The new law “will put an end to some of the most harmful practices of Big Tech and narrow the power imbalance between people and online platforms.”
Digital and consumer rights advocates on Friday hailed a landmark European Union law aimed at curbing Big Tech’s monopolistic behavior.
“This is a big moment for consumers and businesses who have suffered from Big Tech’s harmful practices.”
Negotiators from the European Parliament and European Council agreed late Thursday on the language of the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which aims to prevent major tech companies from anti-competitive practices by threatening large fines or possible breakup.
Ursula Pachl, deputy director-general at the European Consumer Organization (BEUC), an umbrella advocacy group, said in a statement that “this is a big moment for consumers and businesses who have suffered from Big Tech’s harmful practices.”
“This legislation will rebalance digital markets, increase consumer choice, and put an end to many of the worst practices that Big Tech has engaged in over the years,” she added. “It is a landmark law for the E.U.’s digital transformation.”
The European Union just struck an important deal on the Digital Markets Act, recognizing that only a just and interoperable market can ensure fair competition and more choice for users. #DMAhttps://t.co/lGcTDstagj
Cédric O, the French minister of state with responsibility for digital, said in a statement that “the European Union has had to impose record fines over the past 10 years for certain harmful business practices by very large digital players. The DMA will directly ban these practices and create a fairer and more competitive economic space for new players and European businesses.”
“These rules are key to stimulating and unlocking digital markets, enhancing consumer choice, enabling better value sharing in the digital economy, and boosting innovation,” he added.
Andreas Schwab, a member of the European Parliament from Germany, said that “the Digital Markets Act puts an end to the ever-increasing dominance of Big Tech companies. From now on, Big Tech companies must show that they also allow for fair competition on the internet. The new rules will help enforce that basic principle.”
BEUC’s Pachl offered examples of the new law’s benefits:
Google must stop promoting its own local, travel, or job services over those of competitors in Google Search results, while Apple will be unable to force users to use its payment service for app purchases. Consumers will also be able to collectively enforce their rights if a company breaks the rules in the Digital Markets Act.
Companies are also barred from pre-installing certain software and reusing certain private data collected “during a service for the purposes of another service.”
Today’s historical agreement on the #DMA taught us two things, first, that the EU is up to the challenge to reign big tech and, secondly, that Europe’s civil society can make a difference in making the regulatory framework more user-focused.
The DMA applies to companies deemed both “platforms” and “gatekeepers”—those with market capitalization greater than €75 billion ($82.4 billion), 45 million or more monthly end-users, and at least 10,000 E.U. business users. Companies that violate the law can be fined up to 10% of their total annual worldwide turnover, with repeat offenders subject to a doubling of the penalty.
“The DMA is a major step towards limiting the tremendous market power that today’s gatekeeper tech firms have.”
Diego Naranjo, head of policy at the advocacy group European Digital Rights (EDRi), said in a statement that “the DMA will put an end to some of the most harmful practices of Big Tech and narrow the power imbalance between people and online platforms. If correctly implemented, the new agreement will empower individuals to choose more freely the type of online experience and society we want to build in the digital era.”
To ensure effective implementation, BEUC’s Pachl called on E.U. member states to “now also provide the [European] Commission with the necessary enforcement resources to step in the moment there is foul play.”
EDRi senior policy adviser Jan Penfrat said that while “the DMA is a major step towards limiting the tremendous market power that today’s gatekeeper tech firms have,” policymakers “must now make sure that the new obligations not to reuse personal data and the prohibition of using sensitive data for surveillance advertising are respected and properly enforced by the European Commission.”
“Only then will the change be felt by people who depend on digital services every day,” he added.
Originally published on Common Dreams by BRETT WILKINS and republished under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
In another great new video Robert Reich talks about the unspoken downsides of Abortion bans and why they are not “Pro-LIfe”. The video is one of many that can be seen on the Inequality Media YouTube channel – which adds at least a new video weekly.
Abortion bans are not pro-life. They’re pro-poverty and pro-inequality.
I’ll tell you what we can do about it in a moment. But first, let me explain how these bans worsen inequalities.
You’ve probably heard of the two abortion cases making their way through the courts. But it’s not just Texas and Mississippi’s new bans. For years, Republican state lawmakers – almost entirely white men – have been chipping away at reproductive freedom: enacting laws that lead to clinic closures, force people to travel hundreds of miles for abortions, and create near-insurmountable barriers for low-income people, especially people of color.
Make no mistake: bans like those in Texas and Mississippi won’t stop abortions. Wealthy people will always have access, but millions of low-income people will be forced to give birth – with dire consequences for both parent and child.
Pregnant people in Texas now have to travel an average of 247 miles to get an abortion. Who but the wealthy can afford this? Only one third of the lowest paid workers receive paid sick days, while 95% of the highest paid do. Taking just one unpaid day off from a low-wage job can mean sacrificing groceries, electricity, or gas.
These restrictions worsen inequality, and have lifelong effects.
One study found that being forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term makes it nearly 4 times more likely that parent and child will live below the poverty line. They’re also less likely to have full-time work, and more likely to have public assistance four years later. Decades of research confirm that abortion access improves education, employment, and earnings — and the differences are especially large for Black people.
It’s not just economics. Restricting abortion puts people’s health at risk. Researchers found that abortion legalization in the 1970s reduced deaths among Black mothers by 30 to 40 percent.
The Supreme Court’s right-wing majority is poised to gut or even overturn Roe v. Wade. If they do, 21 states already have laws that will go into effect to severely restrict or outright ban all abortions immediately – threatening the livelihoods and health of millions of low-income Americans.
Congress must codify Roe v. Wade into federal law — now — by passing the Women’s Health Protection Act. It’s already been passed in the House but is being blocked in the Senate by – you guessed it – a Republican filibuster.
Let’s be clear: there is nothing “pro-life” about forced pregnancy and forced birth. The freedom to choose when, how, and with whom you start a family should not be dictated by your income or where you live. Congress must act to protect reproductive now, freedom before it’s too late.
“With everything going on in the world right now, the dual polar climate disasters of 2022 should be the top story”
Scientists expressed shock and alarm this weekend amid extreme high temperatures near both of the Earth’s poles—the latest signs of the accelerating planetary climate emergency.
“This event is completely unprecedented and upended our expectations about the Antarctic climate system.”
Temperatures in parts of Antarctica were 50°F-90°F above normal in recent days, while earlier this week the mercury soared to over 50°F higher than average—close to the freezing mark—in areas of the Arctic.
Stefano Di Battista, an Antarctic climatologist, tweeted that such record-shattering heat near the South Pole was“unthinkable” and “impossible.”
“Antarctic climatology has been rewritten,” di Battista wrote.
The joint French-Italian Concordia research station in eastern Antarctica recorded an all-time high of 10°F on Friday. In contrast, high temperatures at the station this time in March average below -50°F.
Record heat in the Arctic is driving an early melt season and crushing 2022 sea-ice extent: current rank now #4. The Antarctic is even worse.
With everything going on in the world right now, the dual polar climate disasters of 2022 should be the top story. pic.twitter.com/qsi4OAob6L
Jonathan Wille, a researcher studying polar meteorology at Université Grenoble Alpes in France, toldThe Washington Post that “this event is completely unprecedented and upended our expectations about the Antarctic climate system.”
“This is when temperatures should be rapidly falling since the summer solstice in December,” Wille tweeted. “This is a Pacific Northwest 2021 heatwave kind of event,” he added, referring to the record-breaking event in which parts of Canada topped 120°F for the first time in recorded history. “Never supposed to happen.”
Walt Meier, a senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, toldUSA Today that “you don’t see the North and the South [poles] both melting at the same time” because “they are opposite seasons.”
“It’s definitely an unusual occurrence,” he added.
50 degrees above normal in the North Pole this week, and 50 to 90 degrees above normal in Antarctica. Good lord. https://t.co/bSrodCJdei
As Common Dreams has reported, the Arctic has been warming three times faster than the world as a whole, accelerating polar ice melt, ocean warming, and other manifestations of the climate emergency.
“Looking back over the last few decades, we can clearly see a trend in warming, particularly in the ‘cold season’ in the Arctic,” Ruth Mottram, a climate scientist with the Danish Meteorological Institute, told the Post. “It’s not surprising that warm air is busting through into the Arctic this year. In general, we expect to see more and more of these events in the future.”
Originally published on Common Dreams by BRETT WILKINS and republished under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
“Instead of hitting the brakes on the decarbonization of the global economy” amid Russia’s war on Ukraine, “now is the time to put the pedal to the metal towards a renewable energy future,” said United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres.
“The 1.5-degree goal is on life support. It is in intensive care.”
So said United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Monday, as he stressed that a swift and just transition to clean energy is necessary to meet the Paris agreement’s objective of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels—and warned against using Russia’s deadly assault on Ukraine as an excuse to ramp up fossil fuel production worldwide.
“We are sleepwalking to climate catastrophe.”
“The science is clear. So is the math,” the U.N. leader said during a speech delivered at a Sustainability Summit hosted by The Economist. “Keeping 1.5 alive requires a 45% reduction in global emissions by 2030 and carbon neutrality by mid-century.” And yet, “according to present national commitments, global emissions are set to increase by almost 14% in the 2020s.”
“We are sleepwalking to climate catastrophe,” Guterres continued. “Our planet has already warmed by as much as 1.2 degrees—and we see the devastating consequences everywhere. In 2020, climate disasters forced 30 million people to flee their homes—three times more than those displaced by war and violence.”
Just this past weekend, scientists conveyed shock and alarm in response to reports that temperatures at both of Earth’s poles reached more than 50°F above average last week. Peer-reviewed research published on Friday foundthat increasingly frequent and intense wildfires around the globe are exacerbating Arctic warming, which is worsening the conditions that make future blazes more likely.
“Two weeks ago,” said Guterres, citing part two of the U.N.’s landmark climate assessment, “the IPCC confirmed that half of humanity is already living in the danger zone. Small island nations, least developed countries, and poor and vulnerable people everywhere are one climate shock away from doomsday. In our globally connected world, no country and no corporation can insulate itself from these levels of chaos.”
“If we continue with more of the same, we can kiss 1.5 goodbye,” he added. “Even 2 degrees may be out of reach. And that would be catastrophe.”
Making matters worse, said Guterres, “the fallout from Russia’s war in Ukraine risks upending global food and energy markets—with major implications for the global climate agenda.”
