It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Saturday, January 11, 2025
Cyclone-hit Mayotte on red alert as new storm approaches Authorities have put the French overseas territory of Mayotte on red alert late on Saturday, Prefect Francois-Xavier Bieuville said, as a tropical storm nears the Indian Ocean archipelago that was devastated by a cyclone last month.
Mayotte was placed on a red weather alert from 1900 GMT on Saturday in anticipation of the passage of Cyclone Dikeledi to the south of the territory.
Authorities called for "extreme vigilance" following the devastation wrought by Cyclone Chido in mid-December
"I have decided to bring forward this red alert to 10:00 pm to allow everyone to take shelter, to confine themselves, to take care of the people close to you, your children, your families," Prefect Francois-Xavier Bieuville, the top Paris-appointed official on the territory, said on television.
Meteo-France predicted "significant rain and windy conditions", saying that very heavy rain could cause flooding.
"We need to be seriously prepared for the possibility of a close passage of the cyclone and the triggering of a red alert," the Mayotte prefecture said on X.
Prefect Francois-Xavier Bieuville said the cyclone was forecast to pass within 110 kilometres (70 miles) of the archipelago's southern coast.
"We even have systems telling us 75 kilometres. So we have something that is going to hit Mayotte very closely", he told reporters in Mamoudzou on Saturday morning.
However, forecasters expect the cyclone to weaken on Saturday night "to the stage of a strong tropical storm, before moving off the coast of southern Mayotte during the day on Sunday".
The prefect has requested that mayors reopen accommodation centres such as schools and gymnasiums that sheltered around 15,000 people in December. 'We are going to have a lot of rain'
He also ordered firefighters and other forces to be deployed to "extremely fragile" shantytowns in Mamoudzou and elsewhere.
Potential mudslides were "a major risk", the prefect said.
"Chido was a dry cyclone, with very little rain," he added.
"This tropical storm is a wet event, we are going to have a lot of rain."
Residents were advised to seek shelter and stock up on food and water.
Mayotte's population stands officially at 320,000, but there are an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 more undocumented inhabitants living in shanty towns that were destroyed by the cyclone in December.
In Mamoudzou, Camelia Petre, 35, said she would be sheltering in her house, which "held up during Chido."
She told AFP that she would be "taking in friends and colleagues who have lost their homes."
She was "very worried about the vulnerable population," she added.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)
Algeria slams France's 'campaign of disinformation' amid row over deported influencer
Algeria on Saturday rejected France's accusation of escalation, denouncing a "campaign of disinformation" in their latest diplomatic row over the arrests of Algerian social media influencers accused of inciting violence.
Algeria on Saturday rejected France's accusation of escalation, denouncing a "campaign of disinformation" in their latest diplomatic row after Algiers sent back to Paris an influencer deported from the European country.
"Algeria is in no way engaged in a logic of escalation... or humiliation," the Algerian foreign ministry said in a statement, accusing the extreme right in France of "waging a campaign of disinformation" against Algeria.
"Doualemn", a 59-year-old influencer, was detained by French authorities in the southern city of Montpellier after posting a controversial video on TikTok.
He was sent by plane to Algeria on Thursday, according to his lawyer, but was sent back to France the same evening as Algeria refused to let the influencer enter.
Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot threatened restrictions to visas or development aid, telling LCI television that France would have "no option but to retaliate" if "the Algerians continue to escalate" the row.
The Algerian ministry said their decision was "motivated by the desire to allow him to respond to the accusations brought against him, to assert his rights and to defend himself within the framework of a fair and equitable judicial process on French territory".
Exclusive: Top French banks and the dirty gas business in Peru’s Amazon
16:11
The Mipaya gas site, in which Repsol holds a 10 percent stake, is located near the village of Kiriguet. Walter Dalguerri – the man holding the machete – is the village chief.
FRANCE 24 reveals, in partnership with investigative media outlet Disclose, RFI and the Pulitzer Center, that French banking group Crédit Agricole holds a €240 million stake in Repsol – a Spanish multinational responsible for gas extraction in the Peruvian Amazon – and is making substantial profits from it. According to our investigation, the gas firm is responsible for numerous environmental and health hazards.
Sun-scorched lands, lonely polar bears, wind turbines spinning above lush meadows and a voice that warns “the countdown has begun”.
This footage is not part of the latest Extinction Rebellion campaign but instead comes from videos produced by French bank Crédit Agricole. In its PR campaign aimed at presenting a greener image, Europe's third-largest banking group promises to “put pressure” on its clients to “preserve the future of the planet”. But in reality, the bank with over €2,400 billion in assets is still a long way from its goal. It is clearly aware of this, since it is buying up shares and bonds in oil and gas companies in spades; multinationals for whom the future of the planet does not seem to be a priority.
These financial operations, which are not mentioned in Crédit Agricole's promotional videos, transit through a little-known but highly strategic entity for the group: its investment subsidiary Amundi, whose mission is to grow the savings of individuals and capital entrusted by public or private companies. By carrying out a detailed analysis of the investments made by the French banking group, the online investigative media Disclose, in partnership with FRANCE 24 and RFI, discovered that in August 2024, Amundi held €238 million worth of shares and bonds in the Spanish company Repsol. This investment earns Crédit Agricole €10.8 million a year. Last September, another French bank, BPCE, took part in raising almost a billion dollars on behalf of Repsol. The Spanish multinational oil and gas company has a strong presence in Latin America, including in Peru. Since 2006, it has been exploiting a huge gas field in the southeast of the country – right in the middle of the Amazon rainforest.
Gas drilling, an extremely polluting activity
The Disclose team travelled to Peru to find out what the French group's investments in the Spanish firm entail. On the banks of the Urubamba River, in an area where more than 5,000 hectares of trees have disappeared – according to a census by the NGO Global Forest Watch – Repsol's footprint is everywhere. Crédit Agricole profits handsomely from this presence, which involves gas drilling, an extremely polluting activity.
