CRIMINAL CRYPTO CAPITALI$M

SEC charges BitConnect founder with $2B scam as promoter pleads guilty

Steve Kaaru 

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed new charges against the founder and promoters of BitConnect, one of the digital currency industry’s largest scams to date. BitConnect founder Satish Kumbhani and the exchange’s lead U.S. promoter Glen Arcaro are facing charges in connection with their alleged roles in defrauding over $2 billion from thousands of investors.

BitConnect was a Ponzi scheme founded in 2016, which reportedly lured investors with promises of exorbitantly high returns. Kumbhani led the team that promised investors the company would utilize its proprietary “volatility software trading bot” to trade their money and make on average 40% in returns. On its website, the now-defunct exchange claimed that it guaranteed 1% in daily returns or 3,700% annually.

However, authorities said BitConnect executives siphoned the investor funds and used them for their own benefits—and paid off earlier investors with new investors’ money.

“We allege that these defendants stole billions of dollars from retail investors around the world by exploiting their interest in digital assets. We will aggressively pursue and hold accountable those who engage in misconduct in the digital asset space,” Lara Shalov Mehraban, the Associate Regional Director of SEC’s New York Regional Office said.

Authorities identified Kumbhani, 36, an Indian national whose whereabouts are currently unknown, as the brains behind the scam.

Arcaro, on the other hand, was the lead promoter of the scam in the United States, investigators said. According to the SEC charges, Arcaro undertook the promotion through his company Future Money, which he incorporated in Hong Kong. The SEC claims that he received more than $24 million in referral commissions and developing funds.

Arcaro has pleaded guilty to fraud charges in connection with his role in BitConnect, the U.S. Department of Justice announced. His sentencing is set for November 15, 2021.

In total, BitConnect is alleged to have made off with 325,000 BTC from thousands of investors. This BTC was worth $2 billion at the time but at today’s prices, it’s worth more than $15 billion.

This is the latest action against the BitConnect scam leaders and promoters by the SEC. As CoinGeek reported a week ago, the watchdog entered a $3.7 million and 190 BTC (worth $8.9 million) settlement with two promoters.

North Atlantic right whales critically endangered by climate crisis, new study finds

Warming sea and shifting food sources drive whales into areas where they risk ship strikes and entanglement in fishing gear

A North Atlantic right whale entangled in fishing ropes in the Gulf of St Lawrence. Severely entangled whales cannot feed and often starve to death.

 Photograph: Nature Picture Library/Alamy

Hallie Golden
Fri 3 Sep 2021 

Climate change-induced warming in the Gulf of Maine has resulted in the population of the North Atlantic right whale to plummet, leaving the species critically endangered and conservationists desperate for safeguards, according to a study published this week in the journal Oceanography.


Cape Cod: eight great white sharks seen feeding on humpback whale carcass

Right whales have long been known for foraging fatty crustaceans in the Gulf of Maine. But in the past decade the water there has been warming faster than 99% of the global ocean, and the whale’s main food source, which thrives in cold water, has deteriorated.

The result – based on a years-long analysis of plankton, right whale sightings and ocean temperature fluctuations – was that the species now travels north-east to the Gulf of St Lawrence in Canada to forage for food, and there is a major decline in the number of female whales reproducing.

“When they can’t build those thick layers of blubber, they’re not able to successfully get pregnant, carry the pregnancy and nurse the calf,” explained Erin Meyer-Gutbrod, an author of the study and a marine ecologist at the University of South Carolina.

She highlighted the fact that in 2009 39 calves were born, a record for the right whale. But birth rates dropped significantly starting in 2010 and in the beginning of 2018, no right whale calves were born.

A significant increase in right whales in the Gulf of St Lawrence was first observed in 2015, according to the study. The whales were probably searching for more food. But instead they found themselves facing a deadly situation.

The policies in place in the Gulf of Maine to protect the whales, including modified fishing gear and vessel speed limits, weren’t in place in the Gulf of St Lawrence. As a result, these creatures started getting hit by ships and entangled in fishing gear.

In the past decade, the population has decreased by about 26%, leaving only 356 North Atlantic right whales on Earth.

With the population reduced to such devastating numbers, in July 2020 the International Union for the Conservation of Nature reclassified the species as critically endangered.

The study, titled “Ocean Regime Shift is Driving Collapse of the North Atlantic Right Whale Population”, was initially prompted by one major right whale death event in 2017, explained Meyer-Gutbrod. In that year, 17 right whale carcasses were discovered, 12 of which were found in the Gulf of St Lawrence.

“We normally see three or four whale carcasses in a year,” she said. “So three or four to 17 is a huge jump.”

Canadian government officials implemented a crisis management plan, which initially looked to be a success when in 2018 there were no reported right whale deaths in the southern Gulf of St Lawrence, according to the study. But the following summer that number jumped again, with 10 deaths recorded.

Meyer-Gutbrod recommended rope-less fishing gear as one good way to address this situation. But on a broader scale, she said it’s important to remember that we don’t know exactly how species are going to respond to the changing climate. And as a result, officials need to increase monitoring efforts and work to predict movements when conditions change.

