03 November 22
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The GOP have finally abandoned the last shreds of common decency, the rule of law and other American ideals.
I mocked it and inveighed against it. Better people than I—Dave Neiwert, Chip Berlet, the SPLC—went out in the field, took good notes, and have spent four decades warning us what was coming unless the prion disease was kept in check. Too many people in a position to do so bailed on the task: the Republicans, because the prion disease was flourishing on the radio and winning them elections; and the Democrats, because they were too polite, or too naive, or too…something to care. (Some Democrats, worse ones, even tried to break off some of the people in whom the prion disease was raging.)
The public episodes are now too numerous to mention; violence—as any number of women’s health advocates will tell you—always has been marbled through it. Now, though, the violence is general and increasingly detached from reality. Over the weekend, watching the reaction to the assault on Paul Pelosi, which also was an attempt on the life of the person who is second in line to the presidency of the United States, I just gave up.
They are beyond anyone’s reach. They are beyond logic and reason. They left democratic norms and customs far behind decades ago. They are beyond political compromise. They are beyond checks and balances, and they have drifted off into the void of a space far beyond the Constitution.
I appreciate what Max Boot (nobody’s notion of a "libtard") wrote in the Washington Post:
It’s true that, by calling out GOP extremism, Democrats do risk exacerbating the polarization of politics. But they can’t simply ignore this dangerous trend. And it’s not Democrats who are pushing our country to the brink: A New York Times study found that MAGA members of Congress who refused to accept the results of the 2020 election used polarizing language at nearly triple the rate of Democrats[...]So please don’t accept the GOP framing of the assault on Paul Pelosi as evidence of a problem plaguing “both sides of the aisle.” Political violence in America is being driven primarily by the far right, not the far left, and the far right is much closer to the mainstream of the Republican Party than the far left is to the Democratic Party.
But people have been saying this literally for decades. They all were essentially hollering down a well. They did not have large, influential media companies behind them. Their political allies were at best timid and at worst absent.
For example, in 2009, the Department of Homeland Security issued a report detailing a resurgence of radicalization in the American military. The entire commingled Republican political and media, led by then-Speaker John Boehner, a reputed “moderate,” lit themselves on fire. The outcry, stoked (as always) by lies and deliberate misrepresentation, caused DHS to run and hide. It withdrew the report. You will note that I did not use the word “forced.” The DHS was not “forced” to do anything, any more than the Clinton administration was “forced” to abandon Lani Guinier. In 2009, the DHS was going to be in Democrats' hands for at least three more years. The department could’ve told Boehner to pound sand and stood by the report. In the real world, political outrage is not “force.” It only has the power that tepid resistance gives to it.
Which brings us to this weekend. Paul Pelosi gets attacked with a hammer during a home invasion and as a temporary proxy for his wife, who is the second in line for the presidency. We had Republican influencers babbling about gay trysts gone wrong, and idiot candidates trying to link the attack to their current bogus spin about a national crime wave. And this is the reaction, on national teevee, of the national chairwoman of the Republican Party. From the Washington Post:
Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, said Sunday it was “unfair” for Democrats to link Republicans’ inflammatory rhetoric toward their political opponents to the attack on Paul Pelosi. “I think this is a deranged individual,” McDaniel said on “Fox News Sunday.” “You can’t say people saying, ‘let’s fire Pelosi’ or ‘let’s take back the House’ is saying ‘go do violence.’ It’s just unfair. And I think we all need to recognize violence is up across the board.”
McDaniel cited an attack in July against New York GOP gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin at a campaign event, and falsely claimed that President Biden “didn’t talk about the assassination attempt against” Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, which Biden condemned. “But, of course, we wish Paul Pelosi a recovery,” McDaniel added. “We don’t like this at all across the board. We don’t want to see attacks on any politician from any political background.”
I just can’t anymore. These people are simply lost and mad. Their political party is simply lost and mad. Their political movement is simply lost and mad. Their candidates are simply lost and mad. We are on the very brink of handing the country over to the lost and the mad. The prion disease has jumped from one subject population to the general public, and in too many ways, it is creating its own reality in the national mind. We are all lost and mad.
The GOP have finally abandoned the last shreds of common decency, the rule of law and other American ideals.
I mocked it and inveighed against it. Better people than I—Dave Neiwert, Chip Berlet, the SPLC—went out in the field, took good notes, and have spent four decades warning us what was coming unless the prion disease was kept in check. Too many people in a position to do so bailed on the task: the Republicans, because the prion disease was flourishing on the radio and winning them elections; and the Democrats, because they were too polite, or too naive, or too…something to care. (Some Democrats, worse ones, even tried to break off some of the people in whom the prion disease was raging.)