You have to strain your ears to catch the hum. A low frequency, like the fluttering wings of a giant dragonfly, contrasts with the birdsong and regular machete strokes of Walter Dalguerri, who has been guiding us through the Peruvian jungle along the Urubamba River for two hours now. On this Friday, October 4, as we approach the Mipaya gas site in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, the hum becomes more and more perceptible. “It's the sound of the flare used to burn off the gas,” explains Dalguerri, as we make our way through one of the many streams we have to cross to reach the site from our starting point, the village of Kirigueti. Dalguerri, with his athletic build and sunburnt face, knows what he's talking about: he's the village chief of Kirigueti, which is located opposite Mipaya.
The Mipaya gas site, in which Repsol holds a 10 percent stake, is located near the village of Kiriguet. Walter Dalguerri – the man holding the machete – is the village chief.
This is one of the 30 or so drilling sites associated with the Camisea mega gas field. Covering 1,700 km² of jungle in the Lower Urubamba region, it’s made up of three concessions held by several oil and gas industry heavyweights: Argentina's Pluspetrol, American firm Hunt Oil, China's CNPC and Repsol, which holds 10 percent of Mipaya and a controlling stake in other drilling operations in the sector.
Since becoming chief of the neighbouring village, Dalguerri has been documenting the pollution caused by activity around the Mipaya gas well. From abandoned plastic sheeting to damaged drainage pipes, he photographs it all. With one exception: the wisps of toxic gas, invisible to the naked eye, that escape from the chimney used to burn "superfluous" gas in the open air. According to Dalguerri, the Mipaya chimney is frequently active. This could have serious consequences not only for local flora and fauna, but also for the health of the several thousand people living nearby. “Flaring produces all kinds of air pollutants, and these have health effects such as heart attacks, respiratory problems, asthma and hospital admissions,” says Jonathan Buonocore, a public health researcher at Boston University and expert on the issue.
In Peru, companies like Repsol that use flaring have to get the green light from the ministry of energy and mines. The problem is that those in charge don't seem to have much regard for the protection of nature and local residents. According to our calculations, based on an analysis of official documents, since 2022 the authorities have approved the emission of over 72,000 tonnes of CO2 from the three concessions linked to the Camisea gas field. And that's just the carbon dioxide emitted by flaring. These authorisations do not take into account methane leaks throughout the production chain, nor the transportation of the gas. This lenient approach to the gas industry can be explained by the fact that the Camisea fields supply 40 percent of the country's electricity, and have earned the state €15 billion in various taxes over the past 20 years. And the government has no intention of stopping there: huge steel pipelines are soon to be built to carry the gas produced by Repsol and its partners to other regions in southern Peru.
When contacted by Disclose, FRANCE 24 and RFI, Repsol did not respond to our requests for an interview. The Argentine company Pluspetrol, which owns the majority of the Mipaya well, was a little more forthcoming. In writing, it assured us that flaring “cannot be considered a health hazard”. All the more so, the company insisted, as the process is “carried out in remote areas, under supervision and in compliance with technical and environmental requirements”.
Disclose and its partners also sent a series of questions to Crédit Agricole to find out why the group maintains its ties with Repsol, especially since the Spanish multinational has been extracting gas in the Peruvian Amazon since 2006. This was its answer: “At the end of 2023, Crédit Agricole decided to accelerate its transition plan (...) Crédit Agricole is therefore studying all renewable energy projects, including those from players in the oil and gas sector.” There is no mention, however, of the €238 million invested in Repsol via its subsidiary Amundi. Yet it is these investments that enable the French bank to profit from the stranglehold of fossil fuels in the Peruvian Amazon.
To measure this influence, we head for Nuevo Mundo, a village located half an hour by boat from the Mipaya gas site. It is home to around 1,000 people, most of them members of the Matsigenka community, an Indigenous Peruvian Amazonian group whose main livelihoods are fishing, hunting and farming. In the dirt roads of this village, accessible only by river or helicopter, people swear by Repsol's gas. The multinational even chose this area on the banks of the Urubamba to set up its regional logistics base, with an airfield, gas compression factory, dormitories and football pitch reserved for employees.
The omnipresence of Repsol explains why residents have access to electricity, the phone network and intermittent wifi, supplied by Elon Musk's Starlink satellites. It's also why Nuevo Mundo boasts a well-stocked grocery store, where fluorescent yellow bottles of Inka Cola sit alongside all kinds of crisps and freeze-dried soups, as well as modern housing – all concrete and glass. One of these houses stands out for its shiny wooden facade. This is the office of Emmac, a private organisation dedicated to preserving the environment. The room where regional manager Guimez Rios greets us features a glass desk and a huge poster extolling the work of his employees. 'The flare is lit continuously. The company says it's necessary'
"The flare is lit continuously. The company says it's necessary,” asserts Rios, one of the few people allowed to enter the multinational's base. A potentially dangerous situation that nobody seems to care about; not even Rios. “The company promises that the gas doesn't pollute,” continues the man on whom Repsol's environmental and health controls depend. As for Nuevo Mundo's doctor, although he has noted a significant number of cases of pneumonia among children, he attributes this to “temperature variations”.
It's hard to get a critical voice heard in a region so heavily subsidised by gas companies. In the Megantoni district alone, which encompasses Nuevo Mundo and some 30 municipalities, fossil fuel companies paid over €98 million in taxes in 2023, according to data from the Peruvian economy ministry. As for the wages on offer, they are highly attractive. In 2023, the average Repsol worker earned €1,843 a month, or seven times the Peruvian minimum wage. It's a salary the multinational can easily afford to pay: Peruvian gas accounts for 25 percent of its global reserves. As for its activities in Peru, they account for 12 percent of its oil and gas turnover, bringing in more than €600 million in 2023.
Hydrocarbons and heavy metals discharged into river
Another example of the omerta surrounding the Camisea gas field is the pollution of Peru’s Huitiricaya River. On February 12, 2019, a complaint against the pollution of the river was filed with OEFA, the Peruvian environmental regulator. Disclose obtained a copy of the complaint, which was filed by a former Repsol executive who was in the region between 2015 and 2018. But when contacted, he refused to comment on the subject. The complaint denounces “alleged pollution resulting from the discharge of highly polluting fluids into rivers and streams in the vicinity of the Sagari gas platform”, the name of a group of wells operated by Repsol. Repsol did not reply to us on this matter either. The pollution, the complaint alleges, has been going on since “around 2017” and could be caused by the discharge of production waters into the Huitiricaya River, on the banks of which the company has drilled three wells. The contamination could be mercury, hydrocarbons or heavy metals, according to a study carried out in 2014 by a company commissioned by Repsol, which lists the products discharged into the water.
