, a high priority at the network,” because “CNN had beat NBC in the race to host a Trump town hall.”

That shouldn’t be a surprise, because the primary standard corporate outlets adhere to is the one they see as boosting their bottom line: the false principle of “balance,” whereby outlets platform voices from “both sides” in order to claim freedom from bias, no matter how extreme or unreliable one side in particular might be.

It’s a principle that was likewise on display in mainstream coverage of the brouhaha. Politico‘s Ryan Lizza (3/25/24), for instance, wrote:

The on-air protests represent what could be a seminal moment in political media as news organizations continue to grapple with how to responsibly represent voices from the Trump right on their screens and in their pages without handing their platforms over to election deniers or bad faith actors who have attacked and attempted to discredit their own reporters.

Of course, what Politico presents as a legitimate dilemma that news outlets might conceivably overcome is in fact an impossibility, given that Trumpism is founded on the rejection of truth and honesty—something many in corporate media at least began to acknowledge after Trump’s failed January 6 insurrection (FAIR.org, 1/18/21).

But that was then; as Trump creeps back closer to power, corporate media are likewise slinking back to hedging their bets and prioritizing false balance over actual journalism.

Twisted picture

Republican strategist Alex Conant (Washington Post, 3/26/24) explained that networks face a “challenging pundit-supply issue”: “They have tried to find serious people coming out of Trumpworld and have not found a lot of appetite.”

The Washington Post (3/26/24) painted a similarly twisted picture:

The outrage over [McDaniel’s] appointment was indicative of the larger struggle television networks have faced in hiring pundits to offer a pro-Trump perspective without running afoul of both the audience and their own employees.

As did the New York Times (3/26/24):

The episode underscored the deeply partisan sphere in which news organizations are trying to operate — and the challenge of fairly representing conservative and pro-Trump viewpoints in their coverage, if major Republican Party figures like Ms. McDaniel are deemed unacceptable by viewers or colleagues.

The nation’s top newspapers would have readers believe that media outlets are trying to offer true journalism, but are thwarted by their “audience” and some less-enlightened members of the press corps, who would prefer to see things through a partisan lens. In fact, the way to “fairly represent” the views of a movement centered around denying the results of elections is to debunk them—not amplify them.

Not a difference of opinion

NBC has made several hires from the far right since the rise of Trump. Shortly after the 2016 election, the network brought on former Fox star Megyn Kelly (FAIR.org, 6/16/17). It added former Bush communications director Nicolle Wallace in 2017, former Fox anchor Shepard Smith in 2020, and former Mike Pence aide Marc Short just a month ago (Variety, 2/27/24).

Trump alum Mick Mulvaney had a “history of bashing the press and promoting the former president’s fact-free claims” (Washington Post, 3/30/22), but CBS said he was “helping us in terms of access to that side of the equation.”

In perhaps the most notorious example, CBS hired former Trump aide Mick Mulvaney in 2022. CBS co-president Neeraj Khemlani explained in a leaked recording (Washington Post, 3/30/22) that “getting access” to Republican elites was crucial, “because we know the Republicans are going to take over, most likely, in the midterms.” That decision also faced backlash, though it didn’t prompt CBS to make the quick about-face NBC did. Still, Mulvaney made only infrequent appearances on the network, and was out within a year.

But none of these went quite so far as NBC‘s McDaniel’s hire, since none of those hires supported Trump’s fraudulent 2020 election claims.

And the outspoken NBC and MSNBC journalists who stood up to their bosses made clear that their beef was not with McDaniel’s partisan affiliation. Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski (3/25/24) said:

To be clear, we believe NBC News should seek out conservative Republican voices to provide balance in their election coverage. But it should be conservative Republicans, not a person who used her position of power to be an anti-democracy election denier.

Anchor Joy Reid (ReidOut, 3/25/24) agreed: “We welcome Republican voices. The reality is: This isn’t a difference of opinion. She literally backed an illegal scheme to steal an election in the state of Michigan.”

So perhaps we have discovered a line that some corporate journalists, at least, are unwilling to cross—even if their bosses have less compunction. It suggests that far more journalists are going to have to stand up to those bosses regarding election coverage decisions if we hope to see anything like the kind of journalism we need to defend what little democracy we have left.

Research assistance: Xenia Gonikberg

The post In Unhiring Ronna McDaniel, NBC Made the Right Move for the Wrong Reason appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Julie Hollar.

NBC created a stir when it announced on Friday that it had hired former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel to be a paid on-air contributor. After three days of vocal pushback from star employees across the company’s outlets, the company heeded the criticism and let McDaniel go. While it’s a positive course correction, the tale as a whole is an inauspicious sign for how corporate media will deal with Donald Trump as the pivotal 2024 presidential election nears.

McDaniel, hand-picked by Trump to lead the RNC after his 2016 election, and ousted at his behest earlier this month (AP, 2/13/24), supported Trump’s false 2020 election claims and frequently attacked the legitimacy of the press corps, including NBC and MSNBC journalists (CNN, 3/22/24).

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow (Rolling Stone (3/26/24) criticized her employers for “putting on the payroll someone who hasn’t just attacked us as journalists, but someone who is part of an ongoing project to get rid of our system of government.”

Those kinds of anti-democracy, anti-journalism positions apparently didn’t strike NBC leadership as any sort of obstacle to their own mission. “It couldn’t be a more important moment to have a voice like Ronna’s on the team,” explained NBC News senior VP Carrie Budoff Brown in an internal memo announcing the hiring (Fast Company, 3/27/24), touting McDaniel’s “insider’s perspective on national politics and on the future of the Republican Party” (Washington Post, 3/23/24).

McDaniel made her first appearance as a paid contributor in an interview on NBC‘s Meet the Press (3/24/24) that had been booked before her hiring. Host Kristen Welker pressed McDaniel repeatedly on her past false claims, asking, “Why should people trust what you’re saying right now?” Subsequent shows on both NBC and MSNBC featured top anchors eviscerating their bosses’ hire, an unusual sight on corporate news.

By Tuesday night, NBC announced its reversal. “No organization, particularly a newsroom, can succeed unless it is cohesive and aligned,” wrote NBCUniversal chair Cesar Conde (Rolling Stone, 3/26/24). “Over the last few days, it has become clear that this appointment undermines that goal.”

False principle of ‘balance’

It’s heartening that the pushback from NBC journalists forced management’s reversal, but it’s shameful that the network made the hiring decision in the first place. And Conde’s mea culpa suggested the company’s decision was fundamentally about quelling a workplace rebellion rather than recognizing a baseline journalistic standard of not rewarding liars with airtime.

Politico (3/25/24) reported that NBC executives liked McDaniel since she helped them “land a Republican presidential debate, a high priority at the network,” because “CNN had beat NBC in the race to host a Trump town hall.”

That shouldn’t be a surprise, because the primary standard corporate outlets adhere to is the one they see as boosting their bottom line: the false principle of “balance,” whereby outlets platform voices from “both sides” in order to claim freedom from bias, no matter how extreme or unreliable one side in particular might be.

It’s a principle that was likewise on display in mainstream coverage of the brouhaha. Politico‘s Ryan Lizza (3/25/24), for instance, wrote:

The on-air protests represent what could be a seminal moment in political media as news organizations continue to grapple with how to responsibly represent voices from the Trump right on their screens and in their pages without handing their platforms over to election deniers or bad faith actors who have attacked and attempted to discredit their own reporters.

Of course, what Politico presents as a legitimate dilemma that news outlets might conceivably overcome is in fact an impossibility, given that Trumpism is founded on the rejection of truth and honesty—something many in corporate media at least began to acknowledge after Trump’s failed January 6 insurrection (FAIR.org, 1/18/21).

But that was then; as Trump creeps back closer to power, corporate media are likewise slinking back to hedging their bets and prioritizing false balance over actual journalism.

Twisted picture

Republican strategist Alex Conant (Washington Post, 3/26/24) explained that networks face a “challenging pundit-supply issue”: “They have tried to find serious people coming out of Trumpworld and have not found a lot of appetite.”

The Washington Post (3/26/24) painted a similarly twisted picture:

The outrage over [McDaniel’s] appointment was indicative of the larger struggle television networks have faced in hiring pundits to offer a pro-Trump perspective without running afoul of both the audience and their own employees.

As did the New York Times (3/26/24):

The episode underscored the deeply partisan sphere in which news organizations are trying to operate — and the challenge of fairly representing conservative and pro-Trump viewpoints in their coverage, if major Republican Party figures like Ms. McDaniel are deemed unacceptable by viewers or colleagues.

The nation’s top newspapers would have readers believe that media outlets are trying to offer true journalism, but are thwarted by their “audience” and some less-enlightened members of the press corps, who would prefer to see things through a partisan lens. In fact, the way to “fairly represent” the views of a movement centered around denying the results of elections is to debunk them—not amplify them.

Not a difference of opinion

NBC has made several hires from the far right since the rise of Trump. Shortly after the 2016 election, the network brought on former Fox star Megyn Kelly (FAIR.org, 6/16/17). It added former Bush communications director Nicolle Wallace in 2017, former Fox anchor Shepard Smith in 2020, and former Mike Pence aide Marc Short just a month ago (Variety, 2/27/24).

Trump alum Mick Mulvaney had a “history of bashing the press and promoting the former president’s fact-free claims” (Washington Post, 3/30/22), but CBS said he was “helping us in terms of access to that side of the equation.”

In perhaps the most notorious example, CBS hired former Trump aide Mick Mulvaney in 2022. CBS co-president Neeraj Khemlani explained in a leaked recording (Washington Post, 3/30/22) that “getting access” to Republican elites was crucial, “because we know the Republicans are going to take over, most likely, in the midterms.” That decision also faced backlash, though it didn’t prompt CBS to make the quick about-face NBC did. Still, Mulvaney made only infrequent appearances on the network, and was out within a year.

But none of these went quite so far as NBC‘s McDaniel’s hire, since none of those hires supported Trump’s fraudulent 2020 election claims.

And the outspoken NBC and MSNBC journalists who stood up to their bosses made clear that their beef was not with McDaniel’s partisan affiliation. Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski (3/25/24) said:

To be clear, we believe NBC News should seek out conservative Republican voices to provide balance in their election coverage. But it should be conservative Republicans, not a person who used her position of power to be an anti-democracy election denier.

Anchor Joy Reid (ReidOut, 3/25/24) agreed: “We welcome Republican voices. The reality is: This isn’t a difference of opinion. She literally backed an illegal scheme to steal an election in the state of Michigan.”

So perhaps we have discovered a line that some corporate journalists, at least, are unwilling to cross—even if their bosses have less compunction. It suggests that far more journalists are going to have to stand up to those bosses regarding election coverage decisions if we hope to see anything like the kind of journalism we need to defend what little democracy we have left.

Research assistance: Xenia Gonikberg

The post In Unhiring Ronna McDaniel, NBC Made the Right Move for the Wrong Reason appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Julie Hollar.

Darren Woods, the CEO of Exxon Mobil, the largest publicly traded oil company in the world, has a clear answer. In a rare interview with the media last week, Woods explained that the “dirty secret” behind why the world wasn’t on track to zero out carbon emissions was that it was simply too expensive. In doing so, he subtly pinned the blame for the emissions created by burning oil and gas on his company’s customers. 

“The people who are generating the emissions need to be aware of and pay the price for generating those emissions,” he told Fortune’s Leadership Next podcast. “That’s ultimately how you solve the problem.”

The emissions in question, created when oil and gas are actually burned, represent 80 to 95 percent of the worldwide emissions associated with oil companies. In energy wonk-land, these emissions are known as “Scope 3.” Three years ago, under pressure from activist investor groups, Exxon reluctantly revealed the vast scale of its own “Scope 3” emissions for the first time. The company estimated that the products it sold in 2019 resulted in 730 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. For reference, that’s 11 percent of what the entire United States emitted that year.

Big emissions have big consequences. Research from the Union of Concerned Scientists has traced the direct and indirect emissions from fossil fuel producers to ocean acidification, the rise in global temperatures, and wildfires in the Western United States.

Activist investor groups have been calling on oil companies to reduce Scope 3 emissions, but Exxon would rather focus on the direct emissions that come from oil rigs and power plants (Scope 1) and the fuel or electricity purchased for things like operating machinery or powering its offices (Scope 2). Exxon sued two of those investor groups in January over the resolutions they’ve submitted demanding faster emissions cuts, arguing that the repeated submissions amount to abuse of the shareholder proposal system. It’s an aggressive move that some experts see as a sign that Exxon is committed to shutting down conversations about responsibility for the full scope of its emissions. 