“As major economies pursue an ‘all-of-the-above’ strategy to replace Russian fossil fuels, short-term measures might create long-term fossil fuel dependence.”
The United States, United Kingdom, and European Union have moved to restrict imports of Russian fossil fuels in response to Moscow’s military offensive. Although progressives have emphasized that the ongoing invasion should lead to an intensification of efforts to move awayfrom dirty energy, profit-hungry proponents of oil, gas, and coal have seized on surging prices to push for boosting extraction and exports.
Guterres warned that “as major economies pursue an ‘all-of-the-above’ strategy to replace Russian fossil fuels, short-term measures might create long-term fossil fuel dependence and close the window to 1.5 degrees.”
“Countries could become so consumed by the immediate fossil fuel supply gap that they neglect or knee-cap policies to cut fossil fuel use,” he said. “This is madness. Addiction to fossil fuels is mutually assured destruction.”
“As current events make all too clear, our continued reliance on fossil fuels puts the global economy and energy security at the mercy of geopolitical shocks and crises,” added Guterres. “We need to fix the broken global energy mix.”
Noting that “the timeline to cut emissions by 45% is extremely tight,” the U.N. leader stressed that “instead of hitting the brakes on the decarbonization of the global economy, now is the time to put the pedal to the metal towards a renewable energy future.”
His remarks came just hours before the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) kicked off a two-week meeting to validate part three of its report, which focuses on the need to drastically slash carbon pollution to avoid the most disastrous outcomes.
Guterres argued that cooperation between the developed and emerging economies of the G20—responsible for 80% of global emissions—is essential to addressing the planetary emergency.
“Accelerating the phase-out of coal and all fossil fuels and implementing a rapid, just, and sustainable energy transition,” he said, is “the only true pathway to energy security.”
Originally published on Common Dreams by KENNY STANCIL and republished under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
Some democracies fall apart because of invasion by a neighbor, terrorism, or a natural disaster, but most are taken down by their own own greedy oligarchs.
Above: Photo Collage / Lynxotic / CC
It’s important now, in light of both world events and the way the Republican party has been captured by a small group of rightwing billionaires and white supremacists, to introduce Americans to an 18th century word that is new to most people alive today, at least in the context of partisan politics.
That word is: faction.
The crises caused by faction were a big deal at the founding of our republic. Faction was a matter of conversation among average people.
Prior to Reagan’s deregulation and tax-cutting binge, America didn’t have a single billionaire and the average income of American CEOs—restrained as they were by a top income tax rate of 74 percent—was only around 30 times that of the average worker.
It was the same when the South was seized by an oligarchic faction of plantation owners and turned from a whites-only democracy into a neofascist oligarchy in the 1840s and 1850s.
Factions are destroyers of democracies.
It was a faction of oligarchs led by Vladimir Putin that took over Russia after that country adopted Milton Friedman’s neoliberal policies of privatization, low taxes, and deregulation, producing an explosion of billionaires who weakened the new Russian democracy by pouring outsized chunks of their money into Russia’s politics.
Russian President Putin’s disastrous decision to invade Ukraine was caused by a deficiency of democracy in Russia; whenever a country is taken over by a single person or a small group of people, such terrible decisions are inevitable. History is littered with them.
And it all starts with a faction of wealthy people corrupting politics.
Faction always leads to the “doom loop” of democracy, which is why Aristotle warned about faction as much as does Bernie Sanders. It happens pretty much the same way all over the world, all across the centuries.
Here in America, it’s something the Founding generation, Lincoln’s generation, and FDR’s generation each had to deal with. FDR called the faction of his day the “Economic Royalists.”
Today, we’re again facing the doom loop caused by what the Founders called faction.
The faction-caused Doom Loop goes like this:
Government makes the rules that regulate taxes and corporations, and uses those rules to prevent wealthy people or businesses from corrupting the government itself.
These “guardrails of democracy” include taxation that’s high enough that oligarchy doesn’t emerge, along with tight regulation of money in politics.
Those corporations and individuals who mostly own/control the marketplace want to “throw off the shackles of government.”
So they get together and pour money into the political process, essentially buying all the politicians and judges they need.
Then their wholly-owned legislators and judges remove laws or change their interpretation to weaken or even eliminate those guardrails of taxation and regulation that protect democracy.
Removing the taxation and regulation guardrails increases the profits of the corporations and the wealth of the morbidly rich oligarchs.
They then recycle a small portion of that “new” money back to the politicians to either maintain the status quo or deteriorate the guardrails even further.
Eventually the guardrails become so weak that the government’s ability to control the excesses of the faction breaks down and the oligarchs take over, transitioning the democracy into oligarchy.
Oligarchic government then, typically within a decade or so, turns into a strongman autocracy, as we see with today’s Russia and almost saw with Trump’s presidency.
This analysis is not, by the way, a radical position or one do you need a college degree to understand.
President Jimmy Carter explained it to me on the radio seven years ago, and any reading of history finds it scattered through the accounts of the Revolutionary, Civil War, and New Deal eras.
And with a billionaire in the White House for four years, with several billionaires in his cabinet, signing billionaire-friendly executive orders and corruptly devastating the EPA, IRS, and several other federal agencies, we approached the brink.
To put it in straightforward terms:
Powerful rich people motivated primarily by a desire to increase their own wealth and power—when they act together as a faction to accomplish that goal, like Lewis Powell suggested to America’s business leaders and wealthiest men in 1971—will always try to change a democracy into an oligarchy.
Investing in politicians and think-tanks, it turns out, is the single most effective investment a faction of oligarchs can make in a republic once its guardrails are sufficiently weakened to allow it to happen on a large scale.
Consider how, prior to Reagan’s deregulation and tax-cutting binge, America didn’t have a single billionaire and the average income of American CEOs—restrained as they were by a top income tax rate of 74 percent—was only around 30 times that of the average worker.
Congress routinely passed laws that were widely popular, like Medicare and the Voting Rights Act, because back then politicians were more responsive to the people than to the morbidly rich.
Today, after Reagan’s massive tax cuts and deregulation efforts, we have hundreds of billionaires, and CEO pay in some industries runs a thousand times that of their workers. And legislation with approval rates as high as 80 percent—like funding education and healthcare—are blocked in the Senate.
Democracies were growing and strengthening around the world from the time of the American Civil War until the 1980s. But, around that time, country after country began to consider Reagan/Thatcher style neoliberalism.
Some countries, like China, explicitly rejected neoliberalism and trickle down economics, and instead adopted Alexander Hamilton’s “American Plan.” As a result, their economies and their middle-classes grew. China’s middle class today, for example, is larger than the population of the entire United States.
But far too many others, encouraged by their elites, took the plunge and drastically cut taxes on the morbidly rich, cut business oversight and regulation, and loosened their laws regulating money in politics.
By 2005, as Reagan’s neoliberalism spread around the world, countries that were losing their middle classes (like America has over the last 40 years) began to flip into oligarchies and then autocracies.
Democracies around the world began to backslide.
Like the USA, country after country has followed Reaganism/neoliberalism to set aside limits on corporate and oligarch participation in politics, with predictable results. As Freedom House noted in their most recent annual report:
“The present threat to democracy is the product of 16 consecutive years of decline in global freedom. A total of 60 countries suffered declines over the past year, while only 25 improved.”
America, they note, is one of the countries in a “decline” of democracy.
While a few of those democracies in decline fell apart because of invasion by a neighbor, terrorism, or a natural disaster, most are being taken down by their own internal factions, typically the nation’s own oligarchs.
In 1776 the United States was the first major experiment in democracy in the past several thousand years and, although it was badly flawed by both slavery and a lack of rights for women, the idea of even the minority of white men deciding the future of their country was a revolutionary departure from thousands of years of kings, popes and brutal warlords.
The era of the Enlightenment, particularly throughout the 1700s, brought vigorous discussions of whether democracy was even possible, or if it would always be doomed to collapse back into oligarchy and autocracy.
The recurrent concern of the people of that era was that wealthy factions would arise and corrupt any democracy back into something resembling a kingdom with wealthy lords and autocratic rulers.
As Lord Bolingbroke wrote in his Memoirs, published in 1752 (the year after Bolingbroke died and James Madison—who would later midwife our Constitution—was born):
“A Party then is, as I take it, a set of men connected together … pretending to have the same private opinion with respect to public concerns; … but when it proceeds further, and influences men’s conduct in any considerable degree, it becomes Faction.”
And what are factions that have seized control of political parties almost always all about? Bolingbroke laid it out with a clarity that still resonates today:
“In all such cases there are revealed reasons, and a reserved Motive. By revealed reasons, I mean a set of plausible doctrines, which may be styled [called] the creed of the party; but the reserved motive belongs to Faction only, and is the THIRST OF POWER. [emphasis Bolingbroke’s]
When greedy people rise up as a faction to try to seize a government, Bolingbroke wrote, they always claim to be acting in the best interests of the people.
Consider today’s Republican Party, backed by billionaires and openly opposed to union rights while reaching out to blue-collar voters, as you read Bolingbroke’s words:
“The creeds of parties vary like those of sects; but all Factions have the same motive, which never implies more or less than a lust of dominion, though they … generally are covered with the specious pretenses of … zeal for the public, which flows, in fact, from Avarice, Self-Interest, Resentment and other private views.”
Bolingbroke was widely read among the Founding generation, and Madison, the “Father of the Constitution,” echoed his sentiments in Federalist 10, in which he warns us of the dangers of faction.
First, he defines the term “faction,” to separate it from the notion of just being a political party or a special interest group:
“By a faction,” Madison writes in Federalist 10, “I understand a number of citizens … who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse [opposed] to the rights of other citizens or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” [emphasis mine]
In other words, factions aren’t political parties or advocates for the public good. They are, pure and simple, politically active wealthy people opposed to the public good and thus a poison in the bloodstream of a democracy.
Madison devotes the entirety of Federalist 10 to warning both his colleagues and future generations of Americans against them. Controlling faction, he wrote, was the most important function of the Constitution:
“To secure the public good and private rights against the danger of such a faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government, is then the great object to which our inquiries are directed.”
Even the most famous British historian of that era, author of The History of England David Hume, wrote in his essay Of Parties in General (1741) about the dangers of wealthy people getting together to form a faction that could take over and corrupt a government, all to increase their own profits and wealth:
“As much as legislators and founders of states ought to be honoured and respected among men, as much ought the founders of sects and factions to be detested and hated; because the influence of faction is directly contrary to that of laws.”