To confirm this, Disclose asked the authorities in charge of extractive industries and the environment for permission to consult the results of the self-checks Repsol must carry out every three months at the point of discharge into the waterway – to no avail. Rios, the environmental controller we met in Nuevo Mundo, doesn't know any more. “We haven't received any more data from Repsol for the past two or three years,” he told us. Disclose also tried to reach the village of Porotobango, where the allegedly polluted site is located, to interview local residents. However, the chief of this village of 160 people objected to the idea as the subject was too sensitive. Child injured by suspected chemical burn
We did, however, manage to speak to a resident of Porotobango, who wishes to remain anonymous. On the phone, he reported that the children of the village are told not to bathe in the river. According to him, cases of skin irritation still occur regularly. This appears to be confirmed by two photos taken in 2023, which show raw wounds on the faces and legs of children who allegedly came into contact with water from the Huitiricaya River. According to three doctors to whom we showed these photos, one of these wounds could be the result of a chemical burn. Meanwhile, the nurse at the Nueva Vida health station, who is responsible for treating the inhabitants of Porotobango, admits she has already had to deal with this type of skin problem. But again, she does not wish to go into details.
The burns on this child's face could be caused by pollution from fluids that Repsol discharges into the river bordering the village of Porotobango.
Once extracted from the depths of the Amazon jungle, the gas produced by Repsol continues its journey to southern Peru. Here, too, serious pollution can occur, since the gas is transported by pipeline. This happened in February 2018, when a pipeline running under the Urubamba River ruptured following a landslide. Large quantities of "natural gas liquid vapours" spilled into the river, a few kilometres south of Nuevo Mundo. The water began to release smoke over several hundred metres, bringing dead fish to the surface, burning the surrounding vegetation and poisoning passengers on nearby boats. This is what happened to 12 people, including Yonar Palomino Silvao, who spoke to FRANCE 24. "We thought we were all going to die, we were suffocating so badly we couldn't row," he recalled. "The air was so full of gas that two or three of us nearly fainted." Another survivor recalls the cries and prayers of passengers who, like him, were suffering from nausea and headaches.
The rest of the time, a significant proportion of the gas extracted from the Camisea fields ends up at the LNG terminal in the port of Pampa Melchorita, on Peru's Pacific coast. From there, it travels to the four corners of the world in the form of liquefied natural gas (LNG). This includes France: between April and October 2024, three tankers loaded with Peruvian gas docked in France. They delivered 220,000 tonnes of LNG for a well-known client: TotalEnergies. This French fossil fuel multinational also benefits from the support of the Crédit Agricole group. In April 2024, the latter's investment subsidiary Amundi bought bonds from TotalEnergies as part of a financing campaign. The deal raised more than €4 billion. This investigation received support from the Rainforest Investigations Network, in partnership with the Pulitzer Center, as well as Planet and ImportGenius.
US Pediatricians Ask Blinken to Intervene as Israel Extends Detention of Gaza Doctor
An Israeli court has ordered Kamal Adwan Hospital director Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya—whose distressed mother reportedly died earlier this week—to be held without charge until February 13. Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya is seen in this photo with his mother, who according to Palestinian media and human rights groups, died of a heart attack on January 8, 2025. (Photo: Family photo/Hamza Yusuf/X)
The largest professional association of U.S. pediatricians is asking the State Department to intervene on behalf of a Gaza hospital director detained by Israel, where a court on Thursday ordered an extension of his imprisonment until mid-February.
The Gaza-based Al Mezan Center for Human Rights said Friday that the Ashkelon Magistrates' Court extended the detention of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, a 51-year-old pediatrician who is the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, without charges until February 13, and without access to legal counsel until January 22.
Israeli troops forcibly detained Abu Safiya on December 28 amid a prolonged siege and assault on Kamal Adwan Hospital, from which he refused to evacuate as long as patients were there. Former detainees recently released from the Sde Teiman torture prison in southern Israelsaid they met Abu Safiya there. According to testimonies gathered by the Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, Abu Safiya was tortured before his arrival at Sde Teiman and inside the notorious lockup.
Al Mezan said that Abu Safiya's attorney believes he is now being jailed at Ofer Prison in the illegally occupied West Bank.
Palestinian media reported earlier this week that Abu Safiya's mother died of a heart attack. MedGlobal, the Ilinois-based nonprofit for which Abu Safiya works as lead Gaza physician, said she died from "severe sadness" over her son's plight.
Dr. Sue Kressley, president of the 67,000-member American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), sent a letter Thursday to Secretary of State Antony Blinken to "seek the assistance of the U.S. government to inquire about the whereabouts and well-being" of Abu Safiya, and to voice concern "for the children who are now without access to pediatric emergency care in northern Gaza," where 15 months of relentless Israeli attacks and siege have obliterated the healthcare system.
As Common Dreams has reported, children in northern Gaza are being killed not only by Israeli bombs and bullets, but also by exposure to cold weather after Israeli troops forcibly expelled their families from homes and other places of shelter while "cleansing" the area.
Kressley's letter asks Blinken to explain what the Biden administration is doing to determine Abu Safiya's whereabouts and why he is being held, what condition he is in, a status report on northern Gaza's hospitals and their capacity for care, and what the U.S. is doing to "improve access to pediatric care in Gaza."
On Friday, the Council on American Islamic-Relations (CAIR) welcomed the AAP letter in a statement asserting that "Secretary Blinken could pick up the phone and demand" that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza—"release Dr. Abu Safiya and all those illegally detained and facing torture and abuse at the hands of Israeli forces."
"The Biden administration's silence on the kidnapping of Dr. Abu Safiya, and on the torture and mistreatment of Palestinian detainees by Israeli forces, sends the message that Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim lives and dignity are of no consequence to U.S. officials," CAIR added.
