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Charles Pierce | So Which Republicans Are Seriously Going to Serve on This Trump Insurrection Commission?
Charles Pierce, Esquire
Pierce writes: "There is no more terrifying term for people who actually want to know what happened than 'blue-ribbon commission.'"
What we saw Saturday was a profile in cowardice. Had there been a secret ballot, the Senate vote to convict Donald Trump likely would have been overwhelming.
hen asked what the Constitutional Convention had created, Benjamin Franklin replied, “A Republic if we can keep it.”
On Saturday, by an unprecedented bipartisan vote of 57-43, the Senate voted to keep the Republic and convict Donald Trump of his seditious incitement of the sacking of the Capitol.
Sadly, that vote did not meet the constitutional requirement of a two-third vote for conviction because 43 Republican senators chose to save their careers over saving the Republic. This was a profile in cowardice. Had there been a secret ballot, the vote to convict would likely have been overwhelming.
America, we say, is the land of the free and the home of the brave, but a vast majority of Republican senators reside in the land of fear and the home of the cowed. During the Civil War, the nation chose to save the Republic. Americans lost more lives than in any other war to defeat the Confederates, end their sedition and free the slaves.
On Jan. 6, the new Confederates stormed the Capitol, some bearing the flags of the Confederacy, some bearing the flags of Trump who — intent on overturning an election that he lost badly — sold them the lie that the election had been stolen. Trump assembled the mob, targeted the mob and set it on the Capitol to stop the certification of the election and the peaceful transfer of power. The senators and Trump’s own vice president were their target. The Capitol was sacked. Brave officers died and were wounded struggling to defend it.
And 43 Republican senators chose to stand with the seditionists rather than defend the Republic.
They betray their own party’s history. It was Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president, who led the forces fighting to keep the Union together — and against the confederates who wanted to divide it. It was Lincoln’s adversary, Jefferson Davis, who led those who would destroy the Republic. This year, the majority of Republicans in the Senate and House chose to stand with Donald Trump, the modern-day Jefferson Davis.
These are the same senators who send the sons and daughters of working families across the world to risk their lives fighting against terrorists or fighting against regimes they do not like. Yet when the terrorists are home-grown and the would-be tyrant leads their own party, they choose not to stand up. They fear losing their seats more than losing the Republic itself.
These conclusions are inescapable. The facts of Trump’s sedition are not in dispute. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell admitted as much, even after voting to acquit. The House managers — led by Rep. Jamie Raskin (whom I am proud to say once served as counsel to the Rainbow Coalition) and the formidable Rep. Stacey Plaskett — put forth an irrefutable case. Trump’s sedition — the effort to overturn a presidential election and end a 200-year history of peaceful elections — struck at the very heart of the Republic’s existence.
There is no explanation other than self-interest and cowardice to stand with Trump and the mob against the Republic and democratic elections.
America is now in a fierce struggle for the very survival of its democracy. A majority of Republican senators stood with the sedition. The Republicans who had the courage to vote for conviction have been censured by their state Republican parties. Across the country, Republican office holders — understanding that they are a minority party — are moving systematically to make voting more difficult, to purge voter rolls, to close polling stations in minority areas, to gerrymander districts, to open the sluice gates to secret money. They want only those they consider “real Americans” to be able to have their votes count.
And now they embrace and defend a leader whose attack on the Constitution he was sworn to defend is an act of treachery without precedent in our history.
Americans must now decide if they will continue to elect those who will not stand up for the Republic. They may rig the rules and tilt the playing field, but the decision will still be in our hands. Let us hope that with Ben Franklin and the Founders we decide to keep the Republic and continue to build a more perfect Union.
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A bill in Montana would protect thousands of acres of public land and could help Joe Biden obtain his 30 by 30 goal. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty)
'America, Send Us Your Ideas': Biden Pledges to Protect 30% of Us Lands by 2030
Hannah Chinn, Guardian UK
Chinn writes: "It was an executive order that made waves in environmental circles: after only a week in office, President Joe Biden pledged to preserve 30% of US lands and waters by 2030."
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Conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh passed away at age 70. (photo: Getty)
Rush Limbaugh, Conservative Radio Provocateur and Cultural Phenomenon, Dies at 70
Marc Fisher, The Washington Post
Fisher writes: "Rush Limbaugh, who deployed comic bombast and relentless bashing of liberals, feminists and environmentalists to become the nation's most popular radio talk-show host and lead the Republican Party into a politics of anger and obstruction, died Feb. 17 at 70."
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'Everything I do is through a racial justice lens,' says first-term Congress member Cori Bush. (photo: Stefani Reynolds/Getty)
8 First-Term House Members Explain How They Plan to Prioritize Racial Justice
Fabiola Cineas and Li Zhou, Vox
Excerpt: "From reforming police funding to setting up postal banking, these progressives say racial justice is at the core of their work."
ust one year ago, America was not ready to consider the possibilities of bold racial justice reform. Discussion of reparations, a system that would redress the country’s oldest sin of slavery, or universal basic income, a guarantee of economic security, were just talking points on the campaign trail for candidates vying to be president.
