STUPIDTY AND ECOCIDE

Burning Plastic Waste is Not an Energy

Solution 

BY JOHN K. WHITE

MAY 3, 2024
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Photo by Claudio Schwarz

The world has a plastics problem. Never mind the horrifying pictures of a seahorse riding a cotton swab or a beached whale found with hundreds of plastic bags in its stomach. Plastic pollution has now progressed up the food chain to our diets, ingested as microplastic particles and even transferred from mother to fetus.

Each year, 400 million tons of plastic are thrown away, equivalent to 73 million barrels of oil, representing an ongoing threat to ecosystems and waterways across the globe. Landfills are now 25% plastic, while a plastic swathe twice the size of Texas swirls around in an endless gyre in the Pacific Ocean.

Coffee cups, condiment containers, and cutlery have all been plasticized for our convenience. Over one trillion plastic bags were thrown away last year, while massive piles overflow landfills and litter our beaches. Composed of various long-chain hydrocarbon polymers, plastic can take from 20 years (bags) to 500 years (bottles) to decompose, essentially another forever chemical, prodded by an unregulated packaging industry. Only 9% has ever been recycled.

So what to do with all the plastic? Continue burying in ever-increasing dumps (business as usual), reuse as “upscaled” consumer products, reprocess to petroleum feedstock for recycling, convert to fuel in various depolymerization schemes (e.g., steam cracking and pyrolysis), incinerate, or burn as refuse-derived fuel (RDF) to make electricity or heat?

The best is to reduce our reliance and cutdown on plastic packaging, requiring improved governance, education, and infrastructure. Sticking colour-coded recycling bins on the street and wishing for compliance isn’t good enough. The worst is to burn as fuel in a “waste-to-energy” plant, essentially incineration – as toxic as the replaced coal in terms of pollution and greenhouse gases. The exact opposite of decarbonization.

In various waste-collection centers, the plan now is to convert more plastics into RDF pellets. But one of the problems with plastic waste is the varying composition, such as PET (bottles), PVC (tubes), polypropylene (yogurt cups), and Styrofoam (takeout containers and packaging material). All are polymer hydrocarbons, difficult to separate into easily recyclable batches or break down as plastic feedstock or burnable fuel.

After processing, the RDF contains a mix of plastics as well as heavy metals and other toxic contaminants. In one such center in Asturias, Spain, 150,000 tons per year is produced, representing about 40% of household waste, where the reformed fuel will then be sold on to power plants for burning if allowed to proceed, including a nearby biomass plant (Hunosa’s La Pereda plant in Mieres). Other units in the US, the UK, and Sweden have already set up RDF waste-conversion plants to provide plastic fuel for electricity generation, district heating, and high-temperature manufacturing industries (i.e., steel, cement, and fertilizer). Expect more to come as plastic waste continues to increase, disastrous for the environment.

Better solutions are available, although each comes with unique challenges. Plastic recycling is difficult, breaking down the polymers into smaller units for reuse but is mechanically weaker than virgin plastic. As Aachen University professor of fuel engineering Peter Quicker noted, chemical recycling produces “an inferior product, such as a low quality oil that has to be treated with great effort in order to turn it back into plastic.”

Other schemes include plastic-eating bugs and bacteria, plant-based biodegradable plastic, and substitution, such as asphalt-enhanced roads, interlocking mortarless construction blocks, and even upscaled textiles. A UK-based company has created an organically combustible packaging material that breaks down in weeks.

Reduction is something we can all do. Carrying a reusable cotton grocery bag in our pocket is simple. Do bananas, oranges, and apples need to be wrapped? We can all start by cutting down and watching what we use and throw away. Of course, the packaging industry must be held to account via globally accepted regulations, which may not apply for years, even decades.

The fourth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-4) met in Ottawa in April to develop an international legally binding policy on plastic pollution. As noted by Inger Andersen, the UN executive director of the UN Environment Programme, “the public is heartsick of plastic pollution,” adding that circularity is needed to avoid exposure to harmful chemicals and protect human and ecosystem health.

Indeed, we have to do something to stop the excess. But we should never burn plastic for fuel or heat. We need a new model to generate energy, not more wasteful power plants that produce even more pollution and greenhouse gases. When countries have started to phase out coal, it is retrograde in the extreme to burn plastic refuse as a replacement. We need only look to the sun and wind to meet our energy needs.

John K. White, a former lecturer in physics and education at University College Dublin and the University of Oviedo. He is the editor of the energy news service E21NS and author of The Truth About Energy: Our Fossil-Fuel Addiction and the Transition to Renewables (Cambridge University Press, 2024) and Do The Math!: On Growth, Greed, and Strategic Thinking (Sage, 2013). He can be reached at: johnkingstonwhite@gmail.com

Why Does the US Government Support And Fund Israel?

By We Advocate Through Environmental Review (W.A.T.E.R.)

May 1, 2024

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.


Environmentalists have learned the investigative rule to “follow the money”. At the core of important environmental issues, it is NOT good vs bad guys, nor cultural wokeness vs anti-wokeness, nor smart vs stupid, nor Republican vs Democrat. Rather, at the core, somebody or something (a group, a corporation, an individual) is making money or acquiring power by supporting environmental destruction. The capitalist economic system allows for that, even encourages it.

The same rule applies to foreign relations. This is no surprise, since foreign relations and environmental destruction are often intimately connected. “Follow the money” is a guide to understanding some of today’s most awful events, such as the ongoing massacre of Gaza. Who gains? Who loses? In particular, why does the US government support and fund Israel? Most Democrat and Republican politicians say the bond between the US and Israel is “ironclad”, “unbreakable”, with “no daylight” between them. Why?