In the United Kingdom, the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) on Thursday demanded that the U.K. government "take urgent action to protect healthcare workers and patients and ensure the immediate release of all arbitrarily detained medical staff."
"The Israeli military has escalated their systematic targeting of Palestinian healthcare workers, with hundreds currently arbitrarily detained under inhuman conditions," MAP said. "These detentions are part of Israel's systematic dismantling of Gaza's health system, which is making Palestinian survival impossible."
MAP Gaza director Fikr Shalltoot said in a statement: "We at MAP are extremely concerned for the life and safety of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya and all Palestinian healthcare workers detained by Israeli forces. These detentions, alongside systematic assaults on hospitals in North Gaza, have left tens of thousands of people without access to healthcare and forced them to flee southwards."
"Dr. Abu Safiya spent weeks and months sending distress calls about Israeli military attacks on Kamal Adwan Hospital, and the dangers posed to his colleagues and patients," Shalltoot added. "His warnings were met with deafening silence from the international community. It is long overdue for the U.K. and other nations to act decisively to protect Palestinians from ethnic cleansing, ensure the safety of healthcare workers, and hold Israel accountable."
Back in the U.S.—where healthcare professionals staged a nationwide "SickFromGenocide" protest earlier this week—members of medical advocacy groups including Doctors Against Genocide, Jewish Voice for Peace-Health Advisory Council, and Healthcare Workers for Palestine-Chicago who recently returned from volunteering in Gaza held a press conference Friday in Chicago demanding the release of Abu Safiya and the "protection of hospitals and healthcare workers" in the embattled enclave.
For-Profit US Health System Continues to Leave Many Millions Uninsured Each Year "With so many unsettling questions about the future of key social safety net programs, policymakers must focus on solutions for delivering consistent insurance coverage to everyone," said one researcher behind a new study. Reina Lara, right, coordinator of operations for NeighborHealth's patient services department, helps a patient with a health insurance application in Boston, Massachusetts, on December 23, 2024. (Photo by Pat Greenhouse/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
More than 10 million workers in the United States who held full-time jobs in 2023 still lacked health insurance for the entire year.
That's just one of the troubling findings from a report released Friday which fleshes out how America's "patchwork" system of employer-provided plans, individually purchased coverage through state-level exchanges, and Medicaid, are leaving many millions of Americans without care year after year.
The new study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) looked at the demographic characteristics of the uninsured population from 2018 through 2023 using Census Bureau data and found lack of healthcare coverage along class, racial, and ethnic lines, as well as disparities when it comes to levels of educational attainment.
"The Affordable Care Act has delivered insurance coverage for millions of Americans, but there are still considerable gaps in coverage—particularly for workers who find themselves too young for Medicare and who earn wages above thresholds for Medicaid coverage," said Emma Curchin, one of the authors of the paper and a research assistant at CEPR.
"These gaps leave millions of people—many of them working full time all year—unable to secure insurance coverage. With so many unsettling questions about the future of key social safety net programs, policymakers must focus on solutions for delivering consistent insurance coverage to everyone," she added.
After it passed in 2010, the Affordable Care Act—which sought to expand health insurance coverage, including by creating nex exchanges in the for-profit market—was able to reduce the share of the U.S. population that was without health insurance by roughly half between 2009 and 2023. While 16.7% of the population lacked insurance in 2009, the latest available data shows 8% of the population is without insurance. But even with the ACA, the study found that more than 27 million U.S. residents are without insurance, and almost 16 million workers have full-time jobs, part-time jobs, or are unemployed but actively seeking work.
The report, which focused on workers between the ages of 18 and 64 found that among full-time, year-round workers, Hispanic workers were most likely to be uninsured (21%). The rate of being uninsured among that group was about four times higher than the corresponding rate for Asian or white workers, which stood at 5.1% and 5.5%, respectively.
Unmarried people are more likely to be uninsured than married people, and full-time workers who live in a household with a child or children are less likely to be uninsured—which "may reflect the greater likelihood that households with children are eligible for Medicaid, because Medicaid eligibility is determined in part by income relative to household size," according to the authors of the study.
For all worker types, higher educational attainment means lower rates of being uninsured, the researchers found. Someone who works full-time and full-year but has less than a high school degree has an uninsured rate 15 higher than a worker with an advanced degree. Workers who complete some of college but do not hold a degree are almost twice as likely to uninsured compared to those who do finish with a degree.
Across racial and ethic groups and levels of educational attainment men consistently have higher uninsured rates than women.
Other findings include that uninsured rates declined as wages increased. 21.4% of full-time, full-year workers in the bottom of the wage distribution lack health insurance, compared with only 1.7% for workers who are in the top wage quintile. Whether you were born inside the U.S. and citizenship status also play a large role in uninsured rates. 28.9% of full-time, full-year workers who were born in a different country and are not citizens are uninsured, but only 6.7% of full-time, full year workers born in the U.S. are uninsured, and 8.6% of these types of workers who were born abroad but who hold U.S. citizenship are uninsured.
What's more, "lack of coverage is particularly acute for part-time or part-year and unemployed non-citizen workers: 36% of part-time workers and 39% percent of unemployed workers are uninsured," the researchers note.
SEIU Joins AFL-CIO to 'Unleash a New Era of Worker Power' as Trump 2.0 Looms "CEOs and billionaires want nothing more than to see workers divided, but we're standing here today with greater solidarity than ever," said AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler. SEIU members rallied in downtown Los Angeles on September 24, 2024. (Photo: Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
The 2-million-member-strong Service Employees International Union announced Wednesday that it is joining the AFL-CIO, bolstering the ranks of the largest labor federation in the United States as unions prepare to fight the incoming Trump administration.
"CEOs and billionaires want nothing more than to see workers divided, but we're standing here today with greater solidarity than ever to reach the 60 million Americans who say they'd join a union tomorrow if the laws allowed and to unrig our labor laws to guarantee every worker in America the basic right to organize on the job," AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler said in a statement.
With SEIU included, the unions that make up the AFL-CIO represent roughly 15 million workers across the nation.
April Verrett, SEIU's international president, said union members "are ready to unleash a new era of worker power, as millions of service and care workers unite with workers at the AFL-CIO to build our unions in every industry and every ZIP code."
