REE’s — Rare Earth Elements.
We’re all connected to the deep sea. There is no line in the ocean that says to us, ‘below this, nothing matters.’ The ocean is all connected. It’s the largest livable habitat on the planet.
— Astrid Leitner, Oregon State U assistant professor.
The interview HERE, to be aired, in 2026, KYAQ.Org (Finding Fringe — Voices from the Edge) covers, well, the part we do not see, for the most part, at the bottom of the sea:
…formed over millions of years from falling debris like shark’s teeth or fish bones—acted as nuclei to gather trace minerals. The estimate is that the nodules grow about one millimeter every thousand years and, in some areas of the seabed, there are billions of these potato-sized rocks, each one teeming with minute marine organisms
This is Astrid’s work:
How will it impact the already diminished populations of phytoplankton which provide up to 70% of the oxygen in the atmosphere? How will it impact the already diminished populations of krill, the foundation of the food pyramid in the sea? How will deep sea mining influence the climate, the movement of currents, and the migration and viability of sea life? The industry has not answered these questions because there is no answer that they will acknowledge—because such answers will expose them as harbingers of global destruction.
Since 2001, the International Seabed Authority (ISA), an intergovernmental body in charge of regulating deep-sea mining in waters beyond national jurisdictions, has granted 31 exploratory licenses to private companies and governmental agencies. The organization is unlikely to approve commercial mining applications until its 36-member council reaches consensus on rules regarding exploitation and the environment. Member states have set a 2025 timeline to finalize and adopt the regulations.
Read more here: The promise and risks of deep-sea mining
Astrid Leitner completed two bachelors degrees at the University of California at Santa Cruz in 2012. She has one degree in Marine Biology and another degree in Earth and Planetary Sciences. During her undergraduate career she focused mainly on coastal ecology, working for the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans (PISCO). Astrid began her career working in the intertidal on a barnacle recruitment project. Later on, she began to work as an AAUS scientific diver in the California Kelp Forests studying the impacts of local, small-scale physical processes on the rockfish community.
Additionally, she spent one semester at STARESO (Station de Recherches Sous-marines et Oceanographiques) in Corsica, France where she studied factors influencing schools of Chromis, the Mediterranean damselfish. Astrid also completed an NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program at Oregon State University where she worked on her first deep sea project. While in Oregon, she worked on the fish community in Astoria Canyon, a large submarine canyon beginning at the mouth of the Columbia River. For this project Astrid analyzed Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) footage from depths ranging from 100 to 1400 meters.
As a part of her research, Leitner discovered the largest aggregation of fish ever documented at abyssal depths of 10,000 to 20,000 feet. She also recently discovered a distinct midwater boundary community along the wall of the Monterey Canyon. In addition to her role as an oceanographer, Leitner is a dedicated advocate and mentor for women in science.
“Her subsequent work in graduate school at University of Hawaii and as a postdoctoral fellow at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute helped her hone her focus on the effects of steep and dramatic undersea features on deep-sea community ecology. Leitner’s work asks, what species use various abrupt deep-sea habitats? What are they doing in these habitats? How do the observed species interact with each other? How does community structure change over space and time? (Astrid Leitner shines light on the deep, dark sea.” — By Nancy Steinberg)
Recently, a team led by researchers at the Natural History Museum in London identified 5,000 new animal species from an untouched area of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (Curr. Biol. 2023, DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2023.04.052).
“And there’s millions, possibly tens of millions of species in the deep sea still to be described,” Travis Washburn, an ecologist who worked with the Geological Survey of Japan to study impacts of seabed mining tests, says. “Without knowing what’s down there, scientists can’t understand mining’s full impact.”
…copper, cobalt, nickel, zinc, silver, gold… Strategic Metals! War War War.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” ― I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked
Rare metals
Rare metals are metals having a low average abundance and/or availability in the Earth’s crust (i.e. the capacity to concentrate in deposits). This is the case, for example, for indium, cobalt and antimony. Rare earths comprise a group of fifteen metals (the lanthanides) which form an integral part of the earth’s rare metals. They are commonly associated with yttrium and scandium. Their unique properties (lightness, strength, energy storage, thermal resistance, magnetic and optical properties, etc.) make them the elements of choice in a range of technology fields, ranging from defence to digital and energy transition sectors (e.g. permanent magnets, batteries, catalytic systems, etc.). Despite their name, the rare earths are not in fact that rare. However, their deposits – in other words, naturally-occurring concentrations that are economically exploitable – are typically not found in abundance.
Strategic metals
A metal is strategic if it is essential to a State’s economic policy (security, defence, energy policy, etc.). A metal may also be considered strategic for a particular company or industry (e.g. aerospace, defence, automotive, electronics & ICT, renewable energies, nuclear, etc.).
Critical metals
A metal is deemed critical if difficulties with the metal’s supply could have negative industrial or economic impacts. In most international studies the criticality of a metal (as of any mineral) is judged on two criteria: supply-side risk (geological, technical, geographical, economic, geopolitical), and economic importance which reflects the vulnerability of the economy to potential shortage or supply interruption creating a surge in prices. According to Raphaël Danino-Perraud, “In short, critical metals are metals associated with supply chain pressures, in terms of both supply and demand.” For the US National Research Council and the European Commission, a metal or mineral is critical when it is “both essential in use and potentially subject to supply constraints.”
This is what Astrid and I talked about: have a listen.
[A marine organism in the genus Relicanthus is attached to a dead sponge stalk tethered to a nodule.]
[While collecting nodules from the seabed, mining vehicles create sediment plumes that can harm ocean life.]
+—+
Rare Earths in the AI Era: How Data Centers Are Driving Demand for Forgotten Metals — Rare earth elements (REEs) consist of 17 metallic elements with similar chemical traits. This group includes the 15 lanthanides, plus scandium and yttrium. These elements aren’t truly “rare” regarding their presence in the Earth’s crust. However, they are typically scattered rather than gathered in deposits that are easy to mine profitably. This spread-out nature complicates their extraction and purification. Despite their name suggesting scarcity, rare earths are vital to modern tech. Their unique physical and chemical features drive their importance.
Here are some of Astrid’s publications, co-authored, and such.
We got into her research, the power of economics driving this dirty industry, and the various laws of the open sea and the laws around deep sea mining, those written, those proposed, those not on the books.
But this is the empire of pain, dirt, pollution, lies, terror, and as we know, Trump is manipulated by Big Tech, MIC, and billionaires. We will pay for the mining, the costs, the external damage, costs, to us, to the sea, and even pay for the metal and mining companies going belly up.
[A Greenpeace activist holds a banner during a protest near a deep-sea mining vessel in Mexico, on September 27, 2023]
“The United States has a core national security and economic interest in maintaining leadership in deep-sea science and technology and seabed mineral resources,” Trump said in the order.
The order directs the US administration to expedite mining permits under the Deep Seabed Hard Minerals Resource Act of 1980 and to establish a process for issuing permits along the US outer continental shelf.
It also orders the expedited review of seabed mining permits “in areas beyond the national jurisdiction,” a move likely to cause friction with the international community.
The White House says deep-sea mining will generate billions of metric tonnes of materials, while adding $300bn and 100,000 jobs to the US economy over the next decade.
Environmental groups are calling for all deep-sea mining activities to be banned, warning that industrial operations on the ocean floor could cause irreversible biodiversity loss.
“The United States government has no right to unilaterally allow an industry to destroy the common heritage of humankind, and rip up the deep sea for the profit of a few corporations,” Greenpeace’s Arlo Hemphill said.
The 30th session of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) Assembly established 1 November as the International Day of the Deep Seabed as proposed by the sponsoring countries, Fiji, Jamaica, Malta and Singapore. The annual observance will promote greater understanding of the deep seabed and its resources while fostering international cooperation in its sustainable management. — Source
Externalities for the Taker Race of people: The price of irreversible ecological damage with deep sea mining could be staggering, estimated to potentially surpass the entire global defence budget of about 2 trillion dollars.
Over 950 marine science and policy experts from more than 70 countries have signed a statement calling for a pause in the development of deep-sea mining.
Trump and Company: Trump’s New Executive Order Promotes Deep Sea Mining in US and International Waters While Bypassing International Law
“You cannot authorize mining that’s going to cause biodiversity loss, that’s going to cause irreparable damage to the marine environment.”
— Matthew Gianni, Deep Sea Conservation Coalition
[Marine biologist Diva Amon explores the deep sea around the Saint Peter and Saint Paul Rocks in the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Brazil.]
So, out of sight, out of mind? The attack on critical thinking, logic, common sense, precautionary principles, and the attack on real science, and research, well well, a Brave New World INDEED.
*****
In an online post last month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) described the political move as a step towards paving the way for “The Next Gold Rush,” stating: “Critical minerals are used in everything from defense systems and batteries to smartphones and medical devices. Access to these minerals is a key factor in the health and resilience of U.S. supply chains.”
The order, titled “Unleashing America’s Offshore Critical Minerals and Resources,” charges NOAA and the Secretary of Commerce with expediting the process for reviewing and issuing licenses to explore and permits to mine seabed minerals in areas beyond national jurisdiction.
Less than a week after it was issued, a U.S. subsidiary of the Canadian deep-sea mining corporation called The Metals Company submitted its first applications to explore and exploit polymetallic nodules in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone.
*****
Trigger Warming: Capitalism and Industrialization images cause many to have PTSD.
Acceptable headline? How the Coal Industry Flattened the Mountains of Appalachia –
Acceptable? Green Energy’s Dirty Secret: Its Hunger for African Resources
Considering the “dirty” impacts of critical minerals mining
Oh, business as usual: Amazon rainforest destruction is accelerating, shows government data
Study warns that vast swaths of Amazon are dead –
Worst environmental problems on planet earth?
Match the images above with any of these descriptors”: Potash – Heringen, Germany; Food – Baton Rouge, Louisiana, US, Food – Huelva, Spain (Most of the phosphate rock used to supply fertilizer for southern Europe is mined in Morocco and sent to facilities such as this one in Spain for processing.), Food – Luling, Louisiana US (New evidence contradicts previous claims of the relative safety of glyphosate, the world’s most widely used herbicide, which is manufactured here.), Steel – Kiruna, Sweden, Steel – Burns Harbor, Indiana, US, Copper – Hurley, New Mexico US, Copper – Hurley, New Mexico US, Aluminium – Gramercy, Louisiana, US, Aluminium — Bauxite waste from aluminum production, Oil – Gulf of Mexica, US, Oil – Gulf of Mexico, US, Oil – Fort McMurray, Canada, Fracking – Williston, North Dakota, US, Fracking – Springville, Pennsylvania, US, Coal– Garzweiler, Germany, Coal – New Roads, Louisiana, US, Kayford mountain, West Virginia, US
Find your answerers here: Industrial scars: The environmental cost of consumption – in pictures
The oceans became a dumping ground due to a long-standing “out of sight, out of mind” philosophy, driven by the sheer vastness of the sea, a lack of scientific understanding of pollution’s effects, and the rise of the Industrial Revolution and mass production.
Oh, the Oppen-Monster-Heimers of the world, going to the very deepest parts of the ocean, for . . . ?