This issue is a hot topic in oil company boardrooms, according to Laura Peterson, a corporate analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “It’s clear that they find it a threat,” Peterson said. “I think that they know, because their emissions are very high, that they’re not going to be able to just evade them through carbon capture as their climate transition plans claim, and that it’s going to open them up to litigation. And so they are just trying to squelch it.” 

Oil companies have been trying to shunt responsibility for carbon emissions for a long time. A study in 2021 scrutinizing Exxon’s memos, studies, and advertisements over the past half-century found that the oil giant used rhetoric to shift the blame for climate change onto average people, their customers. In public communications, the company focused on “consumers” and “demand,” implicitly pointing the finger elsewhere. BP employed a similar strategy, popularizing the idea of calculating your personal “carbon footprint” in marketing campaigns in the early 2000s.

Exxon is one of the few major oil companies that has so far neglected to set any targets for cutting its Scope 3 emissions. The company’s board has argued that applying these targets to companies would cause “significant, unintended consequences for society.” Woods has written that the current way Scope 3 emissions are calculated would encourage bad behavior from companies and force consumers to turn to dirty energy sources like coal. “That’s like saying that requiring calorie information on restaurant menus would force people to binge on junk food,” Peterson quipped in a blog post.

As countries move to regulate Scope 3 emissions, companies are lobbying to stop them. In late February, Reuters reported that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission was planning to drop a requirement forcing companies to disclose these emissions from its proposed climate risk rules for corporations. That would place the responsibility for those emissions on customers. But California is heading in a different direction, adopting a law last year that will eventually require large companies that do business in the state to disclose their Scope 3 emissions — including corporate giants like Exxon.

Of course, it’s hard to untangle exactly who bears how much of the blame for the emissions that led to the climate crisis: Big Oil? Governments? Rich countries? Billionaires? Normal people? It’s some combination of all of the above. Oil companies make the case that it’s a “demand” problem — as long as people are driving cars, and thus demanding fossil fuels, then they have to keep producing the gas.

A 2022 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, however, concluded that people demand “services,” not fossil fuels specifically. In fact, the panel found that people could live comfortably with a lot less fossil fuels. “Demand-side” solutions, including shifts in how buildings are constructed, how people get around, and what they eat, have the potential to reduce emissions 40 to 70 percent across all sectors by 2050.

Climate advocates argue that oil companies, with their history of spreading climate disinformation and trying to block policies to move away from fossil fuels, bear a large portion of the blame for climate change. Across the country, around 30 lawsuits filed by cities, states, and Indigenous tribes seek to hold Exxon and other fossil fuel companies accountable for deceiving the public about the harms of using their products.

“They’re responsible for a lot of climate damage, and they’re responsible for misleading the public in the past, which led to more damage,” Peterson said. “And now they’re basically saying that they should not be responsible for disclosing these emissions, because they’re just not relevant to their business.”

Unsurprisingly, Exxon’s CEO wants to move past the whole history aspect. “That was 30 years ago,” Woods told Fortune last week. “I mean, today, the world has moved on. The understanding of this challenge has moved on. I think where we are today is, how can we contribute to a solution set, not debate the past?”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline There’s a reason Exxon’s CEO says its emissions are your fault on Mar 4, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Kate Yoder.

Photo by Franki Chamaki

Americans have had to weather much in the years since the COVID-19 pandemic first began, including price inflation of basic necessities. Grocery bills, especially, are a drain on household finances. But, as recent reports show, inflation is easing across many industries, and yet food prices overall have remained stubbornly high. Not only is that an indication of a deep rot at the heart of the food industry, agribusinesses, and corporate grocery chains, but it is also a clear sign that we need to repair our entire food system.

Reporting on a new Census Bureau survey, USA Today’s Sara Chernikoff found that “[t]he average American household spends more than $1,000 per month on groceries.” And, while it’s not surprising that those residing in expensive states like California have high grocery bills, there’s little relief for those living in states with lower costs of living. An average California family’s weekly grocery bill is $297.72, but an average North Carolina family’s bill is $266.23—nearly as high.

Attempting to downplay this reality, Paul Donovan, chief economist of UBS Global Wealth Management, wrote in an op-ed in the New York Times that Americans might be overestimating how serious inflation is, feeling the pinch most especially when they buy something as small as a candy bar. “[C]onsumers perceive inflation as higher than it actually is,” wrote Donovan. Further, he claimed, “[h]umans are genetically programmed to emphasize bad news over good news when they make decisions.” Donovan is implying that we’re just imagining high grocery bills.

In fact, inflation in the grocery industry has been higher than in other industries, rising 25 percent over the past four years compared to 19 percent overall, and many have pointed to simple greed as the reason: food prices are high because the companies setting prices think they can get away with padding their profits. Since we all have to eat, naturally this hits lower-income families harder, rather like a regressive tax. A new report by the Groundwork Collaborative found that in 2022, “consumers in the bottom quintile of the income spectrum spent 25 percent of their income on groceries, while those in the highest quintile spent under 3.5 percent.”

Economists have attempted to explain the reasons for grocery-related inflation remaining stubbornly high by pointing fingers at supply chain issues, higher labor costs, and agricultural pests. The Washington Post even admitted—albeit with little additional comment—that “consolidation in the industry gives large chains the ability to keep prices high.” (I’ll return to this critical point below.)

Fearing that voters feeling the pinch every time they shop for food will punish him at the ballot box, President Joe Biden has taken aim at the food industry. At an event in South Carolina on January 27, 2024, the president remarked that, while “inflation is coming down… there are still too many corporations in America ripping people off: price gouging, junk fees, greedflation, shrinkflation.”

To be fair, some foods did become cheaper, such as eggs. Remember the nationwide scramble on eggsin the early months of the pandemic with many grocery retailers limiting the number of cartons per customer? But in the years since, prices leveled off. And then they whisked up again. In fact, eggs are a far better indicator of why Americans are upset about food-related inflation than a Snickers bar.

There are plenty of short-term interventions that government can apply to help American families cope with the high cost of groceries, and President Biden has implemented many of them. Groundwork Collaborative’s report cites an increase in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits for the lowest-income Americans, as well as the federal government’s initiative in taking food corporations to court over price gouging, and helping to lower the prices of crop fertilizers.

But many of these fixes are workarounds to compensate for the massive monopolistic corporatization of our food industry. Recall the point that the Washington Post made with little additional analysis: “consolidation in the industry gives large chains the ability to keep prices high.” The fact is that only a handful of corporations control the majority of our food system. We are all at the mercy of a small number of big companies. And, unless we make serious systemic changes to our food systems, we will remain so.

When thinking about longer-term fixes that free our foods from corporate profiteering, the humble egg is once more a good example. When eggs were prized items during the early months of the pandemic, small producers and farmers markets became the only reliable suppliers for many Americans. I recall being even more grateful than usual for my membership with the Urban Homestead, a small farm in the heart of Pasadena, California, where I live. Each week, I place an order with them for fresh produce and other locally grown foods to supplement my store-bought groceries. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, Urban Homestead was one of the few sources my family had for eggs and fresh produce.

But such small producers are few and far between. While the lucky ones among us may have access to urban farms, there are simply not enough small-scale growers to feed most Americans. Those farms that do exist operate on razor-thin margins, struggling year after year to remain financially viable. They remain on the outskirts of a massive capitalist playing field that is tilted toward profit-centered, highly subsidized agribusinesses and grocery chains. While small farmers, both urban and rural, are struggling, food trading companies are gobbling up massive profits. And the federal government’s farm subsidy program disproportionately benefits large corporate growers rather than the family farmers they are ostensibly aimed at.

Localizing our food supplies and shortening the chain between food buyers (i.e., all of us) and grocery suppliers ought to be the focus of food-centered government policies. This requires adopting a mindset based on the idea of “food justice,” a topic on which much has been written. We need to make it easier for small-scale farmers to grow food while remaining financially stable, and harder for large-scale corporate agribusinesses to control our food supply. This requires incentivizing small-scale farmers to remain small and sustainable—the opposite of the “growth” ideals of corporate profiteers.

Lawmakers and corporate media outlets are so attached to the idea that food producers and distributors deserve massive profits in exchange for controlling our food supply, that a justice-based approach of de-growth rarely enters their discourse. Rather than the rich eating us (and our wallets), it’s time for us to eat the rich.

This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

The post The Real Reason Your Grocery Bill Is Still So High appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Sonali Kolhatkar.

The victims – between the ages of 30 and 50 – were tied up and shot by column of 70 soldiers passing by the shop in Mandalay region’s Madaya township, along the Mandalay-Mogoke highway, a local resident said on condition of anonymity.

“These men, including the shop owner, were tied with their hands behind their backs before they were killed,” the resident said.

The junta troops were mobilized at around 6 a.m. to reinforce soldiers at the Pat Lei Inn outpost near the border of Madaya and Singu township, according to local defense forces. 

At about 8 a.m., the column arrived at the tea shop, about 800 meters (a half-mile) from a conflict area, from where nearly 500 residents have fled fighting between junta troops and People’s Defense Force, or PDF, militia fighters, the resident told RFA.

Because soldiers took the mobile phones belonging to the men at the tea shop, the identities of the victims were still unknown, according to the resident. 

RFA attempted to contact Thein Htay, the junta’s minister for economic affairs and the Mandalay regional spokesman, for comment on the tea shop massacre, but he didn’t answer phone calls on Thursday.  

Airstrikes in Chin state kill 10 civilians 

Also on Thursday, 10 civilians were killed when two junta airstrikes in southern Chin state struck six homes, a local resident said on condition of anonymity for security reasons. 

“The victims included an entire family and some children,” the resident said. “The attack occurred without any battle.”

After the attack in Matupi township’s Vuilu village, the junta cut off mobile phone communications. The village has about 250 people and 70 households. 

RFA attempted to contact Minister of Social Affairs Kyaw Soe Win, who is also the Chin state spokesman for the military junta, but he couldn’t be reached. 

Translated by Aung Naing. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.

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

The simple answer is that the United States is making every effort to lure away from Russia one of its key allies in the region, while Astana, which has recently demonstrated a willingness to distance itself from Moscow, is fully aware of its advantageous geopolitical location and will be looking at who can offer it more favorable conditions for cooperation. A more complicated answer: Kazakhstan may have sensitive information about American President Joe Biden and may be testing the waters for its most profitable use. Given the upcoming US elections, it is safe to assume that all three countries are extremely interested in what President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has to say.

To better understand the situation, we need to return to the events of 2020, when the son of the US President Hunter Biden carelessly left his laptop at a computer shop. The leaked information revealed many dark secrets about the Biden family’s shady money laundering activities. Kazakhstan played an important role in this back at 2010s. Hunter Biden’s “track record” in Kazakhstan includes lobbying the interests of Chinese corporations, money laundering, receiving “gifts” in the form of material assets and large sums in offshore accounts, as well as cooperation with two of the richest people in Kazakhstan, Kenes Rakishev  and Karim Massimov, who at that time served as Chairman of the National Security Committee of the republic. Given the well-known high level of corruption in the post-Soviet republics, we can safely say that not only these people participated in the dark schemes of Hunter Biden, but also that behind them, most likely, stood influential representatives of the political establishment of Kazakhstan, who now may want to take the lead and sell the information profitably, under the agreement that they themselves will not appear in it.

It is also no coincidence that Karim Massimov has been in prison for more than a year. Thus, President Tokayev, who at that time already held high government positions, could either silenced the bearer of compromising information, or, conversely, could have long ago pulled out dirty secrets on the family of the American leader.

Be that as it may, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev knows about Hunter Biden’s activities in Kazakhstan more than any media outlet, and can use this information as a leverage on the White House. Any new piece of information about the dark schemes of the Biden family could become decisive in the ongoing investigation against the President and lead to his impeachment. We can safely predict that Tokayev will try to get most from any of the parties interested in the information.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Kevan Soto.

For a second time, the Ministry of the Interior rejected an application by a group of 80 students and intellectuals to form a party after the government blocked the main opposition Candlelight Party from running in July’s general elections on a technicality.

No reason was given in the Oct. 6 letter signed by Interior Minister Sar Sokha, said Em Sok Sovann, a representative of the would-be Khmer Servant Party.

“This rejection makes me sad; I don’t know what I’ve done wrong,” he said. “What do I need to correct … for me to meet their requirements?”

“Eighty of us agreed to form a political party to help strengthen the multi-party liberal democracy enshrined in the constitution,” he said.

The group’s initial application – to form the Khmer Puppet Party – was turned down in a Sept. 12 letter that said the ministry’s ruling was based on its “failure to include the founder’s signature” along with a list of its 80 founding members.