"Working people have been organizing our workplaces and communities to build a stronger economy and democracy," Verrett added. "We are ready to stand up to union-busters at corporations and in government and rewrite the outdated, sexist, racist labor laws that hold us all back."
"By standing together, SEIU and the AFL-CIO are sending a powerful message to President-elect Trump and his allies who are trying to pit working people against one another."
While neither the SEIU nor the AFL-CIO mentioned President-elect Donald Trump by name in their statements announcing the move, Shuler acknowledged during an MSNBC appearance late Wednesday that organized labor is "going to be on defense, probably right away," as the Republican leader takes office and moves to stack his cabinet with lobbyists and others with deep corporate ties.
"We know that we've got to play a good defense game, but we also, as April and I have been talking about, we've got to be on offense," the AFL-CIO's president added. "Coming together is how we're more powerful and we rebalance the scales of this economy."
Trump's second term is expected to bring an assault on workers' rights much like his first four years in the White House, which saw rollbacks of safety rules, wage protections, and collective bargaining powers.
Among other steps, Trump is expected to fire worker champion Jennifer Abruzzo, general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, and nominate a pro-corporate replacement after he takes office later this month. Abruzzo has led the charge to ban anti-union captive audience meetings, and the incoming Trump administration is expected to try to reverse progress on that front and elsewhere.
Unions are also bracing for Trump's mass deportation plan. Bloombergreported Wednesday that the AFL-CIO "has been working to equip its affiliates around the country to help defend immigrant workers against potential workplace raids and mass deportation efforts once Donald Trump becomes president this month."
"The union federation is also readying rapid response plans to defend federal government employees against the Department of Government Efficiency," Bloomberg added, referring to the advisory commission set to be led by anti-union billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.
Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, said Wednesday that "by standing together, SEIU and the AFL-CIO are sending a powerful message to President-elect Trump and his allies who are trying to pit working people against one another: The labor movement will not be fractured or silenced."
"Unions are a crucial part of a robust and fair economy—and SEIU's affiliation with the AFL-CIO strengthens the collective power of millions of workers, enabling them to fight more effectively for better wages, benefits, and working conditions," said Shierholz. "It also amplifies labor's voice in advocating for progressive economic reforms that benefit all working families."
Progressive Magazine Publishes Previously Secret DNC Membership List
Corporate lobbyists and big-time fundraisers are among the Democratic National Committee members set to decide on the organization's leadership in the coming weeks.
Democratic National Committee chair Jaime Harrison speaks at a DNC meeting on March 10, 2022 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
With the Democratic National Committee set to vote on its next chair in just over three weeks, a progressive magazine on Friday published in full a previously secret list of the DNC members who will decide on the next leader of the party organization in the wake of the disastrous November election.
The American Prospect's Micah Sifry reported that he obtained the closely guarded list from a "trusted source with long experience with the national party."
"This person thinks it's absurd that the party's roster of voting members is secret," Sifry wrote. "Indeed, since there is no official public list, each of the candidates running for chair and other positions has undoubtedly had to create their own tallies from scratch—making it very likely our list comes from a candidate's whip operation."
Based on the DNC's public statements, it was known that the DNC has 448 active members who will decide on key leadership posts in the coming weeks. But the identities of the individuals were, until Friday, kept under wraps.
Michael Kapp, a DNC member from California, told the Prospect that the committee's leadership "holds tightly to the list to prevent any organizing beyond their control."
"Knowing who has actual voting power over the DNC's governance may give grassroots activists around the country who care about the party's future some greater capacity to focus their efforts on the people who actually pull the levers."
The newly revealed list includes more than 70 "at large" members who were all "whisked into their current positions on the DNC roster by [outgoing chair] Jaime Harrison in 2021," Sifry wrote.
"According to DNC bylaws, at-large members must be voted in by the rest of the membership, but the current class was put forward by Harrison as a single slate that was voted on up-or-down as a bloc," Sifry added. "The hacks definitely stand out among Harrison's handpicked cohort. Those include top fundraisers Kristin Bertolina Faust and Alicia Rockmore of California, Carol Pensky of Florida, and Deborah Simon of Indiana, as well as David Huynh of New York, whose main claim to fame appears to be his work as a consultant to now-jailed cryptocurrency hustler Sam Bankman-Fried when he appeared to be the Next Big Funder of the Democrats in 2021-2022."
The list also includes several lobbyists—such as Scott Brennan, a DNC member from Iowa who works for a lobbying firm with clients such as JPMorgan Chase and PhRMA—as well as union leaders, including American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten.
The DNC membership list was revealed as the organization prepares to vote on key leadership posts, including the committee's chair and vice chair positions.
Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler, Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party chair Ken Martin, and former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley are among the contenders for the chairmanship.
James Zogby, a longtime DNC member and outspoken progressive, is running for a vice chair post with the goal of improving "accountability and transparency" at the committee and curbing the influence of dark money—something the DNC has repeatedly refused to address.
Sifry acknowledged Friday that "making the DNC's membership roster public may have little overall effect on the direction of the organization."
"It is, after all, highly dependent on big money and exquisitely attuned to the political needs of the party’s leading officials in Congress," he noted. "According to OpenSecrets, the top contributors to the DNC in the 2023-2024 cycle, after House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries' campaign organization, were Bain Capital ($2.9 million), Google parent company Alphabet ($2.6M), Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins ($2.5M), community media conglomerate Newsweb Corp. ($2.5M), Jeffrey Katzenberg’' holding company WndrCo ($2.5M), Microsoft ($2.4M), Reid Hoffman’s VC firm Greylock Partners ($2.4M), real estate developer McArthurGlen Group ($2.2M), and hedge fund Lone Pine Capital ($2.2M)."
However, Sifry added, "knowing who has actual voting power over the DNC's governance may give grassroots activists around the country who care about the party's future some greater capacity to focus their efforts on the people who actually pull the levers."
"What they do with that potential," he wrote, "is up to them."
Trump Adviser Admits Seizing Greenland Is About Fossil Fuels, Raw Imperialism
"It's oil and gas. It's our national security. It's critical minerals," the next national security adviser told a Fox News host.