Although no complete records exist of the volumes and types of materials disposed in ocean waters in the United States prior to 1972, several reports indicate a vast magnitude of historic ocean dumping:
- In 1968, the National Academy of Sciences estimated annual volumes of ocean dumping by vessel or pipes:
- 100 million tons of petroleum products;
- two to four million tons of acid chemical wastes from pulp mills;
- more than one million tons of heavy metals in industrial wastes; and
- more than 100,000 tons of organic chemical wastes.
- A 1970 Report to the President from the Council on Environmental Quality on ocean dumping described that in 1968 the following were dumped in the ocean in the United States:
- 38 million tons of dredged material (34 percent of which was polluted),
- 4.5 million tons of industrial wastes,
- 4.5 million tons of sewage sludge (significantly contaminated with heavy metals), and
- 0.5 million tons of construction and demolition debris.
- EPA records indicate that more than 55,000 containers of radioactive wastes were dumped at three ocean sites in the Pacific Ocean between 1946 and 1970. Almost 34,000 containers of radioactive wastes were dumped at three ocean sites off the East Coast of the United States from 1951 to 1962.
Following decades of uncontrolled dumping, some areas of the ocean became demonstrably contaminated with high concentrations of harmful pollutants including heavy metals, inorganic nutrients, and chlorinated petrochemicals. The uncontrolled ocean dumping caused severe depletion of oxygen levels in some ocean waters. In the New York Bight (ocean waters off the mouth of the Hudson River), where New York City dumped sewage sludge and other materials, oxygen concentrations in waters near the seafloor declined significantly between 1949 and 1969.
Mustard gas containers, how lovely! Dumped from barges or sent to the bottom aboard scuttled ships, estimates are that millions of pounds of military munitions — unexploded 250-, 500- and 1,000-pound bombs, land mines, mustard gas and other chemical weapons, including munitions confiscated from Nazi Germany and elsewhere following World War II — were sunk the eastern seaboard of the United States, around the Gulf of Mexico and off the coasts of the Hawaiian islands. Records of the dumped munitions, if kept at all, are scarce. Some likely are inaccurate. Some likely were destroyed.
Again, here, the Interview, a month-plus ahead of 91.7 FM airing for DV readers.
The post Law of the Sea, the Abysmal Plain, and the Value of Intentional Obsolescence first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
I’ve put the word “evacuation” in the title of this piece in quotes because it’s not clear where Tehran’s 9.8 million people or some significant number of them would evacuate to as water supplies run dangerously low. Iranian President Massoud Pezeshkian has been criticized for saying out loud how bad the situation is: “If it does not rain in Tehran by December, we should ration water; if it still does not rain, we must empty Tehran.”
Doubtless Iranian water authorities will force severe restrictions on Tehran’s residents if the rains—which have been 82 percent below the long term averages for the past year—do not come.
The post Tehran Contemplates ‘Evacuation’ As Many Cities Face Water Dilemmas appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
Every year, around 8 million tons of plastic waste finds its way into the world’s oceans. Some of this plastic takes centuries to break down. For the plastic that drifts to the coast of Zhejiang, China, a new opportunity presents itself. Here it is collected, brought ashore and given a second life thanks to the “Blue Circle”. With nature’s generosity in mind, a growing number of people is choosing to stand with the ocean.
The post When Trash Infests Our Oceans, Some Choose to Act first appeared on Dissident Voice.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by CGTN.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
The struggles for Palestinian liberation and climate justice are one and the same, according to Marwan Bishara. The eastern Mediterranean is one of the most climate-vulnerable places on the planet. Whereas worldwide temperatures have increased by an average of 1.1°C since pre-industrial times, in Israel/Palestine average temperatures have risen by 1.5°C between 1950 and 2017, with a forecast increase of 4°C by the end of the century for the 400 million people living in the region.
Despite the majority of Middle East countries being signatories to the Paris Climate Accords, so far, their leaders have failed to meet the commitments made in the agreement. Moreover, oil-rich countries in the region continue to increase fossil fuel production. The United Arab Emirates chose to appoint the head of its state-run oil company as the president of the 2025 climate conference in Dubai (COP28), though even this farce pales in comparison to the hypocrisy displayed by their western counterparts. The US will be responsible for over one-third of all planned fossil fuel expansion through 2050. President Biden called climate change an ‘existential threat’ and announced the creation of a climate conservation corps at the same time as the US broke a record for oil production.
This hypocrisy perfectly mirrors the long-standing response of affluent, and powerful, western nations to the Palestinian tragedy, which spout words of protest but continue to provide arms and fuel to the genocidaires. On climate change, they came up with deceptive concepts like carbon offset and carbon credit to evade meaningful action and a just, swift transition to renewable energy. On Palestine, they devised unworkable peace plans that only serve to deepen Palestinian oppression. Under President Trump this willful destruction of the environment will get far worse, as he denies there is any climate crisis at all, and chants ‘Drill, drill, drill’. On Palestine, Trump follows the will of Netanyahu, demanding the complete disarmament of Hamas, the surrender of the Palestinians’ legitimate resistance to occupation.
US hegemony rests on two key pillars in the region and beyond. First, Israel as a Euro-American settler colony, which is an advanced imperialist outpost in the so-called Middle East. Israel is the number one ally of the United States and maintains US hegemony in the region and control of its vast oil resources. The second pillar is the reactionary oil-rich Gulf monarchies. The Palestinian cause is not merely a moral human rights issue, but is essentially a struggle against US-led imperialism and global fossil capitalism, i.e., a vital link in the struggle to save the planet. There can be no climate justice, no just transition to a way of life which doesn’t lead to an end to life, without dismantling the racist settler-colonial state of Israel.
Blowback from Israel’s erasure of Palestine
Equally cynical is Israel’s routine confiscation of Palestinian lands under the pretext of environmental conservation. This tactic, known as green colonialism, exposes Israel’s use of environmentalism to displace the indigenous population of Palestine and exploit its resources. Israeli green zones are primarily established to legitimise land seizures and prevent the return of displaced Palestinians, further entrenching a system of apartheid.
There is only one planet Earth. Today, the climate justice movement calls not only for action to mitigate climate change but also for fundamental shifts in social structures that perpetuate the environmental crisis, addressing issues of social equality, distributive justice, and control of natural resources. Israel exacerbates the climate risks facing Palestinians by denying them the right to manage their land and resources, making them more vulnerable to climate-related events.
Israel’s forest fires in recent years are all due to planting invasive species of fast-growing European trees—pines, cypresses, and eucalyptus—that overwrite Palestine’s identity. The Jewish National Fund (JNF) placed blue donation boxes in Jewish homes worldwide, collecting money to buy land (for the Jewish National Fund, which sell only to Jews) and plant these alien trees—claiming it was planting forests on “barren, desolate lands.”After the 1948 Nakba, when Zionist forces destroyed over 500 Palestinian villages, the JNF planted forests atop the ruins. Pine trees now grow where homes once stood in Al-Qabo, Allar, and Ein Karem.
These forests are green graves, hiding erased villages and blocking refugees from returning. Fast-growing European pines, covering 40% of JNF lands, are ecological time bombs. Their oily needles ignite easily, fueling wildfires. Native olives and carobs—trees that Palestinians nurtured for generations—make up just 5% of JNF plots. This is not conservation. It is conquest, replacing resilient ecosystems with flammable monocultures. The aim is to efface all traces of Palestinian existence, and without concern for the environmental effects. It is ecocide, and utterly criminal.
In the Naqab desert, the Yatir Forest—funded by overseas donors—displaces Bedouin communities under the lie of fighting desertification. Meanwhile, vineyards guzzling stolen water grow on stolen land, their wine marketed as a revival of ancient Judean roots. The truth? They are symbols of colonial theft, draining Palestinian wells dry.
Even nature reserves serve the occupation. Israel bars Palestinians from farming on 70,000 hectares of ‘protected’ land, while settlers build roads and parks. Bulldozers clear olive trees to create ‘buffer zones’ for settler highways. This is not conservation. It is erasure, disguised as environmentalism.
Some of the key issues
* water, wastewater, and hygiene. Even before 2023, Palestinians in Gaza were restricted to water consumption levels well below the recommended minimum. The World Health Organization recommends 100 liters of water per day per person, yet, before the most recent war, Palestinians in Gaza had access to only 83 liters per day because of the occupation-driven lack of control over their own water resources. Under the current genocidal regime, this means close to no water at all. Even before the 2023 invasion of Gaza, Israel was denying spare parts for sanitation infrastructure. All sanitation facilities have been destroyed in Gaza. As a result, some tens of thousands of cubic meters of sewage are seeping into groundwater and flowing into the Mediterranean Sea every day—resources that are used by Palestinians and Israelis alike. Settlers use 6x as much water as Palestinians on the West Bank.
* chemical and debris contamination from bombings; The debris situation in Gaza is unprecedented in several ways including: i) the extent of damage to the housing stock; ii) its geographic spread and spatial density across almost the entire territory of the Gaza Strip; iii) the quantity of debris generated; iv) the rate at which debris is being generated; and v) the expected extremely high levels of UXO [unexploded ordnance, i.e., military ammunition or explosive that failed to explode] contamination.
Previous attacks involving munitions containing heavy metals, asbestos, and other hazardous materials have already contaminated the soil with high concentrations of cobalt and other metals.36 The bombing and use of bulldozers disrupted soil layers and burned (with temperatures of explosions as high as 2000°C), deteriorated, scattered, or completely destroyed the soil (including soil microorganisms). UNEP estimates that the approximately 40 million tons of debris will take 15 years to clear. Much of the land is poisoned and unusable for agriculture.
* noise pollution; with an average of 1 bomb dropped every 10 minutes in Gaza, continuous drone and jet flights, rockets, bombardment from tanks and ships, and other military activities was noted to result in more than double the allowable limit which is the allowable limit for short periods [of 8 hours] not for months.
* food insecurity; Most of Gaza’s remaining trees, including olive, pomegranate, and citrus orchards—essential not only for food and income but also for air purification and shade—have been completely uprooted. Cutting down olive trees is rampant now in the West Bank.
* traumatic impacts of targeted environmental destruction. 500 Palestinian villages were destroyed in 1948, and millions of olive trees since then—some centuries old—bulldozed or burned. Settlers attack farmers during harvests, turning groves into war zones. This planned genocide is comparable to the genocide against natives an the buffalo slaughter in North America. This loss of connection to land and previous and future generations through olive trees is a traumatic experience, expressed in Palestinian literature and art. For example, Khaled Baraka, a 65-year-old Palestinian who was forced to flee his home, shared his anguish: These trees lived through my moments of joy and sadness. They know my secrets. When I was sad and worried, I would talk to the trees, take care of them … but the war killed those trees.
The whole world suffers
Palestinian climate activists fear that cooperation could be misinterpreted as normalizing relations before the conflict is resolved. It is a situation that Majdalani, of EcoPeace, has frequently faced in her own activism. There’s this pervasive sense of ‘we don’t cooperate with the occupier, it’s not the right political environment.’ But if we wait for the ‘right’ political environment, we will lose more land. We will have more people suffering water shortages, more farmers leaving their farms, and the crisis will continue. Unless something changes, all this is moot for Palestinians, as Greater Israel means they will most likely cease to exist, either through murder, starvation or deportation, and Israel will face all these problems without the people who actually love the land and would work most ‘fanatically’ to heal it. Israelis will use their foreign passports to escape the Hell they have created, leaving Israel to hardcore pseudo-religious fascists, a pariah state spreading its sickness, its poison across the world.