It would take the acutely distressing events of the following months to help the nation acknowledge the merits of progressive ideals. Those events include a destructive pandemic that has now claimed close to half a million lives, a debilitating economic crisis that hit low-income people and essential workers the hardest, and racial justice protests that galvanized millions against the brutal police killings of Black Americans.
The federal government distributed stimulus checks as respite, but it quickly became clear that one-time payments wouldn’t be enough. Longer-term investments in working Americans and those who’ve been hit hardest by systemic inequalities would be necessary to ensure stability.
Activists, along with a handful of progressive lawmakers, have been organizing for such bold action — increased minimum wage, Medicare-for-all, the Green New Deal, tuition-free public college, paid family leave — with slow gains. But the caucus advocating for these reforms has only grown bigger.
The Congressional Progressive Caucus, now made up of almost 100 members, is not interested in compromising its values and playing it safe. As caucus chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) wrote in January, “It’s clear that too many people no longer believe that government has done enough to help lift all boats. ... The solution to this is clear: a progressive agenda that makes a transformative difference in people’s lives. Biden’s platform was the most progressive of any recent nominee because our movement worked with his campaign to push forward bold policies.”
Exactly how many progressive priorities can pass this term is still an open question. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has previously said that key agenda items include Covid-19 relief, a green infrastructure bill, and voting rights legislation — all of which could well be shaped heavily by progressive demands.
“‘The Squad’ is growing, as is the Congressional Progressive Caucus,” Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) told Vox. “But the Squad is not just a few members of Congress. It’s the millions of people across the country who want to see transformative change and are with us in spirit in the halls of Congress.”
Vox spoke to eight new progressive Congress members — from Cori Bush, who was a registered nurse and activist in Ferguson, to Kai Kahele, a former military pilot and educator — about how they intend to prioritize racial justice and plan to wield their power as a bloc to move these ideas forward. Their ambitious proposals would address racial disparities across several areas, including education, banking, and policing. Their remarks have been edited for length and clarity.
Rep. Jamaal Bowman (NY-16): Holistic education reform
I’ve spent my life serving children in communities that have been harmed and marginalized by policy. I’ve seen their brilliance go unnoticed and unnurtured. I look forward to introducing holistic education with an unapologetic racial justice lens — legislation that is intersectional and centers children’s holistic needs in ways that haven’t been done before. We will work to undo that harm but also expose the majestic brilliance in each child.
As it stands, America is failing many of our students in public schooling. In 2016, majority-minority school districts received $23 billion less in funding than their majority-white counterparts. That’s a two-tiered system of educational apartheid, which works to uphold white supremacy. I’ve seen firsthand how denial of educational resources can stunt a child’s curiosity [and] growth and prevent them from reaching their full potential.
We need to replace standardized testing and punishment with nurturing and care. That starts with paying a living wage to our public school teachers so that teachers from all socioeconomic backgrounds can pursue the profession, allowing Black and brown kids to have instructors who they see themselves in. We also must fund full-time nurses and social workers, not cops, in our schools, and give them resources to care for children rather than criminalizing them from a young age. We need to invest at least $3 billion into opening at least 25,000 community schools to make educational equity a reality.
“The Squad” is growing, as is the Congressional Progressive Caucus. But the Squad is not just a few members of Congress. It’s the millions of people across the country who want to see transformative change and are with us in spirit in the halls of Congress. This can be a new reconstruction moment for our country, and we’ll use every tool available to make that happen.
Rep. Cori Bush (MO-01): Policing reform that shakes up local, state, and federal budgets
Everything I do is through a racial justice lens. In the 117th Congress, we have a mandate to legislate in defense of Black lives. I am eager to end systemic police violence that disproportionately kills Black and brown people across St. Louis and communities across our country. I believe we need to shift funding away from policing and reinvest in the people and communities who need it most. For me, that starts with redirecting policing budgets to fund schools, housing, and health care.
We are at the intersection of the most devastating pandemic in over a century, an economic crisis that has millions at risk of eviction, and a racial justice reckoning. We have to meet this moment with bold ideas that will make it so entire communities aren’t lost or devastated as a result of inaccessible health care or unaffordable housing. We need to prioritize those among us who have the least: the uninsured, unhoused, undocumented, incarcerated, and those who are unable to have their material needs met.
We need to guarantee basic dignity. Let’s start by giving $2,000 monthly and retroactive survival checks to everyone. Let’s start by ensuring that people aren’t removed from their homes because they’ve been out of work and can’t afford back rent or mortgages. People need direct cash relief, and as a progressive movement, we’re united in the fight to ensure everyone has the resources they need to make it through this crisis.
Rep. Ritchie Torres (NY-15): Housing vouchers for all
My greatest passion is public housing. I would not be where I am today were it not for public housing and the stability it gave me and my family. The New York City Housing Authority, which manages public housing in New York City, houses a population larger than that of most large cities — about half a million New Yorkers. And how I think about it is, if NYCHA were a city unto itself, it would be the largest city of low-income Black and brown Americans in the United States.
The neglect of public housing has been ground zero for systemic racism, and the federal government has systematically starved NYCHA of federal funding of about $40 billion in cash. There are children who have been poisoned by lead because of the federal government, or senior citizens who have been left freezing in their homes during the bitter cold of winter because of the federal government.
