UK

Environmentalists blast Government’s road map for a cleaner, greener country

Helen William, PA
Mon, 30 January 2023

Environmentalists have condemned the Government’s environment plan aimed at helping create a greener, cleaner country as a “road map to the cliff edge”.

The comment from Greenpeace comes as the Government sets out its environmental improvement plan for England. Friends of the Earth have described it as “just rehashed commitments”.

The scheme is built on a vision set out five years ago in the 25 Year Environment Plan, including new powers and duties under the Environment Act, Agriculture Act and Fisheries Act, to provide ways to restore nature and improve the environmental quality of the air, waters and land.

This was the central target agreed in the global deal for nature at the UN Nature Summit COP15 in December.

Environment Secretary Therese Coffey (James Manning/PA)

Environment Secretary Therese Coffey is set to unveil the plan, which also stresses that progress can be measured against interim targets, on Tuesday.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said: “Protecting our natural environment is fundamental to the health, economy and prosperity of our country.

“This plan provides the blueprint for how we will deliver our commitment to leave our environment in a better state than we found it, making sure we drive forward progress with renewed ambition and achieve our target of not just halting, but reversing the decline of nature.”

At least 500,000 hectares of new wildlife habitats, starting with 70 new wildlife projects including 25 new or expanded National Nature Reserves and 19 further Nature Recovery Projects are to be created and restored under the plan.

The Government is also to deliver a clean and plentiful supply of water for people and nature into the future, by tackling leaks, publishing a roadmap to boost household water efficiency, and enabling greater sources of supply.

Councils are to be challenged to improve air quality more quickly and tackle key hotspots and there is also a pledge to transform the management of 70% of the countryside by incentivising farmers to adopt nature-friendly practices.

Boosting green growth and creating new jobs, ranging from foresters and farmers to roles in green finance and research and development, is another pledge.

Ms Coffey said: “Nature is vital for our survival, crucial to our food security, clean air, and clean water as well as health and well-being benefits.

“We have already started the journey and we have seen improvements.

“We are transforming financial support for farmers and landowners to prioritise improving the environment, we are stepping up on tree planting, we have cleaner air, we have put a spotlight on water quality and rivers and are forcing industry to clean up its act. ”

A red squirrel (Liam McBurney/PA)

The plan includes a multi-million pound Species Survival Fund to protect rare species, from hedgehogs to red squirrels, is promised along with a pledge that Government support schemes will help 65 to 80% of landowners and farmers to adopt nature friendly farming practices on at least 10 to 15% of their land by 2030.

They are also to be helped to create or restore 30,000 miles of hedgerows a year by 2037 and 45,000 miles of hedgerows a year by 2050.

Other commitments include actions to tackle water efficiency in new developments and retrofitted properties, including reviewing building regulations and other legislation to address leaky toilets and dual flush buttons and to enable new water efficient technologies.

The restoration of 400 miles of river through the first round of Landscape Recovery projects and establishing 3,000 hectares of new woodlands along England’s rivers is also promised.

The current regulatory framework is to be rationalised to try and create a more efficient system.

There is also to be an effort to cut ammonia emissions through incentivised farming schemes and also to improve the way air quality information is communicated with the public.

Dr Doug Parr, of Greenpeace UK, said: “If this is a road map, it’s a road map to the cliff edge.

“Here’s yet more paperwork containing a threadbare patchwork of policies that fail to tackle many of the real threats to our natural world. This won’t do.

“Ministers want to crack down on dual flush toilets while letting water firms pump tonnes of raw sewage into our rivers and seas.

“Until we see immediate action (from) this Parliament to ban industrial fishing in all our marine protected areas, reduce industrial meat and dairy farming and ramp up protections across a bigger network of national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty, we’re in real danger of UK nature going into freefall.”

Paul de Zylva, of Friends of the Earth, said that “on closer inspection it seems that many (of the measures) are just rehashed commitments the government is already late on delivering – and it’s unclear how others, such as ensuring everyone can live within a 15 minute walk of green space, will actually be met”.

He said: “There’s also a big emphasis on improving air quality which is completely at odds with the government’s £27bn road building agenda, raising serious questions over whether councils are being set up to fail.”

Tribal activists see 'green colonialism' in Nevada mine Biden hails as key to clean energy

AP Yesterday 


OROVADA, Nevada (AP) — Just 45 miles (72 kilometers) from the Fort McDermitt Indian Reservation where Daranda Hinkey and her family corral horses and cows, a centerpiece of President Joe Biden’s clean energy plan is taking shape: construction of one of the largest lithium mines in the world.

As heavy trucks dig up the earth in this remote, windswept region of Nevada to extract the silvery-white metal used in electric-vehicle batteries, the $2.2 billion project is fueling a backlash. “No Lithium. No mine!″ proclaims a large hand-painted sign in Hinkey's front yard.

The Biden administration says the project will help mitigate climate change by speeding the shift away from fossil fuels. But Hinkey and other opponents say it is not worth the costs to the local environment and people.

Similar disputes are taking place around the world as governments and companies advancing renewable energy find themselves battling communities opposed to projects that threaten wildlife, groundwater and air quality.

Hinkey, 25, is a member of the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe and a leader of a group known as People of Red Mountain — named after the scarlet peak that overlooks her house. The group says that in addition to environmental impacts, the Thacker Pass mine would desecrate a site where the U.S. Cavalry massacred their ancestors after the Civil War.

“Lithium mines and this whole push for renewable energy — the agenda of the Green New Deal — is what I like to call green colonialism,″ Hinkey said. “It’s going to directly affect my people, my culture, my religion, my tradition.”

Protests near the mining site have flared up for more than two years, and the project has sparked legal challenges, including an appeal that a federal court will hear this month.

Hinkey had hoped Interior Secretary Deb Haaland — the first Native American Cabinet member — might rally to the side of opponents. But that has not happened.

