Corporate Billionaires Are Wrecking The Supply Chain

https://popularresistance.org/corporate-billionaires-are-wrecking-the-supply-chain-just-look-at-the-railroads/




By Mel Buer, The Real News Network. July 8, 2022


Just look at the railroads.

Draconian labor policies, “cost-cutting” measures, and mass layoffs are decimating US railroad workers for the sake of corporate profits. And the effects are reverberating throughout the supply chain.

Before these past two years, if you were polling passersby on the street, you would have been hard pressed to find anyone ready to admit that they were seriously concerned about the supply chain. You’d be hard pressed, for that matter, to find many who could describe what the supply chain actually is (present company included). That is certainly not the case today. From shortages—and correspondingly high costs—of groceries and consumer goods like baby formula and sunflower oil to medical devices, “supply chain issues” have become a pronounced source of anxiety and frustration for consumers, workers, businesses, and politicians alike.

“The supply chain is in chaos,” Will Knight wrote for WIRED in late March, “and it’s getting worse.” Unsurprisingly, however, the pain resulting from that chaos—like most things in this world—is not evenly distributed. As the economy contracts, inflation continues to skyrocket, and Wall Street tucks tail and runs, everyday workers are the ones left holding the bag.

The supply chain is a lot like the cardiovascular system of global commerce, a vast pulsing web of innumerable veins, arteries, and capillaries connecting points of extraction, production, and trade to points of sale around the world. Moving through that web at any given time is a dizzying menagerie of trains, trucks, ships, and planes transporting raw materials and finished goods.

Much like with the human body itself, the sheer logistics keeping such a complex system moving seamlessly are mind boggling, and when blockages and breakdowns occur at any point, the rest of the system is affected. Each prong and node of the supply chain infrastructure, and every individual process of transporting cargo units—containers coming and going at the ports, freight loaded onto trucks and trains—must work in tandem with one another to prevent disruptions. If movement at one node slows down, it starts a chain reaction across the entire system, and it becomes increasingly more difficult to right the ship (sometimes literally) when things begin to break down.

And things have been breaking down. The supply chain, Knight continues, “is too complex, interconnected, and fragile to be made completely immune to shocks, especially ones as seismic as a global pandemic or a major war.” Between the war in Ukraine, two-plus years of a deadly pandemic, extreme weather events exacerbated by climate change, a “trade war” between the US and China, and other larger-than-life factors, the supply chain has experienced a series of shocks that have experts sounding the alarm and businesses lamenting the seemingly unavoidable spikes in the cost of goods, which have been passed on to consumers.

While these massive geopolitical and environmental events have intuitively served as a sort of taken-for-granted, catch-all explanation for supply chain disruptions and rising costs, they have also conveniently obscured another, sorely under-acknowledged cause of our collective supply chain woes: corporate greed. The fact that corporations have been raking in record profits while simultaneously jacking up prices on everyone (and shareholders have been bragging about it on quarterly earnings calls) certainly has more consumers catching the stench of something rotten beneath the prevailing narrative about inflation and supply chain issues. But corporate extortion via price gouging is not the only issue here.

To grasp just how deep the rot goes, it’s crucial to remember what is perhaps the most frequently (and willfully) forgotten fact about the supply chain: Even though those colorful logistics maps are dazzling to the eye, they also make the whole system seem more like a mechanical process of moving things, but at the ground floor of this system—every single part of it—are people, flesh-and-blood human beings making everything move. When we say that COVID-19 affected the supply chain, what we’re actually talking about in most cases is the people whose labor keeps the supply chain moving in some way, the people driving the trucks and trains, the people loading and steering ships at the ports, but also the farmers and farmworkers and miners and loggers putting out product to be moved, the packers and processors, and so on. What we’re talkin about is a whole lot of those people getting sick, even dying. But there are other ways that the people working somewhere along the supply chain have been—and are being—crushed, thus hurting the supply chain itself, and what’s happening to freight railroaders in the US today is a perfect example of that.

Again, the system shocks mentioned above—war and a raging pandemic among them—have provided a ready-made culprit for delays and disruptions all along the US supply chain. Missing from the equation, though, are the rail carriers themselves: the billionaires who own them and the overpaid CEOs who run them. Lest we forget, BNSF Railway and Union Pacific made billions in profit in 2021. But the cost of those profits, according to railroad workers and their advocates, has been incalculable. Profit-motivated, “cost-cutting” decisions made by those at the top of the corporate hierarchy have ground the hardworking operators, engineers, and others working along the railroad into dust. Such destructive decisions, as retired railroad engineer, union member, and former Iowa state legislative representative Jeff Kurtz puts it, are the real supply chain crisis. Because companies like BNSF and Union Pacific have pushed railroad workers—and, thus, the railroads—to the breaking point in their quest for greater profits, “trains are sitting still, people are quitting in record numbers… people don’t want to hire out on the railroad [anymore] because they’re not going to give their life away… I don’t blame them.”

In mid-May, for The Real News, I went to Fort Madison, Iowa, to attend a solidarity rally held by former railroaders, labor leaders, and their families.

Fort Madison is a quiet town of around 10,000 people nestled up against the Mississippi River along the Iowa-Illinois border. To reach Fort Madison, you have to ditch the main interstate in Des Moines and drive for another few hours southeast on Highway 34—or take the early morning Amtrak to the station sitting right in the heart of downtown. The town serves as the only Iowa stop along Amtrak’s Southwest Chief route, connecting Los Angeles and Chicago by 1,744 miles of rail line owned and serviced by BNSF. On May 15, this lone commuter outpost served as a critical site for railroaders to gather and express outrage and concern over BNSF’s disastrous “Hi-Viz” attendance policy, which they see as the latest example of the industry’s self-destructive, runaway corporate greed.

BNSF’s Hi-Viz attendance policy was introduced earlier this year. Railroad workers opposed its implementation so fiercely that the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) and the Transportation Division of the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail, and Transportation Workers (SMART-TD), which together represent roughly 17,000 railroad workers, initiated steps to prepare for a strike that would have begun on Feb. 1. BLET National President Dennis R. Pierce and SMART-TD President Jeremy Ferguson called the Hi-Viz policy “the worst and most egregious attendance policy ever adopted by any rail carrier.” However, on Tuesday, Jan. 25, US District Court judge Mark Pittman, at the urging of BNSF, blocked the two unions from striking, saying that a strike would cause the rail company “substantial, immediate and irreparable harm.” Judge Pittman did not have much to say about the “substantial” and “irreparable harm” that the Hi-Viz policy would cause railroad workers and the supply chain, however, and the policy went into effect.

Now, six months later, concerns expressed by union officials, rank-and-file workers, and their families about the disastrous effects the policy would have on them and the industry have proven to be well founded.

Under the policy, each rail worker is given a balance of 30 points. Workers who “mark off” (take unscheduled days off) receive a penalty—anywhere from 2 to 25 points off the balance. If the balance drops to 0 at any time, the worker is then subject to disciplinary action, and the point total is reset to 15. If the balance drops to zero three times, then the worker is fired. Workers have a chance to regain points, but only if they work without accruing an infraction for 14 days straight. In mid-May, BNSF revised the policy to allow for additional bonus points to be earned, but only for top performers within a given period.

Given the nature of the work, with a mobile workplace that moves along a rail system where delays and disruptions are a regular occurrence, rail workers’ prescribed schedules change frequently, and they generally receive scheduling calls just hours before they’re required to report to their terminals and get to work. Under such conditions, the Hi-Viz attendance policy becomes even more villainous, essentially preventing workers from being able to meaningfully plan their lives because they are always on call. And that’s not accounting for any accidents, emergencies, illnesses, or whatever other unexpected circumstances that human beings with lives outside of work have to navigate.

One might think, as BNSF itself has encouraged employees to think, that a points-based attendance policy like Hi-Viz would be designed to help workers and managers account for and manage such unexpected disruptions while maintaining operations. Instead, workers report that the policy acts as a heavy-handed mechanism for punishing them for the crime of being a living, breathing person who can’t always predict the future. How can you plan for an emergency? You can’t. But if that emergency happens on a “high-impact day” (when an unscheduled absence prompts deeper cuts to one’s point tally), you’re screwed.

Confused yet? Feeling a little bit uncomfortable with all the red tape? That’s the point.

The principle behind Hi-Viz is not exclusive to the railroads. Such point-based attendance systems have become common practice in many industries—Kellogg’s workers noted their disdain for a similar system at their company when workers struck last fall, and coal miners at Warrior Met Coal in Alabama, who have been on strike since April 1, 2021, cited a similar policy as one of the reasons they hit the picket line. Such policies are designed to keep workers “on all the time.” Major incidents like family and medical emergencies can become career-ending if a worker falls below zero points. Even minor occurrences, like a scheduled doctor’s appointment or a child’s baseball game, can lead to severe consequences for railroaders. In essence, the Hi-Viz point system has made an already strenuous work-life balance impossible for workers.