I’m on a mission to ensure that public housing gets its fair share of federal funding; the federal government should be required by law to fully fund public housing. It should no longer be subject to the annual appropriation because housing is so fundamental.
I’m deeply committed to the vision of housing as a human right. The best tool for making housing not only a human right but also a universal reality is what I call housing vouchers for all. Every person in need should have access to a Section 8 voucher, which would guarantee that they pay no more than 30 percent of their household income toward rent.
President Biden’s executive order on fair housing is a starting point, but it’s hardly enough. Systemic racism has been a reality in America for 400 years, since the beginning of slavery. And in those 400 years, we are as close as we’ve ever been to confronting the root causes of systemic racism. We’re much more conscious of race, and we’re much more committed to centering racial equity. The president is striking the right tone, but the executive order he issued on racial equity should only be the beginning.
This next generation of elected officials is more disruptive and willing to speak out when necessary — “good trouble,” in the words of John Lewis. A Democratic presidency, a Democratic Senate, and a Democratic House represent the makings of an FDR moment over the next few years. We owe it to the American people to make the most of it, or else shame on us.
Rep. Mondaire Jones (NY-17): Supreme Court expansion
We must expand the size of the Supreme Court and look at Court expansion as a racial justice issue. This would unrig our democracy and ensure that all of the legislation that the democratically controlled House and Senate, and the president, enact will be upheld and constitutional.
There is a 6-3 hyperpartisan conservative majority on the Supreme Court that is hostile to democracy itself, and we would be foolish to think that this 6-3 majority is somehow neutral in its deliberations of cases challenging statutes that Congress has enacted.
Court expansion is a racial justice issue when you look at how the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in the 2013 Shelby decision. It’s also an issue of reproductive freedom when you look at how this Court now has a majority that does not believe in a woman’s right to choose. And, of course, court expansion is an issue of LGBTQ+ rights and justice.
We must take a holistic view of systemic racism that is not just rooted in policing reform. Obviously, we’re in this moment of unprecedented recognition of racism in policing in this country. However, systemic racism extends even beyond reforming our criminal legal system to include the way that we fund public education in this country, for example. We must have a broad conception of systemic racism, and we must tackle systemic racism on all fronts, not just on the ones that popularly come to mind.
Rep. Marie Newman (IL-03): Postal banking to improve access to capital
A huge intersection of racial inequity and income inequity is the access to capital, and that almost a third of our nation is underbanked or unbanked. And so I’m very excited about postal and public banking — to make sure that people have a place where they can create their own wealth and have it be sustainable.
We know Black and brown communities are disproportionately affected by being underbanked or unbanked. The Covid-19 pandemic and the distribution of stimulus relief have highlighted these gross inequities.
Americans with bank accounts receive stimulus funds electronically, with the money available in mere seconds. And those businesses who have relationships with major financial institutions receive access to business assistance loans first. However, the underbanked and unbanked wait for weeks — months, in some cases — to receive assistance, forcing many Americans and small businesses into desperate situations.
Legislation on postal banking would establish the USPS to provide basic checking, savings, bill payment, and short-term credit solutions to working people and small businesses, further ensuring that relief passed by Congress in the future is delivered quickly to the American people who are relying on it the most to survive.
I’m currently working with colleagues in the House and Senate who have previously worked on legislation regarding postal banking as part of a collaborative effort to build on past progress and further ensure financial inclusion for unbanked and underbanked Americans as we work toward an equitable economic recovery.
Solving racial inequity is not a silo. It’s not a section or a place. Racism is a part of every minute of every hour of every day. So we have to embed policy that addresses the issue, in every minute of every hour of every day, in every single policy we do.
Rep. Kai Kahele (HI-02): Education access for Indigenous children
I am excited to advocate to strengthen and diversify support of Indigenous children. Although I am still working on the details of what this advocacy will look like in practical policy, I’m interested in 1) building incentives for Indigenous-based early learning options, including dual language programs and classrooms focused on Indigenous culture; 2) encouraging more Native students to pursue fields where we are historically underrepresented, especially in decision-making positions, by supporting debt-free college and ensuring that schools with high populations of Indigenous children are given the tools necessary to apply and succeed in college; and 3) supporting policy and federal funding which will further assist in the revitalization of Indigenous languages in the United States.
Racial justice and true equity require complex, varied policy approaches. I believe that our nation needs to heal and that we can only do that by confronting the way our history is intertwined with racism and colonialism. As a Native Hawaiian, I’m particularly interested in advocating for multifaceted legislation that will target increased supports for Native people, including empowering Native peoples’ role in the economy, improving education opportunities and outcomes, and addressing the disproportionate impact of the criminal justice and carceral systems on people of color.
I believe that we must make strides for all people impacted by the racism that pervades our society. I’m especially interested in making sure any policymaking we develop considers and addresses Indigenous and Pacific Islander communities.
Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez (NM-03): Climate policy that prioritizes environmental justice
I intend to tackle climate change, and focus on what we need to do here in New Mexico, like regulating methane emissions and building out a green energy grid. Focusing on a local problem contributes to solving a planetary crisis.
We must not treat those communities, whether they be coal-, oil-, and gas-producing [communities] that fueled America’s rise, as sacrifice zones. I am working on legislation to ensure the people of New Mexico — especially our Native American, Latino, and rural communities — have a prominent role in our clean energy economy.