At the core, the motivation is NOT concern over which side hit back against the other side’s retaliation first, nor a “clash of civilizations”, nor a dispute over supposed property rights granted in the Bible.1 It is NOT important that (as Trump’s Middle East envoy and son-in-law Jared Kushner said), “Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable”2. It is even NOT the desire to claim control of a pocket of underwater natural gas recently discovered off the coast of Gaza. Rather, for the US government and the wealthy corporate and financial elite circles that populate its policymaking bodies, the core issue is a source of far greater private wealth: Middle Eastern oil.

At first this conclusion seems all wrong because Israel itself has no oil, so what is the evidence? One clue comes from a 1995 statement by past right-wing senator from North Carolina and chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Jesse Helms: “If Israel did not exist, what would U.S. defense costs in the Middle East be? Israel is at least the equivalent of a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Middle East.”3 Helms was referring specifically to costs, but the meaning can be generalized: Israel is essentially a major US military outpost, a forward base, an “aircraft carrier” for power projection.

Iran is the target

The main target of this power projection has long been Iran, which is oil rich. Iran has been a major target of world powers since 1946, when the US and the Soviet Union made competing oil concession claims, which devolved into one of the very first nuclear bombing threats. The Soviets had tried to enforce, with tanks, a WWII agreement between the US, Britain, and the USSR to split Iran’s oil. Backtracking on the prior agreement, the US delivered an ultimatum in March, 1946: either remove your Soviet troops from northern Iran in 48 hours or “we” (the US) will nuke “you” (the USSR). The USSR withdrew in 24 hours.4 (Some historians believe, with good evidence, that the earlier nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was done mainly to impress the Soviets in anticipated situations such as this.)

Then years of hypocrisy and eventually savagery ensued. On September 11, 1947, U.S. ambassador George V. Allen publicly decried intimidation and coercion used by foreign governments to secure commercial concessions in Iran, and he even promised full U.S. support for Iran to freely decide about its own natural resources. All that sounds good and fair. But then in 1952, a progressive nationalist non-secular government was elected by the Iranian people, headed by Mohammed Mosaddegh. His administration instituted social security, land reforms, and women’s rights. His government’s most significant policy was the nationalization of the Iranian oil industry. Evidently, the US saw this “freely decided” decision about natural resources as going way too far. The US CIA thereby was deployed to overthrow the progressive Mosaddegh government and institute a harsh, basically fascist dictatorship under a previous royal family member (the Shah Pahlavi). The Shah then provided Western oil companies with 50% ownership of Iranian oil production. The Iranian Revolution in 1979 re-nationalized Iran’s own oil, much to the chagrin of the U.S.

Ever since 1979, the US has tried to overthrow the Iranian government and seize back control of Iranian oil, including CIA subversion, kidnappings, and attempted invasions through proxy armies.5 One proxy army was that of neighboring Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, who the US supported at the time although he was known as a dictator. In 1982, the US supplied Iraq with arms, money, and materials to make chemical weapons with which to attack Iran in the Iraq-Iran War that began in 1980. The direct US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq from 2001 to 2021 had direct motivations (in part, control of Iraq’s oil and control of Afghanistan’s rich lodes of lithium and rare earth minerals). Neither nation was defeated. But if they had been defeated, that would have enabled the US to militarily surround Iran, with Iraq on the long western border and Afghanistan on the long eastern border. The US also imposed a long series of severe economic and banking sanctions on Iran ever since 1979, in an effort to foment a counter-revolution.

Prior to 1979, Israel was friendly with the dictator Shah regime in Iran. But since then, Israel (like the U.S.), has viewed Iran as an enemy with both Israel and Iran accusing the other of terrorist attacks, including multiple covert assassinations and bombing operations by Israel on Iranian soil. Back in 1986, then Senator Joseph Biden announced how Israel provided the US with an essential military foothold in the Middle East. He said that supporting Israel “is the best three billion dollar investment we make. Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her (U.S.) interests in the region. The United States would have to go out and invent an Israel”.6 The U.S. and Israel share an extensive and deep overlap in military, intelligence, military secrets, surveillance, and high tech weaponry industries.

An ironclad ally

The U.S. now views Israel as a committed (“ironclad”) ally, should they decide upon a military attack against Iran. Behind the scenes, the two nations’ war planners may or may not have different views on when and how to initiate such an attack. Israel clearly wants to attack now and presumes the US will join, a case of the tail wagging the dog. The US is somewhat more cautious, perhaps waiting for the opportunity to establish public acquiescence with a phony pretext, much as it did in the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin “incident” (to escalate in Vietnam), or the 2003 allegation of weapons of mass destruction (to invade Iraq), or even the Sept. 11, 2001 commercial airliner attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon (which were real but falsely blamed on Afghanistan, which had little to do with the attacks). Or perhaps the U.S. government is waiting for an opportunity to promote a subversion and assassination program in Iran (typical of its attempts at regime change around the world) in coordination with Israel, all with plausible deniability.

Israel and the U.S. are likely to act as one in an attack upon Iran, making sure each has the other’s back. Indeed, such an attack has now begun in slo-mo, with a lethal Israeli attack against the Iranian consulate in Damascus, and the US providing defense against the fully expected retaliation. Fortunately, the Iranian retaliation, with several days’ warning against purely military targets, has been restrained and designed to “make a statement” without killing anyone and without (they hope) escalating the situation.

