Saturday, September 25, 2021

“We are unstoppable!” Some of the lessons from Occupy Wallstreet, 10 years later

“One of the main contributions of Occupy was ‘the 99 percent.’”

September 24, 2021

For many, it began as a meme. A picture of a dancer perched on top of the statue sometimes called the Bowling Green Bull located on Broadway within New York’s financial district. The poster bore the message, “What is our one demand?” above the image and, “Occupy Wallstreet, September 17th, Bring tent”, below it. The poster was created by Adbusters Magazine on Canada’s west coast and spread widely online and on growing social media platforms along with the hashtag, #OccupyWallStreet, which began to circulate in July of 2011.

When the day arrived, dozens of activists found the area around the bull and One Chase Plaza had been barricaded by authorities so they set up close by, in Zuccotti Park. Over the coming days their numbers grew so much that they could no longer be ignored by corporate media, although many did their best to dismiss or belittle the protesters, focusing especially on the occupiers insistence that the movement was and would remain leaderless. It then spread to other cities and across borders, an American Autumn following the Arab Spring that had created so much, unfortunately unrealized, hope for change in that part of the world.

Somewhat ironically, the one demand referenced in the poster would never be made clear. Instead, a variety of causes from ending economic inequality, addressing America’s student debt crisis, stopping foreign interventions and many others would become part of the conversation as people gathered at the encampments that sprang up until police in New York ended the experiment a little less than two months later on November 15th. Most other encampments both inside and outside of the country were closed with varying levels of police violence soon after.

During those weeks at least 100 working groups were formed at Zuccotti to look at the issues and General Assemblies took place using the formal consensus model in the hope of giving every participant a voice. Denied the use of amplification, activists created the ‘human microphone’, which had listeners loudly repeat a speakers’ words so that all would hear them, another innovation adopted widely as the movement spread.

The use of formal consensus, especially when almost complete unanimity was called for as it was in some places, created its own problems, not the least of which was the willingness on the part of some to hijack the proceedings for their own purposes or amusement. Then there was the constant drumming, which seemed to be an especially big problem at Zuccotti, where the voices of other Occupiers were drowned out and those living close by were driven to distraction by the noise that began early most mornings and lasted far into the night.

Nonetheless, in reading reminiscences of the weeks before the encampments were dismantled I was reminded of the feelings of hope and community I felt here at Occupy Montreal and in streams that were coming out of encampments far and wide. It was an experience that has colored my approach to life and politics ever since. It even created new media spaces like this one and gave energy (and a slogan) to the first real progressive challenger to the status quo in American politics in generations, Bernie Sanders, many of whose most enthusiastic staffers and volunteers in 2016 had been Occupiers themselves.

While the Occupiers produced many powerful slogans, organizer Yotam Marom made a good argument in The Nation about which has had the biggest impact in the years since, “One of the main contributions of Occupy was “the 99 percent.” That was one of the major gifts. It was the first time, in my life at least, that class was being put on the table, front and center, without any equivocation, and that was a huge gift to the left, that it became popular and clear and simple. A bunch of things that got replicated and spread were incredible.”

For a leaderless movement, Occupy produced many leaders that have gone on to find their niches on the progressive left in the United States and abroad, including one of the founders of the Sunrise Movement and many of those in the Justice Democrats and the growing Democratic Socialists of America who have helped bring new voices like Rashida Tlaib and Cori Bush into the country’s congress.

Despite the successes, the movement also failed in some ways. Outside of large encampments like those in New York, Washington D.C., Oakland and London, England, Occupy wasn’t as diverse as many hoped. Having said this, attempts were made to center marginalized groups like using what was called the ‘progressive stack’ to ensure that these voices would be heard.

As activists faced police repression there seemed to be a growing awareness that this was part of everyday life for marginalized groups and this has led many former Occupiers to join these struggles in the years since, something that was evident at Standing Rock a few years later.

While the right painted the Occupiers as ‘communists’ and ‘anarchists’, the faux populists who have since taken over many conservative parties in wealthier countries seem to have learned more from the movement than the moderates and self described liberals who were so quick to dismiss it. Although clearly insincere, leaders like Steve Bannon helped fashion a message about a forgotten working class and forever wars that could have come out of Occupy.

As Michelle Crentsil recently told Jonathan Smucker of the Intercept, “When Occupy named the crisis, the Democratic Party didn’t do anything to translate that into building power. They got scared and were like, ‘Oh, what if this gets too out of control? Oh no, the socialists are out.’ But the right was figuring out how to use it to catapult themselves into power.”

One aspect of the occupations that has mostly been forgotten is the way that law enforcement responded, especially in the United States, where federal authorities worked not only with state and local police as we might expect, but in New York especially, with corporate security whose bosses clearly had their own reasons for wanting to see the encampment and almost daily protest marches brought to an end.

