Efforts underway in Europe to ban PFAS compounds

BY REBECCA TRAGER

CHEMISTRY WORLD

23 JULY 2021


There is significant movement afoot to ban per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) in Europe – a class of persistent, highly mobile and potentially toxic compounds. The governments of Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and Norway have announced that by July 2022 they will formally propose to the European Chemicals Agency (Echa) that these chemicals be restricted under Reach (registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals) legislation.

The proposal aims to prohibit the production, marketing and use of these substances throughout Europe. Exceptions will be considered for certain established uses, such as medical applications. After summer 2022, Echa’s scientific bodies and socio-economic analysis committee will assess the Reach restriction dossier and deliver an opinion by 2023. A final agreement by EU member states could be possible as early as 2025.

PFASs are used in a wide range of products including fire-fighting foams, non-stick cookware and water-resistant fabrics.

The five European countries, which began this project to regulate PFASs in 2020, are proposing to ban the entire class of chemicals in one go, arguing that this prevents one group from being replaced by another that may also turn out to be harmful years later. Their proposal specifically defines PFASs as any chemical with at least one perfluorinated methyl group or at least one perfluorinated methylene group.

The nations are primarily concerned that this family of thousands of fluorinated substances is ‘extremely difficult to degrade in the environment’ and that their use can lead to groundwater and drinking water contamination, the Danish Environmental Protection Agency (MST) explained in a 19 July statement.

‘A comprehensive restriction is proposed, which includes a ban on the consumer use of substances, mixtures and articles as well as non-essential professional and industrial uses, as all use of PFAS potentially contributes to the accumulation of these extremely difficult-to-degrade chemical compounds in the environment,’ MST said.

The agency noted that toxicological data for PFASs are often limited but the health effects of a number of such substances have been described in the literature – including liver damage, immune system impairment, impairment of fertility and unborn children, as well as possible endocrine disrupting and carcinogenic properties.

Biomonitoring efforts have revealed that a number of PFASs are present in the blood of European citizens, and although such levels of the most prevalent and well-studied PFASs like perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) are declining, levels of newer generation PFASs are rising, according to MST.

In the US, regulatory action on PFASs has been slow. Without federal action by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), many individual US states have adopted their own standards for PFASs. So far, six states have enforceable drinking water standards, and 10 have implemented guidance or notification levels for PFAS in drinking water, according to the US environmental group Safer Chemicals Healthy Families.

However, the regulatory landscape in the US with respect to these substances appears poised to change. President Biden has repeatedly indicated, starting during his campaign for presidency, that PFAS regulation is a top priority. In April, he announced the creation of a new council to accelerate and coordinate efforts aimed at reducing and remediating this class of chemicals.

There seems to be progress on the congressional front as well. On 21 July, the US House of Representatives approved legislation that would require the EPA to set a national drinking water standard for PFOA and PFOS within two years to protect public health. The bill would also designate PFOA and PFOS as hazardous substances within one year, and require the EPA to determine whether to list other PFAS compounds within five years. A companion bill in the Senate is reportedly under development.

Growing problems with orphaned, abandoned wells challenges oil industry

HIGHLIGHTS

Thousands of oil wells can become orphaned as bankruptcies occur

State and federal funding are limited for cleanup, plugging efforts

White House, lobbying groups propose cash injections, reforms


Author
Jordan Blum
Editor
Jeff Mower
Commodity
Natural Gas, Oil, Petrochemical

09 Jul 2021 | 


A growing number of orphaned and abandoned wells in the US is growing costlier by the day, challenging an oil and gas industry that is already negotiating the energy transition away from fossil fuels, according to critics, who are calling for reforms and new funding to clean up long-dormant, corroding sites.

The White House is aiming to inject major cash into well-plugging activities, and new groups in Texas, such as Commission Shift, have sprung up this year to help lobby and draw attention to the potential ticking time bombs of orphaned or undocumented wells. The Permian Basin has become dotted with more unnaturally-occurring phenomena, including the Wink Sinks sinkholes and the so-called Boehmer Lake from failed wells drilled decades ago.

There is also the fear that new drilling and hydraulic fracturing activity -- as well as the associated saltwater disposal wells -- increasingly will interfere with and rupture older well sites, threatening air quality and water supplies often without any visible problems above the surface, said Virginia Palacios, executive director of the new Commission Shift group focused on reforming and better funding the Texas Railroad Commission that oversees state oil and gas regulations.

Spurred by the shale revolution and led by Texas, US oil production boomed from 5.5 million b/d in 2010 to a record high of nearly 13 million b/d at the beginning of 2020, although output has since slipped to about 11.3 million b/d. But that surge in growth has not come without cyclical stops and starts, including busts in 2014 and 2020 and the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, and with each downturn came a wave of bankruptcies and consolidation.

"When these companies go bankrupt, we see more orphan wells going to the state to plug and clean up," Palacios said. "There's just ben a lot of activity out there in the Permian, and with that there's an issue brewing in our state with waste management."

Orphaned wells are those abandoned by companies that are no longer solvent. Texas currently counts about 6,200 orphaned, unplugged wells, while the Interstate Oil & Gas Compact Commission adds up about 57,000 documented orphan wells nationwide.

The Commission Shift also is focused on the estimated 37,000 wells in Texas that have been inactive and unplugged for a decade or more, threatening to soon join the "orphan" list. The state counts almost 150,000 inactive wells overall.

During the pandemic last year, about 10,000 conventionally drilled wells in the Permian were shut-in and never returned, according to S&P Global Platts Analytics, which accounted for about 80,000 b/d of crude that was lost forever. Permian oil wells that are at least 50 years old still produce well more than 35,000 b/d.

Because so many wells are undocumented, including ones that are more than 100 years old, the US Environmental Protection Agency has estimated there may be more than 3 million abandoned wells nationwide, most of which are unplugged.

In Texas, the Railroad Commission is charged with plugging orphaned wells, which in part entails shutting them down and filling the wellbores with cement. Even then, some plugged wells can spring leaks without oversight, because the plugging rules were much more lax decades ago. Texas' well-plugging rules first went into effect in 1976 and have been amended more than 20 times since, ranging from plugging techniques to the types of cement, according to the Environmental Defense Fund.