Given the history, it is no surprise that Iran feels threatened by both the US and Israel and especially by the combination of the two. As a defense, Iran has established close ties with foreign political parties and resident armed militant groups in the Middle East including Hezbollah (in Lebanon), Houthis (in Yemen) and Hamas (in Palestine).

In all of this, it has become clear that a major purpose of US support for Israel has been to use it as the tip of the spear in a long-desired invasion of Iran. Needless to say, being used in this manner by the U.S. does not increase Israel’s actual security at all, no more than a hired hit man achieves a secure life.

One could argue that the U.S.’s “ironclad” loyalty to Israel is all about the election contributions from the billionaire “Israel Lobby” in the US, or about biblical support for Zionism or opposition to Islamic fundamentalism, or about DOD contracts to U.S. weapons manufacturers, or about blame for who committed which terrorist act first. But at the core, US involvement is really about control of oil. The US itself already has a lot of oil (because of environmentally destructive fracking), but to control the international supply provides the controller the power to turn on or off the spigot and affect prices at will to both “adversaries” and competitors. Without the U.S. seeking that control, conflicts in the Middle East more likely would remain local and not involve horrendous massacres funded by outside interests, such as the Gaza massacre, which has been bankrolled and supplied mainly by the U.S.

It is indeed unfortunate that the people of Israel, of Gaza, Iraq, and Afghanistan and (soon) of Iran have been caught in the middle of natural resource extraction and military target zones. US support of Israel is not “ironclad”; it is “oilclad”. And if the war escalates to nuclear (which is likely, if Israel uses any of its nuclear weapons in the attack on Iran with US support and if Russia then gets involved in Iran’s defense), then the registry of unfortunate populations may well expand to everyone in the world. And all this for corporate control of a resource that, in the interest of environmental protection, we should not be using anymore.

College Administrators are Falling Into a Tried and True Trap Laid by the Right

By Lauren Lassabe Shepherd

Source: The Conversation

Image by Fuzheado, Creative Commons Zero

Interrogations of university leaders spearheaded by conservative congressional representatives. Calls from right-wing senators for troops to intervene in campus demonstrations. Hundreds of student and faculty arrests, with nonviolent dissenters thrown to the ground, tear-gassed and tased.

We’ve been here before. In my book “Resistance from the Right: Conservatives and the Campus Wars in Modern America,” I detail how, throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s, conservative activists led a counterattack against campus antiwar and civil rights demonstrators by demanding action from college presidents and police.

They made a number of familiar claims about student protesters: They were at once coddled elitists, out-of-state agitators and violent communists who sowed discord to destroy America. Conservatives claimed that the protests interfered with the course of university activities and that administrators had a duty to guarantee daily operations paid for by tuition.

Back then, college presidents routinely caved to the demands of conservative legislators, angry taxpayers and other wellsprings of anticommunist outrage against students striking for peace and civil rights.

Today, university leaders are twisting themselves in knots to appease angry donors and legislators. But when Columbia University President Minouche Shafik called in the NYPD to quell protests, she was met with a firm rebuke from the American Association of University Professors.

If the past is any indication, the road ahead won’t be any easier for college presidents like Shafik.

Lawfare from the right

Throughout the 1960s, students organized a host of anti-war and civil rights protests, and many conservatives characterized the demonstrators as communist sympathizers.

Students spoke out against American involvement in the Vietnam War, the draft and compulsory ROTC participation. They demanded civil rights protections and racially representative curricula. The intervention of police and the National Guard often escalated what were peaceful protests into violent riots and total campus shutdowns.

From 1968 into the 1970s, conservative lawyers coordinated a national campaign to sue “indecisive and gutless” college presidents and trustees whose approach to campus demonstrations was, in conservatives’ estimation, too lenient.

The right-wing organization Young Americans for Freedom hit 32 colleges with lawsuits, including private Ivy League schools like Columbia, Harvard and Princeton, as well as public land-grant universities like Michigan State and the University of Wisconsin.

The legal claim was for breach of contract: that presidents were failing to follow through on their end of the tuition agreement by not keeping campuses open and breaking up the protests. Young Americans for Freedom sought to set legal precedent for students, parents and broadly defined “taxpayers” to be able to compel private and public institutions to remain open.

Conservative students further demanded that their supposedly communist peers be expelled indefinitely, arrested for trespassing and prosecuted.

Expulsions, of course, carried implications for the draft during these years. A running joke among right-wing activists and politicians was that protesters should be given a “McNamara Scholarship” to Hanoi, referencing Robert McNamara, the U.S. secretary of defense and an architect of the Vietnam War.

Meanwhile, right-wing activists hounded college leaders with public pressure campaigns by collecting signatures from students and alumni that called on them to put an end to campus demonstrations. Conservatives also urged donors to withhold financial support until administrators subdued protesting students.

Cops on campus

Following the massacre at Kent State in 1970, when the National Guard fired at students, killing four and wounding nine, nearly half of all colleges shut down temporarily amid a wave of nationwide youth outrage. With only a week or two left of the semester, many colleges canceled remaining classes and even some commencement ceremonies.

In response, conservatives launched a new wave of post-Kent State injunctions against those universities to force them back open.

With protests ongoing – and continued calls from the right to crack down on them – many university administrators resorted to calling on the police and the National Guard, working with them to remove student protesters from campus.

In fact, this very moment brought about the birth of the modern campus police force.

