https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=475c1BM4w4M
Monday, August 23, 2021
Regime Change, Lies and Video Films
https://www.resumen-english.org/2021/08/regime-change-lies-and-video-films/
By Rosa Miriam Elizalde on August 19, 2021
graphic: Cubadebate
Twenty years of lies from Washington, but only 10 days were enough for the Taliban to take control of Afghanistan. Joe Biden has finished it off by stringing together a pathetic excuse, again a lie: “Our mission in Afghanistan was not to build a nation, not to create a united democracy. Our only national interest in Afghanistan has been and continues to be to prevent a terrorist attack on the United States.”
Who believes him? The Washington Post compiled some 2,000 pages of notes from more than 400 interviews with Afghan military, diplomats, aid workers and officials a year and a half ago. They believed they were testifying on condition of anonymity and talked their heads off about the mistakes of the U.S. military and the deliberate deception of the Afghan population (and the world) to sustain the “regime change” project in Afghanistan at all costs. Lessons learned, they called this an unusual piece of paper.
“Every piece of data was altered to present the best possible picture…. The polls, for example, were totally unreliable, but they reinforced the idea that everything we did was the right thing to do,” said Bob Crowley, the colonel who served as counterinsurgency adviser from 2013 to 2014. Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the architect of the U.S. Cyber Army, added: “I don’t have any visibility into who the bad guys are.”
More than 800,000 U.S. troops have been deployed in Afghanistan since 2001. The Department of Defense has recognized 2,443 casualties and some 20,589 wounded. This military institution, together with the State Department and the Agency for International Development (USAID), not including other entities such as the CIA or the Department of Veterans Affairs, have spent 2.26 billion dollars since 2001, according to estimates by the Human and Budgetary Costs of the War on Terrorism project of Brown University, Rhode Island.
The Costs of War project also estimates that 241,000 Afghans have died as a direct result of military intervention. These figures do not include deaths from disease, loss of access to food, water, infrastructure and other indirect consequences of the war.
It is impossible to ignore the similarities of this data with the regime change plans for Cuba and the continuous threats from Florida politicians. Nearly $250 million in federal funds have been invested in the last two decades by U.S. federal agencies for “regime change” on the island. It should be clarified that these are the public funds documented by the Cuba Money Project, by researcher Tracey Eaton. No one knows how much money has traveled through clandestine and secret channels, while military intervention is always an option on the table for Senators Marco Rubio and Robert Menendez, and Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar, to cite those who head the anti-Cuban fundamentalist wing in Washington.
In addition to regime change and money, what links US imperial history with Afghanistan and Cuba are video movies. The ones we have seen these days on the networks resemble the one narrated and lived by writer Eduardo Galeano. The Uruguayan was a member of the international tribunal that judged in Stockholm (1981) the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
According to the official explanation, the invasion was to defend the secular government that was trying to modernize the country. “I will never forget the climax of those sessions,” Galeano wrote. A high-ranking religious leader, representing Islamic fundamentalists, gave a long dissertation full of anti-communist rage. The US government’s freedom fighter – now terrorist – thundered, “The communists have disgraced our daughters! They have taught them to read and write!”
I think Galeano would agree with me that the cry of that gentleman could be exchanged for those emitted, day in and day out, by the legislators of the crusade against Cuba in Washington.
Source: La Jornada, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English
What is happening in Turkey?
http://peoplesdispatch.org/2021/08/21/what-is-happening-in-turkey/
Despite the announcements from the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan that “everything is under control”, Turkey is experiencing one of the deepest crises in recent years. A conversation with Hasan Durkal.
Hasan Durkal is a former teacher and political activist with the Party for Social Freedom.
Istanbul, Turkey. Watching Turkish TV and reading newspapers one can feel overwhelmed by what is going on in the country. In the end of July 2021, seven members of a Kurdish family were killed in Konya, central Turkey, by armed nationalist assailants who tried to burn their house in what rights activists said was a racist attack.
