The Dawn Of The Apocalypse

https://popularresistance.org/the-dawn-of-the-apocalypse/





By Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. July 26, 2022


We were warned for decades about the death march we are on because of global warming.

And yet, the global ruling class continues to frog-march us towards extinction.

The past week has seen record-breaking heat waves across Europe. Wildfires have ripped through Spain, Portugal and France. London’s fire brigade experienced its busiest day since World War II. The U.K. saw its hottest day on record of 104.54 Fahrenheit. In China, more than a dozen cities issued the “highest possible heat warning” this weekend with over 900 million people in China enduring a scorching heat wave along with severe flooding and landslides across large swathes of southern China. Dozens of people have died. Millions of Chinese have been displaced. Economic losses run into the billions of yuan. Droughts, which have destroyed crops, killed livestock and forced many to flee their homes, are creating a potential famine in the Horn of Africa. More than 100 million people in the United States are under heat alerts in more than two dozen states from temperatures in the mid-to-upper 90s and low 100s. Wildfires have destroyed thousands of acres in California. More than 73 percent of New Mexico is suffering from an “extreme” or “severe” drought. Thousands of people had to flee from a fast-moving brush fire near Yosemite National Park on Saturday and 2,000 homes and businesses lost power.

It is not as if we were not warned. It is not as if we lacked scientific evidence. It is not as if we could not see the steady ecological degeneration and species extinction. And yet, we did not act. The result will be mass death with victims dwarfing the murderous rampages of fascism, Stalinism and Mao Zedong’s China combined. The desperate response is to burn more coal, especially with the soaring cost of natural gas and oil, and extend the life of nuclear power plants to sustain the economy and produce cool air. It is a self-defeating response. Joe Biden has approved more new oil drilling permits than Donald Trump. Once the power outages begin, as in India, the heat waves will exact a grim toll.

“Half of humanity is in the danger zone, from floods, droughts, extreme storms and wildfires,” U.N Secretary General António Guterres told ministers from 40 countries meeting to discuss the climate crisis on July 18. “No nation is immune. Yet we continue to feed our fossil fuel addiction.”

“We have a choice,” he added. “Collective action or collective suicide.”

The Anthropocene Age – the age of humans, which has caused extinctions of plant and animal species and the pollution of the soil, air and oceans – is accelerating. Sea levels are rising three times faster than predicted. The arctic ice is vanishing at rates that were unforeseen. Even if we stop carbon emissions today – we have already reached 419 parts per million – carbon dioxide concentrations will continue to climb to as high as 550 ppm because of heat trapped in the oceans. Global temperatures, even in the most optimistic of scenarios, will rise for at least another century. This assumes we confront this crisis. The earth is becoming inhospitable to most life.

The average global temperature has risen by about 1.1 Celsius (1.9 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1880. We are approaching a tipping point of 2 degrees Celsius when the biosphere will become so degraded nothing can save us.

The ruling class for decades denied the reality of the climate crisis or acknowledged the crisis and did nothing. We sleepwalked into catastrophe. Record heat waves. Monster droughts. Shifts in rainfall patterns. Declining crop yields. The melting of the polar ice caps and glaciers resulting in sea level rise. Flooding. Wildfires. Pandemics. The breakdown of supply chains. Mass migrations. Expanding deserts. The acidification of the oceans that extinguishes sea life, the food source for billions of people. Feedback loops will see one environmental catastrophe worsen another environmental catastrophe. The breakdown will be nonlinear. These are the harbingers of the future.

Social coercion and the rule of law will disintegrate. This is taking place in many parts of the global south. A ruthless security and surveillance apparatus, along with heavily militarized police, will turn industrial nations into climate fortresses to keep out refugees and prevent uprisings by an increasingly desperate public. The ruling oligarchs will retreat to protected compounds where they will have access to services and amenities, including food, water and medical care, denied to the rest of us.

Voting, lobbying, petitioning, donating to environmental lobby groups, divestment campaigns and protesting to force the global ruling class to address the climate catastrophe proved no more effective than scrofula victims’ superstitious appeals to Henry VIII to cure them with a royal touch. In 1900 the burning of fossil fuel – mostly coal – produced about 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year. That number had risen threefold by 1950. Today the level is 20 times higher than the 1900 figure. During the last 60 years the increase in CO2 was an estimated 100 times faster than what the earth experienced during the transition from the last ice age.

The last time the earth’s temperature rose 4 degrees Celsius, the polar ice caps did not exist and the seas were hundreds of feet above their current levels.

You can watch my two-part interview with Roger Hallam, the co-founder of the resistance group Extinction Rebellion, on the climate emergency here and here.

There are three mathematical models for the future: a massive die-off of perhaps 70 percent of the human population and then an uneasy stabilization; extinction of humans and most other species; an immediate and radical reconfiguration of human society to protect the biosphere. This third scenario is dependent on an immediate halt to the production and consumption of fossil fuels, converting to a plant-based diet to end the animal agriculture industry – almost as large a contributor to greenhouse gasses as the fossil fuel industry – greening the deserts and restoring rainforests.

We knew for decades what harnessing a hundred million years of sunlight stored in the form of coal and petroleum would do to the climate**.** As early as the 1930s ****British engineer Guy Stewart Callendar suggested that increased CO2 was warming the planet. In the late 1970s into the 1980s, scientists at companies such as Exxon and Shell determined that the burning of fossil fuels was contributing to rising global temperature.

“[T]here is concern among some scientific groups that once the effects are measurable, they might not be reversible and little could be done to correct the situation in the short term,” a 1982 internal briefing for Exxon’s management noted.

NASA’s Dr. James Hansen told the U.S. Senate in 1988 that the buildup of CO2 and other gasses were behind the rise in heat.

But by 1989 Exxon, Shell and other fossil fuel corporations decided the risks to their profits from major curbs in fossil fuel extraction and consumption was unacceptable. They invested in heavy lobbying and funding of faux research and propaganda campaigns to discredit the science on the climate emergency.