Administrators and lawmakers, afraid that local police could not handle the sheer number of student demonstrators, arranged to deputize campus police – who had historically been parking guards and residence hall curfew enforcers – with the authority to make arrests and carry firearms.

State and federal lawmakers attempted to further stifle student dissent with reams of legislation. In 1969, legislators in seven states passed laws to punish student activists who had been arrested during protests through the revocation of financial aid, expulsion and jail sentences.

President Richard Nixon, who had excoriated campus disruptions during his successful White House run in 1968, encouraged college presidents to heed the laws and applauded them for following through with expulsions.

Is ‘antisemitism’ the new ‘communism’?

As the U.S. presidential election approaches, I’ll be watching to see how the Trump and Biden campaigns respond to ongoing student protests.

For now, Trump has called the recent protests “antisemitic” and “far worse” than the 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville. Biden has similarly condemned “the antisemitic protests” and “those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians.”

Both are repeating the false framework laid out by GOP Reps. Elise Stefanik and Virginia Foxx, a trap that university administrators have fallen into during House inquiries since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

There indeed have been antisemitic incidents associated with pro-Palestinian demonstrations on university campuses.

But in these hearings, Stefanik and Foxx have baited four women presidents into affirming the right’s politicized framing of the protests as rife with antisemitism, leading the public to believe that isolated incidents are instead representative and rampant.

Like their association of civil rights and peace demonstrators with communism throughout the Cold War, politicians on both sides of the aisle are now broadly hurling claims of antisemitism against anyone protesting Israel’s war in Gaza, many of whom are Jewish.

The purpose then, as it is now, is to intimidate administrators into a false political choice: Will they protect students’ right to demonstrate or be seen as acquiescent to antisemitism?

The Curious Case of the Freedom Flotilla

By Craig Murray

May 2, 2024

Source: Craig Murray Blog



The departure of the spectacular “Freedom Flotilla” to Gaza carrying 5,500 tonnes of aid has been postponed (again), because the flag state of the major vessels, Guinea Bissau, has withdrawn their registration.

The key question is why the organisers were proceeding with such an unreliable flag state in the first place?

In the 2010 Freedom Flotilla, the vessel Mavi Marmara was boarded by Israeli troops and ten aid workers were executed in cold blood. Just days before sailing, the Mavi Marmara had changed its flag from Turkey to the Comoros Islands.

On a vessel at sea outside the twelve mile territorial limit of a state (as the Mavi Marmara was when boarded), the law that applies is that of the flag state. Had the vessel still been Turkish flagged, the murderers would have been within Turkish jurisdiction and subject to investigation by Turkey and prosecution in Turkish courts.

I flew to Izmir to investigate the case and I concluded that it was Turkish security services who had obliged the change of flag to the Comoros Islands, thus facilitating the Israeli murderous attack.

Plainly the Mavi Marmara incident should indicate to organisers of aid to Gaza the vital necessity of having a vessel registered to a flag state which would be able to react strongly to an attack by Israel on its ship, and indeed whose flag might deter Israel from such an attack.

So it makes no sense to me that the organisers intended to proceed under the flag of Guinea Bissau.

On 8 April I received a Whatsapp message from organisers asking me to publicise the flotilla. This was my reply.


Hi Irfan and thank you. May I ask what are the flag states of the four vessels?
This is extremely important.
The Mavi Marmara organisers made the literally fatal mistake of allowing the ship to reflag to the Comoros Islands before sailing. Outside the 12 mile territorial sea the vessels are under the law of and entitled to the protection of the flag state

After a holding reply I received


Sorry for the late reply. It is still to be confirmed sir

I reiterated


OK, I am very keen that people understand that it is crucially important.
I have always believed pro Israeli security services influenced the change of flag of the Mavi Marmara.
Any Israeli forces boarding the ships beyond the 12 mile territorial limit are subject to the law of the flag state of the vessel. I should be grateful if you confirm to me the organisers fully understand this.

The reply was simply


Thank you sir

I am therefore entirely perplexed that the organisers went with Guinea Bissau as the flag state rather than a state likely to stand up to Israel and the US. Of course it failed.

Is the problem incompetence, or is it again security service influence?

I should make plain that I absolutely support the aims and the strategy of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. I have several friends on board, and I believe my good colleague Ann Wright is among the organisers. I am however intensely frustrated.

The Little Flotilla that Almost Could

by Craig Wood / May 1st, 2024

The flotilla cargo ship in Istanbul (Photo credit: Medea Benjamin)

Two gutsy activists from the Twin Cities flew to Istanbul, Turkey April 17 to join over three-hundred others from about 40 countries on an eleven-hundred mile voyage across the Mediterranean Sea to raise awareness and bring lifesaving aid to Gaza.

Vietnam Vet and member of Veterans For Peace (VFP) Barry Riesch was nervous about signing on with the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC), but felt he should try to do something for the vast majority of Gazans lacking medical care and being deliberately starved. Apart from the mission’s goal of delivering over five-thousand tons of urgently needed food, water and medical supplies (including five ambulances, and an abundance of baby formula), Reisch said he wanted to do this for his grandkids in hopes “they won’t have to grow up in a world that would ignore such a tragedy.”