“What we don’t want to happen is to have the right whale shift to yet a new foraging habitat, and find ourselves unprepared again to protect them in this new environment,” she said. “So that’s true I think for right whales, and I think broadly, we need to think about other species and how they’re managed and try to be more proactive about predicting the impacts of climate change on their distribution.”

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M PRIVACY INVASION
Ireland watchdog fines WhatsApp record sum for flouting EU data rules

Messaging app calls €225m fine for breaking data protection rules ‘entirely disproportionate’

The watchdog said WhatsApp had committed ‘severe’ and ‘serious’ infringements of the general data protection regulation Photograph: Patrick Sison/AP


Rory Carroll Ireland correspondent
@rorycarroll72
Thu 2 Sep 2021 1

Ireland’s data privacy watchdog has slapped WhatsApp with a record €225m (£193m) fine for violating EU data protection rules.

The Dublin-based Data Protection Commission (DPC) announced the decision on Thursday after a three-year investigation into the messaging app, which is owned by Facebook. It ordered WhatsApp to remedy its policies to protect personal data.


WhatsApp called the fine “entirely disproportionate” and said it would appeal.

It is the biggest fine imposed by the DPC, which has pan-European powers, and the second-biggest levied against a tech company under EU laws.

The watchdog said WhatsApp had committed “severe” and “serious” infringements of the general data protection regulation (GDPR), a landmark rule on transparency that became enforceable in 2018.

“This includes information provided to data subjects about the processing of information between WhatsApp and other Facebook companies,” it said in a statement.

In the 266-page ruling the commissioner, Helen Dixon, said the company provided only 41% of prescribed information to users of its service. Non-users – whose messages sent on other apps could be forwarded to the platform by WhatsApp users – got no information, denying them the right to control their personal data.

Four “very serious” infringements violated the core of GDPR, said Dixon. “They go to the heart of the general principle of transparency and the fundamental right of the individual to protection of his/her personal data which stems from the free will and autonomy of the individual to share his/her personal data in a voluntary situation such as this.”

The violations affected an “extremely high” number of people, said the watchdog.


What is GDPR and why does the UK want to reshape its data laws?

WhatsApp, which was bought by Facebook in 2014, contested the ruling. “WhatsApp is committed to providing a secure and private service. We have worked to ensure the information we provide is transparent and comprehensive and will continue to do so. We disagree with the decision today regarding the transparency we provided to people in 2018 and the penalties are entirely disproportionate.”

The messaging app is used by a quarter of the world’s population. Since Facebook’s takeover digital rights advocates have accused Mark Zuckerberg of breaking a promise to respect the data privacy of WhatsApp users.

The DPC is the lead data privacy regulator in the EU for Facebook and other big tech firms that have their European headquarters in Ireland. Last year it had 14 major inquiries into Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, which is also owned by Facebook.

Some other European watchdogs have alleged that the Irish agency is under-resourced, slow and weak when it comes to punishing privacy breaches, accusations Dixon has rejected.

The record fine does not necessarily indicate sharper teeth in Dublin. When Dixon finished her investigation into WhatsApp last year she proposed a much more modest fine reportedly ranging from €30 to €50m.

Eight data regulators in other EU countries rejected that. The issue was referred to the European Data Protection Board (EDPB), which oversees the GDPR. It made a binding ruling in July, which the Irish watchdog must now enforce.

“This decision contained a clear instruction that required the [Irish data protection commission] to reassess and increase its proposed fine on the basis of a number of factors contained in the EDPB’s decision and following this reassessment the DPC has imposed a fine of €225m on WhatsApp,” Dixon’s office said.

“In addition to the imposition of an administrative fine, the DPC has also imposed a reprimand along with an order for WhatsApp to bring its processing into compliance by taking a range of specified remedial actions.”

John Magee, a data privacy specialist with the law firm DLA Piper, said: “An eye-catching aspect of that process was the increase in the size of the fine from a range of €30m-€50m first proposed by the DPC.

“The fine highlights the importance of compliance with the GDPR’s rules on transparency in the context of users, non-users and data sharing between group entities.”

SOUTH AFRICAN RUGBY TEAM TOURS NZ

40 years on: Photographer Ans Westra in the thick of the 1981 Springbok protest

Zoë George05:00, Aug 28 2021


ANS WESTRA/SUITE GALLERY
Police and protestors face off during the Springbok tour protest in Wellington

The 1981 images are “grunty”. They capture a moment in time that divided the country, but also brought to light the issues New Zealand was facing too.

It was August 29, the day of the second test between the All Blacks and Springboks. There had been protests up and down the country, including violent clashes in Wellington, on Molesworth Street, exactly a month before.

On this day, thousands of people were marching from all over Wellington towards Athletic Park in Newtown to protest. There were anti-tour demonstrators with placards and wearing helmets, and they were facing off against police with batons drawn.

In the middle of them was Ans Westra, a 45-year-old who had made a name for herself as a photographer, notably for her images of Māori.