Christian Parenti in his book Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence quotes from “The Age of Consequences: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Global Climate Change,” a 2007 report produced by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Center for a New American Security. R. James Woolsey, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, writes in the report’s final section:


In a world that sees two meter sea level rise, with continued flooding ahead, it will take extraordinary effort for the United States, or indeed any country, to look beyond its own salvation. All of the ways in which human beings have dealt with natural disasters in the past…could come together in one conflagration: rage at government’s inability to deal with the abrupt and unpredictable crises; religious fervor, perhaps even a dramatic rise in millennial end-of-day cults; hostility and violence towards migrants and minority groups, at a time of demographic change and increased global migration; intra-and interstate conflict over resources, particularly food and fresh water. Altruism and generosity would likely be blunted.

The profits from fossil fuels, and the lifestyle the burning of fossil fuels afforded to the privileged on the planet, overroad a rational response. The failure is homicidal.

Clive Hamilton in his Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change describes a dark relief that comes from accepting that “catastrophic climate change is virtually certain.”

“But accepting intellectually is not the same as accepting emotionally the possibility that the world as we know it is headed for a horrible end,” Hamilton writes. “It’s the same with our own deaths; we all ‘accept’ that we will die, but it is only when death is imminent that we confront the true meaning of our mortality.”

Environmental campaigners, from The Sierra Club to 350.org, woefully misread the global ruling class, believing they could be pressured or convinced to carry out the seismic reconfigurations to halt the descent into a climate hell. These environmental organizations believed in empowering people through hope, even if the hope was based on a lie. They were unable or unwilling to speak the truth. These climate “Pollyannas,” as Hamilton calls them, “adopt the same tactic as doom-mongers, but in reverse. Instead of taking a very small risk of disaster and exaggerating it, they take a very high risk of disaster and minimize it.”

Humans have inhabited cities and states for 6,000 years, “a mere 0.2 percent of the two and a half million years since our first ancestor sharpened a stone,” the anthropologist Ronald Wright notes in A Short History of Progress. The myriad of civilizations built over these 6,000 years have all decayed and collapsed, most through a thoughtless depletion of the natural resources that sustained them.

The latest iteration of global civilization was dominated by Europeans, who used industrial warfare and genocide to control much of the planet. Europeans and Euro-Americans launched a 500-year-long global rampage of conquering, plundering, looting, exploiting and polluting the earth – as well as killing the indigenous communities, the caretakers of the environment for thousands of years – that stood in the way. The mania for ceaseless economic expansion and exploitation, accelerated by the Industrial Revolution two and a half centuries ago, has become a curse, a death sentence.

Anthropologists, including Joseph Tainter in The Collapse of Complex Societies, Charles L. Redman in Human Impact on Ancient Environments and Ronald Wright in A Short History of Progress, have laid out the familiar patterns that lead to systems breakdown. Civilizations, as Tainter writes, are “fragile, impermanent things.” Collapse, he writes, “is a recurrent feature of human societies.”

This time the whole planet will go down. There will, with this final collapse, be no new lands left to exploit, no new peoples to subjugate or new civilizations to replace the old. We will have used up the world’s resources, leaving the planet as desolate as the final days of a denuded Easter Island.

Collapse comes throughout human history to complex societies not long after they reach their period of greatest magnificence and prosperity.

“One of the most pathetic aspects of human history is that every civilization expresses itself most pretentiously, compounds its partial and universal values most convincingly, and claims immortality for its finite existence at the very moment when the decay which leads to death has already begun,” the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr writes in Beyond Tragedy: Essays on the Christian Interpretation of Tragedy.

The very things that cause societies to prosper in the short run, especially new ways to exploit the environment such as the invention of irrigation or use of fossil fuels, lead to disaster in the long run. This is what Wright calls the “progress trap.”

“We have set in motion an industrial machine of such complexity and such dependence on expansion,” Wright notes, “that we do not know how to make do with less or move to a steady state in terms of our demands on nature.”

The U.S. military, intent on dominating the globe, is the single largest institutional emitter of greenhouse gasses, according to a report from Brown University. This is the same military that has designated global warming a “threat multiplier” and “an accelerant of instability or conflict.”

The powerlessness many will feel in the face of ecological and economic chaos will unleash further collective delusions, such as fundamentalist beliefs in a god or gods who will come back to earth and save us. The Christian right provides a haven for this magical thinking. Crisis cults spread rapidly among Native American societies in the later part of the 19th century as the buffalo herds and the remaining tribes faced extermination. The Ghost Dance held out the hope that all the horrors of white civilization — the railroads, the murderous cavalry units, the timber merchants, the mine speculators, the hated tribal agencies, the barbed wire, the machine guns, even the white man himself — would disappear. Our psychological hard wiring is no different.

The greatest existential crisis of our time is to at once be willing to accept the bleakness before us and resist. The global ruling class has forfeited its legitimacy and credibility. It must be replaced. This will require sustained mass civil disobedience, such as those mounted by Extinction Rebellion, to drive the global rulers from power. Once the rulers see us as a real threat they will become vicious, even barbaric, in their efforts to cling to their positions of privilege and power. We may not succeed in halting the death march, but let those who come after us, especially our children, say we tried.

A Measure To Crack Down On Predatory Medical Debt Collection

https://popularresistance.org/a-measure-to-crack-down-on-predatory-medical-debt-collection-is-on-the-verge-of-making-the-ballot-in-arizona/








By Aída Chavez, More Perfect Union.

July 28, 2022
Resist!

Is on the Verge of Making the Ballot in Arizona.

Liz Gorski was a 15-year-old in Prescott, Arizona, when she was in a car accident that changed her life, and trapped her in a cycle of medical debt. After being in a coma for five days, Gorski woke up in the hospital to a new reality. She needed surgeries, physical therapy, and extensive medical care, a bill that ended up being over a million dollars, Gorski recalled. Insurance covered some of these initial expenses, and a lawsuit several years later covered more of the bill. But she still had medical debt sent to collections.