Haaland, whose department oversees Thacker Pass, said that while she supports the right to peaceful protests, her agency is in favor of the mine because “the need for our clean energy economy to move forward is definitely important.”

The project was approved in the waning days of the Trump administration but is central to Biden’s goal for half of all new vehicles sold in the U.S. to be electric by 2030. Lithium batteries are also used to store wind and solar power.

Haaland told The Associated Press that when her agency inherits a project from a previous administration, “It’s our job to make sure we’re doing things according to the science, to the law.”

Hinkey sees her activism as a continuation of her leadership on basketball teams in high school and in college, where she guided her Southern Oregon Raiders to a 20-win season as a senior point guard.

“Corporations are scared of an educated Indian,″ said Hinkey, who hopes to become a teacher. Her athletic experience, education and tribal background make her “someone who can stand up against them,″ she said.

Hinkey said she is especially disappointed because she voted for Biden and expected his administration to slow down the project that was fast-tracked under President Donald Trump. She and other tribal members “feel very lost, very shoved underneath the carpet,″ Hinkey said.

The project does have the support of some leaders of Hinkey’s tribe, who point to the promise of jobs and development on a reservation where unemployment is far above the national average.

“This could help our tribe,″ said Fort McDermitt Tribal Chairman Arlo Crutcher, who recently went to Washington with company executives to meet with the Interior Department. Still, he is skeptical about how many jobs will go to impoverished tribe members.

Lithium Americas, the Canadian company that is developing the project, signed an agreement with the Fort McDermitt tribe — the closest to the mine among more than two dozen federally recognized tribes and bands in Nevada — to ensure local hiring, job training and other benefits. It also agreed to build a community center that includes a preschool and playground for the reservation, where close to half the population lives in poverty.

The October 2022 agreement “is a testament to our company’s commitment to go beyond our regulatory requirements and to form constructive relationships with the communities closest to our projects,″ Lithium Americas President and CEO Jonathan Evans said in a statement. General Motors has pledged $650 million to help develop Thacker Pass, which holds enough lithium to build 1 million electric vehicles annually.

Opponents, including other tribes and environmental groups, argue that the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, an Interior Department agency, violated at least three federal laws in approving the mine.

BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning defended her agency’s actions, saying the Biden administration allowed construction to begin “because the proposal is solid, and the country needs that lithium.”

The National Historic Preservation Act requires tribal consultation in all steps of a project on or near tribal land. But Hinkey and other mine opponents say the mine was hastily approved when tribal governments were largely shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In its 2021 decision approving the project, the agency said it wrote letters in late 2019 to at least three tribes — including Fort McDermitt — inviting comments. Two online meetings were conducted in August 2020, but no objections were raised by the end of an environmental review in December 2020, the agency said.

Michon Eben, historic preservation officer for the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony, said the agency’s actions fell far short of genuine consultation.

“This is the biggest (lithium) mine in the country — and there’s 28 federally recognized tribes and bands in the state of Nevada that all have relationships — and you only send a letter to three tribes? There’s something wrong with that,″ Eben said.

“The consultation kind of skipped us,'' said Gary McKinney, a spokesman for People of Red Mountain and a member of the nearby Duck Valley Shoshone-Paiute Tribe. “Nobody knew about the lithium. They taped a notice on the door and called that" adequate notice,'' he said.

Asked about those claims, Stone-Manning replied: “I regret if people feel that way. I can’t control how people feel.″

In an interview near the mine site, where workers were installing a water pipeline, McKinney said the project will cause irreparable damage. The mine will require large amounts of water, and conservationists say groundwater and soil could become contaminated with heavy metals. The area is also a nesting ground for the dwindling sage grouse.

“The water will be lower. Life will be scared away,” he said. “Our culture, our sacred sites will be gone. We’re facing the annihilation of our identity.″

He and other opponents say the BLM office in Nevada failed to assess the project's likely impact on the massacre site near Sentinel Rock, which juts above sagebrush and high grass used by roaming cattle herds.

“What happens to those who were massacred and buried here?” Eben said in an interview at Sentinel Rock.

The exact location of the massacre, where federal soldiers killed at least 31 Paiute men, women and children, is unknown, although it is generally recognized to be within a few miles of the mine. Tribes call the site Peehee Mu’huh, or “Rotten Moon” in the Paiute language.

A federal judge in February said construction could begin while also ruling that BLM violated federal law regarding disposal of mine waste. Conservationists have appealed, and the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals scheduled oral arguments for June 26.

Eben said she is putting her faith in Haaland, a member of New Mexico’s Laguna Pueblo.

“From one Native woman to another, what I am going to say is, ‘Please come and walk this land with us. Come and listen to our side of the story, our oral histories. A massacre did occur here. ... Our people were killed.'"

And, she added, “you can’t mine your way out of a climate crisis.”

___

Associated Press writers Scott Sonner in Reno, Nevada and Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, New Mexico contributed to this story.

__

Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Matthew Daly, The Associated Press

The U.S. Senate Might Be About to Kill 

Biden's Clean Energy Plans

Alejandro de la Garza

Thu, June 30, 2022 

Deepwater Wind installing the first offshore wind farm at Block Island, Rhode Island, August 14, 2016. Credit - Mark Harrington/Newsday RM—Getty Images

You might not expect to see fireworks in congressional debates over offshore energy worker regulations. But in a little-noticed March meeting of the House transportation and infrastructure committee, things got heated between Rep. Garret Graves (R., La.) and Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D., Mass.) as they argued over an amendment to the 2022 Coast Guard reauthorization bill that would ban foreign flagged ships with multinational crews from working off the U.S. coast. The back-and-forth ended on a sour note. “If my friend wants to keep hiring Russians, that’s fine,” Graves said.

“If my friend from Louisiana wants to thwart the clean energy industry in the United States,” Auchincloss responded, “then that’s fine.”

