It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Sunday, November 29, 2020
New Zealand Government To Declare A Climate Emergency
The Government will declare a climate emergency next week, Climate Change Minister James Shaw said today.
“We are in the midst of a climate crisis that will impact on nearly every aspect of our lives and the type of planet our children will inherit from us.
“Declaring a climate emergency is a clear statement of the Government’s intent to address this crisis.
“It will build on the significant progress we made last term putting in place one of the world’s most ambitious frameworks for long-term, meaningful climate action.
“However, the only way to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis and build a zero carbon New Zealand that meets the needs of everyone, is to take action.
“Today’s Speech from the Throne outlined that climate change will be a priority for this Government.
“Over the next three years the Government will develop policy to ensure the declaration we make next week is backed with action to bring emissions down.
“Every part of Government will have an important role to play in this. And we know there is no time to waste. According to the world’s leading scientists we have just over nine years left to cut global warming emissions in half.
“And so, while the window of opportunity is small and the task is large, this Government has shown again and again that we are equal to the challenge ahead,” James Shaw said.
As even the US mainstream media has been reporting, the prime motive for the murder of Iran’s top nuclear scientist Dr. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh (by Israeli or Saudi operatives, or both) has been to poison the situation that the next US president will inherit. At best, there was only an outside chance that the incoming Biden administration and the outgoing liberal regime of Iranian PM Hassan Rouhani could have revived the Iran anti-nuclear deal that Rouhani had negotiated in 2015 with Barack Obama. Deliberately though, America’s allies have now made it impossible for Biden to pursue that option.
In the time remaining to Rouhani before he leaves office at the mid 2021 elections, Rouhani cannot possibly negotiate with a United States that (a) welshed on its side of the original deal (b) tried to wreck the Iranian economy (c) assassinated General Qassem Soleimani and now (d) has given the greenlight for its allies to murder Iran’s top scientist. No civilised country can behave as the US has been doing in the Middle East and then expect other countries to deal with it in good faith.
At other times in the past, Israel has been strongly suspected of murdering the scientists in the regimes it opposes. (See below.) In passing though, the killing of Fakhrizadeh has once again underlined the folly of US President Donald Trump reneging (in 2018) on the Iran nuclear deal. Imperfect though it was, that deal created a workable trade-off. Iran would halt any progress to nuclear weapons, submit to demeaning inspections by external authorities, and receive (in return) opportunities to trade with the West. Iran complied: the US didn’t. Trump not only scrapped the deal, he imposed harsh economic sanctions on Iran and murdered Soleimani, the most widely respected political leader in Iran – all in order to bludgeon Iran’s leaders back to the bargaining table.
That strategy has failed, utterly. Why Iran would ever re-negotiate any deal with a US incapable of keeping its word was always a mystery. In any case, the US trade and financial sanctions have caused extreme hardship to ordinary people – but all this has achieved has been to undermine public support for the liberal government, and justify the hardliners’ position that it was always naively stupid to trust the Americans in the first place.
In the June 2021 election conservative hardliners will almost certainly prevail. Meanwhile, the Trump strategy has not curtailed Iran’s support for the Houthi rebels in Yemen, or for its foreign policy initiatives in Syria and Lebanon. Given that it now had no incentive to do otherwise, Iran has also recommenced very early work on re-building a nuclear energy capability.
In fact, the trade openings to the West originally promised under the 2015 nuclear deal had been seen by the mullahs as a dangerous threat to their grip on power. The mullahs themselves are corruptly insulated from the hardships caused by the US sanctions. (Soleimani was widely popular because he was seen as the exception to the corruption among the ruling elites.). In practice, all that the overt hostility to Iran (by the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia) has done is to enable the mullahs to justify the strict surveillance measures and security crackdowns on an Iranian public increasingly disenchanted with the dominant role of the mullahs in Iran’s public life.
That’s the tragedy here. The real losers have been the people of Iran - demonised abroad by the most brutal regimes in the Middle East (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE) and ruled at home by a regime of fanatics who treat the hostility of the outside world ( and of their own dissidents) as a badge of virtue.
Footnote: If Mossad agents were responsible for the murder of Dr. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. it would not be the first time Israel has targeted scientists:
In 1967, Egyptian nuclear scientist Samir Naguib was killed in a car accident in the U.S. Naguib was reportedly planning to return to Egypt at the height of war with Israel to help launch Egypt’s nuclear program when he was killed. Another Egyptian nuclear scientist, Yahya al-Mashad, who headed Iraq’s nuclear programme, was killed in a Paris hotel room in 1980. In 1991, Lebanese condensed matter physicist Rammal Hassan Rammal died in mysterious circumstances in France.
In 2004, Iraqi nuclear scientist Ibrahim al-Dhaheri was shot dead as he was riding a cab in Iraq’s western city of Baquba. In 2010, Iranian quantum field theorist and elementary-particle physicist Masoud Alimohammadi was shot dead outside his home in Tehran. Iran accused the U.S. and Israel of killing the scientist, but Washington denied the accusation. Israel, however, did not deny or confirm involvement.
In the same year, Iranian nuclear engineer Majid Shahriari was killed in a car bombing in Tehran.
The individuals concerned are being targeted not simply because of the potential military applications of their work, but also for the contribution they were making to their respective countries’ wider modernising and development efforts.