The public episodes are now too numerous to mention; violence—as any number of women’s health advocates will tell you—always has been marbled through it. Now, though, the violence is general and increasingly detached from reality. Over the weekend, watching the reaction to the assault on Paul Pelosi, which also was an attempt on the life of the person who is second in line to the presidency of the United States, I just gave up.
They are beyond anyone’s reach. They are beyond logic and reason. They left democratic norms and customs far behind decades ago. They are beyond political compromise. They are beyond checks and balances, and they have drifted off into the void of a space far beyond the Constitution.
I appreciate what Max Boot (nobody’s notion of a "libtard") wrote in the Washington Post:
It’s true that, by calling out GOP extremism, Democrats do risk exacerbating the polarization of politics. But they can’t simply ignore this dangerous trend. And it’s not Democrats who are pushing our country to the brink: A New York Times study found that MAGA members of Congress who refused to accept the results of the 2020 election used polarizing language at nearly triple the rate of Democrats[...]So please don’t accept the GOP framing of the assault on Paul Pelosi as evidence of a problem plaguing “both sides of the aisle.” Political violence in America is being driven primarily by the far right, not the far left, and the far right is much closer to the mainstream of the Republican Party than the far left is to the Democratic Party.
But people have been saying this literally for decades. They all were essentially hollering down a well. They did not have large, influential media companies behind them. Their political allies were at best timid and at worst absent.
For example, in 2009, the Department of Homeland Security issued a report detailing a resurgence of radicalization in the American military. The entire commingled Republican political and media, led by then-Speaker John Boehner, a reputed “moderate,” lit themselves on fire. The outcry, stoked (as always) by lies and deliberate misrepresentation, caused DHS to run and hide. It withdrew the report. You will note that I did not use the word “forced.” The DHS was not “forced” to do anything, any more than the Clinton administration was “forced” to abandon Lani Guinier. In 2009, the DHS was going to be in Democrats' hands for at least three more years. The department could’ve told Boehner to pound sand and stood by the report. In the real world, political outrage is not “force.” It only has the power that tepid resistance gives to it.
Which brings us to this weekend. Paul Pelosi gets attacked with a hammer during a home invasion and as a temporary proxy for his wife, who is the second in line for the presidency. We had Republican influencers babbling about gay trysts gone wrong, and idiot candidates trying to link the attack to their current bogus spin about a national crime wave. And this is the reaction, on national teevee, of the national chairwoman of the Republican Party. From the Washington Post:
Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, said Sunday it was “unfair” for Democrats to link Republicans’ inflammatory rhetoric toward their political opponents to the attack on Paul Pelosi. “I think this is a deranged individual,” McDaniel said on “Fox News Sunday.” “You can’t say people saying, ‘let’s fire Pelosi’ or ‘let’s take back the House’ is saying ‘go do violence.’ It’s just unfair. And I think we all need to recognize violence is up across the board.”
McDaniel cited an attack in July against New York GOP gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin at a campaign event, and falsely claimed that President Biden “didn’t talk about the assassination attempt against” Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, which Biden condemned. “But, of course, we wish Paul Pelosi a recovery,” McDaniel added. “We don’t like this at all across the board. We don’t want to see attacks on any politician from any political background.”
I just can’t anymore. These people are simply lost and mad. Their political party is simply lost and mad. Their political movement is simply lost and mad. Their candidates are simply lost and mad. We are on the very brink of handing the country over to the lost and the mad. The prion disease has jumped from one subject population to the general public, and in too many ways, it is creating its own reality in the national mind. We are all lost and mad.
A gas station at Florida’s Broward County on June, 12, 2022. (photo: Joe Cavaretta/AP)Should Big Oil Pay Extra Taxes on Record-Setting Profits?
Mike Bebernes, Yahoo News
Bebernes writes: "President Biden on Monday raised the possibility of levying a new tax on oil company profits unless they ramp up production to bring down the price of gasoline."
“It’s time for these companies to stop war profiteering, meet their responsibilities to this country, give the American people a break and still do very well,” he said.
Major oil companies have enjoyed record profits over the past six months amid persistently high gas prices, which have remained stubbornly high thanks to inflation and to supply shortages caused by sanctions imposed on Russia’s oil industry, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The president also rebuked the companies for spending as much as $100 billion on dividends and stock buybacks aimed at boosting returns for shareholders, rather than using that money to increase production.
Unless they change their behavior, Biden suggested big oil companies should “pay a higher tax on their excess profits.” This idea is the core of what’s commonly called a windfall tax. Though details vary, windfall taxes typically impose extra charges on companies that are enjoying a major surge in profits — often due to external circumstances that are outside their control.
Windfall taxes were used in the U.S. during both world wars to increase funding for the war effort from industries that were profiting from the huge increase in manufacturing at the time. A similar tax was imposed on oil companies during the gas crisis in 1980 and lasted for eight years. It was repealed after prices had stabilized.