Committee chairman Peter DeFasio (D., Ore.) stepped in to note his support for the amendment and it ultimately passed. While not yet enacted—the bill will likely come up before the Senate commerce committee in the next month—wind energy proponents are worried. American Clean Power, a renewables industry group, said the new provision would “cripple” the offshore wind industry and stymie President Joe Biden’s efforts to build 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030. (Unlike Europe and Asia, the United States has almost no offshore wind power at present, and even Biden’s aspirations lag far behind the ambitions of other countries.)

The crux of the debate comes down to certain kinds of highly specialized ships needed to perform mega-construction tasks like erecting huge turbine components and laying miles of underwater cables, which will be needed as offshore construction on the U.S.’s few approved ocean wind projects actually gets underway. The provision would mandate that only U.S. ships with American crews be allowed to work on offshore energy projects, including those big lift jobs, or, if foreign ships are used, they must be crewed either by Americans, or by sailors and workers that match the vessel’s flag of origin: for example, a ship flying the Norwegian flag should be crewed only by Norwegians.

There’s American boats to do a lot of the smaller supporting tasks around that construction, and the bill’s proponents say there’s a big problem of foreign boats with low paid workers taking American jobs. Of the few ships designed to do the specialized heavy lift work, most are registered in different countries than where the crew is from because of financial or regulatory expediency. Lower foreign wages give those ships an unfair advantage, say supporters of the new provision, effectively thwarting the U.S. shipbuilding industry from getting financing to roll out ships capable of building offshore wind turbines. “If the law continues to allow foreign entities to enjoy cost advantages we don’t have, and an unlevel playing field, we simply cannot compete with them,” says Aaron Smith, president of the Offshore Marine Service Association, an industry group that advised on the provision in the Coast Guard bill.

But that situation is also why the bill could mean big problems for offshore wind projects planned up and down the East coast: the U.S. simply doesn’t have many of those types of specialized ships, and the U.S. offshore wind market is so small that even blocking foreign ships from coming still might not make a good enough financial case to get American versions built.

“Every wind turbine installation vessel that is not able to come to the United States because of this provision would eliminate 1,460 megawatts of offshore wind from being installed a year, which would be 4.9 million tons of carbon dioxide,” says Claire Richer, federal affairs director at American Clean Power. Instead, she suggests subsidies to build U.S. offshore wind vessels, rather than mandates that block ships from working here.

In theory, foreign ships could switch their registrations and crews to comply with the law, though that could be difficult since some highly specialized personnel can’t be easily swapped out. Of some essential ships, like the nine worldwide designed to place wind turbine foundations on the seafloor, every single vessel is registered in countries like the Bahamas where the entire crew is permitted to be from somewhere else. And the harsh reality is that there’s so much offshore wind work to be done around the world that the owners of the ships are likely not to bother with the hassle, and just stick to construction jobs in Asia and Europe, leaving the fledgling U.S. offshore wind industry high and dry. And even if protectionism eventually helps build up a domestic offshore construction fleet, some in the offshore wind industry say that the result, free from international competition, would be inferior to the ships building wind power in Europe or Asia, meaning a slower offshore wind rollout.

The whole issue points to an uncomfortable opposition in the green energy transition: we need to decarbonize the economy as fast as possible to avert the worst effects of climate change, but the quickest and most efficient way of doing so sometimes means dropping politically popular protectionism in favor of free trade. The balance between efficiency and protectionism has been long established—things get cheaper when you open the doors to the foreign market, and some domestic industry suffers—and for decades the balance of U.S. policy was weighted firmly toward globalism. Then, around the 2016 election, Donald Trump’s campaign invoked the evils of the North American Free Trade Agreement (“The worst trade deal maybe ever signed anywhere.”) so many times as to make the position politically radioactive.

There’s lots of good reasons to prioritize U.S. green industry—and there’s an argument to be made that sometimes a bit of protectionism is necessary to get the ball rolling. But there are also trade-offs to blocking foreign competition. Usually, it means higher prices: more expensive steel and socks. In the case of offshore wind, it could mean even more delay in developing a desperately-needed source of green power as we wait for our own industry to catch up—assuming it ever really does. There’s a lot of jobs around offshore wind, and only some of them involve manning the ships that come by for a few months to drop components in the water. If the price of those additional American crews means tipping the climate balance even further in the wrong direction, our leaders should think carefully about if it’s really worth it for the rest of us.

'All lies': how the US military covered up gunning down two journalists in Iraq Dean Yates, a former Reuters employee now based in northern Tasmania.

 Dean was bureau chief in Baghdad when two of his colleagues, Saeed Chmagh and Namir Noor-Eldeen, were killed by the US military. Photograph: Matthew Newton/The Guardian

Former Reuters journalist Dean Yates was in charge of the bureau in Baghdad when his Iraqi colleagues Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh were killed. A WikiLeaks video called Collateral Murder later revealed details of their death

by Paul Daley THE GUARDIAN Sun 14 Jun 2020 

For all the countless words from the United States military about its killing of the Iraqi Reuters journalists Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh, their colleague Dean Yates has two of his own: “All lies.”

The former Reuters Baghdad bureau chief has also inked some on his arm – a permanent declaration of how those lies “fucked me up”, while he blamed first Namir – unfairly – and then himself for the killings.

The tattoo on his left shoulder features a looped green ribbon bearing the words Iraq, Bali and Aceh. At opposite points of the ribbon is etched PTSD and Fight Back, Moral injury and July 12 2007.

Yates’s experiences covering the 2002 Bali bombings and the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 seeded his post-traumatic stress, but 12 July 2007 is the day that changed his life irrevocably – while violently ending Namir’s and Saeed’s. It’s also the day that linked him by a thread of truth to the WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange, who would, three years later, become the world’s most infamous hacker-publisher-activist with his release of thousands of classified US military secrets.

Reuters photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen was 22 when he was killed in Baghdad on 12 July 2007. Photograph: Khalid Mohammed/AP

They included a video WikiLeaks titled Collateral Murder, filmed from a US military Apache helicopter as it blasted to pieces Namir, 22, and Saeed, 40, and nine other men, while seriously wounding two children.