In response, Em Sok Sovann sent a letter to the Ministry of the Interior requesting a meeting with Sar Sokha to discuss what was wrong with the applications and how to proceed according to ministry requirements. 

He and fellow applicants consider the two rejections “unconstitutional” and are calling for Sar Sokha to review their applications.

As of Wednesday, he had received no response.

Eliminating rivals

The rejections are the latest bid by the ruling Cambodian People’s Party to eliminate its political rivals. The CPP has used other tactics – including onerous bureaucracy, legal technicalities, and intimidation – to keep would-be competitors off of the country’s ballots and maintain its grip on power.

In September, authorities detained 23 people, including six members of Cambodia’s opposition Candlelight Party, or CLP, for holding a rally to collect enough people’s fingerprints to register a new opposition party, the Panha Tumnerp – or Intellectual Modern – Party.

Former Banteay Meanchey Provincial CLP Secretary Suon Khemrin, who was among those arrested, said that while in detention, police questioned him about who was behind the new party. He told them he had only seen a letter from the Ministry of Interior granting the right to form the Tumnerp Party and requiring enough fingerprints to register the party within 180 days, according to the country’s political party law.

Suon Khemrin was released along with 16 others after more than 30 hours in custody, but told to first sign “a document that was noticeably vague in its wording.”

Some explanation needed

According to the Law on Political Parties, any Cambodian citizen who is aged 18 or older and is a permanent resident of the country has the right to form a political party simply by notifying the Ministry of Interior. The Ministry of Interior must reply in writing that it has received the notification within 15 days.

The law states that in order to be valid, political parties must apply for registration with at least 4,000 members, depending on the province where the party is based.

RFA contacted Ministry of Interior spokesman Khieu Sopheak to ask for additional details about the rejection of Em Sok Sovann’s party applications.

He said that the ministry “always provides a clear reason” for denying the right to form a political party, but asked for time to review applications before he could comment further.

“I’ll note that the name ‘Khmer Puppet’ is no good,” he said. “But, let me check with those in charge of the case first.”

Korn Savang, the investigation and advocacy coordinator for the Committee for Free and Fair Elections in Cambodia, or COMFREL, told RFA that if there was a technical problem with Em Sok Sovann’s applications, the Ministry of Interior should provide him with instructions on how to remedy them.

However, if the ministry rejected his applications without giving an adequate reason, he said, it acted in violation of the law.

Winning on technicalities

Last week, the CLP – the only party that could have mounted a serious challenge to the CPP in July’s general elections – announced it will join with three smaller parties in an “Alliance Toward the Future” that will aim to field candidates in the 2027 local commune elections and the 2028 general election.

In May, the National Election Committee disqualified the party because it did not have the original registration form issued by the Ministry of Interior. With no real opposition, the CPP swept the parliamentary vote.

The announcement of the alliance comes after Candlelight officials had exhausted efforts to ask the ministry to reissue its original party’s registration. Last month, ministry officials again denied the party’s request to reissue a registration letter so that it could participate in future elections. 

That document was lost in 2017 when the offices of the Cambodia National Rescue Party, or CNRP, were raided by government agents. Without the document, the Candlelight Party cannot compete in elections, leaving the country without a viable opposition party.

Speaking to RFA on Wednesday, COMFREL’s Korn Savang called on the Ministry of Interior, when reviewing party applications and registrations, to “make sure it doesn’t lose their documents.”

Translated by Sok Ry Sum. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.

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

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Deconstructed.

The post Syria, Alas. Is There Reason for Optimism? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by B. Nimri Aziz.

The post The Real Reason Disney is Defying DeSantis appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Sonali Kolhatkar.

May Day is an occasion for both celebration and dissent.

On May Day, we celebrate the victories of the trade union movement, such as our successful campaign for the eight-hour day which gave birth to International Workers’ Day. And we follow in the footsteps of our movement’s founders by demanding concrete improvements in the lives of working people, now and in the future.

This year in particular the European labour movement has every reason to be on the march. We have a cost-of-living crisis caused by corporations cynically super-charging their prices and profits under the cover of supply problems arising from the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. At the same time, workers are struggling to buy food and pay rent as a result of the biggest cut in real wages since the start of this century.

This year in particular the European labour movement has every reason to be on the march.

Despite that, only a handful of European countries have imposed windfall taxes on excess profits, to deal with the profit-price spiral driving inflation—or, as I prefer to call it, “greedflation.” Instead, many political leaders are again determined to make ordinary people pay for yet another crisis they played no part in creating.

Austerity 2.0

Austerity 2.0 is under way. We can see this in various policy-makers’ demands for wage restraint and the devastating interest-rate hikes causing real harm to workers. It is evident too in Emmanuel Macron’s undemocratic pension reform in France and the Danish government’s elimination of a public holiday.

But, as we shall see on the streets of Europe today, the fightback in also in train: A dozen days of nationwide stoppages in France, the biggest wave of walkouts in Britain since the 1980s, and Germany’s “mega strike” of industrial action. Nurses in Latvia, tyre-factory workers in Czechia, and transport workers in the Netherlands are among the many groups who have won in pay disputes in recent months.

Unions are also battling, and beating, union-busting tactics to organise new workplaces, with Amazon workers in Germany and Britain taking strike action for the first time. All over Europe, workers are organising and winning through their trade unions.

Lasting change

So there is much for our movement to take pride in this May Day. The challenge though is to transform this “union spring” into lasting change.

That is why trade union renewal will be the priority at the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) congress in Berlin later this month. A thousand delegates and other participants, representing over 45 million workers, will debate and agree a programme of action for the crucial next four years.

It is still the case that too few workers enjoy the benefits of union membership and collective-bargaining agreements.

It is still the case that too few workers enjoy the benefits of union membership and collective-bargaining agreements. In half of European Union member states, half the workforce or fewer are covered by collective bargaining—and those with the lowest coverage have the lowest wages. That must change.

The ETUC and its affiliates have secured an EU directive on adequate minimum wages, which obliges all member states to work with unions and commit by law to increase collective-bargaining coverage. They are required to promote collective bargaining and combat union-busting, and where coverage is below 80% to adopt a plan of action to elevate it. Unions at national level must work to ensure that this important change in direction for the EU—which a decade ago was arguing that collective bargaining was incompatible with economic growth—is implemented in domestic law.

Left behind

But that is only the start. The EU is being left behind on labour policy by the United States, where Joe Biden’s administration has made funding under its $4 billion Inflation Reduction Act dependent on companies paying union wages, supporting a just transition, and curbing corporate excess.

It is good that the EU’s Green Deal matches the US scheme on subsidies to industry. Now it must match it on workers’ rights and social conditions attached. We can no longer tolerate vast sums of public money being handed to companies which act against the public interest by paying poverty wages and leaving our underfunded social systems to pick up the bill—companies such as Amazon, which received more than €1 billion in public contracts over just three years.

That is why one of the main demands in the ETUC’s Berlin manifesto will be a ban on public money being handed to union-busting, tax-dodging, environment-destroying bosses. Failure to reign in the rampant inequality and corporate greed which have caused the current crisis would be a gift to the far right.

Real change

Europe needs a new economic and social model that puts people and the planet before profit at any cost. That is the future European trade union members will be demonstrating for today. And that will be the objective of our discussions and decisions at the ETUC congress this month.

The history of May Day tells us that real change is possible—when working people join together to demand better.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Esther Lynch.

The post Her Name Was Nora al-Awlaki: The Real Reason Donald Trump Should Rot in Hell appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Nicky Reid.

Donald Trump’s former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen arrives for a second day of testimony before a grand jury on March 15, 2023, in New York.

Photo: Mary Altaffer/AP

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This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Jon Schwarz.

The post The Simple Reason Why the U.S. Wants ‘Full Spectrum Dominance’ of the Earth appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Roger McKenzie.

My view on what the Fed should do now in the wake of banking failures is relatively straight-forward:

• Before the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) failure, it was already clear that the Fed should pause interest rate hikes at this week’s meeting, based largely on consistent deceleration of nominal wage growth.
• The SVB failure and subsequent banking turmoil are far more likely to be demand-destroying events than not. If one thought the Fed already should be reducing the pace of their rate hikes (or even pausing entirely) due to labor market cooling, the fallout from SVB just means this cooling will happen more quickly and hence the case for halting further rate hikes is stronger.
• It is a genuine problem that interest rate hikes of nearly 5% in a year cause this much distress in the financial sector, indicating a clear failure of bank management and supervision. These failures should be addressed going forward. But they exist today and the fallout of them clearly provides another argument for standing pat on further rate increases.

Even before SVB failure, labor market cooling argued for no further rate hikes

The January consumer price index (CPI) data came in uncomfortably hot after months of good readings. The February CPI data showed a largely sideways movement in inflation. Worse, revisions to 2022 CPI data showed more disinflation in mid-2022 and less in late 2022—providing slightly weaker evidence of consistent disinflation over the course of the year.

However, nominal wage growth—what many have called a “supercore” measure of inflation—has consistently cooled over the course of 2022 and early 2023. Occasionally a single month of data has shown an uptick of wage growth and concerns are raised, but new data then show continued cooling. Figure A below shows annualized rates of wage growth for the latest three months relative to the prior three months. It shows these rates of wage growth for the initial releases of this data from December 2022 to March 2023. While wage growth blipped up in the December 2022 and February 2023 reports, the most recent report shows a clear pattern of consistent nominal wage deceleration.

This deceleration of nominal wage growth should be near-dispositive for arguments about the proper path of interest rates. If the Fed is insistent on 2% price inflation in the long run, this implies that nominal wages can grow at this 2% inflation rate plus the rate of productivity growth, which we will take as 1.5%. This 3.5% wage growth target, however, assumes no increase in the share of total income accruing to labor rather than capital. Given the large decline in labor’s share of income so far in the pandemic-driven business cycle, this means that several years of wage growth as high as 4.5% could be sustained while still seeing price inflation at the Fed’s 2% target. Nominal wage growth (as shown in Figure A) has been running at or below 4.5% for several months now. In short, wage growth is now running where it should be given the state of the business cycle and the Fed’s 2% inflation target—meaning the Fed should stand pat on any further interest rate hikes.

Besides the fact that current wage growth is consistent with the Fed’s inflation target on the cost side, the rapid normalization of nominal wage growth should also lead to rapid normalization of nominal aggregate demand. Essentially, if overheated demand is not being buoyed by above-target wage growth, it is hard to see how it could continue. The allegedly excess fiscal boost from the American Rescue Plan (and even the “excess savings” banked from this aid) is long gone. Financial and housing markets have lost significant value in recent months. Without excess wage growth, any excess of demand growth is unlikely to be sustained.

Banking stresses are likely to destroy demand in coming year

The failures of SVB and Signature banks and the associated increased stress in the banking sector are far more likely to reduce economy-wide demand in coming months than to increase it. As lending standards tighten and risk premiums rise for private lending, both consumer spending and business investment are likely to be curtailed. In short, whatever your estimate of the path of demand over the next year before SVB’s failure, your estimate now should be significantly lower. This has been recently acknowledged explicitly by the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Eric Rosengren, who noted: “Financial crises create demand destruction. Banks reduce credit availability, consumers hold off large purchases, businesses defer spending. Interest rates should pause until the degree of demand destruction can be evaluated.”

There has been a recent debate in macroeconomic circles about the lags of monetary policy. Traditionally, these lags were thought to be “long and variable.” This would mean that a large part of the contractionary effect of the interest rate increases undertaken in 2022 and earlier this year had yet to hit the economy and would slow growth going forward even if the Fed stopped raising rates today. A newly fashionable view argues that these lags are shorter in today’s economy, meaning that the full contractionary effect of recent rate increases had already been absorbed by the economy and that a pause in rate-hiking would implicitly provide a substantial spur to demand growth. Whatever the outcome of this debate in normal times, the SVB failures clearly show that fallout from past rate increases is ongoing.

Yes, it’s a problem for macroeconomic stabilization that the banking system is this fragile

If one was worried that macroeconomic overheating remained a problem in the U.S. economy and was a key driver of inflation, the pressure to stop raising rates imposed by recent banking stress is extremely troubling. From this point of view, the recent banking stresses are demanding the Federal Reserve sacrifice efforts to cool the economy to control inflation in favor of the needs of financial stability.

It is especially perverse that increasing interest rates has appeared to throw much of the banking system into chaos. It is extremely well-documented that bank profitability is higher when interest rates are higher. However, it seems that banks cannot even make the transition to a new interest rate regime that would be highly favorable for them without substantial turmoil.