Footnote Two : As the US Middle East expert Professor Juan Cole has pointed out in his response to the killing ofFakhrizadeh, it is not as if Iran was on the brink – or anywhere near it – of building a nuclear weapon. Reportedly, Iran has enriched uranium only to 3.5%, well below the 95% needed to build a nuclear weapon. As Cole says:
You’d have to enrich the uranium to about 95% U-235 to make a bomb. Iran has never enriched beyond 19.5%, which is the level that is needed to run its small medical reactor, and is the cut-off for Low Enriched Uranium. There is no reason to think that Iran knows how to enrich to 95% for a bomb or has the various additional technologies that would be necessary to construct a bomb. Sometimes you see US journalists allege that Iran has “enough” enriched uranium to make “two bombs.” That is frankly ridiculous. You don’t make bombs by the amount of uranium you possess that is enriched to 3.5% or 4.5%. Without the necessary level of enrichment, you’d just have some rocks that could be used to heat water.
This lack of a palpable nuclear weapon threat from Iran’s uranium enrichment programme reinforces the view that the timing of the murder – and its motive – has been to fence in the Biden administration, and prevent it from making any gesture of goodwill to Tehran. More than ever, American foreign policy in the Middle East is being held hostage by its supposed friends and allies, and not so much by its alleged enemies.
Footnote Three: One of the other downsides of Trump scrapping the nuclear deal has been that this has apparently encouraged the mullahs to recommence the killing of Iranian dissidents living abroad. These lethal actions in Europe were relatively common in the early 1990s, and picked up again just after the failed Green Revolution in 2010 – but they were suspended in an apparent gesture of goodwill in order to get the 2015 nuclear deal safely negotiated. With that incentive gone, the killing of Iranian dissidents living abroad appears to have resumed.
Footnote Four: And just in case Iran looked like the only place where Donald Trump is trying to poison the foreign policy situation his successor will inherit, it isn’t. Trump is doing the same thing in Afghanistan, too. Not only will the Trump-ordered scale of troop reductions limit the ability of US forces to train Afghan forces, it will undermine the diplomatic efforts to strike a deal with the Taliban. US troop withdrawals were a prime negotiating card in those talks, and the active presence of US forces in the field was an incentive for the Taliban to make any deal at all. At home and abroad, Trump will be leaving Biden to pick up the pieces.
Low-lying Pacific Island Has More Land Above Sea Level Than In 1943
Monday, 30 November 2020, 9:50 am
Press Release: University of Auckland An inhabited island in the low-lying Pacific nation of the Marshall Islands, which are thought to be at risk of being inundated by rising sea levels, has actually increased in size since 1943, scientists say.
And the increase in area above sea level is likely not confined to Jeh Island on Ailinglaplap Atoll, one of 29 coral reef atolls that form the Republic of the Marshall Islands which lie roughly half way between Hawaii and Australia. The low-lying Islands have been called the most endangered nation on earth due to the potential effects of sea level rise.
Atoll islands like those in the Marshall Islands are low-lying deposits of reef-derived sediments deposited in the last 5000 years or less. Despite local sea level rise, scientists have observed growth in land area of most atolls since the mid-20th century, suggesting they are able to accumulate the sediment needed to expand.
But this process of aggregation of sediment is not well understood. In particular, little research has been done to establish whether sediment deposits which accumulate on coral atolls are recent deposits or sediment that has built up over many decades. In a new study Dr Murray Ford from the University of Auckland and Professor Paul Kench from Simon Fraser University in Canada compared aerial photographs from 1943 and used satellite imagery and radiocarbon dating of sediment deposits on Jeh Island.
Photographs and satellite images show the island, sparsely populated with about 40 homes, has increased in land area by 13 per cent since 1943, from 2.02 sq km to 2.26 sq km, reaching 2.28 sq km by 2015. It also appears Jeh is a merger of at least two formerly separate islands where sediment has built high enough to form one larger continuous land area.
As well, satellite images from 2010, 2015 and 2019 reveal a spit at the western-most end is continuing to extend, adding to the total land area above sea level.
In trying to track where the island-building sediment is from and how long ago it accumulated, the ages of sediment samples were calculated using radiocarbon dating. The team tested coral fragments, mollusc shells and microscopic marine organisms called foraminifera at the Island’s western end.
In total 28 radiocarbon dates of island sediments were analysed which showed accretion of sediment deposits was from more recent material, generally post-1950.
“This study has found that the expansion of islands through sediment generation under conditions of sea level rise is possible,” Dr Ford says.
“The coral reefs which surround these islands is the engine room of island growth, producing sediment which is washed up on the island shoreline. Healthy coral reefs are essential for this process to continue into the future.
“In this work and in previous studies, we have found Islands are resilient in the face of rising seas and that sediment supply to some atolls is out-pacing sea level rise. What we don’t know is how that will play out in coming decades but studies of low-lying reef island formation do need to take these findings into account.”
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Thousands of protesting Indian farmers refused to comply with a government appeal to stop blockading major highways into New Delhi on Sunday and vowed to intensify their action against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s liberalising reforms.
Farmers from states around the capital have been demonstrating for three straight days against reforms that deregulate the sector and allow farmers to sell produce to buyers beyond government-regulated wholesale markets, where growers are assured of a minimum price.
Small growers fear the changes will make them vulnerable to competition from big business, and that they could eventually lose price supports for staples such as wheat and rice.