The Railroad Commission is averaging plugging about 1,800 wells per year, and spokesman Andrew Keese noted that 83% of wells are plugged by their operators, even though the commission waived plugging requirements and fees last year amid the oil price crash and a slew of bankruptcies.

The American Petroleum Institute released updated well-plugging standards in June, and the industry-led Environmental Partnership has taken more steps to help detect and repair leaks on active operations.
Washington attention

President Joe Biden has proposed spending as much as $16 billion for "capping hundreds of thousands of orphan oil and gas wells and abandoned mines," although that much money is unlikely to be included in any bipartisan compromise. A bipartisan Senate bill provides $4.7 billion for such efforts, while a pending US House bill would set aside $8 billion for old wells and mines over 10 years. And, apart from the infrastructure and jobs plan, the president's overall fiscal year budget bill proposes almost $500 million total for the cleanup of wells, mines and decommissioned offshore oil and gas facilities.

In court, a recent federal ruling in the bankruptcy case of Fieldwood Energy said the Houston offshore producer could pass hundreds of millions of well cleanup costs in the US Gulf of Mexico to previous field owners and insurers, including BP and Shell. That ruling is pending on appeals, but could have implications for onshore producers.

Since 2015, more than 250 North American producers have filed for bankruptcy with half of them coming from Texas, including 45 upstream bankruptcies in 2020, according to the Haynes & Boone energy bankruptcy tracker. For instance, Fort Worth-based Weatherly Oil & Gas left 163 wells orphaned after it filed for bankruptcy in 2019, according to Commission Shift.

And now, bigger energy companies, such as Chevron, are attempting to sell more of their mature, conventional Permian assets, which critics fear could be sold to smaller producers more likely to go bankrupt and leave behind lots of orphan wells.


At a West Texas ranch

At the 22,000-acre Antina Cattle Company Ranch near Monahans, Texas, two Chevron sites sprung leaks in June from wells that were previously plugged in 1995 or prior.

Ranch owner Ashley Watt said she fears leaks from old plugged wells on her family's property have occurred for more than a decade, contaminating the water and, years ago, even bubbling up crude oil in a toilet.

Watt took to social media on Twitter to raise attention to her plight, even mocking a red plastic bucket that Chevron contractors initially utilized to unsuccessfully cover the leaking well that was spraying brackish water with high benzene concentrations, according to water samples she had taken.

"I'm scared," Watt said. "This problem is finally just bubbling to the surface. The water table is very, very shallow here."

Some of Watt's cattle have died recently, which she believes is from the well pollution. And, even though Chevron re-plugged the primary leak after 11 days, Watt said she still believes pressure levels indicate it is continuing to spew hydrocarbons into the water wells underground.

However, Chevron said in a statement that its tests showed the leaking water met applicable drinking water standards, including for benzene.

"While we cannot speak for the whole of industry, we believe the state's requirements, coupled with Chevron's practices, contributed to a prompt response to this incident," said Chevron spokeswoman Deena McMullen in a statement. "Chevron strives to protect people and the environment wherever we operate. Since arriving onsite on June 12, Ms. Watt has expressed several concerns, which we have addressed. We will continue to review thoroughly any concerns brought to our attention."

A recent Southern Methodist University earth sciences study published in December used satellite imaging to detect subtle surface changes over time, identifying thousands of unplugged and abandoned wells in the Permian, as well as many more emerging sinkholes near well sites. More active satellite imaging from regulators could help mitigate future damages and pollution, the researchers concluded.

Watt said she wonders if it is just a matter of when -- and not if -- leaks eventually occur from most of the other plugged wells on her property, and throughout the larger region.

"The state of Texas is failing the landowners," Watt said. "We're the ones who have to deal with the consequences -- the health and business consequences."

"If this is a preview of what every old oil well looks like, the Permian Basin will be absolutely uninhabitable in the next few decades. Terrifying," she later added.

Silos within the energy industry are coming down as companies confront the need to dramatically cut carbon emissions.

The so-called energy convergence is the idea that companies, policy makers and regulators need to be more collaborative across the energy spectrum.

Joe Brettell is a partner for strategic engagement at Prosody Group, which consults on energy, agriculture and financial services. We asked him about the rising importance of US regulators, climate-related investor pressures, and the changing focus of the US energy capital Houston as it adapts to the energy transition.

Stick around after the interview for the Market Minute, a look at near-term oil-market drivers.

A partial skeleton reveals the world’s oldest known shark attack

A man encountered the animal 3,000 years ago off the coast of Japan

A man buried near Japan’s coast around 3,000 years ago, whose skeleton is shown where it was excavated, is the oldest known victim of a shark bite, a new study finds.

LABORATORY OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY/KYOTO UNIVERSITY

By Bruce Bower
JULY 23, 2021 

Somewhere off southeastern Japan’s coast around 3,000 years ago, a shark attacked and killed a man who was likely fishing or shellfish diving. Afterward, the victim’s fishing comrades presumably brought the body, minus its sheared off right leg and left hand, back to land for burial.

A new analysis of that unfortunate man’s partial skeleton, excavated around a century ago at a village cemetery near Japan’s Seto Inland Sea, has unveiled that grisly scenario. This individual from Japan’s ancient Jōmon culture (SN: 2/15/97) represents the oldest known human victim of a shark attack, say archaeologist J. Alyssa White of the University of Oxford and colleagues. Radiocarbon dating places his death from 3,391 to 3,031 years ago, the researchers report in the August Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

A roughly 1,000-year-old skeleton of a fisherman on Puerto Rico previously displayed the earliest signs of a shark encounter.

White’s group documented at least 790 gouges, punctures and other types of bite damage mainly confined to the Jōmon man’s arms, legs, pelvis and ribs. A 3-D model of these injuries indicates that the victim first lost his left hand trying to fend off a shark. Ensuing bites severed major leg arteries, rapidly leading to death.