Hi-Viz is not an aberration; it is merely the latest egregious manifestation of a cost-and-corner-cutting philosophy that has predominated in the rail industry for years, resulting in trains getting longer and heavier and crews getting slimmer and buried under more work. Looking at the visualized employment data for rail transportation workers on the Bureau of Labor Statistics website, one can see how dramatically rail companies have reduced their workforce since 2015: Screenshot of “Employment, Hours, and Earnings from the Current Employment Statistics survey (National)” trend graph generated using 2001-2022 data compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on the BLS “Databases, Tables & Calculators by Subject” website. Graph shows a precipitous drop in all rail transportation employees from 2015-2022. Screenshot/TRNN.

“Over the last six years,” Karl Evers-Hillstrom noted in May of this year, “the leading freight carriers laid off 45,000 employees, or nearly 30 percent of their combined workforce, according to the Surface Transportation Board. Most of the layoffs came before the pandemic, which ushered in a huge demand for shipped items.” But this trend of “lean” staffing (ie, deliberate understaffing) is showing no signs of letting up. Having already cut deep through muscle and sinew, the rail carriers are now attempting to saw into the bone.

In addition to draconian attendance policies, the railroad carriers are currently seeking via contract negotiations to eliminate two-person crews on their Class I trains, dropping the number from 2 people to 1 person per train. Yes, you read that right. Fight for Two Person Crews, an advocacy group made up of rail workers and labor leaders, has been fighting tooth and nail to maintain the current two-person scheduling by lobbying state legislatures to pass laws prohibiting one person crews on the railways. “Big railroad corporations are pushing to eliminate the second person in the cab of freight trains,” they write on their website. “These trains consist of hazmat and other dangerous materials. Despite the millions of dollars these companies make in profit, they are willing to risk the safety of your community and railroaders to make more.”

For many whose lives are connected to the rail industry, each of these top-down, profit-maximizing moves by the rail carriers is seen as yet another bloodthirsty maneuver to squeeze as much profit for executives and shareholders out of their beleaguered workforce as they can.

“Our engineers and conductors didn’t have more life that they could sell, so the railroads decided to just take it,” said former railroad employee and Iowa state legislative representative Jeff Kurtz at the May 15 rally. “This rally is not about money. This rally is about the fact that they’re trying to steal the lives of the people that are running these trains and making their money for them. They think they can squeeze another dollar out of them, and it’s not right.”

Because of the damage they have done to the workers who make the whole industry run, these policies have already had disastrous consequences across the rail industry, affecting companies’ ability to recruit and retain staff, and leading to dangerous (and avoidable) situations along the rail line. Workers attending the rally in Fort Madison spoke of derailments, stalled trains, and medical emergencies occurring as a direct result of the overburdening of their workforce. In short, for the sake of corporate profits, rail workers are overwhelmed and being overworked across the entire industry, and it’s causing major disruptions throughout the US-based supply chain.

Again, the supply chain is a complex, interconnected system, and disruptions at one point in that system will cause disruptions elsewhere. The corporate mismanagement of the rail industry has directly contributed to bottlenecks cropping up at different points throughout most of the major US shipping and logistics infrastructure. The ports are congested, with ships taking anywhere from 6 to 12 days to load and unload their cargo. If the freight can’t make it out of the port and onto a train, then shippers must wait for space to be made available. Reporting for CNBC, Lori Ann LaRocco writes,


“According to MarineTraffic and Blume Global data, the Port of Oakland tops the list of congestion with vessels taking six days to unload and load. Import containers are lingering almost 11 days in the port before they are transported. The Port of Los Angeles is the second highest in wait times, clocking in almost 12 days for containers to leave the port and five and a half days for vessels to be processed. Rail delays of 6.2 days are also plaguing the port’s productivity.”

A recent release by the US Department of Transportation also calls attention to this issue, noting that “This breakdown in rail service is making it more difficult to clear the docks at Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach: the number of trucking containers that have been on the docks for nine days or more is lower than ever at the Port of Long Beach but the number of long-dwelling rail containers is breaking new records each week.”

And all these disruptions are part of the behind-the-scenes reality creating the high prices and product shortages we’re seeing as consumers. As Bill Tomson reports in AgriPulse, disruptions in the US railroad system have had severe consequences for the movement of crucial agricultural products. “We’ve had a multiyear deterioration of rail service… and with the current pressure in the labor supply, it has gotten far worse. That disruption has made rail service increasingly unreliable to such an extent that it’s causing significant disruption in the supply chain,” John Bode, president and CEO of the Corn Refiners Association, told AgriPulse. The Food and Beverage Issue Alliance, which represents 58 US-based food and beverage trade associations, has said that the continued US rail service failures have “forced at least two temporary shutdowns of corn refineries this year, the effect of which is unheard of.”

Continued disruptions and complaints from shippers have gotten so bad that they’ve prompted members of Congress to take action in recent weeks. In a letter addressed to Surface Transportation Board Chairman Marty Oberman, a bipartisan group of US senators demanded that the board take immediate action to address inadequate freight service across the United States. “We are very concerned over the significant rail service disruptions occurring throughout the US freight rail network. Reports from rail customers, including our manufacturers, farmers, ranchers and energy producers, indicate reliable rail service is not being provided in many situations. Similarly, shippers have little recourse or alternative options to get their goods to market,” the letter said. “In some instances, rail service problems have forced producers to curtail or temporarily stop production altogether. Further accounts of lengthy delays and unpredictable service paint a troubling picture of the conditions our nation’s commerce currently faces.”

Data published by the American Association of Railroads further illustrates multiple months’ worth of slowdowns: “for the week ending May 21, 2022, US Class I railroads hauled a total of 506,976 carloads and intermodal units, down 4.1% compared with the same week last year. This comprises 233,244 carloads—down 3.7% from the prior-year period—and 273,732 containers and trailers—down 4.5% compared with 2021.” Again, while COVID and the war in Ukraine have taken a lot of the blame, rail workers attest that these slowdowns are also very much the consequence of rail carriers’ ill-advised policies.

In recent weeks, the Biden administration has appointed Retired General Stephen R. Lyons to the the Biden-Harris Administration Supply Chain task force. The task force was formed last year to help “address bottlenecks, speed up the movement of goods, and help lower costs for American families,” according to a release from the White House. While the task force has announced improvement in service over the last couple of months within the US supply chain, the disruptions to rail service remain a particular area of concern.

The causes of diminishing rail service were laying the groundwork for today’s crisis well before COVID hit US shores in early 2020. Again, over the last six years, the Class I freight railroads—BNSF Railway, CSX Transportation, Kansas City Southern Railway, Norfolk Southern, and Union Pacific—have slashed their collective workforce by 30%. “They’ve cut labor below the bone, really,” STB Chair Marty Oberman told the House Transportation Committee during a hearing earlier this month. “In order to make up for the shortage of labor, they are overworking and abusing the workforces they have.”

You simply can’t lose that many workers in that short of a time span and expect that no operational crises, like the one the railroads are experiencing right now, will occur. And those tremendous losses to the rail workforce, especially in the freight service, have come both as a result of mass layoffs and a mass exodus by workers fleeing increased workloads, decreasing benefits, and decreasing quality of life. Some of those workers found refuge in passenger rail service, many have left altogether.

BNSF, one of two rail carriers that services the Port of Los Angeles, has lost nearly 1,000 rail workers since the Hi-Viz attendance policy was announced, according to Charlie Wishman, President of the Iowa Federation of Labor, who spoke at the May 15 rally in Fort Madison. “We have to protect the workers who have had their right to strike taken away by a judge’s decision,” he said, referring to the injunction granted by a Texas court earlier this year. “Since that decision, about 1,000 engineers and conductors have resigned, resulting in trains standing still and further hurting the supply chains. These giant companies can quit complaining about a worker shortage when they’re the ones who are causing it.”

Many current rail employees have been reticent to speak publicly about the fallout from BNSF’s Hi-Viz attendance policy, fearing retaliation from the company. So former railroad employees, employees not working on the freight lines, and other labor leaders have stepped up to express their continued concern about the policy and the stalled contract negotiations between the unions representing rail workers and the National Carriers’ Conference Committee, which represents the major rail companies.

At the Sunday, May 15, rally in Fort Madison, Iowa, a group of around 40 railroad workers, their families, and representatives from organized labor in Southeast Iowa gathered outside the riverfront pavilion in front of the Amtrak station to voice their condemnation of the Hi-Viz policy and the untenable situation the rail companies have put workers in.

Along with vocalizing general issues with BNSF’s Hi-Viz policy, rally speakers and attendees highlighted a number of specific qualms with the policy, including the fact that it disproportionately penalizes workers who take time off for medical leave or union business. In order to earn back 4 lost points on one’s attendance tally, BNSF employees must work 14 days in a row. However, taking a day off for union business, or taking an FMLA-related day off, resets the 14-day count. For many workers, this may mean that they effectively don’t have the ability to earn lost points back.

For railroad workers continuing to work in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the new attendance policy makes it increasingly difficult to care for themselves and their coworkers should they contract the coronavirus and fall ill. “It’s an impossible choice: go to work sick or see my family,” rail employee and SMART union representative Wes Eckstedt said on the day of the rally. “A lot of people are going to choose ‘see your family’ every time.”