Yes, the world. Genocide of Palestinians is a dress rehearsal for the collective West’s future treatment of climate refugees, argues Hamza Hamouchene, the North Africa programme coordinator at the Transnational Institute. Colombian President Gustavo Petro: genocide and barbaric acts unleashed against the Palestinian people is what awaits those who are fleeing the South because of the climate crisis. What we see in Gaza is the rehearsal of the future.
In the first two months of the genocide in Palestine alone, the CO2 emissions by Israel were greater than the annual emissions of more than 20 nations in the global South…. Half of those emissions are due to the transport and shipping of weaponry by the United States, which shows the deep complicity in genocide and ecocide in that part of the world, and how even the high seas are not immune from Israeli crimes.
Clearly, what is necessary now is implementation of the grassroots world campaign Boycott, Divest, Sanction and an energy embargo of Israel. Colombia has shown the way when they stopped the export of coal to Israel and more recently banned all trade with Israel and expelled all Israeli diplomats. We need the same thing from South Africa. We need the same thing from Brazil, who provides around 10% of crude oil to Israel. We need the same thing from Nigeria, from Gabon, Russia and Azerbaijan that still provide fossil fuels that are being used to massacre Palestinians—to fuel genocide, displacement, to fuel infrastructure of dispossession, to fuel the F35 bombers and AI infrastructure that kills Palestinians every day.
Petro:
Why have large carbon-consuming countries allowed the systematic murder of thousands of children in Gaza? Because Hitler has already entered their homes and they are getting ready to defend their high levels of carbon consumption and reject the exodus it causes. We can then see the future: the breakdown of democracy, the end, and the barbarism unleashed against our people, the people who do not emit CO2, the poor people.
It is not just a genocide. A lot of analysts and researchers have been coming up with terms such as urbicide, domicide, epistemicide, ecocide. How about holocide, which means the utter destruction of the social and ecological fabric of life in Palestine?
Asad Rehman from War on Want and Friends of the Earth: We’re seeing now also the same ‘walls and fences’ narrative that Israel has used in terms of the West Bank and Gaza and Palestine, now being exported all over the world… the same technologies are being transplanted all around the world. And already Israel is saying, ‘This is battle-tested weaponry. This is battle-tested surveillance’ and already… selling it to some of ‘our’ despotic regimes. That’s why we need a new internationalism, with the trade union movement at the forefront of building and rebuilding a global anti-apartheid movement.
The post War on Gaza first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Amazon, ruthless, mean spirited, soulless and wedded to the obscene profit margin, is also in the business of habitual deception. When it comes to the use of water for its thirsty data centres, this is most telling. In its aggressive push towards artificial intelligence, more are set for construction. When one considers that, in 2021 alone, US data centres were found to be consuming approximately 415,000 acre-feet of water, the statistics are bound to be staggering.
Unlike its competitors, the tech behemoth is rather cagey on how much water is used by its data centres. Statistics on absolute water consumption are simply never provided. There is some speculation that water usage may be relatively less in some instances given the company’s focus on using evaporative cooling systems which only turn on when temperatures reach unacceptable levels.
Will Hewes, who steers the water sustainability efforts for the company at Amazon Web Services (AWS), gives the impression that using water is a lesser evil, as it “reduces the amount of energy that we use”, which assists the company meet “other sustainability goals.” In an interview with Grist in August 2024, he explains that the company “could always decide not to use water for cooling, but we want to, a lot, because of those energy and efficiency benefits.” To this apparent nod to environmental decency, Hewes goes on to remark that “big portions of our data center footprint are in places that aren’t super hot, that aren’t in super water stressed regions.” Virginia and Ohio are mentioned as places where the need to use water cooling is only pressing during the hot periods of summer.
Hewes was giving a barely good impression of verisimilitude. As with Microsoft and Google, Amazon is eagerly constructing data centres in a more systematic, global way, invariably focusing on areas of high aridity. Three data centres, for instance, are proposed for Aragon in northern Spain, all to accompany existing Amazon data centres. These will be licensed to use 755,720 cubic metres of water annually, an amount sufficient to irrigate over 200 hectares (500 acres) of corn, a staple of the region. According to SourceMaterial, the water usage promises to be even greater, as that figure fails to consider “water used in generating electricity to power the new installations”.
A stark, consistent tendency is evident in the company’s practices: They are trustworthy on the subject of water consumption. Take, for instance, the glossy optimism of its November 2022 “Water Positive” initiative, intended to apply, not to the company’s entire operations, but to AWS. The intention is to return more water to communities than is used by the company in AWS global operations by 2030, and direct operations in all Amazon facilities in India by 2027. Last month, AWS announced that it had reached 53% of its Water Positive goal.
One month prior to the launch of the initiative, a strategic memo titled “AWS Water Positive Public Launch” circulated within the company. It was never intended for public consumption, but recently, both The Guardian and SourceMaterial, managed to gain access to it. The authors of the document are mindful that any increase in the company’s projected water use would be detrimental to image and reputation. It was therefore more prudent to avoid making reference to secondary water use, as it “would double the size and budget” for the campaign while not “addressing meaningful operational, regulatory or reputational risks”. The authors further added that there was “no focus from customers or media” on water used for electricity consumption.
The plan by the company was to make water efficiency savings through cutting its 7.7-billion-gallon primary consumption to 4.9 billion by 2030, all the while failing to address the thorny issue of secondary use. Secondary data would only be released if demanded by regulators. “We may decide to release water volumes in the future,” the authors propose, but doing so would be “a one-way door and we should only do so if the lack of data undermines the programme or is required by regulators.”
Those behind the strategy document were not ignorant about the consequences of rationing the accuracy on water consumption. There was “reputational risk of publicly committing to a goal for only a portion of Amazon’s direct water footprint.” Certain potential press headlines were floated: “Amazon hides its water consumption behind AWS” and “Amazon disappoints, failing to take full responsibility for water” were two suggestions.
Already attuned to the implications of this snag, Amazon spokeswoman Margaret Callahan suggested that the document was only of historical interest. It was “obsolete” and, in any case “completely misrepresents Amazon’s current water usage strategy”. The models referenced in the memo “were preliminary and unvetted.” In a marketplace of rampant dishonesty, she also thought it good to point out that other companies were just as culpable for not counting secondary water use in their figures. (Standards are low in this field.) Focusing on the direct water footprint when implementing “corporate water positive programs” was “in line with industry best practices to ensure we’re making the most concentrated impact possible”.
As for accuracy or conclusiveness in such documents, best not count on them. “A document’s existence doesn’t guarantee its accuracy or finality,” stated Callahan with postmodern vacuity. Over the course of meetings, documents were often reshaped, or flawed findings or claims exposed. Much in keeping with the conduct of governments, Amazon operates with Machiavellian glee in an environment peopled by technological princelings and ill-deserving brats. Its practices are not merely draining much needed water supplies but creating a system of sinister opacity and impunity.
The post Draining Practices: Amazon, Water Consumption and Data Centres first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
A view of the Gwadar port of Pakistan Photo: VCG
While the rest of Pakistan’s major cities were drenched in monsoon rains, a group of children stood hand in hand and chorused this in unison in Gwadar’s New Tobagh Ward near Koh-a-Bun Ward:
“Pani Dho, bijli dho, warna Kursi Chor Dho.” ( Give us water, give us electricity, or vacate the chair).
As Gwadar and its surrounding villages and towns are confronting an escalated water crisis, protests — and this slogan to ask for water — have become common across the city. Just a day later, another group of women and children from the Assa Ward and Lal Baksh Ward blocked the iconic Marine Drive demanding for water. A similar protest was held at shaheed Lala Hameed chowk, a symbolic site for past mass demonstrations and mobilisations under Maulana Hidayatur Rehman.
The irony of Gwadar’s situation especially pertaining to its water crisis cannot be overstated. The port city is often showcased as the linchpin of the China’s Belt and Road Initiative. A future city akin to Dubai where boulevards would be wide, sprawling ferries and yachts would dot the Padi Zir (East Bay) and towering cranes would cast the silhouette of a rising metropolis but beneath all this facade unfolds a harsh truth: the children of this city still carry Jerry cans in search for water.
With a population of 0.2 million, Gwadar city currently needs over 5 million gallons of water daily, however, the municipal pipeline network supplies only a meagre 2 million gallons per day, according to the Public Health Engineering (PHE) Department. Assuming that if a single person needs 30 to 50 gallons per day for domestic need, the demand for residential water is still unmet — excluding factors like industrial, commercial, CPEC-oriented infrastructure and future growth which could push the demand over 10-20 MGD.
“The Ankara Kaur Dam — built in 1995 to provide 1.62 MGD has silted up significantly and is completely dead now,” says Javed MB, journalist and founder of Gwadar-a-Tawar, a local news outlet.
Given that Ankar Kaur Dam is completely non-functional, the city is solely reliant on the tankers from the Mirani Dam from the nearby Kech district. The cost? Over 20 million per month, much of which lacks transparency in public audits. Two recently connected dams; Sawar and Shadi Kaur dams are vulnerable to seasonal rainfall, with their long distances causing delays in peak demand and transmission loses.
City dwellers need to stand on public standpipes or buy water from private tankers, priced Rs. 3000 to 5000 per 100 gallon load. For low income families whose income is less than 20,000 monthly, it is untenable.
“On normal days, a tanker costs 21 to 25 thousands, however, with most of the dams dried up, the tankers are selling water in black at a rate of thirty thousands,” says Javed. “The official rate, as set by the district administration and Deputy commissioner of Gwadar recently, is 20 thousands per tanker, but it is rarely enforced.”
The network of pipelines laid by the government are grossly adequate while many of the laid pipes are poorly maintained. Some are clogged and others contain contaminated water. In 2025, the completion of an overarching network of 158 km of pipelines linking the Ankara, Sawar and Shadi Kaur Dam and four underground reservoirs have helped some communities receive water, such as Faqeer colony and Dhoor, according to GDA, chief Engineer, Syed Mohammad Baloch. Howbeit, official data shows that almost 50 per cent of homes in the district receive pipelined water — with 44 per cent through direct connections and 56 per cent via stand posts or public tanks — while the rest rely on tanker mafia, wells and pond water which is often unhealthy and contaminated.
Desalination plants and the impacts
The much touted desalination plants have not also receded the crisis. The district has three plants which either never worked or were inconsistent at best due to bureaucratic hurdles, mass corruption and chronic power outages.
“These desalination plants are like museum exhibits,” Javed laments. “They are there. You can look at it. But they don’t feed the thirsty.”
The biggest one located in Karwat, which remains non-functional even it has been officially inaugurated thrice — by the Nawaz Sharif, PTI and PPP governments. The other two are located in Sur Bandar and on Koh-a-Batil respectively. In response to the growing water crisis in the city, another seawater desalination plant was inaugurated in 2023 with the help of the Chinese government under the funding of CPEC. The new plant was aimed to produce 1.2 million gallons per day — producing a small fraction of the city’s estimated demand of 16 to 22 MGD.