After the man’s body was recovered, his mutilated left leg probably detached and was placed on his chest when he was buried, the researchers say.

Numerous shark teeth found at some Jōmon sites suggest that sharks were hunted, perhaps by drawing them to blood while fishing at sea. “But unprovoked shark attacks would have been incredibly rare as sharks do not tend to target humans as prey,” White says.

RIP

UT Austin Mourns Death of World-Renowned Physicist Steven Weinberg


Physicist Steven Weinberg, January 28, 2008. Credit: Larry Murphy, The University of Texas at Austin

Jul 24, 2021

AUSTIN, Texas — Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg, a professor of physics and astronomy at The University of Texas at Austin, has died. He was 88.

One of the most celebrated scientists of his generation, Weinberg was best known for helping to develop a critical part of the Standard Model of particle physics, which significantly advanced humanity’s understanding of how everything in the universe — its various particles and the forces that govern them — relate. A faculty member for nearly four decades at UT Austin, he was a beloved teacher and researcher, revered not only by the scientists who marveled at his concise and elegant theories but also by science enthusiasts everywhere who read his books and sought him out at public appearances and lectures.

“The passing of Steven Weinberg is a loss for The University of Texas and for society. Professor Weinberg unlocked the mysteries of the universe for millions of people, enriching humanity’s concept of nature and our relationship to the world,” said Jay Hartzell, president of The University of Texas at Austin. “From his students to science enthusiasts, from astrophysicists to public decision makers, he made an enormous difference in our understanding. In short, he changed the world.”

“As a world-renowned researcher and faculty member, Steven Weinberg has captivated and inspired our UT Austin community for nearly four decades,” said Sharon L. Wood, provost of the university. “His extraordinary discoveries and contributions in cosmology and elementary particles have not only strengthened UT’s position as a global leader in physics, they have changed the world.”

Weinberg held the Jack S. Josey – Welch Foundation Chair in Science at UT Austin and was the winner of multiple scientific awards including the 1979 Nobel Prize in physics, which he shared with Abdus Salam and Sheldon Lee Glashow; a National Medal of Science in 1991; the Lewis Thomas Prize for the Scientist as Poet in 1999; and, just last year, the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society of London, Britain’s Royal Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, which presented him with the Benjamin Franklin Medal in 2004.

Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands receives Nobel laureates: Paul Berg, Christian de Duve, Steven Weinberg, Queen Beatrix, Manfred Eigen, Nicolaas Bloembergen. Photo taken on 31 August 1983. Credit: Rob C. Croes / Anefo. Creative Commons Netherlands license.

In 1967, Weinberg published a seminal paper laying out how two of the universe’s four fundamental forces — electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force — relate as part of a unified electroweak force. “A Model of Leptons,” at barely three pages, predicted properties of elementary particles that at that time had never before been observed (the W, Z and Higgs boson) and theorized that “neutral weak currents” dictated how elementary particles interact with one another. Later experiments, including the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland, would bear out each of his predictions.

Weinberg leveraged his renown and his science for causes he cared deeply about. He had a lifelong interest in curbing nuclear proliferation and served briefly as a consultant for the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. He advocated for a planned superconducting supercollider with the capabilities of the LHC in the United States — a project that ultimately failed to receive funding in the 1990s after having been planned for a site near Waxahachie, Texas. He continued to be an ambassador for science throughout his life, for example, teaching UT Austin students and participating in events such as the 2021 Nobel Prize Inspiration Initiative in April and in the Texas Science Festival in February.

“When we talk about science as part of the culture of our times, we’d better make it part of that culture by explaining what we’re doing,” Weinberg explained in a 2015 interview published by Third Way. “I think it’s very important not to write down to the public. You have to keep in mind that you’re writing for people who are not mathematically trained but are just as smart as you are.”

By showing the unifying links behind weak forces and electromagnetism, which were previously believed to be completely different, Weinberg delivered the first pillar of the Standard Model, the half-century-old theory that explains particles and three of the four fundamental forces in the universe (the fourth being gravity). As critical as the model is in helping physical scientists understand the order driving everything from the first minutes after the Big Bang to the world around us, Weinberg continued to pursue, alongside other scientists, dreams of a “final theory” that would concisely and effectively explain current unknowns about the forces and particles in the universe, including gravity.

Weinberg wrote hundreds of scientific articles about general relativity, quantum field theory, cosmology and quantum mechanics, as well as numerous popular articles, reviews and books. His books include “To Explain the World,” “Dreams of a Final Theory,” “Facing Up,” and “The First Three Minutes.” Weinberg often was asked in media interviews to reflect on his atheism and how it related to the scientific insights he described in his books.

“If there is no point in the universe that we discover by the methods of science, there is a point that we can give the universe by the way we live, by loving each other, by discovering things about nature, by creating works of art,” he once told PBS. “Although we are not the stars in a cosmic drama, if the only drama we’re starring in is one that we are making up as we go along, it is not entirely ignoble that faced with this unloving, impersonal universe we make a little island of warmth and love and science and art for ourselves.”

Weinberg was a native of New York, and his childhood love of science began with a gift of a chemistry set and continued through teaching himself calculus while a student at Bronx High School of Science. The first in his family to attend college, he received a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University and a doctoral degree from Princeton University. He researched at Columbia University and the University of California, Berkeley, before serving on the faculty of Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and, since 1982, UT Austin.

He is survived by his wife, UT Austin law professor Louise Weinberg, and their daughter, Elizabeth.


With Steven Weinberg’s death, physics loses a titan

He advanced the theory of particles and forces, and wrote insightfully for a wider public


By Tom Siegfried
Contributing Correspondent


Steven Weinberg in his office at the University of Texas at Austin in 2018.

Mythology has its titans. So do the movies. And so does physics. Just one fewer now.

Steven Weinberg died July 23, at the age of 88. He was one of the key intellectual leaders in physics during the second half of the 20th century, and he remained a leading voice and active contributor and teacher through the first two decades of the 21st.

On lists of the greats of his era he was always mentioned along with Richard Feynman, Murray Gell-Mann and … well, just Feynman and Gell-Mann.