Many progressive Democrats have been pushing for a windfall tax on oil profits for months, but proposals introduced in Congress earlier this year failed to gain momentum. Recently, several European countries, along with the European Union itself, have imposed windfall taxes on energy companies as the continent contends with a massive spike in energy costs after cutting off imports from Russia.
Why there’s debate
Proponents of a windfall tax say the greed of fossil fuel companies, as much as any other economic factor, is what’s keeping gas prices so punishingly high. “This is just rank price gouging,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, who has proposed a statewide windfall tax, told reporters earlier this month. Others argue that a windfall tax would encourage oil companies to invest in increasing drilling capacity, rather than spending billions on enriching their stockholders, which would increase supplies and drive down prices at the pump.
Critics of the idea say punishing companies for making money is anti-competitive and likely to cause gas prices to increase, not decline. They argue that companies are unlikely to invest in new energy projects if they know that they’ll have to surrender a large share of the money they make if that investment pays off. Less investment, they argue, will reduce the supply and ultimately inflate prices. Others say Biden’s proposal is a purely political move aimed at trying to deflect blame for sky-high inflation, which polls show is the one of the most important issues for voters heading into next week’s midterms.
What’s next
Only Congress has the power to create new taxes. Most political experts say that there probably aren’t enough votes to pass a windfall tax right now and that the idea will be all but dead if Republicans take control of one or both chambers of Congress after the midterms. The proposal may have stronger odds in deep-blue California. The state legislature is scheduled to hold a special session on the issue next month.
Perspectives
Supporters
Oil companies are exploiting a crisis to enrich themselves at consumers’ expense
“Big oil companies could absorb the higher costs of crude oil. The reason they’re not is because they’re so big they don’t have to. … It’s the same old story in this country: when crisis strikes, the poor and working class are on the frontlines, while the biggest corporations and their investors and top brass rake it in. What to do? Hit big oil with a windfall profits tax.” — Robert Reich, Guardian
A windfall tax would reverse incentives that reward oil companies for keeping prices high
“Currently, oil companies earn more money when the prices they can charge rise. But if the tax rate of oil companies went up along with the price of oil, the windfall would be recaptured and could then be returned to American consumers.” — Patrick Gaspard, CNN
Concerns that the tax would cause prices to rise are unfounded
“Only the excess profits from oil company manipulation would get taxed, so not a dime would be passed to drivers. Setting a permanent cap on oil refiners’ per-gallon profits is the only thing that will rein in the gouging.” — Jamie Court, Mercury News
Big Oil did nothing to deserve the massive profits that are currently pouring in
“Oil companies have reported huge profits, not due to anything meritorious on their part but due to an increase in demand for oil as the world economy revived and because of the Ukraine-Russian conflict.” — Alan Gin, economist, to San Diego Union-Tribune
Windfall taxes only work in extreme circumstances. The current situation may qualify.
“Even those who think that taxing extraordinary profits generated by current crisis conditions is a worthy goal should realize that historically, such levies seem to work mainly during short-term crisis moments, such as the one we may be witnessing today. Their long-term longevity is hardly guaranteed.” — Ajay Mehrotra, Washington Post
Opponents
A windfall tax would backfire, causing even more pain at the pump
“In practice, imposing a tax on the earnings of energy companies likely would backfire, leading to less — not more — oil and gas production.” — Bernard L. Weinstein, The Hill
The government shouldn’t be allowed to decide how much profit counts as ‘too much’
“The idea is one of the worst concepts imaginable. It lets government determine the proper level of profits that a company may earn, and then hammers them with a tax designed to punish them if they earn too much. It's an abuse of power, and it won't reduce gas prices.” — Steven Greenhut, Orange County Register
American oil companies don’t decide the price of oil in the first place
“Crude oil is globally traded. American crudes are purchased by foreigners, and foreign crudes are purchased by Americans. If American oil companies were working alone to hold up their prices, it would fail immediately because every other country’s oil would undercut them.” — Dominic Pino, National Review
U.S. energy policy needs long-term thinking, not drastic reactions to short-term problems
“We ignore this issue entirely, until there’s a big price spike. And then everybody runs around yelling about how outrageous this is, instead of actually having a serious policy discussion of what’s the right way to deal with this.” — Severin Borenstein, energy economist, to CalMatters
It’s silly to view the economy through a moral lens
“If they’re able to profit from the unusual market situation, it’s because they invested in the past in equipment, technology and know-how to be ready. When they made those decisions, they knew that the ‘lucky’ scenarios might never pan out. But they took that risk in the hope of a reward — and on the assumption that governments wouldn’t seize that reward arbitrarily. Trying to assign moral grades to such investments leads nowhere.” — Andreas Kluth, Bloomberg
Biden’s proposal is nothing more than a flailing attempt to convince voters that inflation isn’t his fault
There’s no chance it will happen, which Biden knows. … Why is Biden doing this? Obviously he’s trying to offload the blame for high gasoline and energy prices onto energy companies, just as Americans cast their midterm votes. … Biden has been blaming energy companies for high prices all year, and there’s nothing about a phony windfall tax proposal that’s going to suddenly convince voters that this time, Biden probably means it. Especially since he doesn’t.” — Rick Newman, Yahoo Finance
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Signing the agreement on Wednesday in Pretoria, South Africa, to stop the fighting in the Tigray region of Ethiopia were Redwan Hussien, the Ethiopian government’s national security adviser, and Getachew Reda, a senior leader in the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. (photo: Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters)
After two years of fighting that left hundreds of thousands dead and millions displaced and facing starvation, the surprise deal came out of peace talks convened by the African Union in South Africa.