A couple of days later, over 270 wildfires started to burn 1,600 square kilometers of Turkey’s forest in its Mediterranean Region, the worst ever wildfire season in the country’s history. Later, due to heavy precipitation and floods during the whole second week of August, entire villages, roads and bridges in the Black Sea region were destroyed.
As if it is not enough, COVID-19 cases are rising again provoking fears of new necessary lockdowns in an already hard hit economy: in the last months, thousands of little shop owners were forced to close their business, unemployment rate reached 27.4% and the Turkish currency tumbled 17% from March to June 2021. In this deep economic crisis, racist resentments against Syrian and Afghan refugees are getting more and more violent.
But when Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan appears on TV, everything seems to be under control: the wildfires were extinguished and those responsible have been caught; the government will compensate every single citizen hit by the damages caused by the fires and the floods and Erdoğan himself will negotiate with the Taliban to stop a new “invasion” by Afghan refugees.
But is everything really under control? We spoke to Hasan Durkal, former teacher and political activist. He was fired in 2017 after the attempted military coup in 2016 and the increased repression against political opposition. He is also a member of the central committee of Toplumsal Özgürlük Partisi (TÖP), the Party for Social Freedom.
Maurizio Coppola: Let’s start from the images on the news from the last few weeks: wildfires and heavy rainfall destroyed entire regions of the country. What exactly happened?
Hasan Durkal: In the last couple of weeks, disasters occurred one after another: Thousands of hectares of agricultural land and forests burned in the south of the country, thousands of animals died, flood disasters caused the death of a still unknown number of people in the Black Sea region, entire settlements disappeared.
Of course, these disasters are partly related to global climate change. But the reason why these disasters cause great social destruction is not natural. There is a massacre of nature spanning years, accompanied by neoliberal social policy spanning years. For years now, entire villages have been built in the middle of valleys where torrents fill rapidly as soon as there are heavy precipitations. Also hydroelectric plants have been built in many places and have put the region at risk by changing the natural flow of the water. In the recent disaster, an issue with one of those plants caused the majority of the harm. In addition, the dominant social policy dismantled public services and served only big construction corporations.
Forest fire in Urla, Balıklıova.
Neoliberalism has not only led to the destruction of natural areas, it has also eliminated public services, the main instrument to fight against such natural disasters. State institutions prove their incapacity to deal with floods and wildfires, but it’s not just a capacity issue. The state does not have any budget to intervene in such disasters and no interest – when people protest against some mega project, state forces jump in to protect private interests. After every disaster, Erdoğan goes on TV and declares an “aid campaign”. He asks people for money, but at the same time he repeats that “everything is under control”.
Honestly, nothing is under control. The Turkish government coalition composed by the two parties AKP and MHP on the political level, but also other ultranationalist, reactionary state factions no longer have the capacity to intervene in almost any problem in Turkey. In fact, a state crisis emerged after the military coup attempt in 2016. The opposed factions of the state formed an alliance to prevent this crisis. But their political natures are too different and they bicker with each other at every opportunity.
What does it have to do with fires and the floods? you might ask. The AKP and MHP coalition did not activate the firefighting planes belonging to the Turkish Aeronautical Association, just because it was an old Kemalist institution. Planes have been rotting in the hangar for years as the government coalition has not yet fully taken over that institution. Appointed a trustee, waiting to confiscate his property, the fire caught them off guard.
And the social costs are high.
MC: At the same time, Kurdish people are under nationalist attack, Erdoğan says that the PKK is responsible for the wildfires. What does this say about the current social and political situation?
HD: Many parts of the Mediterranean area burned at the same time: in Greece, Italy, Algeria – the PKK cannot have set fire to all these woods. Of course this is a conspiracy theory, but unfortunately there are too many conspiracy theories in Turkey. And they blow wind in the sails of fascist organizations and movements and strengthen them.
Erdoğan, who has suffered a great loss of legitimacy, is increasingly using lies and conspiracy theories to rule the country. The accusations against the Kurdish people are not new. The government uses the Kurdish question for any question he has no political answer.