Among his peers, Weinberg was one of the most respected figures in all of physics or perhaps all of science. He exuded intelligence and dignity. As news of his death spread through Twitter, other physicists expressed their remorse at the loss: “One of the most accomplished scientists of our age,” one commented, “a particularly eloquent spokesman for the scientific worldview.” And another: “One of the best physicists we had, one of the best thinkers of any variety.”

Weinberg’s Nobel Prize, awarded in 1979, was for his role in developing a theory unifying electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force. That was an essential contribution to what became known as the standard model of physics, a masterpiece of explanation for phenomena rooted in the math describing subatomic particles and forces. It’s so successful at explaining experimental results that physicists have long pursued every opportunity to find the slightest deviation, in hopes of identifying “new” physics that further deepens human understanding of nature.

Weinberg did important technical work in other realms of physics as well, and wrote several authoritative textbooks on such topics as general relativity and cosmology and quantum field theory. He was an early advocate of superstring theory as a promising path in the continuing quest to complete the standard model by unifying it with general relativity, Einstein’s theory of gravity.

Early on Weinberg also realized a desire to communicate more broadly. His popular book The First Three Minutes, published in 1977, introduced a generation of physicists and physics fans to the Big Bang–birth of the universe and the fundamental science underlying that metaphor. Later he wrote deeply insightful examinations of the nature of science and its intersection with society. And he was a longtime contributor of thoughtful essays in such venues as the New York Review of Books.

In his 1992 book Dreams of a Final Theory, Weinberg expressed his belief that physics was on the verge of finding the true fundamental explanation of reality, the “final theory” that would unify all of physics. Progress toward that goal seemed to be impeded by the apparent incompatibility of general relativity with quantum mechanics, the math underlying the standard model. But in a 1997 interview, Weinberg averred that the difficulty of combining relativity and quantum physics in a mathematically consistent way was an important clue. “When you put the two together, you find that there really isn’t that much free play in the laws of nature,” he said. “That’s been an enormous help to us because it’s a guide to what kind of theories might possibly work.”

Attempting to bridge the relativity-quantum gap, he believed, “pushed us a tremendous step forward toward being able to develop realistic theories of nature on the basis of just mathematical calculations and pure thought.”

Experiment had to come into play, of course, to verify the validity of the mathematical insights. But the standard model worked so well that finding deviations implied by new physics required more powerful experimental technology than physicists possessed. “We have to get to a whole new level of experimental competence before we can do experiments that reveal the truth beneath the standard model, and this is taking a long, long time,” he said. “I really think that physics in the style in which it’s being done … is going to eventually reach a final theory, but probably not while I’m around and very likely not while you’re around.”

He was right that he would not be around to see the final theory. And perhaps, as he sometimes acknowledged, nobody ever will. Perhaps it’s not experimental power that is lacking, but rather intellectual power. “Humans may not be smart enough to understand the really fundamental laws of physics,” he wrote in his 2015 book To Explain the World, a history of science up to the time of Newton.

Weinberg studied the history of science thoroughly, wrote books and taught courses on it. To Explain the World was explicitly aimed at assessing ancient and medieval science in light of modern knowledge. For that he incurred the criticism of historians and others who claimed he did not understand the purpose of history, which is to understand the human endeavors of an era on its own terms, not with anachronistic hindsight.

But Weinberg understood the viewpoint of the historians perfectly well. He just didn’t like it. For Weinberg, the story of science that was meaningful to people today was how the early stumblings toward understanding nature evolved into a surefire system for finding correct explanations. And that took many centuries. Without the perspective of where we are now, he believed, and an appreciation of the lessons we have learned, the story of how we got here “has no point.”

Future science historians will perhaps insist on assessing Weinberg’s own work in light of the standards of his times. But even if viewed in light of future knowledge, there’s no doubt that Weinberg’s achievements will remain in the realm of the Herculean. Or the titanic.



 Tom Siegfried is a contributing correspondent. 

He was editor in chief of Science News from 2007 to 2012 

and managing editor from 2014 to 2017.


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DINGBAT JUSTICE MINISTER

'Unwarranted and ill-advised': Edmonton Police Association warns against legalizing pepper spray for self-defence

The president of the Edmonton Police Association says legalizing pepper spray for self-defence would cause more harm than good.

DID UCP CONSULT OF COURSE NOT

© Provided by Edmonton Journal Michael Elliott, president of the Edmonton Police Association, says introducing legal pepper spray will cause more harm than good.

Alberta Justice Minister Kaycee Madu penned a letter this week calling on the federal government to amend the Criminal Code to allow people to carry and use the substance, which is currently a prohibited weapon, as a means of defence amid a rash of hate-motivated attacks in the province.

“I truly appreciate and understand what Minister Madu is trying to achieve because I know the crimes that are occurring against the population are wrong,” said Michael Elliott in an interview. “But I do know that the introduction of pepper spray, or as we know it as OC spray, as a self-defence mechanism, I think, is unwarranted and ill-advised.”

Elliott said it could result in a significant increase in crime and potential attacks on other people, which would place further strain on an already overwhelmed EMS unit.

He added that when pepper spray is used, people can’t control where it’s going and it can affect other people in the area, including the person using it.

“I can tell you maybe the half a dozen times that I’ve deployed it, I’ve had the residual effects of it and it’s not fun at all,” he said.

Officers are only allowed to use pepper spray on duty if they are “lawfully placed” under the Criminal Code, otherwise they can be charged with assault with a weapon, Elliott said. Each time an officer uses it, they have to report to a supervisor who has to attend the scene to ensure it was used correctly.

“I often wonder who is going to train and make those responsible as a member of the public to use that,” said Elliott. “We had training and had to be exposed to it to understand the effects of it so we can help that person, or persons, that are affected while we wait for EMS or fire to attend.”

At an unrelated announcement Thursday, Premier Jason Kenney said he believes Madu’s proposed changes to the Criminal Code are reasonable and he agreed vulnerable people should be able to protect themselves.

“For example, if a vulnerable woman could have a small tool to help defend herself from a violent attack, I think we should absolutely permit that,” said Kenney.