She wasn’t much interested in rugby, but she was very interested in social documentary.

So on that day in 1981, Westra set out with her trusty Rolleiflex camera, and rolls upon rolls of black and white film – her preferred medium because it allowed her to focus entirely on the image or scene without distraction of colour. She headed first to the Hutt Road, then up towards the game.

She took some of the most dramatic photos of the clashes that day.

One such scene included a lineup of police with batons, poised ready to advance against protestors.

JOSEPH KELLY
Suite Gallery's David Alsop with photographer Ans Westra.

“It's a very dramatic, telling image. In isolation that is really tough content and a difficult thing for New Zealand society to handle as being something we were part of,” said David Alsop, Westra’s friend, Suite Gallery owner and archive manager. “But she captured it in such an elegant and direct, honest way, which is what she is known for.”

Westra, now 85, lives a quiet life in Wellington, but her legacy, and of what happened on that day 40 years ago, will live on through her work.

READ MORE:
* Springbok Tour 'a watershed moment' for Nelsonians on both sides of the divide
* At times unwelcome, Ans Westra documented Māori when no one else was
* New Zealand's pioneering art photographers

Westra had photographed rugby previously when the British Lions visited Athletic Park in 1971. “In one of her classic images of the All Blacks versus the British Lions ... the rugby ball is nowhere to be seen,” Alsop said.

ANS WESTRA/SUITE GALLERY/SUPPLIED
Ans Westra wasn’t interested in rugby, but photographed the All Blacks and British Lions in 1971

But the Springbok tour was something else. It brought together a key component of New Zealand culture with pressing societal questions.

“It was that event that became a catalyst for New Zealand actually trying to get our head around our own mess,” Alsop said. “The way we were able to do that was because we started to support a cause for someone else that was different, but it gave people … a voice and momentum grew from that.”

ANS WESTRA/SUITE GALLERY
Ans Westra took thousands of photos of the Springbok tour protest in Wellington

For New Zealanders old enough to remember the tour, even vaguely, the photos are a reminder of the heightened tensions at this important cultural and national moment.

“We were on one side or the other. We knew someone who was a protester or had gone to a game. It was a divisive episode for New Zealand,” Alsop said.



ANS WESTRA/SUITE GALLERY
Police with batons and helmets during the 1981 Springbok tour protest in Wellington

Two of Alsop’s other favourites involve police and protestors coming face to face. “Here Ans is at the battle-line, right in the thick of it,” he said.

ANS WESTRA/SUITE GALLERY
Ans Westra photographed the battle lines during the 1981 Springbok tour protest in Wellington

Westra was never one to shy away, Alsop said, but she knew her limits. “Ans was always courageous, and she remains that now,” he said.

“She was extremely courageous with her willingness to get into situations many people would have shied away from,” he said.

“The protests. She wasn’t scared of being there. She was staunch. If she knew she was in danger, she would have moved and avoided any tricky situations. For the most part, she rolled her sleeves up and just got in there.”

ANS WESTRA/SUITE GALLERY
Police and protestors during the 1981 Springbok tour in Wellington

Another image that speaks to Alsop is of a young boy in Newtown with a motorcycle helmet perched on his head. Newtown was a “real hotbed” of protest activity, being just a stone’s throw away from Athletic Park.

The image brought back memories of his childhood and the tour. He was just nine when the Springboks came to visit his hometown of Rotorua. He and his family liked rugby. They followed it. He came from a school that had a strong, “ingrained” rugby culture.

ANS WESTRA/SUITE GALLERY
An image from Ans Westra's 1981 collection, documenting the 1981 Springbok tour protest in Wellington.

He vividly remembers cars lining the streets close to his home in the city the day the Springboks played Bay of Plenty, of hearing stories about how people ran onto the runway at Rotorua airport trying to block the plane carrying the Springboks.

Being so young at the time of the tour, it’s almost like Alsop could put himself in the child’s shoes, imagining children watching the action, possibly from behind the safety of fences.

ANS WESTRA/SUITE GALLERY/SUPPLIED
Ans Westra photographed children who were part of the Springbok tour protest in Wellington in 1981

“I wondered if these kids knew what was going on. I wondered if they knew why people had placards. I wonder if they knew why people had cycle helmets on, cricket batting gloves on and protective items,” he said.

“The photographs show kids playing amongst the debris of the aftermath of the protests and I wondered how they felt about that and how affected those kids would have been about the events that had just unfold before their eyes.”


ANS WESTRA/SUITE GALLERY/SUPPLIED
Protestors photograhed by Ans Westra during the 1981 Springbok tour

One of Westra’s goals was to return the “precious objects” back to the subjects of her images – the New Zealand public. That’s been done through the digitisation of her images, available via the National Library online.

There’s still thousands more images to go. Alsop’s best guess is there’s between 300,000 and 350,000 in all, which will take another two to four years to digitise.

“The far-reaching aspects of it and all the benefits and opportunities that came with the project, I didn’t really have a sense of the magnitude of what we were doing when we started. Ans had always talked about returning her images to the people, and now we’ve done that,” he said.