In fact, the Kurdish problem has been a regime’s problem for 100 years in Turkey and it was never solved. We are witnessing a decline of the AKP and MHP coalition. As their legitimacy decreases, the attacks on the Kurdish people increase. On 17 June, nationalists attacked the Peoples’ Democratic Party HDP’s office in Izmir. The perpetrator of the attack was a paramilitary, a former medical officer who provided health care to Turkish soldiers and jihadist gangs in Syria directly linked to the state. At the moment of the attack, a meeting of 40 people should have been held in the office of the HDP, but they canceled it for other reasons. Thus, the planned attack could not reach its target. Nevertheless, party worker Denis Poyraz was killed.
A couple of weeks later, on July 31, a seven-person Kurdish family was murdered in Konya, in central Turkey. Again, it was a racist attack. And again, the state forces allowed this massacre. The family had requested police protection as they experienced racist discrimination in the past. But the police did not do their job.
The coalition is trying to stabilize the government by attacking the Kurdish people and lower classes, which is the only place where all dominant state factions find unity.
MD: Attacks on minorities are frequent, lately on refugees. Are racism and nationalism increasing in Turkey?
HD: Attacks on refugees have been increasing frequently in recent times, yes. The fascist structure of the state finds its base in a part of the society. I think the impact of the economic crisis has a great influence. Although the Turkish economy recovered after the 2008 crisis, it went into a major collapse after 2017. There are millions of unemployed [the leftist union DISK calculates an unemployment rate of around 27%, editor’s note]. Worse still, little tradesmen and shop owners are going bankrupt every day. When we add to this the small farmers who can no longer produce, this means that the petty bourgeoisie is in the middle of a huge impoverishment process.
A significant declassified population is being challenged by the economic crisis. This is one of the main reasons why hostility towards refugees is growing. The AKP party has been engaged on great adventures in the Middle East for years. Erdoğan bears an enormous responsibility in the destruction of Syria, he defends the interests of Turkish capital in Libya and uses Iraqi Kurdistan against the Kurdish people’s movement. Erdoğan entered Afghanistan with the same intentions and now he is increasing the Turkish presence there.
The result of these policies was the entry of millions of refugees into the country, which created a human drama. But it also constitutes the weak belly of the government. As discontent with the economic crisis grew, opposition leaders increased their racist rhetoric. For example, the CHP’s Bolu [a city in the north-west of Ankara, editor’s note] mayor made a decision that forced refugees to pay ten times more for water services than Turkish citizens. The deputies of the neofascist party IYIP, which split from the MHP in 2017 and now forms an important wing of the opposition, also increased their hate speech against refugees.
This led to a pogrom on August 11. In the Altındağ district of Ankara, a large group of nationalists looted the shops of Syrian refugees and stoned their homes. The police just followed the happening, without stopping it. By consequence, Syrian refugees had to leave their homes and the city.
Nationalists generate fake news on the topic. They use social media accounts with thousands of followers that spread refugee hatred. The AKP came under a burden that it was difficult to bear. In fact, the person who best summarizes the refugee policies was Erdoğan’s advisor, Yasin Aktay: He said that if we send refugees out of the country, our economy will collapse. This was a way to cheapen the labor force.
While the opposition increased their racist rhetoric and hate speech in recent weeks, it is highly likely that the mob that attacked refugees in Altındağ was composed mostly of MHP supporters. While the MHP and the AKP are in a coalition, they are not without differences. And it is entirely possible that the MHP wants to force the issue of refugees in order to weaken the AKP relative to itself.
MC: For a couple of weeks, Afghan refugees have been arriving in Turkey. Erdoğan promises to stop them and is building a high security wall of 295 km (183 miles) on the border with Iran to stop what he called an “invasion”. What is the “Afghan question” about for Erdoğan and for Turkey?