By “contrary to that of laws,” Hume meant that a faction—a group of wealthy and powerful people—would do everything they could to corrupt the political process and weaken or destroy laws that might restrain their greed:
“Factions subvert government, render laws impotent, and beget the fiercest animosities among men of the same nation, who ought to give mutual assistance and protection to each other.”
Hume, being a conservative of that era, was skeptical that any democracy could ever survive the assault of political parties that had been taken over by factions of the rich:
“And what should render the founders of parties more odious is, the difficulty of extirpating these weeds, when once they have taken root in any state. They naturally propagate themselves for many centuries, and seldom end but by the total dissolution of that government, in which they are sown.”
And, wrote Hume, once they’ve taken over a “free” government, they’re even harder to get rid of than weeds. Eventually, if not stopped, they’ll consume the only thing that could restrain them, the government itself:
“They are, besides, plants which grow most plentifully in the richest soil; and … they rise more easily, and propagate themselves faster in free governments, where they always infect the legislature itself, which alone could be able, by the steady application of rewards and punishments, to eradicate them.”
As President Jimmy Carter told me seven years ago when we were discussing the Supreme Court’s corrupt Citizens United decision:
“It violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it’s just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. … So now we’ve just seen a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect and sometimes get favors for themselves after the election’s over.”
We’re quite far down the road to wealthy factions so corrupting our government that it has ceased to operate as a functioning republican democracy.
Our best hope for stopping a further slide into oligarchy and ultimately strongman autocracy is to pass legislation that will regulate money in politics.
Tragically, every Republican in the US Senate except Lisa Murkowski voted against strengthening our voting rights and removing some of the power of money in politics.
Hopefully such legislation can be revived this year, although with both Manchin and Sinema now openly taking money from the same billionaire faction that funds the GOP, it’s going to be a hell of a lift.
Nonetheless, reversing the core of Reaganism’s oligarchic agenda is the only way to stop the ongoing faction-driven collapse of American democracy. If we are to break out of the doom loop of democracies that consumed Russia 20 years ago, we must:
Regulate great wealth by raising personal and corporate taxes back to where they were before Reagan.
Restore the hundreds of good-government-protecting regulations on money in politics Congress passed and were signed into law by Presidents Ford and Carter (and in almost every state legislature) but overturned in 2010 by the Supreme Court in their corrupt 5:4 Citizens United decision.
We must continue to work and speak out against faction and do everything we can to make America “a more perfect union.” Otherwise, our nation will be consumed by what Bolingbroke called the “THIRST of POWER.”
This article was first published on The Hartmann Report and published on Common Dreams and republished under Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
How do things really get done (or more often not) in Washington D.C.?
In a new video from Robert Reich, former secretary of labor and accomplished author, the sad subject of so-called ’gridlock’ in government is addressed. This perspective is particularly useful and helpful to consider since this year is an election year.
There’s an unfortunate lack of understanding regarding how things actually work and, more importantly what can be done about it.
Inequality Media, the Org, led by Robert Reich, that is responsible for this content, is putting out clear and incisive messages on topics like this on a weekly, sometimes daily basis. Getting these kinds of valuable messages out to places like YouTube, TikTok and social media is important at anytime. Now, in such a critical moment in our history, it’s essential.
Why doesn’t Congress get anything done?
Well, one chamber actually does. Hundreds of bills have been passed by the House of Representatives, but have been blocked from even getting a vote in the Senate. Bills like The Freedom to Vote Act, The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, The Equality Act, Background checks for gun sales, Reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act, The Protecting the Right to Organize Act, The Build Back Better Act. The list goes on.
So why aren’t these crucial bills getting a vote in the Senate? Because the filibuster makes it impossible.
All told, the House passed over 200 bills in 2021 that have not been taken up in the Senate. Everything from investing in rural education to preventing discrimination against pregnant workers to protecting seniors from scams – bills that have real, tangible benefits for the public; bills that have widespread public support.
So don’t believe the media narrative that Congress is trapped in hopeless gridlock and both sides are to blame. One chamber of Congress, led by Democrats, is passing important legislation and delivering for the people. But Republicans in the Senate, and a handful of corporate Democrats, are hell-bent on grinding the gears of government to a halt.
Why are Senate Republicans doing this? Because their midterm strategy depends on it. Republicans are blocking crucial legislation so they can point to Democrats’ supposed inability to get anything done, and claim they’ll be able to deliver if you give them majorities.
“They have moved to a new stage of terror in which they are trying to physically eliminate representatives of legitimate local Ukrainian authorities,” said the Ukrainian president.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday accused Russia of committing “a crime against democracy itself” by abducting the mayor of Melitopol, a city in southern Ukraine that Russian troops seized in the early days of the invasion.
“This is obviously a sign of weakness of the invaders,” Zelenskyy said during a press conference, praising Melitopol Mayor Ivan Federov as someone “who bravely defends Ukraine and the members of his community.”
Russian forces, Zelenskyy warned, have “moved to a new stage of terror in which they are trying to physically eliminate representatives of legitimate local Ukrainian authorities.”
“The capture of the mayor of Melitopol is, therefore, a crime, not only against a particular person, against a particular community, and not only against Ukraine,” he continued. “It is a crime against democracy itself.”
According to Ukrainian officials, Russian soldiers “put a plastic bag” on Fedorov’s head and abducted him from the Melitopol city center on Friday, outraging local residents who turned out to protest the alleged kidnapping.
“Return the mayor!” townspeople shouted during a demonstration on Saturday. “Free the mayor!”
The New York Timesreported that “nearly as soon as people gathered, the Russians moved to shut them down, arresting a woman who they said had organized the demonstration, according to two witnesses and the woman’s Facebook account.”
Locals in Melitopol, a southern Ukrainian town captured by Russia, protest against the reported kidnapping of their mayor. Video via Zelensky’s office pic.twitter.com/139ld4KKly
Across Europe on Saturday, thousands of people took to the streets to protest Russia’s deadly assault on Ukraine, which shows no sign of abating after entering its third week.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron both spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin by phone on Saturday, urging him to broker an immediate ceasefire and move toward a diplomatic resolution in Ukraine—but there was no indication that Putin was prepared to heed their demands.
“The conversation is part of ongoing international efforts to end the war in Ukraine,” a spokesperson for the German government said in a statement.
The Elysée, meanwhile, described the phone conversation with Putin as “very frank and difficult.”
The call came as Ukrainian officials braced for a potentially massive Russian assault on the capital city of Kyiv, which has thus far fought off Russia’s incursion attempts. The Associated Pressreported that fighting “raged in the outskirts of the capital” as Russian forces continued bombarding and shelling other Ukrainian cities, including the strategic port of Mariupol.
“In Irpin, a suburb northwest of Kyiv, bodies lay out in the open Saturday on streets and in a park,” according to AP.
The U.K. Ministry of Defence has assessed that “the bulk of Russian ground forces” are now roughly 25 kilometers from the center of Kyiv. Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Zelenskyy, declared Friday that Kyiv is “ready to fight.”
Zelenskyy himself said Saturday that “if there are hundreds of thousands of people, who are now being mobilized by Russia, and they come with hundreds or thousands of tanks, they will take Kyiv.”
“We understand that,” he continued. “How Ukrainian people have resisted these invaders has already gone down in history. But we have no right to reduce the intensity of defense, no matter how difficult it may be for us.”
Originally published on Common Dreams by JAKE JOHNSON and republished under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
New survey data shows that voters “want elected officials to challenge corporate greed to lower prices,” said one advocate.
On the heels of fresh data showing that the U.S. inflation rate jumped to a new 40-year high last month, a new survey found that more than 80% of American voters believe costs are rising in part because “big corporations are jacking up prices” while raking in record profits.
Released Friday by the advocacy group Fight Corporate Monopolies, the poll showed that 82% of registered U.S. voters blame big companies for at least some of the recent inflation spike and want elected officials to “take on powerful CEOs and rein in corporate greed to lower prices.”
“Rising prices is the top economic issue for most voters, and they want elected officials to challenge corporate greed to lower prices,” Helen Brosnan, executive director of Fight Corporate Monopolies, said in a statement. “Political leaders should directly address rising prices, release plans to combat corporate greed’s role in driving prices higher, and put forth arguments that center CEOs and big corporations.”
NEW: Following yesterday's inflation report, new polling shows messaging linking corporate greed to rising prices is highly effective. pic.twitter.com/TpejFfMZEn
— Fight Corporate Monopolies (@fightmonopolies) March 11, 2022
The new survey, based on a sample size of 1,000 respondents, comes as progressives in Congress continue spotlighting corporate price-gouging as a key culprit behind rising prices nationwide even as the White House abandons that narrative, despite data indicating it resonates with voters.
With gas prices surging amid Russia’s onslaught against Ukraine, Democrats in the House and Senate introduced legislation on Thursday that would impose a “windfall tax” on oil companies in an effort to “curb profiteering.”
“Last year, oil and gas companies made $174 billion in profits,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a co-sponsor of the legislation, wrote in a Twitter post. “This year they’re on track to make more. We cannot allow Big Oil to use Ukraine and ‘inflation’ as an excuse to rip off Americans.”
Originally published on Common Dreams by JAKE JOHNSON and republished under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
Given the thousands of hours of content that Rogan has produced, the scrutiny is unlikely to stop there. As we argue in our forthcoming book, Rogan’s podcast has long promoted right-wing comedy and libertarian political voices, including some who trade quite gleefully in racism and misogyny.
However, what makes Rogan’s rise particularly important is that it goes beyond the standard partisan political battling that Americans have grown accustomed to in social and broadcast media.
Rogan is not just a purveyor of right-wing ideologies. He is also someone who has built an empire by introducing these ideas – and a wide range of others – to listeners from across the political spectrum. His truly unique skill is drawing in from that spectrum a massive, young, largely male audience that advertisers highly covet.
Ideological whiplash
When the Federal Communications Commission introduced the Fairness Doctrine in 1949, radio and television broadcasters were required to present controversial ideas in a manner that reflected multiple perspectives. However, the combination of cable television, niche consumer targeting and President Ronald Reagan’s deregulatory FCC succeeded in toppling the mandate.
By 1987, conservative talk radio figures such as Rush Limbaugh embraced fully partisan approaches to content creation and audience accumulation. Ignoring their political opponents as potential listeners, they veered further and further to the right, garnering an increasingly homogeneous audience whom advertisers could easily target.
Later, as Fox News’ popularity and reach grew, it took a similar tack, promoting conservative media personalities like Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Greg Gutfeld to preach to the right-wing choir.