“We’ve completed the circle through the images being digitised and accessible to the public.

“People are able to ... see families, see events, see a whole side of New Zealand they would not be able to see if we hadn’t done that work.”

Actor Jet Li rumoured to be the next star on the chopping block after Vicki Zhao

Chinese d Director Zhou Guogang speculated on Douyin that Jet Li will be cancelled soon.

PHOTO: JET LI/INSTAGRAM

Suzanne Sng
PUBLISHED AUG 31, 2021,

BEIJING - Rumours are swirling online that the next star to be blacklisted by the Chinese authorities is martial arts actor Jet Li.

A list of seven names has been circulating online in the wake of actress Vicki Zhao's scandal. Last week, all mentions of the top actress, 45, was scrubbed from the Internet.

Chinese director Zhou Guogang, who had in the past posted celebrity gossip on his Douyin account, jumped in with speculation that Li, 58, will be cancelled soon.

He called out stars such as actor Huang Xiaoming and actress Li Bingbing, who had deleted their pictures with Zhao from their Weibo accounts and sounded a warning to Li earlier this week.

"Quickly flee. Next month, the house may just collapse on you," he said.

The unverified list allegedly from China's National Radio and Television Administration claimed that there will be new restrictions on celebrities who hold foreign citizenship.

Besides Li, who holds Singapore citizenship, others on the list include actress Liu Yifei (American), actors Nicholas Tse (Canadian), Zhang Tielin (British) and Mark Chao (Canadian), and singers Will Pan (American) and Wang Leehom (American).

Zhao, who is a Singapore permanent resident, owns a vineyard in Bordeaux with her billionaire husband, Huang Youlong, and is rumoured to have fled there.

Netizens have speculated that the power couple's business association with beleaguered tech tycoon Jack Ma could be a reason for her being blacklisted.

She posted three mundane photos on Instagram on Sunday (Aug 29), with a caption which seemed to imply that she was in Beijing, but swiftly deleted them.

Later, she changed her bio to just three words in Chinese: "Ha ha ha."

Jesus Christ was world's first COMMUNIST, Russian Marxist leader Zyuganov says, repeating claim holy savior was really a socialist

2 Sep, 2021 

Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party Gennady Zyuganov after the XIII plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. © Sputnik / Mikhail Voskresensky

From casting out the moneylenders to feeding the masses and healing the poor for free, Jesus Christ's revolutionary zeal matches up with almost all of Communism's ideological values, one of Russia's top politicians has claimed.

Gennady Zyuganov, the leader of Russia's communist party, the KPRF, made the explosive comments in an interview with KP Radio on Thursday. According to him, "the first communist on the planet... was Jesus Christ.”

"Put Jesus' Sermon on the Mount and the moral code of the builder of communism side by side, and you'll simply gasp," the politician said. "You need to study the Bible, then you will understand a lot."

ALSO ON RT.COM      Russia’s Communists to stage nationwide protests against ‘political repression’ after popular party figure is BANNED from election

Zyuganov heads the country's second-largest parliamentary group, the successor to the Communist Party that governed the Soviet Union. However, not everyone disagreed with his diagnosis, with the spokesman for the Moscow branch of the Orthodox Church saying that "we do not consider it correct and appropriate to compare God incarnate with any political and economic teachings, including communism." However, he added, the Church opens its doors to supporters of all parties.

READ MORE:   Russia is becoming ‘fascist’ state due to political ‘repression’ & ‘cannibalistic’ reforms, veteran Communist leader tells Putin

The question of whether Jesus' radical opposition to established authority and his message of humility, charity and love for mankind makes him a left-wing figure is still hotly debated. However, the Orthodox Church, and religious belief in general, faced tough restrictions from the state during the Soviet era. The intellectual founder of the communist ideology, German philosopher Karl Marx, branded religion "the opium of the people," arguing that faith in an afterlife was designed to placate those living downtrodden existences.

Last year, Zyuganov proposed including a reference to 'God' in the Russian constitution, raising eyebrows among some who are used to seeing Russia's communists adhere to strictly secular lines. “Actually, in many ways, the moral code of a builder of Communism is built on the Bible,” he said at the time.

ECOCIDE

One Of The Largest US Petrochemical Plants Is Spewing Excessive Smoke After Hurricane Ida Knocked Out Its Power

Industrial sites often spew dirty gases into the air during emergency shutdowns and restarts, threatening nearby communities with smog and other pollution that can make it hard for people to breathe.

Zahra HirjiBuzzFeed News Reporter
Last updated on September 2, 2021

Patrick T. Fallon / AFP via Getty Images
Vehicles drive past the petrol chemical plant near Highway 61 in Norco, Louisiana, on Aug. 30, 2021, after Hurricane Ida made landfall.

A massive Royal Dutch Shell manufacturing complex in Louisiana’s St. Charles Parish is releasing nonstop plumes of smoke into the air after Hurricane Ida knocked out its power.

Local, state, and federal officials are monitoring the incident.