“Obviously, anybody who uses something like that indiscriminately, or not for legitimate self-defence with themselves, would be potentially liable to assault charges. The law would continue to be the law, but a non-lethal tool for individuals to protect themselves from violent attacks, I think is perfectly reasonable.”

At Thursday’s Edmonton Police Commission meeting , Chief Dale McFee said he would need more details as to what the minister’s intent is and clarification on how it would be controlled.

“Certainly there’s some concerns around safety and distribution and I’m not sure if that’s been talked about at this point in time,” said McFee. “Basically how distribution will be controlled and preventions of keeping spray from getting into the wrong hands are obviously going to be of concern.”

The Alberta Association of Chiefs of Police also released a statement on Thursday, voicing its safety concerns and requesting additional information and dialogue with Madu.

– With files from Lisa Johnson and Dustin Cook

OLIGARCHS

Billionaires and a Hong Kong bank chief handed seats on powerful new election body
Nominations for the last remaining seats on a 1,500-strong body which will nominate and select election candidates and those wishing to run for the post of city leader to begin on August 6.

by RHODA KWAN

 23 JULY 2021


Hong Kong has added the CEO of HSBC Asia Pacific, billionaire business people and the president of the city’s pro-Beijing teachers’ union as ex-officio members of its 1,500-strong election committee.

The group is tasked with nominating, appointing, and electing the majority of the city’s legislators and its next chief executive under Beijing’s new electoral reforms which were introduced in March

.

HSBC. Photo: GovHK.

The 15 new appointments, made by a separate vetting committee, were gazetted on Friday.

HSBC Asia Pacific’s Peter Wong was appointed to represent the commercial sector while billionaire businesswoman Pollyanna Chu of Kingston Financial Group will represent the financial sector.

President of the pro-Beijing Hong Kong Federation of Education Workers Wong Kwan-yu was appointed as a representative for education. The group is the second biggest teachers’ union in the city, the largest being aligned with the pro-democracy camp.

Other appointments made include billionaire businessman Pan Su-tong to represent grassroots associations, and Apple supplier Biel Crystal Manufactory’s founder Yeung Kin-man to represent technology and innovation.



The 15 were approved by a seven-person vetting committee introduced as part of the election overhaul. The committee, appointed by the chief executive, is chaired by newly-promoted Chief Secretary John Lee. It includes three executive officials, including Secretary for Security Chris Tang, as well as pro-Beijing heavyweights Elsie Leung and Rita Fan.

On March 30, Beijing passed legislation to ensure “patriots” govern Hong Kong. The move reduced democratic representation in the legislature, tightened control of elections and introduced a pro-Beijing vetting panel to select candidates.

The government has said the overhaul would ensure the city’s stability and prosperity. But the changes also prompted international condemnation, as it makes it near-impossible for pro-democracy candidates to stand.
Election registration

Meanwhile, the nomination period to elect people to fill other seats in the election committee will take place from August 6 to 12, the Registration and Electoral Office announced on Friday.

Hong Kong’s elections for the 1,500-member election committee are set to take place in September. The committee will be made up of both ex-officio members as well as people who are nominated and elected

.

Registration and Electoral Office, and the Electoral Affairs Commission. Photo: Citizen News.

“A nominee must be a registered geographical constituency elector aged 18 or above who is a registered voter for the relevant electio committee subsector or has a substantial connection with that subsector,” a spokesperson said.

The number of people eligible to nominate people to the committee has dropped 97 per cent to 7,891 since 2016.

Indictment Of Trump Associate Threatens UAE Lobbying Success: Raises Questions About Emirati Campaign Against Political Islam – Analysis

US President Donald Trump meet with His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi. Photo Credit: UAE Embassy

July 25, 2021 
By James M. Dorsey

This month’s indictment of a billionaire, one-time advisor and close associate of former US President Donald J. Trump, on charges of operating as an unregistered foreign agent in the United States for the United Arab Emirates highlights the successes and pitfalls of a high-stakes Emirati effort to influence US policy.

The indictment of businessman Thomas J. Barrack, who maintained close ties to UAE Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed while serving as an influential advisor in 2016 to then-presidential candidate Trump and chair of Mr. Trump’s inauguration committee once he won the 2016 election, puts at risk the UAE’s relationship with the Biden administration.

It also threatens to reduce the UAE’s return on a massive investment in lobbying and public relations that made it a darling in Washington during the last four years.

A 2019 study concluded that Emirati clients hired 20 US lobbying firms to do their bidding at a cost of US$20 million, including US$600,000 in election campaign contributions — one of the largest, if not the largest expenditure by a single state on Washington lobbying and influence peddling.

The indictment further raises the question of why the Biden administration was willing to allow legal proceedings to put at risk its relationship with one of America’s closest allies in the Middle East, one that last year opened the door to recognition of Israel by Arab and Muslim-majority states.

The UAE lobbying effort sought to position the Emirates, and at its behest, Saudi Arabia under the leadership of Crown Prince Mohammed’s counterpart, Mohammed bin Salman, at the heart of US policy, ensure that Emirati and Saudi interests were protected, and shield the two autocrats from criticism of various of their policies and abuse of human rights.

Interestingly, UAE lobbying in the United States, in contrast to France and Austria, failed to persuade the Trump administration to embrace one of the Emirates’ core policy objectives: a US crackdown on political Islam with a focus on the Muslim Brotherhood. UAE Crown Prince Mohammed views political Islam and the Brotherhood that embraces the principle of elections as an existential threat to the survival of his regime.

In one instance cited in the indictment, Mr. Barrack’s two co-defendants, a UAE national resident in the United States, Rashid Al-Malik, and Matthew Grimes, a Barrack employee, discussed days after Mr. Trump’s inauguration the possibility of persuading the new administration to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a designated foreign terrorist organization. “This will be a huge win. If we can list them. And they deserved to be,” Mr. Al-Malik texted Mr. Grimes on 23 January 2017.