Today, some conservative voices such as Ben Shapiro and Steven Crowder take this logic a technological step further, embracing the silo-ing effects of social media algorithms to connect with those users most likely to engage with and disseminate their content. Although such figures certainly offend those who disagree with them, their place in the mediasphere is well-established and mostly ignored by opponents.
Rogan, by contrast, is prone to ideological whiplash.
There is no political commonality among these people. But there is a demographic connection. For one, they are all men, as are the vast majority of guests on “The Joe Rogan Experience.”
While Fox News sells politics to TV watchers, Rogan sells a sense of edgy authenticity to podcast listeners. His blend of comedy and controversy certainly has political implications, but from his perspective, it isn’t politics. It’s demographics.
Rogan is, for worse and for better, a true outlier in the world of contemporary talk media. Most political and many comedy podcasts employ the business model of finding an ideological space, connecting via cross-promotion and guest selection with similar shows, and allowing the algorithms of social media to drive traffic their way.
“The Joe Rogan Experience” takes this idea and pulls it in multiple, contradictory directions. Media figures left and right have – until now, at least – coveted opportunities to appear on the show. Once a comedian or podcaster has saturated their own political space, Rogan offers a chance to win over new converts and, in principle, have a discussion that breaks free of partisan constraints. For many Rogan fans, this breadth of discussion and freedom from norms is the heart of the show.
Rogan, however, is far from a neutral host of a new public sphere. His feigned naiveté is all too often a cover to promote edgy, offensive and irresponsible theories that appeal to his audience’s self-styled suspicion of authority.
He pushes the boundaries of political discourse by “just asking questions,” but then hides behind his background as just a comedian to distance himself from any undesirable repercussions.
Spotify, like other streaming services, is primarily built on a wide range of content creators, each of whom attracts a small, dedicated audience, but none of whom are, on their own, particularly powerful.
Rogan is the closest thing to a mass cultural product to be found in the podcast world. He is also one of the only names in podcasting big enough to garner headlines, good or bad. For a company like Spotify trying to boost subscriptions, Rogan’s cross-partisan, youthful, mass appeal is very hard to resist.
Rogan’s recent apologies, however, prove that he is not impervious to pressure. We suspect Spotify will try to thread the needle: covering up Rogan’s penchant for misinformation and offensive provocation just enough to meet the minimum standard of acceptable corporate citizenship without tarnishing the comedian’s brand and demographic appeal.
But is it really necessary for you to know that I am female, love only cats (no dogs) and just got engaged?
No? Good, cause none of that is true. (Except the female part) That’s only one example of the odd twists that can come with the current trend of people going viral when they show “realness” and vulnerability.
Heard of acting? That’s what Meryl Streep does when she plays a person that never went to Yale and is not a rich famous actor, wink wink.
I suppose, as with so many online phenomena these days, it’s TikTok leading the way. No longer a place for young girls to dominate using only dancing, beauty and feminine wiles, it’s now a place where less objectively attractive people can blow up by showing, ostensibly, who they are.
This trend towards realness has, based on informal research, also spilled over into places like LinkedIn, Medium and even Twitter.
On the whole, I think it’s a great thing. If Meryl Streep was only able to play herself, movies would be much less interesting, no doubt!
And maybe at least half of all the realness really is real. Just take it with a grain of salt if you see posts of someone getting engaged 3 times. In the same week.
All kidding aside this trend is part of a bigger, important evolution in digital communication
The evolution from journalistic norms, such as never referring to yourself directly but only as “your scribe”, “the writer”, “your correspondent” or just “one”, as in “one can only wonder…” to today’s norm of writing like the whole world wants to read your diary….
These journalistic conventions seem archaic and even ridiculous when the formerly forbidden “I” is commonplace and the authenticity of direct TikTok style casual presentation is already dominant and growing as a trend.
But the overall shift has more than just a style preference behind it, if you ask this writer (me).
It’s also far more than just the outgrowth of armies of non-journalists communicating spontaneously in every format and on every platform.
It’s really the early beginnings of what has become a common topic of late: the transition to the so-called Metaverse.
Not the Zuckerbergian Metaverse where people run around without legs and have joyless celebrations of themselves.
But rather, the real life cyber world where billions are on their phones communicating in various ways basically all the time. Even while jaywalking.
And as we do this more in every imaginable format, the desire to see “beautiful” landscape photos that have been photoshopped to death, instagram style, is eventually diminished to zero.
And what follows in a new hunger for the “real” or at least the honest seeming portrayal of the real (hi there Meryl!) and content that pushes an entirely different layer of psychological buttons.
As I mentioned above, dear reader, I love this! In spite of the fact that it leads to really scary TikToks (just check out the posts of some of the people that follow you on Tiktok (to see what I mean, the ones that follow 8753 people and get followed by like, 23 have nice videos…) where the frightening reality that’s out there (the banality of empirical unattractiveness you might call it) is already on full display, and how.
But that’s just the price to pay for a deeper and more authentic experience. And for the benefit of the real and valuable advice and knowledge you can get directly from “non-professional” actors who are not acting (presumably). We are reaping the profits of real life experiences, in exchange for nothing more than our attention, and clicks, likes and follows. And I say, Amen to that, bro.
In addition to protests in Berlin and London, people also took to the streets in occupied Ukrainian cities and in Moscow, despite the threat of arrest.
Above: Photo Collage / Lynxotic / Adobe Stock
Tens of thousands of people took to the streets to join anti-war demonstrations across Europe on Sunday as Russia continued its deadly assault on Ukraine, bombarding major cities and intensifying a humanitarian crisis that is having reverberating effects worldwide.
In addition to protests in Berlin, London, Warsaw, and Madrid—where participants carried signs and banners that read “Stop the War” and “Peace and Solidarity for the People in Ukraine”—demonstrations also sprang up on a smaller scale in occupied Ukrainian cities and in Moscow, despite the threat of arrest and police brutality.
Thousands of Russian anti-war protesters have been detained and abused by law enforcement since the invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, according to human rights organizations.
Despite threat of arrest, kidnapping and worse, Ukrainians in their thousands still come out to protest against occupying Russian forces. This latest video from Berdyansk on the Azov coast. pic.twitter.com/AFUf2bz0Wa
The demonstrations Sunday came amid some signs of diplomatic progress in talks between Russia and Ukraine, which have been negotiating on the border of Belarus since the early days of the invasion.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Sunday that Russia is “beginning to talk constructively” and predicted that “we will achieve some results literally in a matter of days.”
Leonid Slutsky, a Russian delegate to the negotiations with Ukraine, echoed his counterpart’s assessment.
“According to my personal expectations, this progress may grow in the coming days into a joint position of both delegations, into documents for signing,” Slutsky told reporters Sunday, without offering specifics on what an agreement would entail.
Seemingly positive developments in diplomatic talks came as Russia showed no sign of easing its attack, which has forced more than 2.5 million people to flee Ukraine and internally displaced millions more.
Zelenskyy said Saturday that around 125,000 people have been able to escape through humanitarian corridors established in besieged cities, but hundreds of thousands remain trapped in Mariupol and other areas facing heavy shelling from Russian forces.
Early Sunday morning, Russia bombed a Ukrainian military facility located just 22 miles from the border of Poland, a NATO member. The airstrike, believed to be Russia’s westernmost attack on Ukraine thus far, killed dozens of people and wounded more than 130 others.
The Associated Press reported that “continued fighting on multiple fronts heaped further misery on the country Sunday and provoked renewed international outrage.”
Brent Renaud, an American journalist who had previously contributed to the New York Times, was killed by Russian forces in the town of Irpin, Ukrainian authorities said Sunday. A second journalist who was traveling with Renaud was reportedly injured.
“We are shocked and saddened to learn of the death of U.S. journalist Brent Renaud in Ukraine,” Carlos Martinez de la Serna of the Committee to Protect Journalists said in a statement. “This kind of attack is totally unacceptable, and is a violation of international law. Russian forces in Ukraine must stop all violence against journalists and other civilians at once, and whoever killed Renaud should be held to account.”
According to the United Nations, at least 549 civilians have been killed and nearly 1,000 have been wounded since Russia invaded Ukraine—estimates that are believed to be significant undercounts.
Local Ukrainian officials said Sunday that 2,187 civilians have been killed in Mariupol alone since the start of Russia’s attack.
A new analysis finds that the 704 billionaires in the U.S. now own more wealth than the bottom half of Americans—roughly 165 million people.
During the first two years of the coronavirus pandemic, the collective wealth of billionaires in the United States grew by a staggering $1.7 trillion as Covid-19 killed millions of people across the globe and threw entire nations into turmoil, worsening extreme poverty, hunger, and other preexisting crises.
“We can’t accept an economy and tax code that allows billionaires to hoard trillions while working families struggle.”
Released Friday to coincide with the second anniversary of the World Health Organization’s official pandemic declaration for Covid-19, the latest billionaire fortune analysis by Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) finds that the 704 billionaires in the U.S. now own more combined wealth than the 165 million people in the bottom half of the country’s wealth distribution.
“For billionaires, it’s been two years of raking in the riches, while for most families it’s been two years of fear, frustration, and financial worry,” ATF executive director Frank Clemente said in a statement.
The new analysis stresses that billionaires’ pandemic windfall “may never be taxed” because it consists of unrealized capital gains, which are not subject to taxation under current U.S. law. As one possible solution, ATF voices support for Sen. Ron Wyden’s (D-Ore.) proposed Billionaires Income Tax, legislation that would impose an annual levy on ultra-wealthy Americans’ unrealized gains from tradable assets such as stocks.
“The rising asset values billionaires have enjoyed over the past two years are not taxable unless the assets are sold,” ATF explains. “But billionaires don’t need to sell assets to benefit from their increased value: they can live off money borrowed at cheap rates secured against their rising fortunes. And when all those wealth gains are passed along to the next generation, they entirely disappear for tax purposes.”
This is why we need Congress to pass a Billionaires Income Tax.
It will tax billionaire wealth gains every year, just like workers’ wages are taxed. And it would raise $557 billion—more than enough to cover the historic clean energy investments @POTUS has proposed, for example.
— Americans For Tax Fairness (@4TaxFairness) March 11, 2022
While Democrats in Congress considered a tax on billionaires as part of their Build Back Better package, that legislation was tanked by a handful of corporate Democrats—including Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.)—and a unified Republican caucus.
“Why should our economic system allow billionaires to hoard wealth unchecked, letting almost all of it go tax-free?”