HD: We can call the Afghan question in Turkey a “Biden effect”. The AKP did not expect Biden’s election and they are now very slow to adapt themselves to the new situation. The Erdoğan-Trump relations were positive, they were able to negotiate relatively freely. Now, Biden is less flexible about AKP’s Middle East policies. Moreover, he did not seem very eager to work with Erdoğan. Erdoğan had to react. At the last NATO summit in Brussels in June 2021, he aspired to a difficult task: protecting the Kabul airport and being NATO’s outpost in Afghanistan. Probably, he promised that he would accept the migrants also resulting from Turkey’s role in Afghanistan.
At the same time, the Afghan refugee question is a way for Europe to put pressure on Erdoğan again. Europe could propose a new refugee’s deal as it did with the Syrian refugees in 2016: Turkey stops the refugees in the country in exchange for direct payments to the government, money the government needs.
But all this reduces internal support for Erdoğan. Despite these contradictions, he has no other choices.
MC: Economically, the pandemic deepened an already existing economic crisis. What happened in the last 18 month in Turkey?
HD: The pandemic intensified an already existing major economic collapse. In the last 20 to 25 years, the economic growth has been based on lending millions to working people, especially to the lower socioeconomic classes. They were included in the financial system and into consumer culture. People became homeowners, bought cars, started businesses thanks to loans and credits. With the deepening of the crisis, they fall into huge debt burdens as the state can no longer make it up by economic growth and redistribution.
Additionally, all public enterprises and resources were privatized, yet today, the state is left with almost no resources any more. Privatizations and liberalizations for capital were intensified in order to integrate Turkey further into the international financial and economic system of neoliberalism. The wheels of the Turkish economy turned thanks to the constant flow of foreign investments and to the rentier sectors of capital (construction, tourism). Such a system is very prone to instability and crisis. In a couple of years, the context has changed and this specific neoliberal accumulation regime failed, the debt crisis destroyed medium and small scale businesses and the Turkish lira lost massive value compared to the Euro and the Dollar.
Before the economic crisis, Erdoğan was able to reconcile different capital fractions by cheapening the workforce and plundering public resources, disbanding trade union organizations and abolishing worker’s rights.
The pandemic crisis intensified these developments, and these policies started to be insufficient. It was not possible any longer to satisfy the needs of the financial capital, the non-monopolistic bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie all at the same time. Erdoğan had to make a decision: if he chose financial capital, he would risk an ongoing social destruction; if he chose other sectors, it would have lost the financial support of finance capital.
He chose to support financial capital and carried out policies within the framework of the interests of large capital groups during the pandemic by rising interest rates. During the lockdowns, he carried out policies that looked after the interests of big markets; the pandemic has been very profitable for big capital.
In his rhetoric, he sometimes used arguments against high interest rates. This caused reactions from the markets. In the end, Erdoğan remains in line with the financial bourgeoisie, but the result of these policies are dire for the working class as already mentioned above.
MC: This multiple crisis has consequences on the ruling party AKP and on the legitimacy of president Erdoğan. Is Turkey facing a hegemonic crisis, too?
HD: Of course it is. Moreover, this is not just about Erdoğan and the AKP. A new social fabric was formed since the Gezi Park protests in 2013. The longing and search for a genuinely democratic, just, secular and ecological society is emerging. This social fabric is not represented by any political party in the current regime.
We have seen the existence of this social fabric during the wildfires: People did what the state didn’t. The people knit a great network of solidarity. They went to the fire zones, mobilized in order to put out the fire, started aid campaigns from below and undertook the rehabilitation of animals damaged in the fire.
Why am I saying all of this? Because a very large part of the country does not trust the institutions. For example, whether or not the perpetrator is caught when there is a rape or femicide depends on street mobilizations of women’s organizations. Confidence in the courts and the law is very low. Although the opposition focuses on the elections, there is a declining confidence in the electoral system.
All this together can be defined as a crisis of hegemony, yes. And it opens new opportunities for socialists to grow.