In a statement on Sunday, an umbrella group representing different farmers’ unions slammed the government for saying it would engage in talks with the farmers if they moved their protest off the roads into a designated stadium site.
“The government, if serious about addressing the demands of farmers, should stop laying down any conditions and should come straight out with the solution it is offering,” the statement said.
Modi sought to allay farmer concerns during his monthly radio address, saying “farmers will get new rights and opportunities” through these laws.
Union and opposition leaders, however, were unmoved by Modi’s comments, and criticised the government’s use of tear gas and water cannon to disperse protesters on Friday.
“Farmers are not fools who would not understand what is in their interest,” said Yogendra Yadav, president of Swaraj India - an opposition party.
With key roads blocked, prices of fresh produce at wholesale markets in Delhi have already begun to tick up, and the protests also disrupted commuter travel into the city.
The farmers’ unions called on farmers in other states to expand the protests from Tuesday, while urging farmers in neighbouring states and others to join demonstrations in Delhi.
Angry Indian farmers reject government offer for talks
NEW DELHI — Protesting farmers on Sunday rejected the Indian government's offer to hold immediate talks if they ended their blockade of key highways they've held as they seek the scrapping of legislation they say could devastate crop prices.
The thousands of farmers will continue camping out on highways in Punjab and Haryana states until three new agriculture laws are withdrawn, Jaskaran Singh, a leader of the Kisan Union, or Farmers’ Union, told reporters.
The farmers say the laws could cause the government to stop buying grain at guaranteed prices and result in their exploitation by corporations that would buy their crops cheaply.
The government says the legislation brings about much needed reform agriculture that will allow farmers the freedom to market their produce and boost production through private investment.
“These reforms have not only served to unshackle our farmers but also given them new rights and opportunities," Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Sunday.
On Friday, Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar offered to hold talks with the farmers’ representatives on Dec. 3.
That followed a day of clashes with police, who used tear gas, water cannons and baton charges to push them back as they tried to enter New Dehli.
The latest offer for talks was made by Home Minister Amit Shah on Saturday. But he said the farmers would have to shift their protests to a government-designated venue in New Delhi and stop blocking the highways.
Singh, the farmer's representative, said he doubted the government really wanted to hold talks.
"We want the farm laws to be scrapped, that’s all,” he said.
Singh said more farmers would be joining the protest and blocking national highways in other states as well.
Farmers have long been seen as the heart and soul of India, where agriculture supports more than half of the country’s 1.3 billion people. But farmers have also seen their economic clout diminish over the last three decades. Once accounting for a third of India’s gross domestic product, they now produce only 15% of gross domestic product, which is valued at $2.9 trillion a year.
Farmers often complain of being ignored and hold frequent protests to demand better crop prices, more loan waivers and irrigation systems to guarantee water during dry spells.
Ashok Sharma, The Associated Press
Indian farmers defiant against reform as Modi tries to calm anger
Protest against newly passed farm bills near Delhi
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Thousands of Indian farmers, angry over reform of the agriculture sector, held a third day of protests on the outskirts of the capital on Sunday, blocking roads into the city and defying a government appeal to move to a designated site
Protest against newly passed farm bills near Delhi
The government on Saturday invited farmers' union leaders for talks on new legislation to deregulate agricultural but that has not calmed farmers' anger over what many see "anti-farm laws", and their action appeared to be spreading.
"We will stay put here today," said Rakesh Tikait, spokesman of the Bharatiya Kisan Union, one of more than 30 protesting unions, as he and his members blocked a road on the eastern approaches to Delhi.
The farmers object to legislation introduced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government in September that would let farmers sell their produce anywhere, including to big corporate buyers like Walmart, not just at government-regulated wholesale markets where growers are assured of a minimum price.
Protest against newly passed farm bills near Delhi
Small growers worry they will be left vulnerable to big business and could eventually lose price support for staples such as wheat and rice
Modi sought to allay farmers' concerns on Sunday.
"From these reforms, farmers will get new rights and opportunities," he said in his monthly radio address.
But one farm union leader said many protesters were demanding that the government withdraw the laws.
"The farmers' leaders will meet later on Sunday to decide their response to the government," he said, referring to the government's call for talks.
The protests began with farmers from the northern states of Haryana and Punjab on the outskirts of New Delhi on Friday, when police fired tear gas and water cannon in a bid to disperse them. [L1N2ID09V]
But instead farmers from the neighbouring state of Uttar Pradesh joined in over the weekend, blocking roads to the east of the capital.
Media reported protests by farmers in the southern states of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala on Saturday.
Prices of fresh produce prices at wholesale markets in the city began to tick up and commuters have faced travel disruption.
(Reporting by Manoj Kumar; Editing by Euan Rocha, Robert Birsel)
Norway gas plant resumes exports to Europe
By Reuters Staff
OSLO (Reuters) - Norway’s Nyhamna gas export terminal has restarted production and is ramping up output following a shutdown triggered by a strike among workers, system operator Gassco said on Sunday.
Sunday’s output loss was expected to amount to 40 million standard cubic metres (mcm) of gas, less than the 50 mcm loss on Saturday, while it was not yet clear if the outage would have any residual impact on Monday.
“Nyhamna has started and currently increasing export. Day ahead impact uncertain,” Gassco said in a regulatory filing.
British gas prices for the coming week had spiked on Friday ahead of the strike on fears of a protracted conflict.