Legislative representative Jordan Boone of SMART Local 445, an 18-year veteran of the railroad, spoke about the difficulties of parenting under the current policies. “I got five kids. We’ve never been able to really be on the forefront of the parental side of a family because of our job,” he said. “We make pretty good money, but it’s overtime—it’s blood money. With the High-Viz, we can’t even go to games anymore because of the amount of time we’re at work. It puts a huge burden on our wives and our kids.”

Jesse Case, Secretary-Treasurer and Principal Officer of Teamsters Local 238, railed against the policy in a fiery speech at the rally, calling out the billions of dollars investors like Warren Buffett make from the railroads. “We’re tired of choosing between people and profits, between families and our jobs,” Case told the crowd. “It’s the workers who keep these trains rolling. The employer provides the jobs but we provide the labor. Why should families suffer when people like Buffett are billionaires? We shouldn’t have to choose between our families and work when they’re going to make billions of dollars either way.”

In a statement to Tri States Public Radio after the May 15 rally, Ben Wilemon, External Corporate Communications Manager for BNSF, said, in part, “We currently have more train crew employees today than we did a year ago, coupled with a robust 2022 hiring plan that already has 300 new employees currently being trained.” According to current railroad employees, however, BNSF’s optimistic hiring plan may run into more than a few issues due to its current policies. “They’re having trouble hiring now because word’s getting out about how much they’re having each person do,” Eckstedt told TRNN.

“The railroads are having a hell of a time recruiting new employees and retaining the ones they have,” Ron Kaminkow, an Amtrak engineer in Reno, Nevada, Vice President of BLET Local 51, and General Secretary of Railroad Workers United, noted in a recent TRNN interview. “In the old days,” Kaminkow continues,


“the way the railroads recruited was largely through networks of existing employees: sons and daughters, brothers and cousins, and friends of theirs in the neighborhood and stuff. That’s how the word got out. And the railroad was a good job, so they never really had problems retaining and recruiting. Now that they do, they are actually making it worse because this network is gone. People are not advising their children to get jobs on the railroad. They’re not advising their friends and neighbors or others that they’re aware of who need a good job. I, myself, in good conscience, find it very, very difficult, and for years I advocated people go to work on the railroad, particularly in the freight service. And now I can’t in good conscience… advise a railroad job to anybody. It’s so sad.”

As BLET forcefully put it in a May release, “The time has come for our Nation’s railroads to be held accountable for their actions, and reconcile the long-term effects of their greed.”

For many rail workers, the path toward a solution begins with a conclusion to the years-long contract fight that has brought the industry to the point of a historic potential national rail shutdown. The negotiations, which began in January 2020, ground to a halt late in the spring. In an effort to settle the ongoing contract dispute, the Coordinated Bargaining Coalition of Rail Labor Unions, which features representatives from unions representing more than 100,000 rail workers nationwide, entered into in-person mediation sessions in late May before the National Mediation Board in Washington DC.

After weeks of unsuccessful mediation sessions, the National Mediation Board released both parties from mediation on June 14, declaring the negotiations at an impasse. This move by the NMB has set the stage for what could be a national railway shutdown within 90 days.

The release from mediation includes an offer of arbitration between the rail unions and the rail carriers. As Frank N. Wilner reports at Railway Age, the unions are expected to reject the offer. **“Because binding arbitration inherently means that rank and file union members will not have the option to vote on their contract—which is their constitutionally mandated right—rail labor will reject the offer of binding arbitration,” Greg Regan, President of the Transportation Trades Department of the AFL-CIO, said in a June 14 statement on behalf of TTD’s 37 affiliated unions, including all of rail labor.

What happens next is a series of 30-day “cooling off” periods, which, as the name suggests, are intended to give both sides an opportunity to, well, cool off, reassess offers on the table, and reconsider paths to a resolution. As we speak, the cooling off period that began on June 17 is in effect.

At any point during the cooling off period, the Biden Administration could appoint a Presidential Emergency Board (PEB) of labor arbitrators that would assume responsibility for hearing both sides of the contract dispute and putting forth recommendations for settlement. This week, the US Chamber of Commerce sent a letter to the White House—the letter was also addressed to Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg—urging President Biden “to help resolve the ongoing labor negotiations between the Class I freight railroads and the twelve rail unions by following historic precedent and appointing a Presidential Emergency Board.” If a PEB is not appointed, then the unions will have finally cleared the way for a national railway strike (and the carriers, for their part, can begin lockouts). One strike or lockout will likely lead to a domino effect across the entire rail industry.

If a PEB is appointed, however, then another 30-day period will begin, allowing for the arbitrators to collect evidence and offer their recommendations. Once they offer those recommendations, both sides of the conflict have another 30 days to attempt to come to a voluntary settlement. If one or both sides rejects the settlement, then the procedural provisions within the Railway Labor Act (RLA) will have run their course, freeing either side to initiate a strike or lockout. But other potential outcomes are still currently on the table and more likely. For instance, it’s possible that Congress will intervene by drafting emergency back-to-work legislation that will form the basis of a new contract.

The stalled contract negotiations are a massive indicator of how big of a gulf exists between the wants and needs of rail carriers and rail workers—and, as rail workers themselves argue, the rail carriers’ offers have been woefully insufficient in addressing the dangerous conditions that they have deliberately created for their workers in the service of their already bloated profit margins.

On June 24, BLET, which represents 23,000 rail workers at Class I railroads, began mailing ballots for a strike authorization vote in anticipation of a strike becoming necessary as the proceedings prescribed by the RLA run their course. “Let me emphasize that authorization does not mean a strike will occur, nor does it mean that all railroads may be struck,” BLET National President Dennis R. Pierce Said In Their Official Press Release. “Now is the time to deliver a unified message to the carriers that their contract proposals are unacceptable to BLET’s membership and that we stand united.”

UK Bill Threatens Journalists With Life In Prison

https://popularresistance.org/uk-bill-threatens-journalists-with-life-in-prison/





By Mohamed Elmaazi, Consortium News. July 8, 2022


Journalists and publishers could face life sentences if National Security Bill 2022, being debated in the U.K. Parliament, becomes law.

The British Parliament is debating a national security bill which could undermine the basis of national security reporting and ultimately throw journalists in jail for life.

A person convicted under the new offense of “obtaining or disclosing protected information,” defined in Section 1 of National Security Bill 2022, faces a fine, life imprisonment, or both, if convicted following a jury trial.

A review of the parliamentary debate on the bill makes clear that work by press outlets such as WikiLeaks is at the heart of Tory and Labour MPs’ thinking as they push to make the bill law.

As currently written, direct-action protests, such as those conducted by Palestine Action against U.K.-based Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems Ltd, could also be captured under the offences of “sabotage” and entering “prohibited places” sections of the bill.

Whistleblowers, journalists and publishers focusing on national security related matters may be most at risk of being prosecuted, though any person who “copies,” “retains,” “discloses,” “distributes” or “provides access to” so called protected information could be prosecuted.

“Protected information” is defined as any “restricted material” and it need not even be classified.

Under this bill, leakers, whistleblowers, journalists or everyday members of the public, face a potential life sentence if they receive or share “protected information” which is widely defined.

That does not mean imprisonment from one day “up to” a life sentence. If a judge determines a fine isn’t suitable enough punishment the only alternative is life in prison. Following a conviction, a judge would have no choice but to either issue a fine or hand down a life sentence, or both.

[Read the bill in its entirety here.]

There is no public interest or journalistic defense in the bill, a fact noted by some of the parliamentarians during the debates.

“The glaring omission at the heart of the National Security Bill is a straightforward public-interest defense, so that those who expose wrongdoing, either as whistleblowers or journalists, will be protected,” Tim Dawson, a long-time member of the National Union of Journalists’ National Executive Council told Consortium News.

“Without this, there is a risk of concerned U.K. citizens being prosecuted as though they were foreign spies,” he added.

The bill can be seen as part of a growing crackdown in both Britain and the United States against legitimate journalism that challenges establishment narratives.

In many respects, the proposed law, which applies to people both inside and outside the U.K., shares many elements with the draconian 1917 Espionage Act, which the U.S. government is using to prosecute WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange.

Assange is charged with 17 offenses under the Espionage Act, amounting to a maximum 170 years in prison. None of the charges allege conspiring with a foreign power and merely pertain to receiving and publishing documents leaked to him by U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning.
No Evidence of Harm

As is the case with the U.S.’ Espionage Act, no evidence of actual harm needs to be proven by prosecutors in order to secure a conviction under the National Security Bill.

There is a broad test of whether the defendant knows or “ought reasonably to know” that their conduct is “prejudicial to safety or interests of the U.K.”

What is, or is not, “prejudicial” to the “safety” or “interests” of the U.K. is also to be determined by the government of the day, according to long established case law from the U.K.’s highest court.