Earlier this month, Manchin floated a further watered-down version of the Build Back Better proposal that calls for tax reforms targeting the wealthy and corporations, but it’s unclear whether the West Virginia Democrat would accept a tax on billionaires.
“Working families pay what they owe in taxes each paycheck. Billionaires generally pay little or nothing in taxes on these extraordinary gains in wealth,” Clemente said Friday. “Congress should enact a Billionaires Income Tax to directly tax these wealth gains as income each year, so that billionaires begin to pay their fair share of taxes. Such a reform is not yet part of President Biden’s investment and tax legislation now being revised by Congress, but it should be.”
According to ATF’s new analysis, the biggest billionaire winners during the coronavirus pandemic’s first two years were:
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who saw his net worth skyrocket by $209 billion;
Google co-founder Larry Page, whose fortune grew by $63 billion; and
Google co-founder Sergey Brin, whose wealth increased by $60 billion.
“Not one of the 15 richest U.S. billionaires gained less than $10 billion,” ATF noted on Twitter, pointing out that during the same two-year period 80 million Americans were infected by Covid-19 and nearly a million were killed by the virus.
“We can’t accept an economy and tax code that allows billionaires to hoard trillions while working families struggle to afford healthcare, childcare, education, and housing,” the group added. “It’s wrong, and we can do better.”
Originally published on Common Dreams by JAKE JOHNSON and republished under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
“Extinction is not inevitable—it is a political choice,” says a new petition calling for bold changes to the Endangered Species Act.
The Center for Biological Diversity on Tuesday laid out a comprehensive case for the Biden administration to go far beyond simply mending the damage done by President Donald Trump to the Endangered Species Act, calling on officials to strengthen the law “to save life on Earth from the extinction crisis.”
In a legal petition, the organization made the case that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service must not only fully implement the Endangered Species Act (ESA) but also add new provisions to the law to counter “years of overt political and industry pressure designed to weaken the Act.”
The petition argues erosion of the landmark legislation has left implementation of the Act “no longer primarily driven by the best science or conservation principles” but instead “by avoiding political controversy.”
“Combating the extinction crisis and restoring our natural heritage are monumental challenges that will require the services to be more visionary than any other administration in history,” said Stephanie Kurose, senior policy specialist at CBD. “We challenge Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and the Biden administration to change the status quo and do whatever it takes to protect our planet for future generations.”
Extinction is a political choice, not an inevitable fact. After years of succumbing to political and industry pressures, @USFWS & @NOAAFisheries must choose to strengthen the Endangered Species Act, undo Trump-era rollbacks and help save life on earth. https://t.co/4gO3G9q55spic.twitter.com/oBqcxbfA93
— Center for Biological Diversity (@CenterForBioDiv) March 8, 2022
Under the Trump administration, CBD said in the 50-page legal filing, officials “caused unprecedented damage to the Act” by gutting a rule which provided threatened species and endangered species with the same level of protection and issuing guidance which said the USFWS need not tell landowners that they need a permit if their activities will harm species, among other rollbacks.
“The United States can prevent future extinctions, but it must take swift action that matches the extent and scale of the problem.”
The Biden administration has taken “sluggish” steps to restore the protections stripped by former President Donald Trump, said CBD, including rescinding two regulations which limited habitat protections for endangered species.
However, wrote the group, “the extensive damage done during Trump’s four years in office must be put in the context of a law that was already not being fully enforced.”
“We need a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that holds the line, not one that compromises in the face of political pressure,” tweeted Noah Greenwald, endangered species program director for CBD.
Federal agencies must strengthen enforcement of the ESA, ensure accountability for extractive industries that harm habitats, and “holistically address the threat of climate change,” said the group.
Specifically, the petition calls for:
Empowering career scientists to make science-based decisions without fear of political reprisal;
Guaranteeing that federal agencies can no longer ignore the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions from their actions on climate change and climate-imperiled species;
Strengthening protections for critical habitat to protect key areas where species can live;
Creating a scientifically defensible definition of recovery;
Defining “significant portion of its range” to fulfill Congress’ intent that species be protected before they are threatened with worldwide extinction;
Requiring all federal agencies to have proactive conservation programs in place for listed species harmed by their actions;
Requiring habitat conservation plans to confer a net benefit whenever development activities harm endangered species;
Strengthening protections for foreign listed species;
Strengthening the regulations governing the reintroduction of experimental populations; and
Revamping the enhancement permitting program to address dubious trophy hunting practices overseas that do not actually enhance the survival or propagation of species.
“Extinction is not inevitable—it is a political choice,” wrote CBD. “The United States can prevent future extinctions, but it must take swift action that matches the extent and scale of the problem.”
Originally published on Common Dreams by JULIA CONLEY and republished under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
“A renewable energy future,” the groups wrote, “is a peaceful and ultimately more prosperous one.”
Above: Photo / Adobe Stock
A coalition of over 200 groups on Wednesday called on President Joe Biden to leverage his authority under the Defense Production Act to simultaneously “produce alternatives to fossil fuels, fight the climate emergency, combat Putin’s stranglehold on the world’s energy economy, and support the transition to a renewable and just economy.”
“With one fell swoop, you would reduce energy costs and move the world away from fossil fuel markets that are all too easily manipulated by bad actors.”
The demand was delivered in a letter to Biden—signed by groups including the Center for Biological Diversity, Global Witness, and Stand.earth—and follows the administration’s move Tuesday to ban U.S. imports of Russian fossil fuels in response to Russia’s ongoing military attack on Ukraine.
The groups thank Biden for that immediate ban and say it must be followed not by “short-sighted policies” like ramping up domestic drilling, as the U.S. fossil fuel lobby and industry supporters like Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) have called for, because that would worsen the climate emergency and “deepen our dependence on fuels that lead to global instability.”
“Oil and gas constitute 40% of Russia’s national revenue, meaning Russian exports of oil and gas are literally funding this invasion,” the letter states.
Ramping up fossil fuel extraction and use would also worsen the climate crisis, the groups note, referencing the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report releasedlast week showing that “natural and human systems” are being driven “beyond their ability to adapt.”
What is needed instead, the letter states, is a massive surge in the deployment of renewable energy.
Biden can lead that effort by utilizing the Defense Production Act (DPA), with specific actions on three fronts, all of which should center communities most impacted by the current fossil fueled-based system. The letter calls on the president to:
Rapidly scale up production, manufacturing, and deployment of renewable energy technologies, heat pumps, storage, and weatherization technologies here and abroad. These green technologies can be exported to Ukraine, the rest of Europe, and the Global South to help wean them off of their dependence on Russian fossil fuels. And they should be simultaneously deployed across the United States to jumpstart the renewable energy revolution and prioritize construction in climate-vulnerable communities. With one fell swoop, you would reduce energy costs and move the world away from fossil fuel markets that are all too easily manipulated by bad actors.
Create millions of long-term, high-paying domestic jobs and position the U.S. to be a global leader in showcasing the economic benefits of the just and renewable energy transition. Investments by the federal government can create high-quality, family-supporting jobs; and build worker power by including high-road labor standards.
Accelerate the transition to zero-emission public transportation, alternatives to car based transportation and related infrastructure domestically, and deploy it nationwide, prioritizing communities who are most vulnerable to the climate emergency. These steps will reduce the burden of higher gas prices at the pump for U.S. residents.
“A renewable energy future,” the groups wrote, “is a peaceful and ultimately more prosperous one.”
Climate advocates have previously linked Russia’s military attack on Ukraine with reliance on fossil fuels.
American author and climate activist Bill McKibben, for example, wrote last month in his newsletter The Crucial Years that “it is a war underwritten by oil and gas” and urged Biden to invoke the DPA to produce “electric heat pumps in quantity, so we can ship them to Europe where they can be installed in time to dramatically lessen Putin’s power. “
Fridays for Future youth activists also took to the streets of cities across the globe last week to #StandWithUkraine and heed a call from the Ukrainian arm of the global climate movement.
In a series of tweets last Thursday, the day of the demonstrations, the global group called this “an eye-opening moment for humanity to see that the world is aflame with new and old wars caused by fossil fuels.”
“We want to call out the era of fossil fuel, capitalism, and imperialism that allows these systemic oppressions,” they said. “We demand a world where leaders prioritize #PeopleNotProfit.”
Originally published on Common Dreams by ANDREA GERMANOS and republished under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
It began with a basic “news you can use” feature from National Public Radio. Titled “5 ways to cope with the stressful news cycle,” producer Andee Tagle’s piece, published in late February, offered tips on how to cope with anxiety caused by news consumption in tense times.
Among Tagle’s tips: “Do something that feels good for your body and helps you get out of your head.” Also: “The kitchen is a safe space for a lot of us. Maybe this is the weekend that you finally re-create Grandpa’s famous lasagna … or maybe just lose yourself in some kitchen organization.”
Tagle’s simple self-help counsel quickly ignited social media scorn, seemingly touching a nerve among numerous commentators.
National Review’s Dan McLaughlin tweeted that the piece indicated that NPR employees “really do not envision their audience as grown adults.”
“I’m all for mental health awareness and therapeutic care,” tweeted Daily Beast editor Anthony Fisher, before ultimately dismissing Tagle’s article as “a lifestyle guide for narcissists.”
The piece and its condemnation raise issues involving research about the mental and psychological toll of everyday news consumption that’s gone largely unnoticed by the public over the last few years. Recent surveys and research on the subject have only occasionally been publicized in the general press. The COVID-19 global pandemic – and the doomsday news reports it sparked – attracted a bit more attention to this research.
Yet the mental and psychological toll of news consumption remains largely unknown to the general news consumer. Even if the research isn’t widely known, the emotions felt by what one Northwestern University Medical School article called “headline stress disorder” probably exist for an certain unknown proportion of news consumers. After all, if these feelings didn’t exist for at least some of their listening audience, NPR would never have published that piece. Nor would Fox News have published a similar article to help its viewers cope.
News threatens mental stability
The idea that more news, delivered faster through new and addicting technologies, can cause psychological and medical harm has a long history in the United States.
Media scholars like Daniel Czitrom and Jeffrey Sconce have noted how contemporaneous research linked the emergence and prevalence of neurasthenia to the rapid proliferation of telegraphic news in the late 19th century. Neurasthenia is defined by Merriam-Webster as “a condition that is characterized especially by physical and mental exhaustion usually with accompanying symptoms (such as headache and irritability).” Early 19th-century scientific exploration in neurology and psychiatry suggested that too much news consumption might lead to “nervous exhaustion” and other maladies.