After leaked FBI files showed the scope of the cooperation, Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Executive Director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund explained, “These documents show that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are treating protests against the corporate and banking structure of America as potential criminal and terrorist activity. These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America.”

The links between these private security forces and police at all levels would become even more obvious during Standing Rock, which had its own encampments. Worse, a private security company, Tigerswan, put their own undercover agents at some of the camps and described peaceful protesters as dangerous terrorists internally according to documents obtained by the Intercept.

More recently, at least in part as a response to short lived encampments used as a tactic by the environmental group Extinction Rebellion in the UK, Boris Johnson’s government has banned them as part of their Police,Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. Intentional or not, this has also criminalized the lifestyle of the country’s Roma and Traveller communities.

I took the title for this story from a chant featured in a documentary I watched recently, “We are unstoppable, another world is possible!” At the time this seemed true and it still echoes today in the movements and voices of progressive politicians that have come after Occupy, a movement that in the end succeeded much more than it failed.

Nuclear waste interaction in the environment may be more complicated than once thought

by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists and collaborators proposed a new mechanism by which nuclear waste could spread in the environment.

The new findings, that involve researchers at Penn State and Harvard Medical School, have implications for nuclear waste management and environmental chemistry. The research is published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

"This study relates to the fate of nuclear materials in nature, and we stumbled upon a previously unknown mechanism by which certain radioactive elements could spread in the environment," said LLNL scientist and lead author Gauthier Deblonde. "We show that there are molecules in nature that were not considered before, notably proteins like 'lanmodulin' that could have a strong impact on radioelements that are problematic for nuclear waste management, such as americium, curium, etc."

Past and present nuclear activities (energy, research, weapon tests) have increased the urgency to understand the behavior of radioactive materials in the environment. Nuclear wastes containing actinides (e.g. plutonium, americium, curium, neptunium...) are particularly problematic as they remain radioactive and toxic for thousands of years.

However, very little is known about the chemical form of these elements in the environment, forcing scientists and engineers to use models to predict their long-term behavior and migration patterns. Thus far, these models have only considered interactions with small natural compounds, mineral phases and colloids, and the impact of more complex compounds like proteins has been largely ignored. The new study demonstrates that a type of protein that is abundant in nature vastly outcompetes molecules that scientists previously considered as the most problematic in terms of actinide migration in the environment.

"The recent discovery that some bacteria specifically use rare earth elements has opened new areas of biochemistry with important technological applications and potential implications for actinide geochemistry, because of chemical similarities between the rare earths and actinides" said Joseph Cotruvo Jr., Penn State assistant professor and co-corresponding author on the paper.

The protein called lanmodulin is a small and abundant protein in many rare earth-utilizing bacteria. It was discovered by the Penn State members of the team in 2018. While the Penn State and LLNL team has studied in detail how this remarkable protein works and how it can be applied to extract rare earths, the protein's relevance to radioactive contaminants in the environment was previously unexplored.

"Our results suggest that lanmodulin, and similar compounds, play a more important role in the chemistry of actinides in the environment than we could have imagined," said LLNL scientist Annie Kersting. "Our study also points to the important role that selective biological molecules can play in the differential migration patterns of synthetic radioisotopes in the environment."

"The study also shows for the first time that lanmodulin prefers the actinide elements over any other metals, including the rare earth elements, an interesting property than could be used for novel separation processes," said LLNL scientist Mavrik Zavarin.

Rare earth element biochemistry is a very recent field that Penn State and LLNL have helped to pioneer, and the new work is the first to explore how the environmental chemistry of actinides may be linked to nature's use of rare earth elements. Lanmodulin's higher affinity for actinides might even mean that rare earth-utilizing organisms that are ubiquitous in nature may preferentially incorporate certain actinides into their biochemistry, according to Deblonde.

New sensor detects valuable rare earth element terbium from non-traditional sources

More information: Gauthier J.-P. Deblonde et al, Characterization of Americium and Curium Complexes with the Protein Lanmodulin: A Potential Macromolecular Mechanism for Actinide Mobility in the Environment, Journal of the American Chemical Society (2021). DOI: 10.1021/jacs.1c07103

Journal information: Journal of the American Chemical Society

Provided by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

The never ending cycle of nuclear insanity

Please repeat after me: No excuses. No compromise. No fear.

John Rachel

September 24, 2021

SOURCENationofChange

Amidst all of the sensible and sane cries to eliminate nuclear weapons, we are caught in a self-sustaining, self-reinforcing feedback loop. Call it the Death Spiral of Human Annihilation.

Yes, the U.S. throughout its history, despite official denials even among historians who should know better — maybe they do but prefer being manufacturers of myth rather than chroniclers of history — has been territorial, possessive and aggressive. The Monroe Doctrine declared the entire Western hemisphere as America’s backyard. The U.S. was hardly shy about grabbing as much as it could from Spain at the end of the Spanish-American War, lands as far away as the Philippines. Through treaties and hard-headed diplomacy, it has effectively turned most European nations, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, and Japan into vassal states, which promote and serve the interests of the U.S., including using their military assets and personnel to take to the battlefield in undeclared wars and provocations against those countries the U.S. perceives as enemies or obstacles to its imperial rule.