Senior officials from both sides shook hands and smiled after signing an agreement in South Africa to cease hostilities, following 10 days of peace talks convened by the African Union.
The surprise deal came one day before the second anniversary of the start of the war, on Nov. 3, 2020, when simmering tensions between Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia and the defiant leaders of the country’s Tigray region exploded into violence.
Mr. Abiy, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, initially billed the war as a “law and order” campaign that he promised would be swift, even bloodless. But it quickly degenerated into a grinding conflict accompanied by countless atrocities, including civilian massacres, gang rape and the use of starvation as a weapon of war.
The deal was signed by Getachew Reda, a senior leader in the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, and Redwan Hussien, Mr. Abiy’s national security adviser, in Pretoria, South Africa’s administrative capital.
It contained a raft of provisions for disarming fighters, permitting humanitarian supplies to reach Tigray — where five million people urgently need food aid — and bringing a measure of stability to Ethiopia.
“We have agreed to permanently silence the guns and end the two years of conflict in northern Ethiopia,” the two sides said in a joint statement.
But mediators warned that it was just the first step in what would most likely be difficult negotiations before a permanent peace could be achieved. It was unclear how the deal’s provisions would be monitored or carried out. And negotiators cautioned that forces inside and outside Ethiopia could yet derail the process and tip the country back into war.
“This moment is not the end of the peace process,” said Olusegun Obasanjo, the former Nigerian president, representing the African Union, “but the beginning of it.”
Mr. Abiy agreed to the deal at a moment of military supremacy, following weeks of sweeping military advances by his troops across Tigray with the help of allied forces from Eritrea, the neighboring country to the north.
But it also came against a backdrop of loud warnings from the United States and the United Nations about the possibility of new atrocities in a war already scarred by widespread abuses, including ethnic cleansing.
“The situation in Ethiopia is spiraling out of control,” the U.N. secretary general, António Guterres, warned last month.
The scale of fighting in Ethiopia rivals that of Ukraine, the American ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said on Oct. 21. As many as half a million people have died as a result of the war in Ethiopia, and the United States was “deeply concerned about the potential for further mass atrocities,” she said.
As African Union-led peace efforts floundered this year, American diplomats brought the two sides together for three secret meetings outside Ethiopia. But while that initiative resulted in a five-month humanitarian cease-fire, it also provided both sides with a chance to rearm for the round of fighting that erupted in August.
After that, American officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said they were considering imposing sanctions, authorized by President Biden last year, in an effort to force the belligerents to stop fighting. But they wanted to give the talks a chance.
Ned Price, a State Department spokesman, welcomed Wednesday’s deal as an “important step toward peace.”
Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House spokeswoman, said, “The United States remains committed to supporting this African Union-led process.”
Mr. Abiy hailed it as a “monumental” deal, seeking in a statement to frame it as part of a broader program of “reforms” led by his government. In a less conciliatory note, Ethiopia’s ambassador to Kenya, Bacha Debele Buta, said in a tweet that “Ethiopia has prevailed” and the federal government would rule Tigray “through a command post.”
Still, there was no immediate reaction from Eritrea, which has played a key role in the fighting and which was not formally represented in the peace talks.
The autocratic leader of Eritrea, Isaias Afwerki, has for decades harbored a bitter rivalry with the leaders of Tigray. It was unclear if he had agreed to the deal signed in South Africa and, crucially, if he would withdraw his troops from the region.
Equally uncertain was the political reception by the leaders of Ethiopia’s ethnic Amhara group, who provided crucial political and military support to Mr. Abiy in his campaign against the Tigrayans. They have long claimed that western Tigray, where Ethiopian forces were accused of ethnic cleansing, rightfully belongs to the Amhara region.
The war in Tigray, one of several conflicts in Ethiopia, is rooted in the seismic shifts that have defined the country over the past three decades.
The main Tigrayan group, the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front, came to power in 1991, when it led a rebellion that ousted a Marxist dictator. It was shunted aside in 2018, after Mr. Abiy, a former ally, came to power amid a popular clamor for change in Ethiopia.