Gassco and Shell, which provides technical service at Nyhamna, late on Saturday said a solution had been found however that allowed the plant to safely restart despite an ongoing strike among security guards.
Norway exported around 330 mcm per day before Saturday’s outage and meets around 22% of Europe’s annual gas demand via an extensive network of pipelines to Britain, Germany, Belgium and France.
Environmental Justice Crusader Eyed for White House Council
(Bloomberg) -- President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team is considering recommending environmental justice champion Mustafa Santiago Ali to lead the White House Council on Environmental Quality, as the incoming administration seeks to prioritize the damage pollution takes on poor and minority communities
WASHINGTON, DC - OCTOBER 19: Mustafa Santiago Ali, Senior Vice President of Climate, Environmental Justice & Community Revitalization for the Hip Hop Caucus appears on SiriusXM's Urban View Presents "Defining Justice In 2017" An Exclusive Subscriber Event hosted by Laura Coates at SiriusXM DC Performance Space on October 19, 2017 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Larry French/Getty Images for SiriusXM).
The deliberations, part of an effort to refocus the obscure White House agency into a hub for promoting environmental justice, was described by two people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named discussing personnel recommendations.
Neither Ali nor representatives of the Biden-Harris transition immediately responded to requests for comment.
The CEQ serves as a kind of mission control coordinating environmental policy decisions and reviews across the federal government. It also oversees implementation of the National Environmental Policy Act.
Under President Donald Trump, the agency has sought to expedite environmental permitting. But Biden has outlined plans for the agency to address environmental injustice amid a national reckoning on matters of race.
Another environmental justice advocate, Cecilia Martinez, is also being considered to lead the agency, Bloomberg Law reported. Martinez now heads Biden’s agency review team focused on CEQ. EPA Veteran
Ali spent 24 years at the Environmental Protection Agency and helped found an office there focused on environmental justice. He resigned as an assistant associate administrator in 2017 as the Trump administration moved to zero out the office’s funding.
At the EPA, Ali also led an interagency working group on environmental justice, which brought together 17 federal agencies and White House offices. One of the group’s work products was a set of recommendations for integrating environmental justice considerations into the government’s NEPA reviews of projects and policies -- a blueprint that could be adopted by the Biden administration.
Biden already has pledged to re-establish a White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council and White House Environmental Justice Interagency Council. He’s emphasized that the problems of climate change and pollution are tied to the struggle for racial equality, asserting in June that low-income communities of color can be victimized by being “in spots where the water is not clean, the air you can’t breathe.”
Ali has argued that environmental justice considerations should be embedded in federal policy making, and emphasized the need to rebuild and revitalize vulnerable communities that bear the brunt of pollution. Progressive activists have lobbied Biden to nominate Ali as EPA administrator.
Unequal Impact
“We have some opportunities for some real wins,” Ali said in a conference call on Nov. 24 marking the 50th anniversary of the EPA. “We also have opportunities to really mitigate and minimize the impacts that happen inside the communities that are often unseen and unheard.”
Ali said the Trump administration’s work to ease environmental regulations has had unequal results. “For all these rules that have been rolled back or weakened, there have been these additional impacts that have happened to our most vulnerable communities,” he said.
Any new regulations that move forward should be buttressed by a “true and full environmental justice analysis” to ensure “we’re providing the protection that’s needed,” he said.
Ali, who is Black, is now a vice president at the National Wildlife Federation. He also served as a senior vice president for the Hip Hop Caucus, a not-for-profit group that promotes political activism among young voters. And he’s the founder of Revitalization Strategies, a business focused on helping vulnerable communities thrive, according to his biography on the wildlife group’s website.
Poor people and people of color often face higher exposure to pollutants, according to the American Lung Association. One reason for the discrepancy is that disadvantaged communities tend to be located near pollution sources, from interstate highways to refineries.
“Since the beginning, environmentalism has struggled with racism and exclusion,” said Julian Brave NoiseCat, a vice president at the progressive think tank Data for Progress.
“For decades, communities of color and indigenous peoples have fought to reorient environmental concerns around inclusion and justice,” said NoiseCat. “Having an environmental justice leader at the helm of CEQ would mark an incredible victory for our movement.”
(Updates with details on interagency working group on environmental justice in eighth paragraph)
For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com
English actor David Prowse (L), who played the character of Darth Vader (Dark Vador in French) in the first Star Wars trilogy poses with a fan dressed up in a Darth Vader costume during a Star Wars convention on April 27, 2013 in Cusset.
Prowse died after a short illness, according to his agent Thomas Bowington. CNN reported in 2018 that Prowse was being treated for prostate cancer.
"It's with great regret and heart-wrenching sadness for us and million of fans around the world, to announce that our client DAVE PROWSE M.B.E. has passed away at the age of 85," Bowington Management said on Twitter Sunday.
"May the force be with him, always!" his former agent, Thomas Bowington, said in a statement to the BBC.
"Though famous for playing many monsters -- for myself, and all who knew Dave and worked with him, he was a hero in our lives."
Prowse wore the black suit and helmet to play Darth Vader, but it was the actor James Earl Jones who provided the character's voice. Prowse's West Country English accent was thought to be unsuitable for the part.
But it was his role as the "Green Cross Code Man" from a British road safety campaign that Prowse said he was most proud of. He was awarded an MBE -- a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire -- in 2000 for that role.