Gorski’s health problems have required lifelong treatment, as she continues to deal with the aftermath of the crash, and the medical bills keep piling up. “Every single time I go, I have a copay and then I have some part of the bill billed to me, and every month I’m paying on all of these bills just to make sure that they don’t go to collections, but sometimes they do because it’s just too many at one time,” she told More Perfect Union. “And it’s like I’m trying to not see the doctor, I’m trying to just push it out, and it never works because then some kind of symptom happens and I can’t handle it.”

Gorski’s experiences navigating the health care system, and her struggle to keep up with endless medical bills that began in her youth, led her to join a statewide effort, known as Healthcare Rising Arizona, to bring the issue directly to voters. “The whole health care system is set up to keep people sick and basically enslaved,” she said. Now, a measure to crack down on medical debt and predatory debt collection practices is on the verge of making it onto the November ballot.

Earlier this month, a coalition of advocates and organizations across the state, led by Healthcare Rising Arizona, made history, turning in over half a million signatures to get the proposal on the ballot — more than any citizen initiative has ever gotten in the state. The campaign easily surpassed the required 237,645 signatures to qualify. The ballot initiative, known as the Predatory Debt Collection Protection Act, would shield Arizonans and their families from debt collectors and abusive practices by limiting the interest rate on medical debt and protecting more of their assets from creditors. Passing this initiative in November, Gorski said, would mean greater “freedom” for working class people in the state.

“You wouldn’t be bogged down by the power of these debt companies, you’d be able to pay off your bills, you’d be able to live your life,” Gorski said. “They don’t accept payment plans, mostly. They will harass you and everything until they get what they want.”

Jessica Baez-Staggers, a member of Healthcare Rising Arizona, became involved with the coalition and gathered signatures because she wanted to help a friend who didn’t know how to get out of $20,000 of medical debt. Passing the measure in November would mean that more working-class people would “feel secure” and that “they don’t have to lose everything because of one sickness,” she said.

Under the proposal, interest on medical debt would be capped at 3 percent. The value of household goods that are shielded from debt collectors would increase, protecting cars up to $15,000 in value, compared to the $6,000 limit for vehicles under current state law, for example. Arizonans’ homes would also get additional protections. Notably, the proposal includes a provision that would exempt people from wage garnishment. Groups like Living United for Change in Arizona (LUCHA), Arizona Working Families Party, and CASE Action, as well as unions like Unite Here Local 11 and the Arizona Building and Construction Trades Council, are also supporting the effort.

More than 100 million individuals in the US are burdened with medical debt, including an estimated 3 million who owe more than $10,000, a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis found. About 15 percent of Arizonans had medical debt on their credit file as of December 2020, according to a Consumer Finance Protection Bureau study. The two biggest business groups in the state, the Arizona Chamber of Commerce & Industry and the Greater Phoenix Chamber, have come out against the measure, saying it would harm creditors. But the coalition says the initiative is a common sense measure that has support across the political spectrum.

“We do pretty well with everybody, you know, even Republicans who don’t necessarily agree with progressives on a ton of issues,” Healthcare Rising spokesperson Rodd McLeod told More Perfect Union. “They don’t like the idea of 10 percent interest. And they don’t like the idea of people having their home or car taken away because they can’t pay a medical bill.”

Privacy Is The Entry Point For Our Civil And Basic Rights’

https://popularresistance.org/privacy-is-the-entry-point-for-our-civil-and-basic-rights/








By Janine Jackson, Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting.

July 28, 2022
Educate!

CounterSpin interview with Nora Benavidez on post-Roe data privacy.

Janine Jackson: The anticipated—but still devastating—Dobbs decision aims to take reproductive health care out of the hands of countless people, and it’s already having that effect. But one might think as terrible as that is, at least a person can go online to learn how to get to the nearest abortion access point, or order pills from Canada.

But the same social media platforms that constantly tell us they’re about building community around and through demographic and geographic barriers are not showing up hard for those values when it comes to a free flow of information on abortion access. What are they doing and what might they do?

We’re joined now by Nora Benavidez, civil rights attorney and the senior counsel and director of digital justice and civil rights at Free Press. She joins us now by phone. Welcome to CounterSpin, Nora Benavidez.

Nora Benavidez: Hi, Janine. Thanks so much for having me.

JJ: Well, maybe let’s start with the shape of the problem. What are the concerns right now around data privacy that are generated specifically by this court ruling and other rulings around abortion access and its criminalization? What could happen? Or what do we see happening?

NB: From the outset, the gutting of Roe by Dobbs is so devastating for, of course, the constitutional reasons, that at one time, Roe codified and really affirmed that abortion was a basic right.

Dobbs, in overruling that, overturning that, has laid open states to pick and choose whether they will allow abortion providers and individuals that kind of right.

But we’re in a very different moment now in 2022 than we were in the 1970s, and that’s really because of the rise of the digital age. With it, as you mentioned in your opening, is that the Internet is our primary pathway for almost everyone, I think, to information, to healthcare to, you know, telehealth appointments.

And so there are these huge questions now about how people will access both just information, and then who is going to have access to that data that we are all of us engaging in and creating a footprint for.

The number one concern is that basically anything we do on our devices is reachable and is collected, retained, even sold by data brokers. In this new post-Roe era, in the states where abortion is criminal now, which is in the dozens, police and prosecutors will be able to buy information, both location and our search history, our app usage, to build criminal cases against women and providers of abortion.

And so it’s really kind of a terrifying moment where privacy is, in a very new way, the entry point for our civil and basic rights.

JJ: So in the face of that, what could social media platforms and ISPs do? I mean, a lot of them have these, we understand they simply are beholden to law enforcement. If law enforcement or the government asks for information, they hand it over. Is there something different that they could be doing in that regard?

Yeah, well, you know, so let’s start from what we already know. Platform companies are in the business of selling records to data brokers, to advertising firms. And a lot of what pre-Dobbs we’ve seen is that a lot of this information then allows platforms to target users with either content that they enjoy or content that otherwise discriminates, which is its own set of issues.

In addition, companies can also be subpoenaed, as you say. They can be subpoenaed by prosecutors who might be wanting the whereabouts of people seeking reproductive health care.