The two sides coexisted uneasily for several years. The Tigrayans retreated to their stronghold in the north of the country. Mr. Abiy built an unlikely alliance with Mr. Isaias, the leader of Eritrea, who had long despised the Tigrayans.
Tensions came to a head in September 2020, when the Tigrayans held regional elections in defiance of Mr. Abiy. Two months later, the feud erupted into war.
The joint agreement signed on Wednesday outlines a plan to allow humanitarian access to Tigray, where a punishing government siege of the region has cut off electricity, banking and other vital services for over 16 months. The deal also has provisions for reintegrating Tigray’s regional government back into the central government, and noted that the Ethiopian government would rebuild all infrastructure damaged in the war.
The two sides also agreed to “a detailed program of disarmament, demobilization and reintegration” of Tigrayan forces, they said.
Analysts said that the coming days would be crucial in determining if the deal could stick, and that much depended on how leaders on both sides sold it to their most vociferous, and heavily armed, supporters.
In South Africa, Uhuru Kenyatta, the former president of Kenya who helped broker the deal, warned in brief comments that unnamed “destructive” actors “from within or without” could scupper the deal — a likely reference to the leader of Eritrea and the Amhara militias that have been fighting alongside the Ethiopian military.
“The devil will be in the implementation,” Mr. Kenyatta said. “We still have a lot of work to do in terms of beginning the political process.”
For civilians across northern Ethiopia, the deal is a welcome respite from a conflict that has become notorious for gross abuses.
At least 2.4 million people have been forced from their homes, according to the United Nations. Rights groups have accused both sides of war crimes including extrajudicial killings, looting and sexual violence. U.N. investigators recently singled out Mr. Abiy’s forces for engaging in “warfare by starvation” and submitting detained women to “sexual slavery.”
American officials said that the same abuses had recurred alongside the recent surge in fighting. After the breakthrough on Wednesday, Mr. Price, the State Department spokesman, said, “It’s our hope that what was announced today will see an end to those reports and, ultimately, the underlying abuses and atrocities.”
For much of the conflict, it has been hard to know exactly what was going on in Tigray. Mr. Abiy’s government cut off the internet and electricity to Tigray in June 2021 and had prohibited reporters from visiting the area. How much that will change now remains unclear.
But the main priority for aid groups, and many international officials, will be to open up access to a region that has undergone immense suffering in the past two years.
The World Health Organization said last week that Tigray had run out of vital medicines, including vaccines and antibiotics. Doctors had resorted to using rags to dress wounds, it said.
In the joint statement released on Wednesday, Mr. Abiy’s government said it would cooperate with humanitarian agencies “to continue expediting aid to those in need of assistance.”
Whether that happens, and how soon, could be an early test of the commitment to peace on both sides.
Scientists at the site in Tulsa, Okla., will begin excavating by hand, using finer grain tools to clean up the coffins. That will help researchers analyze the construction style and hardware of the caskets in order to determine when they were interred. (photo: City of Tulsa)
Tulsa, Okla., city officials announced on Monday that 17 adult-sized graves were uncovered at an excavation site in the Oaklawn Cemetery and another four were found on Tuesday, including two child-sized burials.
The project is part of the city's years-long efforts to get an accurate count of how many people were killed when a white mob decimated the affluent Greenwood district of Tulsa, where black residents lived under Jim Crow segregation.
Some historians estimate as many as 300 Black people were killed in the attack and the days of martial law that followed. Nearly all are believed to have been buried in a series of mass graves approved by the white authorities of the time. Under the temporary restrictions, Black family members of the deceased were reportedly barred from witnessing the burials, as they were held under armed guard, away from their dead mothers, fathers, sons and daughters.
Historic accounts trace the spark of the riot to an incident between a young black man and a white woman in a downtown elevator. The man, who worked as a shoe shiner and was in the elevator on his way to the restroom, allegedly offended the woman, who worked as an elevator operator.
The incident happened shortly after a spate of race riots that swept across the county in 1919.
Scientists will begin excavating by hand
Scientists at the site in Tulsa will now begin excavating by hand, using finer grain tools to clean up the coffins, according to state archeologist Kary Stackelbeck. That will help researchers analyze the construction style and hardware of the caskets in order to determine when they were interred.
"This is going to be part of our process of discriminating which ones we're going to proceed with in terms of exhuming those individuals and which ones we're actually going to leave in place, at least for now," she added.
Researchers also found 19 unidentified bodies in 2o21 that were later re-buried.
"But testing on some did not yield a very good result," Stackelbeck said in an update last week. Now, she explained, teams are going back to those same bodies to "obtain some additional samples and hopefully get some better results."
"Much like last year, we're trying to do every step of this process as respectfully as possible," she said.
A pastor or another member of the clergy will also be present as the remains are transported to the forensic lab.
The excavation is expected to be completed by Nov 18.