American actor Mark Hamill -- who played Darth Vader's son, Luke Skywalker, alongside Prowse -- sent his condolences in a tweet on Sunday.
"So sad to hear David Prowse has passed. He was a kind man & much more than Darth Vader," he wrote.
"Actor-Husband-Father-Member of the Order of the British Empire-3 time British Weightlifting Champion & Safety Icon the Green Cross Code Man. He loved his fans as much as they loved him. #RIP"
Prowse was born into a working class family and grew up in a council estate in Southmead, in southwestern England. He gained a scholarship to attend Bristol Grammar School.
He had a passion for bodybuilding and was crowned British Weightlifting Champion several times in the 1960s. He became lifelong friends with actors Arnold Schwarzenegger in his weightlifting years, according to website IMDb.
His broad physique and towering figure helped land him roles as monsters and villains in TV shows and films. He played the monster in "The Horror of Frankenstein" in 1970 and a bearded torturer in "Carry on Henry" in 1971. That same year he made an appearance as a bodyguard in Stanley Kubrick's dystopian film "A Clockwork Orange" in 1971.
He went on to play Darth Vader in all three of the original "Star Wars" films, in 1977, 1980 and 1983.
Health and fitness remained an interest for Prowse, who also worked as a personal trainer for actors playing the role of Superman, including Christopher Reeve, and wrote a book called "Fitness is Fun."
He published an autobiography, "Straight from the Force's Mouth," in 2011.
Mark Hamill leads tributes to Darth Vader actor Dave Prowse following death
The former bodybuilder earned an MBE for also playing the Green Cross Code Man.
Dave Prowse has died aged 85 (PA)
By PA Reporter
November 29 2020
Mark Hamill has hailed his Star Wars co-star Dave Prowse as “a kind man” who was “much more than Darth Vader” following his death aged 85.
Prowse, the Bristol weightlifter-turned-actor who played the villainous Sith lord in the original Star Wars trilogy, died after a short illness, his agent confirmed.
The towering 6ft 6in performer also earned an MBE for playing the Green Cross Code Man to promote road safety.
Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker opposite Prowse, tweeted: “So sad to hear David Prowse has passed. He was a kind man & much more than Darth Vader.
“Actor-Husband-Father-Member of the Order of the British Empire-3 time British Weightlifting Champion & Safety Icon the Green Cross Code Man. He loved his fans as much as they loved him.”
Daniel Logan, who played the young Boba Fett in Attack Of The Clones, recalled meeting Prowse across the years at various Star Wars conventions.
He said on Twitter: “Sad to hear of the passing of a #StarWars family member. RIP Dave Prowse. Darth Vader wouldn’t be the same without you in the costume.
“We had many fun times & laughs at cons together over the years. Glad to have been able to call you a friend. Rest now and be one with the Force!”
The Twitter account of the Peter Mayhew Foundation, set up in memory of the actor who played Chewbacca, shared a picture of Prowse with Mayhew and their co-star Kenny Baker.
“RIP Dave Prowse. I hope you’re up there sharing a pint and a story with the boys. #DarthVader #DaveProwse #RIPDaveProwse #StarWars.”
Mayhew died in 2019 and Baker, who played R2-D2, died in 2016.
Agent Thomas Bowington confirmed Prowse’s death in a statement, saying: “May the force be with him, always!”
He added: “Though famous for playing many monsters for myself and all who knew Dave and worked with him he was a hero in our lives.
“A constant source of inspiration, encouragement and kindness. A truly and deeply heart wrenching loss for us and millions of fans all over the world!
“But the great power of Prowse in our lives will always stay with us! A loving husband, father and grandfather.”
Prowse won the role playing Vader due to his impressive physique, but with his West Country accent deemed not quite suitable, the part was instead voiced by James Earl Jones.
He represented England in weightlifting at the Commonwealth Games in the early 1960s before embarking on an acting career.
Prowse was reportedly spotted by Star Wars director George Lucas when playing a bodyguard in the 1971 film A Clockwork Orange, and invited to audition for the roles of Darth Vader and Chewbacca.
He once told the BBC he chose Vader over his hairy co-star because “you always remember the bad guys”.
Elsewhere, his career included collaborations with comedy staples such as The Two Ronnies, Kenneth Williams, Morecambe and Wise and Benny Hill. He also appeared in Carry On Henry and Monty Python’s Jabberwocky.
In 1972 he appeared as the Minotaur in the Doctor Who episode The Time Monster, opposite Jon Pertwee as the eponymous Time Lord.
Workplace Hazards Faced by Nursing Assistants in the United States: A Focused Literature Review
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Nursing, 4008 Carrington Hall, CB# 7460, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA
2
North Carolina Occupational Safety and Health Education and Research Center, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health, 1700 Airport Road Rm 343, CB# 7502, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Long-term care workers, grieving and under siege, brace for coronavirus’ next round ‘All of us know COVID-19 is coming,’ one nursing home worker says. ‘Every day, we say: Is today the day it will come back? Is today the day I’ll find out I have it?”
Registered nurse Stefania Silvestri (from left), certified nursing assistant Edwina Gobewoe and recreational therapist Kim Sangrey are three nursing home workers who struggle with grief over the suffering from COVID-19 they’ve witnessed. Provided
In the middle of the night, Stefania Silvestri lies in bed remembering her elderly patients’ cries.