This means promoting clean energy development on our public lands and working with tribal nations to ensure they have the tools and resources necessary to deploy clean energy. Not only should we promote clean energy, but we need to support transmission — or what I like to call a Route 66 — of solar and wind to power other parts of the country.
It’s critical that we take advantage of the economic opportunity that clean energy presents, and it’s on us to ensure that we don’t leave behind the people and communities that fueled our nation.
One example is legislation I intend to lead on that addresses the environmental legacy of oil and gas operations and regulates methane emissions from ongoing oil and gas development. We can put New Mexicans back to work plugging the more than 700 orphaned oil and gas wells in the state, or installing equipment at oil and gas sites to curb venting, leaks, and other sources of methane emissions.
These projects would provide employment opportunities for current or former oil and gas industry workers, while delivering cleaner air and water for communities across New Mexico.
We should place a racial and equitable justice lens on every bill we put forward. Our country is strongest when we value all of our diverse communities.
Rep. Nikema Williams (GA-05): Expanding voting rights access
We can’t begin to address the new ideas until we handle the old business the country has failed to settle. Fifty-six years after the Voting Rights Act was signed into law, we are still talking about people being denied at the ballot box. The ideas that I bring to Congress may seem new, but people of color have dealt with voter suppression and systemic racism for centuries.
My first priority is to push for the passage of HR 1, to advance access to the ballot box. Every year, we witness the suppression tactics used to strip people who look like me of their right to participate in our democracy. It is a shame that in 2021 we are still talking about voting rights. Now is the time to put an end to it. Your access to the ballot box should not be determined by your zip code or bank account.
Minority voters turned out in record-shattering numbers in the November election, and it was too much to bear for white supremacists. All they could do was attempt to silence the voices of millions of Americans. The January 6 domestic terrorist attack on the US Capitol showed how far we have to go to build the “Beloved Community” my friend and predecessor Congressman John Lewis envisioned. Luckily, our democracy is stronger than their threats of violence and conspiracy theories.
Each generation has an obligation to move us one step closer to the promise of America for all, and I intend to do just that.
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Automation at a manufacturing plant. (photo: iStock)
Under Capitalism, "Labor-Saving" Technology Only Adds to Our Workload
Peter Schadt and Hans Zobel, Jacobin
Excerpt: "Robots might increase labor productivity. But whether this means more free time for the employees or unemployment for some and stress for others is not a question of technology but of the wider economy."
Upon its launch ten years ago, Germany's Industry 4.0 program promised a fourth industrial revolution changing the way we work. Yet for all the talk of novelty, it followed age-old capitalist imperatives: using labor-saving technology not to lessen our workload but subject us to even tighter workplace discipline.
he term Industry 4.0 was first introduced ten years ago in Germany at the Hanover Messe, one of the world’s largest trade fairs. Heralding a “fourth industrial revolution,” this PR label quickly become a well-known brand name for the German state’s political and economic program. The economic basis of this program is often referred to as digitalization. On the technical level, this means enabling new production processes through internet-based machine-to-machine communication, artificial intelligence, and computer vision.
Both digitalization and Industry 4.0 should also be of interest for the US left. The reason is simple: In the United States, too, working conditions are deteriorating and digitalization is widely blamed for all of this. And just like in Germany, this new increase in productive power is used to drive imperialism forward. So, for Industry 4.0’s tenth birthday, here’s ten theses on why it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
1. Digitalization Doesn’t Do a Damn Thing.
In the public debate we find repeated claims like “digitization will fundamentally change the way we work.” Not only should workers be reachable any time a digital meeting is due; at the same time, up to 50 percent of all the jobs in the United States are threatened by digitization. These assumptions are common, but nonetheless mistaken.
Digital technology makes it possible, among other things, to work from anywhere. But if employees have to check work-related emails around the clock, they don’t do it because of the smartphone in their pocket but because of the demands of their superiors. Robots might increase labor productivity. But whether this means more free time for the employees or unemployment for some and stress for others is not a question of technology but of the wider economy. It’s not about how or what is produced but for what purpose.
Digitalization doesn’t do anything. It is an expletive. This might sound complicated, but actually everyone knows expletives from everyday language. In the phrase “it’s raining,” everyone knows that there is no “it” that is raining. Rather, the “it” stands for a certain weather condition. All the talk of digitalization usually ignores which subject is putting digitalization into practice and for what reasons. Who gets or keeps their job, what this job looks like, and how it is paid, all depend on the decisions made by capitalists — and not on technology. Capital digitizes the world for its own purposes.
2. Productivity Is Rising . . .
There are a lot of new and not-so-new technical devices. Thanks to the internet, they can now all be linked with one another. This “Internet of Things” links machines not only with one another but also with their products. In these “smart factories,” more goods are produced with significantly less work. In short: productivity increases. So much for the good news.
If you are very optimistic about technology, this fact may lead you to a number of conclusions: This makes it possible to reduce working hours! We will all have more free time and live healthier lives! And we will also produce in a more environmentally friendly way, because of waste reduction.