This could include anything from environmental, energy, climate and housing policy, to policing, foreign affairs or military policy.
WikiLeaks-Style Publications

A review of the parliamentary debates over the bill shows that although it is being justified on the basis of protecting the U.K. from the “serious threat from state-backed attacks on assets, including sites, data and infrastructure critical to the U.K.’s safety or interests,” national security leaks and reporting – including that of WikiLeaks — is explicitly in the minds of at least some of the key politicians supporting the bill.

“Will the right honourable lady condemn the WikiLeaks-type mass dumping of information in the public domain? It is hugely irresponsible and can put lives at risk,” Tory MP Theresa Villiers asked Labour’s Shadow Home Secretary Yevette Cooper, on June 6.

“Yes, I strongly do, because some of the examples of such leaks that we have seen put agents’ lives at risk, put vital parts of our national security and intelligence infrastructure at risk and are highly irresponsible,” Cooper replied, adding, “We need safeguards to protect against that kind of damaging impact on our national security.”

There is no evidence that anything published by WikiLeaks has resulted in the loss of life.

A U.S.-leaked government report itself concluded that there was “no significant ‘strategic impact’ to the release of the [Iraq War Logs and Afghanistan War Diary]”, from the Manning leaks which Assange is being prosecuted over. “No actual harm [against an individual]” could be shown either, a lawyer acting for the U.S. government admitted during Assange’s extradition hearings.

This contradicts the official government line that the leaks caused serious harm.
Broad Threat

Among the many disclosures revealed by WikiLeaks, include the secret texts of proposed corporate and investor rights treaties such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

These treaties, which were being negotiated in secret and would not have been known to the citizens until just before or even after they had become law, would have preferenced corporate rights over domestic laws and subordinated labor, environmental and health protections and climate policy to the profit-making imperatives of private industry. Their passage stalled after their draft texts were leaked and then published by WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks revelations also include dramatic incidents such as the execution of 10 handcuffed Iraqi civilians in their family home, including four women, two children and three infants, by U.S. soldiers who later ordered an airstrike to cover it up.

Many around the world might still believe that a U.K. plan to build the world’s largest “marine park” in the Chagos Islands was motivated by environmental concerns, were it not for a cable published by WikiLeaks revealing that the true purpose was to prevent the indigenous population from ever being able to return to their land.

Torture and rendition of civilians as well as other war crimes were also revealed by WikiLeaks.

All such material, which are among the documents Assange is being prosecuted by the U.S. for publishing, would fall under the National Security Bill’s definition of “protected information.”
Conspiracy with Foreign Power

In theory, involvement of a “foreign power” must also be proven for Section 1 of the bill to apply. But a review of the “foreign power condition” in Section 24 of the bill shows a myriad of ways that this condition could be satisfied.

Section 24 reads as follows:


“24 The foreign power condition

(1) For the purposes of this Part the foreign power condition is met in relation to a person’s conduct if —

(a) the conduct in question, or a course of conduct of which it forms part, is carried out for or on behalf of a foreign power,

and

(b) the person knows, or ought reasonably to know, that to be the case.

(2) The conduct in question, or a course of conduct of which it forms part, is in particular to be treated as carried out for or on behalf of a foreign power if —

(a) it is instigated by a foreign power,

(b) is under the direction or control of a foreign power,

(c) it is carried out with the financial or other assistance of a foreign power, or

(d) it is carried out in collaboration with, or with the agreement of, a foreign power.

(3) Subsections (1)(a) and (2) may be satisfied by a direct or indirect relationship between the conduct, or the course of conduct, and the foreign power (for example, there may be an indirect relationship through one or more companies).

(4) A person’s conduct may form part of a course of conduct engaged in by the person alone, or by the person and one or more other persons.

(5) The foreign power condition is also met in relation to a person’s conduct if the person intends the conduct in question to benefit a foreign power.

(6) For the purposes of subsection (5) it is not necessary to identify a particular foreign power.

(7) The foreign power condition may be met in relation to the conduct of a person who holds office in or under, or is an employee or other member of staff of, a foreign power, as it may be met in relation to the conduct of any otherperson.”
Foreign Funded Organizations

The foreign power condition could potentially be satisfied, therefore, due simply to the involvement, at any stage, of a journalist working for news outlets such as Al Jazeera, Press TV, CGTN, RT, Voice of America, France 24, Redfish or TeleSUr.

Tory MP David Davies, himself a supporter of the bill despite being known for his criticism of the prosecution of Assange, noted that “[human rights group] Reprieve, Privacy International, Transparency International and other excellent organizations that do very good work have received some funding from other nations’ Governments” and could therefore “fall foul” of this law.

“Perfectly legitimate organizations could be left committing an offence, under this area of the bill, if they use leaked information — which may not even be classified — to challenge government policy,” Davies added.

Furthermore, what is deemed to be a “perfectly legitimate organization” is in the eye of the beholder and can change over time – as proven by the increased E.U. and U.S. censorship of RT and Sputnik since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Even if a foreign power is proven to somehow be involved, either in the obtaining of restricted material, sharing or publishing it, there is no apparent need to prove conspiring with that foreign power for the condition to be satisfied and therefore for a defendant to be convicted.

Therefore, if a person reports upon U.K. government documents — which prosecutors argue have been hacked and released by a foreign government agency, or even a hacker group infiltrated or influenced somehow by a foreign government agency — they could be found guilty under this law, without any evidence either of participation in the hack or conspiracy with a foreign power.
The Bill and the Official Secrets Act

Following the revelations of mass, warrantless, government surveillance, by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, as well as WikiLeaks revelations of war crimes and other state wrongdoing, the Cabinet Office asked the Law Commission to review its official secrecy, data protection and espionage laws.

In 2020, the Law Commission recommended replacing the Official Secrets Acts 1911, 1920 and 1939 with an Espionage Act, and updating the Official Secrets Act 1989. Many of its recommendations on ‘reforming’ U.K, secrecy laws, would make it easier to bring prosecutions against whistleblowers, journalists and publishers by lowering so called “barriers to prosecution”.

For example, the Law Commission recommended that prosecutors should no longer have to prove that leaks by public servants and contractors, covered by the 1989 Act, have caused “damage”. The 1989 Act is the main legislation currently used to target whistleblowers, leakers, journalists and publishers.

The National Security Bill repeals the older official secrets laws and expands criminalisation of conduct which might be useful to an “enemy” with the more broadly defined “foreign power”. This bill also adopts recommendations to expand what can be labelled a “prohibited place” beyond military sites. Section 1 applies to people based outside the U.K,, regardless of their nationality, and this appears to flow from the Law Commission’s proposed amendments to the 1989 Act, which currently only applies to U.K. citizens.

Technically, the National Security Bill hardly amends the Official Secrets Act 1989. Perhaps this is because the Home Office opposes the Law Commission’s insistence that revisions to the 1989 Act re-introduce a public interest defence, which could be used by journalists and everyday civilians. The Home Office also opposes the idea of an independent body to receive whistleblower concerns. Yet many of the most draconian recommendations have been implemented in some form in the Bill.

Section 1 of the Bill – which lacks any requirement to prove damage along with the overly broad foreign power condition– could simply be the Home Office’s way of seeking to expand the scope of conduct covered by the 1989 Act as much as possible without explicitly doing so. The National Security Bill therefore appears to fall foul of the Law Commission’s recommendations that the definition of a foreign power “should not render the offense overly broad”.
National Security Reporting

In 2018, emails and other documents belonging to the Institute for Statecraft’s Integrity Initiative, a now defunct U.K.-based, intelligence services-linked, propaganda and psyop organization, were hacked and published online.

The documents revealed that the Integrity Initiative was receiving funding from the U.K. Foreign Office, Facebook, NATO and neoconservative-linked foundations, and was engaged in directing anti-Russian, anti-left and pro-NATO propaganda towards the European and U.K. public.

Integrity Initiative documents, including emails and a contract with the U.K. Foreign Office, revealed an ambitious global agenda involving secret “clusters” of academics, journalists, policy makers and national security-linked officials in Europe, North Africa and North America, with more being planned.

The hacked documents revealed that the purpose of the Integrity Initiative was to shape public opinion and public policy under the guise of combatting Russian “disinformation.”

A group called Anonymous Europe claimed responsibility, though the Foreign Office and Western media suggested, without evidence, that the Russian government was somehow behind the hack.

The BBC even reported, also without evidence, that the documents were “leaked to the Russian media.”

In fact, the documents were published on an internet messaging board and available to anyone aware of the website, including independent British and American journalists who reported upon them.

Reporting on such documents, if the National Security Bill becomes law, could be considered a violation of Section 1, given that some of the files were “restricted” government documents and the Integrity Initiative was partially government funded. If foreign government actors were involved in hacking or releasing the documents that alone could satisfy the “foreign power condition” in Section 24.

Even the fact that journalists (including British citizens) who were writing for foreign government-funded news outlets reported on the documents could satisfy the “foreign power condition.”

Even more disturbing, involvement of a foreign power is not actually needed if the government argues that the conduct of the defendant was “intended” to “benefit a foreign power.” In this circumstance, “it is not necessary [for the prosecution] to identify a particular foreign power.”