U.S. Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.) speaks during the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on July 17, 2024. (Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
Amid mounting fears over U.S. President Donald Trump's interest in purchasing or potentially even invading the Danish territory Greenland, his incoming national security adviser made the reasons why quite clear in a Wednesday interview on Fox News.
Speaking with Fox host Jesse Watters about Trump's recent comments on Greenland, Congressman Mike Waltz (R-Fla.), his incoming national security adviser, expanded on the president-elect's Tuesday declaration that Denmark should give the autonomous island northeast of Canada to the United States "because we need it for national security."
Walz said that "this is not just about Greenland. This is about the Arctic. You have Russia that is trying to become king of the Arctic with 60-plus icebreakers, some of them nuclear-powered. Do you know how many we have, Jesse? We have two, and one just caught on fire. This is about critical minerals. This is about natural resources. This is about, as the polar ice caps pull back, the Chinese are now cranking out icebreakers and pushing up there as well. So, it's oil and gas. It's our national security. It's critical minerals."
"And Denmark can be a great ally, but you can't treat Greenland—which they have operational control over—as some kind of backwater. It's in the Western Hemisphere, multiple presidents have tried to bring it into our sphere," Waltz continued, noting Donald Trump Jr.'s personal trip to the island on Tuesday. "As you just saw from Don Jr. landing up there, that people of Greenland, all 56,000 of them, are excited about the prospect of making the Western Hemisphere great again."
Rather than acknowledging Greenland residents' concerns about and opposition to Trump's recent interest—positions echoed by Danish and other European leaders—Watters expressed that, if he lived there, he would prefer to be "on the American side of things" rather than affiliated with Denmark, then refocused on the discussion of natural resources.
Waltz told him that "you're starting to see shipping lanes and shipping coming across the North side, the famous Northwest Passage. That all has to be secured, Jesse. And right now we don't have a single base in the North side of Alaska and we need the Canadians to step up. They're next to last in NATO defense spending."
The Trump adviser also tied the president-elect's desire to take over Greenland to some of his other proposals, such as designating Mexican cartels as terrorist organizations, reclaiming the Panama Canal—possibly by force—and renaming the Gulf of Mexico. Waltz did not mention Trump's pitch to make Canada, whose prime minister just announced his resignation, the 51st state.
"So this is about reintroducing America in the Western Hemisphere, whether that is taking on the cartels, the Panama Canal, Greenland, the 'Gulf of America'—which I love, I'm waiting to see the maps redrawn," Waltz said. "You can call it Monroe Doctrine 2.0, but this is all part of the America First agenda and it's been ignored for far too long."
While Trump and his allies promote a fresh wave of imperialism ahead of the January 20 inauguration, others are highlighting its connections to U.S. history—including political economist C.J. Polychroniou, who addressed how "Trump's second administration seems set on advancing a new version of Manifest Destiny" in a Thursday opinion piece for Common Dreams.
"Imperialism seems to be Trump's new theme, but his overall vision of power is reminiscent of U.S. imperialist attitudes of the 19th century. He seems to believe that territorial expansion of the boundaries of the United States would make the country safer, stronger, and more prosperous," Polychroniou wrote. "Of course, this could all just be a symptom of Trump's arrogance and ignorance, but there can be no denying that imperialism is embedded in U.S. political culture. The U.S. has been preparing for a future global conflict for quite some time now, first with Russia and then with China."
"The truth is that U.S. imperialism never died," Polychroniou stressed, pointing to the nation's massive military budget and hundreds of bases around the world. "Of course, imperialism has taken new forms in the 21st century and the dynamics of exploitation have changed. But imperialism is still about world hegemony and a struggle for the control of strategic resources."
"The U.S. continues to exercise imperial power by using all its available tools and weapons to make the world conform to its own whims and wants as it tries to shore up its declining economic dominance," he added. "But with Trump's return to the White House, and armed as he appears to be with a new version of Manifest Destiny, U.S. imperialism may become more aggressive and even more dangerous to world peace. If that turns out to be the case, the world is headed for an even more violent future."
In a Thursday piece for The Nation also exploring Greenland's "strategically significant" location and the global superpowers vying for more regional control, national affairs correspondent John Nichols highlighted that Greenland Prime Minister Múte Egede of the democratic socialist Inuit Ataqatigiit party and Erik Jensen, leader of the social democratic Siumut movement, have both responded to Trump's comments by emphasizing that their territory "is not for sale."
As Nichols detailed:
Both Inuit Ataqatigiit and Siumut favor independence for the island, which is now a self-governing territory of the Kingdom of Denmark. Eighty percent of the votes in Greenland's 2021 election were cast for pro-independence parties. And Egede now says: "The history and current conditions have shown that our cooperation with the Kingdom of Denmark has not succeeded in creating full equality. It is now time for our country to take the next step."
The goal, explains the prime minister, is to "remove the shackles of colonialism."
"Work has already begun on creating the framework for Greenland as an independent state," according to Egede, who signaled in his New Year's address that a referendum could be held as soon as this year.
Trump’s Imperialism Atop Western Warmongering
The hypocrisy of the so-called "highly-developed" or "rule-of-law" democracies knows no bounds.
Conflicts across the world’s regions experienced a further surge in 2024, according to data provided by Armed Conflict Locations & Event Data (ACLED)—an independent, international non-profit organization that collects data on real time on locations, actors, fatalities, and types of all reported political violence and protest events around the world. While Ukraine and Gaza are considered the two major global hotspots of conflict, violence increased by 25 percent in 2024 compared to 2023 and conflict levels have experienced a two-fold increase over the past five years, according to ACLED. The intensity and human toll of armed conflicts are also on the rise as more civilians are exposed to violence and the number of actors involved in violence is proliferating.
What is also noteworthy about the data on violence collected by ACLED is that neither democracy nor more development appears to constrain violence. In fact, the data collected by ACLED shows that countries with elections in 2024 experienced much higher rates of violence than countries without elections.
As militarism and warmongering are pushed to new heights, the rhetoric of peace also goes into full swing.