For many people living in and around Gwadar, water is not just a problem — it defines their daily life. Girls drop out of schools to stand in community posts or fetch water many kilometres away every day. There has been a rise in diseases like diarrhoea, cholera, dehydration, back pain and constant depression on women owing to the constant stress of water shortage.
The economic impact of water shortage has also affected the fishermen of Gwadar. Fishing, which is the sole income of the coastal towns, needs water in ice making, preserving catch and washing their nets. Therefore, they spend their money in buying water than they earn from selling fish. “What they earn from catching fish in one trip, the money is spent on purchasing water and fuel. This becomes impossible for these hand to mouth fishermen,” says Javed.
Thirst in the Hinterlands
In the vast coastal belt of Balochistan, just behind the shimmering billboards and free-trade zones of Gwadar city, the far-flung villages of Jiwani, Pasni, Kulanch, Sur bandar, Ormara and Pishukaan are parched. Unlike the port city of Gwadar , these villages seldom make headlines — yet the shortage of water has also steadily worsened there over the years.
“We don’t have any water to drink, let alone for bathing,” Dur Muhammad laments as he leans to scoop water out from a shallow and brackish well that he needs to re-dig everyday. “We come here with motorcycles. Some come with their donkeys and a few even walk the distance on foot. All we ask for is water. But nothing changes and no one listens.”
Dur Muhammad, 30, lives in Dasht Kurmi, a village located in Suntsar, Tehsil Jiwani, just four kilometers before the BP-250 checkpoint — or commonly known as the Gabd Rimdan-250 border. This village lies between two great ports — approximately 120km east of Iran’s Chabahar port and 70km west of the Gwadar port, yet the people feel a world apart.
Having a population of around 400 and inaccessible by road, requiring travel by sea on boats due to the lack of road infrastructure, Dasht Kurmi is divided into four local settlements: Faqeer Muhammad Bazaar, Hammal Bazaar, Kalar Bazaar and Kahuda Sadiq Bazaar. In these dusty settlements, water has also become a defining clock of life.
“The acutest water shortage in the Gwadar district is being experienced in Jiwani Tehsil,” Javed adds. “The locals in this area have turned to natural ways of water conservation.”
When it rains, which is very rare, the villagers dig wide and narrow trench-shaped earthen ponds to collect water during or before the rainy seasons to collect the runoff of the nearby streams. These makeshift catchment basins temporarily become lifelines which the people of Dasht Kurmi depend on for weeks.
Once they dry, the locals resort to digging small hand-dug wells –locally known as Khaneegs — to collect the little water that remains three meters beneath the cracked soil. This technique, like in Dasht Kurmi has passed through generations throughout the peripheral areas of water-scarce Gwadar where government-funded pipelines, including those under the CPEC umbrella, rarely reach.
For the people of Jiwani, a tehsil just 70 kilometers from the Gwadar city, water also came via a network of pipelines from the — now dead — Ankra Kaur Dam. But the locals have also been left at the mercy of the tanker mafia.
Protests in Jiwani have been very deadly since the inception. Three people including a child named Yasmeen, were reportedly killed on 21 February in 1987 by the firing of the security forces when the protesters were rallying for water. Despite an allocation of Rs 937 million rupees in 2021 for building dams and pipelines, little progress has been seen in Jiwani as of 2025.
According to an estimate from the provincial government, the Gwadar city and its adjoining Town of Jiwani which accounted for nearly 200,000 people as of 2012, needed 3.5 million gallons of water daily, however, the normal daily delivery was 2 million gallons, leaving an enormous shortfall of 1.5 million gallons every day.
Towns of Empty cans
“The people living close to the Pasni city spend more time looking for water than at the sea,” says Waqar Ghafoor, a resident of Reek-a-Pusht, Pasni. “ Every morning, the locals here take their containers and wait by the side of the roads, hoping that a private tanker may pass by. The water from the tankers is often brackish and unfit to drink and some time there is no tankers at all. They wait under the sun for hours. This is not living, we are only surviving.”
Pasni, a fishing town of 100,000 residents, is supplied by the Shadi Kaur Dam, built in 2004 — also supplying to the nearby town of Ormara. By now, the dam has gradually silted and damaged, providing only little water. The daily requirement of Pasni in 2011, with a population of 50,000 back then, stood at 1.5 million gallons per day while the actual supply was less than 1.0 million gallons per day — fulfilling barely 6 per cent of the total need.
“We receive water from the Shadi Kaur Dam via pipelines which are poured into big tanks built in the city and from these tanks is a network of other pipes distributing water to the households,” explains Waqar Ghafoor. “Though the residents of Reek a Pusht, where I live, receive some amount of water but the people living in the city confront a dire water shortage. The pipelines are broken or stolen there and pumping stations are shut down or remain without fuel for days due to administrative issues.”
Following the collapse of the Shadi Kaur Dam which killed as many as 70 people and devastated homes, lives and agricultural land in the town in 2005, the dam was rebuilt in 2010 by the help of the Federal Public Sector Development Programme. Being built at a cost of Rs 7.9 billion rupees and with a storage capacity of 37,000 acre‑feet (45,600,000 cubic metres), the dam was expected to supply 70 cusecs (cubic feet per second). But it now supplies just 12 cusecs to the towns of Pasni and Ormara — 8 cusecs to the agriculture sector and 4 to the tanker trucks.
While there is hardly any rain observed in the area, the dam’s storage capacity has dropped down to less than 30 per cent, according to local officials.
Kulaanch, another town, some few kilometers from the Gwadar port is also dependent on the Sawar Dam, the same dam that also supplies to the Gwadar city.
“Some villages of Kulaanch are connected to the pipeline network while others aren’t,” says Ishaque Ibrahim, a resident of Beelaar, Kulanch, whose family has now relocated to the nearby Kech district due to water shortage.
Ishaque tells that though Sawar Dam technically serves the area, but the distribution of water isn’t equal. “You can get water from the reservoir only if you have recommendations. Therefore, only the affluent and the well-connected to the district’s Irrigation Department get the supply while the poor are left at the mercy of the private tanker mafia, which charge 21 to 25 thousands — a sum only a few can afford.”
The water crisis in the district is both manmade and natural. The geography of the Makran Coast compounds this issue — hot and dry terrain with a thin freshwater lens means that freshwater is not merely limited in the division but also risks sea water intrusion. Rising sea levels keep destroying homes built on the brink of the sea by one wave and the other especially in Pishukan and Ganz and salt water intrusion into inland aquifers have rendered many community wells useless. For many villages, hand pumps churn out saline water which damages the skin.
Dams and Desalination: The peripheral Paradox
Establishing desalination plants in the peripheral areas dates back to 2008. Four desalination plants were decided to be deployed in the district in 2017. One for the Gwadar city at a cost of Rs 1 billion and three others in Jiwani, Pasni and Singhar — each with a cost of Rs 20 million. By 2017, only the one in Gwadar was functional and the others remained non-operational owing to bureaucratic delays and lack of staff. The Gwadar Seawater Desalination plant that opened in 2023 supplies to the city only, while the areas in the periphery remain out its direct service.
In April 2023, two reverse osmosis (RO) plants were inaugurated for Sur bandar and Chabarkani — hometown of MPA Mulana Hidayat-ur-Rehman — but they don’t reach the remote towns of Pasni, Pishukaan, Ormara or Jiwani.
Fixing the flow
The Solution to the Water crisis is neither prohibitively expensive nor complex.
Abdullah Rahim, who runs a page — Makran Weather Forecast — says that building small and medium sized dams around the district to trap seasonal or monsoon rains could drastically reduce the dependency on the faraway sources like Mirani Dam and reviving and desiltation of Ankra Kaur and Shadi Kaur Dam could bring back millions of gallons of water into circulation.
“ Local hydrologists believe that building small dams on the hilly catchment areas of Nigwar and Kulaanch can help reduce the dependency,” says Abdullah Rahim. He also adds that this neglect was absorbed in February 2024, when an unseasonal shower struck Gwadar district, dropping 183 millimetres of rain in just 30 hours — more than it’s normal average rainfall.
“All the streets were under water and people were stranded. And when the rain receded, there was not a single reservoir or water body to show for it,” regrets Abdullah. “There were no check dams. No retention ponds. This precious rainwater simply ran into the Arabian Sea.” Officials believe that if 30 per cent of that water was stored, Gwadar’s water demand could have been fulfilled for months.
Javed MB, on the other hand believes that Gwadar or the Makran division doesn’t come under the jurisdiction of the traditional path of Pakistan’s Monsoon belt. Therefore, though dams can also help when its rains, but what about years when it doesn’t? Ostensibly, Pakistan Meteorological Department has also warned earlier that the Makran Coast is becoming drier and hotter over the years, with longer dry spells and shorter monsoon periods.
“We need to operationalize the existing desalination plants in Gwadar and the nearby towns. While solar-powered small filtration units could serve off-grid villages,” Javed says.
Water in Gwadar has no longer a resource, it is a commodity of inclusion or exclusion and a test of loyalty to the land or just a departure, provoking one to question: Is Gwadar being built for its current poor residents or for an envisioned future of investors or gated economic zones?
And yet, in every evening as the cranes of the port continue their slow rotation, with ships being unloaded and their horns echoing in the dusk, somewhere in the hills or a river, a girl returns to her home with a jerry-can, half full. Her back aches, with the water tasting metallic. But she and the others don’t have another choice, since for the world, Gwadar may be a port of luxury and opportunity but for the locals, it is a port of thirst.
The post The Mirage of Development: Gwadar’s Water Wars first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
This blog is now closed, you can read more of our UK political coverage here
Mark Sedwill, the former cabinet secretary and former national security adviser, goes next. He is now a peer, and a member of the committee.
He says the deputy national security adviser, Matthew Collins, thought there was enough evidence for the case to go ahead. But the CPS did not agree. Who was right?
In 2017, the Law Commission flagged that the term enemy [in the legislation] was deeply problematic and it would give rise to difficulties in future prosecutions.
And I think what has played out, during this prosecution exemplifies and highlights the difficulties with that.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
If the Bill of Rights contains no guarantee that a citizen shall be secure against lethal poisons distributed whether by private individuals or by public officials, it is surely only because our forefathers, despite their considerable wisdom and foresight, could conceive of no such problem. — Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring
Simple stuff: I interviewed Carol Van Strum for my radio show, Finding Fringe, ahead of its airing, Dec. 24, so I could give listeners a bit of reality here on the coast and in the world at large. She will be at the Yachats Commons (Oregon) Nov. 15 for the screening of the flick, The People vs. Agent Orange.
We talked about the state of the state of the world, too, and the reality that this is not just a Trump thing, that the poisons in our bodies vis-a-vis air, food, water, airwaves have been pushed into us by Capitalists, by the dirty people we call scientists and technologists and engineers.
Operation Ranch Hand — 20 million gallons of Agent Orange dumped into an area the size of Mass., and that means, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. Birth defects, and even epigenetic issues two generations later.