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'General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo warned that employers are using surveillance and automated management practices to block workers from exercising their basic rights.' (photo: iStock)
General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo warned that employers are using surveillance and automated management practices to block workers from exercising their basic rights.
NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo said that she was motivated by a concern that employers could deploy workplace technologies to disrupt union organizing or other federally-protected activities.
"An issue of particular concern to me is the potential for omnipresent surveillance and other algorithmic-management tools to interfere with the exercise of Section 7 rights by significantly impairing or negating employees' ability to engage in protected activity and keep that activity confidential from their employer, if they so choose,” Abruzzo wrote. “Thus, I plan to urge the Board, to the greatest extent possible, to apply the Act to protect employees from intrusive or abusive electronic monitoring and automated management practices that would have a tendency to interfere with Section 7 rights.”
As Abruzzo points out, the NLRB has already established that some forms of electronic surveillance and automated management violate labor laws. Employers can't roll out new surveillance technologies to target workers engaged in labor actions protected by the National Labor Relations Act (e.g. unionizing). This can take a variety of forms: security cameras, wearable as well as in-vehicle tracking devices, private investigators that trawl worker social media accounts and groups, as well as computer and mobile applications that track keystrokes, internet traffic, and communications.
“Some employers use that data to manage employee productivity, including disciplining employees who fall short of quotas, penalizing employees for taking leave, and providing individualized directives throughout the workday,” Abruzzo writes.
Amazon, currently in the midst of crushing organizing at its workplaces, is probably the best example of a company that also happens to practice these and more forms of electronic surveillance and automated management. Warehouse workers have consistently cited surveillance as a key motivator for the desire to organize, but Amazon has also deployed its surveillance dragnet to envelop drivers in the name of safety as they’re pushed to deliver at impossible and dangerous rates. Amazon has a secret surveillance program to monitor Flex drivers, which was discovered by Motherboard after a job posting was left up and files for the program were accidentally left online. Assisting all this surveillance are additional implements, specifically systems made to track individual workers in the name of productivity, then punish them the second they fail.
It has long been clear that Amazon’s constant churn has been indispensable to it resisting labor organizing efforts, but an important part of that churn traces back to the surveillance technology embedded in every part of its vast logistics empire that allows it to rationalize and justify the constant firings.
This leads us to Abruzzo's push for what she calls a new framework, in which she wants the NLRB to review surveillance technologies or automated management according to the criteria of whether they'd restrict worker rights or are necessary for a specific and legitimate business need.
Under this framework, employers would be required to disclose more information about the technology (how is it used, who is using it, how it surveils the workers) and that in instances where the company can prove it is not being used to suppress workers’ rights, step in to manage and mitigate the deployment of that technology.
"I will urge the Board to require the employer to disclose to employees the technologies it uses to monitor and manage them, its reasons for doing so, and how it is using the information it obtains," Abruzzo's memo states. "Only with that information can employees intelligently exercise their Section 7 rights and take appropriate measures to protect the confidentiality of their protected activity if they so choose."
Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israeli far-right lawmaker and the head of the Otzma Yehudit party, gives a statement following the exit polls of the 2022 Israeli general election on Nov. 2, 2022, in Jerusalem. (photo: Ilia Yefimovich/Getty)
Even as some in D.C. have expressed concern about the figures in Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition, little is done about the tax-exempt U.S. supporters of Israel’s far right.
This isn’t a Sacha Baron Cohen movie. Chasdei Meir is one arm of a far-right movement whose surging political party, Otzma Yehudit, or Jewish Power, appears to have propelled Benjamin Netanyahu to victory in Israel’s Tuesday election.
According to exit polls, Otzma Yehudit is poised to seize multiple seats in the Israeli parliament. Otzma Yehudit formed an alliance with two other extremist political parties, HaZionut HaDatit and Noam, as part of a coalition to boost Netanyahu. Should the coalition take control, as exit polls suggest it will, Netanyahu will reportedly give its leader Itamar Ben-Gvir a seat in his cabinet.
The party — and its leaders — are famously anti-Arab. On October 13, Ben-Gvir drew his gun in a Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem and told his followers, on camera, to shoot Palestinians. For Ben-Gvir, the provocations against Arabs have proved effective at bolstering his image as Israel’s most hard-line extremist politician — and now a kingmaker in Israeli parliament.
The Jewish supremacists who delivered Netanyahu his victory are the ideological descendants of Meir Kahane, an American-born Zionist and founder of the Jewish Defense League, which has been responsible for bombings on American soil, killings, and attacks on both Arabs and moderate Jews in Israel. Organs of the Kahanist movement have been consistently designated as terror groups by the U.S. and continue to receive funding from a network of U.S. based allies.
