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Author: Kenny Stancil

  • Florida GOP Denounced for Passing Bill to ‘Intimidate’ Voters

    Civil rights advocates on Friday condemned the Republican-led Florida Legislature for passing another voter suppression bill that far-right Gov. Ron DeSantis, a likely GOP presidential candidate for 2024, is expected to sign into law.

    The Florida House passed Senate Bill 4B by a margin of 77-33 on Friday, two days after state senators approved the bill in a 27-12 party-line vote. The legislation seeks to expand the authority of the Office of Statewide Prosecution (OSP) to pursue charges for alleged election-related crimes. The OSP reports to Republican Attorney General Ashley Moody, a close ally of DeSantis.

    A coalition of voting rights groups—including NAACP Florida, ACLU of Florida, Common Cause Florida, and the Brennan Center for Justice—submitted joint testimony opposing S.B. 4B on Thursday. In a joint statement issued after its passage on Friday, the coalition warned that the legislation “risks impacting people with past convictions who will continue to be arrested and prosecuted in the criminal legal system for honest mistakes about their voter eligibility.”

    “The office made arrests, claimed jurisdiction, and is now seeking to change the law after the courts said no.”

    “This proposal is a solution in search of a problem,” the coalition said. “There is no legitimate need to waste taxpayer dollars and state resources by expanding the Office of Statewide Prosecution for these purposes. This bill is being heard and swiftly passed only because the governor desires to expand his prosecutorial authority over Floridians who are lawfully trying to exercise their right to vote.”

    S.B. 4B comes as DeSantis faces rebuke for using Florida’s newly established Office of Election Crimes and Security to arrest 20 formerly incarcerated individuals who believed they were eligible to vote—thanks to Amendment 4, a voter-approved 2018 referendum re-enfranchising 1.4 million people with past felony convictions—for alleged “voter fraud” last year.

    Most of the people who were arrested for improperly casting ballots had been approved by the Florida Department of Elections, which mailed them voter registration cards prior to the 2020 election. Despite this, all of them have been slapped with felony charges carrying prison terms of up to five years and fines of up to $5,000. The arrests, unsurprisingly, have reportedly scared away many potential voters.

    “While one of the cases has been settled, judges have in many cases dismissed charges and some local state attorneys have been reluctant to pursue charges,” Florida Politics reported Friday. “Democrats have questioned if the proposed legislation will allow the statewide prosecutor to take over cases that local state attorneys won’t try.”

    Florida Rep. Anna Eskamani (D-47) alluded to body cam footage showing that many of those arrested—and some of the police officers—were confused about the nature of the charges.

    “We had folks in Orange County that, after that amendment passed, they called the Supervisor of Elections, they called the Division of Elections, and were told they could vote,” she told Florida Politics. “There’s a reason why these cases are being tossed out.”

    According to the news outlet, many critics of S.B. 4B view it as “an intimidation tactic to discourage many former felons from registering regardless, even if they are now eligible to do so.”

    Florida Rep. Yvonne Hinson (D-20) said that after “citizens served their time, they should be able to have their civil rights restored.” She called the bill “an intentional act by the Legislature to manipulate the judicial process to fit a political position.”

    “This bill will create more confusion and disenfranchise eligible voters as part of what’s been a continued effort to intimidate voters—especially returning citizens—from participating in our democracy.”

    The coalition of voting rights groups opposed to S.B. 4B shared the Democratic lawmakers’ assessments.

    By increasing the OSP’s power, this legislation “would remove cases from local prosecutors and prosecute minor occurrences of mistaken voters rather than having to prove a widespread voter conspiracy,” the groups lamented. “It would also seek to circumvent three Florida courts’ decisions which have rejected the OSP’s argument for more expansive jurisdiction.”

    “The office made arrests, claimed jurisdiction, and is now seeking to change the law after the courts said no,” the coalition continued. “We have grave concerns about the potential for this office targeting returning citizens for honest mistakes about their eligibility to vote in an effort to intimidate communities of color.”

    “All voters should have equal, meaningful, and non-burdensome access to the ballot box,” said the coalition. “To date, Florida has failed to effectively and efficiently verify people’s eligibility under the current system, and the state’s failure has disproportionately harmed Black Floridians.”

    According to the rights advocates, the state has refused for years “to provide sufficient guidance to those looking to determine whether they can vote. At the same time, government officials have allowed and, in some instances, outright encouraged people with past felony convictions to register to vote without verifying their eligibility to do so.”

    “This bill will create more confusion and disenfranchise eligible voters as part of what’s been a continued effort to intimidate voters—especially returning citizens—from participating in our democracy,” the groups warned. “Rather than trying to give unchecked power to prosecutors who report to the governor and his political appointees, state officials should instead find ways to fix the complex and unnavigable system for returning citizens to determine their eligibility and invest resources to solve current known problems.”

  • As Temps Soar, State AGs Urge OSHA to Implement Heat Protections for Worker Safety

    Attorneys general from seven U.S. states on Thursday called for swift federal action to shield workers nationwide from the deadly effects of extreme heat, which is being made worse by the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis.

    In a petition to the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the state AGs of California, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania urged the agency to issue an emergency temporary standard (ETS) to protect workers who are exposed to dangerously high temperatures by May 1, before the start of summer.

    Specifically, the AGs called on OSHA to issue an ETS that “requires employers to take targeted steps to prevent harm to their workers, such as providing ample water, rest breaks, and access to cool or shaded areas,” any time “the heat index reaches 80°F—a temperature associated with increased rates of serious heat-related illnesses.”

    “Extreme workplace heat poses a grave danger to the health and safety of tens of millions of outdoor and indoor workers in our states and across the nation,” the AGs wrote. “Because climate change is spurring longer, more intense, and more frequent heatwaves, workers are increasingly exposed to dangerous levels of heat and humidity, along with the secondary effects of extreme heat, such as poor air quality.”

    “Exposure to extreme heat can cause a range of acute and chronic heat-related illnesses, and extreme heat is responsible for dozens of workplace deaths each year, a number that is likely significantly undercounted,” they continued. “Although nearly all outdoor and many indoor workers are susceptible to occupational heat illness, workers in certain industries—including agriculture, construction, postal and delivery services, warehousing, and food services—are particularly vulnerable to heat stress due to the combined effects of their work environment, the physical nature of their work, and prevailing socioeconomic factors.”

    Democratic California AG Rob Bonta said in a statement that “we have the tools to address this challenge and we must use them.”

    “We have the tools to address this challenge and we must use them.”

    While California, Oregon, and Washington have already identified extreme heat as an occupational hazard and adopted lifesaving emergency standards accordingly, the AGs stressed in their petition that federal heat protections are necessary because “in 27 states and territories, OSHA is the only entity authorized to issue workplace health and safety standards that cover both public and private sector workers.”

    Moreover, the officials pointed out, OSHA’s existing attempts to mitigate workplace heat hazards are inadequate.

    “As OSHA has acknowledged, enforcement actions under the General Duty Clause [of the Occupational Safety and Health Act] are almost always unsuccessful,” the AGs wrote, “because without a regulatory standard for heat, it is difficult for the agency to prove in an enforcement proceeding that working in extreme heat is hazardous.”

    While the AGs strongly support OSHA’s recent move to initiate rulemaking for a permanent heat standard, they noted that this process “is expected to take several years, leaving millions of outdoor and indoor workers exposed to dangerous levels of heat in the interim.”

    In the meantime, an ETS “would fill this regulatory void during the hottest months of the year when workers are most likely to experience extreme workplace heat exacerbated by climate change,” the AGs observed.

    Last June, Public Citizen published a report detailing how exposure to extreme heat on the job leads to at least 170,000 injuries and up to 2,000 deaths each year in the U.S. alone. The progressive advocacy group implored OSHA to act immediately to protect workers from record-breaking temperatures, estimating that at least 50,000 injuries could be avoided annually as a result.

    On Thursday, Juley Fulcher, a worker health and safety advocate at Public Citizen and lead author of the report, reiterated the group’s demand for OSHA to promulgate an ETS to prevent more workers from succumbing to heat-related illnesses.

    “Millions of essential workers across the country, working both indoors and outdoors, risk their health and lives working in excessive heat conditions to keep our economy running,” said Fulcher. “As OSHA navigates the extensive procedures and bureaucratic hurdles to create a final heat standard, the danger to workers continues unabated.”

    “Too many American workers have suffered from occupational heat stress. And climate change continues to make an already-urgent crisis even more dangerous,” she added. “As our summers grow hotter and more deadly, OSHA must heed the call of these seven AGs and issue an emergency heat standard to protect workers.”

  • Sanders, Senate Dems Invite Schultz to Testify About Starbucks’ Labor Law Violations



    Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont on Tuesday invited Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz to testify about the coffee giant’s “lack of compliance with federal labor laws.”

    All 10 Democratic members of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) joined Sanders, who chairs the panel, in inviting Schultz to a hearing scheduled for March 9.

    The letter—signed by Sanders and Sens. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Bob Casey (D-Pa.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), and Ed Markey (D-Mass.)—gives Schultz until February 14 to confirm his attendance at the hearing.

    “We greatly appreciate your assistance to the HELP Committee,” the lawmakers told Schultz, whose wealth increased by $800 million during the pandemic to nearly $4 billion.

    Since December 2021, when baristas in Buffalo made history by forming the first unionized Starbucks in the United States, workers at nearly 280 of the coffee chain’s locations nationwide have voted to unionize. Organizers have won more than 80% of their campaigns despite the company’s unlawful intimidation and retaliation tactics.

    In response to mounting demands for better wages, benefits, and conditions, “the $122 billion-dollar corporation has fought their workers every step of the way, including refusing to bargain a first contract in good faith, delay tactics, and a significant escalation in union-busting,” Sanders’ office noted in a statement.

    “There have been 500 unfair labor practice cases filed against Starbucks and its affiliates,” the statement continued. “The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has issued 75 complaints in response to those charges and has sought emergency preliminary injunctive relief in five cases in the federal courts.”

    “Sanders has sent three letters to Schultz in the last year calling on the CEO to end the egregious union-busting campaign the company has deployed against its own workers,” the Vermont Independent’s office added. “Schultz has not yet responded to or provided the documents requested in the most recent letter Sanders sent in January 2023.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • Google Targets Low-Income People With Ads for ‘Fake Abortion Clinics’: Study



    Research published Monday shows that Google is targeting lower-income users with advertisements for so-called crisis pregnancy centers, anti-choice organizations known to steer people away from accessing abortion care.

    As the Tech Transparency Project (TTP), which conducted the analysis, explained: “Crisis pregnancy centers—which critics have dubbed ‘fake abortion clinics‘—appear to offer medical services but instead push an anti-abortion message, providing free ultrasounds and baby supplies with the aim of persuading women to carry unwanted pregnancies to term. Abortion rights advocates accuse them of using deceptive tactics to get women in the door—and targeting their advertising at low-income women and women of color in urban areas.”

    For its investigation, TTP established Google accounts for test users in Phoenix, Arizona; Atlanta, Georgia; and Miami, Florida. The users were characterized as 21-year-old women belonging to three different household income groups as defined by Google: average- or lower-income, moderately high-income, and high-income. While logged into each account, researchers entered 15 abortion-related search terms, including “Abortion clinic near me” and “I want an abortion,” and then recorded ads that appeared on the first five pages of results. Researchers used a Google Chrome browser with no previous history, and they used virtual private networks to make it look like the users were conducting searches from their respective cities.

    TTP found that Google showed ads for crisis pregnancy centers to women on the lower end of the income scale at a higher rate than their wealthier counterparts in two of the three cities. In Phoenix, average- or lower-income women saw 56% of ads come from crisis pregnancy centers, higher than what moderately high-income women (41%) and high-income women (7%) saw. In Atlanta, 42% of the ads targeted at average- or lower-income women came from crisis pregnancy centers, more than Google showed to moderately high-income women (18%) and high-income women (29%).

    “By pointing low-income women to [crisis pregnancy centers] more frequently than higher-income women in states with restrictive laws, Google may delay these women from finding an actual abortion clinic to get a legal and safe abortion,” TTP director Katie Paul told The Guardian on Tuesday.

    “The time window is critical in some of these states,” said Paul.

    Abortion is banned after 15 weeks of pregnancy in Arizona and Florida. In Georgia, abortion is banned after six weeks, before many people know they are pregnant.

    Because it can cost thousands of dollars in lost wages, child care, transportation, and lodging, lower-income people are less likely to be able to travel for abortion care.

    Women on the lower end of the income scale did not receive ads for crisis pregnancy centers at the highest rate in every city in TTP’s study. In Miami, researchers observed an inverse pattern: high-income women saw a larger share of ads from anti-abortion organizations (39%) than moderately high-income women (10%) and average- or lower-income women (15%).

    “It’s not clear why Miami diverged from the other cities, but one possibility is that crisis pregnancy centers, which often seek to delay women’s abortion decisions until they are past the legal window for the procedure, are more actively targeting lower-income women in states like Arizona and Georgia, which have more restrictive abortion laws than Florida,” TTP hypothesized. Although Republican lawmakers in Arizona and Florida have both prohibited abortion after 15 weeks, Arizona’s ban comes with heightened restrictions.

    Still, even if high-income women in Miami received more crisis pregnancy center ads on the top five pages of search results, that doesn’t mean those are the ones they saw first. Ad rank is significant, and according to TTP, Google showed ads for anti-abortion organizations “higher up in the search results for lower-income women than it did for women of other income levels,” as shown below.

    In Miami, the first ad shown to an average- or lower-income Google user searching for \u2018Abortion clinic near me' is for a crisis pregnancy center. In Miami, the first ad shown to an average- or lower-income Google user searching for ‘Abortion clinic near me’ is for a crisis pregnancy center.(Photo: Tech Transparency Project)

    In Miami, the first three ads shown to a moderately high-income Google user searching for \u2018Abortion clinic near me' are for abortion providers. In Miami, the first three ads shown to a moderately high-income Google user searching for ‘Abortion clinic near me’ are for abortion providers.(Photo: Tech Transparency Project)

    In Miami, the first ad shown to a high-income Google user searching for \u2018Abortion clinic near me' is for an abortion provider. In Miami, the first ad shown to a high-income Google user searching for ‘Abortion clinic near me’ is for an abortion provider.(Photo: Tech Transparency Project)

    The search terms used are also important. Several queries in TTP’s experiment yielded only crisis pregnancy center ads for lower-income women.

    “Although companies buying ads with Google can selectively target the groups they want to reach–including by income–Paul adds that many users won’t be aware they are being targeted by Google in this way,” The Guardian reported.

    “Google has a large share of influence, particularly in the United States when people are trying to search for authoritative information,” Paul explained. “People generally tend to consider Google’s search engine as an equalizer. They think the results they get are the results that everyone’s going to get. But that’s just not the case.”