Daddy got sprayed (USA daddy), and then raised that family, had kiddos, and, bam, surprise surprise — spina bifida, hormone imbalances, diseases, diabetes, you know it, thanks Dow and Hercules and the other chemical companies.
The effects remain one of the most contentious legacies of the Vietnam War. This report focuses on the hardships faced by Vietnamese people living with Agent Orange–related health problems and disabilities and suggests ways the US and Vietnamese governments can better address the legacy of Agent Orange to provide support to individuals and families, and to strengthen bilateral relations.
Read the report: It’s only 28 pages: Agent Orange Victims in Vietnam: Their Numbers, Experiences, Needs, and Sources of Support By Phan Xuân Dũng
Not a great image:
Summary
- US-Vietnam cooperation in addressing the consequences of the use of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War has achieved remarkable progress, but much remains to be done to assist and reconcile with the multiple generations of Vietnamese affected.
- Assistance for Agent Orange victims in Vietnam is provided by multiple international and nongovernmental actors. As of 2023, the US Congress has allocated more than $139 million for health and disability programs in eight provinces heavily sprayed with Agent Orange. These programs receive mostly positive feedback from participants, despite their limited scope.
- The Vietnamese government supports people affected by Agent Orange through general disability assistance and preferential treatment for those who participated in the war. However, this support does not meet the needs of all families and is not available to some subsets of victims.
- To better address the health and disability effects of Agent Orange, Vietnam should develop a single preferential policy that applies to all cases and better inform international partners and donors. US policymakers should increase funding for and expand the scope of health and disability services, including livelihood and psychological support for affected people.
About the Report
This report examines the experiences of Vietnamese people affected by Agent Orange and other herbicides used by the US military during the Vietnam War and the assistance that has been provided to them by Vietnam and the United States. The report is based on the author’s document-based research and interviews with Vietnamese people affected by Agent Orange and representatives of agencies and organizations that provide assistance. Research was supported by the Southeast Asia program at the United States Institute of Peace.
It is an odd world, where we murdered brown people in Vietnam, and now we are buddies? We have murdered Cubans in the millions and Venezuelans and, it will be more of the same in those countries that end in “a” in South and Central AMerica == Guatemala, Nicaragua, Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, and then the “e” and “u” of our country’s madness = Peru, Chile, and the “l” of it — Brazil!
Chapter Excerpt
From Cold War enemies to partners, the United States and Vietnam have come a long way in restoring and fostering bilateral relations since normalization in 1995. However, the path toward rapprochement was not easy. It was an arduous process for those involved, ridden with a myriad of sensitive subjects, among which were the environmental and health consequences of the Agent Orange herbicide used by U.S. forces during the Vietnam War. Even after re-establishing formal diplomatic relations, the two countries failed to reach a common ground on the issue. During the stalemate, in 2002, the U.S. ambassador to Vietnam called Agent Orange the “one significant ghost” of the war that hindered complete reconciliation. Not until 2007 did the United States and Vietnam finally agree to jointly address this war legacy.
This paper unpacks the U.S.’ response to the Agent Orange fallout, an overlooked or less emphasized aspect of the warming U.S.-Vietnam bilateral ties that carries significant symbolic, political, legal, and humanitarian implications. The paper answers the following questions: What are the harmful effects of this chemical substance? Who are the victims of Agent Orange in Vietnam? How is Washington assisting Hanoi with mitigation efforts? How should U.S. assistance be con- ceptualized, and what is the rationale for the current approach? Why did the United States change tack after so many years of intransigence? Most importantly, what do the victims need and what more can the United States do to promote reconciliation with the Vietnamese whose lives have been debilitated by the toxic herbicide?
After providing an overview of the Agent Orange legacy in Vietnam, this paper elucidates the research’s theoretical underpinnings, which revolve around the concept of reparative justice. Subsequently, the paper examines the material and symbolic component of U.S. policies toward the issue of Agent Orange in Vietnam. Regarding material redress, there is no direct compensation or reparations. Instead, the U.S. Congress provides annual funds for environmental remediation projects and health programs to assist persons with disabilities living in areas sprayed with the herbicide. In terms of symbolic justice, Washington has not accepted culpability for the use of toxic defoliants. U.S. leaders avoid drawing causation between Agent Orange and the health effects seen in Vietnam but implicitly acknowledge this through their statements and actions. This ex-gratia approach allows Washington to evade the domestic political costs while securing strategic gains through improved bilateral relations with the Southeast Asian country. The paper argues that initiatives by a transnational network of victims’ supporters, including NGOs and American state actors, helped end the deadlock in bilateral negotiations and prompted American assistance. In the final section, the paper explores the perspective of Vietnamese Agent Orange victims and offers some policy recommendations for the United States. The paper underlines the need for a more victim-centered response, which will build long-term trust and confidence between the two countries and promote a more genuine relationship between the United States and the victims.
Both pieces on Carol Van Strum ended up in Dissident Voice: here and here. I even did a review of that documentary, The People VS Agent Orange, which highlights Tran To Nga‘s fight in France — “Eternal Impunity of Capitalism’s Crimes“. Here’s one passage from that story I wrote:
Dr. James Clary was with the Air Force in Vietnam, which ran the program. He was ordered to dump the computer and erase all memory. Instead, he printed out a stack of documents two feet high – missions, sorties, coordinates, dates, gallons dropped throughout all of Southeast Asia and Laos.
“We had the information coming from Dow that there were real problems for people associated with this chemical. It was all locked up for 35 years.”
Playing down all the negative effects of this chemical was part of the Dow plan. Dioxin was the byproduct in the brew. Dow told the US government they were having difficulty producing the volume of the chemical the US wanted. The government told them to not worry about safety standards and quality control, and that a fast production process which produced more of the dioxin would not matter, since the crops and forest were being sprayed, and if people got in contact with it, the idea coming from both industrialists at Dow and those in government and the military was, “Hey, so what, this is a war . . . these are the effing Vietnamese.”
However, a former military man like Clary never saw it that way. He reiterated that 20 million gallons of it was dumped on Southeast Asia. The Ranch Hand program stopped in 1971, but then the chemicals were enlisted by the US on forest land – clear cuts that were sprayed to denude the razed land of any opportunistic weeds and shrubs. The money has to be made, and the stockpiled product has to go! Sell it to the state forestry department and timber outfits.
Trần Tố Nga, pictured at her home in Evry, France, on May 10, 2021, sued 14 chemical companies that produced and sold Agent Orange to the US military during the Vietnam War. Although her suit was dismissed by a French court, her campaign raised awareness of Agent Orange victims.
“It’s like a sign that says ‘Dig Here’ and they’re not digging,” said Dr. David Ozonoff, a professor of environmental health at Boston University and co-editor-in-chief of the online journal Environmental Health, after reviewing ProPublica’s findings. “It raises questions about whether they want to know the answer or are just hoping the problem will naturally go away as the veterans die off.”
Joel Michalek, co-author of a major Air Force study into Agent Orange exposure and birth defects, said ProPublica’s analysis suggests the issue should be revisited. In the 1980s, he and his team found a higher rate of post-war birth defects in the children of veterans who handled Agent Orange than in the children of those who didn’t, but they later concluded that herbicide exposure was not the cause.
“You see parallel patterns of what we saw back then,” said Michalek, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. “That, to me, is a signal.”
And so Vietnam is being recolonized by the Poison Manufacturers:
“Monsanto today, and for the last decade, has been focused solely on agriculture,” Charla Lord, a spokesperson for the company, said when asked to comment on the company’s past history in the country. “But we share a name with a company that dates back to 1901. The former Monsanto was involved in a wide variety of businesses including the manufacture of Agent Orange for the U.S. government. … The U.S. courts have determined that the contractors who manufactured Agent Orange for the government are not responsible for damage claims associated with the military use of Agent Orange because the manufacturers were government contractors carrying out the instructions of government.”
The U.S. government has also issued statements backing away from responsibility for deaths and devastation in Vietnam. Instead it acknowledges a number of dire conditions, diseases and fatalities as “presumed” to be associated with Agent Orange exposure in its own veterans.
Some 69 miles northeast of Ho Chi Minh City in Dong Nai province, Nguyen Hong Lam and his generation of Vietnamese farmers associate Monsanto with its parties and its genetically modified seeds, rather than the Agent Orange attacks that they lived through. According to Lam, the parties, more officially known as launch events hosted by Monsanto, were held between 2012 and 2014, in line with the launch of Monsanto’s genetically modified crops in Vietnam. While Lam doesn’t affiliate Agent Orange with Monsanto, he does know the feeling of community that Monsanto created.
“There were parties that lasted even three days,” he said of the events, which were meant as promotional outreach to farmers. “Dozens of tents would be put up right in the fields to accommodate up to 400 farmers. They were always as much fun as wedding parties.”
Monsanto gatherings such as these were not uncommon here, especially with the company aiming to increase its contact with farmers around the country
“We do hundreds of these [launch] events in the field. Seeing is believing. Their livelihood depends on that,” Narasimham Upadyayula, CEO of Monsanto’s subsidiary Dekalb Vietnam, which is fully owned and operated by Monsanto, said. “We gave them a vision.”
All it takes is that soft Edward Bernays mind killing POWER of AmeriKKKa:
The Americanization and what it ushers in, including the expansion of companies like biotech giant Monsanto, risks burying the history of Agent Orange.
When the lawsuit settled in 1984 for $180 million, U.S. District Judge Jack Weinstein ruled that direct payments could only be made to disabled veterans or survivors of those who’d died, cutting off children like Kerry.
Weinstein, who’d expressed doubt that veterans had been harmed, was even more skeptical about their children, writing, “however slight the suggestion of a causal connection between the veterans’ medical problems and Agent Orange exposure, even less evidence supports the existence of an association between birth defects … and exposure of the father to Agent Orange.”
Mike Ryan wasn’t surprised. “I knew we had no shot,” he said.
In 1997, when the VA finally began offering compensation for children with spina bifida, the Ryans didn’t bother applying. Mike Ryan said it was never about the money; it was about recognition of the debt he believes his country owes his daughter kERRY. “She has 22 birth defects, and they want to pay only for spina bifida? Come on, give me a break.”
Kerry died in 2006 at the age of 35.
Mike Ryan, now 71, said he hadn’t kept up with scientific advancements that potentially confirm what he’s spent years arguing — that a father’s exposure to toxins can cause health problems in offspring. In the end, it won’t matter what researchers discover, he insisted.
“They will never admit it,” he said, “because if they do, then America is admitting to drafting the unborn.”
For decades, Vietnam veterans have suspected that the defoliant harmed their children. But the VA hasn’t studied its own data for clues.
A new ProPublica analysis has found that the odds of having a child born with birth defects were more than a third higher for veterans exposed to Agent Orange than for those who weren’t.
‘If we are overly accommodating, we will inevitably surrender our culture.’ Nguyen Kim Phuong
The U.S.’s lobbying efforts have been well-received.
Jeffrey Smith, author of the best-selling book “Seeds of Deception,” minced no words in interviews about the topic. “The [Vietnamese} government was getting skewed advice from the biotech industry and from their chief supporter—the U.S. government,” he said.