In the last year, Google has been forced to turn over its location information about its customers when law enforcement seek court orders for that information. What’s been interesting is that actually in response to Dobbs, Google has updated its privacy policy to start deleting location data about users who visit places related to their health.

My organization, Free Press, has been working on pressuring Google to modify its retention and collection practices. So this is a really huge step. It’s some initial victory. But that’s only one company. We’ve seen, for the last several years, other companies like Amazon have put major sets of information together for law enforcement when they seek something through a search warrant, subpoena, other court orders.

All of these are within the bounds of the law. The problem is that there’s that additional layer that law enforcement can actually circumvent both court oversight and other Fourth Amendment concerns by buying our data from third parties. So when they don’t want to go through the process of seeking a search warrant, a subpoena, or another court order, police can just circumvent it very easily. They can go through a data broker and pick and choose whatever they want to buy.

JJ: So what do we do in the face of this? I understand that there are certain legislative moves that are going on or being proposed. There has to be a way to address this.

NB: Yeah. Well, I always try to start with the individual and work my way up, and it’s always important, I think, to help affirm for people that they can seek out information. There are really wonderful guidelines now for how to protect yourself online. And whether that is through encrypted apps, using a VPN, those are important things to start learning about.

There are also then the much larger, what I call kind of systemic reforms that we need to be looking at. And as you say, some of that is through legislation. You know, Congress has currently a set of proposals before it that would limit what law enforcement can buy from data brokers.

One of those bills is called the “Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act.” It’s a long name, but it’s a really good bill. And it closes a loophole that allows data brokers to sell our information to police without a warrant.

There is going to be a hearing on this bill coming up this month. Free Press has endorsed the legislation. I think that we need a groundswell of support all over the country who are saying yes, this is the kind of privacy protection we need.

We also then need more, you know, we need other agencies throughout the federal government to step in. And one of those critical ones is the Federal Trade Commission, which is tasked with oversight over deceptive practices, the kinds of things that we’ve described today where people’s data has been sold, otherwise used in nefarious ways.

And so the FTC has before it a really unique moment to look at use of data practices, and begin creating rules around how corporations can mitigate the harm to their customers and other consumers. So I hope that over the coming months we are going to see the FTC take this on with an open and participatory process. It’s one that we call a rulemaking, where they build a record of the harm and then begin developing the guardrails to prevent these kinds of deceptive, unfair practices.

But we need all of these things, Janine. This isn’t some distance threat. It isn’t like women may at some point risk being prosecuted. This is already happening around the country. And so we need advocates to start telling these stories to help make the link that what we do online has very real world consequences.

JJ: Well, first of all, it’s so dystopian, the idea of our information being packaged and sold to begin with, and it almost feels like, you know, shutting the barn door after the cows have escaped. Just bigger picture, it makes me think about publicizing, nationalizing the Internet anyway. I mean, isn’t it really a public resource, and the idea of all of our information being essentially a commodity is just kind of terrifying, big picture.

NB: I agree. I mean, and yet, many times when I talk with people, their natural instinct is to say that the gathering of our data actually helped. You know, there’s this intuitive sense that whatever I do on Facebook actually can help make my experience more unique and personalized. And that may be true in some instances where you start getting ads for the types of local Facebook groups that you actually might want to join. I get that.

What we have to start talking about is that there’s that underbelly to what’s really happening, and that the Internet no longer serves people in the ways that we once thought it held such promise to connect us all to make a more equitable future.

In the middle of all of that then, I just sort of think to myself, how do we talk about these issues to help people understand there are pros and there are very real trade offs, very dangerous ones that really strip us of our own autonomy.

If you’re doing something online unaware of the trade off that as you search for something, that search result will be collected, stored and even sold to someone, that isn’t just about making your local Facebook group recommendations better or more exciting for you. That really removes any anonymity, which is something that throughout history, this country has been so committed to, at least in theory.

You know, when the founding fathers dreamt up what the fourth amendment would be, it was early, early British rule where crown officials would storm into people’s homes and take their writing and their other belongings because it was seen as potentially threatening to the crown.

And so there’s this old history of all of it being centered on power. And so what we’re seeing now in the stripping of and the violations of our privacy all come back to the ways that our power has been taken from us.

JJ: Well, I guess I would say we do have a positive vision of an Internet that could have the good things that we want if we can build in these protections that help us in terms of privacy. We can have a positive vision going forward of what the Internet could be that’s kind of the way we thought of it, you know, hopefully, many, many years ago. That can still happen, yeah?

NB: I think it can, and some of the work that excites me the most, both in my own job at Free Press, the work I see across the country now from policymakers and allies on the ground throughout the country, are people who are trying to dream up what a better Internet would look like, and what real realized civil rights are online.

One of the most exciting places that I’ve seen this is through the Disinformation Defense League, a network of over 230 local organizations around the country, either led by or centering communities of color. We are so often—I’m a Latina, you know, I work with groups that are considered typically on the fringes and otherwise not really at the table for large, systemic conversations. And this network is one of the most exciting places that I have seen harvest and try to incubate great ideas for reform.

That includes policy reform, privacy protections, civil rights protections online, things that can intervene to blunt what we see as harmful and discriminatory practices online. So I think that there is a future Internet that we can realize, and we all need to have a voice and a seat at the table.

JJ: We’ve been speaking with Nora Benavidez from Free Press. They’re online at freepress.net. Nora Benavidez, thank you so much for joining us today on CounterSpin.

NB: Thanks so much, Janine.

Trade Unionists Take A Stand For Jobs, Pay, Pensions And Conditions

https://popularresistance.org/thousands-of-trade-unionists-take-a-stand-for-their-jobs-pay-pensions-and-conditions/





By Morning Star. July 28, 2022


MPs And Activists Show Solidarity With RMT And TSSA Members On The Picket Lines Throughout The Country.

The rail network was brought to a standstill today as thousands of RMT and TSSA members walked out over jobs, pay, pensions and other conditions.

RMT is in dispute with Network Rail and 14 train operators while TSSA is striking at Avanti West Coast.

Speaking from the Euston picket line, RMT general secretary Mick Lynch said the union had received an “inadequate” pay offer from Network Rail last week.