Therefore, for example, if a journalist known for writing articles critical of NATO reports on “restricted” material which paints the military alliance in a bad light, regardless of whether the documents were leaked to him directly or even if he simply came across them already published online, that journalist could be prosecuted, convicted and sentenced to life — if the prosecutor convinces the jury that, based on their prior reporting or public comments critical of NATO or of Western foreign policy, they intended their reporting on the “restricted material” to “benefit a foreign power.”

Which foreign power was he intending to benefit? It isn’t necessary for the prosecutor to say, as Section 24 (6) makes clear.

There are a number of other notable elements to this bill worth considering.
‘Sabotage’ and Entering ‘Prohibited Place’

Direct action might also fall foul of provisions in this bill, if the foreign power condition is satisfied.

Committing “damage” against any “asset,” inside or outside the U.K., for “a purpose that they know, or ought reasonably to know, is prejudicial to the safety or interests of the United Kingdom” is also punishable by a fine or life in prison, or both, under Section 12.

“Damage” includes “alteration” or “loss of or reduction in access or availability” to an “asset.”

Under Section 4, entering a “prohibited place” could result in a life sentence, if the person knew or “ought reasonably to know” it is prejudicial to the safety or interests of the U.K. This includes if someone “accesses, enters, inspects [including films], passes over or under, approaches or is in the vicinity of a prohibited place.”

Conceivably, direct action activists such as members of Palestine Action who have successfully shut down factories belonging to Israeli weapons manufacture Elbit Systems Ltd, would be caught by such provisions, The same goes for journalists filming them or entering a premises designated “prohibited.”

In 2018, emails and other documents belonging to the Institute for Statecraft’s Integrity Initiative, a now defunct U.K.-based, intelligence services-linked, propaganda and psyop organization, were hacked and published online.

The documents revealed that the Integrity Initiative was receiving funding from the U.K. Foreign Office, Facebook, NATO and neoconservative-linked foundations, and was engaged in directing anti-Russian, anti-left and pro-NATO propaganda towards the European and U.K. public.

Integrity Initiative documents, including emails and a contract with the U.K. Foreign Office, revealed an ambitious global agenda involving secret “clusters” of academics, journalists, policy makers and national security-linked officials in Europe, North Africa and North America, with more being planned.

The hacked documents revealed that the purpose of the Integrity Initiative was to shape public opinion and public policy under the guise of combatting Russian “disinformation.”

A group called Anonymous Europe claimed responsibility, though the Foreign Office and Western media suggested, without evidence, that the Russian government was somehow behind the hack.

The BBC even reported, also without evidence, that the documents were “leaked to the Russian media.”

In fact, the documents were published on an internet messaging board and available to anyone aware of the website, including independent British and American journalists who reported upon them.

Reporting on such documents, if the National Security Bill becomes law, could be considered a violation of Section 1, given that some of the files were “restricted” government documents and the Integrity Initiative was partially government funded. If foreign government actors were involved in hacking or releasing the documents that alone could satisfy the “foreign power condition” in Section 24.

Even the fact that journalists (including British citizens) who were writing for foreign government-funded news outlets reported on the documents could satisfy the “foreign power condition.”

Even more disturbing, involvement of a foreign power is not actually needed if the government argues that the conduct of the defendant was “intended” to “benefit a foreign power.” In this circumstance, “it is not necessary [for the prosecution] to identify a particular foreign power.”

Therefore, for example, if a journalist known for writing articles critical of NATO reports on “restricted” material which paints the military alliance in a bad light, regardless of whether the documents were leaked to him directly or even if he simply came across them already published online, that journalist could be prosecuted, convicted and sentenced to life — if the prosecutor convinces the jury that, based on their prior reporting or public comments critical of NATO or of Western foreign policy, they intended their reporting on the “restricted material” to “benefit a foreign power.”

Which foreign power was he intending to benefit? It isn’t necessary for the prosecutor to say, as Section 24 (6) makes clear.

There are a number of other notable elements to this bill worth considering.
‘Sabotage’ and Entering ‘Prohibited Place’

Direct action might also fall foul of provisions in this bill, if the foreign power condition is satisfied.

Committing “damage” against any “asset,” inside or outside the U.K., for “a purpose that they know, or ought reasonably to know, is prejudicial to the safety or interests of the United Kingdom” is also punishable by a fine or life in prison, or both, under Section 12.

“Damage” includes “alteration” or “loss of or reduction in access or availability” to an “asset.”

Under Section 4, entering a “prohibited place” could result in a life sentence, if the person knew or “ought reasonably to know” it is prejudicial to the safety or interests of the U.K. This includes if someone “accesses, enters, inspects [including films], passes over or under, approaches or is in the vicinity of a prohibited place.”

Conceivably, direct action activists such as members of Palestine Action who have successfully shut down factories belonging to Israeli weapons manufacture Elbit Systems Ltd, would be caught by such provisions, The same goes for journalists filming them or entering a premises designated “prohibited.”

In the 1964 case of Chandler v Director of Public Prosecutions, the U.K.’s highest court upheld conviction of members of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament for violating the Official Secrets Act. The activists were convicted for entering Wethersfield RAF base “a prohibited place” for a purpose deemed “prejudicial to the security of the state.” The trial judge was said to be within his right to deny the defendants the ability to offer evidence or cross-examine witnesses to argue that their purpose in entering the base was to improve the U.K.’s security.

This is the same case that held that what is “prejudicial” to the “safety” or “interest” of the country is up to the government of the day to determine.
Protecting Corporate Secrets

Section 2 of the bill also creates a crime of “obtaining or disclosing trade secrets.” As is the case with Section 1, this occurs whether the person knew or “ought reasonably to know” that their conduct is “unauthorised.”

A person faces either a fine or up to 14 years in prison, or both, if they are convicted.

There is no whistleblowing, journalistic or public interest protection provided in this section either.

Arguably, obtaining or disclosing “trade secrets” which could reveal, for example, corruption, environmental pollution, labor violations and other human rights abuses or other forms of corporate malfeasance could conceivably result in prosecution under this bill.

The foreign power condition must be satisfied for Section 2 to apply, which, it has already been shown, is arguably easier to do than one might think.
Limiting Legal Aid Access

Access to legal aid is also restricted for anyone convicted of a “terror” offence. This means that someone who, for example, was convicted for violating Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000 — for refusing to give access to their mobile phone password at the airport — could find themselves denied legal aid years later.
Freezing Funds and Other Assets

The ability of the government to “freeze” assets is also made easier in the Bill. The law currently permits freezing and seizing of assets if it can be shown that they are “intended to be used” for terrorism. This is replaced in Section 61 and Schedule 10 with the lower threshold of “at risk of being used” for terrorism.
State Crimes Committed Abroad

Interestingly, Section 23 amends the Serious Crime Act 2007 to note that it can’t be used to prosecute members of MI5 (Security Service), MI6 (Secret Intelligence Service), GCHQ or the armed forces, for any criminal conduct committed outside the U.K,, if their criminal conduct is deemed “necessary for the proper function” of those institutions.
Leaking and Direct Action

When the National Security Bill was first revealed, a number of observers seemed somewhat sanguine about it on the basis that the foreign power condition needed to be met before a conviction could be secured under Section 1.

The Freedom of Information Campaign, for example, tweeted:




When journalist Richard Spence asked about the potential life sentence, they replied:




Since then, however, the Freedom of Information Campaign, jointly with Article 19, submitted a brief for MPs making clear that journalists and civil society activists who receive some foreign funding and yet are engaged in “legitimate activities” could be caught by this bill.

The Bill appears to have cross-party support (with few dissenters) amid seeming hysteria over alleged Chinese government influence operations.

Laws are versatile and can, if not strictly drafted, be used in circumstances that even the original drafters had not intended. All it requires is for a prosecutor to be willing to bring a case and for a judge to allow it to go forward.
Beyond Stated Purpose

The Espionage Act is a perfect case in point. Ostensibly created to protect the U.S. from German spies during WWI, it was used to successfully prosecute people for their opposition to their country’s involvement in the war. Their convictions were upheld on appeal despite the fact that the First Amendment protects freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

Decades later the administration of Richard Nixon used the same act to prosecute Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. The governments of George W. Bush and Barack Obama would then use the law, again to target whistleblowers such as John Kiriakou who revealed C.I.A. torture, Jeffrey Sterling who used official channels to blow the whistle on a dangerous and ultimately botched plot to undermine Iran’s nuclear program and Daniel Hale who revealed that 90 percent of those killed by U.S. drones in Afghanistan were civilians.

Now this same 1917 law is being used to prosecute Assange, an award-winning journalist, for publishing “restricted” documents while based outside the U.S. and the U.K.

During a debate, Margaret Ferrier, an independent MP from Scotland, asked whether the home secretary has “considered the dangers to freedom of the press that the National Security Bill presents.”