The plumes of smoke at Shell’s Norco plant are just one of a growing number of sources of industrial pollution slowly coming into view across the Gulf Coast following the Category 4 hurricane’s devastating blow to the region.

Ida washed out roads, flattened homes and businesses, felled trees, and knocked out power for roughly 1 million people, including the entire city of New Orleans. At least seven people died in the region due to the storm.

At this point, Shell is not saying much about the problems plaguing the Norco facility, one of the largest petrochemical plants in the country.

In response to questions from BuzzFeed News, an oil company spokesperson declined to say what gases are being released or what amount of emissions have already gone into the air.

The company also did not share a timeline for when the plumes of black smoke would stop.

“While the site remains safe and secure, we are experiencing elevated flaring,” Curtis Smith, a Shell spokesperson, told BuzzFeed News in an email. “We expect this to continue until power is restored.”

When it’s up and running, Shell’s combined refinery and chemical plant in Norco processes about 250,000 barrels of crude oil and 170,000 barrels of gasoline a day, in addition to generating billions of pounds of ethylene, propylene, and other chemicals.

Like other refineries and industrial sites along the Gulf Coast, Shell shut down the plant ahead of Ida’s landfall.


Patrick T. Fallon / AFP via Getty Images

Smoke from flaring operations a refinery in Norco, Louisiana, drifts on the horizon with clouds as homes stand in a neighborhood that experienced flooding in LaPlace, Louisiana, on Aug. 30, 2021, in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida.

Industrial sites often spew dirty gases into the air during emergency shutdowns and restarts, threatening nearby communities with smog and other pollution that can make it hard for people to breathe.

Back in 2017, Hurricane Harvey led to Texas chemical and petroleum plants releasing a year’s worth of pollution in a matter of days and weeks, according to a BuzzFeed News analysis.

According to Shell’s Norco permit, some flaring in emergency situations is allowed, but it's unclear whether the current emission levels exceed what’s allowable under the permit.

“Shell Norco is flaring,” Gregory Langley, press secretary of Louisiana’s Department of Environmental Quality, told BuzzFeed News in an email. “When there is an emergency condition, they are allowed to do this under their permit.”

That being said, Langley added, “The flares at Shell Norco are large and produce some smoke.”

Starting Thursday, Louisiana’s environmental officials will monitor Norco’s air quality using what’s called a Mobile Air Monitoring Laboratory.

The Environmental Protection Agency is also sending a special plane to help monitor local air emissions in Norco, agency press secretary Nick Conger told BuzzFeed News in an email. EPA has received reports of the facility flaring four types of noxious gas: butadiene, benzene, hydrogen sulfide, and hydrogen, Conger added.

“Excessive smoke seen in the community is a result of a lack of electricity” at the plant, EPA officials wrote in an incident summary posted online Wednesday afternoon.

They noted that Shell is conducting its own air monitoring along the Norco fence line and in the surrounding community, reporting that information to emergency officials in St. Charles Parish, and company engineers “are looking at all options to try to reduce emissions to flare.”

St. Charles Parish officials did not immediately respond to questions from BuzzFeed News. Shell also declined to provide information about its air monitoring results to BuzzFeed News.

Norco residents say the current flaring levels aren’t normal.

“This is bad,” Norco resident Peter Anderson told DeSmog. “I have never seen this many flares.”

Beyond Norco, Shell is still assessing whether Ida damaged a chemical plant in Geismar, Louisiana, as well as any of the company’s floating platforms and other infrastructure used for extracting fossil fuels offshore in the Gulf of Mexico.

Ongoing power outages, widespread storm debris, and impassable roads are complicating the ability of companies and government officials to quickly identify environmental impacts, such as emission releases and spills, triggered by the storm.

At least 138 major industrial sites are located in parishes hit hard by Ida, according to the New York Times.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the EPA had received 28 reports of possible spills and pollution events in places hit by Ida, including 17 possible air pollution incidents. None of them have so far required the EPA to do on-the-ground assessments.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reported on Wednesday that there’s a mileslong black slick of oil near an oil rig in Gulf waters. The spill was identified using aerial imagery.

UPDATE
September 2, 2021
This story has been updated to include a response from the Environmental Protection Agency, noting that officials have received reports detailing how four types of gases are being flared at the Norco plant and how the agency is deploying a plane to monitor local air emissions.

Feds responding to reports of oil, chemical spills after Ida

NOT CLEANING UP JUST LOOKING

By MICHAEL BIESECKER

This image provided by NOAA taken Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2021 and reviewed by The Associated Press shows oil slicks at the flooded Phillips 66 Alliance Refinery in Belle Chasse, La. State and federal regulators responded to the spill site after AP provided the photos of the spill Wednesday and the company acknowledged a "sheen of unknown origin" at its flooded refinery. (NOAA via AP)


WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal and state agencies say they are responding to reports of oil and chemical spills resulting from Hurricane Ida following the publication of aerial photos by The Associated Press.