He said: “It’s a pay offer over three years which is nowhere near the rate of inflation.

“And the conditions that they wish to impose on that are not acceptable to the members.”

TSSA general secretary Manuel Cortes told Transport Secretary Grant Shapps to “get out of the way or get involved directly in talks. I don’t care which one it is, but unless he does that we’ve got no way to reach a settlement.”

Network Rail chief executive Andrew Haines said: “Despite our best efforts to find a breakthrough, I’m afraid there will be more disruption for passengers this week.”

MPs and activists from other unions showed their solidarity on picket lines throughout the country.

Shadow transport minister Sam Tarry joined striking workers on the picket line at Euston, in defiance of Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer’s orders for his front-bench team to stay away.

Asked by ITV’s Good Morning Britain if he expected to be sacked by Sir Keir, Mr Tarry said: “I’ve no idea what Keir will decide to do but I know this — if Keir was in government right now, this dispute wouldn’t be happening.”

However, the Ilford South MP was later sacked from the front bench.

A Labour spokesperson said: “This isn’t about appearing on picket lines. Members of the front bench sign up to collective responsibility. That includes media appearances being approved and speaking to agreed front bench positions.”

Also at Euston, former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said: “The degree of poverty pay within the rail industry is huge, and now the levels of job insecurity have grown as well.”

At Liverpool Lime Street Station, Liverpool West Derby MP Ian Byrne said: “It’s massively important for me to be here. I’ve been a trade unionist all my life and I will always back workers.”

Fabrice Kabamba, who commutes to Walton-on-Thames from Waterloo Station, was one of many train passengers who voiced their support for the strike.

He said: “As an employee myself, struggling to pay bills, I can sympathise with them.”

Swedish football fans Rebecka Ronnegard and Felix Nystrom were delayed at Sheffield Station after watching the Euro 2022 semi-final on Tuesday.

Ms Ronnegard said: “I support the workers and I hope they can come to an agreement.”

Mr Nystrom said: “I definitely support the right to strike to reach a fair agreement.”

Mr Shapps, who has refused to intervene in the strike, wrote in the Telegraph that he wants to ban “strikes by different unions in the same workplace within a set period.”

He also wants a 60-day cooling-off period after each strike and guaranteed minimum service levels.

Union leaders blasted this new attack by Mr Shapps.

Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “If Grant Shapps had his way we would all still be in the workhouse.

“His intervention is just the latest in a growing list of political attacks on trade unions and the most fundamental rights held by working people.”

TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said: “Grant Shapps hasn’t lifted a finger to end this rail dispute.

“Instead of doing his job, he has been blocking an agreement and picking fights with unions.

“These proposals are an attack on the fundamental right to strike. They are anti-democratic and anti-worker.”

Unison general secretary Christina McAnea said: “The government wants to turn the clock back to Victorian times when children were sent up chimneys and working people ruthlessly exploited.

“Curbing the right of employees to strike would be the green light for a return to the worst workplace abuses of the past.”

Labour’s shadow transport secretary Louise Haigh said: “This hapless Conservative government is so mired in scandal and chaos, they refuse to do the job they’re paid for and sort this dispute out.”

Train drivers’ union Aslef announced today a one-day strike at nine train companies on Saturday August 13 after the firms’ failed to make a pay offer to help members keep pace with the increase in the cost of living.

Drivers are already set to strike this Saturday at seven companies and Aslef members at two more train companies, Avanti West Coast and CrossCountry, voted overwhelmingly for industrial action in a dispute over pay.

Lufthansa Workers Strike Over Wages

https://popularresistance.org/lufthansa-workers-strike-over-wages/





By La Izquierda Diario Argentina , Left Voice. July 28, 2022




Today, ground workers for the German airline Lufthansa are striking for wage increases and better working conditions.

On Tuesday, a similar strike took place at the airport in Lyon, France.

The ver.di union, one of the unions representing workers at the German airline Lufthansa, has called for a new strike on Wednesday, July 27, to demand a 9.5-percent wage increase to address inflation. The strike affects ground workers in maintenance and towing.

“The situation at airports is degenerating and employees are increasingly under pressure and overworked due to severe understaffing, high inflation, and no raise for three years,” Christine Behl, a ver.di leader, told AFP. This flows from a shortfall of 7,000 employees in Germany’s aviation sector, the result of precarious jobs marked by low wages, along with the significant number of jobs lost during the pandemic.

In a press release addressed to passengers, the union explains, “We want a functioning air traffic without stress and strain for our passengers and employees. Lufthansa has cut too many staff during the pandemic.” The statement noted that the union was engaged in collective bargaining, but that Lufthansa had thus far “refused to invest in sufficient staff and thus in smoother air traffic.”
Storm Of Anger Among Airline Workers In Germany And France

The mobilization at Lufthansa follows a summer of anger in the airline industry as inflation increases and air travel resumes after the pandemic. In France, unionized ground staff at Lyon’s Saint-Exupéry airport held a two-hour strike mobilization.

These are not the only mobilizations. In recent weeks, workers at Ryanair, Easyjet, Brussels Airlines (a Lufthansa subsidiary), British Airlines, as well as workers employed by the airports themselves in Paris and Brussels, have all held demonstrations that have caused the cancellation of several thousand flights. Lufthansa has been forced to cancel some 6,000 flights in recent weeks, and many more will be canceled as a result of today’s strike by ver.di.

Aviation sector employers have been putting pressure on workers for several years now, with wage freezes, layoffs, insufficient staffing, and difficult working conditions — which even led to the death of an employee at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris in early July. All this is part of an explosive cocktail that is at the root of the wave of strikes affecting airports across the continent.

Why Mahmoud Abbas is Seeking New ‘Powerful’ Sponsors

https://popularresistance.org/washington-is-the-problem-not-the-solution-why-mahmoud-abbas-is-seeking-new-powerful-sponsors/





By Ramzy Baroud, Mintpress News. July 28, 2022


Washington is the Problem, Not the Solution.