The US continues its legal efforts to extradite Assange from a British prison, where he is remanded in failing health, to face espionage allegations. Instructively, the detailed, 37-page US indictment against him makes no mention of Collateral Murder – the video that caused the US government and military more reputational damage than all the other secret documents combined, and that launched WikiLeaks and Assange as the foremost global enemy of state secrecy.

 

The US continues its legal efforts to extradite WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange from a British prison. Photograph: Matt Dunham/AP

Is the US concerned that referring to the video will give rise to war crimes charges against the military personnel involved in the attack? Certainly, bringing the video into the prosecution case against Assange could only vindicate his role in exposing the US military’s lies about the ghastly killings.
‘Loud wailing broke out’

Early on 12 July 2007 Yates sat in the “slot desk” in the Reuters office in Baghdad’s red zone. He was ready for the usual: a car bomb attack while Iraqis headed to work, a militant strike on a market, the police or the Iraqi military. It was quieter than usual.

Press freedom is at risk if we allow Julian Assange's extradition
Roy Greenslade

Yates recalls: “Loud wailing broke out near the back of our office … I still remember the anguished face of the Iraqi colleague who burst through the door. Another colleague translated: ‘Namir and Saeed have been killed.’”

Reuters staff drove to the al-Amin neighbourhood where Namir had told colleagues he was going to check out a possible US dawn airstrike. Witnesses said Namir, a photographer, and Saeed, a driver/fixer, had been killed by US forces, possibly in an airstrike during a clash with militants.

Dean Yates is now based in northern Tasmania. He says Assange brought the truth of the killings to the world. Photograph: Matthew Newton/The Guardian

Yates emailed the US military spokesman in Iraq and telephoned a senior Reuters editor to tell him the news.

While the bureau was in a crisis of anger and mourning, Yates still had to write the early stories about the two men killed on his watch. He initially wrote that they had died in what Iraqi police called “American military action”.

Yates says: “Pictures taken by our photographers and camera operators showed a minivan at the scene, its front mangled by a powerful concussive force … There was much we didn’t know. US soldiers had seized Namir’s two cameras, so we couldn’t check what he’d been photographing.”

By early evening the military spokesman still had not replied. Yates pressed him for a response– and for the return of Namir’s cameras. Just after midnight, the US military released a statement headlined: “Firefight in New Baghdad. US, Iraqi forces kill 9 insurgents, detain 13.”

It quoted a US lieutenant as saying: “Nine insurgents were killed in the ensuing firefight. One insurgent was wounded and two civilians were killed during the firefight. The two civilians were reported as employees for the Reuters news service. There is no question that Coalition Forces were clearly engaged in combat operations against a hostile force.”

Yates, shaking his head, says: “The US assertions that Namir and Saeed were killed during a firefight was all lies. But I didn’t know that at the time, so I updated my story to take in the US military’s statement.”

 

Dean Yates says news organisations dealt with the US military in good faith: ‘What a joke that turned out to be.’ Photograph: Matthew Newton/The Guardian

It was a shocking time for locally engaged staff of foreign news organisations in Baghdad. On 13 July, the day of Namir and Saeed’s funerals, Khalid Hassan, a New York Times reporter/translator, was shot dead.

After the funerals Yates pressed the US military for Namir’s cameras and for access to cameras and air-to-ground recordings involving the Apache that killed his colleagues.

On 14 July, Yates learned that militants had murdered a Reuters Iraqi text translator.

In an effort to save employees’ lives, he began collaborating with other foreign news organisation managers to engage with the US military to better understand its rules of engagement.

“We dealt with them in good faith,” he says. “What a joke that turned out to be.”
‘Cold-blooded murder’

On 15 July the US military returned Namir’s cameras. Namir had photographed the aftermath of an earlier shooting and, a few minutes later (just before his death), US military Humvees at a nearby crossroads. There were no frames of insurgent gunmen or clashes with US forces. Date and time stamps show that three hours after Namir died his camera photographed a US soldier in a barrack or tent. The troops who mopped up the killing scene evidently messed around with his cameras afterwards.
Date and time stamps show that three hours after Namir Noor-Eldeen died his camera was used to photograph a US soldier. Photograph: Reuters

Reuters staff had by now spoken to 14 witnesses in al-Amin. All of them said they were unaware of any firefight that might have prompted the helicopter strike.

Yates recalls: “The words that kept forming on my lips were ‘cold-blooded murder’.”

The Iraqi staff at Reuters, meanwhile, were concerned that the bureau was too soft on the US military. “But I could only write what we could establish and the US military was insisting Saeed and Namir were killed during a clash,” Yates says.

The meeting that put him on a path of destructive, paralysing – eventually suicidal – guilt and blame “that basically fucked me up for the next 10 years”, leaving him in a state of “moral injury”, happened at US military headquarters in the Green Zone on 25 July.

Yates and a Reuters colleague met the two US generals who had overseen the investigation into the killings of Namir and Saeed.

Dean Yates’ framed photos of his colleagues. ‘The words that kept forming on my lips were “cold-blooded murder”.’ Photograph: Dean Yates

It was a long, off-the-record meeting. The generals revealed a mass of detail, telling them a US battalion had been seeking militias responsible for roadside bombs. They had called in helicopter support after coming under fire. One Apache had the call sign Crazy Horse 1-8.

“They described a group of men spotted by this Apache,” Yates says. “Some appeared to be armed and Crazy Horse 1-8 … had requested permission to fire because we were told these men were ‘military-aged males’ … and they appeared to have weapons and they were acting suspiciously. So, we were told those men on the ground were then ‘engaged’.”

The generals showed them photographs of what was collected after the shooting, including “a couple of AK-47s [assault rifles], an RPG [rocket-propelled grenade] launcher and two cameras”.


“I have wondered for many years how much of that meeting was carefully choreographed so we would go away with a certain impression of what happened. Well, for a time it worked,” Yates says.