“Many of my constituents,” Ferrier added, “are concerned that measures that could prevent journalists from publishing stories of public interest are undemocratic.”
‘Online Safety Bill’

“No, I do not see a danger to journalistic freedoms,” Minister for Security and Borders Damian Hinds replied. He proceeded to change the subject by referring to another proposed bill saying that the government is “taking stringent steps to ensure, for example, that in the Online Safety Bill journalistic rights and freedoms are absolutely to the fore, because of the vital and irreplaceable role that a free and sometimes boisterous media plays in underpinning and challenging us in our democracy.”

The Online Safety Bill, described as an “Orwellian censorship machine” by the Open Rights Group, would grant powers to ministers to censor legal content. It requires all online communications – public and private — to be monitored for “harmful content” and undermines encryption of private messenger apps like WhatsApp and Signal.

“The Online Safety Bill creates a carve out for news media organizations (defined as ‘news publishers’) who are registered with the Independent Press Standards Organisation or IMPRESS or Ofcom in the case of broadcasters,” said Monica Horten, policy manager for freedom of expression at the Open Rights Group.

In theory, this carve out means news organizations “are not subject to platform content moderation policies in the same way as everybody else.” Horten added that online platforms “are mandated to leave their content online, regardless of whether it meets their policies, or other Online Safety Bill compliance requirements.”

This censorship exemption ostensibly applies to “all content that is created for the purpose of journalism and which is U.K.-linked,” according to a convoluted explanatory note recently published by the Home Office.

Regulated media outlets will also have a fast-track complaint process if their material is taken down.

In other words, a two-tier freedom of expression between the press and everyday people.

What will happen in practice to citizen journalists, bloggers and independent and alternative outlets which are not, cannot or have no interest in being, regulated by U.K. press regulators remains to be seen.

“It will be impossible for large platforms, operating at scale, to determine on that basis who is and who is not a ‘journalist,’” Horten argued.

Ominously, she assessed that it is “therefore probable that the only way to make this provision work will be to institute a register of media.”

Biden’s Reckless New Provocation Ratchets Up Risk Of Nuclear War

https://popularresistance.org/bidens-reckless-new-provocation-ratchets-up-risk-of-nuclear-war-with-china/








By Jeremy Kuzmarov, Covert Action Magazine.

July 8, 2022
Educate!

Sending U.S. Warships Into South China Sea And Taiwan Strait In Violation Of UN Convention On The Law Of The Sea.

On June 25, the U.S. Navy sent a warship, the USS Benfold, to the South China Sea, only one day after a U.S. spy plane provocatively flew over the Taiwan Strait under the close monitoring of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

According to CNN, the U.S. flyover came after China sent 29 planes into Taiwan’s self-declared air defense identification zone (ADIZ).

From China’s point of view, the U.S. spy plane mission on June 24 was especially provocative because it was the first U.S. military activity in the region after China made it clear that there are no “international waters” in the Taiwan Strait.

Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, China claims jurisdiction over the Taiwan Strait.

The PLA Eastern Theater Command organized aerial and ground forces and tracked the spy plane’s movements on high alert throughout its entire course on June 24 according to Senior Colonel Shi Yi, spokesperson of the PLA Eastern Theater Command.Shi slammed the Biden administration’s move as being “intentional,” whose purpose was “to disrupt the regional situation and endanger the cross-Straits peace and stability. We firmly oppose this,” she said.
Turning Taiwan Into A Porcupine

Ever since the Obama administration launched a “pivot to Asia,” the U.S. has expanded its military forces and provocative military maneuvers in an effort to encircle and intimidate China. The Biden administration, following Trump, has extended this policy, with National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan stockpiling the National Security Council (NSC) with China hawks.[1]

U.S. strategic planners consider Taiwan—which broke away from China in 1949 after the defeated Guomindang in China’s civil war took refuge there with U.S. backing—essential in blockading China and a key source for the manufacture of advanced computing chips essential to the U.S. military and industry.[2]

When Biden made a commitment to backing Taiwan militarily, he effectively overturned the “One China Policy”—established when the U.S. resumed diplomatic relations with China in 1979—recognizing Beijing to be the legitimate government of all China, including Taiwan.[3]

Since 2019, the U.S. has sold more than $14 billion in weaponry to Taiwan and sent military advisers to train its Special Forces. A U.S. government official described the U.S. strategy as being designed to turn Taiwan into a “porcupine”— a territory bristling with armaments and other forms of U.S.-led support that makes it “appear too painful to attack.”
Rejecting China’s Claim Of Sovereignty Over The Taiwan Strait

In line with this latter strategy, the Biden administration rejects China’s claims to sovereignty over the Taiwan Strait. The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said that the spy plane’s transit demonstrates the United States’s “commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific.”

U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price told Bloomberg News that “the Taiwan Strait is an international waterway” where freedom of navigation and overflight “are guaranteed under international law. The United States will continue to fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows, and that includes transiting through the Taiwan Strait.”

According to Price, China’s assertion that “there are no international waters” in the Taiwan Strait is not legitimate but is intended to “deter the U.S. from sailing through the Strait,” something that Beijing says “harms stability and send[s] the wrong signal to ‘Taiwan independence forces.’”

Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which China has ratified but the U.S. has not, nations are entitled to territorial waters stretching 12 nautical miles (22km) from their coast.

They may also claim an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) stretching another 200 nautical miles—beyond that are the high seas.

At its widest, the Taiwan Strait spans about 220 nautical miles; however, at its narrowest, it is 70 nautical miles—meaning recent U.S. actions are illegal.

If one accepts that Taiwan is part of China, as the U.S. nominally still does under the One China policy, then the entirety of the strait generally falls under Chinese jurisdiction—as China alleges.
A Habitual Aggressor

According to the Global Times, the USS Benfold—a guided missile destroyer built by Ingalls Shipbuilding—is a habitual aggressor in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait.

In January 2022, the destroyer illegally entered the Chinese territorial waters off the Xisha Islands in the South China Sea without authorization from the Chinese government, leading the PLA Southern Theater Command to organize naval and air forces to warn it away.

U.S. Navy spokesmen referred to the USS Benfold’s operations as “freedom of navigation operations.”

They accused China of violating international law by establishing baselines around dispersed islands like the Paracels in the South China Sea, which allows China to “claim more internal waters, territorial sea, exclusive economic zone, and continental shelf than it is entitled to under international law.”

China, however, accuses the U.S. of “infring[ing] on China’s sovereignty and security,” while “pursuing maritime hegemony and militarizing the South China Sea. Facts fully prove that the U.S. is a ‘risk-maker’ in the South China Sea and the ‘biggest destroyer’ of peace and stability in the South China Sea.”
The South China Sea Is Not The Gulf Of Mexico

We should remember that the name of the Sea where the U.S. is sending its naval vessels and spy planes is the South China Sea—and not the Gulf of Mexico.

If China were sending its warships on provocative missions off the coast of Mexico or Canada, U.S. leaders would respond with hysterics and probably immediately begin bombing.
Rising Specter Of Nuclear War

Mark Selden, the editor of The Asia-Pacific Journal and academic expert on China, raised concern in an interview about “the rising specter of nuclear war,” particularly “in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine” and “at a time when [the] U.S. calculus has shifted from welcoming growing Chinese economic and geopolitical strength, notably in the Nixon era, to across-the-board pressures on China.”

According to Selden, the shifting U.S. calculus “includes mounting U.S. military support for Taiwan and stepping back from its position of calculated ambiguity on the future of the island in favor of direct and indirect challenges of China’s claims. The result is the largest increase in U.S. military spending since World War II in the form of $70 billion in aid…at a time when U.S.-China conflict again centers on Taiwan.”
Tally Of Provocative Military Maneuvers

The Committee for a SANE U.S.-China Policy, an activist group that aims to prevent war, has compiled a tally of provocative military maneuvers and close encounters between the U.S. and China since January 2021 in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait.

According to their findings, the U.S. in that time initiated 45 incidents, and the Chinese 53.

Joseph Gerson and Michael T. Klare, the founders of the committee, write that “almost every day, China and/or the United States deploy their ships and warplanes in a menacing (“muscle-flexing”) fashion to demonstrate resolve and to throw the other side off balance….While officials on both sides claim that their forces are merely conducting military drills that pose no threat to their rival, these mock combat operations in the vicinity of opposing forces send an unmistakable signal of hostile intent. It is not unusual, moreover, for ships and planes of one side to monitor the operations of the other, and even, on occasion, to interfere with them. When this occurs, there is always the risk of a collision or unintended shooting incident, leading to further military action and full-scale conflict.”

In short, the specter of war between the U.S. and China has never been greater. It is up to us, consequently, to try to avert conflict and restore legality and sanity to U.S. foreign policy through concerted political activism.

Protesting For Jayland Walker

https://popularresistance.org/protesting-for-jayland-walker/







By Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. July 8, 2022




The number of bullets used to kill Jayland Walker have sparked an outcry, but police kill one Black person every day in this country.

If systemic change is not the demand all protest is for naught.

Jayland Walker was killed by police in Akron, Ohio when he was shot more than 60 times. The nature of his death, and the brutality of his killing, made headlines. But lest anyone forget, the police kill an average of three people every day in this country and one of those victims will be Black.