For all these reasons, if one was an inflation hawk who thought interest rates needed to be raised further, the imperative to stop raising rates now based on stresses in the banking system is an extremely dangerous development. And, in fact, even if one did not think that rates needed to be raised further in order to contain inflation, it’s still a bad thing that our financial system has become so fragile that raising rates causes these kinds of tremors. Even if I don’t think the economy needs higher interest rates today, there may be a future where higher interest rates would benefit the economy—and it would be very bad if macroeconomic stabilization options were held hostage to a fragile financial system.

These considerations argue strongly for improved regulatory and supervisory actions moving forward. The rollback of Dodd-Frank regulations in 2018 was a terrible step backwards in this regard. Further, the Federal Reserve rolled back regulatory safeguards even further than the 2018 law made necessary. Today’s hawks (and those like me who want to preserve the option of raising interest rates at some point in the future) should be among the most strident proponents for tightening these regulatory standards back up, and for holding the Fed accountable for supervisory failures.

But for now, the banking system is fragile and recent rate hikes have put stress on the system (as maddening as all of this is). This fragility is likely to cool the economy in coming months. Given this, any reasonable estimate of where interest rates should have gone in 2023 made before the SVB collapse should be marked down since.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Josh Bivens.

Consider the following passage from a recent book on how to reason with “science deniers.”

“Content Rebuttal and technique rebuttal can be effective tools.”

We already know, based on the work of Schmid and Betsch, that it is possible to present science deniers with information that might change their minds. In the case of COVID-19 denial, what information might that be? With content rebuttal, we might share the studies showing that masks are effective. With technique rebuttal, we might point out the problem with conspiracy reasoning, either just before or just after they have heard scientific misinformation. Or — if that doesn’t work — perhaps we might exploit their predilection for conspiracist thought. Imagine a conversation in which you are talking to a COVID-19 denier (which means that the person is already predisposed to believe in conspiracy theories), and you share the fact that Russia and China are engaged in a massive disinformation campaign on social media in support of the idea that the coronavirus is a ‘hoax’ and we need to ‘liberate’ ourselves from more lockdown restrictions. This is not a conspiracy theory, it is a real live conspiracy! Might this not appeal to them? I’ve cited some sources earlier in this chapter that you can print out and hand to them. Some even include graphs and charts. You might encourage your interlocutor to think about who is benefiting from all the polarization and division in the U.S. Doesn’t that make them even a little bit suspicious? If all else fails, suggest that they do their own research. It is perverse, but it just might work!

— Lee McIntyre, How To Talk To A Science Denier (MIT Press, 2021) p. 174

We might cite studies showing that masks are effective.

True, we might, but that won’t necessarily have the desired effect, as there are also studies showing that masks are ineffective. McIntyre’s book shows that cherry picking data is a key problem in “science denial,” so how can he justify overlooking the studies that run counter to his preferred conclusion? See, for example, Dr. Dean Edell’s Eat, Drink, & Be Merry, (HarperCollins, 1999) p. 246, which cites a study of 1500 Swedish surgeons showing that working maskless did not result in a higher rate of infections, and more recently, “The scientific case against face masks,” (Unherd TV, January 13, 2023), which cites a range of mask studies claiming they are minimally effective or ineffective. For those who feel that the kind of mask is all-important, check with the This Week in Virology podcast, which recently cited a study of medical workers that concluded surgical masks and N95 masks were about equally effective in preventing disease transmission.

We might point out the problem with conspiracy reasoning.

Again, we might, but if we do we also have to point out that McIntyre’s own sources claiming “apparently” massive Russian and Chinese disinformation campaigns targeting Americans about COVID-19 and other issues are anonymous U.S. government officials whose intelligence services have a record of lying, distortion, and propaganda that make Mao and Stalin look like hopeless amateurs. In other words, he’s as guilty of conspiracy thinking as the “science deniers” he’s calling out in his book. It’s difficult to see how hypocrisy is the road to rational consensus.¹

I’ve cited some sources earlier in the chapter that you can print out and hand to them.

Which is about as condescending as it gets. Jehovah’s Witnesses use this approach. Should that convince us their worldview is rational?

In any case, why would this be a better approach than people sharing links to their favorite online sources, as is commonly done, with no evidence that it leads to broader and deeper rational consensus? On the contrary. It leads to wholesale denunciation of those who fail to accept the presumably superior insight of one’s favored sources.

Some even include graphs and charts.

Graphs and charts are not inherently more credible sources of information than pure text, as McIntyre seems to believe. Trying to convince someone by means of the form of an argument rather than the substance is part of the problem. In short, graphs and charts are only as good as the person who makes them. Vaccine skeptics and climate change skeptics can and do use graphs and charts to support irrational or misleading conclusions.

You might encourage your interlocutor to think about who is benefiting from all the polarization and division in the U.S.

This is good advice, but the answer is not “Russia and China,” as McIntyre thoughtlessly assumes, but the U.S. national security state and the banks and other corporations that dominate it. The power of the propaganda apparatus they have developed to mislead the public mind is unprecedented in human history, with the possible exception of the medieval Church. The Russian and Chinese contribution to false American beliefs is about as significant as how much your toaster contributes to global warming.

Do your own research! 

Uh, no. Do your research in collaboration with others. This is how science works, and how democracy best works. Doing one’s own research might lead to endless ratification of confirmation bias, that is, selectively looking for information that reinforces what one already believes. Only when we interact with others do we have a chance of discovering our errors. This is less likely to happen online, where information is curated for your eyes only, which leads to ideological silos where underlying assumptions remain unseen and unchallenged. So do your research with others, and include people who hold different initial assumptions than you do, though hopefully not too radically different. And be respectful.

Obviously, science has a lot to teach us about what the relevant facts are and how they are best accounted for in areas of specialized knowledge, but there are no grounds for believing that when scientists venture into social and political thought that their conclusions are any better than those of the next guy you meet at the bus stop.

1. McIntyre’s dubious sources on alleged Russian and Chinese disinformation include: “The Coronavirus Gives Russia and China Another Opportunity to Spread Their Disinformation,” Washington Post, March 29, 2020. Also, “Chinese Agents Spread Messages That Sowed Virus Panic in U.S., Officials Say,” New York Times, April 22, 2020.

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

Postal jobs have long been a road to the middle class for Black Americans. The Postal Service began employing Black workers shortly after the Civil War and became a major source of good, middle-class jobs for this share of the workforce in the early 20th century.

During the 1940s, civil rights advocacy, combined with wartime needs, created even more opportunities for Black postal workers. By the mid-1960s, their leadership had increased significantly, with the three biggest post offices in the country — New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles — all headed by Black postmasters. By the end of the 20th century, Black employees made up 21 percent of the U.S. postal workforce.

In 2022, Black workers made up 29.0 percent of the Postal Service workforce — more than double their 12.6 percent share of the total U.S. labor force. According to an Institute for Policy Studies analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data, postal workers have by far the highest median annual wage ($51,730) and the highest median hourly wage ($24.87) among the 10 occupations with the heaviest representation of Black workers.

Three of these 10 occupations have median hourly wages below $15 per hour. Of the 10 occupations with the largest shares of Black workers, USPS was the fifth-largest employer, with more than 600,000 employees.

Wage data are from the May 2021 National Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates supplemental tables. Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

The Center for Economic and Policy Research notes that the wage gap between white and Black workers is narrower among postal workers than among private sector employees. The Economic Policy Institute has found that Black workers’ share of USPS jobs is significantly higher than their share of all public sector jobs.

Many Black families stand to gain from expanded postal financial services

The Postal Service faces constant pressure to make deep spending cuts that would be devastating for customers and employees across the country. Instead of cutbacks that could drive away customers, decisionmakers should explore new revenue sources, particularly those that would help meet important social needs, such as postal banking.

Black families would benefit significantly from expanded postal financial services. According to an FDIC survey, 11.3 percent of all Black households and 9.3 percent of Latino households did not have bank accounts in 2021, compared to just 2.1 percent of white households.

Among households with income between $15,000 and $30,000, 29.3 percent of Black households and 26.5 percent of Hispanic households were unbanked, compared with 13.6 percent of White households. Single mothers and adults with disabilities were also more likely than other Americans to be “unbanked.”

Families without bank accounts are much more likely to have to use high-cost financial services. For example, 21.8 percent of unbanked households used check cashing — almost 10 times the share of banked households that use such services. And 15.5 percent used money transfer services, more than double the 6.6 percent share of banked households that use these services.

Among all families without bank accounts, the most-cited reason was that they couldn’t afford minimum balance requirements. Other major reasons included distrust of banks, high and unpredictable fees, and inconvenient locations. A 2019 S&P Global report found that majority Black neighborhoods have lost more bank branches than non-majority-Black neighborhoods. JPMorgan, for example, reduced the number of branches in majority-Black areas by 22.8 percent from 2010 to 2018, compared to a decline of 0.2 percent in the rest of the country.

With more than 31,000 post offices across the country and a high level of public trust, USPS is well-positioned to provide dependable, affordable financial services. According to a 2015 USPS Office of Inspector General report, expanding postal financial services such as check-cashing, ATMs, and electronic money orders could generate as much as $1.1 billion in annual revenue.

Members of Congress have introduced legislation for two approaches to expanded postal financial services. These include a Treasury-backed savings system at the post office similar to what existed in the United States from 1911 to 1967 and individual FedAccounts accessible through local post offices in conjunction with the Federal Reserve.

These proposals would provide reliable, affordable alternatives to predatory financial firms. They could also facilitate distribution of federal stimulus checks. Every community across the United States benefits from a strong USPS.

Rather than weakening this vital public infrastructure, policymakers should focus on strengthening — and expanding — this service to meet 21st century needs.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Sarah Anderson.

If that news wasn’t actually published anywhere, then all of the ‘news’-media fail their most-basic obligation to the public: to provide facts that are crucial in order for the public to understand — instead of to mislead the public to misinterpret and misunderstand — the most important news of the day:  to misunderstand the events that are shaping our future history.

If, instead, that news was published somewhere but Google refused to produce a find of that extremely important news-report, then Google fails its most-basic obligation to the public, because it’s not letting the public understand the world; it is instead hiding crucial important facts so as to encourage misunderstanding.

So, I then did a Yandex search for that headline, “U.S. arms exports up 49% in fiscal 2022,” and it found only four finds, which were the Reuters direct news-report, plus three obscure appearances of that headline, one from Moldova, one from Vietnam, and one from Poland — nothing at all mainstream or even ‘alt-news’ anywhere. And, five hours later, it was the same four finds plus two more — one from Tanzania, and the other an obscure personal-finance site, neither of which two additional sites, when I clicked onto it, actually had that headline or news-report on it.

Yandex isn’t American but Russian. Its main person and founder is the Russian-Maltese-Israeli (all three citizenships) billionaire Arkady Volozh who resigned as the company’s CEO on 30 December 2022 because he had been sanctioned by the EU for being a Russian billionaire who had kept his Russian citizenship and residence after Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022.

As for Google, it was, behind the scenes, founded and is controlled by the Pentagon, CIA, and some Stanford University professors.

So far as I can tell from those two Web-searches, that Reuters news-report, which like all such had been sent out from that news-agency to thousands of news-media around the world, wasn’t published by any of them.

It’s remarkable but — otherwise than here — unremarked-upon. And, though investors in America’s suppliers to the military benefit from controlling their markets (the U.S Government and its ‘allies’ or vassal-nations), the actual performance of the U.S. military ever since the end of WW II (in places such as Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and many others) has been poor. When profits instead of the nation’s actual defense are the main motivation for a nation’s military expenditures, enormous waste and a stunningly unsucessful military are the result. For example, Russia, where the Government controls the corporations that make its weapons, spends one-twentieth what the U.S. does on its military, but no one would say that its military is only one-twentieth as effective.

A good case can be made that this Ukraine-war boom in American-made military-equipment sales is the main immediate aim of the individuals who control U.S.-and-allied countries. Maybe that’s the reason why the Reuters news-report is, evidently, unpublishable, at least in any mainstream ‘news’-medium, or by any search-engine. Otherwise, it’s just a total mystery, why it went unpublished (except by Reuters itself).

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Eric Zuesse.

The post Is the Reason Some Wealthy People Oppose Democracy Deeper Than We Think? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Thom Hartmann.

"These statistics highlight the need for the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act and the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act."

The number of workers who held a job covered by a union contract—including those who report no union affiliation—rose by 200,000 to 16 million last year, but the percentage of employees represented dropped from 11.6% to 11.3%, according to the BLS.

The bureau found that though 7.1 million public sector employees belonged to unions in 2022, similar to the 7.2 million private sector workers, the union membership rate was 33.1% for the public sector compared with just 6% for the private sector.