To judge US President Joe Biden’s recent visit to Israel and Palestine as a ‘failure’ in terms of activating the dormant ‘peace process’ is simply a misnomer. For this statement to be accurate, Washington would have had to indicate even a nominal desire to push for negotiations between the Israeli government and the Palestinian leadership.

Political and diplomatic platitudes aside, the current American administration has done the exact opposite as indicated in Biden’s words and actions. Alleging that the US commitment to a two-state solution “has not changed”, Biden dismissed his Administration’s interest in trying to achieve such a goal by declaring that the “ground is not ripe” for negotiations.

Considering that the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas has repeatedly announced its readiness to return to negotiations, one can only assume that the process is being stalled due to Israel’s intransigence. Indeed, none of Israel’s top leaders or major parties champion negotiations, or the so-called peace process, as a strategic objective.

However, Israel is not the only party to blame. The Americans, too, have made it clear that they moved on from that political sham altogether, one which they have invented and sustained for decades. In fact, the final nail in the ‘negotiating solution’ coffin was hammered by the Donald Trump Administration, which has simply backed every Israeli claim, thus shunning all rightful Palestinian demands.

The Biden Administration has been habitually blamed by Palestinians, Arabs and progressive voices within the Democratic Party for failing to reverse Trump’s prejudiced moves in favor of Israel: for example, moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, shutting down the US consulate in East Jerusalem, accepting the unfounded Israeli claims regarding its jurisdiction over illegal Jewish settlements built over occupied Palestinian land, and so on.

Even if one assumes that the Biden Administration is capable of reversing some or all of Trump’s unlawful actions, what good would that be in the greater scheme of things? Washington was, and remains, Israel’s greatest benefactor, funding its military occupation of Palestine with an annual gift of $4 billion, in addition to many other schemes, including a massive and growing budget allocated for Israel’s Iron Dome alone.

As horrific as Trump’s years were in terms of undermining a just resolution to the Israeli occupation of Palestine, Biden’s policies are but a continuation of an existing pro-Israel American legacy that surpasses that of Trump by decades.

As for Israel, the ‘peace process’ has served its purpose, which explains the infamous declaration by the CEO of the Jewish settlement council in the occupied West Bank, known as Yesha, in 2018, “I don’t want to brag that we’ve won. (…) Others would say it appears that we’re winning.”

However, Israel’s supposed ‘victory’ following three decades of a fraudulent ‘peace process’ cannot be credited to Trump alone. Biden and other top US officials have also been quite useful. While it is widely understood that US politicians support Israel out of sheer interest, for example, the need to appease the influential pro-Israel lobby in Washington DC, Biden’s, support for Israel stems from an ideological foundation. The US President was hardly bashful when he repeated, upon his arrival at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on July 13, his famous statement, “You need not be a Jew to be Zionist.”

Consequently, it may appear puzzling to hear Palestinian officials call on the US – and Biden, specifically – to pressure Tel Aviv to end its 55-year occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.

Mohannad al-Aklouk, the Palestinian representative at the Arab League, for example, repeated the same cliched and unrealistic language of expecting the US to “exert practical pressure on Israel”, “set the stage for a fair political process based on international law”, and “meet its role as a fair sponsor of the peace process”. Strangely, Mr. al-Aklouk truly believes that Washington, with its dismal track record of pro-Israeli bias, can possibly be the savior of the Palestinians.

Another Palestinian official told The New Arab that PA President Abbas was “disappointed with the results of Biden’s visit,” as, apparently, the Palestinian leader “expected that the US President would make progress in the peace process”. The same source continued to say that Abbas’ Authority is holding meetings with representatives from “powerful countries” to replace the US as sponsors of the once US-sponsored negotiations.

Abbas’ political stance is confusing. The ‘peace process’ is, after all, an American invention. It was a unique, self-serving style of diplomacy that was formulated to ensure Israel’s priorities remain at center stage of US foreign policy in the Middle East. In the Palestinian case, the ‘peace process’ only served to entrench Israeli colonization of Palestine, while degrading, or completely sidelining, legitimate Palestinian demands. This ‘process’ was also constructed with the aim of marginalizing international law as a political and legal frame of reference to the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

Instead of questioning the entire ‘peace process’ apparatus and apologizing for the strategic plunders of pursuing American mirages at the expense of Palestinian rights, the Palestinian Authority is still desperately clutching on to the same old fantasy, even when the US, along with Israel, have abandoned their own political farce.

Even if, supposedly, China, Russia or India would agree to be the new sponsors of the ‘peace process’, there is no reason for Tel Aviv to engage in future negotiations, when it is able to achieve its colonial objectives with full American support. Moreover, none of these countries have, for now, much leverage over Israel, therefore are unable to sustain any kind of meaningful pressure on Tel Aviv to respect international law.

Yet, the PA is still holding on, simply because the ‘peace process’ proved greatly beneficial in terms of funds, power and prestige enjoyed by a small but powerful class of Palestinians that was largely formulated after the Oslo Accords in 1993.

It is time for Palestinians to stop investing their political capital in the Biden Administration or any other administration. What they need is not a new ‘powerful’ sponsor of the ‘peace process’ but a grassroots-based struggle for freedom and liberation starting at home, one that galvanizes the energies of the Palestinian people themselves. Alas, this new paradigm cannot be achieved when the priorities of the Palestinian leadership remain fixated on the handouts and political validation of Washington and its Western allies.

Nature’s Own Fuel Could Save Us From the Greenhouse Effect and Electric Grid Failure

https://scheerpost.com/2021/07/29/natures-own-fuel-could-save-us-from-the-greenhouse-effect-and-electric-grid-failure/



July 29, 2021

23 Comments on Nature’s Own Fuel Could Save Us From the Greenhouse Effect and Electric Grid Failure
Hemp fuel and other biofuels could quickly reduce carbon emissions while saving the electric grid, but they're often overlooked for more expensive, high-tech climate solutions.