Riesch has good reasons to be nervous. Since the Free Gaza Movement began in 2006, only a handful of small ships have been allowed to bring humanitarian aid to Gazans. Retired U.S. Army Colonel and former diplomat Ann Wright is a member of the 2024 FFC Steering Committee. She was a participant (resistor) on five previous flotillas that never reached Gaza. In 2010 she watched Israeli troops rappelling from helicopters onto the deck of the Mavi Marmara from a nearby boat. Ten resistors were killed and 50 more wounded after some of them allegedly tried to fight back in international waters against the Israeli invaders who were using pressurized water hoses on them. In a video, Wright gave other accounts of Israeli troops harassing and beating resistors before confiscating their belongs and taking them against their will to Israeli jails until they could be deported.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu contends that Israel has been unfairly targeted by resistors trying to break his country’s illegal navel blockade and bring humanitarian aid into Gaza. During a 2015 speech in Tel Aviv he told the Jewisih Agency Assembly “They send flotillas to Gaza, they don’t send flotillas to Syria. It’s amazing, this travesty of justice, this violation of the truth, the rape of truth.”

Former FBI agent and whistleblower Coleen Rowley is a member of VFP and Women Against Military Madness (WAMM) couldn’t disagree with Netanyahu more. She hopes that he and his cronies will be called to answer for their criminal behavior sooner than later. Rowley has been speaking at academic and other professional venues with an emphasis on ethical decision-making for twenty years. Before flying to Istanbul she talked over the phone with me about the “berserk Israelis” who have “shredded the law” — not only breaking the rules of the high seas for murder and kidnapping, but with their ongoing violations of international humanitarian law and war crimes on land. In a recent television interview she said “ I told people I can’t help seeing the faces of my own grandchildren (I have five grandchildren now) in the faces of these poor Gazan children who are being orphaned, starved and murdered.”

Riesch and Rowley attended intensive nonviolence training shortly after arriving in Istanbul. “The most frightening part of the training was a simulation replete with deafening booms of gunfire and exploding percussion grenades and masked soldiers screaming at us, hitting us with simulated rifles, dragging us across the floor, and arresting us” author/activist Medea Benjamin wrote in a Counterpunch article. During an April 19 Zoom meeting in Istanbul, resistors discussed their fears about the trip. One recalled a mock situation where three doctors from New Zealand laid on the floor during a seminar and instructed resistors on what to do if their heads are stepped on in the dark. Lawyers provided legal advice about separating “false authority” from “legitimate authority” along with tips for walking away from precarious situations. Despite their fears, resistors believe what they are doing not only has to be done, it is morally and legally justifiable, citing a recent ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that it is “plausible” Israel has committed acts of genocide: The court further maintains, that it is now incumbent upon citizens and governments of the world to do what they can to stop the genocide.

The location of the launch was kept secret due to Israel’s history of sabotaging boats in port and the departure dates were pushed back repeatedly because of outside pressures — mostly from the Israeli and U.S. governments. Last week the Israelis made an announcement about intercepting the flotilla that prompted Huwaida Arraf, U.S. human rights attorney and FFC Steering Committee member to say “Governments must refuse to collaborate in maintaining Israel’s illegal siege on Gaza by obstructing the flotilla in any way. We call on the governments of the 40 countries represented on the Freedom Flotilla to uphold their obligations under international law and demand that Israel guarantee the flotilla safe passage to Gaza.” Soon after, UN experts reaffirmed Arraf’s demand  “As the Freedom Flotilla approaches Palestinian territorial waters off Gaza, Israel must adhere to international law, including recent orders from the International Court of Justice to insure unimpeded access for humanitarian aid.”

But on April 26, the doubts crept home. During a morning call, Riesch talked about his dwindling hopes that the flotilla would make it to Gaza “Now there’s a problem with ship flags” — this is the fourth delay.” According to Reuters, Guinea-Bissau made a decision to remove its flag from flotilla boats. Istanbul activists answered with this:  “The Guinea-Bissau International Ships Registry (GBISR), in a blatantly political move, informed the Freedom Flotilla Coalition that it had withdrawn the Guinea Bissau flag from two of the Freedom Flotilla’s ships, one of which is our cargo ship.”

Riesch mentioned that frustrated resistors were already drifting away and during last night’s FFC meeting, he found out numerous other boats loaded with activists were preparing to join the flotilla in a show of solidarity, even though Israelis planned to stop them with a blockade. So, it was decided the flotilla would meet up with the blockade and wait a few days before turning around. The earliest departure time he said would be Sunday April 28 — if they could clear customs. Later that evening he sent a text saying the trip was canceled.

During a follow-up Q&A TikTok post, Wright told Benjamin that Israel always uses delay tactics before flotilla launches and the State Department invariably issues travel warnings and cautions Americans about challenging the Israeli government — especially now since the U.S. has been so openly complicit with the ongoing ethnic cleansing in Gaza. While support for the flotilla remains high from Turkish nationals, Wright strongly believes the U.S. is using economic pressures including military aid, ito derail the project in Turkey.

If nothing else, those who traveled to Istanbul succeeded in bringing much-needed attention to the plight of captive and undernourished Palestinians waiting in refugee camps for the next bombing campaign. About 45% of the people living in Gaza are children under the age of 15. So far, well over one hundred fifteen thousand Palestinians have been killed or wounded — most were women and children. It may take decades to rebuild the parts of Gaza already destroyed but for now, resistors are packing their bags — some hope to return this summer.

First row — Coleen Rowley far left and Barry Riesch third from left

Ann Wright second from left, and Medea Benjamin second from back in Istanbul FacebookTwitter

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Craig Wood is a Minneapolis writer and member of Veterans For Peace. He can be reached at craig2mpls@yahoo.com. Read other articles by Craig.