As The Washington Postreported:

The lackluster figures reflect how far unions have to go to see an upsurge in membership, especially in a year of booming job growth. More than 5 million jobs were created in 2022 across the economy, especially in industries where union membership is lower, such as leisure and hospitality, meaning union jobs did not outpace the growth of nonunion jobs. The economy also launched millions of new businesses, where jobs rarely start off unionized. And many of the high-profile victories at Starbucks, Apple, and REI, for example, added a relatively small number of union members. A 2022 Bloomberg analysis of labor data found that the average unionized Starbucks store added 27 workers to union rolls.

Despite the continued low union numbers, labor historians say there's been a major shift underway, propelled by pandemic conditions, in how Americans view unions. More Americans said they approved of unions in 2022 than at any point since 1965—some 71% of those polled, according to Gallup.

Responding to the BLS release, the AFL-CIO, a federation of unions representing 12.5 million workers, asserted, "These statistics highlight the need for the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act and the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act, which will hold union-busting companies and organizations accountable and give workers the negotiating power they deserve."

Specifically pointing to the record-low unionization rate last year, Nina Turner, a former Democratic congressional candidate and senior fellow at the Institute on Race, Power, and Political Economy, said that "this is a move in the wrong direction."

Noting the same statistic, Democrats on the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce tweeted: "Unfortunately, this is not a surprise even though unions are extremely popular among workers. This is a direct result of employers using illegal union-busting tactics and Republicans turning their backs on working people."

The panel's Democrats also called on Congress to pass the PRO Act—a historic proposal to reform U.S. labor laws to better serve workers, spearheaded by the committee's ranking member, Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.).

"Every worker deserves a union," Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), who was elected in November, said in a statement Thursday. "Unions built the middle class and they built America. It's time to pass the PRO Act and drastically expand union membership across this country."

A trio of Economic Policy Institute experts who analyzed recent data from both the BLS and the National Labor Relations Board pointed out Thursday that between October 2021 and last September, the NLRB saw a 53% increase in union election petitions, and "evidence suggests that in 2022 more than 60 million workers wanted to join a union, but couldn't."

"The fact that tens of millions of workers want to join a union and can't is a glaring testament to how broken U.S. labor law is," they wrote. "It is urgent that Congress pass the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act and the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act. State legislatures must also take available measures to boost unionization and collective bargaining."

Despite union-busting efforts from powerful corporations, last year saw a wave of high-profile worker victories. Employees at Apple, Amazon, Chipotle, Google, Starbucks, Minor League Baseball, T-Mobile, Trader Joe's, and beyond successfully organized.

"In 2022, we saw working people rising up despite often illegal opposition from companies that would rather pay union-busting firms millions than give workers a seat at the table," AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler said Thursday. "The momentum of the moment we are in is clear."

"Organizing victories are happening in every industry, public and private, and every sector of our economy all across the country," she added. "The wave of organizing will continue to gather steam in 2023 and beyond despite broken labor laws that rig the system against workers."

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

Janine Jackson interviewed the Center for Climate Integrity’s Richard Wiles about the lies of the fossil fuel industry for the December 16, 2022, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

Center for Climate Integrity (12/9/22)

Janine Jackson: The House Oversight Committee has revealed new documentation showing that fossil fuel companies have long been well aware of their industry’s impact on climate disruption, with all of its devastating effects. And rather than respond humanely to human needs, they’ve opted to use every tool in the box, including bold lying, pretend naivete and aggressive misdirection, to continue extracting every last penny that they can.

It invites a question: If an investigation falls in the forest and no laws or tax policies or news media approaches are changed by it, does it make a sound?

Our next guest’s group collects and shares the receipts on fossil fuel companies’ architecture of deception—not for fun, but for change. Richard Wiles is president of the Center for Climate Integrity. He joins us now by phone. Welcome to CounterSpin, Richard Wiles.

Richard Wiles: Thanks for having me. Pleasure to be here.

JJ: I don’t think we can assume listeners will have heard the details from this House committee. What, most importantly to your mind, did the evidence that they unearthed show or confirm or illustrate about the actions and intentions of fossil fuel companies with regard to climate change?

RW: I guess the big new findings here are internal emails, internal communications, PowerPoint presentations, prepared for the CEO of the oil majors that reveal in a number of different ways the way they continue to aggressively mislead the public and the Congress and the media about their role in solving climate change—which is nothing, as you can imagine.

So this investigation was limited to internal documents that the company might have after the Paris Agreement in 2015. The committee subpoenaed any communications that they might have had relevant to climate change since that date.

And that’s important because there’s around 28 states and municipalities, plus another 16 communities in Puerto Rico, that are now suing oil companies for basically lying about what they knew about climate change, and their ongoing deception and greenwashing.

And the committee’s work, the documents that they’ve uncovered, have really added a lot to the evidence that will support those cases that make the case, particularly since 2015, that the companies continue to lie about their commitment to solving the problem.

Wall Street Journal (10/3/21)

And they do it in a number of different ways. I’m sure that some of your listeners have seen Exxon’s famous and seemingly never-ending ads about algae, right, which internal emails to the company make clear is never going to be any kind of a significant contributor to solving climate change, or being a carbon-free fuel.

There’s a lot more stuff in the weeds, like the companies talk about how they support the Paris Climate Accords. But then, internally, they’re saying things like, “God, please don’t say anything that’ll commit us to advocate for the Paris Agreement.”

There’s lots about how they want to position natural gas as a climate solution, when they know that it isn’t a climate solution. And they talk about that in these documents.

So the Committee’s efforts, this investigation, has produced a lot of information that is going to be helpful to holding the companies accountable in court, and also just educating members of Congress and the media about the fact that these companies are the problem, they’re not part of the solution. They’re aggressively part of the problem.

And it’s one thing to have somebody like me say that, or environmental advocates say that, or public interest groups say that. It’s another thing to be able to prove it with the company’s internal communications.

So that’s basically the contribution they made.

JJ: Let me just, as a side note, this is with available information, right, because some of the biggest players just said, “Nope—transparency, public oversight, indicate our internal conversations? Nope, not gonna do it.” Right?

RW: Right. The committee used its subpoena power. But the companies have fancy lawyers, and they’re not particularly interested in cooperating on this issue.

And so they did produce, I think, a million pages of documents, but probably roughly 900,000 of those pages, probably more than that, were things that were irrelevant, like company websites and whatever, that stuff that doesn’t have anything to do with what the committee wanted.

In a lot of cases, some of the players, like API, among others—that’s the American Petroleum Institute, the lobbying group for the oil industry—they would just redact page after page of these internal documents, and might give you a sentence or two.

So there was a lot of redactions, a lot of withholding. I think it’s clear that the companies and the trade association fundamentally obstructed this investigation.

But at the same time, they also knew they had to turn over something. And what they did turn over did contain a significant amount of evidence of this ongoing duplicity and deception around climate change, and their role in causing it, and their role in “solving it.”

JJ: Yeah. You know, it’s shorthanded to the House Oversight Committee, including by me, but it’s called the Oversight and Reform Committee.

And the Center for Climate Integrity, you guys seem post-weasel words, post–”Yes, they do harm, but look at the good they also do”–style conciliation.

You seem to take the fact that fossil fuel industries are in bad faith, as not like, “Let’s talk about it,” but a factor to consider in what we do moving forward, right?

RW: Right, exactly. One hundred percent.

JJ: I appreciate that. And so many people are like, “Oh, well, they’re the experts on the industry. So if we’re going to regulate them, obviously the industry needs to be part of how they define how we regulate them.” And it’s just such a merry-go-round.

And I want to ask you, as a group that steps outside of that, what are we calling for now? What is our work, concretely, now? How do we get off this dime?

Richard Wiles: “The only way we’re going to have the kind of meaningful climate policy change…is if we actually beat the oil guys.”

RW: Yeah, this is a good point. You got to think about the oil industry the way you think about the tobacco industry, the opioid industry, right? Nobody is looking to the tobacco companies for healthcare policy advice anymore, and the same for the opioid guys.

These guys, they cause a problem, and there was no way to work it out with them, right? They had a very profitable product, they knew it was killing people left and right, and they didn’t care at all.

And the only way they were stopped was by head-on confrontation in the courts—not the Congress, which they fundamentally own, but to the courts.

And our view is that, while obviously the Congress has a role here, and we hope someday the Congress passes meaningful climate legislation, that certainly hasn’t happened yet.

We had a good energy bill this fall, but it didn’t do anything to reduce emissions or to rein in these companies.

The only way we’re going to have the kind of meaningful climate policy change that ushers in an era of renewable energy is if we actually beat the oil guys. We have to actually win. It’s not a negotiation, it’s a fight. They want us to think it’s a negotiation, because that means they’ve won; we’re talking to them.

But if anyone can think of a time in human history where the most powerful industry or interest group of that era, that time, voluntarily committed suicide, voluntarily said, “Ah, you know, we don’t want all this power, we don’t want all this money….”

JJ: “We’ll just show ourselves out.”

RW: “…go out of business,” right. Yeah, if you can show me that, maybe I’ll change my mind. But you’ve got to be pretty naive to think that’s what’s going to happen here.

And all the evidence shows that’s not true. We can say that, and there’s still powerful forces who think, “Oh, well, they’re just naive, of course you’re going to have to work with the oil guys.”

Well, no. And what these documents do is help make it clear to people who need to have it made clear to them, like members of Congress and the media, that the oil companies are the problem, period. That’s it. That’s the reason we don’t have climate policy. There’s no other reason. It’s because these very wealthy, powerful, vested interests make sure that the public is confused about climate change, that everybody thinks that they’re part of the solution, that all these things that we know aren’t true, and that this evidence helps us show are not true.

So our view is you’ve got to attack the companies, you’ve got to expose them for all the lies that they live off of. And you’ve got to make them pay, both reputationally and financially, through the courts, for their ongoing lies and deception. And for the damage that those lies do, in terms of the cost that communities face from extreme storms and hurricanes, and just the routine business of adapting to climate change.

Building a seawall we didn’t have to build. Now we need a cooling center, or suddenly we got to move the sewage treatment plant. Look, our drinking water’s loaded with salt water now. Whatever it is, all these costs that were foisted upon us by the industry, they need to pay.

And I guess our view is if they’re held accountable financially, and if people understand through that process—like they do with Big Pharma now, that “opioids, not good, really bad, these companies deliberately and knowingly killed people.”

If we can hang that same kind of messaging around the necks of the oil and gas industry, where it belongs, then I think we can change the conversation about how we’re going to solve climate. It’ll be a much more fruitful conversation.

And if the companies have to pay, also, if these cases are successful and the companies are made to pay for the damage that they knowingly caused—and I want to emphasize that the companies knew 50 years ago that their products would cause climate change, and they wrote it down, and they talked about catastrophes that would happen. And then they decided, at some point in the early ’90s/late ’80s, that they needed to run a massive disinformation campaign instead of tell the truth. If they’re held accountable to that, it’s a big financial cost that they absolutely deserve to have to pay.

And they’ll be very different-looking industries if they’re made to pay those costs. And at that point, maybe, just maybe, we will get the kind of climate solutions that we need.

Until we do that, I don’t think there’s any reasonable path that’s going to get us to the transformational kind of change that we need to get to, if the oil companies and gas companies are just standing in the way, as powerful as they are today, and everybody thinks that really the problem is them, right? That’s what they’ve done, right?

Washington Post (12/9/22)

JJ: And how long a shower they take, right? And I would love to put a pin in that right there. But I feel obliged to ask you a final question, which is that Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, his takeaway, as he tweeted, was, “Second only to hydrocarbons, the biggest product of the fossil fuel industry is lies.” That’s what he took away.

But then I read this Washington Post subhead, that was, “Some oil companies remain internally skeptical about the switch to a low-carbon economy even as they portray their businesses as partners in the cause, documents say.”

I mean, uff da, what the heck is that?

RW: Right? Sheldon Whitehouse nailed it, right? The number two product is lies.

JJ: How’s that kind of media coverage going to get us, is what I’m saying.

RW: Yeah, that’s just completely wrong. That’s what we’re battling against, right? There’s somehow this notion that the companies have a legitimate skepticism, and internal debates about whether or not they should really try harder on climate, and that’s what the documents showed…No, that’s not what the documents show.

The documents show that they are lying about their commitment to solving the problem. The documents show that they’re going to increase drilling in the Permian Basin by maybe 1,000% while they’re going to say that they’re in favor of the Paris Climate Accords.

That’s what the documents showed. They showed ongoing duplicity and lies. And, yeah, that’s part of the challenge, is to get the media to report this correctly.

We’re up to that challenge. And we think the more documents come out, the clearer it’s going to be, and the more attorneys general that step up and sue these companies for consumer fraud, and the more municipalities that demand to have the cost that they are spending to adapt to climate change covered by the oil companies, like they should be, the more evidence that comes out, I think, the better we’ll do.