Hemp plants being grown and researched in Oregon State University greenhouses. [Stephen Ward / Oregon State University]

By Ellen Brown / Original to ScheerPost

On July 14, the European Union unveiled sweeping climate change and emissions targets that would, according to Gulf News, mean “the end of the internal combustion engine”:


The commission’s draft would reduce permitted emissions from new passenger cars and light commercial vehicles to zero from 2035 – effectively obliging the industry to move on to battery-electric models.

While biofuels are a less high-tech, cheaper and in many ways more effective solution to our dependence on petroleum, the United States and other countries are discussing similar plans to the EU’s and California is already on board. But in a recent article in the Los Angeles Times and related video, Evan Halper argues that we may be trading one environmental crisis for another:


The sprint to supply automakers with heavy-duty lithium batteries is propelled by climate-conscious countries like the United States that aspire to abandon gas-powered cars and SUVs. They are racing to secure the materials needed to go electric, and the Biden administration is under pressure to fast-track mammoth extraction projects that threaten to unleash their own environmental fallout.

Extraction proposals include vacuuming the ocean floor, disturbing marine ecosystems; and mining Native American ancestral sites and pristine federal lands. Proponents of these proposals argue that China controls most of the market for the raw material refining needed for the batteries, posing economic and security threats. But opponents say the negative environmental impact will be worse than the oil fracking that electric vehicles are projected to replace.

Not just the batteries but the electricity needed to run electric vehicles (EVs) poses environmental concerns. Currently, generating electric fuel depends heavily on non-renewable sources. And according to a March 2021 report from the Government Accountability Office, electric vehicles are making the electrical grid more vulnerable to cyber attacks, threatening the portions of the grid that deliver electricity to homes and businesses. If that is true at current use levels, the grid could clearly not sustain the load if all the cars on the road were EVs.

Not just tribal land residents but poor households everywhere will bear the cost if the proposed emissions targets and EV mandates are implemented. According to one European think tank, “average expenses of the poorest households could increase by 44 percent for transport and by 50 percent for residential heating.” As noted in Agence France-Presse, “The recent ‘yellow vest’ protests in France demonstrated the kind of populist fury that environmental controls on motoring can provoke.”

People who can barely make ends meet cannot afford new electric vehicles (EVs), and buying a used EV is risky. If the lithium battery fails, replacing it could cost as much as the car itself; and repairs must be done by pricey dealers. No more doing it yourself with instructions off the Internet, and even your friendly auto repair shop probably won’t have the tools. Except for the high-end Tesla, auto manufacturers themselves are largely losing money on EVs, due to the high cost of the batteries and low consumer demand.

Off the Electric Grid with Clean Biofuel

There is another solution to the environmental hazards of gasoline-fueled cars, one that does not require sending all our combustion engine vehicles to the junkyard. This is alcohol fuel (bioethanol). Not only are greenhouse gas emissions from ethanol substantially lower than from gasoline, but as detailed in a biofuel “explainer” on the website of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology:


As we search for fuels that won’t contribute to the greenhouse effect and climate change, biofuels are a promising option because the carbon dioxide (CO2) they emit is recycled through the atmosphere. When the plants used to make biofuels grow, they absorb CO2 from the air, and it’s that same CO2 that goes back into the atmosphere when the fuels are burned. In theory, biofuels can be a “carbon neutral” or even “carbon negative” way to power cars, trucks and planes, meaning they take at least as much CO2 out of the atmosphere as they put back in.

A major promise of biofuels is that they can lower overall CO2 emissions without changing a lot of our infrastructure. They can work with existing vehicles, and they can be mass-produced from biomass in the same way as other biotechnology products, like chemicals and pharmaceuticals, which are already made on a large scale.… Most gasoline sold in the U.S. is mixed with 10% ethanol.

Biofuels can be created from any sort of organic commercial waste that is high in carbohydrates, which can be fermented into alcohol locally. Unlike the waste fryer oil and grease used to generate biodiesel, carbohydrates are supplied by plants in abundance. Methanol, the simplest form of alcohol, can be made from any biomass – anything that is or once was a plant (wood chips, agricultural waste of all kinds, animal waste, etc.). In the US, 160 million tons of trash ends up in landfills annually. Estimates are that this landfill waste could be converted to 15-16 million gallons of methanol.

In the third in a series of national assessments calculating the potential supply of biomass in the United States, the US Energy Department concluded in 2016 that the country has the future potential to produce at least one billion dry tons of biomass resources annually without adversely affecting the environment. This amount of biomass could be used to produce enough biofuel, biopower, and will bioproducts to displace approximately 30% of 2005 U.S. petroleum consumption, said the report, without negatively affecting the production of food or other agricultural products.

Energy Independence

A documentary film called Pump tells the tale of the monopolization of the auto fuel industry by the petroleum cartel, and how that monopoly can be ended with a choice of biofuels at the pump.

Henry Ford’s first car, built in 1896, ran 100% on alcohol fuel, produced by farmers using using beets, apples, corn and other starchy crops in their own stills. He envisioned the family piling into the car and driving through the countryside, fueling up along the road at independent farms. But alcohol was burdened with a liquor tax, and John D. Rockefeller saw a use for the gasoline fuel that was being discarded as a toxic waste product of the kerosene market he had cornered. In 1908, Ford accommodated Rockefeller’s gasoline fuel by building America’s first “flex-fuel” car, the Model T or “Tin Lizzie.” It could be made to run on either gasoline or ethanol by adjusting the ignition timing and air fuel mixture. Rockefeller then blocked competition from Ford’s ethanol fuel by using his power and influence to help pass Prohibition, a Constitutional amendment banning the sale and transport of alcohol.

The petroleum monopoly was first broken in Brazil, where most cars are adapted to run on bioethanol made from sugar cane. Existing combustion engines can be converted to use this “flex fuel” with simple, inexpensive kits. The Brazilian biofuel market dates back to the oil crisis of the 1970s, when gas had to be imported and was quite expensive. With the conversion to biofuels, Pres. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva achieved national energy independence, giving a major boost to the struggling Brazilian economy.

The U.S. push for biofuels was begun in California in the 1980s, when Ford Motor Company was enlisted to design a flex fuel car to help reduce the state’s smog problem. But again the oil industry lobbied against it. They argued that bioethanol, which in the U.S. is chiefly made from corn, was competing for corn as a foodstuff at a time when food shortages were a major concern.