Environmental Protection Agency spokesman Nick Conger said Thursday that a special aircraft carrying photographic and chemical detection equipment was dispatched from Texas to Louisiana to fly over the area hard hit by the Category 4 storm, including a Phillips 66 refinery along the Mississippi River where the AP first reported an apparent oil spill on Wednesday.

Coast Guard spokesman Petty Officer 3rd Class Gabriel Wisdom said Thursday that its aircraft has also flown over the refinery, as well as to the Gulf of Mexico. The AP published photos of a miles-long brownish-black slick in the waters south of Port Fourchon, Louisiana.

Photos captured by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration aircraft Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2021 and reviewed by The Associated Press show a miles long black slick floating in the Gulf of Mexico near a large rig marked with the name Enterprise Offshore Drilling. The company, based in Houston, did not immediately respond to requests for comment by phone or email on Wednesday. EPA officials said Wednesday hey were unaware of any leak requiring a federal response. (NOAA via AP)

The AP first reported the possible spills Wednesday after reviewing aerial images of the disaster zone taken by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Ida made landfall Sunday, its eyewall carving through Louisiana with 150 mph winds and a storm surge so powerful it temporarily reversed the flow of the mighty Mississippi.

The NOAA photos showed a black and brown slick floating near a large rig with the name Enterprise Offshore Drilling painted on its helipad. The company, based in Houston, said Thursday that its Enterprise 205 rig was safely secured and evacuated prior to the storm’s arrival and that it did not suffer any damage.

“Enterprise personnel arrived back at the facility on September 1 and confirmed the integrity of all systems and that no environmental discharges occurred from our facility,” the company said in a statement.

Sandy Day, spokesperson for the U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, which regulates oil rigs, confirmed it had received a report Wednesday about which the oil spill the AP had published photos. But the location was inside state waters, rather than the federal jurisdiction farther offshore.

Patrick Courreges, spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources, said his agency had no way to physically investigate the spill.

“It’s going to be awhile for us before we can make our way out there,” Courreges said Thursday. ”We don’t have planes, helicopters or Gulf-seaworthy boats.”

Aerial photos taken by an NOAA aircraft Tuesday also showed significant flooding to the massive Phillips 66 Alliance Refinery in Belle Chasse, Louisiana. In some sections of the refinery, a rainbow sheen and black streaks were visible on the water leading toward the river.

In statements issued Monday and Tuesday, Phillips 66 said “some water” was inside the refinery, but did not respond to questions about environmental hazards.

Only after the AP sent the company photos Wednesday showing extensive flooding and what appeared to be petroleum in the water, the company confirmed it had “discovered a sheen of unknown origin in some flooded areas of Alliance Refinery.”

“At this time, the sheen appears to be secured and contained within refinery grounds,” Phillips 66 spokesman Bernardo Fallas said Wednesday evening, three days after the hurricane blew through. “Clean-up crews are on site. The incident was reported to the appropriate regulatory agencies upon discovery.”

Though Fallas characterized the spill as a “sheen of unknown origin,” the report Phillips 66 made to Louisiana regulators Wednesday called it “heavy oil in floodwater,” according to a state call log provided to the AP. The log also contained a call from an oyster harvester concerned that water contamination from the refinery was fouling environmentally sensitive beds downriver.

Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality spokesman Greg Langley said Wednesday that a state assessment team was sent to the refinery and observed an on-site oil spill being addressed with booms and absorbent pads. A levee meant to protect the plant had breached, allowing floodwaters to flow in during the storm and then back out as the surge receded.

Langley said there was no estimate available for how much oil might have spilled from the refinery.

Louisiana regulators were tracking about 100 reports of chemical and petroleum spills statewide as of Wednesday. The reports ranged from sunken boats leaking diesel to overturned fuel tanks and flooded oil pipelines, according to the call log. Several chemical manufacturers also reported venting or flaring off toxic chemicals due to losing electricity.

Stephanie Morris, spokesperson for the Louisiana Oil Spill Coordinator’s Office, said that four days after Ida hit, state regulators were still in the very early stages of responding to the environmental hazards spawned by the storm. She said a state aircraft had been flying over the affected area, focusing more on identifying ongoing threats than quantifying what had already leaked into the water and air.

“We’re in what we call the rapid assessment phase, because we are trying to assess it from the air,” Morris said. “We’re just getting a sense of what’s out there and locations. We don’t have a sense yet of what the sources of sheens might be or volumes.”

___

Follow AP Investigative Reporter Michael Biesecker at http://twitter.com/mbieseck

___

Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org.

Ohio Republican claims Afghan refugees could 'infiltrate' US government like 'America-hating' Ilhan Omar

Matthew Chapman
September 02, 2021

Facebook


On Thursday, former Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel — a leading candidate for the state's Republican nomination for Senate — fired off a racist screed against Afghan refugees on Twitter, following a report that some could be resettled in Cleveland.

"This is exactly how we ended up with America-hating, Christian-hating, Jew-hating, Ilhan Omar infiltrating the U.S. government," said Mandel — referring to the Somali-American congresswoman from Minnesota who came to America as a refugee at a young age.