But the reality is that new digital technologies, as technologies, have no inevitable social consequences. Whether, through productivity increases, the workload decreases for everyone or increases for some while others lose their jobs is a question of economy, not technology. But even this is only half the truth.
3. Productivity Gains Serve Profits Alone.
The bad news is that productivity increases are purely there to help companies cut costs — and thereby gain competitive advantages. New technology is only introduced if it is worthwhile for the company.
Anyone who thinks that technological progress in capitalist society is innocent, and can be rolled out at will, forgets that the only reason for increasing productivity in this system is to increase profits. This always comes at the expense of the workers who have to generate these profits by working with the new machinery.
Productivity in capitalism has its peculiarities. It does not measure the ratio of labor to income but that of invested capital to realized profit. This means that with new machinery, work actually increases and intensifies. The capitalist isn’t out to reduce human effort, but rather to maximize his profit by increasing the efficiency of his capital.
4. There’s More Workplace Stress.
Capitalist progress produces odd results: it actually increases work stress — and even more so in the digital age. What Karl Marx described for the conditions of industrialization in Das Kapital now repeats itself on a technically superior level. Armed with laptop and digital equipment, the individual employee now commands a larger machine park than ever before. This can also be noticed at the assembly line: More is produced in less time. Every mistake is even more significant. This causes what Marx in his day called an increased “contraction of labor.”
Marx also pointed out the increasingly dense “filling of the pores of working time.” Unfortunately, this is still true today. The more expensive the digital machines that are purchased, the more economically sensible it is to use them without interruption. The same applies to the wageworkers themselves. For examples, today’s logisticians at Amazon have become so-called pickers: with a GPS around their wrists, they navigate the shortest distance through the warehouse. Their superiors receive a message if they leave the route without permission — even if they just want to talk to colleagues for once or take a short toilet break.
5. Agitate, Educate.
So, what to do when capital shapes digitization according to its interests and labor only appears as a means of profit? The realization that technology is only developed and used for capital is a rejection of illusions about the beneficial effects of digital machine parks. It is the indication that the consequences of the new technology are actually quite harmful for those who have to work with it. However, this is due not to digitalization but the fundamental arithmetic of the capitalist system. That is why there is need not for a new Luddism but an organized “No!” to a life being reduced to nothing but variable capital.
So, if you do not want to be degraded to a bit or byte of the digital machinery, you should study how this economy works and why it is always the same who benefit from increases in productivity — namely, those who acquire the new technology as capital and not those who have to work with the new technology. As long as things stay that way, there are very narrow limits to the use of technology.
6. Industry 4.0 Is a Program for German Supremacy.
As if all this wasn’t uncomfortable enough, now the birthday boy comes into play. Since 2011, German politicians have made these new technologies and their economic application a top priority: with billions in investments, digital infrastructure is provided that supports research. In addition, an alliance is being forged between industry, research institutions, and the state: the “Platform for Industry 4.0.” The American rival project, the “Industrial Internet Consortium,” was founded three years later, in March 2014.
This is also the difference between digitization and Industry 4.0. While the former describes the ideological version of the new wave of increased productivity of capital, Industry 4.0 describes a program of the German government that aims to catapult German capital to the top of the world market using this technology. Industry 4.0 is therefore a political and economic program.
7. The German Project Has Become a European One.
The year 2014 saw the start of Europe’s “Digital Agenda.” Six years later, the European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen proclaimed the goal of “digital sovereignty.” This goal not only requires the expansion of digital infrastructure across Europe but also a common European legal framework. The aim is to turn Europe into a large single market for digital technologies so that companies can use this market and grow accordingly. After all, they are to take on US companies like Amazon, Google, and Facebook or Chinese giants like Ali Baba.
This German program, however, increasingly meets opposition in the EU itself. If national rights are standardized across Europe, the companies with the greatest capital power will prevail in the new homogeneous market. And those are mainly the German ones. This causes resentment among the European partners. In October 2020, Michael Roth, minister of state for Europe in the German Foreign Office, let everyone know what he thinks of those objections by smaller EU countries: they would just have to “overcome the national small statehood” and “bundle the Europe-wide sprawl of programs and strategies in a common policy.”
Elegantly enough, Roth equated German and European interests in order to denigrate any objection to the project for German capital as national particularism. The small states, however, have a choice: either they turn their backs on the EU and its leading nation, Germany, and thus immediately give up competition for the world market, or they accept their shabby role as a sales market for German products or as a workbench for German companies in order to “participate” in potential global market gains.
8. Data Protection Laws Are an Economic Strategy.
This inner-European contradiction reproduces on a higher level in the competition with China and the United States. Germany likes to boast about its comparatively strict data protection laws, but the reason for this should also be looked at. While the German Industry 4.0 relies particularly on the networking of factories, the United States, with Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Google, and Microsoft, are far ahead when it comes to business-to-consumer technology — the use of consumer data for business. So, Europe has particularly tough rules where it hits foreign capital.
In Europe, whose free market benefits mostly German capital, the German government regards the legislation of its partner countries as reflective of mere “small state mentality.” But where US capital is superior, Europe will defend its own rules against the United States — but this should not be regarded as narrow-minded European particularism against the rest of the world but rather a sign of adherence to ethical principles.