CHICAGO NABISCO WORKERS JOIN STRIKE IN FOUR US STATES
By James Martin,
WSWS.
August 21, 2021
https://popularresistance.org/chicago-nabisco-workers-join-strike-in-four-us-states/
Nabisco bakery workers in Chicago, Illinois, have joined a strike of plant workers across four states against brutal working conditions, low pay and a proposed two-tier health care system demanded by management even as the company rakes in record profits.
They join workers on strike in Portland, Oregon; Richmond, Virginia; and Aurora, Colorado.
Over 1,000 workers are now currently on strike against Nabisco and its parent company, Mondelez International, Inc., part of a growing rebellion of workers in multiple industries. Over 200 workers in Portland were first to strike on August 10.
Workers at Frito-Lay and its parent company PepsiCo recently struck against low wages, “suicide” work shifts, and higher health care costs in Kansas and Indiana, only to have their struggles betrayed by the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM) and the Teamsters. The bakery workers on strike in Chicago also joined the strike of 800 mechanics in the Chicago metropolitan region.
Nabisco workers, who produce and bake Oreo cookies, Ritz crackers and other popular snacks, have been forced to work 12- to 16-hour shifts, sometimes seven days a week, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Mondelez is now proposing that workers accept an “Alternative Work Schedule,” widely hated and adopted in the auto industry, where workers take on up to 16-hour shifts without overtime pay. The company is also proposing a contract which creates a two-tier health care plan which costs more for all new hires.
While Nabisco workers toiled in gruesome conditions, Mondelez made record profits during the pandemic and made over $26.2 billion in revenue in 2020.
Worker Nathan Williams told Vice, “During the pandemic, we came in seven days a week. Some people worked every day—16 hours a day—for three months.” Nabisco demanded overtime hours and refused to hire more workers. Workers at Nabisco industrial bakery facilities in the United States and Mexico have faced a relentless assault on their living standards over the past decade, including cuts to pensions, mass layoffs and a constant threat of plant closures.
In 2016, Mondelez demanded that the BCTGM union, which covers the striking Nabisco workers, impose $46 million in concessions upon the Chicago workforce—equivalent to cuts of $23,000 per worker—or it would move production lines to Salinas, Mexico.
Mondelez also demanded an increase of 10 percent to the health care costs to replace the fully paid health care plan and replace the pensions with a 401(k) defined-contribution plan, offloading retirement costs onto workers. By 2018, Mondelez had eliminated the pensions of thousands of retirees and workers and moved them into 401(k) plans.
The BCTGM did nothing to oppose the assault on the Chicago workers, and Mondelez closed nine of 16 production lines at the Southside Chicago facility and laid off more than 400 out of nearly 1,000 workers. Workers making $26 an hour were escorted out of the plant by security guards during the layoffs which workers then described felt like a funeral procession. The company initially threatened to lay off nearly 600 workers. With the threat of layoffs, many higher paid workers at the plant retired early.
Michael, a former Chicago Nabisco worker, spoke out on social media in support of the striking workers. “I stand with you in your stand against corporate greed,” he said. “Please be aware that the current buildings you work in are old, and to reinvest in them might be the perfect excuse along with union negotiations that failed to set the ball in motion to let Mondelez close them!”
Michael noted that the company has kept the facility dilapidated for years to hang the threat of plant closure over the workers with the complicity of the union. He added, “The Chicago bakery went from 18 ovens to five back in 2017. This was their plan all along, and they are going to let your union leadership hang you all with it.”
Francesca, the daughter of a Chicago Nabisco worker, also said, “My dad told me stories of how back when he first started work at Nabisco in 1960 there were over 4,000 people. Now it’s just a few hundred.”
While Nabisco workers are seeking to fight for more, the BCTGM has sought to spread nationalist anti-Mexican poison, pitting American workers against their brothers and sisters south of the border. The most recent statement by the union states, “Nabisco has long profited from the loyalty and dedication of its U.S. workers and the exploitation of its employees in Mexico. By taking this action, Nabisco workers in all four locations are saying strong and clear: stop exporting our jobs to Mexico and end your demands for contract concessions.”