For supporters of Israel in America, the ascent of the Kahanists raise troubling political issues. As a Nation investigation detailed in 2019, Chasdei Meir, Otzma Yehudit, and HaZionut HaDatit (also known as National Union or the Religious Zionist Party) are supported by a network of tax-exempt American nonprofits that fund Israeli extremists — many of them based in New Jersey and next door in New York. At least one of the far-right Israeli groups receiving support subsidized by American tax breaks is designated as a terror organization by the U.S.
Many of Israel’s backers in the U.S., however, oppose these groups, and some of them have made it known. At least one liberal Democrat on Capitol Hill who can be relied upon to take Israel’s side has reportedly expressed their concern directly to Netanyahu. Ahead of the elections, Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., a Democrat and the chair of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, reportedly issued a stark warning to Netanyahu in a closed-door meeting: “The composition of such a coalition could seriously erode bipartisan support in Washington, which has been a pillar of the bilateral relationship between the US and Israel.”
In his own backyard, meanwhile, Menendez has looked the other way, remaining silent on the network of tri-state organizations that fund the very groups he opposes. (Menendez’s office did not respond to a request for comment.)
The network of tax-exempt organizations in the U.S. funnels donations to Ben-Gvir and his followers, supporting their efforts to ethnically cleanse Palestinians through violent attacks and illegal settlements. The groups are still registered with the IRS, and filings show that since The Nation’s investigation into donations made in the early 2000s, many of the groups continued raising money into 2020, the most recent year for which records are available. Lawmakers and federal regulators appear to have done little. The Intercept also uncovered a previously unreported nonprofit — Tomchei Tzedaka — tied to the Israeli far right that has raised over $15 million dollars since 2017.
“It is unacceptable that the U.S. government continues to subsidize funds that are used for illegal activities and to fund violent groups operating in Israel-Palestine,” Raed Jarrar, advocacy director at Democracy for the Arab World Now told The Intercept. “This is an issue that has been going on for decades. The fact that there are nonprofits subsidized by America taxpayers that support organizations designated by the U.S. government as terrorist groups shows that Israel continues to be treated in an exceptional way in Washington, D.C.”
Just as a tangled web of U.S.-based support groups fund the Israeli far right, a complex and dizzying network of organizations inside Israel and occupied territories is on the receiving end of those transactions.
Among the main organs of the Kahanist right is Lehava, a 10,000-strong Jewish supremacist organization that has attacked police, committed arson against mixed Jewish-Arab schools, and organized pogroms in Arab neighborhoods. Lehava shares its headquarters with Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party, and Ben-Gvir, a lawyer, has represented members of the group tried for crimes against Arabs. In addition to its political and activist wings, the movement has a religious arm: Yeshivat HaRa’ayon HaYehudi, or the Jewish Idea, which is classified as a terrorist organization by the U.S. due to its affiliation with Kahane’s ideology.
Groups associated with Kahanism were delisted from the State Department’s official Foreign Terrorist Organizations list this year, but remain classified as Specially Designated Global Terrorists under Executive Order 13224, which allows the U.S. to block any financial support. Michael Ben-Ari, a leader of both the Otzma Yehudit party and the Yeshivat HaRa’ayon HaYehudi, was denied entry to the U.S. in 2012 for his terrorist affiliations.
The name “Jewish Idea” is itself drawn from the terrorist organization founded by Kahane in 1987. In addition to the yeshiva, a host of groups in Israel, the occupied territories, and the U.S. use the name. One such U.S. group, Friends of HaRaayon Hayehudi, is based in Skokie, Illinois. The group coordinates with its counterpart, the Charity of Light Fund, Inc., first registered in New Jersey in 2001. As recently as 2020, both U.S. organizations have donated to the Yeshivat HaRa’ayon HaYehudi in Israel, despite the terror listings.
Many top officials in the network of Kahanist groups have a history of violence. Levi Chazan, a director of both Friends of HaRaayon Hayehudi and the Charity of Light Fund, was convicted of shooting nine Palestinians in Ramallah in 1984. Chazan also works with the Kahanist organization Chemla in Israel, which counts multiple operatives in Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party as employees. Among them is Ben-Zion Gopstein, who runs Lehava and was indicted in Israel on terrorism charges in 2019 for inciting violence against Arabs. The vigilante anti-miscegenation group Chasdei Meir, named after Meir Kahane, lists Chazan as a member. The organization says he runs a home to “save” Jewish women.
The U.S. donation button on Lehava’s website redirects to the Tomchei Tzedaka Corp, registered in Lakewood, New Jersey. According to tax filings, Tomchei Tzedaka has raised over $16 million dollars in donations since 2017, with most of the funds being passed on to undisclosed organizations in Israel. When reached for comment, a representative of Tomchei Tzedaka told The Intercept that he could not speak on the relationship between Tomchei Tzedaka and Lehava due to “Rabbinic law.”