[Some of the more than 100,000 pages of discovery material related to the chemical industry that were stored in Carol Van Strum’s barn in rural Oregon],
The post Toxic Stew: Chemicals, Poisons, Sprays, Nanoparticles, VOCs, PFAS’s and the Evil Monsters Cooking up this Brew first appeared on Dissident Voice.“If we are overly accommodating, we will inevitably surrender our culture. All we want is justice.” — Nguyen Kim Phuong, 86, who lived through both wars involving the French and the Americans. Phuong is forgiving about the war and is happy to see U.S.-Vietnam relations moving forward. But he is not happy to see Monsanto continually increasing its reach in his country, with little consequence for its actions.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Ceasefire is a relief. After two years of surviving war, we can finally breathe — but that doesn’t mean our suffering is over. For many of us, it’s only just begun. The tents, and the people still living in them, stand as a heavy reminder that our struggles are far from over. After two years of immense destruction by the Israeli military, most families in Gaza are now living in tents — nylons and…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
India is the thirstiest user of groundwater in the world, sucking up more of this valuable resource than both the U.S. and China combined. Indeed, the country relies on groundwater (like lakes and rivers) to keep its crops irrigated, its industries running, and its people quenched. In some rural communities, as much as 85 percent of their drinking water is pumped from underground.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
There are more than 5,400 data centers in the United States, which is almost half of the number of data centers worldwide. In the past four years, there has been a surge in data center construction, particularly in poor communities in the South. Clearing the FOG speaks with Jai Dulani of Media Justice, who authored a new report: The People Say No: Resisting Data Centers in the South, and Kali Akuno of Cooperation Jackson, about the harms that these centers are causing in local communities, particularly in their enormous consumption of water and energy, and the risk they pose to the US economy. Akuno also addresses the bigger picture of the deleterious impact of artificial intelligence on our lives.
The post The AI Race: How The Surge In Data Centers Harms Us appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
Climate change has a new partner in its quest to alter life as we know it: Nuclear, the power buzzword for the AI Holy Grail of human submission to digital electrons mimicking human brainpower. And AI can’t survive, can’t thrive without enormous amounts of electrical energy. Wall Street has the answer and politicians agree that nuclear is the big, beautiful answer to a whole new advanced level of human mental experience with electrons. The nuclear narrative is more positive than ever, “go for it,” but what if something goes wrong or is nuclear suddenly risks-free?
The post Nuclear Goes Political appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
This Indigenous Peoples Day, the approximately 2,700 Ojibwe tribal members of the Bay Mills Indian Community in northern Michigan are marking the holiday amid fear that their region could face another environmental catastrophe like the one that occurred in 2010, when Enbridge’s Line 6B oil pipeline burst and spilled over a million gallons of tar sands crude oil, contaminating the Kalamazoo River and over 40 miles in its watershed.
Today, the community is afraid that an even more potentially devastating event is looming: a future rupture of another Enbridge relic, the antiquated 72-year-old Line 5 pipeline, which originates and ends in Canada but travels across Wisconsin and Michigan, and crucially, through the Great Lakes under the Straits of Mackinac.
The post Oil Pipeline Threatens Catastrophe For Tribes In Michigan – Again appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
This Indigenous Peoples Day, the approximately 2,700 Ojibwe tribal members of the Bay Mills Indian Community in northern Michigan are marking the holiday amid fear that their region could face another environmental catastrophe like the one that occurred in 2010, when Enbridge’s Line 6B oil pipeline burst and spilled over a million gallons of tar sands crude oil, contaminating the Kalamazoo River and over 40 miles in its watershed.
Today, the community is afraid that an even more potentially devastating event is looming: a future rupture of another Enbridge relic, the antiquated 72-year-old Line 5 pipeline, which originates and ends in Canada but travels across Wisconsin and Michigan, and crucially, through the Great Lakes under the Straits of Mackinac.
The post Oil Pipeline Threatens Catastrophe For Tribes In Michigan – Again appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
More To The Story: OpenAI became the world’s most valuable private company last week after a stock deal pushed the value of the artificial intelligence developer to $500 billion. But when OpenAI was founded a decade ago, the company’s approach to artificial intelligence wasn’t taken seriously in Silicon Valley. Tech journalist Karen Hao has been covering OpenAI’s astounding rise for years and recently wrote a book about the company, Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI. She says that while many in Silicon Valley warn of AI’s sci fi–like threats, the real risks are already here. (The Center for Investigative Reporting, which produces Reveal and More To The Story, is currently suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement.)
On this week’s More To The Story, Hao sounds the alarm about the risks to the planet from AI’s growth, examines the Trump administration’s efforts to deregulate the industry, and explains why the version of AI being developed by Silicon Valley could destabilize democracy.
Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson
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Read: America’s Worst Polluters See a Lifeline in Power-Gobbling AI—and Donald Trump (Mother Jones)
Listen: Is AI Pushing Us Closer to Nuclear Disaster? (More To The Story)
Read: Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI (Penguin Press)
Read: The Center for Investigative Reporting Sues OpenAI, Microsoft for Copyright Violations (Mother Jones)
Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choicesThis post was originally published on Reveal.
Indigenous groups in Mexico opposed to the planned brewery say families already have little access to water – and that their way of life is also under threat
On a summer evening in southern Mexico, a percussion group using water bottles as instruments leads a procession through Mérida, capital of Yucatán state. Children walking alongside elderly people are guided by members of Múuch’ Xíinbal, a Maya land rights organisation. The placards they carry declare: “Water is not for sale.” A heavy chant accompanies the march: “It’s not a drought – it’s plunder!”
At a rallying point in the city, protesters read from a manifesto and accuse the government of prioritising profit over water, health and land. They denounce a wave of mega-projects imposed without their consent, from industrial-scale pig farms to the controversial Maya Train tourist expansion. But they reserve their greatest anger for the Heineken brewery in Kanasín, near Mérida, which was announced in June.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
The escalating the political crisis in Madagascar appears to have reached its peak on September 29, when President Andry Rajoelina announced that he was dissolving the government, following days of mass protests largely led by young people, against chronic water and power outages.
The unrest began on September 25 in the capital, Antananarivo, as demonstrators took to the streets demanding reliable access to electricity and potable water, a fundamental challenge for many Malagasy households.
What began as largely peaceful marches soon degenerated as security forces intervened decisively. Tear gas was deployed, curfews imposed, and reports emerged of beatings, mass arrests, and even use of live ammunition.
The post Madagascar’s President Dissolves Government Following Protests appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
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More than 200 million people are at risk of drinking tap water contaminated with chemicals that cause cancer, liver damage, birth defects and other reproductive harms, according to research released Wednesday that includes an interactive map of high-risk hot spots. The map, developed by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), focuses on arsenic, chromium-6 and nitrate — all scientifically…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Human-generated climate change, the result of enormous quantities of CO2 spewing into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels (in 2024, the CO2 annual rate set a new all-time record of 3.75 ppm or an 18,600% increase over natural variability of 0.02 ppm per annum, according to paleoclimate pre-industrial data) causing widespread interconnectivity merging of dry regions of the planet. This is a new feature of global warming.
“Our entire infrastructure and civilization are based around a climate that no longer exists.” (John Marsham, professor Atmospheric Science, University of Leeds)
Dry areas of the planet are merging into massive mega-dry behemoth regions reflective of how far advanced climate change has progressed, with global warming turning hotter, and hotter, especially 2023-24 when global mean temperature increased by 0.3°C or 10-fold in one year, ushering in a full year of 1.5°C above pre-industrial.
The post Mega-Dryness Spreads Throughout Northern Hemisphere appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
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This post was originally published on American Jewish World Service – AJWS.
As demand for artificial intelligence technology boosts construction and proposed construction of data centers around the world, those computers require not just electricity and land, but also a significant amount of water. Data centers use water directly, with cooling water pumped through pipes in and around the computer equipment. They also use water indirectly, through the water required to produce the electricity to power the facility. The amount of water used to produce electricity increases dramatically when the source is fossil fuels compared with solar or wind.
A 2024 report from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimated that in 2023, U.S. data centers consumed 17 billion gallons (64 billion liters) of water directly through cooling, and projects that by 2028, those figures could double – or even quadruple.
The post Data Centers Consume Massive Amounts Of Water appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
As demand for artificial intelligence technology boosts construction and proposed construction of data centers around the world, those computers require not just electricity and land, but also a significant amount of water. Data centers use water directly, with cooling water pumped through pipes in and around the computer equipment. They also use water indirectly, through the water required to…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Lamar River, Yellowstone. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.
Anyone who drives around the state of Montana right now can see one unassailable truth: our state’ renowned rivers and the prized fish which inhabit them are in big trouble. From east to west, north to south our great rivers have withered to tiny ribbons of water, un-floatable for most recreation and uninhabitable for our native and prized trout species.
When rivers shrink, algae explodes and temperatures soar, as sunlight penetrates the water from top to bottom. As the algae decays, it consumes oxygen, turning what was a perfectly oxygenated, cold-water fish habitat into a hypoxic dead zone, where nothing can survive.
Anyone who has lived in Montana for more than a few seasons can tell: these symptoms are no longer rare events, happening every so often. Now, it seems, this is the new normal. Like many things in nature, the reason for our declining surface water supplies is multifaceted. Climate change is inducing drought, year over year, while demand for water soars as every inch of Montana is bought up and groundwater is given away for new development. Simultaneously, the state is allowing unlimited nutrient pollution through categorical exclusions from water quality protections. Where these political realities meet is at a dead river. Where they began is with Governor Gianforte’s Red Tape Initiative.
So what can the state of Montana do about it? We could start by enforcing the states’ public water rights, which have the exact legal purpose of protecting in-stream flows. That’s right – the state owns water rights and they are a part of the public trust, like our right of stream access. That means the state must protect those interests, above all else, or they violate our constitutional rights. Yet, in pursuit of its political pro-business agenda, the Gianforte administration is refusing to exercise these rights on our behalf. Instead, the very water that is supposed to be left in our rivers, is exploding out of private center pivots everywhere you look.
Since fish can’t sue, the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Upper Missouri Waterkeeper and Save the Bull Trout are suing for the fish and also for people who recreate on our world class rivers. In Montana, like much of the West, water is property and that property is extremely valuable in our arid climate. Without question, ranchers have a right to use water but so to do the fish and the people of Montana.
The most valuable right the public owns is located where the Blackfoot River joins the Clark Fork River at the site of the former Milltown Dam.
The Montana Power Company was granted 2000 cfs for its water right when the dam was built in 1904 as an instream hydropower right to generate electricity. In 2008, the State of Montana acquired this very senior water right through the Upper Clark Fork River Basin Superfund settlement with the intent that the water right would be used to restore the fishery and recreational uses. Yet, during the hottest and driest period on record, when the famed Blackfoot river has been in the 0% percentile of flows all summer, Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks and Governor Gianforte have not enforced our rights.
This is but one example of the tragedy that is unfolding.
Simply put, our lawsuit alleges that Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks has a duty to enforce and protect its water rights by making a call to support minimum flows designed to protect aquatic life because state held instream flow rights are part of the public trust and thus the agency is constitutionally mandated to utilize them to protect our right to a clean and healthy environment.