There was some discussion about what permitted Crazy Horse 1-8 to open fire if there was no firefight. One of the generals insisted the dead were of “military age” and, because apparently armed, were therefore “expressing hostile intent”.

Yates says: “Then they said, ‘OK, we are just going to show you a little bit of footage from the camera of Crazy Horse 1-8.’”

The generals showed them about three minutes of video, beginning with a group including Saeed and Namir on the street.

 

Saeed Chmagh and Namir Noor-Eldeen in the Collateral Murder video. Photograph: WikiLeaks

“We heard the pilot seek permission from the ground to attack.” After the pilot receives permission, the men are obscured. The chopper circles for a clear aim.

'As I watch the footage, anger calcifies in my heart'
Read more

Yates says: “When the chopper circled around, Namir can be seen going to a corner and crouching down holding something – his long-lens camera – and is taking photographs of Humvees. One of the crew says, ‘He’s got an RPG’ … He’s clearly agitated. And then another 15, 20 seconds the crew gets a clear line of sight … I’m watching Namir crouching down with his camera which the pilot thinks is an RPG and they’re about to open fire. I then see a man I believe to be Saeed walking away, talking on the phone. Then cannon fire hits them. I’ve got my head in my hands … The generals stop the tape.”

The generals downplayed a slightly later incident when they said a van had pulled up and Crazy Horse 1-8 assessed it as aiding the insurgents, removing their bodies and weapons.

“At some point after watching that footage it became burnt into my mind that the reason the helicopter opened fire was because Namir was peering around the corner. I came to blame Namir for that attack, thinking that the helicopter fired because he made himself look suspicious and it just erased from my memory the fact that the order to open fire had already been given. They were going to open fire anyway. And the one person who picked this up was Assange. On the day that he released the tape [5 April 2010] he said that helicopter opened fire because it sought permission and was given permission. And he said something like, ‘If that’s based on the rules of engagement then the rules of engagement are wrong.’”

Reuters asked for the entire video. The general refused, saying Reuters had to seek it under freedom of information laws. The agency did so, but its requests were denied.

During the next year, Yates checked when it might be released. All the while he and other executives from foreign news organisations continued their good faith meetings with various US generals to enhance the safety of their Baghdad staff.
Namir Noor-Eldeen, pictured, and Saeed Chmagh would have remained forgotten statistics in a war that killed countless Iraqi combatants, hundreds of thousands of civilians and 4,400-plus US soldiers had it not been for Chelsea Manning. Photograph: Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP via Getty Images

On the anniversary of Namir’s and Saeed’s killings, Yates wanted to break the off-the-record agreement with the generals. He argued that enough time had passed for the Pentagon to give Reuters the tape. His superiors insisted the agreement be honoured. A passage in the article he wrote for the anniversary read: “Video from two US Apache helicopters and photographs taken of the scene were shown to Reuters editors in Baghdad on July 25, 2007 in an off-the-record briefing.”

Yates stayed in Baghdad until October 2008. He did not get the full video. Reuters continued to ask for it. Yates was reassigned to Singapore. He displayed symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, including noise aversion and emotional numbness. He avoided anything to do with Iraq and had trouble sleeping.

On 5 April 2010, when Wikileaks released Collateral Murder at the National Press Club in Washington, rendering himself and WikiLeaks household names (and exposing how the US prosecuted the Iraq war on the ground), Yates was off the grid,walking in Cradle Mountain national park on a Tasmanian holiday with his wife, Mary, and their children.

Namir and Saeed would have remained forgotten statistics in a war that killed countless Iraqi combatants, hundreds of thousands of civilians and 4,400-plus US soldiers had it not been for Chelsea Manning, a US military intelligence analyst in Baghdad. In February 2010 Manning, then 23, discovered the Crazy Horse 1-8 video and leaked it to WikiLeaks. The previous month Manning had leaked 700,000 classified US military documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to WikiLeaks. Assange unveiled the Crazy Horse 1-8 footage (a 17-minute edited version and the full 38-minute version remain on WikiLeaks’ Collateral Murder site). The video was picked up by thousands of news organisations worldwide, sparking global outrage and condemnation of US military tactics in Iraq – and launching WikiLeaks as a controversial truth-teller, publisher and critical enemy of state secrecy. WikiLeaks later made public the cache of 700,000 documents.
‘Look at those dead bastards’

Collateral Murder is distressing viewing. The carnage wrought by the 30mm cannon fire from the Apache helicopter is devastating. The video shows the gunner tracking Namir as he stumbles and tries to hide behind garbage before his body explodes as the rounds strike home.

The words of the crew are sickening.

There is this, after Namir and others are blown apart:

“Look at those dead bastards.”

“Nice.”

And this:

“Good shoot’n.”

“Thank you.”

Saeed survives the first shots. The chopper circles, Saeed in its sights, as he crawls, badly injured and desperate to live.

“Come on buddy … all you got to do is pick up a weapon,” the gunner says, eager to finish Saeed off.

The attack on the van that stopped to help the journalists. Photograph: WikiLeaks

A van pulls up. Two men, including the driver (whose children are in the back), help the dying Saeed get in.

There is more urgent banter in the air about engaging the van. Crazy Horse 1-8 promptly attacks it.

“Oh yeah, look at that. Right through the windshield.”

Two days after Assange released the video, Yates emerged from Cradle Mountain. It was hours before he turned on his phone and checked emails, finally learning of Collateral Murder in a local newspaper.

“I thought, ‘No, this can’t be the same attack … that leads on to all this other stuff that we never knew about’ … This was the full horror – Saeed had been trying to get up for roughly three minutes when this good Samaritan pulls over in this minivan and the Apache just opens fire again and just obliterates them – it was totally traumatising.”


Yates immediately thought: “They [the US military] fucked us. They just fucked us. They lied to us. It was all lies.”

The day Collateral Murder was released, a spokesman for US Central Command said an investigation of the incident shortly after it occurred found that US forces were not aware of the presence of the news staffers and thought they were engaging armed insurgents.