In fact, Nabsico workers in the US have more in common with their Mexican coworkers than the so-called “union” that claims to represent them.
Workers should put no trust in the BCTGM, which recently brought four consecutive sellout agreements to striking Frito-Lay workers in Kansas. Workers struck against poverty wages and had yet another sellout contract imposed on them after they were given meager strike pay and starved out.
At Nabisco, the BCTGM has worked to impose brutal working conditions on thousands of workers across the country and has overseen the layoff of hundreds of workers over the last decade. One laid off Chicago Nabisco worker, Tony, mockingly said that “[Mondelez] runs the union.” To which Henry, another former worker, respond, “What union?”
Nabisco workers in Illinois, Oregon, Virginia and Colorado should follow the lesson of the Volvo auto workers who boldly took control of their strike independent of the United Auto Workers union and formed a rank-and-file committee. Workers who want to fight against brutal working conditions, forced overtime without pay and concessions to health care should form their own rank-and-file committee independent of the BCTGM and formulate their own demands.
August 21, 2021
https://popularresistance.org/chicago-nabisco-workers-join-strike-in-four-us-states/
Nabisco bakery workers in Chicago, Illinois, have joined a strike of plant workers across four states against brutal working conditions, low pay and a proposed two-tier health care system demanded by management even as the company rakes in record profits.
They join workers on strike in Portland, Oregon; Richmond, Virginia; and Aurora, Colorado.
Over 1,000 workers are now currently on strike against Nabisco and its parent company, Mondelez International, Inc., part of a growing rebellion of workers in multiple industries. Over 200 workers in Portland were first to strike on August 10.
Workers at Frito-Lay and its parent company PepsiCo recently struck against low wages, “suicide” work shifts, and higher health care costs in Kansas and Indiana, only to have their struggles betrayed by the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM) and the Teamsters. The bakery workers on strike in Chicago also joined the strike of 800 mechanics in the Chicago metropolitan region.
Nabisco workers, who produce and bake Oreo cookies, Ritz crackers and other popular snacks, have been forced to work 12- to 16-hour shifts, sometimes seven days a week, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Mondelez is now proposing that workers accept an “Alternative Work Schedule,” widely hated and adopted in the auto industry, where workers take on up to 16-hour shifts without overtime pay. The company is also proposing a contract which creates a two-tier health care plan which costs more for all new hires.
While Nabisco workers toiled in gruesome conditions, Mondelez made record profits during the pandemic and made over $26.2 billion in revenue in 2020.
Worker Nathan Williams told Vice, “During the pandemic, we came in seven days a week. Some people worked every day—16 hours a day—for three months.” Nabisco demanded overtime hours and refused to hire more workers. Workers at Nabisco industrial bakery facilities in the United States and Mexico have faced a relentless assault on their living standards over the past decade, including cuts to pensions, mass layoffs and a constant threat of plant closures.
In 2016, Mondelez demanded that the BCTGM union, which covers the striking Nabisco workers, impose $46 million in concessions upon the Chicago workforce—equivalent to cuts of $23,000 per worker—or it would move production lines to Salinas, Mexico.
Mondelez also demanded an increase of 10 percent to the health care costs to replace the fully paid health care plan and replace the pensions with a 401(k) defined-contribution plan, offloading retirement costs onto workers. By 2018, Mondelez had eliminated the pensions of thousands of retirees and workers and moved them into 401(k) plans.
The BCTGM did nothing to oppose the assault on the Chicago workers, and Mondelez closed nine of 16 production lines at the Southside Chicago facility and laid off more than 400 out of nearly 1,000 workers. Workers making $26 an hour were escorted out of the plant by security guards during the layoffs which workers then described felt like a funeral procession. The company initially threatened to lay off nearly 600 workers. With the threat of layoffs, many higher paid workers at the plant retired early.