“Help me.”
“Please don’t leave me.”
“I need my family.”
Months of caring for older adults in a Rhode Island nursing home ravaged by COVID-19 have taken a steep toll on Silvestri, 37, a registered nurse.
She can’t sleep, as she replays memories of residents who became ill and died. She’s gained 45 pounds.
“I have anxiety,” she says. “Some days, I don’t want to get out of bed.”
As the coronavirus surges around the country, Silvestri and hundreds of thousands of workers in nursing homes and assisted-living centers are watching cases rise in long-term care facilities with a sense of dread. Many of these workers struggle with grief over the suffering they’ve witnessed at work and in their communities. Some, like Silvestri, have been infected with the coronavirus and recovered physically — but not emotionally.
Since the start of the pandemic, more than 616,000 residents and employees at long-term care facilities have been struck by COVID-19, according to the latest data from KFF. Just over 91,000 have died as the coronavirus has invaded nearly 23,000 facilities.
Harold Pollack. University of Chicago
At least 1,000 of those deaths represent certified nursing assistants, nurses and other people who work in institutions that care for older adults, according to a recent analysis of government data by Harold Pollack, a professor at the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration. This is almost certainly an undercount, Pollack says, because of incomplete data reporting.
How are long-term care workers affected by the losses they’re experiencing, including the deaths of colleagues and residents they’ve cared for, often for many years?
Edwina Gobewoe, a certified nursing assistant who has worked at Charlesgate Nursing Center in Providence, Rhode Island, for nearly 20 years, says, “It’s been overwhelming for me personally.”
“One day, we hear our resident has breathing problems, needs oxygen, and then a few days later they pass,” Gobewoe says. “Families couldn’t come in. We were the only people with them, holding their hands. It made me very, very sad.”
Every morning, Gobewoe would pray with a close friend at work.
“We asked the Lord to give us strength so we could take care of these people who needed us so much,” she said.
When that colleague was struck by the coronavirus in the spring, Gobewoe prayed for her recovery and was glad when she returned to work several weeks later.
But sorrow followed in early September: Gobewoe’s friend collapsed and died at home while complaining of unusual chest pain. Gobewoe was told her death was caused by blood clots, which can be a dangerous complication of COVID-19.
She would “do anything for any resident,” Gobewoe said, sobbing. “It’s too much, something you can’t even talk about,” describing her grief.
In July, when I first spoke with Kim Sangrey, 52, of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, she was distraught over the deaths of 36 residents in March and April at the nursing home where she’s worked for several decades — most of them due to coronavirus and related complications. Sangrey, a recreational therapist, asked not to name the home, where she continues to work.
“You know residents like family — their likes and dislikes, the food they prefer, their families, their grandchildren,” she says. “They depend on us for everything.”
When the pandemic hit, “It was horrible,” she says. “You’d go into residents’ rooms, and they couldn’t breathe. Their families wanted to see them, and we’d set up Zoom wearing full gear, head to toe. Tears are flowing under your mask as you watch this person that you loved dying — and the family mourning their death through a tablet.
“It was completely devastating. It runs through your memory — you think about it all the time.”
Mostly, Sangrey says, she felt empty and exhausted. “You feel like this is never going to end — you feel defeated. But you have to continue moving forward.”
Three months later, when we spoke again, the number of COVID-19 cases in Pennsylvania was rising, but Sangrey sounded resolute. She’d had six sessions with a grief counselor, and it had become clear that “my purpose at this point is to take every ounce of strength I have and move through this second wave of COVID.
“As human beings, it is our duty to be there for each other. You say to yourself, ‘OK, I got through this last time, I can get through it again.’ ”
That doesn’t mean that fear is absent. “All of us know COVID-19 is coming. Every day, we say, ‘Is today the day it will come back? Is today the day I’ll find out I have it?’ It never leaves you.”
Silvestri feels horrified when she thinks about the end of March and early April at Greenville Center in Rhode Island, where up to 79 residents became ill with COVID-19 and at least 20 have died.
The coronavirus moved through the facility like wildfire.
“You’re putting one patient on oxygen, and the patient in the next room is on the floor ,but you can’t go to them yet,” Silvestri says of that time. “And the patient down the hall has a fever of 103, and they’re screaming, ‘Help me, help me.’ But you can’t go to him either.
“I left work every day crying. It was heartbreaking — and I felt I couldn’t do enough to save them.”
Then, there were the body bags.
“You put this person who feels like family in a plastic body bag and wheel them out on a frame with wheels through the facility, by other residents’ rooms,” says Silvestri, who can’t smell certain kinds of plastic without reliving these memories. “Thinking back on it makes me feel physically ill.”
Silvestri, who has three children, developed a relatively mild case of coronavirus in late April and returned to work several weeks later. Her husband Michael also became ill and lost his job as a truck driver. After several months of being unemployed, he’s now working at a construction site.
Since July 1, the family has gone without health insurance, “so I’m not able to get counseling to deal with the emotional side of what’s happened,” Silvestri says.
Though her nursing home set up a hotline number that employees could call, that doesn’t appeal to her.
“Being on the phone with someone you don’t know, that doesn’t do it for me,” she says. “We definitely need more emotional support for health care workers.”
What does help is family.