“We regret the loss of innocent life, but this incident was promptly investigated and there was never any attempt to cover up any aspect of this engagement.”
Dean Yates not long after his admission to Ward 17, a PTSD specialist unit. Photograph: Dean Yates

Edited into the story Reuters published about Collateral Murder was that line from Yates’s first anniversary article: “Video from two US Apache helicopters and photographs taken of the scene were shown to Reuters editors in Baghdad on July 25, 2007 in an off-the-record briefing.”

Reuters’ outraged Iraqi staff were under the misapprehension Yates had seen the whole video.

“I hate to admit it, but this was my chance to set the record straight and I didn’t do it,” Yates says. “I just, I don’t know, didn’t have the courage to do it … I should’ve picked up the phone and said to [Reuters] ‘we cannot let this go and we have to say what we knew’.”

In one email to a senior editor that night, Yates wrote: “I think we need to push the issue of transparency strongly with the US military … When I think back to that meeting with two generals in Baghdad … I feel cheated … they were not being honest … We met afterwards with the military several times to work on improving safety for reporters in Iraq.”

The editor replied: “I appreciate how awful this is for you. Take good care; rest assured that we’re not letting this drop.”

Then Yates let it go.


How shameful it is to the military – they know that there’s potential war crimes on that tapeDean Yates

He moved to Tasmania, endured PTSD and eventually, after three inpatient stays at Austin Health’s Ward 17 in Melbourne (a specialist unit for PTSD) grappled with his emotional pain – the “moral injury” now articulated in his shoulder tattoo – over the deaths of Namir and Saeed. Reuters paid for his treatment in Ward 17 and agreed to create the role of head of mental health and wellbeing strategy for him when he could no longer work as a journalist (he has now left the company).


It was in Ward 17, in 2016 and 2017, that he came to understand the moral injury he was enduring by unfairly blaming Namir for making Crazy Horse 1-8 open fire. The other element of his moral injury related to his shame at failing to protect his staff by uncovering the lax rules of engagement in the US military before they were shot – and for not disclosing earlier his understanding of the extent to which the US had lied. Yates made peace with Namir and Saeed – and himself.

Assange, he says, brought the truth of the killings to the world and exposed the lie that he and others had not.

“What he did was 100% an act of truth-telling, exposing to the world what the war in Iraq looks like and how the US military lied.”

 

The tattoo on Yates’ right shoulder pays tribute to his breakthroughs at Ward 17. Photograph: Matthew Newton/The Guardian

Of the US indictment against Assange, Yates says: “The US knows how embarrassing Collateral Murder is, how shameful it is to the military – they know that there’s potential war crimes on that tape, especially when it comes to the shooting up of the van …They know that the banter between the pilots echoes the sort of language that kids would use on video games.”

Fight Back, read the words inked on to Yates’s left shoulder.

Amid the continuing attempt to extradite Assange to the US, many more words are likely to be spoken about the events of 12 July 2007, the lies of the US military – and their exposure through Collateral Murder.

Nationalism Will Not Stop North American Union

The drive to further Fortress North America is gaining ground with through the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) Also known as the North American Union. It is the natural follow up to NAFTA, driven by the events of 9/11.

Unfortunately the response so far has been that of narrow nationalism and the wailing over the death of sovereignty.

In the U.S. it has been led by nativist populist Lou Dobbs, and in Canada by left nationalist Maude Barlow, making strange bedfellows indeed.

DOBBS: There are rising concerns in Canada about the SPP, the so-called Security and Prosperity Partnership which some think is directly the foundation for something called the North American Union. The Bush administration is pretty excited about that, saying the initiative is meant to increase security and prosperity for all of North America. Opponents, however, say the initiative is nothing less than a plan to create a North American Union that would eliminate sovereignty for all three nations.

As Christine Romans now reports, grassroots opposition is rising in Canada.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): In Ottawa, author and activist Maude Barlow has unrestrained contempt for the Security and Prosperity Partnership. She's concerned about a grab for Canada's natural resources and a watering down of its regulations and benefits by the biggest corporations doing business in North America. And that's just for starters.

MAUDE BARLOW, THE COUNCIL OF CANADIANS: If Canadians and Americans and Mexicans, ordinary people, saw what these guys are talking about, including one trade bloc, one security perimeter, one -- you know, everybody agreeing with George Bush's foreign policy, and don't ask any questions -- you know, lowest common denominator environmental standards, I don't think they would go for it.

ROMANS: Her group, the Council of Canadians, has published a citizens guide called "Integrate This," denouncing the deep integration agenda between the United States, Mexico and Canada. The stated goal established by presidents Bush, Fox and Prime Minister Paul Martin is integration by 2010. Harmonizing regulations for a safer, more prosperous North America.

But Barlow recently testified before a parliamentary trade committee that the SPP "... is quite literally about eliminating Canada's ability to determine independent regulatory standards, environmental protections, energy security, foreign, military, immigration and other policies."

Among the Canadians left, a growing fear that big business is drafting government policy behind closed doors.

BRUCE CAMPBELL, CANADIAN CENTER FOR POLICY ALTERNATIVES: This is a vast initiative. It's an umbrella for a whole bunch of initiatives. There's 20 working groups and initiatives totaling about 300. And very little is known really about the nitty-gritty of these. We have a superficial knowledge, but I think we need -- we need to know more.

ROMANS: He's hoping all three legislative bodies will insist on oversight.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROMANS: It's just emerging as an issue now before Canada's lawmakers, driven by progressives and Canadian nationalists. In the U.S., the (INAUDIBLE) opposition is dominated by border control advocates. Strange bedfellows, they both agree, but both are wondering why more people aren't raising questions. Canadian immigration opponents promise plenty of noise as the next trilateral meeting of leaders approaches in Canada this time -- Lou.