    “Lower-income women are being targeted,” she said, “and they’re the ones that are going to suffer the most under these policies.”

    As TTP pointed out: “Google is helping these centers reach their intended audience. Abortion rights groups and academic studies have noted that crisis pregnancy centers typically target women of lower socioeconomic classes, in part by advertising free services on public transportation and in bus shelters.”

    Crisis pregnancy centers have sought to expand their reach since the U.S. Supreme Court’s far-right majority overturned Roe v. Wade last summer.

    These facilities have “been known to employ a number of shady tactics to convince women seeking an abortion to keep their pregnancies,” The Guardian noted. “Those include posing as abortion clinics online though they do not offer abortion care, refusing pregnancy tests for women who say they intend to have an abortion, and touting widely disputed research about abortion care to patients. Crisis centers, which go largely unregulated despite offering medical services, have been known to target low-income women precisely because they find it harder to travel out of state for abortion care.”

    Previous reports have shown that Google is increasingly aiding these anti-abortion organizations, particularly in the GOP-led states that eliminated reproductive freedom as soon as the constitutional right to abortion was revoked.

    TTP’s new findings “add to growing questions about Google’s handling of crisis pregnancy centers,” the group wrote. “Bloomberg News has reported that Google Maps routinely misdirected users searching for abortion clinics to crisis pregnancy centers and that Google often failed to affix a warning, as promised, to crisis pregnancy center ads indicating they do not provide abortions. (In response to the first report, Google pledged to clearly label U.S. facilities that provide abortions in Google Maps and search results.)”

    “Last fall, TTP also found that Google frequently served ads for crisis pregnancy centers that falsely suggest they offer abortions, violating the platform’s policy against advertising that misleads users,” the group noted.

    During its new investigation, “TTP found similar omissions in multiple ads.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • Family of Forest Defender Killed by Police Demands Answers



    Family members of climate activist Manuel Esteban Paez Terán are demanding answers regarding the January 18 police killing of their 26-year-old relative, commonly known as “Tortuguita.”

    At a press conference held Monday morning outside the DeKalb County courthouse in suburban Atlanta, family members and lawyers discussed the results of a private autopsy and demanded access to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s (GBI) full record of events amid its ongoing probe.

    According to the private autopsy, multiple officers from a joint task force shot Tortuguita at least 13 times during a raid on an encampment in the Weelaunee Forest. Tortuguita was part of a collective that occupied the forest in an attempt to prevent the construction of a $90 million, 85-acre police and fire training facility popularly known as Cop City.

    The GBI alleges that Tortuguita fired a weapon before officers killed him. The GBI claims that it has traced the bullet that wounded a state trooper to a handgun found at the scene and has reportedly provided documents showing Terán purchased the firearm in 2020. However, law enforcement officials continue to evade basic questions about the fatal shooting.

    “Manny was a kind person who helped anyone who needed it,” Tortuguita’s mother, Belkis Terán, said in a statement shared ahead of the press conference. “He was a pacifist. They say he shot a police officer. I do not believe it.”

    “I do not understand why they will not even privately explain to us what happened to our child,” she added.

    Civil rights attorney Jeff Filipovits lamented that “the GBI has selectively released information about Manny’s death.”

    “They claim Manny failed to follow orders,” said Filipovits. “What orders? The GBI has not talked about the fact that Manny faced a firing squad, when those shots were fired, or who fired them.”

    “Any evidence, even if it is only an audio recording, will help the family piece together what happened on the morning of January 18. This information is critical, and it is being withheld.”

    The GBI has stated publicly that body camera footage of the shooting does not exist. However, the bureau has not yet stated whether there is any audio or video from other sources, such as drones or helicopters that were being used at the time.

    Tortuguita’s family has requested that the GBI release whatever audio or video recordings of the shooting exist or any other information that could help illuminate what occurred.

    “Any evidence, even if it is only an audio recording, will help the family piece together what happened on the morning of January 18,” said Brian Spears, a civil rights attorney with nearly five decades of experience litigating police shootings. “This information is critical, and it is being withheld.”

    While the family searches for answers, Tortuguita’s killing “escalates concerns related to the construction of a police training center and the government’s willingness to deem activists as terrorists,” Fossil Free Media noted. “The power used against these activists will soon be used against other protesters.”

    Several Weelaunee Forest defenders were arrested and charged—under a 2017 Georgia law that expanded the definition of “domestic terrorism” to include certain property crimes—during mid-December raids on their encampment.

    More forest defenders were detained on the same charges on January 18, the day police fatally shot Tortuguita—the first or possibly second time that police have killed an environmental activist in modern U.S. history, according to experts. Additional activists are also facing prosecution as a result of Republican Gov. Brian Kemp’s crackdown on demonstrations held since Tortuguita’s killing.

    According to Grist:

    Over the course of December and January, 19 opponents of the police training center have been charged with felonies under Georgia’s rarely used 2017 domestic terrorism law. But Grist‘s review of 20 arrest warrants shows that none of those arrested and slapped with terrorism charges are accused of seriously injuring anyone. Nine are alleged to have committed no specific illegal actions beyond misdemeanor trespassing. Instead, their mere association with a group committed to defending the forest appears to be the foundation for declaring them terrorists. Officials have underlined that an investigation is ongoing, and charges could yet be added or removed.

    Atlanta Police Department Assistant Chief Carven Tyus was recently quoted as saying, “Protests by non-locals are inherently terrorism,” according to Fossil Free Media. Moreover, Tyus has admitted in private meetings with his advisory council: “Can we prove they did it? No. Do we know they did it? Yes.”

    Fossil Free Media noted that “the city of Atlanta has also admitted to using Georgia’s hands-free driving law as a pretext to arrest at least one person for filming officers at Cop City.”

    Gerry Weber of the Southern Center for Human Rights said that “police who behave legally have no reason to fear being filmed and should welcome it.”

    “Law enforcement has a vested interest in this training center that demands scrupulous transparency and impartiality,” said Weber. “Unfortunately, we are getting the exact opposite.”

    “Cop City is something that no one in the community asked for, and survey after survey shows that the majority of Atlanta residents are opposed. The mayor continues to run roughshod over the desires of the community.”

    While Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens and DeKalb County CEO Michael Thurmond announced what they called a “compromise” for Cop City last week, opposition to the project remains strong among locals.

    “Cop City is something that no one in the community asked for, and survey after survey shows that the majority of Atlanta residents are opposed,” Kamau Franklin from Community Movement Builders, one of the organizations fighting against Cop City. “The mayor continues to run roughshod over the desires of the community.”

    The Atlanta City Council gave the Atlanta Police Foundation, a private organization, permission to build Cop City in 2021, four years after the Atlanta City Planning Department recommended that the Weelaunee Forest—deemed one of four “city lungs”—be turned into a massive urban park.

    A coalition of more than 1,300 progressive advocacy groups published a letter last week calling for an independent investigation into the killing of Tortuguita. The groups also demanded the resignation of Dickens, a Democrat who they said parroted “the rhetoric of extreme right-wing Gov. Brian Kemp” when he condemned protesters rather than police officers after the shooting.

    The coalition pointed out that Dickens and the Atlanta City Council have the authority to terminate the land lease for Cop City and implored local policymakers to do so immediately.

    Ikiya Collective, a signatory of the letter, noted that the training set to take place at Cop City “will impact organizing across the country” as police are taught how to repress popular uprisings.

    “This is a national issue,” said the collective. “Climate justice and police brutality are interconnected, which is why we are joining the Stop Cop City calls to action with the frontline communities in Atlanta.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • UN Chief Unleashes on Fossil Fuel Giants: ‘Your Core Product Is Our Core Problem’



    United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres made clear Monday that securing a livable planet depends on stopping the “bottomless greed of the fossil fuel industry and its enablers.”

    In a speech to the General Assembly, Guterres called for an end to “the merciless, relentless, senseless war on nature” that “is putting our world at immediate risk of hurtling past the 1.5°C temperature increase limit and now still moving towards a deadly 2.8°C.”

    2023 must be “a year of reckoning,” the U.N. chief said as he outlined his priorities for the months ahead. “It must be a year of game-changing climate action. We need disruption to end the destruction. No more baby steps. No more excuses. No more greenwashing.”

    Scientists have warned repeatedly that scaling up the extraction and burning of coal, oil, and gas is incompatible with averting the most catastrophic consequences of the climate emergency. Nevertheless, hundreds of corporations—bolstered by trillions of dollars in annual public subsidies—are still planning to ramp up planet-heating pollution in the years ahead, prioritizing profits over the lives of those who will be harmed by the ensuing chaos.

    “I have a special message for fossil fuel producers and their enablers scrambling to expand production and raking in monster profits: If you cannot set a credible course for net-zero, with 2025 and 2030 targets covering all your operations, you should not be in business,” said Guterres. “Your core product is our core problem.”

    “We need a renewables revolution, not a self-destructive fossil fuel resurgence,” he added.

    In order to halve global greenhouse gas emissions this decade, the U.N. chief said, the world needs “far more ambitious action to cut carbon pollution by speeding up the shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy—especially in G20 countries—and de-carbonizing highest emitting industrial sectors—steel, cement, shipping, and aviation.

    In addition, he continued, the world needs “a Climate Solidarity Pact in which all big emitters make an extra effort to cut emissions, and wealthier countries mobilize financial and technical resources to support emerging economies in a common effort to keep 1.5°C alive.”

    “We need a renewables revolution, not a self-destructive fossil fuel resurgence.”

    “Climate action is impossible without adequate finance,” Guterres noted. “Developed countries know what they must do: At minimum, deliver on commitments made at the latest COP. Make good on the $100 billion promise to developing countries. Finish the job and deliver on the Loss and Damage Fund agreed in Sharm El-Sheikh. Double adaptation funding. Replenish the Green Climate Fund by COP28. Advance plans for early warning systems to protect every person on earth within five years. And stop subsidizing fossil fuels and pivot investments to renewables.”

    Like the 26 annual U.N. climate meetings that preceded it, COP27 ended last November with no commitment to a swift and just global phase-out of coal, oil, and gas.

    In an effort to avoid a repeat performance at COP28 in the United Arab Emirates this December, Guterres intends to convene a “Climate Ambition Summit” in September.

    “The invitation is open to any leader—in government, business, or civil society,” Guterres said Monday. “But it comes with a condition: Show us accelerated action in this decade and renewed ambitious net-zero plans—or please don’t show up.”

    “COP28 in December will set the stage for the first-ever Global Stocktake—a collective moment of truth—to assess where we are, and where we need to go in the next five years to reach the Paris goals,” he continued.

    Guterres added that “humanity is taking a sledgehammer to our world’s rich biodiversity—with brutal and even irreversible consequences for people and planet. Our ocean is choked by pollution, plastics, and chemicals. And vampiric overconsumption is draining the lifeblood of our planet—water.”

    In 2023, the world “must also bring the Global Biodiversity Framework to life and establish a clear pathway to mobilize sufficient resources,” said the U.N. chief. “And governments must develop concrete plans to repurpose subsidies that are harming nature into incentives for conservation and sustainability.”

    “Climate action is the 21st century’s greatest opportunity to drive forward all the Sustainable Development Goals,” Guterres stressed. “A clean, healthy, and sustainable environment is a right we must make real for all.”

    Guterres’ speech was not limited to the climate and biodiversity crises. He also emphasized the need for a “course correction” on devastating wars and raging inequality, calling for a new global economic architecture that foregrounds the needs of the poor instead of allowing the richest 1% to capture nearly half of all newly created wealth.

    “This is not a time for tinkering,” said the U.N. chief. “It is a time for transformation.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • Spread of Bird Flu to Mammals Could Put Humans in Danger, Scientists Warn



    As a deadly strain of avian influenza continues to decimate bird populations around the world and spread among other animals, some scientists are warning that mammal-to-mammal transmission has emerged as a real possibility with potentially catastrophic consequences for humans.

    Over the past year, officials in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada have detected cases of the highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu in a variety of species, including bears, foxes, otters, raccoons, and skunks. Last month, a cat suffered serious neurological symptoms from a late 2022 infection, according to French officials who said that the virus showed genetic characteristics consistent with adaptation to mammals.

    Most of these infections are likely the result of mammals eating infected birds, according to Jürgen Richt, director of the Center on Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases at Kansas State University.

    More alarming, multiple researchers argue, was the large outbreak of H5N1 on a Spanish mink farm last October, which could mark the first known instance of mammal-to-mammal transmission.

    “Farmworkers began noticing a spike in deaths among the animals, with sick minks experiencing an array of dire symptoms like loss of appetite, excessive saliva, bloody snouts, tremors, and a lack of muscle control,” CBC News reported Thursday. “Eventually, the entire population of minks was either killed or culled—more than 50,000 animals in total.”

    “A virus which has evolved on a mink farm and subsequently infects farmworkers exposed to infected animals is a highly plausible route for the emergence of a virus capable of human-to-human transmission to emerge.”

    A study published two weeks ago in Eurosurveillance, a peer-reviewed journal of epidemiological research, described the outbreak and its public health implications. Notably, the authors wrote that their findings “indicate that an onward transmission of the virus to other minks may have taken place in the affected farm.”

    As CBC News noted, “That’s a major shift, after only sporadic cases among humans and other mammals over the last decade.”

    Michelle Wille, a University of Sydney researcher who focuses on the dynamics of wild bird viruses, told the Canadian outlet that “this outbreak signals the very real potential for the emergence of mammal-to-mammal transmission.”

    It’s just one farm and none of the workers—all of whom wore personal protective equipment—were infected. However, Dr. Isaac Bogoch, a Toronto-based infectious disease specialist, warned Thursday that if the virus mutates in a way that enables it to become increasingly transmissible between mammals, including humans, “it could have deadly consequences.”

    “This is an infection that has epidemic and pandemic potential,” Bogoch told CBC News. “I don’t know if people recognize how big a deal this is.”

    A “mass mortality event” involving roughly 2,500 endangered seals found off the coast of Russia’s Caspian Sea last month has also raised alarm.

    According to Phys.org:

    A researcher at Russia’s Dagestan State University, Alimurad Gadzhiyev, said last week that early samples from the seals “tested positive for bird flu,” adding that they were still studying whether the virus caused the die-off.

    Peacock warned there have been mixed reports from Russia about the seals, which could have contracted the virus by eating infected seabirds.

    But if the seals did give bird flu to each other it “would be yet another very concerning development,” he added.

    “The mink outbreaks, the increased number of infections of scavenger mammals, and the potential seal outbreak would all point to this virus having the potential to cause a pandemic” in humans, he said.

    Among birds, the mortality rate of H5N1 can approach 100%, ravaging wild bird populations and poultry farms alike. The World Organization for Animal Health told BBC News on Thursday that it has recorded almost 42 million cases of H5N1 in wild and domestic birds since the current outbreak started in October 2021. Another 193 million domestic birds have been culled in an attempt to curb transmission.