“I’ve leaned on my husband a lot, and he’s been there for me,” Silvestri says. “And the children are OK. I’m grateful for what I have — but I’m really worried about what lies ahead.”
KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a nonprofit news service covering health issues. It is an editorially independent program of KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation), which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
SUMMER 2020
Across the country, essential workers are on strike for Black lives Bryce Covert 7/20/2020
Before she got sick with Covid-19, Deatric Edie typically left her house at 5:30 in the morning every day and wouldn’t get home until 1:30 or 2 in the morning, long after her family was asleep. She has worked in fast food her whole life to support her four children and now a grandchild, and even after the pandemic hit she worked several jobs: one at McDonald’s, another at Papa John’s, and a third at Wendy’s.
Workers in a Miami McDonald’s before the Covid-19 pandemic.
She’s a shift leader at McDonald’s but still makes just $9 an hour, even though she says some of her peers make $11. “Working three jobs, it’s not enough to cover rent, water, and food,” she said. “I still have to find another way to make those ends meet.” Sometimes that means there’s no food in the house. “I would go without eating to make sure my kids eat,” she said.
That was before the pandemic. Now things are even more difficult. She said McDonald’s didn’t provide her with protective equipment or force customers to wear masks. Edie has diabetes and high blood pressure, putting her at higher risk of complications from the coronavirus, but she had to keep working to make sure her family had enough money to pay the rent and buy food. Then one of her co-workers recently got sick. A few days ago she felt very ill herself, struggling to breathe. She tested positive for Covid-19.
“I’m very scared right now. My lights can go off, I can’t pay rent.”
That means she’s now out of work, at home isolating from her family. She’s not getting paid leave from any of her jobs. “I’m very scared right now,” she said. “My lights can go off, I can’t pay rent.”
In response to a request for comment, a McDonald’s representative said in a statement, “McDonald’s enhanced over 50 processes in restaurants. McDonald’s and our franchisees distributed an ample supply of PPE [personal protective equipment] with no supply breaks, including gloves and over 100 million masks, in addition to installing protective barriers in restaurants. We are confident the vast majority of employees are covered with sick pay if they are impacted by COVID-19.”
Being home sick with Covid-19 won’t keep Edie from participating in the Strike for Black Lives, though, which she plans to do over FaceTime. On Monday, tens of thousands of workers from a variety of different lines of work in more than 25 cities will go on strike to demand that the corporations they work for and the government that’s supposed to work for them confront systemic racism.
Fast food workers like Edie will be joined by an enormous swath of the workforce: other low-wage workers like airport employees, rideshare drivers, nursing home caregivers, and domestic workers alongside middle-class teachers and nurses and even high-paid Google engineers. Those who can’t strike the whole day will walk off the job for eight minutes and 46 seconds, the amount of time a white police officer kept his knee on Black Minneapolis resident George Floyd’s neck before he died.
It’s a massive action that will bring together major unions as well as grassroots organizers. The Service Employees International Union, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, and American Federation of Teachers will join forces with the Fight for 15, United Farm Workers, and the National Domestic Workers Alliance. Social justice organizations, such as the Movement for Black Lives, Poor People’s Campaign, and youth climate organizers will also participate. It represents a unique partnership: Labor unions don’t always act in concert, let alone partner with grassroots and social justice groups.
But demand for putting together such an action came from the bottom: Workers who have been activated by the toll of the pandemic and the massive uprisings against racial injustice and police violence across the country. They see these things as inextricable.
“Across the country, people are gaining a new understanding that it is impossible to win economic justice without racial justice. That health care for all, fair immigration policies, and bold action on climate change all require racial justice,” said Mary Kay Henry, president of SEIU. “This is a unique and hopeful moment in our movement’s history, because in organizing this strike with our partners, we found broad acceptance and acclamation that now is the time to take large-scale action to demand that corporations and government do more to dismantle structural racism and protect Black lives. We are all clear that until Black communities can thrive, none of us can.”
Edie says on top of low pay, as a Black woman she’s also had to deal with racism. She sees her ordeal reflected in the struggles of the other workers who will go on strike. “We … are in the same boat,” Edie said. “Because we all are essential workers and we all are fighting for the same things.”
Trece Andrews works on the front lines caring for elderly nursing home residents in Detroit, Michigan. Despite her tenure spanning two decades at the same facility, Andrews makes just over $15 an hour. She notes she’s among the luckier ones at her facility; those who work in housekeeping, dietary services, or laundry make more like $10 an hour. “It’s poverty wages we make here,” she said. She makes so little, in fact, that the nursing home isn’t her only job. She’s also started a caregiving business on the side with three clients. As a single mother, she has to forego healthcare for her daughter because it would cost so much to add her. She pays out of pocket for her shots and annual physicals.
Andrews is now caring for the elderly in the middle of a pandemic that preys on the vulnerable. Nursing homes have been linked to a third of Michigan’s Covid-19 deaths. At first, she said, her facility didn’t give out the proper personal protective equipment, but only distributed it when workers specifically asked for it. Only recently did the facility hand out everything they needed, like masks, gowns, and gloves. And yet there’s a Covid-19 unit at her facility, and some of her co-workers have gotten sick. “We all are essential workers, and we all are fighting for the same things”
“Anxiety been high for a lot of us,” she said. “People just scared to come to work.”