In my own research into social psychology and radiolistening, I noticed the same medical descriptions recurring in the 1920s, once radio became widespread. News reports chronicled how radio listening and radio news consumption seemed to threaten some people’s mental stability.
One front-page New York Times article in 1923 noted that a woman in Minnesota was divorcing her husband on the then-novel grounds that he suffered from “radio mania.” The wife felt her husband “paid more attention to his radio apparatus than to her or their home,” which had apparently “alienated his affection” from her.
Similar reports of addiction, mania and psychological entanglement spawned by new media emerged again as television proliferated in the American home in the 1950s, and again with the proliferation of the internet.
The public discussion of psychological addiction and mental harm caused by new technologies, and the ensuing moral panics they spawn, appears periodically as new communication technologies emerge. But, historically, adjustment and integration of new media occurs over time, and disorders such as neurasthenia and “radio mania” are largely forgotten.
Anxious about frightening news
“Headline stress disorder” might sound ridiculous to some, but research does show that reading the news can make certain subsets of news consumers develop measurable emotional effects.
There are numerousstudies looking into this phenomenon. In general, they find some people, under certain conditions, can be vulnerable to potentially harmful and diagnosable levels of anxiety if exposed to certain types of news reports.
The problem for researchers is isolating the exact subset of news consumers this happens to, and describing precisely the effect that occurs in response to specific identified news subjects and methods of news consumption.
Just because popular culture manages to pathologize much of everyday behavior doesn’t mean identified problems aren’t real, as those skewering the NPR story implied.
We all eat; but some of us eat far too much. When that occurs, everyday behavior is transformed into actions that can threaten health and survival. Likewise, most of us strive to stay informed, but it’s likely that in certain situations, for certain people, staying informed when the news is particularly frightening can threaten their mental health.
Therefore, the question is not whether the problem is real, but how research might quantify and describe its true prevalence, and how to address the problem.
And that’s precisely why the NPR article caused such a stir. Many people who consume news without problem couldn’t fathom why others might benefit from learning how to cope with “headline stress disorder.”
In reality, the criticism aimed at NPR says nothing about those who find our current run of bad news particularly anxiety provoking. It does say a lot about the lack of empathy from those who would scoff at the idea.
“This long-overdue legislation will strengthen the Postal Service so it can better serve the American people.”
Postal reform advocates on Tuesday welcomed the U.S. Senate’s passage of House-approved bipartisan legislation that was held up last month by GOP Sen. Rick Scott of Florida.
A day after overcoming a filibuster, the Postal Service Reform Act passed the evenly split Senate in a 79-19 vote, with several Republicans joining Democrats to send the bill to President Joe Biden’s desk.
“Every day tens of millions of Americans rely on the post office for their daily essentials—seniors and veterans, small business owners, small-town rural Americans, people waiting for wedding invitations, birthday cards, letters—so we know that the Postal Service is really beloved,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) at a press conference after the vote.
The U.S. Postal Service is “an important institution in American life” and was long in need of a revamp, he added, calling the bill’s passage a win for bipartisanship, postal workers, and the public.
“Every day the Postal Service faithfully delivers for the American people and today the Senate is finally delivering for the post office,” declared Schumer, flanked by Democratic and Republican colleagues.
SIGNED. SEALED. DELIVERED.
The Senate passed the Postal Service Reform Act! 📬
National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) president Fredric Rolando said in a statement that “this is a monumental victory for letter carriers and all Americans who depend on the Postal Service for affordable and high-quality universal service.”
“I want to congratulate and thank all the NALC members who lobbied their members of Congress to win passage in the Senate and the House,” he added. “Thanks to your support, dedication, and action, bipartisan postal reform, that was 12 years in the making, has finally passed in both chambers.”
The $107 billion compromise package, which the House advanced with a 342-92 vote in February, will make future Postal Service retirees enroll in Medicare—ending a costly mandate forcing the USPS to prefund health benefits—and require the creation of a new online mail tracking system.
BREAKING: WE WON!
After a campaign by the APWU & allied unions, the U.S. Senate has passed the Postal Service Reform Act, ending the disastrous 75-year pre-funding mandate which has been artificially bankrupting the Postal Service for decades.https://t.co/6SFWHW6LL8
— The American Postal Workers Union – APWU (@APWUnational) March 8, 2022
“This long-overdue legislation will strengthen the Postal Service so it can better serve the American people,” tweetedSen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.).
The bill was even supported by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, an appointee of former President Donald Trump who has faced multiple scandals.
The Senate vote comes as DeJoy is under fire for a USPS plan to buy gas-powered delivery trucks in spite of President Joe Biden’s proposed transition to zero-emission government vehicles.
We need your voice! The new @USPS postal truck gets worse mileage than the 1988 model when new. Way back when Beetlejuice and Rambo III were in theaters. Help us tell Postmaster General DeJoy to hit reverse on this disastrous plan #FutureIsElectrichttps://t.co/9n2GUbgjMw
“DeJoy’s environmental review is rickety, founded on suspect calculations, and fails to meet the standards of the law,” said Earthjustice senior attorney Adrian Martinez last month. “We’re not done fighting this reckless decision.”
Originally published on Common Dreams by JESSICA CORBETT and republished under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
“Amazon repeatedly endeavored to thwart the committee’s efforts to uncover the truth about Amazon’s business practices,” the House Judiciary Committee wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland. “For this, it must be held accountable.”
A U.S. House committee on Wednesday asked the Department of Justice to investigate Amazon and some of its executives for possible criminal obstruction of Congress, accusing the e-commerce giant of lying under oath and refusing to provide certain information requested by lawmakers during an antitrust probe.
That’s according toThe Wall Street Journal, which first obtained a letter sent to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland by Democratic and Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee. Signatories said they are alerting the DOJ to “potentially criminal conduct” by Amazon and some of its executives, though the letter doesn’t name specific individuals.
As the Journal reported:
The letter accuses the Seattle-based tech giant of refusing to provide information that lawmakers sought as part of an investigation by the body’s Antitrust Subcommittee into Amazon’s competitive practices. The letter alleges that the refusal was an attempt to cover up what it calls a lie that the company told lawmakers about its treatment of outside sellers on its platform.
The alleged lie came, according to the Washington Post, during “sworn testimony to the committee in 2019 about whether it uses data that it collects from third-party sellers to compete with them.”
The newspaper, which is owned by Amazon founder and ex-CEO Jeff Bezos, continued:
“[C]redible investigative reporting” and the committee’s investigation showed the company was engaging in the practice despite its denial, the letter said.
Subsequently, as the investigation continued, Amazon tried to “cover up its lie by offering ever-shifting explanations” of its policies, the letter said.
Furthermore, “after Amazon was caught in a lie and repeated misrepresentations, it stonewalled the committee’s efforts to uncover the truth,” according to the letter.
Throughout the investigation, “Amazon repeatedly endeavored to thwart the committee’s efforts to uncover the truth about Amazon’s business practices,” states the panel’s letter. “For this, it must be held accountable.”
The Judiciary Committee, chaired by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), conducted a 16-month antitrust investigation into Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook. The probe resulted in an October 2020 report that criticized all four tech giants and stimulated legislative proposals designed to limit their power.
However, the Journal noted that “lawmakers’ interaction with Amazon has been particularly contentious, according to people involved, and the new letter makes it the only one of the four companies that Judiciary Committee members have accused of illegal obstruction.”
Reutersreported that Wednesday’s “referral to the DOJ follows a previous warning from members of the U.S. committee in October in which they accused Amazon’s top executives, including founder Jeff Bezos, of either misleading Congress or possibly lying to it about Amazon’s business practices.”
According to the Journal, committee members at the time “sent a letter to Amazon Chief Executive Andy Jassy urging the company to provide ‘exculpatory evidence’ surrounding its private-label business practices. Lawyers representing Amazon met with legal counsel for the committee following the letter but didn’t produce the requested evidence, saying the investigation Amazon had conducted was privileged information between attorney and client, according to people familiar with the matter.”
Wednesday’s letter, the newspaper reported, says that Amazon “has refused to turn over business documents or communications that would either corroborate its claims or correct the record.”
“It appears to have done so to conceal the truth about its use of third-party sellers’ data to advantage its private-label business and its preferencing of private-label products in search results—subjects of the committee’s investigation,” the letter continues.
“As a result, we have no choice but to refer this matter to the Department of Justice to investigate whether Amazon and its executives obstructed Congress in violation of applicable federal law,” adds the letter.
It was signed by Nadler; Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), chair of the panel’s subcommittee on antitrust, commercial, and administrative law; and subcommittee members Reps. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), Pramilia Jayapal (D-Wash.), and Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.).
Originally published on Common Dreams by KENNY STANCIL and republished under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
Bitcoin and Crypto’s reached a major turning point: why is cryptocurrency worth anything?
In a recent interview clip Jack Dorsey quietly states his opinion on the difference between people who “get” blockchain and crypto, and those that will forever be married to the past:
This is the simply stated portion that says it all:
“People who have questions in the world, people who have curiosity (and are) recognizing that the current systems, wether they be corporate financial systems or the government financial systems just aren’t working for them…”
Although the context of his statement is regarding bitcoin as the native currency for the internet, and in particular how people are responding to the fact that financial systems “just aren’t working for them” it is, nevertheless, a perfect statement of how the world is changing.
It has already changed into two distinct groups: those that are clinging to the status quo, since it has worked very well for them, and those that want to find a new and better way, because, in most cases, the current system did not work for them.
It’s important to realize that this statement is not coming from a disgruntled outsider, but from the hugely successful founder of Square, now called Block.
The fact that a large group of highly successful business leaders, such as Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk, although benefiting massively from the current financial systems, are at the same time embracing a new way of thought and action for the future, is at the crux of the issues addressed in this post.
Buffet vs Musk & Dorsey and the zero sum mindset of Malthusian Capitalism
There is a war waging between those that are open to, and welcoming of, bitcoin, crypto, blockchain, DeFi and other new financial innovations and those that reject all of it and would like nothing more than to see it stopped, by any means necessary.