The unsuccessful push for designating the Brotherhood came three months after Mr. Barrack identified the two Prince Mohammeds in an op-ed in Fortune magazine as members of a new generation of “brilliant young leaders.” The billionaire argued that “American foreign policy must persuade these bold visionaries to lean West rather than East… By supporting their anti-terrorism platforms abroad, America enhances its anti-terrorism policies at home.”

Mr. Barrack further sought to persuade America’s new policymakers, in line with Emirati thinking, that the threat posed by political Islam emanated not only from Iran’s clerical regime and its asymmetric defence and security policies but also from the Brotherhood and Tukey’s Islamist government. He echoed Emirati promotion of Saudi Arabia after the rise of Mohammed bin Salman as the most effective bulwark against political Islam.

“It is impossible for the US to move against any hostile Islamic group anywhere in the world without Saudi support…. The confused notion that Saudi Arabia is synonymous with radical Islam is falsely based on the Western notion that ‘one size fits all,’ Mr. Barrack asserted.

The Trump administration’s refusal to exempt the Brotherhood from its embrace of Emirati policy was the likely result of differences within both the US government and the Muslim world. Analysts suggest that some in the administration feared that designating the Brotherhood would empower the more rabidly Islamophobic elements in Mr. Trump’s support base.

Administration officials also recognized that the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt constituted a minority, albeit a powerful minority, in the Muslim world that was on the warpath against the Brotherhood.

Elsewhere, Brotherhood affiliates were part of the political structure by either participating in government or constituting part of the legal opposition in countries like Kuwait, Iraq, Yemen, Bahrain, Morocco, Jordan, and Indonesia.

The affiliates have at times supported US policies or worked closely with US allies like in the case of Yemen’s Al Islah that is aligned with Saudi-backed forces.

In contrast to UAE efforts to ensure that the Brotherhood is crushed at the risk of fueling Islamophobia, Nahdlatul Ulama, one of, if not the world’s largest Muslim organization which shares the Emirates’ rejection of political Islam and the Brotherhood, has opted to fight the Brotherhood’s local Indonesian affiliate politically within a democratic framework rather than by resorting to coercive tactics.

Nahdlatul Ulama prides itself on having significantly diminished the prospects of Indonesia’s Brotherhood affiliate, the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), since the 2009 presidential election. The group at the time successfully drove a wedge between then-President Susilo Yudhoyono, and the PKS, his coalition partner since the 2004 election that brought him to power. In doing so, it persuaded Mr. Yudhoyono to reject a PKS candidate as vice president in the second term of his presidency.

Nahdlatul Ulama’s manoeuvring included the publication of a book asserting that the PKS had not shed its links to militancy. The party has since failed to win even half of its peak 38 seats in parliament garnered in the 2004 election.

“Publication of ‘The Illusion of an Islamic State: The Expansion of Transnational Islamist Movements to Indonesia’ had a considerable impact on domestic policy. It primarily contributed to neutralizing one candidate’s bid for vice president in the 2009 national election campaign, who had ties to the Muslim Brotherhood,” said militancy expert Magnus Ranstorp.Click here to have Eurasia Review's newsletter delivered via RSS, as an email newsletter, via mobile or on your personal news page.



James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.

Some Native Americans Fear Blood Quantum Is Formula For ‘Paper Genocide’ – Analysis


Portrait of Left Hand Bear, Oglala Sioux Chief.

 Photo Credit: Heyn Photo, Pixabay

July 25, 2021 
By VOA
By Cecily Hilleary

Native Americans have survived centuries of imported diseases, dispossession of lands and forced assimilation. Today, many worry about another existential threat: Blood quantum—a system the U.S. government and many tribes use to measure Native ancestry and eligibility for membership.

Blood quantum (BQ) is based on a simple formula: Half of the combined degree of “Indian blood” an individual’s parents’ possess. So, if both parents have 100% Indian blood, their child will have a BQ of 100%.

But where bloodlines have been “diluted” by unions with non-Natives, calculating BQ can be complex, as evidenced by a chart published in the 1983 Bureau of Indian Affairs Manual, and percentages are usually expressed as fractions. For example, if a man with one-half BQ marries a woman with one-quarter BQ, their child will have a BQ of three-eighths.

Colonial construct

For thousands of years, Native tribes understood “belonging” in terms of social kinship. Settler colonialism, however, introduced notions of race to determine social status, eligibility to marry, hold office or own land.

By the 19th century, terms such as “mixed-blood” and “half-breed” crept into treaties such as that with the Osage in 1825, by which the United States set aside a separate reservation for “half-breeds.”

Gradually, BQ became the standard test for deciding who was eligible for land and treaty benefits.

In 1934, Congress passed the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA), touted as an effort to reduce government interference in tribal affairs. The new law, which recognized anyone with “one-half or more Indian blood,” urged federally recognized tribes to form representational governments, draft individual bylaws and constitutions, and decide membership criteria.

More than 260 tribes ended up accepting the IRA and set membership requirements. For some, it was lineal descent from individuals listed on historic “base rolls.” Others mandated BQ of one-quarter or more. A few decided on a combination of lineal descent, residency and/or BQ.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs issues Certificates of Degree of Indian Blood, a form of identification that certifies individuals’ BQ and eligibility for tribal membership.
‘Paper genocide’

But some Native Americans who follow the issue closely say sticking with the BQ system for measuring ancestry is a recipe for disaster.

Jill Doerfler, head of the University of Michigan’s American Indian and Indigenous Studies Department, grew up in the White Earth Nation, one of six bands of Anishinaabe (also known as Chippewa) people united under the governing body of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe (MCT).

“What blood quantum does is racialize American Indian identity,” she said. “It is an outside concept used to disenfranchise Native people and tribes from their legal and political status. And it’s the best way to eliminate ongoing treaty obligations.”

Increased urbanization and intermarriage with non-Natives mean bloodlines are diluting, and as time goes on, fewer and fewer individuals will qualify as tribe members and will lose associated health and education benefits.

“And if a nation doesn’t have any citizens, there’s no nation,” Doerfler said. “There’s no relationship that has to be maintained, and no services that need to be provided. The government could eliminate the whole budget line of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.”