Her family is also vulnerable. She cares for her father, who has cancer. Her doctor advised her not to go to work, so she took about a month off. But she doesn’t get paid leave, so she eventually went back. “I came on back because you got to have something, money, to survive,” she said. “I just try to distance myself and wear my mask … and protect myself the best I can. But it’s still scary.”
Andrews and her co-workers will be walking off the job on Monday to push for change. “We just want to let people know that we are essential workers, too,” she said. “We been put on the backburner.” They’re demanding better pay, benefits, staffing levels, and safety guidelines.
She sees their fight connected to the larger movement for racial justice. “A lot of my co-workers are Black and brown people,” she said. She herself is Black. “That’s why to us, we relate it to racism. Because we are the ones doing this hard work, but we’re not getting recognized properly.”
Jerome Gage is also a Black worker on the front lines. He’s been a full-time driver for Lyft in Los Angeles for two years. At first he thought he would be able to earn a basic, steady income while fitting in work as he went back to school. And in the beginning he was paid a proportion of his fares. But then the rideshare companies changed their systems, and he now gets paid a flat rate per mile. He found himself having to work at specific times to take advantage of peak hours; if he didn’t, there would be times when he made less than minimum wage. “It’s an incredibly depressing experience sitting at 3, 4 am because I have a bill due Monday I have to pay, hoping to make a couple more bucks in the middle of the night,” he said.
That’s why he got involved in the fight in his state of California not just to pass AB5, a law passed in September that classifies many gig workers as employees, but to continue to fight to protect it as tech companies have lobbied against it. Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash have bankrolled a November ballot measure that would exempt them from the law.
The pandemic has made things more urgent. Demand for rides all but halted as the pandemic hit, which meant Gage went weeks without work. And yet he still hasn’t gotten unemployment benefits despite applying for the benefits Congress extended to nontraditional workers like him. “We are the ones doing this hard work, but we’re not getting recognized properly”
Then there’s safety. Lyft was “incredibly slow to react to the need for PPE for drivers,” he said. “It was an incredibly scary situation.” In July, he said, he got his first packet from Lyft in the mail with protective equipment in it. “They’ve really been negligent in their effort to make a safe, sanitized driving environment.” And yet, he noted, people who are wary of taking public transportation are turning to Uber and Lyft. The services, he said, “are key to help flatten the curve.”
On Monday, he plans to cover his car in signs and join a caravan that will begin at a McDonald’s and then travel to the Los Angeles Unified School District and the University of Southern California to demand they both stop using police on campus. He noted that a lot of his fellow gig workers are people of color. “These two things are totally related,” he said. He won’t take any rides while he’s out protesting, and he hopes other drivers, even if they don’t join the caravan, will also turn off the app in solidarity. “I think that will send a significant signal to Lyft and Uber,” he said, “that we have the ability to organize.”
Striking workers are making a series of demands: first, that corporations make “an unequivocal” declaration that Black Lives Matter, but also that they raise wages, allow workers to form unions, offer childcare support, and provide healthcare and sick leave. They also want politicians at every level to “use their executive, legislative, and regulatory powers to begin to rewrite the rules and reimagine our economy and democracy so that communities of every race can thrive.”
The movement already has some wins under its belt. When I spoke several days ago to Patricia Parks-Lee, an employee at Loretto Hospital in Illinois, she and her co-workers were planning to time a strike over unfair labor practices with Monday’s action.
They had accused management of failing to bargain in good faith over a new contract since December. Parks-Lee makes $19.50 an hour, and many others among the predominantly Black workforce make less than $15. To get by, Parks-Lee usually works at least one other job at a different hospital as a certified nursing assistant, sometimes three. She said she and her co-workers weren’t just striking for better pay, but for “dignity and respect.”
“If you respect who I am and respect my job, why would you limit my ability to do it?”
But on July 17, before they had to walk off the job, Loretto reached an agreement with workers. Their union, SEIU, said it included “life-changing” wins, such as bringing all workers to at least $15 an hour and raises for others, improved staffing, greater scheduling stability, and immigration protections.
The hospital was short-staffed and under-resourced long before the pandemic. Employees bring clothes in from home for the patients who come in without undergarments or wearing soiled clothing. Then, Parks-Lee said, the hospital rationed personal protective equipment like hand sanitizer and gloves. “If you respect who I am and respect my job, why would you limit my ability to do it by counting out the number of gloves?” she said.
In response to a request for comment, Mark A. Walker, director of community relations at Loretto, called the allegation that workers were not given proper PPE “blatantly not true and unfounded.”
Parks-Lee, who is Black, is a crisis worker in the emergency room at Loretto. That means she is often helping community members most in distress — women fleeing domestic violence, people going without food or shelter. “Whatever the crisis situation presents itself, we try to assist,” she said. Racial injustice impacts not just her and her co-workers, but her patients, too. They are “Black, brown,” lacking in “financial stability,” she said. And yet other hospitals often refuse to accept them and send them on to Loretto instead. “Nobody wants them. But we welcome them,” she said.
That’s the throughline bringing all of these varied workers together: outrage over racial injustice, which impacts pay, benefits, and how Black and brown Americans are treated both inside and outside of work. “It’s not surprising that we’re in this together,” Gage said. “We may have different careers, but we’re all going through the same issues.”
Andrews says seeing so many different workers come together is “awesome.”
“That’s going to show unity,” she said. “It’s going to show that we tired, we’re not playing anymore. We want to be heard.”
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