Afterall, there is nothing more antithetical to a clean and healthy environment than a dead, dry river.
Please consider joining us to protect our rivers that are world famous, not just for fishing but also for floating and swimming.
The post The State of Montana is Failing to Protect the Public’s Water and Fish appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Mike Garrity.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Unbeknownst to much of the public, Big Tech exacts heavy tolls on public health, the environment, and democracy. The detrimental combination of an unregulated tech sector, pronounced rise in cyberattacks and data theft, and widespread digital and media illiteracy—as noted in my previous Dispatch on Big Data’s surveillance complex—is exacerbated by legacy media’s failure to inform the public of these risks. While establishment news outlets cover major security breaches in Big Tech’s troves of personal identifiable information (PII) and their costs to individuals, businesses, and national security, this coverage fails to address the negative impacts of Big Tech on the full health of our political system, civic engagement, and ecosystems.
Marietje Schaake, an AI Policy fellow at Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centered AI Policy, argues that Big Tech’s unrestrained hand in all three branches of the government, the military, local and national elections, policing, workplace monitoring, and surveillance capitalism undermine American society in ways the public has failed to grasp. Indeed, little in the corporate press helps the public understand exactly how data centers—the facilities that process and store vast amounts of data—do more than endanger PII. Greenlit by the Trump administration, data centers accelerate ecosystem harms through their unmitigated appropriation of natural resources, including water, and the subsequent greenhouse gas emissions that increase ambient pollution and its attendant diseases.
Adding insult to the public’s right to be informed, corporate news rarely sheds light on how an ethical, independent press serves the public good and functions to balance power in a democracy. A 2023 civics poll by the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School found that only a quarter of respondents knew that press freedom is a constitutional right and a counterbalance to the powers of government and capitalism. The gutting of local news in favor of commercial interests has only accelerated this knowledge blackout.
The demand for AI by corporatists, military AI venture capitalists, and consumers—and resultant demand for data centers—is outpacing utilities infrastructure, traditional power grid capabilities, and the renewable energy sector. Big Tech companies, such as Amazon and Meta, strain municipal water systems and regional power grids, reducing the capacity to operate all things residential and local. In Newton County, Georgia, for example, Meta’s $750 million data center, which sucks up approximately 500,000 gallons of water a day, has contaminated local groundwater and caused taps in nearby homes to run dry. What’s more, the AI boom comes at a time when hot wars are flaring and global temperatures are soaring faster than scientists once predicted.
Constant connectivity, algorithms, and AI-generated content delude individual internet and device users into believing that they’re well informed. However, the decline of civics awareness in the United States—compounded by rampant digital and media illiteracy, ubiquitous state and corporate surveillance, and lax news reporting—makes for an easily manipulated citizenry, asserts attorney and privacy expert, Heidi Boghosian. This is especially disconcerting given the creeping spread of authoritarianism, smackdown on civil liberties, and surging demand for AI everything.
Open [but not transparent] AI
While the companies that develop and deploy popular AI-powered tools lionize the wonders of their products and services, they keep hidden the unsustainable impacts on our world. To borrow from Cory Doctorow, the “enshittification” of the online economy traps consumers, vendors, and advertisers in “the organizing principle of US statecraft,” as well as by more mundane capitalist surveillance. Without government oversight or a Fourth Estate to compel these tech corporations to reveal their shadow side, much of the public is not only in the dark but in harm’s way.
At the most basic level, consumers should know that OpenAI, the company that owns ChatGPT, collects private data and chat inputs, regardless of whether users are logged in or not. Any time users visit or interact with ChatGPT, their log data (the Internet Protocol address, browser type and settings, date and time of the site visit, and interaction with the service), usage data (time zone, country, and type of device used), device details (device name and identifiers, operating system, and browser used), location information from the device’s GPS, and cookies, which store the user’s personal information, are saved. Most users have no idea that they can opt out.
OpenAI claims it saves data only for “fine-tuning,” a process of enhancing the performance and capabilities of AI models, and for human review “to identify biases or harmful outputs.” OpenAI also claims not to use data for marketing and advertising purposes or to sell information to third parties without prior consent. Most users, however, are as oblivious to the means of consent as to the means of opting out. This is by design.
In July, the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit vacated the Federal Trade Commission’s “click-to-cancel” rule, which would have made online unsubscribing easier. The ruling would have covered all forms of negative option marketing—programs that give sellers free rein to interpret customer inaction as “opting in,” consenting to subscriptions and unwittingly accruing charges. Director of litigation at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, John Davisson, commented that the court’s decision was poorly reasoned, and only those with financial or career advancement motives would argue in favor of subscription traps.
Even if OpenAI is actually protective of the private data it stores, it is not above disclosing user data to affiliates, law enforcement, and the government. Moreover, ChatGPT practices are noncompliant with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the global gold standard of data privacy protection. Although OpenAI says it strips PII and anonymizes data, its practice of “indefinite retention” does not comply with the GDPR’s stipulation for data storage limitations, nor does OpenAI sufficiently guarantee irreversible data de-identification.
As science and tech reporter Will Knight wrote for Wired, “Once data is baked into an AI model today, extracting it from that model is a bit like trying to recover the eggs from a finished cake.” Whenever a tech company collects and keeps PII, there are security risks. The more data captured and stored by a company, the more likely it will be exposed to a system bug, hack, or breach, such as the ChatGPT breach in March 2023.
OpenAI has said it will comply with the EU’s AI Code of Practice for General-Purpose AI, which aims to foster transparency, information sharing, and best practices for model and risk assessment among tech companies. Microsoft has said that it will likely sign on to compliance, too; while Meta, on the other hand, flatly refuses to comply, much like it refuses to abide by environmental regulations.
To no one’s surprise, the EU code has already become politicized, and the White House has issued its own AI Action Plan to “remove red tape.” The plan also purports to remove “woke Marxist lunacy in the AI models,” eliminating such topics as diversity, equity, and inclusion and climate change. As Trump crusades against regulation and “bias,” the White House-allied Meta decries political concerns over compliance with the EU’s AI code. Meta’s claim is coincidental; British Courts, based on the United Kingdom’s GDPR obligations, ruled that anyone in a country covered by the GDPR has the right to request Meta to stop using their personal data for targeted advertising.
Big Tech’s open secrets
Information on the tech industry’s environmental and health impacts exists, attests artificial intelligence researcher Sasha Luccioni. The public is simply not being informed. This lack of transparency, warns Luccioni, portends significant environmental and health consequences. Too often, industry opaqueness is excused by insiders as “competition” to which they feel entitled, or blamed on the broad scope of artificial intelligence products and services—smart devices, recommender systems, internet searches, autonomous vehicles, machine learning, the list goes on. Allegedly, there’s too much variety to reasonably quantify consequences.
Those consequences are quantifiable, though. While numbers vary and are on the ascent, there are at least 3,900 data centers in the United States and 10,000 worldwide. An average data center houses complex networking equipment, servers, and systems for cooling systems, lighting, security, and storage, all requiring copious rare earth minerals, water, and electricity to operate.
The densest data center area exists in Northern Virginia, just outside the nation’s capital. “Data Center Alley,” also known as the “Data Center Capital of the World,” has the highest concentration of data centers not only in the United States but in the entire world, consuming millions of gallons of water every day. International hydrologist Newsha Ajami has documented how water shortages around the world are being worsened by Big Data. For tech companies, “water is an afterthought.”
Powered by fossil fuels, these data centers pose serious public health implications. According to research in 2024, training one large language model (LLM) with 213 million parameters produced 626,155 pounds of CO2 emissions, “equivalent to the lifetime emissions of five cars, including fuel.” Stated another way, such AI training “can produce air pollutants equivalent to more than 10,000 round trips by car between Los Angeles and New York City.”
Reasoning models generate more “thinking tokens” and use as much as 50 percent more energy than other AI models. Google and Microsoft search features purportedly use smaller models when possible, which, theoretically, can provide quick responses with less energy. It’s unclear when or if smaller models are actually invoked, and the bottom line, explained climate reporter Molly Taft, is that model providers are not informing consumers that speedier AI response times almost always equate to higher energy usage.
Profits over people
AI is rapidly becoming a public utility, profoundly shaping society, surmise Caltech’s Adam Wierman and Shaolei Ren of the University of California, Riverside. In the last few years, AI has outgrown its niche in the tech sector to become integral to digital economies, government, and security. AI has merged more closely with daily life, replacing human jobs and decision-making, and has thus created a reliance on services currently controlled by private corporations. Because other essential services such as water, electricity, and communications are treated as public utilities, there’s growing discussion about whether AI should be regulated under a similar public utility model.
That said, data centers need power grids, most of which depend on fossil fuel-generated electricity that stresses national and global energy stores. Data centers also need backup generators for brownout and blackout periods. With limited clean, reliable backup options, despite the known environmental and health consequences of burning diesel, diesel generators remain the industry’s go-to.
Whether the public realizes it or not, the environment and citizens are being polluted by the actions of private tech firms. Outputs from data centers inject dangerous fine particulate matter and nitrogen oxides (NOx) into the air, immediately worsening cardiovascular conditions, asthma, cancer, and even cognitive decline, caution Wierman and Ren. Contrary to popular belief, air pollutants are not localized to their emission sources. And, although chemically different, carbon (CO2) is not contained by location either.
Of great concern is that in “World Data Capital Virginia,” data centers are incentivized with tax breaks. Worse still, the (misleadingly named) Environmental Protection Agency plans to remove all limits on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, according to documents obtained by the New York Times. Thus, treating AI and data centers as public utilities presents a double-edged sword. Can a government that slashes regulations to provide more profit to industry while destroying its citizens’ health along with the natural world be trusted to fairly price and equitably distribute access to all? Would said government suddenly start protecting citizens’ privacy and sensitive data?
The larger question, perhaps, asks if the US is truly a democracy. Or is it a technogarchy, or an AI-tocracy? The 2024 AI Global Surveillance (AIGS) Index ranked the United States first for its deployment of advanced AI surveillance tools that “monitor, track, and surveil citizens to accomplish a range of objectives— some lawful, others that violate human rights, and many of which fall into a murky middle ground,” the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace reported.
Surveillance has long been the purview of authoritarian regimes, but in so-called democracies such as the United States, the scale and intensity of AI use is leveraged both globally through military operations and domestically to target and surveil civilians. In cities such as Scarsdale, New York, and Norfolk, Virginia, citizens are beginning to speak out against the systems that are “immensely popular with politicians and law enforcement, even though they do real and palpable damage to the citizenry.”
Furthermore, tracking civilians to “deter civil disobedience” has never been easier, evidenced in June by the rapid mobilization of boots on the ground amid the peaceful protests of ICE raids in Los Angeles. AI-powered surveillance acts as the government’s “digital scarecrow,” chilling the American tradition and First Amendment right to protest and the Fourth Estate’s right to report.
The public is only just starting to become aware of algorithmic biases in AI training datasets and their prejudicial impact on predictive policing, or profiling, algorithms, and other analytic tools used by law enforcement. City street lights and traffic light cameras, facial recognition systems, video monitoring in and around business and government buildings, as well as smart speakers, smart toys, keyless entry locks, automobile intelligent dash displays, and insurance antitheft tracking systems are all embedded with algorithmic biases.