At least that’s the impression you get, if you follow Germany’s Europe minister: “Our path must focus on the individual, build on clear ethical principles, high data protection and security standards and freedom of expression, and contribute to more democratic participation, prosperity and freedom.” In this way we are clearly differentiating ourselves from the data capitalism of US tech giants and the Chinese model with state control and digital repression. Because nowhere is the focus more on the individual than in Europe, where Daimler organizes its production via the German SAP systems and not via Microsoft.
9. The EU, United States, and China Are Fighting for Global Market Dominance.
However, in the last decade the EU was not alone in launching a project for digital sovereignty. All over the world, nations support their domestic capital in the competition for growth with appropriate programs. In the United States, the industrial internet took off around the same time as its German counterpart. Under Trump, for example, many US states have become huge experimental fields for autonomous vehicles, one of the digital technologies in which the capitals with the most test miles also have the best chance of dominating the market in the future. So, the American auto industry can finally catch up with the German one. May Germany become the next Detroit!
Under the Trump administration, attacks on Chinese capital increased. One prominent example in the IT sector was the US government’s offensive against TikTok. The ban on the platform, which has a few million users in the United States, was averted only because Trump “agreed” with the Chinese owner Bytedance to transfer its US business to a company presumably based in Texas.
In recent years, China has risen from being the “extended workbench” of the West to becoming its fiercest competitor. With its “China 2025” program and its recent update in 2020, the Middle Kingdom aims to reach the top. With its strategy of “dual cycles,” China wants to strengthen its domestic market (cycle one) and intensify its cooperation with other Asian countries on the field of digitalization (cycle two) in order to intensify the trade war against the United States.
With all these measures, China pursues the same goal as the European Union and the United States: to dominate the world market as a leading technological power.
10. Organize.
In this way, digitalization connects the shop floor with the imperialism of the world powers. For both — economy and politics — the workers being digitized are the human resource in this latest edition of the world market competition. The theses have shown the serious consequences this has for them. Now, it’s up to them to put an end to it.
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Buddhist monks and nuns display pictures of detained Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi. (photo: AP
Myanmar's Suu Kyi Faces Indefinite Detention Under New Charge as Crackdown Intensifies
Associated Press
Excerpt: "Police in Myanmar filed a new charge against deposed leader Aung San Suu Kyi, her lawyer said Tuesday, as the military authorities who seized power in a coup intensified their crackdown against their opponents."
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Sea Shepherd crew members with an illegal gillnet retrieved from the Sea of Cortez. (photo: David Reina/Sea Shepard)
In the Fight to Save the Endangered Vaquita, Conservationists Take on Cartels
Elizabeth Claire Alberts, Mongabay
Excerpt: "The critically endangered vaquita porpoise, a species endemic to the Sea of Cortez in the Upper Gulf of California in Mexico, is at severe risk of extinction due to illegal gillnet fishing for the critically endangered totoaba fish."
rom above, the Sea of Cortez is a picture of serenity: turquoise waters lapping against rose-tinted bluffs and soft sand beaches. But down below, beneath the water’s surface, a war is raging.
Each year, typically between late November and May, huge gillnets — some stretching more than 600 meters (2,000 feet), or the length of five and a half football fields — are dropped into the waters to catch totoaba (Totoaba macdonaldi). This critically endangered species is illegally fished for its prized swim bladders, which can fetch prices between $20,000 and $80,000 per kilo in China. While gillnets are highly effective at catching totoaba, they also catch just about everything else, including another critically endangered species: the vaquita (Phocoena sinus).
The vaquita is a bathtub-sized porpoise with silvery-gray skin and panda-like eyes that lives exclusively in a small section of the northern Gulf of California, close to the town of San Felipe in Baja California, Mexico. Right now, experts say there may only be about nine vaquitas left, despite the Mexican government spending more than $100 million to aid its recovery.
“The vaquita issue, in my opinion, is an example of epic, epic failure of conservation,” Andrea Crosta, executive director of Earth League International (ELI), an NGO that investigates wildlife crime, told Mongabay in an interview. “I don’t think rhinos and elephants combined have $100 million … and yet the vaquitas went from a few hundred individuals to … nobody knows how many now. Probably 12, 10, maybe less.”
But Crosta says it’s not the fishers deploying the gillnets that are the biggest threat to the vaquitas — it’s the people organizing the illegal trade of totoabas behind the scenes. They’re the ones placing the gillnets into the fishermen’s hands, he said.
“They’re very expensive nets, so the fishermen, or the fishing cooperatives, in order to start, they don’t have the money to pay for … nets at $3,000 to $4,000 apiece,” Crosta said. “So they get the money from the traffickers so they are in debt to them. The little bit of totoaba that they get is used to repay the nets. And that’s why, sometimes they [the traffickers] kill them, because they cannot repay them.”
While Crosta says the key to saving the vaquita is fighting against organized crime, other NGOs have focused their efforts on monitoring the Sea of Cortez for illegal gillnet use or placing international pressure on the Mexican government through seafood sanctions.
There may be multiple approaches to try and save the near-extinct vaquita, but there’s one thing that nearly everyone seems to agree upon: what happens this year could decide the vaquita’s fate. Either the imperiled porpoise will stage a recovery, or it will make its final and precipitous dive toward extinction.