Michael, a former Chicago Nabisco worker, spoke out on social media in support of the striking workers. “I stand with you in your stand against corporate greed,” he said. “Please be aware that the current buildings you work in are old, and to reinvest in them might be the perfect excuse along with union negotiations that failed to set the ball in motion to let Mondelez close them!”
Michael noted that the company has kept the facility dilapidated for years to hang the threat of plant closure over the workers with the complicity of the union. He added, “The Chicago bakery went from 18 ovens to five back in 2017. This was their plan all along, and they are going to let your union leadership hang you all with it.”
Francesca, the daughter of a Chicago Nabisco worker, also said, “My dad told me stories of how back when he first started work at Nabisco in 1960 there were over 4,000 people. Now it’s just a few hundred.”
While Nabisco workers are seeking to fight for more, the BCTGM has sought to spread nationalist anti-Mexican poison, pitting American workers against their brothers and sisters south of the border. The most recent statement by the union states, “Nabisco has long profited from the loyalty and dedication of its U.S. workers and the exploitation of its employees in Mexico. By taking this action, Nabisco workers in all four locations are saying strong and clear: stop exporting our jobs to Mexico and end your demands for contract concessions.”
In fact, Nabsico workers in the US have more in common with their Mexican coworkers than the so-called “union” that claims to represent them.
Workers should put no trust in the BCTGM, which recently brought four consecutive sellout agreements to striking Frito-Lay workers in Kansas. Workers struck against poverty wages and had yet another sellout contract imposed on them after they were given meager strike pay and starved out.
At Nabisco, the BCTGM has worked to impose brutal working conditions on thousands of workers across the country and has overseen the layoff of hundreds of workers over the last decade. One laid off Chicago Nabisco worker, Tony, mockingly said that “[Mondelez] runs the union.” To which Henry, another former worker, respond, “What union?”
Nabisco workers in Illinois, Oregon, Virginia and Colorado should follow the lesson of the Volvo auto workers who boldly took control of their strike independent of the United Auto Workers union and formed a rank-and-file committee. Workers who want to fight against brutal working conditions, forced overtime without pay and concessions to health care should form their own rank-and-file committee independent of the BCTGM and formulate their own demands.
STUDY MEASURES FRACKING’S IMPACT ON NEARBY SURFACE WATER QUALITY
By Bridget Reed Morawski,
Nation Of Change.
August 21, 2021
https://popularresistance.org/study-measures-frackings-impact-on-nearby-surface-water-quality/
“Our work provides the first large-sample evidence showing that hydraulic fracturing is related to the quality of nearby surface waters for several U.S. shales.”
A new study correlates poorer surface water quality with nearby hydraulic fracturing but finds that the impacts aren’t major enough to be considered harmful by federal regulators. However, the researchers noted they weren’t able to study “potentially more dangerous” substances related to fracking because of a lack of data.
While some published studies have already linked groundwater contamination with hydraulic fracking activity, one of the researchers behind the study, Christian Leuz of the University of Chicago, said through a press release that their work was the “first large-sample evidence showing that hydraulic fracturing is related to the quality of nearby surface waters for several U.S. shales.”
The study, published in the journal Science, found “small but consistent” increases in the concentration of nonbiodegradable salts in watersheds where new hydraulic fracturing activities were taking place.
“The high salt concentrations were most pronounced at monitoring stations located closer to wells and at stations likely located downstream from wells,” the study summary noted, adding that the highest accumulations were “observed within a year from drilling at monitoring stations assigned as downstream from a well and within 15 kilometers [or less than 10 miles] from a well.”
Researchers studied four salts associated with hydraulic fracturing flowback, or the fluids that bubble up to the surface through a fracking well due to pressure, and a briney wastewater mixture known in the industry as produced water. Three salts were found to have elevated concentrations associated with new hydraulic fracturing: chloride, barium and strontium. A fourth salt was studied — bromide — but evidence correlating its presence to new fracking development was “mixed and not robust.”