Intervention in Gaza

by Paul Larudee / April 29th, 2024

Is there a point at which the genocide in Gaza becomes egregious enough to provoke other countries to directly intervene in the Gaza Strip to prevent further genocide? Can Israel exterminate the entire population without anyone stopping them?

This is not a rhetorical question. Intervention is not merely judgments by the International Court of Justice or resolutions introduced at the United Nations. It is not even shiploads of supplies sent to queue up for delivery into Gaza, pending permission from the Israeli occupying authorities. Rather, intervention means forcing one’s way into Gaza, whether the occupying authorities like it or not, and being prepared for confrontation.

If there is such a point for some countries, what is that point? Half a million deaths, by massacre, starvation, dehydration, hypothermia, hyperthermia, exposure and disease? A million? And what are the countries that are willing to take action? Or can Israel exterminate the entire population without any countries intervening to stop the genocide?

The question is essential and not rhetorical, because it is now clear that there is no level of atrocity that Israel is not willing to commit, nor that the United States is not willing to support with all armaments necessary to commit the deed, as well as all aid necessary to sustain the Israeli economy. Israel will not be deterred by economic or diplomatic isolation. It is willing to be boycotted by the entire world other than the US. It cares nothing for legal judgments against it. Whether delusional or not, it sees genocide as its only means of survival, and will pursue it until it is deprived of the means to do so.

It therefore behooves us to ask the question whether there are any countries willing to intervene to stop the genocide, and at what point they will be willing to do so. If there are such countries, they will need to define the tripwire for their intervention and the means that they are willing to use to enforce it. They will need to form a consortium that is prepared to act in concert. The consortium will have to act outside the United Nations, because the US veto will prevent any UN action, other than symbolic.

The intervention need not be belligerent, but it must not accept to be impeded, nor to be attacked by the forces of the Israeli government. It must be prepared to defend itself if necessary. A suggested model for such an intervention may be found at https://dissidentvoice.org/2024/03/gaza-airdrops/, but the participating countries will make their own plans according to their own means and priorities.

The demonstrations, sit-ins, speeches, letters, phone calls, emails, boycotts, flotillas, legal judgments and other actions to apply pressure to stop the genocide are successful in raising awareness, changing opinions, and perhaps even partially forestalling the inevitable. But they have not in the least affected Israeli actions or US government support for them. Direct intervention is the only way that Israel can be made to stop.Facebook

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Paul Larudee is a retired academic and current administrator of a nonprofit human rights and humanitarian aid organization. Read other articles by Paul.

“Workers Have Power”: Thousands Rally in NYC for May Day, Call for Solidarity with Palestine

By Riya Al’sanah, Julia Bannon , Amy Goodman

 May 2, 2024

Source: Democracy Now!

Screenshot

Workers around the world rallied Wednesday to mark May Day, with many calling on the labor movement to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian cause. In New York, Democracy Now! spoke to demonstrators who demanded that U.S. unions apply political pressure for a ceasefire in Gaza and to stop their government’s arms trade with Israel. “Workers do have the power to shape the world,” said Palestinian researcher Riya Al’sanah, who was among thousands gathered at a May Day rally in Manhattan.

City University of New York Workers Announce Wildcat Sickout After NYPD Arrests Over 100 of Their Students and Colleagues

By Left Voice

May 2, 2024

Source: Left Voice



CUNY workers announced a wildcat sickout after NYPD raided City College’s Gaza Solidarity Encampment. It’s the first known job action in the PSC union’s 52-year history.

In the evening of Tuesday, April 30, hundreds of New York Police Department (NYPD) officers from precincts all over New York City assembled in Harlem to raid both Columbia University and the City College of New York. The university presidents had invited the police force onto campus to forcibly remove the Gaza Solidarity Encampments at each school and the students at Columbia occupying “Hind’s Hall,” normally known as Hamilton Hall but renamed by student activists after a 6-year-old girl in Gaza who was killed by Israel tanks while surrounded by her dead family members in their car.

The schools are approximately 20 blocks apart. After police finished their assault on Hind’s Hall, entering through an upstairs window with guns drawn before arresting the student activists, many of them moved uptown toward City College. Activists at both schools estimate at least 100 people were arrested from each one, including students and faculty.

City College is normally an open campus, one that requires City University of New York (CUNY) IDs to enter the buildings but not the grounds. A few days ago, the college set up temporary fencing around all of the entrances that had not already been locked, and last night, they began guarding the exit points, allowing people out but not in. Police violence and arrests occurred both inside and outside of campus.

Marc Kagan, an adjunct faculty member at CUNY’s School of Labor and Urban Studies, described some of what happened outside the gates in an email sent Wednesday morning:

The police presence was overwhelming. A couple of hundred in riot gear massed on Amsterdam [Avenue] easily broke up perhaps twice as many demonstrators, just surging into the crowd and randomly pulling people out for arrest, then pushing the rest of the crowd this way and that at will. Dozens more were deployed on every side street and far more than that at the two ends of Convent [Avenue].

Monday evening, unionized CUNY workers, organized with the Professional Staff Congress (PSC-CUNY, AFT Local 2334), had an assembly to discuss the situation and vote on next steps. The most controversial proposal — which passed after much discussion — was to hold a sick-out on Wednesday, May 1, International Workers Day, if at least 250 members of the bargaining unit scheduled to work that day pledged to do so by 10pm on Tuesday.