DOBBS: The new -- the new world order that this president's father talked about with such great enthusiasm seems to be high on the agenda in this administration. It's remarkable to me, the arrogance, the idea of just simply throwing away the nation's sovereignty. But they're trying to do so in many ways.

But like opposition to NAFTA this narrow nationalism fails to address the real nature of this agreement and thus is unable to effectively offer any alternative.

For narrow nationalism has already been defeated by the continental reality of the trading blocs created as a result of the evolution of the WTO. It was begun in the 1970's with the creation of the Trilateral Commission and has evolved since then into a new global order of capital integration and a new era of inter-capital imperialism.

The New World Order was declared by George Bush I and the result has been almost two decades of transformation of the nation state into the corporatist state. That is where the State is a partner with the private sector, the ultimate P3 is globalization.

The agenda of the corporatist state is to access large amounts of public funds accessible for private investment, such as public pension funds/Social Security.

It is replacing the Fordist Welfare State in the U.S. and the social security state in social democratic countries like Canada and Mexico. It is creating blended economies of trading blocs in Latin America, Europe, Asia, and ultimately at its source; North America. Left out is Africa which remains the cheap goods, labour and raw resource colony of the New World Order, and the place they can invest.

Immigration Bill Advances North American Union
By Cliff Kincaid
Apr 29, 2007

Rep. Edward Royce, a high-ranking conservative California Republican, said over the weekend that a White House-backed amnesty plan for illegal aliens has provisions which undermine the national sovereignty of the U.S. and help facilitate development of a North American Union, much like the European Union that supersedes the sovereignty of 27 European countries.

He vowed to defy the White House and mobilize House Republicans against the bill, backed by what he called the "open borders lobby."

This is a new development in the decadence of the period of State Captialism. Ultimately as corporations replaced governments in providing services, they developed the need for trade agreements that allowed for their access to these services intra and internationally.

The dialectic was that globalization required nation states to promote it, but through a new form of governance, one modeled on corporate agreements rather than on binding national and international models of governance. APEC, the WTO, the GATTS, etc. are all corporate treaties signed by two parties, the State and its corporate allies. They are not international trade agreements solely between governments, and their dispute resolution boards are made up of corporate as well as judicial lawyers.

A group supporting North American integration is preparing to hold its annual "North American Model Parliament" for students from the United States, Canada and Mexico.

The North American Forum on Integration, or NAFI, is scheduled to hold "Triumvirate," in Washington, D.C., May 20–25.

NAFI, according to the group's website, is as a non-profit organization based in Montreal, dedicated to "address the issues raised by North American integration as well as identify new ideas and strategies to reinforce the North American region."

The group's support of North American integration is documented by an objective listed to "identify the elements of the North American agenda which would allow the consolidation and reinforcement of the North American region."

A variety of issues pertinent to the formation and operation of a North American Community are debated by the mock parliament, including expanding immigration, stimulating investment in Mexico and revising NAFTA to move in the direction of becoming a regional government.

This year's Triumvirate themes are listed as the creations of a customs union, water management, human trafficking and telecommunications in North America.

Last year's Triumvirate 2006 was held in the Mexican Senate.

Triumvirate 2005, the first NAFI mock North American Parliament, was held in Ottawa, Canada.

As WND reported, Raymond Chretien, the president of the Triumvirate and the former Canadian ambassador to both Mexico and the U.S., was quoted as claiming the exercise was intended to be more than academic.

"The creation of a North American parliament, such as the one being simulated by these young people, should be considered," he told WND.

The recent development of TILMA, a labour, capital, agreement between Alberta and B.C. which allows for NAFTA regulations to be applied in the two provinces as a way of breaking traditional inter provincial barriers is another example of the NAU being put into practice.

The North American Union is the child of the privateers and neo-cons despite the opposition of the traditional right in the U.S. In Canada the right has always admired the U.S. and been contientalist, it is the left who has been nationalistic.

Preserving America’s Freedom

Wood’s actions in Idaho were the first successful and visible manifestations of a groundswell of opposition to the NAU that has materialized in recent months. Led by members of the John Birch Society (of which this magazine is an affiliate), concerned grass-roots activists have succeeded in raising awareness at the local and state level of the dangers presented by the SPP and the move toward further North American integration. As a result of these efforts, resolutions opposing a North American Union have been introduced in 18 states as we go to press. So far, resolutions opposing the SPP and NAU efforts of the federal government have been passed by state legislatures in Idaho and Montana. But it is in Idaho that opposition to the SPP had its first great success.

North American Union

One example is the reaction to evidence that U.S. officials are laying the groundwork for a North American entity, sometimes called a "North American Community" or "North American Union" of the U.S., Canada and Mexico in economic and other spheres. I attended a Washington conference devoted to developing a North American legal system that included literature outlining the creation of a North American Supreme Court. Lou Dobbs of CNN had me on his show recently to talk about it. "It's clear that you're as astounded as I am and as my colleagues are that more people in the media are not focusing on this issue," he said. Indeed, it is a story with dramatic implications for the survival of our nation as a sovereign entity. Yet, Dobbs is the only major media figure to consider the issue newsworthy. Conservative radio host Michael Medved openly ridiculed those who are covering the issue, and Fox News won't touch it.

In the latest developments, Judicial Watch, the public interest law firm, has uncovered federal documents indicating that secretive "working groups" in the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), a Bush Administration initiative, are working on a "One Card" concept to facilitate cross-border movement between the three countries. The SPP is being sold to the public as an attempt to help business, but the documents indicate a far-reaching effort to erase national borders and even national identity. Previous documents released by Judicial Watch through the Freedom of Information Act reveal a strategy called "evolution by stealth" to undermine the sovereignty of the three countries. That suggests a determined effort to keep this from the American people.

It may be difficult for the rest of the media to continue ignoring the controversy because opposition to the SPP is growing not only in the U.S. but Canada and Mexico. In fact, activists, academics, union officials, politicians and journalists from Canada, Mexico and the United States were in Ottawa from March 31-April 1 to organize opposition to the initiative. Judi McLeod of the Canada Free Press reports sources close to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper as saying that he is firmly against Canada being part of any North American Union and that Canadian sovereignty is "everything" to him.