And the more people understand, the message in the media will change. But we got a long way to go.

But this investigation is a good step in the right direction, for sure. You’re building a wall; it’s just a brick in the wall. And at some point, it’s going to be a wall that they can’t get out around. So in the meantime, we’ll just keep building.

JJ: Keep on keeping on.

RW: Yeah, that’s what we do.

JJ: We’ve been speaking with Richard Wiles. He’s president of the Center for Climate Integrity. You can find their work online at ClimateIntegrity.org. Richard Wiles, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

RW: Oh, thanks for having me. Really appreciate it.

The post ‘The Oil Companies Are the Reason We Don’t Have Climate Policy’ appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Janine Jackson.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Allen Forrest.

Only the cruelest person remains unaffected by war. The one now taking place in Ukraine is particularly galling. How should one understand the needless killing of thousands of persons, the uprooting of millions, the daily cruelty and perversity? A war between two countries that, until now, were united by blood, by family? Many observers believe that, notwithstanding Putin’s assertion that his country was being encroached upon by NATO, he would have carried out this insane aggression against Ukraine anyway. However, rather than launching a brutal war, he could have begun by suddenly cutting the flow of Russian gas to Europe, thus forcing the conditions for a diplomatic engagement. But Vladimir Putin, a small man with big ambitions, wanted something more to fulfill his lifelong dream of retaking territories lost after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and recreating the Russian Empire. While claiming that Russia and Ukraine were sister nations, he started the systematic ravaging of that country. A peculiar way to treat a family member. What he has achieved is not a quick victory but rather enormous loss of life and treasure for both countries that will take generations to recoup. Of one thing we can be sure. Because of the incredible heroism of the Ukrainian people, when this madness ends, Ukrainian flowers will again bloom through the ashes.

The following poem by Carlos Duguech, an Argentinian poet, political analyst, and creator of the radio program Peace in the World, reflects the feelings of all peace-loving people in the world.

Nor

The dull white of bones;

nor the still gaze of the dead;

nor the hopeless brown

of all the blood

now defeated and abased;

nor the clangor of the iron gunners;

nor the insolent whistle of the bullets;

nor the speeches of the conquerors;

nor the others’ relentless yes-sirs;

nor the rags raised as flags

of a white, forlorn surrender;

nor the ostentatious signatures of those who sign as gods,

the instruments of surrender of those who lose,

who always lose;

nor the newspaper pages that make haste to write

headlines full of vain homages

to those who win

while they corner, oh shamelessness of the trade,

those who lose, who always lose;

nor medals of gold or silver

or bronze or of coarse gold plating

that they pin on the breasts of battle heroes;

nor the new ranks that are added and added,

from death to death;

nor the prayers that no gods answer,

busy as they are with just being gods;

not even remorse,

nor the traumatized conscience

of the survivor of so much death,

of the sordid and smoking trench,

of so much flesh defiled by shrapnel.

None of that, nothing,

absolutely nothing,

will be of use when the time comes

that you ask

the reason for all wars.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Cesar Chelala.

The post Republicans: Another Reason a Recession Would be Bad News appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Dean Baker.

“At first, I didn’t believe it, because I hadn’t applied for it,” Sotheara said. “I thought at first it was an online scam,” he said.

“This is a valuable award. Only a few people in Asia have received it, and it is an honor for our country, as Cambodia will be recognized through the award,” Sotheara said. The award also acknowledges the efforts he and his NGO have made over the last two decades to help the people of Cambodia, he said.

“All our employees are so happy, and this will encourage us now to work even harder to deserve having received the award,” he added.

Established in 1958 and named after the Philippines’ seventh president who died in a plane crash a year earlier, the Ramon Magsaysay Award is considered Asia’s most prestigious prize. It honors people across the region who have done groundbreaking work in their fields.

Also receiving the award this year are Filipina pediatrician Bernadette J. Madrid, French anti-pollution activist Gary Bencheghib, and Japanese ophthalmologist Tadashi Hattori. All four are expected to attend an awards ceremony in Manila Nov. 30.

Sotheara, 54, was among the first generation of psychiatrists to graduate in Cambodia after the 1975-79 period of Khmer Rouge rule that killed an estimated 1.7 million people and left many thousands of survivors deeply traumatized, many of them living in remote rural areas of the country.

Now executive director of Cambodia’s Transcultural Psychosocial Organization (TPO), Sotheara developed the concept of baksbat, or “broken courage” — a post-traumatic state of fear, passivity and avoidance considered more relevant and particular to the Cambodian experience.

Switching to clinical psychiatry after working for a time as a surgeon, Sotheara later quit his job at a state hospital after he was approached for help by a patient coming from a remote community and became aware of the needs going unmet in Cambodia’s countryside.

Sotheara’s NGO now delivers treatment directly to people’s homes and communities, he said. “When I help one patient, I also help his family and community, because when one person experiences mental issues, we need to treat the whole family.”

Many Cambodians experience mental health problems, and Sotheara’s TPO has not been able to respond to all their requests for help, he said. “But since we started, we’ve improved a lot.”

There were only 10 psychiatrists at Sotheara’s own graduation, he said.

“Now we have around 100 psychiatrists, but we can’t answer all the demands made of us because many of those experts like working in the city, and not many work out in the communities.”

Around 80% of Cambodia’s population live in rural areas, and service must be provided to those people, he added.

Also speaking to RFA, TPO employee Taing Sopheap said she has worked with Chhim Sotheara for the past 15 years and has seen him sacrifice himself both physically and financially to carry out his NGO’s work.

“If a case is urgent and important, he will work on it regardless of the cost in time to his team or to other cases,” she said.

Translated by Samean Yun for RFA Khmer. Written in English by Richard Finney.

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

In recent days Ottawa has aggressively taken up the Haitian cause. On Wednesday Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations Bob Rae met the president of the Dominican Republic, Luis Abinader, to talk about Haiti. The somewhat unusual move — heads of state generally meet each other — was explained by the fact Canada leads the UN Economic and Social Council’s Ad Hoc Advisory Group on Haiti.

Prior to traveling to Santo Domingo Rae was in Port-au-Prince. He met Haiti’s de-facto Foreign Affairs Minister Jean Victor Geneus and civil society actors. Rae held a press conference with Haitian media and released a number of statements and tweets about Canada’s desire to assist.

At the Organization of American States last week Canada’s permanent representative to the organization, Hugh Adsett, said “we continue to feel that the international community in collaboration and in consensus with Haiti can play a crucial role” in Haiti. Adsett added, “Canada is ready, willing and able to accompany Haitians on this path to emerge from the crisis but the solutions must come from within Haiti.” The statement was made just after Canadian-backed OAS head, Luis Almagro, published a statement on Haiti and called for the return of United Nations soldiers to the country.

Last month Ottawa supported a year-long extension of the UN Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH). “Canada welcomes the renewal of BINUH UN ’s mandate by the UNSC”, tweeted Canada’s Mission to the UN. In his interview with Haiti’s Le Nouvelliste Rae said he “works closely” with BINUH head Helen La Lime. In that interview Rae dismissed as “ridiculous” the notion — believed by many Haitians — that the foreign powers want chaos to justify extending BINUH and possibly resending UN troops.

Canada’s ambassador to Haiti, Sébastien Carrière, accompanied Rae during his meetings and has recently clamored for major changes in Haiti. Last weekend Carrière hosted a webinar titled Haiti, sortie de crise: quel accompagnement du Canada” (“Haiti, emerging from the crisis: what support from Canada”). The event included multiple Haitian actors and was led by Canadian government-funded Haitian-Québec journalist Nancy Roc, a virulent opponent of Haiti’s elected president in the early 2000s. (When I challenged panelists at an August 2005 conference in Montréal titled “Haiti: A democracy to construct” for failing to mention the February 29, 2004 US/France/Canada coup or violence unleashed by the coup government, Roc called me a “Chimères”, a purported pro-Aristide thug.)

On social media Haitian diaspora activists suggested the aim of the webinar may have been to legitimate further foreign intervention. They believe Ottawa may use the event to say Haitian actors were consulted.

Among his multiple recent interventions Carrière boasted about Canada spending $30 million on the Haitian police in 2022. On August 10 the federal government approved the export of Canadian-made armored personnel carriers to the Haitian police. Since ousting the elected government in 2004, Canada has devoted significant resources and political capital to the Haitian police. But in Les Cayes the police reportedly killed two protesters on Tuesday while simultaneously repressing protesters in other cities. Canadian officials have stayed mum on the repression at demonstrations against growing insecurity and soaring prices. This week tens of thousands demonstrated to demand the departure of Prime Minister Ariel Henry who was selected a year ago by the Core Group (representatives of US, Canada, France, Brazil, Spain, Germany, EU, UN and OAS).

It is unclear what Ottawa’s immediate objective is in Haiti. Does it want a new UN military or police force? Some are suggesting foreign countries wants to contract private security forces.

Irrespective of their plan, there is little reason to believe Ottawa’s rhetoric claiming a desire to assist solutions “coming from within Haiti”. During this century Canada has helped destabilize an elected government, planned a coup and invaded to topple a president. It also trained and financed a highly repressive police force, justified their politically motivated arrests and killings. Ottawa has also backed the exclusion of Haiti’s most popular party from participating in multiple elections and helped fix at least one election. After a terrible earthquake Canada dispatched troops to control the country and later propped up a repressive, corrupt and illegitimate president facing massive protests. Ottawa has also been part of a coalition of foreign representatives that openly dictate to Haitian leaders.

Considering Ottawa’s recent history no one should trust Canadian claims about assisting Haitians. But even if you ignore the last two decades and stick to policy this week why trust officials who refuse to even criticize police who kill protesters?

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Yves Engler.

Congresswoman Ilhan Omar urged Democrats to better serve and engage with working people in a Saturday keynote speech at the annual progressive political convention Netroots Nation.

"We cannot assume that the politics of transaction will turn out the votes when Americans are longing for the politics of transformation."

The Minnesota Democrat's 11-minute address in Pittsburgh wrapped up a session about the upcoming midterm elections titled, "On to November: How We Win and Save Democracy."

Omar celebrated recent victories, stating that "our movement is at a watershed moment. Over the past several years, we've seen the biggest resurgence of progressive organizing and movement-building in our lifetimes."

"Across the country young people are reviving the labor movement," she said, noting unionization efforts by Amazon, Google, Starbucks, and Trader Joe's workers. "We have taken on some of the biggest, wealthiest multinational corporations in the world—and we are winning."

"I'm proud that workers in my office led a movement to unionize the staff of the United States Congress and we are just getting started," Omar said. "But friends, it is not just unions."

The Somali-born congresswoman cited her youth in a refugee camp, her historic election to Congress, and the campaigns and wins of other diverse, progressive candidates despite well-funded efforts to defeat them.

Omar also highlighted recent legislative successes, including healthcare expansion for veterans, a gun safety measure, and the Inflation Reduction Act, a compromise package on Medicare, taxation, and climate action that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) negotiated with obstructionist Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.).

She further noted public safety changes currently underway in her district—over two years after Minneapolis police murdered George Floyd, an unarmed Black man.

"The reality is none of these things would be possible without a massive, vocal, organized progressive movement driving the narrative and pushing for change," Omar said. "Because I know this: when you show up, it gives us the power to organize the base and to work to push for change on the inside."

The congresswoman continued:

I want to be clear about something else: We cannot take any of that for granted now. It is when you start to get comfortable that your opponents strike—and I know this very well. We have to be alert. We have to protect our victories as vigorously as we fight for them, because we cannot build on those wins if they are rolled back.

Labor rights, abortion rights, criminal justice reform, even the very survival of our democracy is being threatened at this moment. We are up against forces that are willing to suppress the vote, overturn election results, and literally commit treason against our country to get their way. We are up against corporate donors, landlords, and war profiteers spending millions of dollars to take out progressive members of Congress.

"The only way to protect our wins is with a massive, historic voter turnout," Omar argued. "We cannot go after the same tiny slices of swing voters we go after election after election—using the same poll-tested talking points we use every election. We cannot assume that the politics of transaction will turn out the votes when Americans are longing for the politics of transformation."

Noting that in 2016, a notable share of voters—particularly those who supported former President Barack Obama four years earlier—cast their ballots for a third-party candidate or simply stayed home, Omar explained that "these nonvoters are more likely to be working class, they are more likely to be immigrants, and they are more likely to be people of color. In fact, more than half of them have an income of less than $30,000 a year."

"These are the people the Democratic Party should stand for," she argued, adding that "we cannot rely on" the likes of outgoing Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) or Manchin "to save us."