The derision, insults and disdain lobbed at bitcoin, crypto and anyone that believes in them, by the “old guard” epitomized by Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger are now well known and documented:
A few quotes:
“Probably rat poison squared.” — Warren Buffett in Fox Business interview at 2018 meeting
“I think I should say modestly that the whole damn development is disgusting and contrary to the interests of civilization” – Charlie Munger vice chairman at Berkshire Hathaway
“I certainly didn’t invest in crypto. I’m proud of the fact I’ve avoided it. It’s like a venereal disease or something. I just regard it as beneath contempt.” – Charlie Munger vice chairman at Berkshire Hathaway
Interestingly, if you look deeper at the interviews and quotes, you’d see that, in spite of the headline grabbing hyperbole, it’s the price speculation that is at the heart of the criticism.
The comments that crypto and bitcoin “don’t produce anything” are ridiculous on their face, as if the fiat dollar “produces” products, services or anything else.
Oh, wait, the dollar does “produce” inflation (loss in value), and has done so very dependably over the last 100+ years.
Take a stat so well known that it is almost a cliché, any way you put it: a 2013 U.S. dollar (the year the federal reserve was created, not coincidentally) would be worth more than 16x what a dollar is worth today. One has to ask where that value is now?
Bitcoin, however, has over time only gained value. A lot. If bitcoin is rat poison, maybe the fiat system and the federal reverse are the rat?
100 year old billionaires are, aparently, not inclined to speak from enlightened self-interest. Or, to be kind, perhaps they are blinded by the success they enjoyed in a system that favors anyone at the top of the pyramid, one built on value theft?
One very big caveat, however, is clearly that the “everything bubble” is bursting, price speculation always ends in price crashes, and the massive gains in the value of various cryptocurrencies are a symptom of a larger systemic emergency, rather than a quality inherent to crypto itself. There’s that.
The gap between this kind of thinking vs. that of the forward looking cryptocurrency proponents, and what they consider to be positive innovations, is vast. In a time where divisive thought is nearly ubiquitous this is not news.
However, the fact that the legions of those that “get it” are as large as they are, and that they are constantly growing, has clearly taken the debate past the point of no return.
To get the full view of this divide it’s important to look also at just how the nearly 100 year old duo of Buffet & Munger got to be the “legends” that they are.
All the best known names they are associated with, from the initial Berkshire Hathaway purchase in 1962 to more recent investments in companies such as CocaCola, GEICO Insurance, RJ Reynolds Tobacco, Sees Candy, Clayton Homes and so on, paint a clear picture of extreme hierarchal and exploitative capitalism that is solely based on making themselves and shareholders rich, and doing it on the backs of consumers.
In an example of the thinking of those that do not worship the duo, in The Nation, David Dayen wrote: “America isn’t supposed to allow moats, much less reward them. Our economic system, we claim, is founded on free and fair competition. We have laws over a century old designed to break up concentrated industries, encouraging innovation and risk-taking. In other words, Buffett’s investment strategy should not legally be available, to him or anyone else.”
Exactly this kind of double standard, corrupt to the core, is built on systemic greed founded on a Malthusian “zero-sum mindset”. This is what has led millions to conclude that the system just isn’t working for them.
Being championed ad nausea for this lifetime of “achievement” is part and parcel of the status quo that many, from many in the 99% to the “nouveau 1%”, such as Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey, Vitalik Buterin and many others, are actively seeking alternatives to.
That distinction, being rich and powerful and yet not satisfied with the legacy of corruption and greed, is at the heart of the new wave of thought that has made bitcoin, crypto and DeFi a force to be reckoned with.
Moreover, seeing the state of the world that centuries of this kind of thinking has engendered, it’s natural for the young and more enlightened to want to search for other ways for things to work, ways that perhaps champion something other than monopolistic greed and exploitation.
In a recent Interview Elon Musk addressed precisely this issue – how many in the current system are focused on prospering at the expense of others and maintaining a zero-sum mindset. In the clip he outlines how important it is to understand the failure of that approach.
The idea that crypto will disappear is wishful thinking by those that cling to the systems of the past
A clip of Harrison Ford speaking at the Global Climate Action Summit was banned on some platforms as incendiary. Why? Because he passionately accuses those that are financially linked to fossil fuels of working to spread disinformation and misinformation, in order to perpetuate their massive incomes, even while the planet is on the brink of climate disaster.
Blocking this opinion, from a rich and famous film star, no less, is typical in the way that the established system works to suppress the idea that you should do anything about the fact that “it’s just not working” for you.
This is the same divide, mentioned above, that is nearly all pervasive today, but will never stop innovation in thinking about financial systems. It will not stop DeFi or DAOs or crypto or bitcoin.
It will not stop sustainable energy from becoming an ever bigger part of the world’s energy infrastructure. The point of going back has long since passed.
How money works according to Musk
Jack Dorsey has an understated and somehow “quiet” way of expressing revolutionary ideas. Elon Musk, on the other hand, is well known for controversial and flamboyant statements, and especially tweets.
But to get a taste of just how radical his thinking really is, particularly to those that disagree, you have to dig deeper into lengthy interviews, such as those with Lex Fridman, where he reveals his thinking more specifically on money, crypto and the governments role in the system of money.
Coming from the wealthiest person on earth, some may find it odd, yet his thoughts on crypto vs fiat money are well documented. It’s just this kind of stance, taken by so many in the “new” establishment at the top of the current financial pyramid, who also see the necessity for change toward new ideas and systems that can so away with the worst of the status quo, well represented above by Buffet & Munger and other “crypto haters”.
Government is a corporation in the limit
In yet another interview excerpt, Musk goes even deeper into his belief that – in his exact words: “if you don’t like corporations should really hate governments”
While this particular statement arose out of a spat with Senator Elizabeth Warren regarding taxes, the overall concept of challenging the status quo and the, clearly failed, systems perpetuated, remains in play.
Web3, and how Web2 and legacy financial structures are linked
Although fraught with infighting – the typical bitcoin vs. Ethereum vs. Doge vs. Shiba Inu internal debates and criticisms are not on the magnitude of the division between those that generally support and benefit from, for example, status quo financial structure and fossil fuel business, vs those that favor Blockchain and Sustainable energy.
Further, the spirit of the clash between Web2 and Web3 rests not on the tech or the systems themselves, which it can be argued are the same, but on the beliefs and intent of each camp.
The surveillance capitalism business models of web2, epitomized by Facebook and Google are diametrically opposed to the spirit and stated goals of web3, just as bitcoin was created out of a time that, not coincidentally, corresponded to the 2008 crash and crisis born of the greed and corruption of the legacy economic establishment.
There are two distinct camps that have emerged.
Those, such as Tesla and Elon Musk, that reject the traditional holy grail of shareholder value and instead embrace, for example, a more enlightened mission “to accelerate the transition to sustainable energy”. This aligns with any individual choosing the support crypto as a “Hodler” or at least believer, vs. those that support the legacy systems of finance, the fossil fuel industrial complex and Web2’s exploitative business model.
This divide is the ultimate test of our time and it will only grow in stature and importance.
The correspondence between forward looking innovation in all human thought, communication and action is already too big to stop and cannot be wished away.
There will undoubtedly be setbacks to these new directions, and there will be attacks using more than insults, such as those quoted above, but the time for the unstoppable force to be quelled is long since past. Coke and a smile? No thanks.
“We hope that the government will support our amendments which seek to strengthen our ability to hit Russian oligarchs as quickly and effectively as possible,” said one Labour Party lawmaker.
After authorities in France and Germany seized a pair of yachts owned by super-wealthy Russians on Wednesday, pressure is mounting on United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson to follow suit by confiscating the assets of oligarchs linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“It shouldn’t have taken a war to force the British government to act on what had become an international money racket.”
French authorities reportedly seized a superyacht belonging to Igor Sechin—former deputy prime minister of Russia who has been CEO of the state-owned oil company Rosneft since 2012—in the shipyards of La Ciotat.
According to French officials, the 280-foot “Amore Velo” had arrived at the Mediterranean port on January 3 and was slated to remain there until April 1 while undergoing repairs. However, customs officers seized the yacht after they noticed it was “taking steps to sail off urgently” in violation of the European Union’s new sanctions on Russian oligarchs.
In a separate incident on Wednesday, German authorities reportedly seized “Dilbar,” a superyacht owned by Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov. The 512-foot vessel, valued at roughly $600 million, was taken in Hamburg’s shipyards, where it was being worked on.
Sechin and Usmanov were both included in a list, published Monday, of 26 Russian oligarchs who would be subject to E.U. sanctions imposed in response to Moscow’s deadly assault on Ukraine. The document refers to Sechin as one of Putin’s “most trusted and closest advisors, as well as his personal friend,” while Usmanov is described as a “pro-Kremlin oligarch with particularly close ties” to Putin.
The confiscation by France and Germany of some of Sechin and Usmanov’s most prized assets has led critics to demand more far-reaching action from the U.K., which left the E.U. in 2020.
Last week, Johnson, a right-wing Tory, announced that the U.K. would implement “the largest and most severe package of economic sanctions that Russia has ever seen.”
“Oligarchs in London,” said Johnson, “will have nowhere to hide.”
Britain has hit nine wealthy Russians with sanctions since Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine last week, but “Johnson has been accused by opposition politicians and some of his own lawmakers of failing to take more speedy action,” Reutersreported Thursday.
When Damian Hinds, a Tory serving as the U.K.’s national security minister, was asked Thursday if the Cabinet was too “scared” to target Russian elites due to the “legal implications,” Hinds said, “No.”
An unnamed government source told the PA news agency, however, that it could take “weeks and months” to build legally sound cases against some Russian oligarchs.
According toThe Independent, “Johnson is coming under pressure to tighten the net on illicit Russian finance in ‘weeks, not years,’ as officials confirmed that they are aware of wealthy oligarchs moving cash out of the U.K. in advance of expected sanctions.”
London Mayor Sadiq Khan, a member of the Labour Party, urged the government last week to seize assets owned by Putin’s allies, who use London as a “safe harbor… to park their cash.”
Since then, more elected officials, including conservatives, have echoed Khan’s call.
Tom Tugendhat, the Tory chair of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, said Thursday that “we should be looking immediately to seize those assets linked to those who are profiting from Putin’s war machine, holding it in trust, and returning it to the Russian people as soon as possible.”
In a Washington Post opinion piece published Tuesday, British journalist Hannah Fearn wrote that “it shouldn’t have taken a war to force the British government to act on what had become an international money racket.”
According to the Post, “Russian money is so ubiquitous, so notorious in Britain’s capital city that the global financial hub was long ago nicknamed “‘Londongrad.'”
While mega-rich tax dodgers from around the globe have dumped billions into London’s real estate market—inflating property values and exacerbating an affordable housing crisis—anti-corruption researchers have called the city a “laundromat” for Russia’s dirty money, in particular.