In Kagan’s view, “The encampment-faculty/staff meeting the night before [the brutality] was, I think, a preliminary and nascent example of the type of real union/student relationships we would need to build to ever realize the prospect of a People’s CUNY. That is, one that is fully funded and substantially less hierarchical.”

Shortly after 10:00 PM, messages went out through email and on social media: the threshold had been reached, the pledge’s signatories had been verified as members of the bargaining unit, and the sickout was on.

In addition to being the will of the assembly, the action responds to the call from the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions – Gaza for the workers of the world to mobilize on their behalf for May Day. As one chant heard at the CUNY encampment goes, “Gaza calls, CUNY answers!”

Under New York State’s Taylor Law, which governs labor relations for public employees in New York City and bans public sector strikes, a sick-out counts as an illegal job action. As far as the PSC members we spoke with know, this is the first job action in the PSC’s 52-year history.

One PSC member who preferred to remain anonymous, upon being released from 1 Police Plaza in the early hours of Wednesday morning, said, “I don’t even give a fuck about being arrested, I care about the first ever PSC job action and that it’s for Palestine!”

It remains to be seen whether the university will choose to pursue legal or disciplinary action against workers participating in the sickout. The PSC has already issued a statement disavowing the action and discouraging members from participating, but the comments on the Instagram version of the statement are almost unanimously negative, with one commenter remarking that “These are the most unanimous comments I have ever read. I hope the PSC is heeding this vote of no confidence in the leadership.” Even after the 10:00 PM deadline passed, more members continued to sign the pledge.

CUNY workers are furious and heartbroken, just as their colleagues across the country whose campus encampments have also faced police brutality in the last two weeks are furious and heartbroken. Many intend to mobilize for the May Day march for Palestine at 4:00 PM this afternoon in Foley Square, alongside other sectors of the working class of New York, including UAW members who work at Columbia University, Barnard College, New York University, and The New School.

As PSC members organizing for Palestine love to chant, “Arab, Jewish, Black, and white, workers of the world unite!”

How Labor Can Aid the Student Movement for Palestine

Despite heavy repression, campus protests in solidarity with Palestine have been spreading like wildfire across the US. The support of organized labor can help the movement grow — and increase its leverage to achieve its demands.

By Caitlyn Clark

May 3, 2024

Source: Jacobin

April 24, 2024 - Texas State Troopers are violently dispersing a peaceful Palestine solidarity protest on the campus grounds of University of Texas at Austin. | Image credit: @RyanChandlerTV

Since April 18, over one thousand students, faculty members, and community supporters have been arrested at college campus protests across the country. Despite fierce repression from university administrators and police, new Gaza solidarity encampments, set up by students protesting Israel’s genocide and demanding their schools divest, are popping up every day.

Students have been threatened with arrest, suspension, and even expulsion for their participation in campus protests calling on their universities to disclose their financial holdings and divest from all financial ties to Israel and weapons manufacturing. On April 30, police in riot gear swept student antiwar encampments at Columbia and City College of New York, arresting nearly three hundred protesters. Violent police attacks on peaceful protesters have gone viral on social media, including harrowing footage of blood being hosed off from the walls at Emerson College in Boston and police tasing a protester while he was pinned to the ground and handcuffed at Emory University in Atlanta.

Last night, a mob of pro-Israel counterprotesters at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) launched an attack on the student encampment, launching fireworks directly into the camp, attempting to tear down students’ barricades, and brutally beating students. Campus security and police officers arrived on the scene but refused to intervene for an hour and a half.

As the situation continues to escalate, the need for support from groups beyond the students is becoming increasingly clear. Organized labor, with its capacity to mobilize wider layers of working people and leverage to shut down universities or even broader sectors of the economy through collective action, can help the protest movement to achieve its demands.

Union Solidarity With Palestine

Several international labor unions — including the United Auto Workers (UAW), the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE), and the American Postal Workers Union — have publicly called for a cease-fire, in addition to over two hundred local unions. Many have shown up at local rallies and protests, including a rally organized by UAW Region 9A that marched to support the student encampment at New York University on April 27.

These efforts show that more of the labor movement is recognizing the need for solidarity with Palestine. But unions can have their greatest impact in winning a cease-fire and student demands for university divestment when they use their power to strike and carry out other disruptive actions.

During the Berkeley Free Speech Movement (FSM) of the 1960s, organized labor played a crucial role in supporting the student strike on UC Berkeley’s campus. Joel Geier, a student activist in the International Socialists (IS) during the FSM, recalls:

The local labor movement, including the campus unions — the Building Trades, SEIU [Service Employees International Union], the ILWU [International Longshore and Warehouse Union], and the San Francisco Labor Council — supported the strike. A contribution to shutting down the campus came from an unexpected force: the conservative Teamsters. I led a group of FSMers to meet with Teamster union officials, who agreed with us that crossing our picket lines would be scabbing, and they would prevent all deliveries to the campus. Within an hour, no trucks bringing supplies or food entered the campus, helping to halt the normal functioning of the university. The solidarity of campus workers was outstanding, particularly the underground support from secretaries and clerks of the main university administrators, who acted as part of our intelligence network, providing us with the enemy’s thinking, plans, and memos.

Yet on many college campuses today, union groundskeepers have been tasked with the university’s dirty work of sweeping protest camps, throwing students’ posters and tents in the trash.