    The highly pathogenic strain of avian flu also frequently causes death in other mammals, including humans. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), nearly 870 cases of H5N1 were reported in humans from 2003 to 2022 and they resulted in at least 457 deaths—a fatality rate that exceeds 50%.

    The virus has “not acquired the ability for sustained transmission among humans,” the WHO stated last month. “Thus the likelihood of human-to-human spread is low.”

    However, a December report from the U.K. Health Security Agency warned that the “rapid and consistent acquisition of the mutation in mammals may imply this virus has a propensity to cause zoonotic infections,” meaning that it could jump to humans.

    Dr. Wenqing Zhang, head of the WHO’s global influenza program, told BBC News on Thursday that the threat posed by the virus spilling over “is very concerning and the risk has been increasing over the years as reflected in the number of outbreaks in animals as well as a number of infections in humans.”

    “We’re closely related to minks and ferrets, in terms of influenza risks… If it’s propagating to minks, and killing minks, it’s worrisome to us.”

    As CBC News reported this week: “Most human infections also appeared to involve people having direct contact with infected birds. Real-world mink-to-mink transmission now firmly suggests H5N1 is now ‘poised to emerge in mammals,’ Wille said—and while the outbreak in Spain may be the first reported instance of mammalian spread, it may not be the last.”

    Wille warned that “a virus which has evolved on a mink farm and subsequently infects farmworkers exposed to infected animals is a highly plausible route for the emergence of a virus capable of human-to-human transmission to emerge.”

    Louise Moncla, an assistant professor of pathobiology at the University of Pennsylvania, told the outlet that viruses often adapt to new host species through an “intermediary host.”

    “And so what’s concerning about this is that this is exactly the kind of scenario you would expect to see that could lead to this type of adaptation, that could allow these viruses to replicate better in other mammals—like us,” Moncla explained.

    The alarm bells sounded this week echo long-standing warnings about the growing prospects of a devastating bird flu pandemic.

    In his 2005 book, The Monster at Our Door, the late historian Mike Davis wrote that “the essence of the avian flu threat… is that a mutant influenza of nightmarish virulence—evolved and now entrenched in ecological niches recently created by global agro-capitalism—is searching for the new gene or two that will enable it to travel at pandemic velocity through a densely urbanized and mostly poor humanity.”

    Alluding to the “constantly evolving nature of influenza viruses,” the WHO recently stressed “the importance of global surveillance to detect and monitor virological, epidemiological, and clinical changes associated with emerging or circulating influenza viruses that may affect human (or animal) health, and timely virus-sharing for risk assessment.”

    To avert a cataclysmic bird flu pandemic, scientists have also emphasized the need to ramp up H5N1 vaccine production, with Wille pointing out that “a very aggressive and successful poultry vaccination campaign ultimately stopped all human cases” of the H7N9 strain of the virus in the early 2010s.

    Others have also criticized the global fur farming industry, citing the spread of bird flu as well the coronavirus among cruelly confined minks.

    “We’re closely related to minks and ferrets, in terms of influenza risks,” Dr. Jan Hajek, an infectious diseases physician at Vancouver General Hospital, told CBC News. “If it’s propagating to minks, and killing minks, it’s worrisome to us.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • GOP Readies ‘Shameful’ Vote to Oust Omar From House Committee



    Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and her progressive allies are denouncing the Republican effort to oust her from a key House panel as early as Thursday.

    House Republicans on Wednesday advanced a resolution to remove Omar from the House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC). In a party-line 218-209 vote, GOP lawmakers approved a rule that sets the parameters for debate on the chamber floor prior to a final vote.

    “It remains unclear when House Republicans will bring the Omar resolution to the floor for debate and a final vote,” The Hill reported. “Democrats still need to formally submit a separate resolution with their roster for the Foreign Affairs Committee.” That is expected to happen by Thursday.

    The GOP has sought for years to remove Omar, a principled critic of Israeli apartheid and Washington’s role in perpetuating it, from the HFAC. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has unilateral authority to boot any lawmaker from a select committee, but because the HFAC is a standing committee, removing a member from it requires a full House vote.

    On Tuesday night, after Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio) introduced the measure to remove Omar from the HFAC over supposedly “antisemitic” remarks, the progressive lawmaker tweeted that “there is nothing objectively true in this resolution.”

    In response to Miller’s argument that “Omar clearly cannot be an objective decision-maker on the Foreign Affairs Committee given her biases against Israel and against the Jewish people”—a contention that wrongfully equates criticism of Israel’s colonization of Palestine with criticism of Jewish people—the Minnesota Democrat said that “if not being objective is a reason to not serve on committees, no one would be on committees.”

    In a Wednesday statement, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) called the House GOP’s pending vote against Omar “the latest racist attack by the far-right to silence progressives in Congress who speak up for a human rights-centered foreign policy, including Palestinian human rights.”

    “The GOP is riddled with white nationalists and antisemites. It is infuriating and absurd that they are trying to distract from the bigoted hatred in their own party by attacking a progressive woman of color.”

    “Anti-Palestinian politicians and organizations” have long tried “to censor the Congresswoman’s consistent calls for accountability for the Israeli government’s apartheid and human rights violations against Palestinians,” said JVP. “Sadly, these Republican attempts to attack Congresswoman Omar have been buoyed in the past by attacks on Palestinian rights advocates within the Democratic party.”

    According to Beth Miller, political director of JVP Action: “These attacks are happening because Congresswoman Omar is effective. Because she is a progressive. Because she is a Black Muslim woman. Because her values are universal and include fighting for Palestinians.”

    “The GOP is riddled with white nationalists and antisemites,” said Miller. “It is infuriating and absurd that they are trying to distract from the bigoted hatred in their own party by attacking a progressive woman of color. Congresswoman Omar consistently calls for the Israeli government to be held accountable for its crimes—crimes the GOP would rather cover up.”

    Meanwhile, Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said Monday that the CPC “stands fully behind our deputy chair.”

    “Omar is a valued member of the Democratic caucus and of this Congress,” said Jayapal. “Throughout her service in Congress and on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, she has brought her essential and unique voice and lived experience to bear: as a refugee, war survivor, and soon, as the first African-born ranking member on the Africa Subcommittee.”

    “You cannot remove a member of Congress from a committee simply because you do not agree with their views,” Jayapal continued. “This is both ludicrous and dangerous. In the last Congress, Republican members were moved from committees with a bipartisan vote for endangering the safety of their colleagues. Speaker McCarthy is attempting to take revenge and draw false comparisons.”

    Jayapal praised the few Republicans “who have already rejected this idea” and expressed hope that “more will join them to state their opposition so it is not brought to the floor, or vote against it should it be brought to the floor.”

    As The Washington Post reported Wednesday:

    Republican leaders have worked for weeks to ensure that there were enough votes to pass a resolution removing Omar from the committee through their razor-thin majority margin, which stands at three as Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) remains away from Washington recuperating from a traumatic fall. Opposition to the effort emerged last month as four lawmakers signaled that they wouldn’t support the measure, citing concerns that it would continue a precedent set by former speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

    But the inclusion of a provision in the four-page resolution, that Republicans argue provides due process to Omar, seems to have appeased at least one crucial voter, as Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.) announced Tuesday that she would now support the measure. Reps. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) and Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) have publicly suggested that they would vote against it before the resolution’s text was released Tuesday, while Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) has said he remained undecided. Republican leadership aides, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to outline private whip counts, said they have the votes to pass the measure whenever Democrats formally appoint Omar to her committee.

    Jayapal affirmed earlier this week that Democrats “will stand strongly with Rep. Omar: an esteemed and invaluable legislator, a respectful and kind colleague, and a courageous progressive leader.”

    On Sunday, Omar argued that House Republicans are trying to oust her from the HFAC because they disapprove of having a Muslim refugee from Somalia on the panel, as Common Dreams reported.

    Omar has been the frequent target of Islamophobic bigotry, including from Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which paid Facebook to host attack ads that endangered the lawmaker’s life. Due to credible death threats, the Minnesota Democrat is often assigned security by the U.S. Capitol Police.

    In her Sunday conversation with CNN‘s Dana Bash, Omar acknowledged that she apologized for the wording of her February 2019 tweets tying U.S. lawmakers’ support for Israel to money from lobbyists—at the time, she specifically called out AIPAC, which has given millions of dollars to members of Congress.

    The GOP’s campaign to expel her from the HFAC “is politically motivated,” Omar said. “In some cases, it’s motivated by the fact that many of these members don’t believe a Muslim, a refugee, an African should even be in Congress, let alone have the opportunity to serve on the Foreign Affairs Committee.”

    On Monday, Omar asserted that her work on the HFAC has contributed positively to “advancing human rights, holding government officials accountable for past harms, and advancing a more just and peaceful foreign policy.”

    Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) concurred, tweeting Monday that Omar’s work on the panel “matters deeply and Republicans’ cowardly efforts to remove and silence her are a disgrace.”

    Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) echoed Pressley, writing on social media: “It’s shameful that Republicans are trying to remove her [from the HFAC] after smearing her for years. We need her voice, values, and expertise on the committee.”

    Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), meanwhile, noted that “Omar is once again facing ugly personal and political attacks with incredible courage and dignity.”

    “It is outrageous that the House leadership wants to boot her off the Foreign Affairs Committee,” Sanders tweeted. “Fair-minded Republicans must join Democrats in preventing that from happening.”

    This article has been updated to include a statement from Jewish Voice for Peace.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • ‘Drought Profiteers’ Under Fire as Wall Street Targets Colorado River Water

    Financial speculators are buying and selling rights to the Colorado River’s dwindling water resources in a bid to profit as historic drought conditions intensified by the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis lead to worsening scarcity.

    Wall Street investment firms “have identified the drought as an opportunity to make money,” Andy Mueller, general manager of the Colorado River Water Conservation District, told CBS News on Tuesday. “I view these drought profiteers as vultures. They’re looking to make a lot of money off this public resource.”

    Matthew Diserio, the co-founder and president of a Manhattan-based hedge fund called Water Asset Management (WAM), makes no secret of his intentions, having described water in the United States as “the biggest emerging market on Earth” and “a trillion-dollar market opportunity.” The company’s website declares that “scarce clean water is the resource defining this century, much like plentiful oil defined the last.”

    A newly published joint investigation by CBS News and The Weather Channel found that WAM has purchased at least $20 million worth of land in Western Colorado over the past five years, making it one of the biggest landowners in a farming and ranching region known as the Grand Valley.

    According to Mueller, WAM has bought more than 2,500 acres of farmland in the area. But “it’s the water”—not the land—that investors are really interested in, he said, observing that the farmland comes with water rights.

    “There are real fears that this crucial water supply for the West is on the brink of disaster.”

    Notably, WAM has “hired Colorado’s former top water official as one of its lawyers,” CBS News reported. Diserio previously stated that “one of his firm’s strategies is to profit from water in part by making the farms it buys more efficient and then selling parts of its water rights to other farmers and cities increasingly desperate for the natural resource.”

    Mueller is tasked with protecting Colorado’s share of the Colorado River—a sprawling 1,450-mile waterway that traverses seven states and is a key water source for 40 million people in the western U.S. and northern Mexico, including those in the metropolitan areas of Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Diego, Denver, Las Vegas, Albuquerque, and Salt Lake City.

    Clean water is becoming increasingly scarce in the region for a variety of reasons, not least of which is the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency.

    “The Colorado River relies mostly on snowpack in the Rocky Mountains that feeds into the river as it melts in the spring and summer,” Weather Channel storm specialist Greg Postel explained. “But climate change is making the West hotter and drier. For every degree the temperature has gone up, the flow of the river has dropped by about 5%—a nearly 20% reduction over the past century.”

    The volume of water being withdrawn from the Colorado River has fallen since 2000 despite more people moving to the region. But with less water flowing into the river amid the West’s ongoing 23-year megadrought—more severe than anything seen in the preceding 1,200 years—recent decreases in per capita water consumption are insufficient.

    “It’s taken a major toll on the nation’s largest reservoirs,” Postel said of climate change-amplified drought. “Lake Powell in Arizona and Lake Mead in Nevada—they are at historic lows. They’re at just 25% of their full, combined capacity. There are real fears that this crucial water supply for the West is on the brink of disaster.”

    As the long-brewing crisis surrounding the Colorado River grows more acute, the federal government has taken steps to compel state-level policymakers to improve how they manage water resources in the increasingly arid region.

    For instance, “Congress recently allocated $4 billion in drought funding that can be used to pay farmers to fallow their land and not use their water,” CBS News reported. “Some Western states, including Colorado, are also considering paying some farmers to keep their lands fallow.” Agriculture accounts for 70% of withdrawals from the Colorado River.

    Last August, after the Colorado River Basin states failed to meet a federal deadline to approve a plan for achieving a 15% to 30% reduction in water use, the U.S. Department of Interior (DOI) announced—based on projected water levels for 2023—that Arizona, Nevada, and Mexico would be forced to draw less from the river this year.

    On Tuesday, for the second time in six months, the seven states that depend on the Colorado River failed to reach a water conservation pact by the DOI’s deadline, increasing the likelihood the agency will impose cuts later this year. Six states—Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming—agreed to slash water use. But California, the largest water consumer of the bunch, refused, setting the stage for what CNN described as a “high-stakes legal battle.”

    In August, Food & Water Watch research director Amanda Starbuck implored policymakers to “eliminate rampant corporate water abuse before it’s too late,” decrying the “massive water use of Big Ag and Big Oil.”

    “By switching to renewable energy sources like solar and wind, California could save 98% of the water currently needed for its fossil fuel production,” said Starbuck. “And by transitioning away from industrial megadairies, thirsty crops like almonds and pistachios, and engaging in regenerative farming, California will gain enormous water savings that could serve small farmers and domestic households.”

    Regarding WAM and other hedge funds looking to profit from looming water shortages, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) unveiled legislation last March that would prevent Wall Street from speculating on life-sustaining water resources.

    The Future of Water Act, as the congressional Democrats’ bicameral legislation is titled, would amend the Commodity Exchange Act to affirm that water is a human right to be managed for public benefit—not a commodity to be bought and sold by investment firms. The bill would also prohibit the trading of water rights on futures markets—a recently invented financial ploy widely condemned as “dystopian.”

    Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch, said at the time of the bill’s introduction that “with the climate crisis delivering historically devastating droughts across the West, it is clearer than ever that water should be treated as a scarce, essential resource, not a commodity for Wall Street and financial speculators.”

    “This groundbreaking legislation would put a lid on dangerous water futures trading before it creates a crisis,” said Hauter, “and it reinforces the fact that water must be managed as a public resource, not a corporate profit center.”

    Mueller, for his part, said Tuesday that “water in Colorado, water in the West, is your future.”

    “Without water,” he added, “you have no future.”