‘It’s a difficult situation’
The totoaba fishing craze began in the Sea of Cortez in the 1920s. The marine fish was originally caught for its meat, but a Chinese market developed for its swim bladder, which is believed to have medicinal value, although this claim hasn’t been scientifically proven.
By 1975, the species had become so overfished that the Mexican government permanently banned the fishing of totoaba, which was listed as an endangered species by the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service three years later. A couple of decades after that, it was also classified as critically endangered by the IUCN. Yet totoaba fishing has persisted, with swim bladders being regularly smuggled out of Mexico and sold in China through a thriving black market. In the process, countless vaquitas have gotten tangled up in the gillnets intended not only for the totoaba, but also for shrimp and other fish species in the Sea of Cortez.
In 1997, it was estimated that there were about 567 vaquitas left in the Sea of Cortez. A decade later, their numbers had dwindled down to 245, a 57% decline. By 2014, the population had dropped another 60% to 97. The following year, the Mexican government banned all gillnet fishing in an effort to save both the vaquita and the totoaba — but vaquita numbers, in particular, kept falling. In 2015, experts said there were only about 60 individuals left.
The latest published estimate of the vaquita population stated that as of the summer of 2018, there were fewer than 19 individuals left. Lorenzo Rojas-Bracho, head of marine mammal research and conservation with the Mexican government’s National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP by its Spanish acronym), said a new study, which has yet to be published, puts the figure at around nine individuals, including three calves. However, he said that getting an exact number isn’t easy.
“Let’s say, for example, that you have a room full of marbles,” Rojas-Bracho told Mongabay in an interview. “With 300 marbles, it would be easy for you to find them at the beginning. But once you have 10, it is going to be hard.”
He also says that people involved in illegal fishing regularly steal CONANP’s acoustic monitoring equipment, possibly because they view vaquita conservation work as a deterrent to their trafficking. He added that scientists like himself are also being unfairly blamed for the current gillnet ban.
“It’s a difficult situation,” he said. “We put [the monitoring equipment] in the water and leave them [there] and then pick them up [and] download the data, but now they steal our devices. I think in a way … it’s revenge.”
As for the totoaba, no one really knows how many are left, although their populations are considered “severely reduced.”
‘It’s a criminal issue’
To Crosta, the fight to save the vaquita shouldn’t necessarily be viewed as a conservation issue.
“It’s a criminal issue, with, of course, environmental implications and conservation implications,” he said. “But first of all, it’s a criminal issue, so the responsibility to fight back has to be given to crime specialists — not to biologists, not to scientists, not even to activists.”
Crosta, who was featured in the 2019 National Geographic documentary Sea of Shadows, has spent more than three years working with his ELI colleagues to compile as much data as possible on the individual criminals and syndicates behind the illegal totoaba trade, which they pass on to the Mexican authorities.
“Slowly but surely, we were able to map, and to identify, all the most important players in Mexico, especially behind totoaba trafficking poaching and trafficking,” he said.
This ultimately led to the arrests of six Mexicans suspected of totoaba trafficking in November 2020. One of the men arrested was Sunshine Rodríguez Peña, the alleged leader of a local cartel involved in totoaba trafficking.
“They were triggered by our reports and by our information,” Crosta said. “More than half of the people arrested [we had] details [about] already in our confidential report two years ago. So we’re very happy that they did it.”
But Crosta says he doesn’t think these arrests will ultimately solve the problem since totoaba traffickers from Mexico team up with Chinese businesspeople and crime organizations.
“I told them [the authorities], ‘Do not stop [with] the Mexicans,’” he said. “There are many key people in Mexico in totoaba cartels, yes, but they need the Chinese traders in Mexico in order to smuggle the totoaba outside of Mexico. So the Chinese traders in Mexico are the most important link of the whole supply chain.”
Yet the Chinese traffickers in Mexico remain at large, Crosta said. Across the Pacific, however, there have been efforts to disrupt the supply chain.
In December 2018, Chinese customs officials confiscated 444 kilograms (980 pounds) of totoaba swim bladders — estimated at the time to be worth about $26 million — in the cities of Guangdong and Guangxi. While this happened far away from the Sea of Cortez, it had a significant impact on the totoaba market in Mexico, Crosta said.
“Almost instantaneously, the totoaba illegal market in Mexico crashed,” he said. “It went down, down, down, down, down — almost zero — because finally, they touched their real pressure points.”
‘The only way that the vaquita will survive’
Other groups have taken different approaches. Sea Shepherd, an international marine conservation NGO, has been going down to the Sea of Cortez since 2015 to monitor the area for illegal fishing activity, working in partnership with the Mexican government. The group physically removes gillnets from the Vaquita Refuge, a 184,100-hectare (455,000-acre) area in the Upper Gulf of California, sometimes directly confronting fishing vessels seen to be using these illegal gillnets.
Since the start of their campaign, the group says it has extracted more than 1,000 gillnets from the vaquita habitat, some of which have dead or live totoaba or other marine species tangled up in the mesh. In 2019, the group even found a dead vaquita that had been caught in a gillnet.