Instead, "we need to elevate people who have fluency in the day-to-day struggles of the people they seek to represent," Omar asserted. "For every moderate suburban Republican there are line cooks, homeworkers, dishwashers, cashiers, farmworkers who would vote a straight Democratic ticket if they were given a reason to."

"Progressives win when turnout is high and we lose when turnout is low," she noted. "So this election, we cannot let fear defeat us. Let us focus on those who don't have a voice and who will support our boldest, most endearing ideas as a party."

"Let's elevate the people who are closest to the pain. Let's give working folks a reason to turn out to vote for us," she added. "That's who our party should be for, that's who our party should be talking to, and that's who we should be counting on to help us save our democracy in November."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

Without the support of a single Republican, Democrats in the U.S. House on Friday gave final passage to a $740 billion piece of legislation that includes historic investments in renewable energy development, a minimum tax on large corporations, and a landmark requirement for Medicare to directly negotiate the prices of a subset of prescription drugs.

Democratic proponents of the bill and outside groups have hailed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) as the most significant climate action measure ever passed by U.S. lawmakers, even though the package contains substantial handouts to the fossil fuel industry alongside the slew of tax incentives and subsidies for green energy that could substantially curb greenhouse gas emissions.

The Senate passed the reconciliation bill along party lines last weekend, and Friday's final vote in the House was 220 to 207, with all Democrats in favor and a "nay" from every single member of the Republican caucus who voted.

"Today, Democrats are keeping our promises to the American people and advancing key progressive priorities," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, following the vote.

"After more than a year of negotiations and even longer campaigning on these issues, the Democratic majority in Congress has unanimously sent a sweeping bill to tackle climate action, tax fairness, and lower drug costs to the President’s desk," Jayapal said. "Like their Senate colleagues, not a single House Republican voted for this legislation, despite its popularity with the majority of Americans across the political spectrum."

President Joe Biden is expected to sign the bill into law as soon as Friday evening, capping off more than a year of negotiations that were repeatedly sabotaged by Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), who succeeded in dramatically scaling back their party's agenda.

While acknowledging the IRA "is not perfect" given provisions that "that risk expanding fossil fuel extraction and use," Union of Concerned Scientists president Johanna Chao Kreilick said the IRA is "a game-changer and reason for hope."

"We finally have a Congress that's heeding the science on the severity of human-caused climate change and incentivizing the clean energy solutions that are supported by the vast majority of people in the United States," said Kreilick. "It's extremely disappointing and alarming that despite the urgency to act, Republican lawmakers have largely refused to support critical climate policy."

Every member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus voted for the bill despite grassroots climate advocates' vocal concerns about the legislation's giveaways to the fossil fuel industry, including a section that requires new oil and gas lease sales as a prerequisite for wind and solar development.

"It is a start, and we have more work to do to fully respond to the cost of living crisis," said Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) after the bill's passage.

"People deserve lower insulin prices and lower drug prices in general, including if you have private health insurance," Bowman continued. "We need to protect frontline communities from fossil fuel pollution, and finally end our dependence on oil, gas, and coal. Our work continues to deliver affordable, quality housing, child care, and education, a $15 minimum wage, immigration justice, and more. As we celebrate the progress made today, we recommit to addressing every priority in Build Back Better and more."

During a press conference ahead of Friday's vote, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.)—chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus—said the IRA "marks the largest-ever federal investment in climate action, putting the United States back on track to cut carbon pollution by 40% by 2030," a projection that some climate advocates have questioned given its dependence on the effectiveness of unproven carbon capture technology.

"We've got more to do," Jayapal said on the House floor, pointing to the bill's exclusion of housing and child care funding. "But today, let's celebrate this massive investment for the people."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), for her part, said the IRA takes steps toward "loosening the stranglehold" of corporate interests on Congress.

But the bill in many ways reflects the power that corporate America continues to exert over the legislative process. In addition to the gifts to Big Oil secured by Manchin, the private equity industry—with the help of Sinema—won the last-minute removal of tax provisions targeting the notorious carried interest loophole.

Republicans, given an opening by the unelected Senate parliamentarian, also axed a provision that would have imposed a $35-per-month insulin copay cap for patients with private insurance. The bill still contains an insulin copay cap for Medicare Part D enrollees as well as a $2,000 annual cap on beneficiaries' prescription drug spending.

Despite regressive late-stage changes to the bill, corporate lobbying groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce mobilized aggressively against the IRA, with particular focus on tanking its drug price provisions and the 15% minimum tax on highly profitable companies.

"Multibillion-dollar corporate special interests including Big Pharma claim the sky will fall if they finally pay their fair share in taxes or negotiate fairer prices," Liz Zelnick, spokesperson for Accountable.US, said shortly before Friday's vote. "Industry rhetoric contradicts their own public filings which show record profits, virtually no reasonable taxes paid, and huge giveaways to wealthy investors and executives."

"The reality is highly profitable corporations can afford to contribute more towards an economy that works for everyone, but many would prefer to keep charging seniors and families whatever they please while paying virtually nothing in return," Zelnick added. "That is why Congress must finish the job of reining in corporate greed, lowering costs, and ensuring wealthy companies finally pay their fair share."

Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food and Water Watch—a group that has been highly critical of the Inflation Reduction Act—said Friday that the bill "takes important steps to promote clean energy, but utterly fails to rein in toxic, destructive fossil fuel extraction."

"The Inflation Reduction Act can only be seen as the beginning of our response to the climate crisis. Much more is needed, specifically to restrict any and all new fossil fuel projects," said Hauter. "Unfortunately the bill aims to actually promote additional drilling and fracking, an unconscionable trade-off that will increase pollution in frontline and environmental justice communities."

"Our focus now must shift to stopping Senator Manchin's awful 'side deal' to fast track fossil fuel permitting," Hauter added. "This giveaway to big corporate polluters would doom any progress that might result from the passage of this legislation."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jake Johnson.

Without the support of a single Republican, Democrats in the U.S. House on Friday gave final passage to a $740 billion piece of legislation that includes historic investments in renewable energy development, a minimum tax on large corporations, and a landmark requirement for Medicare to directly negotiate the prices of a subset of prescription drugs.

Democratic proponents of the bill and outside groups have hailed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) as the most significant climate action measure ever passed by U.S. lawmakers, even though the package contains substantial handouts to the fossil fuel industry alongside the slew of tax incentives and subsidies for green energy that could substantially curb greenhouse gas emissions.

The Senate passed the reconciliation bill along party lines last weekend, and Friday's final vote in the House was 220 to 207, with all Democrats in favor and a "nay" from every single member of the Republican caucus who voted.

"Today, Democrats are keeping our promises to the American people and advancing key progressive priorities," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, following the vote.

"After more than a year of negotiations and even longer campaigning on these issues, the Democratic majority in Congress has unanimously sent a sweeping bill to tackle climate action, tax fairness, and lower drug costs to the President’s desk," Jayapal said. "Like their Senate colleagues, not a single House Republican voted for this legislation, despite its popularity with the majority of Americans across the political spectrum."

President Joe Biden is expected to sign the bill into law as soon as Friday evening, capping off more than a year of negotiations that were repeatedly sabotaged by Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), who succeeded in dramatically scaling back their party's agenda.

While acknowledging the IRA "is not perfect" given provisions that "that risk expanding fossil fuel extraction and use," Union of Concerned Scientists president Johanna Chao Kreilick said the IRA is "a game-changer and reason for hope."

"We finally have a Congress that's heeding the science on the severity of human-caused climate change and incentivizing the clean energy solutions that are supported by the vast majority of people in the United States," said Kreilick. "It's extremely disappointing and alarming that despite the urgency to act, Republican lawmakers have largely refused to support critical climate policy."

Every member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus voted for the bill despite grassroots climate advocates' vocal concerns about the legislation's giveaways to the fossil fuel industry, including a section that requires new oil and gas lease sales as a prerequisite for wind and solar development.

"It is a start, and we have more work to do to fully respond to the cost of living crisis," said Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) after the bill's passage.

"People deserve lower insulin prices and lower drug prices in general, including if you have private health insurance," Bowman continued. "We need to protect frontline communities from fossil fuel pollution, and finally end our dependence on oil, gas, and coal. Our work continues to deliver affordable, quality housing, child care, and education, a $15 minimum wage, immigration justice, and more. As we celebrate the progress made today, we recommit to addressing every priority in Build Back Better and more."

During a press conference ahead of Friday's vote, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.)—chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus—said the IRA "marks the largest-ever federal investment in climate action, putting the United States back on track to cut carbon pollution by 40% by 2030," a projection that some climate advocates have questioned given its dependence on the effectiveness of unproven carbon capture technology.

"We've got more to do," Jayapal said on the House floor, pointing to the bill's exclusion of housing and child care funding. "But today, let's celebrate this massive investment for the people."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), for her part, said the IRA takes steps toward "loosening the stranglehold" of corporate interests on Congress.

But the bill in many ways reflects the power that corporate America continues to exert over the legislative process. In addition to the gifts to Big Oil secured by Manchin, the private equity industry—with the help of Sinema—won the last-minute removal of tax provisions targeting the notorious carried interest loophole.

Republicans, given an opening by the unelected Senate parliamentarian, also axed a provision that would have imposed a $35-per-month insulin copay cap for patients with private insurance. The bill still contains an insulin copay cap for Medicare Part D enrollees as well as a $2,000 annual cap on beneficiaries' prescription drug spending.

Despite regressive late-stage changes to the bill, corporate lobbying groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce mobilized aggressively against the IRA, with particular focus on tanking its drug price provisions and the 15% minimum tax on highly profitable companies.

"Multibillion-dollar corporate special interests including Big Pharma claim the sky will fall if they finally pay their fair share in taxes or negotiate fairer prices," Liz Zelnick, spokesperson for Accountable.US, said shortly before Friday's vote. "Industry rhetoric contradicts their own public filings which show record profits, virtually no reasonable taxes paid, and huge giveaways to wealthy investors and executives."

"The reality is highly profitable corporations can afford to contribute more towards an economy that works for everyone, but many would prefer to keep charging seniors and families whatever they please while paying virtually nothing in return," Zelnick added. "That is why Congress must finish the job of reining in corporate greed, lowering costs, and ensuring wealthy companies finally pay their fair share."

Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food and Water Watch—a group that has been highly critical of the Inflation Reduction Act—said Friday that the bill "takes important steps to promote clean energy, but utterly fails to rein in toxic, destructive fossil fuel extraction."

"The Inflation Reduction Act can only be seen as the beginning of our response to the climate crisis. Much more is needed, specifically to restrict any and all new fossil fuel projects," said Hauter. "Unfortunately the bill aims to actually promote additional drilling and fracking, an unconscionable trade-off that will increase pollution in frontline and environmental justice communities."

"Our focus now must shift to stopping Senator Manchin's awful 'side deal' to fast track fossil fuel permitting," Hauter added. "This giveaway to big corporate polluters would doom any progress that might result from the passage of this legislation."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jake Johnson.

The post The Other Reason for Putin’s Rush to War:  Russian Oil Dependency appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Sandy Smith-Nonini.

RFA previously interviewed Ghopur in her capacity as an activist sharing the story of her mother, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison after spending nearly two years in an internment camp in northwestern’s China’s Xinjiang region. This time, she spoke with reporter Gulchehra Hoja from RFA’s Uyghur Service in her role as a designer who is introducing Uyghur patterns to the world of fashion. The interview has been edited for length.

RFA: When did you first become interested in fashion design?

Ghopur: I first began thinking about going abroad to study fashion design when I was 15 or 16 years old. I was born in Toksu [in Chinese, Xinhe] county, Aksu [Akesu] prefecture. I graduated from high school when I was 19 and began studies in oil painting at the Xinjiang Arts Institute. When I was studying at the Arts Institute, though, I never quite felt complete. Although oils were a part of my life, and part of my studies, they weren’t everything to me. But fabrics brought me a whole other kind of thrill.

RFA: Do you sense that your educational background has provided you with a different kind of inspiration in your field than other people might have?

Ghopur: I do sense that. For example, people in Europe use a lot of pale and muted colors. They don’t really like color, or particularly bright colors. But if you look at Uyghur etles, for example, there are a minimum of seven or eight colors in etles designs, and the colors are matched to one another very well. I’ve sensed that Uyghurs have a relatively high-level color sensibility compared to that of people from other cultural backgrounds.

RFA: What do you feel when you look at etles?

Ghopur: Etles gives me hope. When I look at it, when I wear it or dress other people in it, I remember the homeland [where] I would go to the fabric markets whenever I was sad. I would get so much enjoyment from just holding and touching the fabrics, and looking at the styles, colors and designs.