  • Havana Declaration Outlines Vision for Building Just World Economy



    Delegates to the Havana Congress on the New International Economic Order—a gathering organized by the Progressive International and attended by more than 50 scholars and policymakers from 26 countries across all six inhabited continents—agreed over the weekend on a declaration that outlines a “common vision” for building an egalitarian and sustainable society out of the wreckage of five decades of neoliberal capitalism.

    “The crisis of the existing world system can either entrench inequalities,” the declaration asserts, or it can “embolden” popular movements throughout the Global South to “reclaim” their role as protagonists “in the construction of a new world order based on justice, equity, and peace.”

    Delegates resolved to focus their initial efforts on strengthening the development and dissemination of lifesaving technologies in low-income nations.

    “Delegates agreed that a key priority must be to secure science and technology sovereignty.”

    This decision comes one year after Cuban officials announced, at a press conference convened by the Progressive International (PI), their plan to deliver 200 million homegrown Covid-19 vaccine doses to impoverished countries abandoned by their wealthy counterparts and Big Pharma—along with tools to enable domestic production and expert support to improve distribution.

    It also comes as Cuba assumes the presidency of the Group of 77 (G77), a bloc of 134 developing countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America where “the combined crises of food, energy, and environment” are escalating, PI noted.

    “What is the common vision to guide the Global South out of this crisis?” the coalition asked. “What is the plan to win it? What is the New International Economic Order for the 21st century?”

    “After two days of detailed discussions about how to transform our shared world, delegates agreed that a key priority must be to secure science and technology sovereignty,” PI general coordinator David Adler said Sunday at the conclusion of the Havana Congress. “From pharmaceuticals to green tech, from digital currencies to microchips, too much of humanity is locked out of both benefiting from scientific advances and contributing to new ones. We will, as today’s declaration calls for, work to build ‘a planetary bloc led by the South and reinforced by the solidarities of the North’ to liberate knowledge and peoples.”

    Speaking at the January 12 ceremony during which Cuba ascended to the G77 presidency, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla emphasized the need for coordinated action across the Global South on science and tech, arguing that “scientific-technical development is today monopolized by a club of countries that monopolize most of the patents, technologies, research centers, and promote the drain of talent from our countries.”

    The G77 Summit on Science, Technology, and Innovation, scheduled for September in Havana, seeks to “unite, complement each other, integrate our national capacities so as not to be relegated to future pandemics,” said Parrilla.

    During his speech on the first day of the Havana Congress, meanwhile, former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis called for a new non-aligned movement to “end the legalized robbery of people and Earth fueling climate catastrophe.”

    Read the full Havana Declaration on the New International Economic Order:

    The Havana Congress,

    Recalling the role of the Cuban Revolution in the struggle to unite the Southern nations of the world, and the spirit of the 1966 Havana Tricontinental Conference that convened peoples from Asia, Africa, and Latin America to chart a path to collective liberation in the face of severe global crises and sustained imperial subjugation;

    Hearing the echoes of that history today, as crises of hunger, disease, and war once again overwhelm the world, compounded by a rapidly changing climate and the droughts, floods, and hurricanes that not only threaten to inflame conflicts between peoples, but also risk the extinction of humanity at large;

    Celebrating the legacy of the anti-colonial struggle, and the victories won by combining a program of sovereign development at home, solidarity for national liberation abroad, and a strong Southern bloc to force concessions to its interests, culminating in the adoption of the U.N. Declaration on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order (NIEO);

    Acknowledging that the project of decolonization remains incomplete, disrupted by concerted attacks on the unity of the South in the form of wars, coups, sanctions, structural adjustment, and the false promise that sovereign development might be won through integration into a hierarchical world system;

    Emphasizing that the result has been the sustained divergence between North and South, characterized by the same dynamics that defined the international economic order five decades prior: the extraction of natural resources, the enclosure of ‘intellectual property,’ the plunder of structural adjustment, and the exclusion of the multilateral system;

    Recognizing that despite these setbacks, the flame of Southern resistance did not die; that the pursuit of sovereign development has yielded unprecedented achievements—from mass literacy and universal healthcare to poverty alleviation and medical innovation—that enable a renewed campaign of Southern cooperation today;

    Stressing that this potential for Southern unity is perceived as a threat to Northern powers, which seek once again to preserve their position in the hierarchy of the world system through mechanisms of economic exclusion, political coercion, and military aggression;

    Seizing the opportunity of the present historical juncture, when the crisis of the existing world system can either entrench inequalities or embolden the call to reclaim Southern protagonism in the construction of a new world order based on justice, equity, and peace;

    The Havana Congress calls to:

    • Renew the Non-Aligned Movement: In the face of increasing geopolitical tensions born from a decisive shift in the global balance of power, the Congress calls to resist the siren song of the new Cold War and to renew the project of non-alignment, grounded in the principles of sovereignty, peace, and cooperation articulated at the 1955 Bandung Conference, 1961 Non-Aligned Conference, 1966 Tricontinental Conference, and beyond.

    • Renovate the NIEO: To accompany the renewed non-aligned movement, the Congress calls to renovate the vision for a New International Economic Order fit for the 21st century; a vision that must draw inspiration from the original Declaration, but also account for the key issues—from digital technology to environmental breakdown—that define the present conditions for sovereign development; and to enshrine this vision in a new U.N. Declaration on the occasion of its 50th anniversary.

    • Assert Southern Power: The Congress recognizes that economic liberation will not be granted, but must be seized. As the original call for a New International Economic Order was won through the exercise of collective power in the coordinated production of petroleum, so our vision today can only be realized through the collective action of the South and the formation of new and alternative institutions to share critical technology, tackle sovereign debt, drive development finance, face future pandemics together, as well as coordinate positions on international climate action and the protection of national sovereignty over the extraction of natural resources.

    • Accompany Cuba in the G77: The Congress recognizes the critical opportunity afforded by Cuba’s presidency of the Group of 77 plus China to lead the South out of the present crisis and channel the lessons of its Revolution toward concrete proposals and ambitious initiatives to transform the broader international system.

    • Build a Planetary Bloc: The Congress calls on all peoples and nations of the world to join in this struggle to definitively achieve the New International Economic Order; to build a planetary bloc led by the South and reinforced by the solidarities of the North, whose peoples recognize their obligation to resist the crimes committed in their names; and to bring the spirit of this Havana Congress into the communities that we call home.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • Bolsonaro Requests Six-Month US Tourist Visa to Prolong Florida Trip as Brazilian Probes Mount



    Brazil’s far-right ex-president Jair Bolsonaro has applied for a six-month visitor visa to remain in the United States amid worsening legal troubles in his home country.

    U.S. authorities received Bolsonaro’s application on Friday, The Financial Times reported Monday, citing “his lawyer, Felipe Alexandre, who has advised the former president not to leave the country while it is being processed—a period that could last several months.”

    Bolsonaro is facing multiple investigations in Brazil. That includes longstanding probes into alleged wrongdoing committed during his four-year presidential term as well as the Brazilian Supreme Court’s recently launched inquiry aimed at determining whether his incessant lies about electoral fraud are to blame for the coup attempt that his supporters launched in Brasília on January 8.

    The close ally of former U.S. President Donald Trump—whose unceasing lies about his loss in the 2020 presidential election sparked a deadly right-wing insurrection in Washington two years ago—retreated to Florida on December 30, two days before the January 1 inauguration of his leftist successor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, commonly known as Lula.

    “He has been staying at the Kissimmee home of a former mixed martial arts fighter, José Aldo, where he is often thronged by adoring members of Florida’s right-leaning Brazilian expat community,” the Times noted. “Bolsonaro had been traveling on an A-1 visa reserved for diplomats and heads of state. It expired the day he left office, with a 30-day grace period.”

    Earlier this month, several members of U.S. Congress urged the Biden administration to rescind Bolsonaro’s visa.

    “We must not allow Mr. Bolsonaro or any other former Brazilian officials to take refuge in the United States to escape justice for any crimes they may have committed when in office,” stated a letter to the White House signed by 41 Democratic lawmakers.

    Alexandre claimed that there is no evidence that Bolsonaro committed any crimes related to the anti-democratic assault in Brasília, when his election-denying supporters ransacked Brazil’s presidential palace, Congress, and Supreme Court.

    Bolsonaro has tried to distance himself from the rioters, saying that they “crossed the line.” In December, however, Bolsonaro broke his post-election silence to tell his backers—many of whom spent weeks after the October 30 runoff calling for a military coup to prevent Lula from taking office—that his political fate rested in their hands.

    “Who decides where I go are you,” Bolsonaro told a crowd outside the gates of the presidential residence on December 9. “Who decides which way the armed forces go are you.”

    Days later, hundreds of Bolsonaristas set fire to cars and buses and tried to breach federal police headquarters in Brasília in a preview of the larger January 8 insurrection.

    A bigger right-wing mob invaded Brazil’s main government buildings earlier this month under the false pretense that Lula’s victory in October’s election was the result of widespread fraud—a mistaken belief fueled by years of Bolsonaro and his allies’ baseless attacks on the integrity of the country’s election infrastructure, disinformation that spread rapidly on social media.

    The day after the attack, thousands of democracy defenders took to the streets of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo to demand jail time for those who carried out the violence as well as those who aided and abetted it.

    Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Western Hemisphere panel, said earlier this month that the U.S. should comply if Lula’s administration requests Bolsonaro’s extradition.

    Alexandre, meanwhile, told the Times that Bolsonaro “might eventually decide to petition for a more permanent U.S. visa than the six-month extension he is seeking.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • United States: ‘Spectacular failure of climate leadership’, as Biden outpaces Trump on oil and gas permits

    Just days after US President Joe Biden called global warming ‘an existential threat to human existence’ and declared Washington’s ostensible commitment to decarbonisation at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, the US proceeded with Lease Sale 257, the nation’s largest-ever auction of oil and gas permits, reports Kenny Stancil.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • New Research Details Promise of Converting From ‘War Economy to a Green Economy’



    A pair of reports published Thursday show that many workers employed in the U.S. military-industrial complex support shifting manufacturing resources from military to civilian use—a conversion seen as vital to the fight against the climate emergency.

    Moving “from a war economy to a green economy” can help avert the worst consequences of the climate crisis, noted the Costs of War project at Brown University’s Watson Institute, publisher of the new research.

    “Ever-higher military spending is contributing to climate catastrophe, and U.S. lawmakers need a better understanding of alternative economic choices,” Stephanie Savell, co-director of Costs of War, said in a statement. “Military industrial production can be redirected to civilian technologies that contribute to societal well-being and provide green jobs. This conversion can both decarbonize the economy and create prosperity in districts across the nation.”

    In one of the papers released Thursday, Miriam Pemberton, an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, described “how the United States developed a war economy,” as reflected in its massive $858 billion military budget, which accounts for roughly half of all federal discretionary spending.

    As Pemberton explained:

    When the U.S. military budget decreased after the Cold War, military contractors initiated a strategy to protect their profits by more widely connecting jobs to military spending. They did this by spreading their subcontracting chains across the United States and creating an entrenched war economy. Perhaps the most infamous example: Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter jet, which is built in 45 states.

    The strategy proved successful. Today, many members of Congress have political incentives to continue to raise the military budget, in order to protect jobs in their districts. Much of the U.S. industrial base is invested in and focused on weapons production, and industry lobbyists won’t let Congress forget it.

    Not only is the Pentagon a major contributor to planet-heating pollution—emitting more greenhouse gases than 140 countries—and other forms of environmental destruction, but a 2019 Costs of War study showed that “dollar for dollar, military spending creates far fewer jobs than spending on other sectors like education, healthcare, and mass transit,” Pemberton continued.

    Moreover, “military spending creates jobs that bring wealth to some people and businesses, but do not alleviate poverty or result in widely-shared prosperity,” Pemberton wrote. “In fact, of the 20 states with economies most dependent on military manufacturing, 14 experience poverty at similar or higher rates than the national average.”

    “A different way is possible,” she stressed, pointing to a pair of military conversion case studies.

    “The only way to really lower emissions of the military is you’ve got to make the military smaller.”

    As military budgets were shrinking in 1993, Lockheed was eager to expand its reach into non-military production.

    “One of its teams working on fighter jets at a manufacturing facility in Binghamton, New York successfully shifted its specialized skills to produce a system for transit buses that cut fuel consumption, carbon emissions, maintenance costs, and noise, called ‘HybriDrive,’” Pemberton explained.

    By 1999, Lockheed “sold the facility producing HybriDrive buses and largely abandoned its efforts to convert away from dependence on military spending,” she wrote. “But under the new management of BAE Systems, the hybrid buses and their new zero-emission models are now reducing emissions” in cities around the world.

    According to Pemberton, “This conversion project succeeded where others have failed largely because its engineers took seriously the differences between military and civilian manufacturing and business practices, and adapted their production accordingly.”

    In another paper released Thursday, Karen Bell, a senior lecturer in sustainable development at the University of Glasgow, sought to foreground “the views of defense sector workers themselves,” noting that they “have been largely absent, despite their importance for understanding the feasibility of conversion.”

    Bell surveyed 58 people currently and formerly employed in military-related jobs in the U.S. and the United Kingdom and found that “while some workers said that the defense sector is ‘socially useful,’ many were frustrated with their field and would welcome working in the green economy.”

    “This was a small group so we cannot generalize to defense workers overall,” writes Bell. “However, even among this small cohort, some were interested in converting their work to civil production and would be interested in taking up ‘green jobs.’”

    One respondent told Bell: “Just greenwashing isn’t going to do it. Just putting solar panels up isn’t going to do it. So we’re trying to stress that the only way to really lower emissions of the military is you’ve got to make the military smaller.”

    “By the way, do we really need to update all our ICBMs [Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles]?” the survey participant asked. “Don’t we have enough to blow up the world three times over, or five times over? Why don’t we take those resources and use them someplace else where they really should be?”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • Big Oil Asks US Supreme Court to Reinstate Offshore Fracking in California



    The American Petroleum Institute and a pair of oil companies filed a petition for certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday in a bid to overturn a lower federal court ruling that blocked fracking in public waters off California’s coast.

    “The decision to halt fracking was exceedingly well-reasoned, and I hope the court rejects the oil industry’s reckless attempt to overturn the 9th Circuit’s ruling,” Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), said in a statement. “Fracking is dangerous to whales, sea otters, and other marine wildlife, and this dirty, harmful technique has no place in our ocean.”

    CBD and the Wishtoyo Foundation sued the Trump administration to stop offshore fracking in 2016. Then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris filed a similar case.

    In 2018, U.S. District Judge Philip S. Gutierrez ordered a prohibition on permits for offshore fracking in federal waters off California, ruling that the U.S. Department of Interior (DOI) had failed to adhere to multiple federal laws.

    A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Gutierrez’s decision last June, arguing that the DOI violated the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the Coastal Zone Management Act when it allowed fracking in offshore oil and gas wells in all leased public waters off California.

    In late August, the Biden administration, of which Harris is the vice president, asked the 9th Circuit for an en banc review to overturn the panel’s ruling.