As The Independent reported:
Labour has tabled amendments to the government’s Economic Crimes Bill to require the true ownership of properties to be registered within 28 days rather than 18 months.
Sir Keir Starmer—who has offered Labour’s help to rush the long-awaited legislation through the Commons in a single day on Monday—told the prime minister that the proposed delay would give cronies of Vladimir Putin plenty of time to “quietly launder their money… into another safe haven.”
In a recent letter to Kwasi Kwarteng, a Tory serving as the U.K.’s business secretary, Labour Party parliamentarian Jonathan Reynolds wrote: “In the spirit of ending malign influence in our economy we hope that the government will support our amendments which seek to strengthen our ability to hit Russian oligarchs as quickly and effectively as possible.”
“Much more must be done to stop the movement to oligarchy not just in Russia, but all over the world.”
According to the prime minister’s official spokesperson, “We are not being held back from introducing sanctions.” But, he said, “we do have laws that we need to abide by” when it comes to implementing economic restrictions.
“When it comes to individuals it is the case that we need to do the preparatory work, the requisite work, to make sure it is legally sound before introduction,” said the spokesperson, who added that “if there are ways to further speed it up then we will.”
Meanwhile, in the U.S., members of Congress cheered Tuesday night when President Joe Biden said during his State of the Union address that “we’re joining with European allies to find and seize [Russian oligarchs’] yachts, their luxury apartments, their private jets. We’re coming for your ill-begotten gains.”
Several Russian elites have reportedly moved their yachts to the Maldives, which lacks an extradition treaty with the U.S., in anticipation of a possible crackdown.
Some progressives have called for confiscating all luxury vessels owned by billionaires, not just those close to Putin, while others have demanded urgent action to combat worsening inequality all over the globe.
“None of these oligarchs should be allowed to park their yachts, fly their jets, sleep in their mansions, or stash their cash offshore during the war in Ukraine,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Tuesday. “But much more must be done to stop the movement to oligarchy not just in Russia, but all over the world.”
Originally published on Common Dreams by KENNY STANCIL and republished under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
“We are not part of this conflict, and we have a responsibility to ensure it does not escalate and spread beyond Ukraine,” said NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Friday that the 30-country alliance will not impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine, warning that such a step would draw NATO forces into direct conflict with Russia and potentially spark “a full-fledged war in Europe.”
“We are not part of this conflict, and we have a responsibility to ensure it does not escalate and spread beyond Ukraine because that would be even more devastating and more dangerous, with even more human suffering,” Stoltenberg said during a press conference following a meeting of NATO foreign ministers.
Stoltenberg told reporters that while the Ukrainian leadership’s call for a no-fly zone was mentioned during Friday’s meeting, NATO members ultimately agreed that the alliance shouldn’t have “planes operating over Ukrainian airspace or NATO troops on Ukrainian territory.”
“NATO is not seeking a war with Russia,” said Stoltenberg, who condemned Russia’s assault on Ukraine as an unlawful act of aggression and demanded that Russian President Vladimir Putin order the immediate withdrawal of all troops.
Watch Stoltenberg’s press conference:
NATO’s rejection of a no-fly zone came a day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy renewed his push for a no-fly zone over the besieged country.
“I hope the sky will be shut down,” Zelenskyy said during a press conference on Thursday.
But many world leaders, progressive lawmakers, and anti-war campaigners have warned that because a no-fly zone must be enforced militarily, the imposition of such an airspace ban would dramatically increase the risk of broadening the deadly conflict in Ukraine.
Last week, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said U.S. President Joe Biden has no intention of supporting a no-fly zone, warning that it could bring the United States into “a war with Russia, which is something we are not planning to be a part of.”
The prime minister of Lithuania, a NATO member, similarly rejected calls for a no-fly zone during a news conference on Friday.
“I believe that all encouragements for NATO to get involved in the military conflict now are irresponsible,” said Ingrida Simonyte.
Originally published on Common Dreams by JAKE JOHNSON and republished under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
These sanctions are aimed at generating opposition from both Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle and everyday Russians. As a scholar who studies regime change, I believe the risk is that they will actually drive the Kremlin’s weak opposition further into obscurity.
A ‘punishment logic’
Economic sanctions follow a “punishment logic”: Those feeling economic pain are expected to rise up against their political leaders and demand a change in policies.
In authoritarian regimes like Putin’s, where average citizens are the most likely to suffer, sanctions usually do more to hurt the opposition than help it.
How Putin has quelled dissent
Putin has used a variety of tools to try to quell domestic opposition over the past two decades.
Some of these were subtle, such as tweaking the electoral system in ways that benefit his party. Others were less so, including instituting constitutional changes that allow him to serve as president for years to come.
Despite a clampdown on activism, Russians have repeatedly proved willing to take to the streets to make their voices heard. Thousands demonstrated in the summer and fall of 2020 to support a governor in the Far East who had beaten Putin’s pick for the position only to be arrested, ostensibly for a murder a decade and a half earlier. Thousands more came out last spring to protest against Navalny’s detention.
Putin has even begun facing challenges from traditionally subservient political parties, such as the Communist Party and the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party.
Flickers of opposition
Importantly, Putin has occasionally shown a willingness to back down and change his policies under pressure. In other words, as much as Putin has limited democracy in Russia, opposition has continued to bubble up.
The result is a president who feels compelled to win over at least a portion of his domestic audience. This was clear in the impassioned address Putin made to the nation setting the stage for war. The fiery hourlong speech falsely accused Ukrainians of genocide against ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine. “How long can this tragedy continue? How much longer can we put up with this?” Putin asked his nation.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine, Russians have continued to show their willingness to stand up to Putin. Thousands have gathered to protest the war in Ukraine, despite risking large fines and jail time.
Despite these public showings, the liberal opposition to Putin is undoubtedly weak. In part, this is because Putin controls state television, which nearly two-thirds of Russians watch for their daily news. Going into this war, half of Russians blamed the U.S. and NATO for the increase in tensions, with only 4% holding Russia responsible.
Putin has already shown he can use his information machine to convert past Western sanctions into advantage. After the West sanctioned Russia for its 2014 takeover of Crimea, Putin deflected blame for Russians’ economic pain from himself to foreign powers. The result may have fallen short of the classic “rally around the flag” phenomenon, but on balance Putin gained politically from his first grab on Ukraine. More forceful economic sanctions this time around may unleash a broader wave of nationalism.
And former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev reacted to the country’s expulsion from the Council of Europe by suggesting Russia might go back on its human rights promises.
Another casualty of the war
This has already begun.
In the first week of the war, Russian authorities arrested more than 7,000 protesters. They ramped up censorship and closed down a longtime icon of liberal media, the Ekho Moskvy radio station. The editor of Russia’s last independent TV station, TV Dozhd, also announced he was fleeing the country.
Russia already ranked near the bottom – 150 out of 180 – in the latest Reporters Without Borders assessment of media freedom. And a new law, passed on March 4, 2022, punishes the spread of “false information” about Russia’s armed forces with up to 15 years in jail.
Ultimately, the opposition seen on the streets in Russia today and perhaps in the coming weeks may be the greatest show of strength that can be expected in the near future.
Even in the best of circumstances, economic sanctions can take years to have their desired effect. For Ukrainians, fighting a brutal and one-sided war, the sanctions are unlikely to help beyond bolstering morale.
The danger is that these sanctions may also make average Russians another casualty in Putin’s war.
“Using cluster munitions in populated areas shows a brazen and callous disregard for people’s lives,” said the human rights group.
Russian forces used cluster bombs during attacks on Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv in what may amount to war crimes, Human Rights Watch said Friday.
“Using cluster munitions in populated areas shows a brazen and callous disregard for people’s lives,” said Steve Goose, arms director at Human Rights Watch, in a statement.
The new assessment of Monday strikes on Kharkiv, an eastern city home to over 1.4 million people, is based on photos and video evidence verified by the human rights group and was presented as Russia faces increasing global condemnation over its ongoing invasion, which has stoked fears of nuclear disaster and has already forced over one million people to flee Ukraine.
HRW already confirmed last week use of cluster munitions by Russian forces in a February 24 strike just outside a hospital in the Ukrainian city of Vuhledar. The new assessment focuses on munitions that hit the Moskovskyi, Shevchenkivskyi, and Industrialnyi districts of Kharkiv on February 28.
The rights group—which noted the “inherently indiscriminate nature of cluster munitions and their foreseeable effects on civilians”—based its new assessment on interviews with two witnesses and an analysis of 40 videos and photographs, which revealed information on explosion signatures and remnants of the rockets.
The munitions used in the Kharkiv strikes, said HRW, were delivered by Russian-made 9M55K Smerch cluster munition rockets.
NEW: Russian forces fired cluster munitions into at least three residential areas of Kharkiv, #Ukraine’s second largest city, on February 28, 2022. The use of these weapons might constitute a war crime. https://t.co/S7cgZFAifnpic.twitter.com/rMubla6C1a
Over 120 nations have signed on to an international treatybanning the use, transfer, and stockpiling of cluster munitions, which can pose deadly harm far beyond initial explosions, as unexploded submitions becoming akin to landmines. The Cluster Munition Caolition describes the weapons as being able to “saturate an area up to the size of several football fields.”
Neither Russia, Ukraine, nor the U.S., however, is state party to the treaty.
“We are seeing mounting evidence of indiscriminate attacks on Kharkiv and the price civilians are paying for these serious violations,” said HRW’s Goose.
“If these deadly acts were carried out either intentionally or recklessly,” he added, “they would be war crimes.”
The head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) also said Friday that Russian forces have used cluster bombs in its attacks on Ukraine.
“We have seen the use of cluster bombs and we have seen reports of use of other types of weapons which would be in violation of international law,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters.
Amnesty International has also previously confirmed Russian forces’ use of cluster bombs on Ukraine, and open source investigative outlet Bellingcat has also been tracking Russia’s use of the weapons during the invasion.
In a Wednesday statement, the U.K. presidency of the Convention on Cluster Munitions expressed “grave” concern about reports of Russia using the weapons in strikes on Ukraine, noting that cluster bombs “have had a devastating impact on civilians in many conflict areas.”
The Cluster Munition Coalition, in a Wednesday tweet, said, “We welcome the growing number of states speaking out on—and urge all states to condemn—the unacceptable use of cluster munitions by Russian forces in Ukraine.”
Originally published on Common Dreams by ANDREA GERMANOS and republished under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