Speaking of electoral democracies, warmongering talk is also sharply on the increase in developed nations, courtesy of major leaders of the western world, and comes with a rising militarism. Mark Rutte, NATO’s recently appointed secretary-general, warned last month that “danger is moving toward us at full speech” and that the west must face the fact that “what is happening in Ukraine could happen here too.” He urged NATO to “shift to a wartime mindset” and implored the citizens of NATO countries to tell their banks and funds that “it is simply unacceptable that they refuse to invest in the defense industry.” UK’s prime minister Keir Starmer has zealously endorsed the widening of NATO’s war against Russia and recently gave Ukraine permission to use Storm Shadow cruise missiles inside Russia. And Joe Biden delivered a warmongering rant at his final address to the United Nations (UN) General Assembly on September 24, 2024, urging an expansion of alliances against Russia and China and threatening Iran.
Warmongering is a constant element in the never ending obsession of U.S. presidents since the end of the Second World War to pursue a policy of what Andrew Bacevich described a few years ago as “militarized hegemony until the end of time.” Indeed, since the breakout of the Ukraine conflict, Washington has been more than eager to wage a proxy war against Russia while the U.S.-led western military bloc (NATO) has increased its military presence in the eastern part of the Alliance, seeks to expand its southern flank to Africa and looks toward the Indo-Pacific as part of its global approach to security. Meanwhile, all major western states have been behind Israel in its destruction of Gaza, offering the Jewish state an extraordinary level of support (weapons, cash and political support) as it carries out war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Of course, as militarism and warmongering are pushed to new heights, the rhetoric of peace also goes into full swing. Western hypocrisy knows no bounds. Biden spoke of the need for a peaceful world in his final address to the UN although he has done everything in his power to prolong the war in Ukraine and ensure Gaza’s destruction. His administration has vowed to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian and has fueled Israel’s war in Gaza, making the U.S. complicit in war crimes in Gaza.
Geopolitical forecasts for 2025 are grim.
The Biden administration did very little to prevent Russia from invading Ukraine as it totally ignored the question of Ukraine’s membership into NATO and has denied massacres, genocide and ethnic cleansing taking place in Gaza by the Israel Defense Fores (IDF). In fact, Biden himself called the International Criminal Court’s decision to issue an arrest warrant for the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu “outrageous.” The icing on the cake was when Biden’s Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, who will go down as the worse Secretary of State since World War II, had the audacity to write in a recent essay in Foreign Affairs that the United States is a country that, unlike Russia and China, seeks a “world where international law, including the core principles of the UN Charter, is upheld, and universal human rights are respected.”
Unsurprisingly, geopolitical forecasts for 2025 are grim. ACLED projects an annual increase of 20 percent in levels of violence in 2025. And then there is Trump’s return to the White House which surely adds another layer of unpredictability to an already volatile and highly dangerous world.
Imperialism is still about world hegemony and a struggle for the control of strategic resources.
Trump’s second administration seems set on advancing a new version of Manifest Destiny with threats of retaking the Panama Canal, which the U.S. ceded to Panama in 1999, forcibly buying Greenland, which is controlled by Denmark, and calling Canada “the 51st State,” a remark he repeated shortly after Justin Trudeau’s resignation.
Imperialism seems to be Trump’s new theme, but his overall vision of power is reminiscent of U.S. imperialist attitudes of the 19th century. He seems to believe that territorial expansion of the boundaries of the United States would make the country safer, stronger, and more prosperous. Of course, this could all just be a symptom of Trump’s arrogance and ignorance, but there can be no denying that imperialism is embedded in U.S. political culture. The U.S. has been preparing for a future global conflict for quite some time now, first with Russia and then with China.
Imperialism seems to be Trump’s new theme, but his overall vision of power is reminiscent of U.S. imperialist attitudes of the 19th century.
The U.S. set the theater for a conflict with Russia by orchestrating the 2014 coup in Ukraine, treating the country in turn as a NATO ally in all but name and subsequently engaging in military provocations with the hope of inducing Russia to embark on a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which finally occurred on February 24, 2022. And it has been following the same scenario in the Asia-Pacific region by making Taiwan and the South China Sea the fuse for conflict.
The truth is that U.S. imperialism never died. And how could it when the U.S. still maintains around 750 military bases in at least 80 countries and territories (U.S. bases represent over 90 percent of the world’s foreign bases) and spends more on defense than the next nine countries combined, which include major powers such as China, Russia, India, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom? There are more active-duty U.S. Air Force personnel in Britain than in 40 U.S. states.
Of course, imperialism has taken new forms in the 21st century and the dynamics of exploitation have changed. But imperialism is still about world hegemony and a struggle for the control of strategic resources. Military and economic/natural resource interests are interrelated, and the major capitalist states are all caught in an inescapable struggle for survival, power, and prestige. In its turn, the U.S. continues to exercise imperial power by using all its available tools and weapons to make the world conform to its own whims and wants as it tries to shore up its declining economic dominance. But with Trump’s return to the White House, and armed as he appears to be with a new version of Manifest Destiny, U.S. imperialism may become more aggressive and even more dangerous to world peace. If that turns out to be the case, the world is headed for an even more violent future.
CJ Polychroniou is a political scientist/political economist, author, and journalist who has taught and worked in numerous universities and research centers in Europe and the United States. Currently, his main research interests are in U.S. politics and the political economy of the United States, European economic integration, globalization, climate change and environmental economics, and the deconstruction of neoliberalism’s politico-economic project. He has published scores of books and over one thousand articles which have appeared in a variety of journals, magazines, newspapers and popular news websites. His latest books are Optimism Over Despair: Noam Chomsky On Capitalism, Empire, and Social Change (2017); Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet (with Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin as primary authors, 2020); The Precipice: Neoliberalism, the Pandemic, and the Urgent Need for Radical Change (an anthology of interviews with Noam Chomsky, 2021); and Economics and the Left: Interviews with Progressive Economists (2021).
Progressive Foreign Policy Expert Says Americans Are Tired of Democrats Being 'Party of War'
"It's time for Democrats to offer Americans a new and affirmative vision of U.S. foreign policy, one that boldly and unashamedly embraces global peacemaking as an essential component of our own security and prosperity."