The concentrations identified by the researchers aren’t high enough to be considered harmful by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, according to a study summary.
“Our work provides the first large-sample evidence showing that hydraulic fracturing is related to the quality of nearby surface waters for several U.S. shales. Though we estimated very small water impact, one has to consider that most measurements were taken in rivers or streams and that the average fracturing well in our dataset was not particularly close to the monitors in the watershed,” explained Leuz through the press release.
The researchers warned that the hydraulic fracturing process results in fluids with chemicals “that are potentially more dangerous than salts.” However, the researchers weren’t “able to look for these chemicals because they’re not widely covered by public databases” and lamented the “availability and measurement frequency of water quality data.”
To plug the data gaps, federal and state agencies could site monitoring stations “in a more targeted fashion to better track potential water quality impacts,” the researchers suggested to facilitate future detailed reports. The study was conducted by Leuz, Pietro Bonetti of the University of Navarro in northern Spain and Giovanna Michelon of the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom. The researchers say they “used a geo-coded database that combined surface water measurements with 46,479 hydraulic fracturing wells from 24 shales across 408 watersheds from 2006 to 2016” and applied a statistical model to draw their conclusions.
August 21, 2021
https://popularresistance.org/study-measures-frackings-impact-on-nearby-surface-water-quality/
“Our work provides the first large-sample evidence showing that hydraulic fracturing is related to the quality of nearby surface waters for several U.S. shales.”
A new study correlates poorer surface water quality with nearby hydraulic fracturing but finds that the impacts aren’t major enough to be considered harmful by federal regulators. However, the researchers noted they weren’t able to study “potentially more dangerous” substances related to fracking because of a lack of data.
While some published studies have already linked groundwater contamination with hydraulic fracking activity, one of the researchers behind the study, Christian Leuz of the University of Chicago, said through a press release that their work was the “first large-sample evidence showing that hydraulic fracturing is related to the quality of nearby surface waters for several U.S. shales.”
The study, published in the journal Science, found “small but consistent” increases in the concentration of nonbiodegradable salts in watersheds where new hydraulic fracturing activities were taking place.
“The high salt concentrations were most pronounced at monitoring stations located closer to wells and at stations likely located downstream from wells,” the study summary noted, adding that the highest accumulations were “observed within a year from drilling at monitoring stations assigned as downstream from a well and within 15 kilometers [or less than 10 miles] from a well.”
Researchers studied four salts associated with hydraulic fracturing flowback, or the fluids that bubble up to the surface through a fracking well due to pressure, and a briney wastewater mixture known in the industry as produced water. Three salts were found to have elevated concentrations associated with new hydraulic fracturing: chloride, barium and strontium. A fourth salt was studied — bromide — but evidence correlating its presence to new fracking development was “mixed and not robust.”
The concentrations identified by the researchers aren’t high enough to be considered harmful by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, according to a study summary.
“Our work provides the first large-sample evidence showing that hydraulic fracturing is related to the quality of nearby surface waters for several U.S. shales. Though we estimated very small water impact, one has to consider that most measurements were taken in rivers or streams and that the average fracturing well in our dataset was not particularly close to the monitors in the watershed,” explained Leuz through the press release.
The researchers warned that the hydraulic fracturing process results in fluids with chemicals “that are potentially more dangerous than salts.” However, the researchers weren’t “able to look for these chemicals because they’re not widely covered by public databases” and lamented the “availability and measurement frequency of water quality data.”
To plug the data gaps, federal and state agencies could site monitoring stations “in a more targeted fashion to better track potential water quality impacts,” the researchers suggested to facilitate future detailed reports. The study was conducted by Leuz, Pietro Bonetti of the University of Navarro in northern Spain and Giovanna Michelon of the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom. The researchers say they “used a geo-coded database that combined surface water measurements with 46,479 hydraulic fracturing wells from 24 shales across 408 watersheds from 2006 to 2016” and applied a statistical model to draw their conclusions.
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