Mandel, who previously lost a Senate race against Democrat Sherrod Brown in 2012 and is now seeking the vacant seat from retiring Rob Portman by boasting of his allegiance to former President Donald Trump, has repeatedly come under fire for racist rhetoric.

In March, he was briefly suspended from Twitter after polling his followers on which "type of illegals" will commit the most crimes: "Muslim Terrorists" or "Mexican Gangbangers." He has focused particularly on Omar, calling for her to be deported.

The real reason abortion opponents also hate mask and vaccine mandates
John Stoehr
September 02, 2021

President Donald Trump's campaign rally on August 22, 2017 (Photo: Screen capture)

I received this morning a message via Twitter from a very well-known television news host. It seemed to be regarding yesterday's column about what I think is the proper place of abortion in American politics. It isn't a fight for the sanctity of life or "life" or what have you, I said. It is a fight against democratic modernity itself. Here is their response:

Focus on this: when does a "person" begin? That is the question. We have no consensus. We evolved on the question of when life ends that fostered much of the law around demise … That's the real issue here. And Roe was never the best-reasoned decision.

This response suggests that this very well-known television news host did not get the gist of my piece. Or perhaps they did not want to. In any case, if I were to believe that the question of life's beginning is the "real question" and the "real issue," I'd be restricting myself from considering a whole range of knowledge, history and argument, including the fact that few but Catholics cared about abortion for most of American history. It did not become a political issue until Americans organized themselves to force it to become a political issue. Why would I or anyone ignore that in favor of a carefully designed and narrow question the answer to which privileges anti-abortionists?

When you expand the question — from one of "morality" (and I'll get to why I put that word on quotes in a moment) to one of politics — you can make enough room to see that the question of consensus is a question built on sand. There may be no consensus about when "life" begins, but there's damn well consensus about individual liberty. Most Americans are for it. There may be no consensus about when a person becomes a person, but there's damn well consensus about forcing individuals to subordinate themselves (or their bodies, in the case of abortion) to an authoritarian collective. Most Americans are against it. Imagine a political debate over abortion that's actually political.

Restricting politics to one of "morality" makes pro-choice Americans seem immoral, even downright evil. That's the point! And that's why I put "morality" in quotes. In yesterday's column, I tried to make clear that while anti-abortionists say they believe in the sanctity of life, or say they believe an embryo is a person, they do not really believe this. How do I know? If individuals mattered as much as they say they matter, a half-century-old anti-abortion movement would not exist. As I said: "The authoritarian collective that comprises it requires that the needs of individuals be expendable compared to the interests and needs of the collective. If the authoritarian collective really believed in the sanctity of the individual's life, such respect would threaten the integrity of the hierarchies of power that literally define the anti-abortionist's life. Such respect would mean psychic death."

Yes, it's authoritarian. Yes, it's a collective. (I explain why in yesterday's column.) And yes, individuals are expendable. That individuals are indeed expendable means anti-abortionists don't mean what they say. (It also means the very well-known television news host who asked me to focus on the "real question" is a dupe or a patsy or both.) Even as they say life is precious, life is expendable, even disposable. This fact is abundantly clear in all kinds of ways when you expand the frame of the debate over abortion. The poor are disposable. Racial and sexual minorities are disposable. Of course, in the case of abortion, women are disposable. (Though, to be sure, abortion will be accessible to any woman of means.) Even the authoritarian men and women who make up the authoritarian collective are disposable. I don't think anything illustrates that better than the GOP response to the covid pandemic.

You'll have noticed by now that anti-vax Republicans are dying in droves. That's OK from the point of view of the authoritarian collective. If sacrificing a few of their number ends up sabotaging the president's effort to bring the country out of the pandemic — if it makes room for the new delta variant to mutate and spread — then such sacrifice is worth it. It could create conditions by which a majority of the American people blame Joe Biden and his party, and return the Republicans to power in the 2022 midterms. Why do many of the same people who desire bans on abortion also desire bans on vaccine and mask mandates? The link isn't "freedom." That's the lie they tell themselves and everyone. The link is the preservation and expansion of the authoritarian collective at the expense of individuals. They accuse pro-choice Americans of being evil as means of covering up the barbarous flesh-eating reality of their larger political project.

As for the very well-known television news host, I'm not naming them for their sake. I don't think they're biased in any ideological way (though I should make room for that being the case if so). The reason I mention them at all is because their response to me is example of the tight framing of the abortion debate among members of the Washington press corps that in effect favors the anti-abortionists and covers up the Republican Party's gothic politics. As I said, there's plenty of consensus in this country if you know how to find it.

Right-wing hysteria has reached a boiling point
History News Network
September 02, 2021

(Shutterstock.com)

Although right-wingers like Rudy Giuliani argue that left-wing cancel culture is dangerous to free speech, the ongoing right-wing movement to ban Critical Race Theory (CRT) from school curriculums fits into the right's long history of attacks on progressives' free speech. The Texas Senate bill removing Martin Luther King, Jr's "I Have a Dream" speech, Native American history, and the history of white supremacy from public school curriculums may be blocked from passing right now, but it has made waves throughout the internet. This bill comes amidst nationwide right-wing outrage over CRT, which Fox News reportedly mentioned nearly 1300 times between March and June this year.