Matt Duss, a former top aide to U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) who is now the executive vice president at the Center for International Policy, is seen during a 2016 CCTV interview.
"Democrats have become the party of war" and "Americans are tired of it."
That's the message that Matt Duss, a former top aide to U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) who is now the executive vice president at the Center for International Policy, imparted in an opinion piece published Thursday in The Guardian.
"In defending the militarist status quo, Democrats ceded the anti-war lane to Republicans," Duss wrote. "As they enter the political wilderness, it's time to reckon with what they got so wrong."
Among other things, what they got wrong during Vice President Kamala Harris' failed 2024 Democratic presidential bid, according to Duss, was embracing figures like former CIA director Leon Panetta and "torture advocate" Liz Cheney in a bid to woo right-wing and moderate voters.
As President-elect Donald Trump's campaign painted the Republican nominee—who fulfilled his 2016 campaign promise to "bomb the shit out of" Islamic State militants and "take out their families" with devastating results—as the " candidate of peace," Democrats "left the anti-war lane wide open for him by leaning into a tired, curdled militarism as a substitute for an actual foreign policy vision," Duss said.
"It's time for Democrats to offer Americans a new and affirmative vision of U.S. foreign policy, one that boldly and unashamedly embraces global peacemaking as an essential component of our own security and prosperity," he wrote. "One that insists that keeping Americans safe does not require spending more on defense than the next 10 countries combined."
Duss continued:
Our leaders should be clear about the genuine security threats that our country faces, but decide, at long last, to stop being drawn into dumb bidding wars about being "tougher on Russia/terrorism/China/whatever"—a framing designed to sustain the hawkish status quo. They should broaden the national security conversation to include the challenge of domestic and global inequality and the grievances it powers. They should articulate not just a domestic but a global pro-worker agenda—in addition to a global corporate minimum tax, a global minimum wage, for example. Make clear that a foreign policy fit for this era doesn't pit the security and prosperity of Americans against workers in other countries but recognizes that our security and prosperity are bound together.
"All of this will of course require confronting the various defense, business, and foreign lobbies that distort and constrain our policy discussions, which is why a strong anti-corruption plank is essential for any such platform," Duss said.
That's a tall order. Reflecting on President Joe Biden's term, Duss asserted: "I never imagined I would write this, but by the end of his presidency he will have done more damage to the so-called 'rules-based order' than Trump did. Fifteen months and counting of support for Israel's horrific assault on Gaza has violated virtually every international norm on the protections of civilians in war and left America's moral credibility in tatters. Biden showed that international law is little more than a cudgel to be used against our enemies while being treated as optional for our friends."
"In his 2020 election victory speech, Biden proclaimed: 'I believe at our best America is a beacon for the globe. And we lead not by the example of our power, but by the power of our example,'" Duss recalled. "It's a nice line, but Biden showed that he sees it as little more than that. The question now for Democrats is whether they can actually mean it, or if they even want to."
Addressing the recent phenomenon of Republicans being perceived as the anti-war party of the working class—even if such perception is divorced from reality on both fronts—Duss lamented that "this year's Democratic ticket failed to provide a sufficient response."
"Instead of responding to the right's tech oligarch-funded faux-populism by offering a genuine alternative and attacking the real sources of our country's insecurity, they leaned into a defense of a militarist status quo that most Americans rightly recognize as broken," he added. "They must not make that mistake again."
SINOPHOBIA
'Completely Out of Touch... Both Parties': Supreme Court Looks Ready to OK TikTok Ban
"Banning TikTok in this way sets a dangerous precedent that could pave the way to future government interventions against online speech," said one advocate.
The illustration logo of TikTok is displayed on a mobile phone screen in front of The White House in Washington D.C., United States on April 20, 2024. (Photo: Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images)
To the chagrin of First Amendment defenders and content creators, the Supreme Court on Friday appeared poised to uphold a law passed by Congress last year that would shut down the widely popular social media app TikTok in the U.S. unless its owner, the Chinese company ByteDance, sells it.
The de facto ban on TikTok was tucked into a $95 billion legislative package for aid to Ukraine and Israel that was passed by the Senate in April 2024. A standalone version of the legislation cleared the House with bipartisan support a month earlier. It is set to go into effect on January 19, barring a sale by ByteDance or intervention by the Supreme Court.
The law was justified on national security grounds, which were fueled by fears that national security laws in China could compel ByteDance to give the Chinese government access to data on TikTok users.
Nina Turner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Race, Power, and Political Economy, wrote Thursday: "The U.S. government stood up to TikTok before they stood up to[Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, or the health insurance lobby, or Big Pharma, or Big Oil—no. TikTok. Completely out of touch with the American people. Both parties."
During oral arguments, "justices across the ideological spectrum asked tough questions of both sides, [but] the overall tone and thrust appeared to suggest greater skepticism toward the arguments by lawyers for TikTok and its users that the First Amendment barred Congress from enacting the law," according to Friday reporting from The New York Times.
However, the Times also noted that "several justices were skeptical about a major part of the government's justification for the law: the risk that China might 'covertly' make TikTok manipulate the content shown to Americans or collect user data to achieve its geopolitical aims."
Ahead of the U.S. Supreme Court's hearing on TikTok's appeal of the ban, three bipartisan lawmakers were among the First Amendment advocates who filed amicus briefs in support of the app in late December. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) asked the court to grant TikTok an emergency injunction to block the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.
The ACLU, the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), and the Freedom of the Press Foundation were among several civil liberties groups that also filed an amicus brief in late December, arguing that the government has not presented sufficient evidence that the app, which is used by 170 million Americans, causes "ongoing or imminent harm."
In a statement released Friday, the Free Press policy counsel Yanni Chen said that "as with repressive laws from oppressive regimes around the world, the real toll of the ban will be on everyday people... TikTok users, many of whom use the platform to organize communities and express views that legacy media often ignore."
"Banning TikTok in this way sets a dangerous precedent that could pave the way to future government interventions against online speech," she added.
Guimez Rios, the local head of Emmac, in his office in Nuevo Mundo. The environmental protection organisation is funded by Repsol. © Alexander Abdelilah
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