    The Biden administration’s request, which drew the ire of environmentalists because it would have enabled offshore fracking to resume, was denied in September.

    “Fracking is dangerous to whales, sea otters, and other marine wildlife, and this dirty, harmful technique has no place in our ocean.”

    In its June ruling, the 9th Circuit stated that the DOI “should have prepared a full [environmental impact statement] in light of the unknown risks posed by the well stimulation treatments and the significant data gaps that the agencies acknowledged.”

    Instead, the agency “disregarded necessary caution when dealing with the unknown effects of well stimulation treatments and the data gaps associated with a program of regular fracking offshore California in order to increase production and extend well life,” the 9th Circuit wrote.

    The panel’s decision prevents the DOI from issuing fracking permits until it completes Endangered Species Act consultations and published an environmental impact statement that “fully and fairly evaluate[s] all reasonable alternatives.”

    In addition to the fact that offshore fracking increases planet-wrecking greenhouse gas emissions, tens of millions of gallons of toxic fracking wastewater have been dumped into the ocean since 2010.

    According to CBD scientists, “At least 10 chemicals routinely used in offshore fracking could kill or harm a broad variety of marine species, including sea otters, fish, leatherback turtles, and whales.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • Federal Workers Union Says Biden Right Not to Negotiate With GOP Over Debt Ceiling



    The largest union of federal workers in the U.S. urged Congress this week to raise the debt ceiling without mandating reductions in social spending, arguing that President Joe Biden is right to reject the GOP’s attempt to use the nation’s borrowing limit as leverage to force through devastating cuts.

    “The debt limit must be cleanly raised to avoid default and ensure the continuation of funding for the government and critical programs like Social Security, Medicare, veterans’ benefits, and the U.S. military,” Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), wrote in a letter sent to every member of Congress on Monday. “No negotiation that puts these programs or any aspect of federal employee compensation at risk should be considered.”

    Several House Republicans are threatening to block the lifting of the country’s borrowing cap—an arbitrary and arguably unconstitutional figure set by Congress—unless Democrats agree to slash government spending, including on vital social programs

    Notably, Capitol Hill’s deficit hawks oppose reducing the Pentagon’s ever-growing budget and rescinding former President Donald Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy.

    The U.S. government’s outstanding debt officially hit the statutory limit of $31.4 trillion last Thursday, at which point the Treasury Department started repurposing federal funds.

    Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen recently told congressional leaders that “the use of extraordinary measures enables the government to meet its obligations for only a limited amount of time,” possibly through early June. She implored Congress to “act in a timely manner to increase or suspend the debt limit,” warning that “failure to meet the government’s obligations would cause irreparable harm to the U.S. economy, the livelihoods of all Americans, and global financial stability.”

    A 2011 debt ceiling standoff enabled the GOP to impose austerity and led to a historic downgrading of the U.S. government’s credit rating, but the country has never defaulted on its debt. Economists warn that doing so would likely trigger chaos in financial markets, resulting in millions of job losses and the elimination of $15 trillion in wealth.

    Aware that an economic calamity is at stake, many Republican lawmakers “have announced that they will not support an increase in the debt ceiling without concomitant reductions in spending, possibly in the form of reductions to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid,” Kelley wrote in the letter sent earlier this week.

    “The White House says it will not negotiate such an arrangement,” he added. “AFGE strongly supports the administration’s refusal to negotiate on this matter.”

    “No negotiation that puts these programs or any aspect of federal employee compensation at risk should be considered.”

    In a Wednesday speech from the floor of the upper chamber, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) criticized “the House GOP’s reckless approach to the debt ceiling” and challenged Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) “to level with the American people” on which popular programs his party wants to cut.

    “The debt ceiling is a subject of the highest consequence, and using it as a bargaining chip, using it as brinkmanship, as hostage-taking, as Republicans are trying to do is exceedingly dangerous,” said Schumer.

    “If the House of Representatives continues on [its] current course and allows the United States to default on its debt obligations, every single American is going to pay a terrible and expensive price,” Schumer continued. “The consequences of default are not some theoretical abstraction; if default happens, Americans will see the consequences in their daily lives.”

    “Interest rates will go soaring on everything from credit cards, and student loans, to cars, mortgages, and more,” he added. “That’s thousands of dollars for each American going right out the door, and it will happen through no fault of their own.”

    As many observers pointed out repeatedly in the wake of the midterm elections, Democrats had the power to prevent this high-risk game of brinkmanship altogether by raising the debt ceiling—or abolishing it completely—when they still controlled both chambers of Congress.

    Despite ample warnings from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and other progressive lawmakers and advocacy groups, conservative Democrats refused to take unilateral action during the lame-duck session.

    On Wednesday, Schumer pleaded with GOP lawmakers to simply raise the debt ceiling without demanding policy concessions in exchange.

    “I’d remind my Republican colleagues that they did it before when Trump was president three times; no Democratic obstruction or hostage-taking,” said Schumer. “We did it once together when Biden was president. And much of this debt comes from spending when Trump was president, voted on by a Republican House and a Republican Senate.”

    “It’s a bit of hypocrisy now to say that they can’t do it again, and they are holding it hostage and are playing a dangerous form of brinksmanship,” Schumer argued. “It shouldn’t matter who is president. It’s still bills we already incurred that must be paid for the good of all Americans.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • ‘Spectacular Failure of Climate Leadership’: Biden Outpaces Trump on Oil and Gas Permits



    Although President Joe Biden vowed on the campaign trail to phase out federal leasing for fossil fuel extraction, his administration approved more permits for oil and gas drilling on public lands in its first two years than the Trump administration did in 2017 and 2018.

    According to the Center for Biological Diversity’s analysis of federal data released Wednesday, the Biden White House greenlit 6,430 permits for oil and gas drilling on public lands in 2021 and 2022—a 4.2% increase over former President Donald Trump’s administration, which rubber-stamped 6,172 drilling permits in its first two years.

    “Two years of runaway drilling approvals are a spectacular failure of climate leadership by President Biden and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland,” said Taylor McKinnon of the Center for Biological Diversity. “Avoiding catastrophic climate change requires phasing out fossil fuel extraction, but instead we’re still racing in the opposite direction.”

    Of the drilling authorized so far by the Biden administration, nearly 4,000 permits have been approved for public lands in New Mexico, followed by 1,223 in Wyoming and several hundred each in Utah, Colorado, California, Montana, and North Dakota.

    According to the Center for Biological Diversity, these “Biden-approved drilling permits will result in more than 800 million tons of estimated equivalent greenhouse gas pollution, or the annual climate pollution from about 217 coal-fired power plants.”

    Just last week, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres told the elites gathered at the World Economic Forum in Davos that “fossil fuel producers and their enablers are still racing to expand production, knowing full well that their business model is inconsistent with human survival.”

    Reams of scientific evidence show that pollution from the world’s existing fossil fuel developments is enough to push temperature rise well beyond 1.5°C above the preindustrial baseline. Averting calamitous levels of global heating necessitates ending investment in new oil and gas projects and phasing out extraction to keep 40% of the fossil fuel reserves at currently operational sites underground.

    As a presidential candidate, Biden pledged to ban new oil and gas lease sales on public lands and waters and to require federal permitting decisions to weigh the social costs of additional planet-heating pollution. Although Biden issued an executive order suspending new fossil fuel leasing during his first week in office, his administration’s actions since then have run roughshod over earlier promises, worsening the deadly climate crisis that the White House claims to be serious about mitigating.

    “The president and interior secretary have the power to avoid a climate catastrophe, but they need to change course rapidly.”

    The U.S. Department of Interior (DOI) argued on August 24, 2021 that it was required to resume lease auctions because of a preliminary injunction issued by U.S. Judge Terry A. Doughty, a Trump appointee who ruled in favor of a group of Big Oil-funded Republican attorneys general that sued Biden over his moratorium. In a memorandum of opposition filed on the same day, however, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) asserted that while Doughty’s decision prevented the Biden administration from implementing its pause, it did not compel the DOI to hold new lease sales, “let alone on the urgent timeline specified in plaintiffs’ contempt motion.”

    Just days after Biden called global warming “an existential threat to human existence” and declared Washington’s ostensible commitment to decarbonization at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, the DOI ignored the DOJ’s legal advice and proceeded with Lease Sale 257. The nation’s largest-ever offshore auction, which saw more than 80 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico offered to the highest-bidding oil and gas giants, was blocked in January 2022 by a federal judge who wrote that the Biden administration violated environmental laws by not adequately accounting for the likely consequences of resulting emissions.

    Despite Biden’s pledge to cut U.S. greenhouse gas pollution in half by the end of this decade, the DOI’s Bureau of Land Management held lease sales in several Western states in 2022, opening up tens of thousands of acres of public land to fossil fuel production. The DOI has so far announced plans for three new onshore oil and gas lease sales in 2023. The first will offer more than 261,200 acres of public land in Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, and Wyoming to the highest-bidding drillers. The second and third will put a total of 95,411 acres of public land in Nevada and Utah on the auction block.

    In addition, the Biden administration published a draft proposal last summer that, if implemented, would permit up to 11 new oil and gas lease sales for drilling off the coast of Alaska and in the Gulf of Mexico over a five-year period.

    The president’s 2021 freeze on new lease auctions was meant to give the DOI time to analyze the “potential climate and other impacts associated with oil and gas activities on public lands or in offshore waters.” Nevertheless, the agency’s long-awaited review of the federal leasing program effectively ignored the climate crisis, instead proposing adjustments to royalties, bids, and bonding in what environmental justice campaigners described as a “shocking capitulation to the needs of corporate polluters.”

    The U.S. Geological Survey has estimated that roughly 25% of the country’s total carbon dioxide emissions and 7% of its overall methane emissions can be attributed to fossil fuel extraction on public lands and waters. According to peer-reviewed research, a nationwide prohibition on federal oil and gas leasing would slash carbon dioxide emissions by 280 million tons per year.

    The Biden administration “has not enacted any policies to significantly limit drilling permits or manage a decline of production to avoid 1.5°C degrees of warming,” the Center for Biological Diversity lamented. The White House even supported the demands of right-wing Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.)—Congress’ leading recipient of fossil fuel industry cash and a long-time coal profiteer—to “add provisions to the Inflation Reduction Act that will lock in fossil fuel leasing for the next decade.”

    On numerous occasions, including earlier this month, progressive lawmakers and advocacy groups have implored the Biden administration to use its executive authority to phase out oil and gas production on public lands and in offshore waters. A petition submitted last year came equipped with a regulatory framework to wind down oil and gas production by 98% by 2035. According to the coalition that drafted it, the White House can achieve this goal by using long-dormant provisions of the Mineral Leasing Act, Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, and the National Emergencies Act.

    “The president and interior secretary have the power to avoid a climate catastrophe, but they need to change course rapidly,” McKinnon said Wednesday. “Strong executive action can meet the climate emergency with the urgency it demands, starting with phasing out fossil fuel production on public lands and waters.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • ‘Shameful’: UK Approves ‘Emergency’ Use of Banned Bee-Killing Pesticide



    Biodiversity defenders have sounded the alarm about the United Kingdom government’s Monday decision to provide another so-called “emergency” exception for the use of an outlawed neonicotinoid pesticide lethal to bees.

    “Bad news again for bees as the U.K. government allows banned neonicotinoids in our fields against the advice of its own experts,” Friends of the Earth campaigner Sandra Bell tweeted. “The real ’emergency’ here is our declining biodiversity—it’s time farmers got support for alternatives, not a green light for using toxic chemicals.”

    Despite U.K. guidance affirming that emergency applications should not be granted more than once, the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) announced for the third straight year that it will permit the use of sugar beet seeds coated with thiamethoxam under certain conditions in England.

    “If the government is serious about halting biodiversity loss by 2030, they must support farmers to explore long-term, agroecological solutions that don’t threaten our endangered bee population.”

    Against the recommendation of an independent panel of pesticide experts, the agency approved the use of thiamethoxam just four days after the European Union’s highest court ruled that providing emergency derogations for prohibited neonicotinoid-treated seeds is inconsistent with the bloc’s laws. The U.K. withdrew from the E.U. in 2020.

    DEFRA’s emergency authorization for thiamethoxam-coated sugar beet seeds also comes one month after the U.K. government advocated for a stronger global pesticide reduction target at the United Nations COP15 biodiversity summit.

    Calling the authorization “yet another shameful episode in a long list of failures to protect the U.K. environment,” the British chapter of the Pesticide Action Network (PAN) said that “putting bees and other insects at risk shows just how seriously this government takes the biodiversity crisis.”

    “It’s incredibly brazen to allow a banned bee-harming pesticide back into U.K. fields mere weeks after the government talked up the need for global ambition on reducing pesticides at the U.N. biodiversity talks in Montreal,” Bell said in a statement issued by the Pesticide Collaboration, a progressive coalition of 83 health and environmental organizations, trade unions, farmer and consumer groups, and academics.

    “This is the third consecutive year that the government has gone directly against the advice of its own scientific advisers with potentially devastating consequences for bees and other vital pollinators,” said Bell. “The health of us all and the planet depends on their survival. The government must fulfill its duty to protect wildlife and keep pesticides off our crops for good—that means supporting farmers to find nature-friendly ways to control pests.”

    University of Sussex biology professor Dave Goulson has estimated that a single teaspoon of thiamethoxam—one of three neonicotinoids produced by Bayer, the German biotech corporation that merged with agrochemical giant Monsanto in 2018—is toxic enough to wipe out 1.25 billion bees.

    A Greenpeace U.K. petition imploring Thérèse Coffey, a Conservative Party lawmaker serving as secretary of state for environment, food, and rural affairs, to “enforce a total ban on bee-killing pesticides” has garnered nearly one million signatures.

    Describing DEFRA’s move as “a huge disappointment,” the Stand By Bees campaign on Tuesday urged supporters to “continue pushing” and “write to your local MP.”

    In 2013, the European Commission banned the use of thiamethoxam and two other hazardous neonicotinoids produced by Monsanto—clothianidin and imidacloprid—on bee-attractive crops including maize, rapeseed, and some cereals. This was followed by a prohibition on all outdoor uses in 2018, which the European Court of Justice upheld in 2021, rejecting an appeal by Bayer.

    The Pesticide Collaboration warned Monday that DEFRA’s latest authorization for thiamethoxam-coated sugar beet seeds “raises wider concerns over whether the government will maintain existing restrictions on neonicotinoids and other harmful pesticides, or whether they may be overturned as part of a forthcoming bonfire of regulations that protect nature, wildlife, and communities.”

    At issue is the Retained E.U. Law Bill, which threatens to rescind E.U.-era environmental standards and other measures enacted prior to Brexit.