Checking Big Tech’s unchecked power
Given the level and surreptitiousness of surveillance, the media are doubly tasked with treading carefully to avoid being targeted and accurately informing the public’s perception of data collection and data centers. Reporting that glorifies techbros and AI is unscrupulous and antithetical to democracy: In an era where billionaire techbros and wanna-be-kings are wielding every available apparatus of government and capitalism to gatekeep information, the public needs an ethical press committed to seeking truth, reporting it, and critically covering how AI is shifting power.
If people comprehend what’s at stake—their personal privacy and health, the environment, and democracy itself—they may be more inclined to make different decisions about their AI engagement and media consumption. An independent press that prioritizes public enlightenment means that citizens and consumers still have choices, starting with basic data privacy self-controls that resist AI surveillance and stand up for democratic self-governance.
Just as a healthy environment, replete with clean air and water, has been declared a human right by the United Nations, privacy is enshrined in Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Although human rights are subject to national laws, water, air, and the internet know no national borders. It is, therefore, incumbent upon communities and the press to uphold these rights and to hold power to account.
This spring, residents of Pittsylvania County, Virginia, did just that. Thanks to independent journalism and civic participation, residents pushed back against the corporate advertising meant to convince the county that the fossil fuels powering the region’s data centers are “clean.” Propagandistic campaigns were similarly applied in Memphis, Tennessee, where proponents of Elon Musk’s data center—which has the footprint of thirteen football fields—circulated fliers to residents of nearby, historically Black neighborhoods, proclaiming the super-polluting xAI has low emissions. “Colossus,” Musk’s name for what’s slated to be the world’s biggest supercomputer, powers xAI’s Hitler-loving chatbot Grok.
The Southern Environmental Law Center exposed with satellite and thermal imagery how xAI, which neglected to obtain legally required air permits, brought in at least 35 portable methane gas turbines to help power Colossus. Tennessee reporter Ren Brabenec said that Memphis has become a sacrifice zone and expects the communities there to push back.
Meanwhile, in Pittsylvania, Virginia, residents succeeded in halting the proposed expansion of data centers that would damage the region’s environment and public health. Elizabeth Putfark, attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, affirmed that communities, including local journalists, are a formidable force when acting in solidarity for the public welfare.
Best practices
Because AI surveillance is a threat to democracies everywhere, we must each take measures to counter “government use of AI for social control,” contends Abi Olvera, senior fellow with the Council on Strategic Risks. Harlo Holmes, director of digital security at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, told Wired that consumers must make technology choices under the premise that they’re our “last line of defense.” Steps to building that last line of defense include digital and media literacies and digital hygiene, and at least a cursory understanding of how data is stored and its far-reaching impacts.
Best defensive practices employed by media professionals can also serve as best practices for individuals. This means becoming familiar with laws and regulations, taking every precaution to protect personal information on the internet and during online communications, and engaging in responsible civic discourse. A free and democratic society is only as strong as its citizens’ abilities to make informed decisions, which, in turn, are only as strong as their media and digital literacy skills and the quality of information they consume.
This essay first published here: https://www.projectcensored.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
The severe drinking water crisis in San Juan, Puerto Rico, is worsening, and is not limited to the old colonial city but also affects other municipalities across the country. However, San Juan has become the focus of public opinion due to the high influx of tourists who come to the city as part of Caribbean cruise itineraries, as well as for summer concerts, such as the upcoming Bad Bunny shows.
The water shortage that began on July 24 is not only affecting tourism, but also other types of businesses, many of which have recently decided to temporarily close or reduce their activities, dealing a major blow to an already struggling economy.
The post Water Crisis Deepens In Puerto Rico appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
This figure shows changes in heat content of the top 700 meters of the world’s oceans between 1955 and 2023 (US EPA)
A new study claims severe ocean overheating may be causing a fundamental climate shift. Ocean heatwaves over the past couple of years have been massive and extensive and intensive on a scale never seen before at times covering 96% of the world’s oceans, which should be impossible. (“The Oceans are Overheating – and Scientists Say a Climate Tipping Point May be Here,” ScienceDaily, July 26, 2025)
Starting in 2022-23, massive ocean heatwaves persisted for more than 500 days covering nearly the entire globe. This shocking event, never witnessed before, puts the entire global warming scenario on a new level that’s predictably negative. The message is as clear as a bell: World leadership should focus on removal of fossil fuel emissions as soon as possible. Global warming, especially in the ocean, is on a rapid upswing and not waiting around, as such, fully 2/3rds of the planet is suffering a very dangerous heat stroke that’s separate and apart from extreme heatwaves on land.
After all, Earth is basically a liquid planet, according to NASA: “Covering more than 70% of Earth’s surface, our global ocean has a very high heat capacity. It has absorbed 90% of the warming that has occurred in recent decades due to increasing greenhouse gases, and the top few meters of the ocean store as much heat as Earth’s entire atmosphere.” (Ocean Warming/ Vital Signs, NASA)
Scientists fear system-wide climate change may be in the works, threatening ocean marine ecosystems such corals, fisheries, and aquaculture, as well as goosing up terrestrial temperatures way too fast too soon across the planet. Marine heatwaves this decade have lasted four times (4x) longer than the historical record. Hot oceans accelerate climate change. As water temperatures rise, oceans lose ability to absorb excessive heat and land temperatures rise accordingly.
“According to the study’s researchers, the 2023 MHWs may mark a fundamental shift in ocean-atmosphere dynamics, potentially serving as an early warning of an approaching tipping point in Earth’s climate system,” Ibid.
Given the duration of the heatwave, which began in earnest in 2023 and continues today in some regions, Zhenzhong Zeng, PhD, co-author of the study, Earth systems scientist China Southern University of Science and Technology believes it is the start of a “new normal for the world’s oceans.” Emerging data indicates the heat in the oceans is accumulating exponentially, a trend that defies climate model predictions. It’ll accelerate heat on land, leading to more severe and widespread droughts, heatwaves, wildfires and storms, which are already seriously severe in today’s world.
Zhenzhong Zeng claims to be “very scared” by the potential regime shift in the oceans: “I think almost all of the Earth system model projections are wrong… Record marine heatwaves may signal a permanent shift in the oceans.”
Some impacts of the shift are starting to appear: “When Ocean temperatures rise dramatically, they trigger a cascade of effects that lead to mass fish deaths. The primary mechanism involves oxygen depletion, as warmer water holds less dissolved oxygen while simultaneously increasing fish’s metabolic rates and oxygen requirements. This double impact can lead to widespread suffocation. Additionally, fish are ectothermic (cold-blooded), making them particularly vulnerable to temperature changes.” (“Marine Heatwaves Trigger Mass Fish Deaths in Australian Waters,” Aussie Animals, 2025)
Devastating results hit western Australia early in 2025. Temperatures 5°C above normal killed tens of thousands of fish. Scientists agree this represents a broader global challenge as research shows climate change has multiplied the event of marine heat zones by 20 times. Now, it’s coming home to roost as the world’s oceans turn away from decades of absorbing excessive global heat.
Ocean Payback
According to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the ocean won’t hold its heat forever. Eventually, it’ll feed back into the climate system, causing acceleration of global warming beyond all expectations, as “it’s too late” becomes reality.
It’s not just oceans that are overheating: “Water temperatures have surged above 85 degrees in the Mediterranean Sea, where records have been broken every day for weeks.” (“The Mediterranean Sea is Experiencing a Record-Smashing Heat Wave,” Washington Post, July 4, 2025) Scientists have expressed concern over the potential for sizeable losses of marine life.
Ocean Heat Impact: Antarctica & Greenland
The Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets represent the largest land store of freshwater, which, should they completely melt and flow into the ocean, would add a total of 7.5 and 58 m to global-mean sea level, respectively. Recent observations have shown the ice sheets melting at an accelerating rate. Now, ocean heat has become a bigger-than-expected threat to the stability of the major ice sheets much, much earlier than science expected.
The Greenland ice sheet is particularly vulnerable, as warm ocean currents undercut fjords and erode outlet glaciers, undercutting and destabilizing calving.
The leading cause of ice mass loss for the West Antarctica Ice Sheet is ocean heat. Only recently, under the auspices of the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership, 450 polar scientists held an emergency meeting to alert the world to clear evidence of instability of the ice sheet. They strongly suggest immediate halt to fossil fuels.
Statement of Polar scientists’ group: “The services of the Southern Ocean and Antarctica – oceanic carbon sink and planetary air-conditioner – have been taken for granted. Global warming-induced shifts observed in the region are immense. Recent research has shown record-low sea ice, extreme heatwaves exceeding 40°C [104°F] above average temperatures, and increased instability around key ice shelves. Shifting ecosystems on land and at sea underscore this sensitive region’s rapid and unprecedented transformations. Runaway ice loss causing rapid and catastrophic sea-level rise is possible within our lifetimes. Whether such irreversible tipping points have already passed is unknown.” (“‘Emergency’ Warning for Antarctica Issued by Nearly 500 Polar Scientists,” IFLScience, Nov. 22, 2024)
Unfortunately, climate change is not about to go away, rather, it is gaining momentum by the year as CO2 emissions from fossil fuels skyrocket into the atmosphere, as of June 2025 at 430 ppm, a new record high for atmospheric concentration. Moreover, the annual rate of CO2 increase in 2024 (also setting a new record) was 3.50 ppm, more than double the annual rate in 2000 at 1.24 ppm, when atmospheric CO2 concentration was at 37o ppm.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in 2015 an international group of scientists determined anything above 350 ppm atmospheric CO2 would be beyond the “safe zone.” Nobody has suggested the scientists have changed their minds. But that issue is now upstaged by the world’s property/casualty insurance industry as it screams, hollers, complains, rejects, doubles rates, drops coverage all because of climate change. Property insurers have brought to the fore in full public view a climate change monster that’s destroying the American dream of home ownership.
Based upon referenced sources herein, fossil fuel emissions must be stopped as soon as possible to hopefully mitigate a whacky climate system that is already threatening the very foundations of the current socio/economic system, unwittingly suggesting maybe ‘it should also go’ the way of fossil fuels.
As if out of the blue, within only a couple of years, climate change has become capitalism’s biggest nightmare. Maybe they should scramble to do whatever is scientifically necessary to try to mitigate whatever can be mitigated. Too bad CO2 capture and sequester is a decidedly weak, and inconsequential, solution. “It’s a fraud!” (Al Gore)
The post Massive Ocean Regime Shift, Alarming first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
The ocean bumps beneath our boat, and a cold mist obscures the way forward. I peer over the driver’s shoulder to consult the GPS screen behind the steering wheel. The map reveals a labyrinth of islands, as well as dozens of inlets and fjords cutting up the western fringe of British Columbia’s Central Coast. Most bear colonial names: Jackson Passage, Laredo Inlet, Princess Royal Channel. But looking closer, I can make out other, older names: Nowish, Khutze, Kynoch.
When the mist lifts, the topography pops up all around me. Sheer granite peaks plunge into a Magic Eye mirage of cedar, fir, and spruce trees rooted to rocky shores.
The post Welcome To The Great Bear Sea appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.