Student activists can take a page out of the FSM’s book in building relationships with local unions, especially those representing the groundskeepers involved in universities’ repression of encampments. Many college campuses have pro-labor student clubs that organize solidarity efforts with their local unions, and, increasingly, their own undergraduate student labor unions; these clubs and unions would be the ideal avenues for holding conversations with local unions about supporting the student activists. At the New School in New York City, for instance, student-workers are picketing to simultaneously demand union recognition from the university and to support the Gaza solidarity encampment at the school — a tactic that organizers say has helped stave off more aggressive tactics from police.

As many college students gear up for summer break and a likely demobilization of campus activism, student activists can think of using the summer to develop long-term relationships with local unions, supporting them in upcoming contract fights or labor disputes and in turn sharing why student activists will need their support in the coming fall.

Some union members whose locals or internationals have passed cease-fire resolutions are already starting to take organized action in support of the protests.

Organizers in Los Angeles launched a button campaign, “Button Up 4 Palestine,” on April 30 to show solidarity, while United Teachers Los Angeles members from the rank-and-file-led LA Educators for Justice in Palestine led teach-ins at the student encampment at UCLA. In New York City, bus drivers with Transport Workers Union Local 100 refused to drive city buses to transport arrested protesters from a Jewish Voice for Peace protest during Passover, and public defenders unionized with Association of Legal Aid Attorneys UAW Local 2325 have been providing legal services to arrested protesters. (Local 2325 is itself currently being subpoenaed by Congress for passing a cease-fire resolution last December.) And graduate workers at the University of Southern California organized with UAW Local 872 have filed unfair labor practice (ULP) charges against the university for the unlawful arrest of its members during a peaceful protest on campus.
The Power of the Strike

For most union workers, no strike–no lockout clauses in their contracts restrict them from going on strike over a ULP. But workers who are organizing a union for the first time, fighting for recognition, or working under an expired contract typically can throw up legal picket lines over ULPs. Most union contracts include language protecting workers from having to cross legal picket lines, something often referred to as “secondary boycotts.”

A strategically placed picket line can trigger secondary boycotts that have the power to bring the economy to a screeching halt. On college campuses, this may look like picketing in front of the loading docks of cafeterias, biosciences buildings, and engineering buildings, all of which tend to rely on time-sensitive deliveries. This was a tactic employed by the UAW strike of forty-eight thousand academic workers in the University of California system during their six-week strike in 2022.

Secondary boycotts during an ILWU recognition fight for a small unit of intermodal yard workers at the Port of Tacoma shut down the entire port for a day, costing the company an estimated $5–6 million. The result? The company caved, granting voluntary recognition for the union that eventually won those workers double their pay, up to $80,000 annually from $40,000. The lesson here is that solidarity across bargaining units, job classifications, and unions gets the goods.

Picket lines don’t have to be legal of course. The ongoing Massachusetts public school teachers’ strike wave and the 2018 wildcat teachers’ strikes in West Virginia and Arizona show that sufficiently organized workers can carry out winning strikes even when they are against the law. As West Virginia teachers’ striker Emily Comer said, “It doesn’t matter if an action is illegal if you have enough people doing it.”

Actions don’t have to be as drastic as secondary boycotts or illegal strikes. Both are highly risky, especially in controversial political moments like this one; most workplaces still aren’t at the levels of organization required to pull them off effectively, and governments sometimes respond to illegal strikes with severe repression. But every action counts, like button campaigns or other structure tests that can help union activists build long-term organization of members. Heated moments require flexible tactics, but organizers should be cautious of taking shortcuts.

Workers are behind the operations that keep these universities afloat, from the faculty and graduate students that teach the classes and grade the papers, to the custodial and cafeteria staff that keep the campus clean and fed. If workers choose to stand in solidarity with student protesters rather than the bosses — the universities — they may be able to use their leverage to help students win their demands.

For the students’ movement for Palestine to develop beyond the campus (and to survive the demobilization of summer break), it will have to make inroads into other spheres of society where ordinary people have power. The power of the working class lies in its numbers and its ability to stop the flow of capital through the simple — but by no means easy — act of withholding its labor.

The current student protest wave is a reminder that the shop floor isn’t the only important site of struggles for social justice, as the bravery and courage of student activists facing immense repression has breathed new life into the movement for Palestinian liberation. But to build an effective mass movement for Palestine, we’ll need strategic leverage. We can start with the unions.

‘Unshocked’: Naomi Klein vs the “ideological shackles of Zionism”

By Naomi Klein, Mehdi Hasan

 May 3, 2024

Source: Zeteo

In a conversation with Mehdi for her new contributor segment at Zeteo, called “Unshocked,” Jewish activist, academic, and author Naomi Klein calls for an “exodus from the ideological shackles of Zionism.”  Naomi also reacts to Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu comparing student protesters at Columbia University to Nazis, telling Mehdi that when it comes to Netanyahu, “there is nobody more adept at exploiting Jewish trauma, historical trauma, and turning it into a political weapon for his own advantage.” Mehdi also opens up to Naomi about why he decided to boycott the White House Correspondents Dinner. “I can’t call out what Israel is doing to Palestinian journalists with American-made bombs and then go to a fun, comedy-type dinner with the President of the United States — who’s not just responsible for that, but is also not even acknowledging it,” Mehdi told Naomi.  In 2007, Naomi wrote “The Shock Doctrine,” a book that explains what happens when a national crisis throws citizens into a state of shock and how the powerful exploit those moments. Although it may be one her most popular books, Naomi tells Mehdi that she dreams of a day where the Shock Doctrine will no longer be relevant, where people can stay grounded even in times of chaos.