    “It is inexcusable to see England falling so far behind the E.U. on regulations in place to prevent such a detrimental impact on biodiversity,” Soil Association, a U.K.-based research and advocacy group, tweeted Tuesday. “It’s not credible to claim an exemption is ‘temporary’ or ’emergency’ when it is used year after year. How many more years will it happen?”

    According to Amy Heley of the Pesticide Collaboration: “In previous years, DEFRA insisted that the sugar industry must make progress in finding alternatives, but we are yet to see any outcomes of this. The Pesticide Collaboration is deeply concerned that this emergency derogation is simply another example of the government failing to follow through on their own pledges to improve the environment and protect human health.”

    As Joan Edwards, director of policy & public affairs at the Wildlife Trusts, noted Monday: “Just last month, the Secretary of State Thérèse Coffey committed the U.K. to halving the environmental impact of damaging pesticides by 2030. However, today she has incompatibly authorized the use of a banned neonicotinoid, one of the world’s most environmentally damaging pesticides.”

    “Only a few days ago, the E.U.’s highest court ruled that E.U. countries should no longer be allowed temporary exemptions for banned, bee-toxic neonicotinoid pesticides,” said Edwards. “Yet this government deems it acceptable to allow the use of a toxic pesticide that is extremely harmful to bees and other insects, at a time when populations of our precious pollinators are already in freefall. This is unacceptable.”

    The Soil Association, meanwhile, argued that “if the government is serious about halting biodiversity loss by 2030, they must support farmers to explore long-term, agroecological solutions that don’t threaten our endangered bee population.”

    “Neonicotinoids simply have no place in a sustainable farming system,” the group added.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • Thousands Across US Demand Reproductive Freedom on Roe’s 50th Anniversary



    Thousands of people called for reproductive freedom at rallies around the United States on Sunday—the 50th anniversary of the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that made abortion a constitutional right until the Supreme Court’s reactionary majority overturned it last summer.

    At more than 200 events in 46 states, demonstrators condemned the court’s 6-3 opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which enables states to curtail or even prohibit access to reproductive healthcare. Since the ruling was handed down on June 24, Republican lawmakers have enacted deadly abortion restrictions in 26 states, including near-total bans in several.

    “Fifty years after the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, a radical right-wing movement hijacked our courts and eliminated federal protections for abortions,” said Rachel O’Leary Carmona, executive director of Women’s March, which organized Sunday’s “Bigger Than Roe” day of action.

    “But as the fight turns to the states, they are going to learn that the overwhelming majority of Americans in all states support abortion rights—and women will fight to protect our rights and our lives,” she added.

    Carmona spoke at the Wisconsin state capitol. Women’s March picked Madison rather than Washington, D.C. as the location of this year’s national protest because the group wanted to send “a clear message to elected leaders and to our base—we are going to where the fight is, and that is at the state level.”

    “We’ll start in Wisconsin, where an upcoming Supreme Court election this spring will determine the balance of power on the state’s Supreme Court and the future of abortion rights in Wisconsin,” the group explained.

    Due to legal uncertainty around the status of Wisconsin’s pre-Roe abortion ban, enacted in 1849, providers have been forced to stop offering abortion care in the state.


    Women’s March—with the support of nearly 50 organizations, including Planned Parenthood, Working Families Power, and the National Organization for Women—orchestrated “sister marches” in cities across the country.

    “We are taking the fight to the states,” organizers said. “From Wisconsin, to Nebraska, to Georgia, to Arizona and Texas, women and our allies are defending abortion rights where they still stand, and working to put measures on the ballot to regain abortion rights in places where politicians are putting their agendas over the will of the people.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • White House Refuses to Shield Endangered Right Whales From Lethal Vessel Strikes

    The Biden administration on Friday denied an emergency petition aimed at protecting critically endangered North Atlantic right whales from being struck and killed by ships in their calving grounds off the southeastern coast of the United States. Conservation groups in November asked the National Marine Fisheries Service to establish a rule that mirrors the agency’s yet-to-be-finalized proposal to…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Peet’s Coffee Baristas Unionize First Cafe With Help from Starbucks Workers

    In a win for workplace democracy, employees at a Peet’s Coffee & Tea located in Davis, California formed the chain’s first unionized shop in the United States on Friday. Workers at the café voted 14-1 to join Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1021. “We will not be the last,” tweeted Peet’s Workers United (PWU), which organized the winning unionization campaign.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • ‘Global Catastrophe’ Coming If West Keeps Arming Ukraine, Top Russia Official Says



    Should the West continue to ship arms to Ukraine, Moscow will retaliate with “more powerful weapons,” a top Russian government official and close ally of President Vladimir Putin said Sunday, referring to the use of nuclear missiles.

    “Deliveries of offensive weapons to the Kyiv regime will lead to a global catastrophe,” Vyacheslav Volodin, chairman of the State Duma, Russia’s lower house, said in a statement shared on the Telegram messaging app.

    “If Washington and NATO countries supply weapons that will be used to strike civilian cities and attempt to seize our territories, as they threaten, this will lead to retaliatory measures using more powerful weapons,” said Volodin.

    Ukraine, with the support of its Western allies, is seeking to reclaim territory illegally annexed by the Kremlin in recent months—not seize Russian land, as Volodin asserted.

    Volodin’s threat “comes amid arguments over whether Germany will send Leopard 2 battle tanks to Ukraine to fight the Russian invasion,” Politico reported. “Kyiv has requested the German-made tanks, which it says it needs to renew its counteroffensive against Moscow’s forces.”

    This is not the first time that Russian officials have threatened to use nuclear weapons since Putin attacked Ukraine last February. On Thursday, one day before NATO and other military leaders met in Germany to discuss how to defeat Russia in Ukraine, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy chairman of the country’s security council, said that a loss by Moscow could lead to nuclear war.

    “Berlin has so far resisted the call from Ukraine and its allies to send the tanks without the U.S. making the first move, over fears of an escalation in the conflict,” Politico noted Sunday. “Berlin also hasn’t approved deliveries of the tanks from its allies, as Germany gets a final say over any re-exports of the vehicles from countries that have purchased them.”

    The news outlet previously reported that the $2.5 billion military package announced Thursday by the White House excludes the Army’s 60-ton M1 Abrams tanks due to maintenance and logistical issues, not because sending them would intensify the war.

    NATO has sent more than $40 billion worth of weapons to Ukraine since the beginning of Russia’s invasion. The U.S. government, de facto leader of the military alliance, has authorized more than $26.7 billion alone.

    On Sunday, Volodin urged U.S. and European lawmakers to “realize their responsibility to humanity.”

    “With their decisions, Washington and Brussels are leading the world to a terrible war: to a completely different military action than today, when strikes are carried out exclusively on the military and critical infrastructure used by the Kyiv regime,” said Volodin.

    Contrary to Volodin’s claim, Russia has not limited its ongoing assault to military assets. According to a top Kyiv official, more than 9,000 Ukranian civilians have been killed since Russia invaded 11 months ago. The United Nations has confirmed more than 7,000 civilian deaths in Ukraine but says the real figure is much higher.

    A strike on a Ukrainian apartment building last week, Russia’s deadliest attack on civilians in months, killed dozens of people. Meanwhile, fighting near the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant has sparked fears of a disastrous meltdown on multiple occasions.

    “Given the technological superiority of Russian weapons,” Volodin continued, “foreign politicians making such decisions need to understand that this could end in a global tragedy that will destroy their countries.”

    “Arguments that the nuclear powers have not previously used weapons of mass destruction in local conflicts are untenable,” he added. “Because these states did not face a situation where there was a threat to the security of their citizens and the territorial integrity of the country.”

    Volodin was echoing points made recently by other Russian officials. Asked Thursday if Medvedev’s remarks that day reflected an attempt to escalate the war, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “No, it absolutely does not mean that.”

    Peskov argued that Medvedev’s comments were consistent with Russia’s nuclear doctrine, which permits a nuclear strike after “aggression against the Russian Federation with conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is threatened.”

    As Reuters noted, Putin has portrayed Russia’s so-called “special military operation” in Ukraine as “an existential battle with an aggressive and arrogant West, and has said that Russia will use all available means to protect itself and its people.”

    Last January, one month before the start of the largest war in Europe since WWII, Russia, the United States, China, France, and the United Kingdom—home to more than 12,000 nuclear weapons combined—issued a joint statement affirming that “nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought” and reaffirming that they plan to adhere to non-proliferation, disarmament, and arms control agreements and pledges.

    Nevertheless, the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council continue to enlarge or modernize their nuclear arsenals. For the first time since the 1980s, the global nuclear stockpile, 90% of which is controlled by Moscow and Washington, is projected to grow in the coming years, and the risk of weapons capable of annihilating life on Earth being used is rising.

    In early October, U.S. President Joe Biden warned that Russia’s war on Ukraine has brought the world closer to “Armageddon” than at any point since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Less than three weeks later, however, his administration published a Nuclear Posture Review that nonproliferation advocates said increases the likelihood of catastrophe, in part because it leaves intact the option of a nuclear first strike. The U.S. remains the only country to have used nuclear weapons in war, destroying the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic bombs in August 1945.

    Experts have long sounded the alarm about the war in Ukraine, saying that it could spiral into a direct conflict between Russia and NATO, both of which are flush with nuclear weapons. Despite such warnings, the Western military coalition has continued to prioritize weapons shipments over diplomacy.

    U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin admitted last April that the U.S. wants “to see Russia weakened,” implying that Washington is willing to prolong the deadly conflict as long as it helps destabilize Moscow.

    Peace advocates, by contrast, have repeatedly called on the U.S. to help secure a swift diplomatic resolution to the Ukraine war before it descends into a global nuclear cataclysm.

    U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres recently told attendees of the World Economic Forum in Davos: “There will be an end… there is an end of everything, but I do not see an end of the war in the immediate future. I do not see a chance at the present moment to have a serious peace negotiation between the two parties.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • Baristas Form First Unionized Peet’s Coffee in US With Help From Starbucks Workers



    In a win for workplace democracy, employees at a Peet’s Coffee & Tea located in Davis, California formed the chain’s first unionized shop in the United States on Friday.

    Workers at the café voted 14-1 to join Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1021.

    “We will not be the last,” tweeted Peet’s Workers United (PWU), which organized the winning unionization campaign. PWU is the counterpart to Starbucks Workers United (SBWU), the outfit behind dozens of successful union drives nationwide.

    “Solidarity, from coffee shop to coffee shop,” SBWU wrote on social media ahead of Friday’s vote at Peet’s. After PWU won, their Starbucks allies gave them a warm “welcome to the labor movement.”

    SBWU organizer Tyler Keeling from Lakewood, California played an instrumental role in PWU’s efforts, as detailed last week in Jacobin.

    PWU expressed gratitude to Keeling before and after the union vote.

    In November, Peet’s workers at two locations in Davis filed for union elections with the National Labor Relations Board.

    In a petition asking for community support, PWU wrote: “We are overworked, understaffed, and underpaid. Barista’s raises are less than a tenth of inflation, there are pay discrepancies that do not align with seniority, skill, or any kind of logic, and we have been forced to shut down multiple times in the past month due to understaffing. We’ve had no viable recourse for removing toxic managers other than waiting for the problem to resolve itself.”

    “Meanwhile, our managers have been using union-busting tactics like Starbucks to divide and confuse us,” organizers continued. “They’ve called in corporate higher-ups to have conversations about unionizing with employees, they’ve reinstated punitive scheduling and dress code measures, and posted misleading informational fliers in break rooms.”

    “We are fighting for fair wages, decent schedules, and corporate transparency, but two stores against a multimillion-dollar corporation is a lonely battle,” they added. “Peet’s has always taken pride in its loyal customers and loving community, and we need that now more than ever.”

    In a statement issued after workers voted overwhelmingly in favor of union representation, the company said that “while we had hoped for another outcome, we respect the right of our Davis employees to choose.”

    “As we follow the legally required next steps with the union at North Davis, we will continue to work for and with our employees companywide. That is the Peet’s way,” the company added.

    According to PWU, Peet’s executives went out of their way in the lead-up to the representation vote to dissuade workers from joining SEIU, including by holding anti-union captive audience meetings.

    The corporation “paid a store manager from Chicago to fly to Davis to give his ‘unbiased’ opinion on unions,” organizers said. “The president of the company came in and essentially begged people to give him another chance and to put all our faith in him.”

    The second Davis location that had also filed to hold a unionization vote withdrew its request last week. According to PWU, that happened because “corporate gave the entire staff… a $500 bonus for pulling their petition and for ‘giving Peet’s a chance.’”

    Since December 2021, workers at more than 270 Starbucks locations across the United States have voted to unionize. Organizers have won more than 80% of their campaigns despite the corporation’s unlawful intimidation and retaliation tactics.

    Keeling of SBWU said Saturday that he is “so happy to have more coffee shops unionizing.”

    “The future looks bright,” Keeling declared. “The new wave of unionization will save the world.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • Outrage as Biden Admin Refuses to Shield Right Whales From Lethal Vessel Strikes



    The Biden administration on Friday denied an emergency petition aimed at protecting critically endangered North Atlantic right whales from being struck and killed by ships in their calving grounds off the southeastern coast of the United States.

    Conservation groups in November asked the National Marine Fisheries Service to establish a rule that mirrors the agency’s yet-to-be-finalized proposal to set speed limits for vessels longer than 34 feet and expand the areas where speed limits apply.

    As the petitioners—the Center for Biological Diversity, the Conservation Law Foundation, Defenders of Wildlife, and Whale and Dolphin Conservation—explained, such a regulation “would have helped prevent incidents like the 2021 boat collision that killed a right whale calf off Florida and likely fatally injured its mother.”

    The species’ precipitous population decline has continued year after year. Scientists recently estimated that only 340 North Atlantic right whales remain, including just 70 reproductive females that give birth every three to 10 years.

    “I’m outraged that the Biden administration won’t shield these incredibly endangered whales from lethal ship strikes,” said Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This is an extinction-level emergency. Every mother right whale and calf is critical to the survival of the species.”

    According to the petitioners, the federal agency responsible for stewarding the nation’s marine resources said that it lacks the funds and staff necessary “to effectively implement the emergency regulations.”

    Officials from the fisheries service, part of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), claim that “they are working with vessel operators to get voluntary slow-downs,” the petitioners added, “but voluntary efforts have not proved effective in the past.”

    “NOAA has dragged its feet on updating the vessel speed rule for over a decade… The agency’s decision not to take emergency action to protect mothers and calves puts the species’ entire future at risk.”

    Defenders of Wildlife senior attorney Jane Davenport noted that “right whales have journeyed to the Southeast since time immemorial to birth and nurse their calves in the safety of warm, shallow waters.”

    “But the calving grounds have become killing grounds,” said Davenport. “NOAA has dragged its feet on updating the vessel speed rule for over a decade; right whale mothers and calves have paid for this delay with their lives. The agency’s decision not to take emergency action to protect mothers and calves puts the species’ entire future at risk.”