RFA: Tell us about your fashion label.

Ghopur: I’ve already done all the formal paperwork to apply for a patent in Norway. The label is called Føniks, or Phoenix. In the Uyghur language it refers to the enqa, the mythical bird. The enqa is a bird of legend. It has a long life. When it is time to die, the enqa flies close to the sun and sets itself on fire, after which it is reborn. The bird represents hope and rising from the ashes, which is the kind of spirit I want to have in my own life and work. I’ve gone through difficulties, and I’ve fallen down, but I’ve gotten myself back up and am continuing to walk forward. This is also my mother’s dream for me. My mother gave her life for me, so I want to make her dreams a reality. My dreams are my mother’s.

RFA: Are your designs using etles an expression of longing for the Uyghur homeland?

Ghopur: We can say that, yes. When I first began studying in this field, I primarily learned about European and Turkish culture and fashion. I was exposed to many European ideas about color. I began my studies in fashion design at a school in Turkey, a rather well-known school. In the process of my studies, I learned fashion design as well as collection preparation, which is separate from design. In collection preparation, I learned things like how to put clothing on models, how to create the environment for an entire collection, and so forth. In addition to this, I also studied color theory and styling. In three or four years I finished my studies at the school, having earned a number of certificates, and I later came to Norway.

RFA: As a Uyghur artist, have the difficulties and suffering you have faced inspired your designs?

Ghopur: It’s only natural that they have influenced me. Initially, I had no plans to work with etles. I had no plans to design, make or sell any such clothing. I started to become political after I began advocating for my mother’s cause. I went on different programs and gave interviews to media outlets. I did everything I could to advocate for my mother, but it wasn’t enough, so I asked myself what else I could do. I’d already made something of a name for myself in fashion design, so I decided that I could do activism through my work in this field. The real reason behind my use of etles has to do with the Uyghur cause. I’m currently planning to put together a collection with a minimum of 50 designs using etles, which I want to show in Norway. In the event that I’m ultimately unable to do this, I might do a photography exhibit instead. I want to use our fabrics and sense of color to show people that Uyghurs are not just people who escaped from China — instead, we’re a people with a developed and beautiful culture. I would be delighted to make even a small impact in this way.

RFA: Etles has become more popular in recent years. The Chinese government is now using etles in clothing design, not a representation of Uyghur fashion and culture, but instead promoting it as a component of Chinese culture. Some famous American and European brands have paid for the rights to use etles designs of some Uzbek brands. Are you feeling any competition as a result?

Ghopur: Naturally, I do feel some competition, because I only recently began this work. Uzbek designers and brands have a much longer history working with etles than I do. But when they use etles, they call it “Uzbek etles.” I call mine “Uyghur etles.” They use Uzbek etles, but I’m using genuine Uyghur etles. Etles was born in our homeland, specifically in Hotan [Hetian], and later spread along the Silk Road. Etles gives me great spiritual nourishment, encouragement, and strength.

Not many people know much about fashion design. It’s now 2022. What’s going to be popular in 2023? What colors should we put on the market? What styles are going to sell? We have to think about politics, economics, current lifestyles, global development. Fashion design is at once art, economics, politics, and life. It’s not just about popular brands and styles. I want to make my brand known first in Norway, then in Europe, and eventually around the globe. God willing, that’s my plan.

Translated by RFA’s Uyghur Service. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

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

Another Ramadan, another attack on Palestinian worshipers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem. In explaining the Israeli attacks, the majority of Euro-American politicians, media analysts, and commentators, exemplified in this predictably inane CBC report, are emphasising the "high tensions" that come along with the confluence of three major religious events, and framing Israeli actions as a response to the "Palestinian terrorist attacks" in four Israeli cities.

When this dehumanisation of Palestinians appears in mainstream media and public discourse within Israeli and Euro-American spaces, it is framed in a normalising manner.

Palestinians are accustomed to hearing these types of explanations that basically present a distorted picture of a religious conflict that is caused by political Islamist ideologies and their bigotry, intolerance, and hatred towards Jews. The Palestinian people, who are quintessentially defending their right to exist and live on the lands that they have called home for generations across centuries, are labelled by Israel and its Euro-American allies as violent, hateful, emotional, irrational, and backwards people who continuously cause cycles of violence.

Underneath this superstructure of fanciful Israeli and Euro-American ideologies, political sophistry, and ahistorical narratives, is the brute reality of settler-colonial conquest. The reason Israel has launched this latest attack is the same reason that it has launched so many before it and will be the reason for their coming attacks: The Israeli state is built on a foundation of settler colonial sovereignty.

Embedded at the foundation of the Israeli state, continuously animating its actions and policies, regardless of which political party or coalition is in power, is the idea that Israel, as a Jewish majority nation-state, must secure and expand supreme sovereign control over the land of historic Palestine. This is the cause and the goal of Israeli violence.

It is the cause because Israeli violence springs from the project of colonial modernity and replicates it in Palestine. Zionism was originally driven by the desire to protect European Jews from the horrors of European anti-Semitism. But as soon as this desire took the path of settler colonisation and practised settler-colonial violences in Palestine beginning in the early parts of the 20th century, the cause itself became the establishment of settler colonial sovereignty, which is necessarily supreme in its logic and form. It is also the goal of Israeli violence because supreme sovereignty over the entire land of historic Palestine is yet to be definitively secured for Israel. Palestinian resistance still stands in its way.

Israeli violence

In my scholarly work, I have argued that it is irrelevant whether Israeli police, soldiers, settlers, or politicians believe that they are simply using violence to "contain a riot", "establish law and order," "protect Israeli civilians," "maintain the status quo of the holy sites," and so on.

To achieve these proclaimed intentions and motivations, it is not necessary to attack a woman from behind with a police baton as she films the desecration of the Muslim holy sites; violently push and kick elderly men as if they're cattle; arrest children and surround one lonesome child with a dozen armed Israeli police as if he is an evil supervillain; break the stained glass windows and damage centuries-old walls in Al-Aqsa Mosque; fire tear gas, stun grenades, and rubber-coated steel bullets at worshippers inside the Mosque; prevent ambulances from reaching the approximately 158 injured; attack medical staff who were helping the injured inside the compound; assault a photojournalist who is documenting Israeli actions; arrest at least 450 Palestinians and then proceed to violently assault their relatives who went to wait for them outside of Israeli jails, and the list goes on and on.

These acts of violence are not about security, law and order, or maintaining the status quo. They are revelatory of the Israeli drive to assert supreme Israeli sovereignty over Palestine and Palestinians. The message of these acts of violence is this: Israel has the final and last judgement on the life and death of Palestinians, and there are no serious consequences for Israelis and no tangible recourse for Palestinians once those judgments are decided, sometimes at a whim.

This aspiration towards supreme power is prevalent throughout Israeli politics and society and has been for some time. It was almost a year ago that Israel launched a devastating military onslaught on the Gaza Strip in the wake of similar events that are happening today: expulsions of Palestinians from their homes and the desecration of Muslim places of worship. From May 10 to May 21, 2021, an 256 Palestinians were killed, including 66 children, and nearly 2,000 Palestinians were injured, including more than 600 children, 400 women, and 1,000 men. The infrastructural damage was severe: Some 2,000 housing units were either destroyed or severely damaged; 15,000 housing units suffered some damage; multiple water and sanitation facilities and infrastructure were damaged (leaving approximately 800,000 people without regular access to safe water), 58 education facilities, nine hospitals and nineteen primary healthcare centres all suffered some damage. There was an estimated $89m worth of damage to the energy, agricultural, and industrial sectors. Again, these acts of violence are clearly disproportionate and not necessary for the proclaimed goal of "Israeli security." They arise out of and are meant to cement and achieve total and absolute Israeli Jewish sovereign power over the Palestinians.

This drive towards supreme sovereignty explains why all this destruction in just 11 days, piled as it is on top of the long continuum of Israeli violence, did not satisfy the majority of the Israeli public. When the ceasefire came into effect, a poll published on Israel's Channel 12 "indicated that 72 percent of Israelis thought the air campaign in Gaza should continue, whereas 24 percent said Israel should agree to a cease-fire." Israelis communicated a range of expressions and statements, from the indifferent to the euphoric, for their desire to continue unleashing Israel's war machine. Many videos appeared on social media of Israeli civilians dancing and celebrating the onslaught on Gaza and the violence against Palestinians everywhere, chanting "Death to Arabs," and "May your village burn down," and showing a general disregard for the death and destruction of the Palestinians as a people.

When this dehumanisation of Palestinians appears in mainstream media and public discourse within Israeli and Euro-American spaces, it is framed in a normalising manner. For example, last year in a New York Times report, the desire for the majority of Israelis to continue the onslaught on Gaza is framed as Israelis simply wanting a "final conclusion" to "a very unpleasant situation", and a "decisive victory against Hamas."

Even when Israelis expressed genocidal wishes against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, when an Israeli person states, "the government should wipe out Gaza once and for all," even in that situation, the CBC's flagship nightly news programme, The National, found a way to cleanse and make presentable these expressions of a genocidal and eliminatory drive. In their feeble narratives, the New York Times presented Israeli quotes as frustrated Israelis who just want peace and quiet; the CBC framed the genocidal statement as scared Israelis who want security and are understandably angry. Both narratives offer nothing in the way of revealing the reality of violence, but rather themselves participate in the concealment of that reality. These orientalist, racialised, and violent narratives are part of the operation of settler-colonial violence, and as such, cannot reveal it.

That's where we are still today in the same place we have been for decades: mainstream and dominant international discourse focuses on distractions and distorted pictures of what is happening to Palestinians, while Israel continues to unleash violence that is caused by and geared towards the goal of supreme sovereignty.

This is a form of sovereignty that has nothing to do with the complex and rich religion of Judaism and the Jewish tradition. Rather, following the logic of colonial modernity, this form of sovereignty, akin to other Euro-American (neo)colonial and settler-colonial states such as the United States, seeks to establish a kind of power that diverse cultures and religions across human history have reserved only for the gods: a kind of power that allows an entity to act with impunity because it is the first and last judge.

This latest attack on the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound has little to nothing to do with a supposed Muslim-Jewish clash and has much more to do with a form of sovereignty that attempts to secure and establish a god-like power for a particular settler-colonial nationality. So long as the Israeli project is driven by the aspiration towards supreme power and sovereignty over Palestinians and Palestine, then we will be writing about Israeli attacks on Palestinian worshippers for years to come. Nothing short of a foundational transformation in the logic and structures of colonial modernity will prevent what is, at this moment, an inevitable outcome: more death and destruction for Palestinians and Palestine.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Mark Muhannad Ayyash.

The Azovstal Steel and Iron Works facility operated by Metinvest Group, in Mariupol, Ukraine, on Saturday, Jan. 15, 2022.

Photo: Christopher Occhicone/Bloomberg via Getty Images

A worker monitors the zinc galvanized steel on the rolling plant, that will in future harness hydrogen instead of coal, on the production line at the Salzgitter AG steel plant in Salzgitter, Germany, on Monday, July 13, 2020.

Photo: Rolf Schulten/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Major U.S. steel producers have no plans to invest in clean steel production, nor do they have an incentive to in the current high-price and high-profit environment.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Justin Mikulka.

An illustration of a duel entitled “False Courage” by artist Thomas Rowlandson, published on Nov. 22, 1788.

Photo: Heritage Images via Getty Images

One of the great successes of the movement against dueling and honor culture was to remove speech from the terrain of violence.

Will Smith slaps Chris Rock onstage during the show at the 94th Academy Awards at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles on March 27, 2022.

Photo: Myung Chun/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Ryan Grim.

Image by Michal Lis.

Recently I wrote about the faulty logic of the pro-nuke Left; those among us that support nuclear power as an answer to climate change. But, as I argued, supporting atomic technology will end up doing more harm than good. Then came Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine which has also demonstrated that the threat of nuclear war is not solely dependent on the detonation of atomic weapons, providing one more reason nuclear power should be opposed and not embraced.

As Russia’s invasion so clearly demonstrated, the threat of nuclear war is not solely dependent on the detonation of atomic weapons. Nuclear power plants, when located in contested regions or on active battlefields, also pose a grave risk. If hit by artillery or missile fire, an unforeseen tragedy could quickly unfold. One such frightful scenario nearly occurred as Russian forces shelled the Zaporizhzhia power plant in the southern Ukrainian city of Enerhodar in late February 2022. As blasts occurred around the facility, a fire erupted in a nearby building and was later extinguished. Reports claimed no radioactivity was released during the blaze, but given the nature of the conflict, no independent investigation was conducted to ensure its safety.

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The post One More Reason to Oppose Nuclear Technology appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Joshua Frank.