David Blume counters that it is not a question of “food or fuel” but “food and fuel.” Most U.S. corn is grown as livestock feed, and the “distillers grains” left after the alcohol is removed are more easily digested by cows than unprocessed grain. Distillers grains have another advantage over hay as a livestock feed: its easier digestion reduces the noxious cow emissions said to be a significant source of greenhouse gases.

Fuel from a Weed: The Wide-ranging Virtues of Hemp

Opponents, however, continue to raise the “food versus fuel” objection, and they claim that biofuels from corn are not “carbon neutral” when the steps used to create them are factored in. Even the fertilizers needed to grow them may emit CO2 and other greenhouse gases. But corn is not the only biofuel option. There are plants that can grow like weeds on poor soil without fertilizers.

Industrial hemp – the non-intoxicating form of cannabis grown for fiber, cloth, oil, and many other purposes – is a prime candidate not just for fuel but to help save the environment. Hemp has been proven to absorb more CO2 per hectare than any forest or commercial crop, making it the ideal carbon sink. It can be grown on a wide scale on nutrient poor soils; it grows remarkably fast with almost no fertilizer or irrigation; and it returns around 70% of the nutrients used in the growth cycle back to the soil. Biofuels usually require substantially more water than fossil fuels, but hemp needs roughly half the amount needed for corn. Hemp can also be used for “bioremediation” – the restoration of soil from toxic pollution. It helps remove toxins and has been used by farmers to “cure” their fields, even from radioactive agents, metals, pesticides, crude oil, and toxins in landfills.

An analysis published in the journal Science in 2019 concluded that a worldwide tree planting program could remove two-thirds of all the CO2 emissions that have been pumped into the atmosphere by human activities. As reported in The Guardian in 2019, one trillion trees could be restored for as little as $300 billion – “by far the cheapest solution that has ever been proposed.” The chief drawback to that solution is that trees grow slowly, requiring 50 to 100 years to reach their full carbon sequestering potential. Hemp, on the other hand, is one of the fastest CO2-to-biomass conversion tools available, growing to 13 feet in 100 days. It also requires much less space per plant than trees, and it can be grown on nearly any type of soil without fertilizers.

In a 2015 book titled “Cannabis Vs. Climate Change,” Paul von Hartmann notes that hemp is also one of the richest available sources of aromatic terpenes, which are known to slow climate change. When emitted by pine forests, terpenes help to cool the planet by bouncing energy from the sun back into space. In a mature hemp field, the temperature on a hot day can be 20 degrees cooler than in surrounding areas.

Reviving an American Staple

Hemp has many uses besides fuel. Long an American staple, its cultivation was mandated in colonial America. It has been used for centuries in pharmaceuticals, clothing and textiles; it is an excellent construction material; its fiber can be used to make paper, saving the forests; and hemp seeds are , providing protein equivalent by weight to beef or lamb.

The value of industrial hemp has long been known by the U.S. government, which produced an informational film in 1942 called “Hemp for Victory” to encourage farmers to grow it for the war effort. Besides its many industrial uses, including for cloth and cordage, the film detailed the history of the plant’s use and best growing practices.

Henry Ford used hemp as a construction material for his Model T, and Porsche is now using hemp-based material in the body of its 718 Cayman GT4 Clubsport track car to reduce its weight while maintaining rigidity and safety. “Hempcrete” (concrete made from hemp mixed with lime) is a “green” building material used for construction and insulation, including for building “tiny homes.”

Hemp can replace so many environmentally damaging industries that an April 2019 article in Forbes claimed that “Industrial Hemp Is the Answer to Petrochemical Dependency.” The authors wrote:


[O]ur dependency on petrochemicals has proven hard to overcome, largely because these materials are as versatile as they are volatile. From fuel to plastics to textiles to paper to packaging to construction materials to cleaning supplies, petroleum-based products are critical to our industrial infrastructure and way of life.

… Interestingly, however, there is a naturally-occurring and increasingly-popular material that can be used to manufacture many of the same products we now make from petroleum-derived materials …. That material is hemp.

… The crop can be used to make everything from biodegradable plastic to construction materials like flooring, siding, drywall and insulation to paper to clothing to soap to biofuels made from hemp seeds and stalks.

The authors note that while hemp was widely grown until a century ago, the knowledge, facilities and equipment required to produce it efficiently are no longer commonly available, since hemp farming was banned for decades due to its association with the psychoactive version of the plant.

Fueling a Rural Renaissance

In an effort to fill that vacuum, a recent initiative in California is exploring different hemp varieties and growing techniques, in the first extensive growing trials for hemp fiber and grain in the state since the 1990s. The project is a joint effort among the World Cannabis Foundation, hemp wholesaler Hemp Traders, and Oklahoma-based processor Western Fiber. The Pennsylvania-based Rodale Institute, a nonprofit that supports research into organic farming, has also partnered on a USDA-supported research project on the use of hemp in the development of biochar (charcoal produced by firing biomass in the absence of oxygen). On July 31, the World Cannabis Foundation will host a field day and factory tour in Riverdale, California, where an old cotton gin has been converted to hemp textile manufacture. The event will also feature presentations by a panel of hemp experts.

How to decarbonize 51 billion tons of greenhouse gases annually with hemp technology and regenerative farming will also be the focus of a COP26 “fringe festival” called “Beyond the Green,” to be held in Glasgow, Scotland, in November along with COP26, the 2021 UN Climate Change Conference.

A 2018 article summarizing research from the University of Connecticut concluded that hemp farming could “set a great example of a self-sustainable mini ‘ecosystem’ with minimal environmental footprint.” Henry Ford’s vision was to decentralize industry, with “small [factory] plants … on every stream,” a rural renaissance fueled not with oil but with alcohol. Hemp fuel and other forms of bioethanol are renewable energy sources that can be produced anywhere, contributing to energy independence not just for families but for local communities and even for the country. And it doesn’t place the burden of addressing climate change on the middle or working classes.