    Existing regulations require ships longer than 64 feet to slow to 10 knots or less to safeguard right whales in certain areas at specific times. The fisheries service has acknowledged that bolstering its vessel speed rule is essential to prevent the species’ extinction.

    Vessel strikes are one of two leading threats to right whales’ existence. The other key danger is entanglement in commercial fishing equipment.

    Friday’s rejection of stronger vessel speed limits comes just weeks after Congress enacted a policy rider that gives the fisheries service until 2028 to issue a new regulation requiring the lobster industry to reduce right whale entanglements. Conservationists condemned federal lawmakers’ move to postpone action in spite of a court decision deeming the service’s current rule unlawful, saying that the yearslong delay is almost certain to doom the species to extinction.

    Entanglement in lobster fishing gear kills an estimated four right whales per year—six times higher than the rate considered biologically sustainable. Non-fatal entanglements can also result in illness and interfere with reproduction.

    Monsell said Friday that Congress’ betrayal last month makes “protecting right whales from vessel strikes… even more crucial.”

    Erica Fuller, senior attorney at the Conservation Law Foundation, expressed disappointment that “the government declined to take immediate action to protect these mothers and newborn calves, and instead chose to continue longstanding bureaucratic practices with a species that can’t afford a single death of another breeding female.”

    “The whole world is watching how NOAA plans to save this species,” said Fuller.

    As the petitioners explained:

    Right whales begin giving birth to calves around mid-November, and the season lasts until mid-April. Their calving grounds are off the southeastern coast from Cape Fear, North Carolina, to below Cape Canaveral, Florida. Pregnant females and mothers with nursing calves are especially at risk of vessel strikes because they spend so much time near the water’s surface. Scientists know of no other calving grounds for the right whale.

    “The road to a declining right whale population has been paved by the agency delaying or reducing needed actions,” said Regina Asmutis-Silvia, executive director of Whale and Dolphin Conservation. “Denying our petition to take emergency action only increases the likelihood that even more drastic actions will be needed moving forward.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • Manchin-Romney Attack on Social Security Is ‘Last Thing We Need’: Sanders

    Progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders on Saturday slammed right-wing Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin’s widely panned proposal to explore slashing Social Security benefits as part of a debt ceiling pact with Republicans.

    During a Wednesday interview with Fox Business at the ruling class’ annual gathering in Davos for the World Economic Forum, Manchin (W.Va.) suggested that members of both major U.S. political parties “work together” on solving the nation’s so-called “debt problem.” Although Manchin didn’t explicitly demand cuts to Social Security and expressed opposition to GOP calls for privatization, he singled out the program for intervention, saying that Congress “should be able to solidify it.”

    Given that Republicans are currently threatening to tank the global economy unless Democrats agree to reduce social spending, Manchin’s unilateral call for appeasement has set off alarm bells.

    What’s especially concerning to progressives is that the corporate-backed lawmaker is the co-author, alongside Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), of the TRUST Act, a bill that would enable Congress to create bipartisan “rescue” committees for the nation’s trust fund programs—including Social Security and Medicare—and give the panels 180 days to develop “legislation that restores solvency and otherwise improves each.” Measures put forth by the bipartisan committees would be fast-tracked for floor votes in both chambers of Congress, with no amendments allowed.

    Not only is Social Security legally incapable of adding to the federal deficit, but budget analysts have shown that the program is financially sound, requiring just a small increase in payroll tax revenue to ensure full benefits beyond 2035.

    “The last thing we need is another commission to propose cuts to Social Security and Medicare,” Sanders (I-Vt.) tweeted Saturday.

    “The disastrous Bowles-Simpson ‘fiscal commission’ came very close to passing Congress some ten years ago. Bernie led the fight against it. It was a bad idea then, it is an even worse idea now.”

    “The last time we had one, it proposed cutting Social Security benefits for middle-class seniors by up to 35% and cutting tax rates for billionaires,” Sanders added, referring to the notorious 2010 Bowles-Simpson Commission, on which Manchin and Romney’s bill is based.

    Former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles and former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson (Wyo.), the Obama-appointed chairs of that commission, both endorsed the TRUST Act in 2021, calling it “important and vital.”

    Historically informed critics, by contrast, have condemned Manchin and Romney’s legislation as “a Trojan horse to cut seniors’ benefits.”

    Sanders’ staff director Warren Gunnels provided additional historical context on Saturday, linking to a 2012 essay in which the senator explained that in addition to seeking to cut wealthy households’ tax rates and current retirees’ Social Security benefits, the panel also proposed raising the retirement age to 69 years, slashing veterans’ benefits, increasing interest rates on student loans, and eliminating 450,000 federal jobs, among other harmful measures.

    On Wednesday, Manchin asserted that his and Romney’s bill could be used to secure a debt ceiling deal with House Republicans, many of whom have vowed to not lift the country’s borrowing cap—an arbitrary and arguably unconstitutional figure set by Congress—unless Democrats agree to shred vital social programs.

    The U.S. government’s outstanding debt officially hit the statutory limit of $31.4 trillion on Thursday, at which point the Treasury Department started repurposing federal funds.

    Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told congressional leaders last week that “the use of extraordinary measures enables the government to meet its obligations for only a limited amount of time,” possibly through early June. She implored Congress to “act in a timely manner to increase or suspend the debt limit,” warning that “failure to meet the government’s obligations would cause irreparable harm to the U.S. economy, the livelihoods of all Americans, and global financial stability.”

    Notably, Capitol Hill’s deficit hawks do not support reducing the Pentagon’s ever-expanding budget or hiking taxes on the rich to increase revenue. On the contrary, the first bill unveiled by House Republicans in the 118th Congress seeks to rescind most of the Inflation Reduction Act’s roughly $80 billion funding boost for the Internal Revenue Service—a move that would help wealthy households evade taxes and add an estimated $114 billion to the federal deficit.

    A 2011 debt ceiling standoff enabled the GOP to impose austerity and also resulted in a historic downgrading of the U.S. government’s credit rating, but the country has never defaulted on its debt. Economists warn that doing so would likely trigger chaos in financial markets, leading to millions of job losses and the erasure of $15 trillion in wealth.

    Knowing that a painful recession is at stake, “many leading Republican lawmakers are demanding that their new House majority use the debt limit as leverage to force the Biden administration to accept sweeping spending cuts that Democrats oppose, creating an impasse with no clear resolution at hand,” the Washington Post reported last week.

    Manchin claims to have spoken “briefly” with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) about the TRUST Act. Asked about the White House’s opposition to attaching any policy concessions to a debt ceiling agreement, Manchin said he believes the Biden administration will change its tune and negotiate with Republicans.

    Alex Lawson, the executive director of Social Security Works, told Common Dreams earlier this week that President Joe Biden should “reiterate his commitment to only signing a clean debt limit increase, and specifically rule out a closed-door commission designed to cut Social Security.”

    Lawson’s sentiment was echoed Saturday by Gunnels, who wrote on social media: “I’m old enough to remember that the disastrous Bowles-Simpson ‘fiscal commission’ came very close to passing Congress some ten years ago. Bernie led the fight against it. It was a bad idea then, it is an even worse idea now.”

    Rather than allowing a bipartisan commission to propose devastating cuts, Sanders argued, “we must instead expand Social Security.”

    Surveys have shown that U.S. voters are strongly opposed to cutting or privatizing Social Security and want Congress to expand the program. Last year, Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) led the introduction of the Social Security Expansion Act, which would lift the cap on income that is subject to the Social Security payroll tax and boost the program’s annual benefits by $2,400.

    According to Data for Progress, 76% of likely voters—including 83% of Democrats, 73% of Republicans, and 73% of independents—support imposing, for the first time, payroll taxes on individuals with annual incomes above $400,000 per year to fund an expansion of Social Security benefits. Currently, only those making $147,000 or less are subject to the Social Security payroll tax.

  • EPA Plan for Forever Chemical Discharges ‘Lacks the Urgency’ Needed, Watchdog Says



    The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s newly released plan for regulating wastewater pollution, including discharges of toxic “forever chemicals,” is far too muted and sluggish, a progressive advocacy group warned Friday.

    The Environmental Working Group (EWG) detailed how the EPA’s long-awaited Effluent Guidelines Program Plan 15 postpones sorely needed action to rein in widespread contamination from per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). PFAS are a class of hazardous synthetic compounds widely called forever chemicals because they persist in people’s bodies and the environment for years on end.

    “We are deeply concerned that the EPA is punting on restrictions for PFAS polluting industries like electronics manufacturers, leather tanners, paint formulators, and plastics molders,” said Melanie Benesh, EWG’s vice president of government affairs. “We are also alarmed that the EPA’s proposed restrictions on some of the most serious PFAS polluters—chemical manufacturers and metal finishers—are also getting delayed, with no timeline for when those limits will be final, if ever.”

    According to EWG, the EPA’s new plan “falls short” of its pledge, made in the agency’s 2021 PFAS Strategic Roadmap, to “get upstream” of the forever chemicals problem.

    As the watchdog summarized:

    The EPA confirmed that by spring 2024—nine months later than previously scheduled—it will release a draft regulation for manufacturers of PFAS or those that create mixtures of PFAS. The agency will do the same for metal finishers and electroplaters by the end of 2024, a delay of six months. The EPA did not announce when final rules will be available for these industries.

    The agency will also begin regulating PFAS releases from landfills but did not provide a timeline for a final rule.

    For all other industrial categories the EPA considered for PFAS wastewater limitation guidelines, the new plan includes more studies and monitoring, likely delaying restrictions on these sources indefinitely.

    “Polluters have gotten a free pass for far too long to contaminate thousands of communities. Now they need aggressive action from the EPA to stop PFAS at the source,” Benesh said. “But the EPA’s plan lacks the urgency those communities rightfully expect.”

    “Although it’s a good thing the EPA is committing to address PFAS discharges from landfills—a source of pollution that disproportionately affects vulnerable communities—it’s also frustratingly unclear from EPA’s plan when, if ever, those limits will materialize,” said Benesh.

    “Given the glacial pace of change in the EPA’s plan,” she added, “states should not wait for the EPA to act on PFAS.”

    “Polluters have gotten a free pass for far too long to contaminate thousands of communities. Now they need aggressive action from the EPA to stop PFAS at the source.”

    Scientists have linked long-term PFAS exposure to numerous adverse health outcomes, including cancer, reproductive and developmental harms, immune system damage, and other negative effects.

    A peer-reviewed 2020 study estimated that more than 200 million people in the U.S. could have unsafe levels of PFAS in their drinking water. The deadly substances—used in dozens of everyday household products, including ostensibly “green” and “nontoxic” children’s items, as well as firefighting foam—have been detected in the blood of 97% of Americans and in 100% of breast milk samples. Such findings stem from independent analyses because the EPA relies on inadequate testing methods.

    Researchers have identified more than 57,000 sites across the U.S. contaminated by PFAS. Solid waste landfills, wastewater treatment plants, electroplaters and metal finishers, petroleum refiners, current or former military facilities, and airports are the most common sources of forever chemical pollution. Industrial discharges of PFAS are a key reason why 83% of U.S. waterways contain forever chemicals, tainting fish nationwide.

    Some congressional Democrats are “trying to force the EPA to address PFAS more quickly,” EWG noted.

    The Clean Water Standards for PFAS Act, introduced in 2022 by Rep. Chris Pappas (D-N.H.) and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), would require the EPA to establish PFAS wastewater limitation guidelines and water standards for PFAS in nine distinct industry categories by the end of 2026.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • Biden Admin Still Pushing Trump-Era Legal Positions After Two Years in White House



    Two years after President Joe Biden was inaugurated, his administration continues to advance Trump-era legal positions in dozens of court cases, a progressive watchdog group revealed Friday.

    Former President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) “consistently made a mockery of the law throughout his four years in power,” the Revolving Door Project (RDP) noted in the latest release of its long-running litigation tracker.

    Even though “their laughable reasoning and indefensible positions were struck down at a historic rate, many cases were still waiting for Biden,” RDP wrote. “Two years into Biden’s presidency, an alarming number remain, either in some form of pause or advancing forward with the Biden administration adopting Trump’s position.”

    RDP’s litigation tracker, a noncomprehensive database updated Friday to include additional cases and developments, breaks down legal actions across more than a dozen categories. A selection of the Biden administration’s moves follows:

    Immigration
    • Biden’s DOJ bowed to Republican pressure and pulled out of settlement talks with migrants whose families were separated at the border;
    • The Biden administration continues to misuse Title 42 public health authority, first misused by Trump, to turn away asylum-seekers at the border; and
    • The Biden administration continued to defend the practice of violating the legal rights of unaccompanied migrant children under the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) program.
    Environment
    • Though Biden canceled the Keystone XL pipeline on his first day as president, his Department of Justice defended the Trump-approved Line 3 pipeline in court; and
    • The Biden administration urged an appeals court to overturn an offshore fracking ban once backed by Vice President Kamala Harris.
    Education
    • Biden’s DOJ defended Betsy DeVos and her corrupt Education Department’s actions in court.
    Voting Rights
    • Biden failed to defend voting rights amid historic assault.
    Criminal Justice Reform
    • Biden endorsed an expansion of police power.
    Social Security
    • Biden’s DOJ defended a Social Security provision that deprives Puerto Rico residents of benefits before the Supreme Court.
    Executive Power and Immunity
    • Biden’s DOJ is defending former President Trump in a defamation lawsuit stemming from a sexual assault accusation; and
    • Biden’s DOJ argued to toss out lawsuits against Trump and top officials for violently removing protestors ahead of a photo-op.
    Death Penalty
    • Biden’s DOJ asked the Supreme Court to reinstate the death sentence in the Boston Marathon bomber case.
    International Law/Human Rights
    • Biden’s DOJ declined to take a position on whether prisoners at Guantánamo have due process rights.

    “Fidelity to Trump-era positions takes many forms,” RDP pointed out. “Biden’s DOJ successfully defended Trump-era warrantless searches of travelers’ phones; in 2022, the public learned that customs officials maintain a huge database of travelers’ copied phone data. The DOJ continued to prosecute an Indigenous woman arrested while praying on sacred grounds disrupted by Trump’s border wall construction. They successfully defended the 17-year allowance Trump’s EPA granted to Montana to fail to meet clean water standards for nutrient pollution.”

    In addition, the Biden White House persists “in siding with the pork industry against California and animal rights groups in a high-profile Supreme Court case, despite dozens of Democratic lawmakers urging a change of course,” RDP continued. “National Pork Producers Council v. Ross is not the only animal farming case in which the Biden-Garland Justice Department continues to maintain Trump administration positions. The latest update to the litigation tracker shows the Justice Department continuing to defend multiple Trump-era Department of Agriculture decisions that excuse or enable the cruel treatment of poultry, lab-kept primates, and pigs in slaughterhouses.”