This hysteria reached a boiling point last month when a Virginia school board meeting was shut down by right-wing protestors over a curriculum that allegedly promotes CRT, although Loudoun County Schools officials publicly stated that CRT is not part of their curriculum. The ongoing distress over CRT is fueled by a massive, right-wing media-backed movement to control school curriculums. Fox News host Tucker Carlson, for example, recently called for teachers to wear body cameras to monitor CRT teaching, despite previously arguing in favor of free speech on campuses.

The panic over CRT may seem to have come out of nowhere, with media coverage of it skyrocketing in recent months, but progressive movements in academia have caused alarm for decades. This began with conspiracy theories about critical theory (CT), a method of systemic critique which was the predecessor of CRT. These conspiracy theories focus on the developers of CT, the Frankfurt School thinkers, who were mostly Jewish, and claim that they infiltrated American universities with the goal of destroying Western culture and implementing "Cultural Marxism."

While these theories may seem far-fetched, they are still promoted today by right-wing thinkers like Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson. Frankfurt School historian Martin Jay traced these conspiracy theories back to LaRouche movement writer Michael Minnicino's essay that relies on little to no source material to make false, exaggerated claims. Minnicino claims, without evidence, that "the heirs of Marcuse and Adorno completely dominate the universities" and teach their students "'Politically Correct' ritual exercises." The essay reduces the Frankfurt School's complex "intellectual history into a sound-bite sized package available to be plugged into a paranoid narrative," according to Jay. Despite the suspicious beginnings of this conspiracy theory, right-wing thinkers like Jeffrey A. Tucker and Mike Gonzalez continue to blame the Frankfurt School thinkers for today's attacks on free speech, going as far as to suggest executive action to prevent their influence.

While the evidence supporting CT conspiracy theories is dubious, there is historical evidence to suggest that the Frankfurt School thinkers were far too divided to have devised such a world-changing plot. One must only look towards Adorno and Marcuse's final letters to each other—their correspondence on the German student movement in the 1960s—to see these divisions on full display.

In these letters, the two thinkers debated whether it was justified for Adorno to have called the police on a group of students who occupied his classroom demanding that he engage in self-criticism. While Adorno dismisses the students and their demands as "pure Stalinism," Marcuse aligns himself with the students and their goals, finding it more helpful to aid the movement than disparage it. These thinkers differ in one key aspect: while Marcuse finds solidarity with the students in their goals, and is less concerned with how they achieve them, Adorno is repulsed by the means. How can a group that cannot even agree on which movements are good for society have possibly conducted such a mass, societal shift? The historical, fact-based evidence makes it clear—they didn't.

Some figures on the right have cancelled the Frankfurt School, reducing their complex history into buzzwords, and rendering their ideas meaningless. This is just one example of how right-wing figures cancel things that counter their worldview through misinformation. CT conspiracy theories fit with former Trump advisor Sebastian Gorka's claim that the Green New Deal will take your hamburgers, despite the proposal making no mention of meat. The theories also fit with the Governor of South Dakota Kristi Noem's claim that we need to defend the "soul of our nation" against gay rapper Lil Nas X, just because he released Satan-themed shoes. We saw this pattern of regressive fear-mongering at its worst last month when there were two-stabbings at a protest at a Los Angeles spa, spurred by a transphobic hoax. There is a pattern of misinformed reactionary cancelling in which even former President Barack Obama has been tied to the recent outrage over CRT. And these cancelling efforts clearly have had a wide-reaching effect, with 26 states making steps against CRT just recently.

Although reactionary cancelling is doing some damage, we can fight it through progressive cancelling. While reactionary cancelling serves oppression, pushing racist, anti-Semitic, or homophobic agendas, progressive cancelling advocates consequences for socially unjust actions and amplifies marginalized voices.

In his essay "Repressive Tolerance", Marcuse says that to realize universal tolerance, we first need to escape from our repressive society. One part of doing this is, instead of tolerating all opinions equally, to retract tolerance from opinions that perpetuate violence and oppression. Marcuse calls on us to fight the forces that serve oppression. We cannot play into the pocket of the oppressor like the Loudoun School Board meeting protestors. Instead, we must resist oppression like the 1960s student protestors who used progressive cancelling against perceived injustices like the United States' involvement in Vietnam.

Progressive cancelling is the same form of cancelling that hit J.K. Rowling, Harvey Weinstein, or even Christopher Columbus—one that centers marginalized people and says "enough" to violence and oppression. On a wide-enough scale, we could achieve what Marcuse called a "Great Refusal." To change our societal trajectory to one towards Marcuse's "opposite of hell," we need to fight reactionary cancelling through progressive cancelling.


Leah Allen is Assistant Professor of Gender, Women's and Sexuality Studies at Grinnell College.

This article was originally published at History News Network