Despite funneling millions of dollars to the Yeshivat HaRa’ayon HaYehudi and its affiliated groups in Israel, none of the U.S.-based nonprofits or donors to these organizations have faced federal oversight for their actions. The exception is the New York-based Central Fund of Israel, which was forced to temporarily halt its activities supporting Lehava and other extremist-aligned organizations in 2014 after an IRS investigation instigated by research and advocacy from T’ruah, a Jewish human rights group.
Despite the well-documented history of violence swirling around the figures who returned Netanyahu to the prime minister’s office, one member of Congress, Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., spoke out forcefully against Otzma Yehudit in the run-up to the election. “As #Israel heads towards another election in November, I urge Israeli political leaders from all sides of the political spectrum to ostracize extremists like Itamar Ben-Gvir whose outrageous views run contrary to Israel’s core principles of a democratic and Jewish state.” Sherman tweeted. “These extremists undermine #Israel’s interests and the U.S.-Israel relationship, which I and my colleagues have worked to strengthen.”
All the glaciers in Yosemite and the ice patches in Yellowstone National Park, as well as the few glaciers left in Africa, are on track to belts due to global warming. (photo: AP)
Even if global warming is limited to just 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), which now seems unlikely, all the glaciers in Yosemite and the ice patches in Yellowstone National Park, as well as the few glaciers left in Africa, will be lost.
Other glaciers can be saved only if greenhouse gas emissions “are drastically cut” and global warming is capped at 1.5 degrees Celsius, the Paris-based UNESCO warned in its report.
“This report is a call to action,” UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay said in a statement and linked the report to United Nations Climate Change Conference, known as COP27, which is set to begin in Egypt next week. “COP27 will have a crucial role to help find solutions to this issue.”
About 50 of the organization’s more than 1,150 World Heritage sites have glaciers, which together constitute almost a tenth of the world’s glaciered area.
The almost 19,000 glaciers located at heritage sites are losing more than 60 billion tons of ice a year, which amounts to the annual water consumption of Spain and France combined, and accounts for about 5 percent of global sea-level rise, UNESCO said.
“Glaciers are retreating at an accelerated rate worldwide,” said Tales Carvalho Resende, a hydrology expert with UNESCO.
The organization described a “cycle of warming” in which the melting of glaciers causes the emergence of darker surfaces, which then absorb even more heat and speed up the retreat of ice.
Besides drastic cuts in emissions, the UNESCO report calls for better monitoring of glaciers and the use of early warning mechanisms to respond to natural disasters, including floods caused by bursting glacial lakes. Such floods have already cost thousands of lives and may have partly fueled Pakistan’s catastrophic inundations this year.
While there have been some local attempts to reduce melt rates — for example, by covering the ice with blankets — Carvalho Resende cautioned that scaling up those experiments “might be extremely challenging, because of costs but also because most glaciers are really difficult to access.”
Throughout history, glaciers have grown during very cold periods and shrunk when those stretches ended. The world’s last very cold period ended over 10,000 years ago, and some further natural melting was expected in Europe after the last “Little Ice Age” ended in the 19th century.
But as carbon dioxide emissions surged over the past century, human factors began to quicken what had been expected to be a gradual natural retreat. In Switzerland, glaciers lost a record 6 percent of their volume just this year.
While the additional melting has to some extent balanced out other impacts of climate change — for instance, preventing rivers from drying out despite heat waves — it is rapidly reaching a critical threshold, according to UNESCO.
In its report, the organization writes that the peak in meltwater may already have been passed on many smaller glaciers, where the water is now starting to dwindle.
If the trend continues, the organization warned, “little to no base flow will be available during the dryer periods.”
The changes are expected to have major ramifications for agriculture, biodiversity, and urban life. “Glaciers are crucial sources of life on Earth,” UNESCO wrote.
“They provide water resources to at least half of humanity,” said Carvalho Resende, who cautioned that the cultural losses would also be immense.
Around the world, global warming is exposing ancient artifacts faster than they can be saved by archaeologists.
“Some of these glaciers are sacred places, which are really important for Indigenous peoples and local communities,” he said.
UNESCO cited the example of the centuries-old Snow Star Festival in the Peruvian Andes, which has already been impacted by ice loss. Spiritual leaders once shared blocks of glacier ice with pilgrims, but the practice was stopped when locals noticed the rapid retreat in recent years.
Small glaciers at low or medium altitudes will be the first to disappear. UNESCO said ice-loss rates in small glaciered areas “more than doubled from the early 2000s to the late 2010s.”
This matches observations from researchers who have studied the retreat of glaciers. Matthias Huss, a European glaciologist, said scientists had seen “very strong melting in the last two decades” in Switzerland.
At the same time, there are fewer and fewer places cold enough for glaciers to actually grow. “Nowadays, the limit where glaciers can still form new ice is at about 3,000 meters [about 9,840 feet],” he said, explaining that in recent decades that altitude has risen several hundred meters.
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