And then, she worries, the government could divest tribes of all their land, resulting in what some term “paper genocide.”

‘Drastic decline’

In 2012, MCT contracted with the Minnesota-based Wilder Foundation to study population trends for MCT as a whole, and its six member bands—White Earth, Mille Lacs, Grand Portage, Fond du Lac and Bois Forte—individually.

“The study showed that if we keep the current one-quarter MCT blood quantum requirement, we will see a pretty drastic decline by the end of the 21st century,” said Mike Chosa, public relations director at the Leech Lake Band.

“In 2013, our population was around 41,000. And in 2098, they predict fewer than 9,000 members,” Chosa said. “And the numbers decline even more rapidly the further you go out.”

Wilder looked at how MCT’s tribal population would change over time if different membership criteria were applied—allowing blood from other Chippewa tribes to enter the equation, for example, or reducing BQ requirement to one-eighth.

Wilder concluded that by loosening BQ restrictions, MCT’s population would grow significantly. But for that to happen, MCT would have to rewrite its constitution.
Considering alternatives

In 2018, MCT conducted a tribal survey to gauge interest in doing just that.

“Over half the people were in favor of eliminating blood quantum altogether,” Chosa said. “The other half were in favor of expanding the types of blood that we would consider. In the end, it’s got to be an individual decision for all native nations and tribes.”

It isn’t an easy decision, especially for tribes that share casino and other earnings with members. A greater tribal population means smaller per capita payouts.

MCT plans to put the matter to a referendum and, if that passes, a secretarial vote.

Ultimately, however, it will be up to the federal government to decide.

“Unlike some tribes, our constitution was actually written by the Department of Interior and approved by the Department of Interior,” Chosa said. “So, if we want to change it, we need to go through the Department of Interior.”

Why isn’t Joe Biden doing all he can to protect American democracy?

Both parties are beholden to an anti-democratic coalition. This is stopping real change

‘If democracy is to be preserved, both parts of the anti-democracy coalition must be stopped.’ Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

Robert Reich,

Sun 25 Jul 2021 

You’d think Biden and the Democratic party leadership would do everything in their power to stop Republicans from undermining democracy.

So far this year, the Republican party has passed roughly 30 laws in states across the country that will make voting harder, especially in Black and Latino communities. With Trump’s baseless claim that the 2020 election was stolen, Republicans are stoking white people’s fears that a growing non-white population is usurping their dominance.

Yet while Biden and Democratic leaders are openly negotiating with holdout senators for Biden’s stimulus and infrastructure proposals, they aren’t exerting similar pressure when it comes to voting rights and elections. In fact, Biden now says he won’t take on the filibuster, which stands firmly in the way.

What gives? Part of the explanation, I think, lies with an outside group that has almost as much influence on the Democratic party as on the Republican, and which isn’t particularly enthusiastic about election reform: the moneyed interests bankrolling both parties.

A more robust democracy would make it harder for the wealthy to keep their taxes low and profits high. So at the same time white supremacists have been whipping up white fears about non-whites usurping their dominance, America’s wealthy have been spending vast sums on campaign donations and lobbyists to prevent a majority from usurping their money.

They’re now whipping up resistance among congressional Democrats to Biden’s plan to tax capital gains at 39.6% – up from 20% – for those earning more than $1m, and they’re on the way to restoring the federal tax deduction for state and local taxes, of which they’re the biggest beneficiaries.

In recent years these wealth supremacists, as they might be called, have quietly joined white supremacists to become a powerful anti-democracy coalition. Some have backed white supremacist’s efforts to divide poor and working-class whites from poor and working-class Black and brown people, so they don’t look upward and see where most of the economic gains have been going and don’t join together to demand a fair share of those gains.

Similarly, white supremacists have quietly depended on wealth supremacists to donate to lawmakers who limit voting rights, so people of color continue to be second-class citizens. It’s no accident that six months after the insurrection, dozens of giant corporations that promised not to fund members of Congress who refused to certify Biden as president are now back funding them and their anti-voting rights agenda.

Donald Trump was put into office by this anti-democracy coalition. According to Forbes, 9% of America’s billionaires, together worth a combined $210bn, pitched in to cover the costs of Trump’s 2020 campaign. During his presidency Trump gave both parts of the coalition what they wanted most: tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks for the wealth supremacists; legitimacy for the white supremacists.

The coalition is now the core of the Republican party, which stands for little more than voter suppression based on Trump’s big lie that the 2020 election was stolen, and tax cuts for the wealthy and their corporations.

Meanwhile, as wealth supremacists have accumulated a larger share of the nation’s income and wealth than at any time in more than a century, they’ve used a portion of that wealth to bribe lawmakers not to raise their taxes. It was recently reported that several American billionaires have paid only minimal or no federal income tax at all.

Tragically, the supreme court is supporting both the white supremacists and wealth supremacists. Since Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito joined in 2005 and 2006, respectively, the court has been whittling away voting rights while enlarging the rights of the wealthy to shower money on lawmakers. The conservative majority has been literally making it easier to buy elections and harder to vote in them.

The Democrats’ proposed For the People Act admirably takes on both parts of the coalition. It sets minimum national standards for voting, and it seeks to get big money out of politics through public financing of election campaigns.

Yet this comprehensiveness may explain why the Act is now stalled in the Senate. Biden and Democratic leaders are firmly against white supremacists but are not impervious to the wishes of wealth supremacists. After all, to win elections they need likely Democrats to vote but also need big money to finance their campaigns.

Some progressives have suggested a carve-out to the filibuster solely for voting rights. This might constrain the white supremacists but would do nothing to protect American democracy from the wealth supremacists.

If democracy is to be preserved, both parts of the anti-democracy coalition must be stopped.


Robert Reich a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a columnist for Guardian US

The Many Faces of Regime Change in Cuba

Cubans confront a host of problems amid a national health emergency — and the Biden administrative is only adding to punitive sanctions with the intent to make everything worse.