Actually what right winger Judi McLeod said in her article was far less flattering of Harper, and more to my point;

"This newspaper had been told by trusted sources that Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is against the NAU. But not only is Harper's silence on the NAU deafening, his top ministers attend NAU meetings."

Mar. 31, 2006: At the Summit
of the Americas in Cancun,
Canada (under new Prime
Minister Stephen Harper) along with the
U.S. and Mexico release the Leaders' Joint
Statement. The statement presents six action
points to move toward a North American
Union, aka a North American Community.
These action points include:
1) Establishment of a Trilateral Regulatory
Cooperative Framework,
2) Establishment of the North American
Competitiveness Council (NACC),
3) Provision for North American Emergency
Management,
4) Provision for Avian and Human
Pandemic Influenza Management,
5) Development of North American Energy
Security,
6) Assure Smart, Secure North American
Borders.

The release of the new Fraser Institute study by Preston Manning and Mike Harris shows that the conservative corporatist lobby embraces the North American Union, unlike their social conservative counterparts.

Canada must reduce trade and ownership barriers, integrate economy with U.S., say Manning and Harris

Canada needs to fully open its economy and drop restrictions on foreign ownership in all business sectors including banking, financial services and telecommunications, Preston Manning and Mike Harris say in a new policy paper released today by independent research organizations The Fraser Institute and the Montreal Economic Institute.

The two also call for eliminating Canada’s supply boards and agricultural subsidies, establishing a customs union and common external tariff with the United States, and reforming Canada’s approach to foreign aid.

International Trade Liberalization

Freer international trade offers the most effective means of increasing Canadian prosperity and sustaining essential social services. Manning and Harris propose eliminating protectionist measures from supply management to business subsidies, systematic privatization of government export promotion and development programs, elimination of ideologically driven efforts to diversity trade patterns and partners, and fully opening up the domestic market to international competition.

Maximizing the Benefits of Strong Canada-US Relations

Whether Canadians like it or not, Canada's influence in the world depends to a large extent on its ability to gain and exert influence in Washington. Harris and Manning propose a Canada-US Customs Union involving a common external tariff, a joint approach to the treatment of third-country goods, a fully integrated energy market, a common approach to trade remedies and border security, and an integrated government procurement regime.

The solution lies not in narrow nationalism but in the labour movement creating a continental opposition to the NAU by focusing on the environment. It is not the Kyoto protocol perse that is the weak link in the Harper Bush push for a North American Union, it is government regulation they oppose. The push is for deregulation, to have national standards meet the lowest common denominator.

Regulations pertaining to food and pesticides, environmental issues by any other name, being subjected to not only NAFTA but the SPP protocols as well.

Better break out the veggie-scrubbers: Canada is set to raise its limits on pesticide residues on fruit and vegetables for hundreds of products.

The move is part of an effort to harmonize Canadian pesticide rules with those of the United States, which allows higher residue levels for 40 per cent of the pesticides it regulates.

Differences in residue limits, which apply both to domestic and imported food, pose a potential "trade irritant," said Richard Aucoin, chief registrar of the Pest Management Regulatory Agency, which sets Canada's pesticide rules.

Canadian regulators and their U.S. counterparts have been working to harmonize pesticide regulations since 1996, as part of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Now the effort is being fast-tracked as an initiative under the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), a wide-ranging plan to streamline regulatory and security protocols across North America.

The SPP's 2006 report identified stricter residue limits as "barriers to trade."

When it comes to the environment, environmental health, green house gas reductions, the three Amigos oppose tougher regulations. It is this that is the weakness in ruling class plans for a Continental union. And the source of real opposition to the SPP. It is not a narrow nationalist response but a global solidarity alternative to corporate globalization.

Asserting that “global warming has transformed the issue of pollution into the ultimate health and safety issue,”

United Steelworkers (USW) president Leo W. Gerard on May 7 told the North American Labor Conference on Climate Crisis that regulating both carbon emissions and trade more stringently are essential for addressing the global climate crisis.

“Labor, environmental and human rights standards are at the core of our vision for making the global economy work for workers,” Gerard told more than 300 delegates. “They should become the new gold standard for how nations trade with each other.”

Gerard characterized the Labor Movement’s vision of addressing global warming as fundamentally at odds with the approach of giving away the right to emit carbon pollution to the world’s giant corporations and letting them make immense profits by trading and acquiring those rights without ever addressing the basic inequalities in our global economy.

“We need to use regulation of global warming and trade to lift two billion people out of poverty around the world,” he said. “To do that, we’ll need to regulate a lot of economic activity — from power plants to fuel efficiency to energy efficiency — and we’ll need to use this regulation as a powerful tool to improve workers’ lives, both here in North America and across the globe. The struggle for sustainability is not just about cleaning up the planet. It’s about engaging in raising standards of living over the long term – creating a world that has the capacity to solve the divisions of wealth and poverty that are the drivers of international conflict.”

To create a real opposition to capitalist contientalism and globalization a new movement of the Cooperative Commonwealth must be built.

An alternative form of stateless socialism based on community self management is the only solution to the crisis of capitalism with its attempts to privatize and commodify the world while avoiding the social and environmental costs of its actions.

Technocracy offered a possible alternative industrial model of contientalism under self management, the IWW and the Socialist Industrial Unionism of DeLeon offered models of self management of Fordist production. Combined they offer a real alternative to the current models of capitalism. See my paper: The Administration of Things: 20th Century North American Economic Models for A Post Capitalist Society, Socialist Industrialization, Syndicalism and Technocracy

While the cooperative commonwealth offers a political economic model of a market without the state.

See:

Deep Integration

Origins of the Captialist State In Canada

Time For A Canadian Steel Workers Union

Will Canadian Labour Accept Free Trade?

Cold Gold

Mittal Plays Monopoly

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