We do forget while the police snuff out more than 1,000 lives every year . We awake from the slumber of semi-denial when a case comes to public attention that is especially egregious. It can be George Floyd begging for his life or Jayland Walker being executed by a mob. There are times when we can’t look away.

Police killings do not occur in a vacuum. They are a key part of the state’s plan to keep Black people under physical control. Of course there should be community control of the police, but that can’t happen unless there is a truly democratic state, one that gives the people control over every aspect of their lives. Obviously police should be prosecuted when they kill, but those instances will always be few and far between. The system can be counted on to act as it was intended.

When Black people declare that they will get justice on their own, they too are killed, as happened to Micah Johnson in Texas and Gavin Long in Louisiana in 2016, the year that Philando Castille and Alton Sterling died at the hands of police in highly publicized cases. Long and Johnson chose to act when no one else would but their choice is not one which makes sense in a country with a history of brutal reaction.

We also know that philanthropy from ruling class forces doesn’t work either. The Black Lives Matter organization imploded amid financial scandals, self-dealing, and cooptation. Raising money from foundations leads to well paid gigs and goodies for the already well connected while the body count remains unchanged.

It is time to look at our own past in this country and to other countries in order to determine strategies of action. While the era of the civil rights movement, the liberation movement, is fetishized, its lessons are rarely heeded.

A mass movement did bring about change. The people who struggled had no political friends, which was actually a good thing. They were under no illusions that politicians would advocate on their behalf. Yet they made demands anyway, knowing that people in power did not want to hear from them. Now we have “activism” that involves bad actors from the Black political class, which was created in response to the liberation movement, and which does the job that a buffer class always does.

Lawyers can sue and get monetary settlements, mothers of dead children are dragged out for show, while the state apparatus churns on. The mass movement which could put a stop to this and other human rights abuses is rarely mentioned as a response.

Political treachery and allegiance to the Democratic Party lead to a repetition of outrage followed by bitter disappointment when justice does not come. There will always be a Jayland Walker, one every day to be exact. They may be hit by one bullet or by many. The sad revolving door of marches, outrage, and opportunism will continue absent a determination to change course.

Perhaps we should look not just to our past but to the rest of the world for guidance. While Black people here wring their hands due to misleadership, inertia and political impotence, the masses in Ecuador recently brought their country to a standstill with a general strike. Thousands of people took to the streets against neo-liberal policies and environmental destruction and their demands were met. In Colombia a Black woman was recently elected vice president after that country’s African descended community developed a mass movement over many years.

That kind of victory can happen in this country if we admit that we must change our thinking. It is time to recognize that people around the world have achieved revolutionary changes while American political life grows more and more reactionary. Protests for Jayland Walker will achieve nothing unless there is recognition that he and all Black people are colonized and suffer the same fate as all colonized people in the world.

Unlike indigenous Ecuadoreans, Black people in this country are under the misapprehension that they have the rights that the law claims they have. The recently celebrated Declaration of Independence said all men were created equal while simultaneously permitting chattel slavery in the new nation. It isn’t surprising that a Black family mourns a police homicide every day.

Perhaps the masses who acted in concert in the 1960s didn’t use the word colonized, but they knew what they were up against. They may have used the term civil rights, but they were struggling to have their human rights defended. They knew they had to look to themselves and to no one else. That recognition is missing decades later.

The police and the courts aren’t under any illusions but too many Black people are. It is appropriate to grieve for the fallen, but not to be shocked when they fall or when the system that took them out shows its unjust nature. No one should be protesting for Jayland Walker who isn’t also protesting against a rotten system.

The struggle is one for change, but that can’t happen if police killings are viewed as aberrations instead of as features that the system needs in order to operate. Protesting for Jayland Walker cannot be about police abolition either. Abolition of the entire system must be on the agenda. That demand is a very tall order and that is why it must be studied now before amnesia takes over once again.

The United States Wants To Prevent A Historical Fact

https://popularresistance.org/the-united-states-wants-to-prevent-a-historical-fact/



By Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. July 8, 2022



Over the course of the past fifteen years, European countries have found themselves with both great opportunities to seize and complex choices to make. Unsustainable reliance on the United States for trade and investment, as well as the curious distraction of Brexit, led to the steady integration of European countries with Russian energy markets and more uptake of Chinese investment opportunities and its manufacturing prowess.

Closer linkages between Europe and these two large Asian countries (China and Russia) provoked the US agenda to prevent that integration or delay it. This agenda, now deepened during the recent Group of 7 (G7) meeting in Germany and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit in Spain, is creating a dangerous situation for the world.

This goes back to the financial crisis of 2007–08, which was spurred on by the collapse of the US housing market and several key US financial institutions. The crisis signaled to the rest of the world that the US-centered financial system was untrustworthy. The US could not remain the market of last resort for the world’s commodities. G7 countries – which saw themselves as the guardians of the global capitalist system – begged states outside their orbit, such as China and India, to put their surpluses into the Western financial system to prevent its total meltdown. In return for this service, countries outside of the G7 were told that, henceforth, the G20 would be the executive body of the world system and the G7 would gradually disband. Yet, almost twenty years later, the G7 remains in place and has arrogated to itself the role of world leader, with NATO – the Trojan horse of the US – now positioning itself as the world’s policeman.

NATO’s Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has said that the organization will undergo the largest overhaul of its ‘collective deterrence and defense since the Cold War’. The NATO member states, now with the addition of Finland and Sweden, will expand their ‘high readiness forces’ from 40,000 troops to 300,000 who, equipped with a range of lethal weaponry, will ‘be ready to deploy to specific territories on the alliance’s eastern flank’, namely the Russian border. The United Kingdom’s new chief of the general staff, General Sir Patrick Sanders, said that these armed forces should prepare to ‘fight and win’ in a war against Russia.

With the conflict in Ukraine ongoing, it was obvious that NATO would foreground Russia at the Madrid Summit. But the materials produced by NATO made it clear that this was not merely about Ukraine or Russia but about preventing Eurasian integration. China was mentioned for the first time in a NATO document at the 2019 London meeting, in which it was said that the country presented ‘both opportunities and challenges’. By 2021, the tune had changed, and NATO’s Brussels Summit communiqué accused China of ‘systemic challenges to the rules-based international order’. The revised 2022 Strategic Concept accelerates this threatening rhetoric, with accusations that China’s ‘systemic competition… challenge[s] our interests, security, and values and seek[s] to undermine the rules-based international order’.

Four non-NATO countries – Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea (the Asia-Pacific Four) attended the NATO summit for the first time, which drew them closer to the US and NATO’s agenda to put pressure on China. Australia and Japan, along with India and the US, are part of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad), often called the Asian NATO, whose clear mandate is to constrain China’s partnerships in the Pacific Rim area. The Asia-Pacific Four held a meeting during the summit to discuss military cooperation against China, erasing any doubt about the intentions of NATO and its allies.

In the wake of the revelations of the 2007–08 financial crisis and the G7’s broken promises, the Chinese adopted two pathways to gain more independence from the US consumer market. First, they improved the domestic Chinese market by increasing social wages, integrating China’s western provinces into the economy, and abolishing absolute poverty. Second, they built trade, development, and financial systems that were not centered around the US. The Chinese participated actively with Brazil, India, Russia, and South Africa to set the BRICS process in motion (2009) and put considerable resources into the Belt and Road Initiative or BRI (2013). China and Russia settled a long-standing border dispute, enhanced their cross-border trade, and developed a strategic collaboration (but, unlike the West, did not formulate a military treaty).

During this period, Russian energy sales to both China and Europe grew and several European countries joined the BRI, which increased mutual investments between Europe and China. Earlier forms of globalization in Eurasia were limited by colonialism and the Cold War; this marked the first time in 200 years that integration began to take place on an equitable foundation across the region. Europe’s trade and investment choices were utterly rational, as piped natural gas through Nord Stream 2 was far cheaper and less dangerous than liquified natural gas from the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Mexico. Considering the chaotic Brexit situation and difficulties in getting the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership off the ground, much of Europe saw Chinese investment opportunities as far more generous and dependable than other alternatives. In contrast, risk-averse and rent-seeking private equity from Wall Street became less attractive to the European financial sector.

Europe was drifting inexorably towards Asia, which threatened the basis of the US-dominated economic and political system (also known as the ‘rules-based international order’). In 2018, US President Donald Trump publicly chastised NATO’s Stoltenberg, telling him, ‘we’re protecting Germany. We’re protecting France. We’re protecting all of these countries. And then numerous of these countries go out and make a pipeline deal with Russia, where they’re paying billions of dollars into the coffers of Russia. …Germany is a captive of Russia… I think it’s very inappropriate’.

While NATO’s language has turned to threats of war against China and Russia, the G7 has pledged to challenge China-led initiatives by developing the new Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII), a $200 billion fund to invest in the Global South. Meanwhile, the leaders at the BRICS summit, held at the same time, offered a sober appraisal of the times, calling for negotiations to end the Ukraine War and measures to be taken to stem the cascading crises experienced by the world’s poor. There was no talk of war from this body which represents 40% of the world’s population, and BRICS’s strength may well grow as Argentina and Iran have applied to join the bloc.