Fidel Castro holds up a newspaper headlining a plot to kill him in 1959. (Bettmann via Getty)

BY LOUIS A. PÉREZ JR

JACOBIN
07.24.2021

After months of casual indifference to conditions in Cuba, the Biden administration reacted with purposeful swiftness to support street protests on the island. “We stand with the Cuban people,” President Biden pronounced. A talking point was born.

“The Biden-Harris administration stands by the Cuban people,” secretary of state Antony Blinken followed. Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair Robert Menéndez also joined to emphasize “the need for the United States to continue to stand with the Cuban people.”

For more than a hundred and twenty years, the United States has “stood with the Cuban people” — or, perhaps more correctly, has stood over the Cuban people. Cuba seems always to be at the receiving end of American history. To stand with the Cuban people has meant armed intervention, military occupation, regime change, and political meddling — all normal events in US-Cuba relations in the sixty years before the triumph of the Cuban revolution. In the sixty years after the revolution, standing with the Cuban people has meant diplomatic isolation, armed invasion, covert operations, and economic sanctions.

It is the policy of economic sanctions — the embargo — officially designated as an “economic denial program,” that gives the lie to US claims of beneficent concern for the Cuban people. Sanctions developed early into a full-blown policy protocol in pursuit of regime change, designed to deprive Cubans of needed goods and services, to induce scarcity and foment shortages, to inflict hardship and deepen adversity.

Nor should it be supposed that the Cuban people were the unintended “collateral damage” of the embargo. On the contrary, the Cuban people have been the target. Sanctions were designed from the outset to produce economic havoc as a way to foment popular discontent, to politicize hunger in the hope that, driven by despair and motivated by want, the Cuban people would rise up to topple the government.

The declassification of government records provides insight into the calculus of sanctions as a means of regime change. The “economic denial program” was planned to “weaken [the Cuban government] economically,” a State Department briefing paper explained, to “promote internal dissension; erode its internal political support . . . [and] seek to create conditions conducive to incipient rebellion.” Sanctions promised to create “the necessary preconditions for nationalist upheaval inside Cuba,” the Department of State Bureau of Intelligence and Research predicted, thereupon to produce the downfall of the Cuban government “as a result of internal stresses and in response to forces largely, if not wholly, unattributable to the U.S.”

The “only foreseeable means of alienating internal support,” the Department of State offered, “is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship. . . . Every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba . . . [to deny] money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.”

The embargo has remained in place for more than sixty years. At times expanded, at other times contracted. But never lifted. The degree to which US sanctions are implicated in current protest demonstrations in Cuba is a matter of debate, of course. But that the embargo has contributed — to a greater or lesser extent — to hardship in Cuba can hardly be gainsaid; that has been its intent. And now that hardship has produced popular protests and demonstrations. That, too, is in the “playbook” of the embargo.

But the embargo has had a far more insidious impact on the political culture of Cuba. The Cuban government is not unaware of the United States’ desired policy outcomes from the sanctions. They understand well its subversive reach and interventionist thrust, and have responded accordingly, if not always consistently.

Such a nakedly hostile US policy, which has been ongoing and periodically reaffirmed over such a lengthy period of time, designed purposely to sow chaos, has in fact served Cuban authorities well, providing a readily available target that can be blamed for homegrown economic mismanagement and resource misallocation. The embargo provides a refuge for blamelessness and immunity from accountability. The tendency to attribute the consequences of ill-conceived policies to the embargo has developed into a standing master narrative of Cuban government.

But it is more complicated still. Not a few within the Cuban government view popular protests warily, seeing them as a function of US policy and its intended outcomes. It is no small irony, in fact, that the embargo has so often served to compromise the “authenticity” of popular protest, to ensure that protests are seen as acts in the service of regime change and depicted as a threat to national security.

The degree to which the political intent of the embargo is imputed to popular protest often serves to drive the official narrative. That is, protests are depicted less as an expression of domestic discontent than as an act of US subversion, instantly discrediting the legitimacy of protest and the credibility of protesters. The embargo serves to plunge Cuban politics at all levels into a Kafkaesque netherworld, where the authenticity of domestic actors is challenged and transformed into the duplicity of foreign agents. In Cuba, the popular adage warns, nothing appears to be what it seems.

Few dispute the validity of Cuban grievances. A long-suffering people often subject to capricious policies and arbitrary practices, an officialdom often appearing oblivious and unresponsive to the needs of a population confronting deepening hardship. Shortages of food. Lack of medicines. Scarcity of basic goods. Soaring prices. Widening social inequalities. Deepening racial disparities.

Difficulties have mounted, compounding continuously over many years, for which there are few readily available remedies. An economy that reorganized itself during the late 1990s and early 2000s around tourist receipts has collapsed as a result of the pandemic. A loss of foreign exchange with ominous implications for a country that imports 70 percent of its food supplies.

The Trump administration revived the most punitive elements of US sanctions, limiting family remittances to $1,000 per quarter per person, prohibiting remittances to family members of government officials and members of the Communist Party, and prohibiting remittances in the form of donations to Cuban nationals. The Trump administration prohibited the processing of remittances through any entities on a “Cuba restricted list,” an action that resulted in Western Union ceasing its operations in Cuba in November 2020.

And as a final spiteful, gratuitous gesture, the outgoing Trump administration returned Cuba to the list of state sponsors of terrorism. At the precise moment the Cuban people were reeling from greater shortages, increased rationing, and declining services, the United States imposed a new series of sanctions. It is impossible to react in any way other than with blank incredulity to State Department spokesperson Ned Price’s comment that Cuban humanitarian needs “are profound because of not anything the United States has done.”

Cubans confront all at once a collapsing economy, diminished remittances, restricted emigration opportunities, inflation, shortages of food, scarcity of medicines, all in a time of a national health emergency — and with the United States applying punitive sanctions with the intent of making everything worse. Of course, the Cuban people have the right to peaceful protest. Of course, the Cuban government must redress Cuban grievances.

Of course, the United States must end its deadly and destructive policy of subversion.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Louis A. Pérez Jr is the J. Carlyle Sitterson Professor of History and director of the Institute for the Study of the Americas at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His most recent book is Rice in the Time of Sugar: The Political Economy of Food in Cuba (2019).