    In a statement, RDP researcher Ananya Kalahasti said that “as the previous administration violated legal and ethical norms at every turn, Attorney General Merrick Garland’s choice of continuity with the Trump DOJ’s positions erodes the integrity of the very institution he is determined to protect.”

    “While the Justice Department makes concerted strides towards a more just application of the law in many cases,” Kalahasti added, “it pulls backward in others, muddling the legacy and body of precedent it is shaping in real-time.”

    RDP researcher Hannah Story Brown observed that although “the Justice Department has chosen continuity with its Trump-era position in amicus filings before the Supreme Court in National Pork Producers Council v. Ross… the Biden administration still has a potent opportunity to chart a better course, with other ongoing cases like Suncor v. Boulder County Commissioners, a climate damages case in which the Supreme Court has solicited the Justice Department’s opinion.”

    Brown made clear that RDP is “watching closely to see whether the Justice Department chooses to break from or maintain the position it first adopted under disgraced former DOJ environmental attorney Jeffrey Clark in related state-level climate cases.”

    Under normal circumstances, maintaining the previous administration’s positions “would be relatively routine,” RDP argued. “Even if the White House is shifting from one party to another, it is not generally assumed that all of the federal government’s litigation positions will change. Instead of a blanket reversal, each case tends to receive a thorough review before the new administration decides to stay the course or reverse.”

    “But these are not normal circumstances,” the group continued. “At every turn and in every corner of the federal government, the Trump administration gleefully trampled the law. In fact, loyalty to the president’s person—which plainly required a willingness to ignore legal constraints—was a nonnegotiable condition of employment. In the wake of such an attack, normal deference is not warranted.”

    “The Biden administration must move quickly to drop, reverse, or settle the cases that Trump left behind,” RDP stressed. “And—we would have thought this wouldn’t need to be said—the administration should adopt Trump’s positions about as often as a stopped clock is accurate.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • Nurses Strike to Save Lives and End Tory Attack on NHS



    Nurses at 55 National Health Service facilities across England launched a two-day strike on Wednesday after the United Kingdom’s right-wing government, led by Tory Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, refused to open formal negotiations over pay and patient safety.

    Royal College of Nursing (RCN) general secretary Pat Cullen called the 12-hour work stoppages on Wednesday and Thursday—which come after nurses at dozens of NHS facilities in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland participated in the union’s first-ever national strike in December—”a modest escalation before a sharp increase in under three weeks from now.” There is a strike fund, and picket line locations can be found here.

    The nearly 500,000-strong nurses’ union announced earlier this week that if progress is not made by the end of January, members at 85 NHS facilities in England and Wales will walk off the job again on February 6 and February 7. RCN members in Northern Ireland are not slated to join next month’s walkout. In Scotland, strike action remains paused amid ongoing negotiations.

    “Rather than negotiate, Rishi Sunak has chosen strike action again.”

    “It is with a heavy heart that nursing staff are striking this week and again in three weeks,” Cullen said Monday. “Rather than negotiate, Rishi Sunak has chosen strike action again.”

    On Wednesday, the registered nurse and union leader added: “People aren’t dying because nurses are striking. Nurses are striking because people are dying. That is how severe things are in the NHS and it is time the prime minister led a fight for its future.”

    “Today’s record number of unfilled nurse jobs cannot be left to get worse,” said Cullen. “Pay nursing staff fairly to turn this around and give the public the care they deserve.”

    A 2021 study commissioned by the RCN found that in real terms, the salaries of experienced U.K. nurses have fallen by 20% due to successive below-inflation pay bumps since 2010. The current dispute is fueled by discontent over a proposed 4-5% raise, which fails to keep pace with the soaring cost of living, up by 10.5% in 2022. RCN is seeking a 5% raise above inflation.

    According to the RCN, “Low pay is pushing nursing staff out of the profession and contributing to record vacancies.”

    Because there are “tens of thousands of unfilled jobs,” Cullen said, “patient care is suffering like never before.”

    As the union pointed out, the upcoming February strike dates coincide with the tenth anniversary of the final report of the Robert Francis inquiry, which documented the relationship between inadequate nurse staffing levels and higher mortality rates.

    “Pay nursing staff fairly to turn this around and give the public the care they deserve.”

    If the U.K. government invested in better pay for nurses, it “would recoup 81% of the initial outlay in terms of higher tax receipts and savings on future recruitment and retention costs,” the RCN noted, citing London Economics researchers.

    “My olive branch to government—asking them to meet me halfway and begin negotiations—is still there,” said Cullen. “They should grab it.”

    Also on Wednesday, the GMB union announced that 10,000 ambulance workers in the U.K. plan to strike on February 6, February 20, March 6, and March 20.

    “Ambulance workers are angry. In their own words, ‘They are done,’” said GMB national secretary Rachel Harrison. “Our message to the government is clear—talk pay now.”

    February 6 is set to become the first time in history that nurses and paramedics strike on the same day.

    The past year has seen a surge in labor unrest across the U.K., with teachers in England and Wales voting Monday afternoon to strike on February 1, the same day 100,000 other public sector workers were already scheduled to walk off the job to demand improved pay and benefits.

    The Tories further angered organized labor this week by advancing a bill that threatens to take away the right of nurses, ambulance workers, teachers, firefighters, rail workers, and others to strike.

    Progressive critics argue that the Tories’ proposal to fire striking public sector workers who refuse to comply with a mandatory return-to-work notice amounts to a “pay cut and forced labor bill” and would constitute a “gross violation of international law.”

    During a recent speech inveighing against the anti-strike legislation, left-wing Labour Party MP Zarah Sultana said that the bill is about “shifting the balance of power: weakening the power of workers and making it easier for bosses to exploit them and for the government to ignore them.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • ‘We Need Medicare for All’: Record Number in US Postponed Healthcare in 2022



    Nearly 40% of people in the United States said they or a family member delayed medical care last year due to the prohibitively high cost of treatment under the nation’s for-profit healthcare model, according to a Gallup survey published Tuesday.

    As U.S. residents faced soaring prices for private insurance, the percentage of them forgoing medical services as a result of the costs climbed 12 points in one year, from 26% in 2021 to 38% in 2022. Of those who reported postponing treatment last year, 27% said they or a family member did so “for a very or somewhat serious condition,” up nine points from the previous year.

    “After health insurance companies raised prices 24% last year and made nearly $12 billion in profits last quarter, 38% of Americans now report they or a family member put off needed medical care because it was too expensive,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) tweeted in response to the new findings. “We must end this corporate greed. We need Medicare for All.”

    Gallup has been collecting self-reported data on this issue since 2001. The firm’s latest annual healthcare poll, conducted from November 9 to December 2, found the highest level of cost-related delays in seeking medical care on record, topping the previous high of 33% (2019 and 2014) by five points and marking the sharpest annual increase to date. The proportion of people who said they or a family member postponed treatment for a serious condition in 2022 (27%) also surpassed the previous all-time high of 25% (2019).

    Lower-income households, young adults, and women in the U.S. are especially likely to have postponed medical care due to high costs.

    According to Gallup:

    In 2022, Americans with an annual household income under $40,000 were nearly twice as likely as those with an income of $100,000 or more to say someone in their family delayed medical care for a serious condition (34% vs. 18%, respectively). Those with an income between $40,000 and less than $100,000 were similar to those in the lowest income group when it comes to postponing care, with 29% doing so.

    Reports of putting off care for a serious condition are up 12 points among lower-income U.S. adults, up 11 points among those in the middle-income group, and up seven points among those with a higher income. The latest readings for the middle- and upper-income groups are the highest on record or tied with the highest.

    Another recent survey found that just 12% of Americans think healthcare in the U.S. is handled “extremely” or “very” well. Such data provides further evidence of the unpopularity of a profit-maximizing system that has left 43 million people inadequately insured, kicked millions off of their employer-based plans when the coronavirus caused a spike in unemployment, and contributed to the country’s startling decline in life expectancy.

    Last week, prior to the publication of Gallup’s poll, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) wrote on social media: “If you don’t believe corporate greed has deadly consequences, take a look at the decline in American life expectancy. We need Medicare for All, and we must raise the minimum wage.”

    While the current, profit-driven U.S. healthcare system—which forces millions to skip treatments to avoid financial ruin and allows the pharmaceutical and insurance industries to rake in massive profits—is deeply inefficient and unpopular, polling has consistently shown that voters want the federal government to play a more active role in healthcare provision, with a majority expressing support for a publicly run insurance plan.

    Recent research shows that a single-payer system of the kind proposed in Medicare for All legislation introduced by Sanders and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) could have prevented hundreds of thousands of Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. over the past two and a half years.

    Not only would a single-payer insurance program guarantee coverage for every person in the country, but it would also reduce overall healthcare spending nationwide by an estimated $650 billion per year.

    “Millions of Americans across this country are avoiding seeking lifesaving medical care because they’re afraid it will bankrupt them,” Khanna, a universal healthcare advocate, tweeted last week. “In many cases, their fears are well-founded. We need Medicare for All.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • As Debt Ceiling Alarm Sounded, GOP Accused of Plotting ‘Terrorist Attack on the Economy’



    As Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned Friday that the United States is likely to reach its arbitrary borrowing limit next week, progressives denounced congressional Republicans for threatening to use a debt ceiling standoff to force cuts to popular federal programs including Medicare and Social Security.

    “They have the tiniest majority of one house and they are prepared to use it to get concessions they know are incredibly unpopular,” Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, told The Washington Post. “It would be a terrorist attack on the economy.”

    Yellen announced that once the outstanding debt of the U.S. hits the statutory limit of $31.4 trillion—an event projected to happen on January 19—the Treasury Department will start repurposing federal funds to delay the date the government runs out of money. Until Congress raises the debt limit, the Treasury cannot borrow additional money, including to pay for spending that has already been authorized.

    In a letter to congressional leaders, Yellen wrote that “the use of extraordinary measures enables the government to meet its obligations for only a limited amount of time,” possibly through early June. She implored Congress to “act in a timely manner to increase or suspend the debt limit,” warning that “failure to meet the government’s obligations would cause irreparable harm to the U.S. economy, the livelihoods of all Americans, and global financial stability.”

    House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) suggested—before the GOP won its slim House majority during November’s midterms—that if elected to lead the chamber, he would refuse to lift the country’s borrowing limit unless Democrats agreed to slash the social safety net and climate investments in return.

    To secure enough votes to win his drawn-out battle for the speaker’s gavel, McCarthy made undisclosed promises to far-right lawmakers, including several House Freedom Caucus members who have expressed opposition to raising the debt ceiling even if all of their demands, from shredding vital social programs to passing draconian immigration restrictions, were met.

    The fight over the debt ceiling represents one of McCarthy’s “most difficult balancing acts,” CNN noted recently. The California Republican will “need to work with Senate Democrats and President Joe Biden to cut a deal and avoid economic catastrophe without angering his emboldened right flank for caving into the left.”

    McCarthy told reporters Thursday that “he hoped to ‘sit down with [Biden] early’ to work through a number of outstanding fiscal issues, potentially including the looming need to raise the debt ceiling,” the Post reported. “In doing so, McCarthy reaffirmed Republicans’ interest in seeking an agreement that could cap spending in exchange for votes to address the country’s borrowing cap.”

    “We’ve got to change the way we’re spending money wastefully in this country,” McCarthy said. “And we’re going to make sure that happens.”

    Notably, Capitol Hill’s deficit hawks do not support reducing the Pentagon’s ever-expanding budget or hiking taxes on the rich to increase revenue. On the contrary, the first bill unveiled by House Republicans in the 118th Congress seeks to rescind most of the Inflation Reduction Act’s roughly $80 billion funding boost for the Internal Revenue Service—a move that would help wealthy households evade taxes and add an estimated $114 billion to the federal deficit.

    A 2011 debt ceiling standoff enabled the GOP to impose austerity and also resulted in a historic downgrading of the U.S. government’s credit rating, but the country has never defaulted on its debt. Economists warn that doing so would likely trigger chaos in financial markets, leading to millions of job losses and the erasure of $15 trillion in wealth. Knowing that a painful recession is at stake, “many leading Republican lawmakers are demanding that their new House majority use the debt limit as leverage to force the Biden administration to accept sweeping spending cuts that Democrats oppose, creating an impasse with no clear resolution at hand,” the Post reported.

    According to CNN, some Republicans—fearful of both a disastrous default and political backlash for attacking popular programs—remain uneasy about using the debt ceiling as a bargaining chip, recalling how then-Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) proposal to privatize Medicare “became fodder for attacks that depicted him rolling an elderly lady in a wheelchair off a cliff.”

    Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), however, has warned that GOP lawmakers desperate to win the White House in 2024 will “blow up the economy” and run ads blaming Biden for it.

    The Biden administration on Friday urged Republicans to drop any plans they have to hold the nation’s economy hostage, saying it has no intention to conduct debt ceiling negotiations and calling on lawmakers to raise the nation’s borrowing limit to preserve its credit.

    “We have seen both Republicans and Democrats come together to deal with this issue,” White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters. “It is one of the basic items that Congress has to deal with and it should be done without conditions.”

    In a joint statement, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said Friday that “a default forced by extreme MAGA Republicans could plunge the country into a deep recession… Democrats want to move quickly to pass legislation addressing the debt limit so there is no chance of risking a catastrophic default.”

    As many observers pointed out repeatedly in the aftermath of the midterm elections, Democrats had the power to prevent this high-risk game of brinkmanship from proceeding any further by raising the debt ceiling—or abolishing it altogether—when they still controlled both chambers of Congress.

    Despite ample warnings from Warren and other progressive lawmakers and advocacy groups, conservative Democrats refused to take unilateral action during the lame-duck session.

    In the absence of congressional action, Yellen—who has supported proposals to permanently eliminate the federal government’s borrowing cap as most countries around the world have done—still has the authority to avert an economic calamity by minting a trillion-dollar platinum coin.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • Barbara Lee Tells Colleagues She’s Running for Senate

    Progressive Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee of California told lawmakers Wednesday during a closed-door meeting of the Congressional Black Caucus that she intends to run for Senate, Politico reported, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter.

    Lee’s decision, which has yet to be communicated through an official campaign announcement, comes one day after fellow progressive Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) announced that she is running for the seat currently held by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, an 89-year-old corporate Democrat.

    Feinstein has indicated that she wants to serve the final two years of her six-year term but has yet to say whether she plans to seek another term in 2024. Regardless, the competition to succeed the oldest member of Congress, whose cognitive health has become a major concern, has been escalating for weeks.

    Lee, a former co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) and the only federal lawmaker to vote against the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, has long been a champion of egalitarian policies in California and beyond.

    Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) has publicly stated that he is exploring a run, and progressive Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) is also considered to be a potential candidate in the race.

    Feinstein’s seat is widely seen as safely Democratic for whichever candidate emerges from what is likely to be a crowded primary field, though some observers have warned of the possibility that CPC members Lee, Porter, and Khanna could split the progressive vote.