The US and its allies seek either to remain hegemonic and weaken China and Russia or to erect a new iron curtain around these two countries. Both approaches could lead to a suicidal military conflict. The mood across the Global South is for a more measured acceptance of the reality of Eurasian integration and the emergence of a world order based on national and regional sovereignty and the dignity of all human beings, none of which can be realized through war and division.

Anticipations of a war at a scale not seen before evokes ‘A Personal Song’ by the Iraqi poet Saadi Yousif (1934–2021), written just before the US started its deadly bombardment of Iraq in 2003:


Is it Iraq?
Blessed is the one who said
I know the road which leads to it;
Blessed is the one whose lips uttered the four letters:
Iraq, Iraq, nothing but Iraq.

Distant missiles will applaud;
soldiers armed to the teeth will storm us;
minarets and houses will crumble;
palm trees will collapse under the bombing;
the shores will be crowded
with floating corpses.
We will seldom see Al-Tahrir Square
in books of elegies and photographs;
Restaurants and hotels will be our roadmaps
and our home in the paradise of shelter:
McDonald’s
KFC
Holiday Inn;
and we will be drowned
like your name, O Iraq,
Iraq, Iraq, nothing but Iraq.

Dutch Farmer Protests Inspire More Actions Amid Food Shortages

https://popularresistance.org/dutch-farmer-protests-inspire-more-actions-amid-food-shortages/








By Margaret Flowers, Popular Resistance.

July 8, 2022
Resist!

Mass protests in The Netherlands that began over the first weekend in July have now spread to Germany, Poland and Italy.

Dutch farmers are blocking roads, airports and food distribution centers in an effort to shut their country down. These actions are in response to climate laws designed to lower nitrogen levels that will result in putting farms out of business and underscore why addressing the climate crisis requires a just transition for displaced workers. Farmers want the government to know that without farmers, there won’t be food.





The protests are now spreading to more countries. They are occurring as inflation hit double digits in June, especially for food and fuel, and food shortages are expected this fall.

What began with farmers in The Netherlands has now expanded with fisher people blocking ports and conspiracy theorists and anti-government protesters joining in. The protests are being supported, in part, by Big Ag and Big Business.

According to Otto ter Haar of the Dutch Green Party (in a personal communication), the origins of the protests were not ideological but were due to farmers and their family members “fighting for their farms.” He adds that “They are supported by right wing parties and agro-corporations. They are opposed by (left wing) environmental, climate and animal welfare organisations.”

NCR Media reports: (machine translated)


On Monday, the fishermen unexpectedly joined: they fear the expiry of their environmental permits and took some media attention. In the meantime, Covid activists, conspiracy theorists, truck drivers and anti-government protesters are also mixing among the farmers. The farmers seem to be speculating that their protest is turning into abroad anti-state movement–​​this report takes stock of the new grassroots, or as Fokke and Sukke characterized it, the ‘farmers made’. In a disconcerting film by Nijkerk Nieuws, a demonstrator performs who indeed manages to lump everything together. The battle is against ‘them’.

This is not without significance politically, Raoul du Pré analyzed in de Volkskrant. He sees a “populist revolt against the administrative Netherlands, fired without hesitation from parliament”. NRC columnist Tom-Jan Meeus previously showed that behind the farmers are large agricultural companies and wealthy entrepreneurs. He believes that it is now a question of who is in charge in the Netherlands. “Succumbing to a livestock sector that, after decades of blockage, causes a threefold problem – climate, nature, water – would not be just a political defeat. Then this generation of politicians will distance themselves from politics: distance from the idea that politicians run the country.”

So the farmers’ protest has everything it takes to get out of hand. And not just on the street.

This is similar to what happened initially in the French Yellow Vest protests as right wing elements tried to co-opt the movement for their own interests. The French protests were portrayed as anti-climate because they were opposed to a rise in diesel fuel prices, but in reality they were a reaction to the decline of worker rights and economic security.

As the protests spread this week, German farmers helped Dutch farmers shut down roads and the border. In Poland, people marched in Warsaw complaining that they are bearing the brunt of an inflation they did not create. Italian farmers are copying the Dutch.









These protests may continue to spread this year as inflation is expected to worsen and that, on top of the climate crisis, military conflicts and sanctions, is expected to lower food production causing shortages this fall. This is a critical time for social movements to raise these issues and fight for solutions that create economic security and justice for everyone. If the left fails to mobilize, then people in desperation may turn to the right, to the detriment of the planet and everyone.

At the end of 2020, I wrote that this decade is a time when a number of crises are coming to a head. These crises will force changes. What those changes look like depends on how effective our social movements are in influencing the path we take.

Ajamu Baraka explains how we do that using a Peoples-Centered Human Rights Framework. I wrote about that and provided links to resources here. Only through mutual struggle will we have the strength to counter right-wing reactionary forces. Many countries, particularly those in Latin America, are demonstrating that this is possible.

We have a responsibility as residents of the largest empire in the world, the United States, to organize and take action. The rapid spread of the protests in the European Union is a wake up call that the time to do so is now.

Reproductive justice and the U.S. carceral system

https://www.workers.org/2022/07/65355/



By Marie Kelly posted on July 8, 2022

The Supreme Court ruling against reproductive rights guaranteed for 50 years in the SCOTUS Roe v. Wade decision has had dramatic and devastating consequences for anyone who can get pregnant but is trapped in the U.S. carceral system.

Number of incarcerated women accelerating


Ban the shackling of incarcerated pregnant people! Illustration by Molly Crabapple

According to the Prison Policy Initiative, the incarceration rate of women in the U.S. has grown at twice the pace of men over the past 40 years. There has been a startling 475% increase in women incarcerated. The majority of women (60%) are awaiting trial and have not been convicted of any crime. (Dec. 8, 2021, prisonpolicy.org/blog)

Strict drug laws may account for some of the increase in the population of women in prisons. The crackdown on immigrants means Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents often detain immigrants in local jails. More girls than boys are held in youth detention centers for truancy and running away from home — often a desperate attempt to escape an abuser.

What is the fate of these people, now that the federal government has abandoned any commitment to reproductive freedom for the working class?

Prisoners subject to local and state laws

Those incarcerated in local jails and state prisons are subject to local and state laws.

At last count, 29 states have laws banning abortion. Many of these states, like Texas and Oklahoma, have seen the highest increase in the number of incarcerated women. Even for nonincarcerated people, access to abortion in these states will require travel across state lines and cash — insurmountable barriers for many poor workers, especially in Black, Brown and Indigenous communities.

For the large population of women on parole or probation, traveling out of state for an abortion poses a real threat of being sent back to prison.

Options are harsher for people arrested while pregnant, who will be forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy. Depending on state law, there is little to no option for an abortion if the person is sent to prison in a state with anti-abortion laws.

Carceral conditions dangerous for pregnancy

Incarcerated people who are pregnant represent about 4% of the total population in women’s prisons across the U.S. They are at the mercy of a carceral system that does very little to guarantee prenatal care, proper nutrition and safety from complications due to pregnancy.

In fact, the health care in prisons is dangerously inadequate. Incarcerated people are exposed to toxins in their environments, threat of sexual abuse, risk of physical injury and severe mental distress.

Pregnant individuals need good food, plenty of exercise and proper rest. They need education about childbirth. None of these necessities are a priority in the current carceral institutions.

Workers World has reported that incarcerated women and their families in Georgia’s Pulaski State Prison “described extortion, sexual assault and physical and emotional violence, plus the inhumane living conditions of moldy food, unsanitary cells, callous guards and lack of medical care, which are all fairly standard throughout the Georgia system.” (tinyurl.com/8rtsmje9)

Giving birth while incarcerated

Childbirth is never easy, but most women have the support of family members and medical professionals. Pregnant people who are incarcerated have either the bare minimum of care or, in a worst case scenario, are totally alone in a cell when they are giving birth.

Erica Thompson is a Black woman who was held in a Florida jail in 2021 for driving with a suspended license. Guards ignored her cries for help when she went into labor and gave birth. Her baby, Ava Daniels, died at a local hospital due to complications that medical personnel said would have been preventable if she had been delivered at a hospital. (Daily Kos, Oct. 24, 2021)

Pregnant people who are transported to a hospital from prison are still being shackled, even when there are laws on the books restricting the practice. Following birth, many mothers are transported back to prison without their newborns. This cruel separation can have profound negative implications on newborn development and exacerbate postpartum depression for the new mom.

Abolish prisons now!

In 1970, prior to the 1973 Roe ruling, Shirley Wheeler was convicted of manslaughter after an illegal abortion. More recently, with the far-right direction of the Supreme Court, the anti-abortion war on pregnant people has gained momentum.

In April, only after enormous pressure from pro-choice activists, state of Texas murder charges were dropped for Lizelle Herrera. She was charged after an alleged self-induced abortion. There was, in fact, no law on the books at the time for which she could legally have been arrested or charged with a crime. (workers.org/2022/04/63287/)

Now is the time for prison abolition. It is critical for the fight for reproductive freedom and justice.