“Sea Shepherd favors the strategy of physical intervention because the only way that the vaquita will survive is if their habitats are kept clear of illegal fishing gear,” Peter Hammarstedt, director of campaigns at Sea Shepherd, told Mongabay in an email. “Every net that is removed from the sea, saves the lives of countless marine creatures and gives the vaquita fighting chance.”
On Dec. 31, 2020, there was a violent confrontation between Sea Shepherd and fishermen on board several local fishing boats, or pangas. According to the NGO, the fishermen were attacking two Sea Shepherd vessels, the Farley Mowat and the Sharpie, which were carrying both Sea Shepherd crew members and Mexican navy personnel, with lead weights and Molotov cocktails when one of the pangas collided with the Farley Mowat. One fisherman died as a result of the incident, while another was seriously injured.
“This … attack is the latest in a series of increasingly violent assaults launched against Sea Shepherd’s ships over the past month,” Sea Shepherd said in a statement. “Assailants have hurled Molotov cocktails, knives, hammers, flares, bottles of fuel, and other deadly projectiles at the vessels, crew, and military personnel on board. No serious injuries have occurred prior to today’s incident.”
The Mexican navy released a similar statement, saying the poachers deliberately attacked the Sea Shepherd vessels. The incident is still being investigated.
Kristin Nowell, founder of the Cetacean Action Treasury, an NGO focused on vaquita conservation which partners with local NGOs and fishers in San Felipe on net removal projects, says there has been a lot of anger following the incident.
“There is a tendency to want to blame the Sea Shepherds for everything — for the collision (which was an accident many of us have been dreading given the increasingly risky maneuvers of pangas harassing them) and for the atmosphere of conflict and crisis,” Nowell told Mongabay in an email. “But Sea Shepherds wouldn’t be needed in the Vaquita Refuge to pull illegal nets if fishers weren’t so busy putting them in.”
Nowell says she is worried about what will happen to the vaquita now since Sea Shepherd has left the area and no one is there to patrol for illegal gillnet use. The totoaba will also likely have a late spawning season, which means that most of them have yet to arrive in the Upper Gulf of California and the main poaching season has yet to begin.
“Observers in San Felipe report the Vaquita Refuge is full of gillnetters, particularly in … the southwestern part of the refuge, near where vaquitas were last detected,” she said. “And it’s so blatant they’re actually marking the nets with visible buoys instead of trying to hide their activity.”
Another NGO, the Washington, D.C.-based Animal Welfare Institute, has been working to pressure the U.S. government to ban imports of Mexican shrimp and other fish caught in the vaquita habitat. Along with the Center for Biological Diversity and the Natural Resources Defense Council, AWI helped facilitate an embargo on these seafood products in 2018, and for the ban to be expanded to cover all seafood caught in the northern Gulf of California in 2020.
“Once the initial embargo went into place, you saw much more movement from the shrimp industry, saying that, ‘Yes, obviously there’s a problem,’” Kate O’Connell, marine animal consultant at AWI, told Mongabay in an interview. “I do think that it does cause the government to stop and pause and reflect upon what they need to be doing.”
However, she says the only way that the embargo will truly work is if the Mexican government properly supports the local fishing community.
“The fishing communities have been really poorly treated by the Mexican government,” O’Connell said. “Alternative gear has existed for some time. They haven’t made it available or they’ve made it very difficult to get permits [for the gear]. They haven’t offered alternative livelihoods to these people, and a number of young people are thinking of doing something other than fishing. The entire region has just been sort of left to flounder.”
Crosta says the sanctions are entirely misdirected since they’re hurting local fishermen who are struggling to make a living while navigating the fishing bans in the Upper Gulf, which could exacerbate the issue of protecting the vaquita.
“What do you think would be the effect?” Crosta said. “It’s turning every single, last honest fisherman into a poacher, into an illegal fisherman. It’s just a favor to criminals. If you want to put sanctions [on something], put sanctions on something else — not on fish.”
Crosta also says that any tactics that do not directly target the criminal syndicates involved in totoaba trafficking are simply “buying time.”
“They buy time for the vaquita so it’s very important, but you do not address the problem,” he said.
‘If we stop killing them, the vaquita might recover’
While the vaquita population is dangerously low, Rojas-Bracho says there may be three calves in the population right now, which shows that the vaquitas are still actively breeding — and offers a sliver of hope.
“One of our surveys in 2018 showed that there’s a chance that they produce a calf every year, instead of every other year,” he said. “If that’s true, that means a population can — and this is very exciting — they can recover.”
Rojas-Bracho is also the co-author of a new study that suggests the species has enough genetic diversity to keep the population going.
“It’s not doomed to extinction, because of the genetic makeup,” he said. “If we stop killing them, the vaquita might recover.”
While different NGOs are employing various tactics to protect the vaquita, Crosta is firm in his belief that the species’ last chance of survival pivots on the arrest of all totoaba criminals — not only the local traffickers but also their Chinese counterparts.
“My biggest regret is that we could not find earlier the funds needed to … save the vaquita by destroying the trafficking networks behind the illegal trade of totoaba,” Crosta told Mongabay in an email following our interview. “But we managed to map all the illegal supply chain and identify all the top Chinese traffickers in Mexico. The authorities have been given all the information.
“They need to complete the job,” he added.” And we are ready to help.”
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