This is not particularly extraordinary or surprising. Competition defines and drives much of what goes on between countries, each nation vying for advantage and improvements in its own standing and accumulation, regardless of what hardships it might impose on other countries and their populations. Thus U.S. adventurism and colonization was pretty much business-as-usual for much of its history, as it was for every other ambitious nation on the rise.

However, beyond predictable overt aggressiveness, it was at the end of and immediately after WWII that a seismic change occurred in Washington DC that has elevated our country to become the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world” and propelled the entire planet toward the unstable, chaotic mess we now find ourselves in.

Politically there was the marginalization of Henry Wallace, and the installation of Harry Truman as president. Institutionally it was the creation of the extremely independent security organization, the CIA, as successor to the OSS (Office of Security Services). Programmatically, it was bringing 1600 Nazi scientists into the U.S. under Operation Paperclip. Economically, it was the continuation of a war economy and the expansion of the MIC — the military industrial complex — cementing in place the core elements of “forever war” even in times of peace. Dwight D. Eisenhower saw what was happening and in January 1961 warned the country of the dangers of this in his farewell speech.

The U.S. pursuit of empire and global hegemony now had the mechanisms, the funding, the know-how, the institutional momentum, the “right stuff”, to take the world stage. All of the toxic premises and preconditions were now circulating in the bloodstream of the military and diplomatic channels, a cocktail of pathogens for the madness that infected and captivated those in power, and still does to this day.

This virulence culminated in the 90s with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The U.S. turned its back on an unprecedented historical opportunity, the chance for peace and cooperation on a global scale, one that had the potential of initiating a millennium where wars were the rare exception, and the colonial power struggle paradigm would be consigned to history books. Instead, it embraced the “end of history”, a baseless claim of ultimate superiority and entitlement based on America’s victory over the world’s only other superpower.

By the late 90s the U.S. pulled out all of the stops. It would leave no technology untapped, no opportunity unexploited, no promise or treaty unbroken, UN resolutions and world opinion be damned, international law deemed irrelevant. The trajectory we are now on was set in stone. It’s our way or bombs away.

Let’s not get distracted or deluded by claims of noble intent and appeals to the twisted logic of empire.

And our mental discipline starts with our never ever forgetting who started this mess. And thus who must take the lead in fixing it.

Dropping the atomic bombs on Japan sent a message to the world, particularly the Soviet Union.

“We have the ultimate weapon and we will use it. Don’t mess with us, don’t doubt our resolve, no one can stop us.”

The Soviet Union had no choice. Either develop a sufficient nuclear potential to counter that of the U.S. or be held hostage to bullying and coercion.

That unfortunate dynamic unleashed a nuclear arms race that at one point saw enough nuclear weaponry in the stockpiles of the U.S. and the USSR, to destroy the planet 50 times over. This madness has been tempered slightly with treaties but it’s still insanity by any rational measure. Russia and the U.S. still have over 13,000 nuclear weapons — much more powerful and “usable” than when they were at peak numerical levels — and other nuclear nations add another 1,125 to the mix. This is an improvement. The same improvement we could claim if a person only got shot 14 times instead of 50 times. The coroner’s work reconstructing the body for viewing might be a little easier. Should we count our blessings?

Listen, folks. It’s on us! Both the U.S. as a nation and the U.S. as citizens. There’s no passing the buck here, not when the survival of life on Earth is at stake.

Until the U.S. steps forward and leads the effort, nuclear warfare will always be with us. And annihilation of the human species will always hover over us as a real, increasingly probable result.

Moreover, please never forget: Those now in power will never backtrack on this suicidal course. It is what defines them, drives them. It’s as much a part of them as their hearts and brains and the void where their souls would be if they weren’t morally bankrupt, sociopathic mutants.

The only way we’ll have peace is if we REMOVE FROM POWER every single one of the warmongers.

No excuses. No compromise. No fear.

I recommend a massive awakening of 150-200 million U.S. citizens as to the personal costs of war, the inevitable product of: our military adventurism and expansion; our endless, unnecessary, illegal, immoral wars; our completely wasteful procurement of unneeded weapon systems, upgrading our nuclear arsenal, now putting weapons is space in violation of existing treaties; a commitment without the approval of the citizenry to “full- spectrum dominance”, i.e. world rule by an unchallengeable empire.

For decades the DOD and their rah-rah imperialists in office have had a blank check. And like anyone with a blank check, they’ve spent OUR MONEY with wild abandon. THIS is a strategy for defunding the military just enough so that it can properly defend our nation and its people, but no longer use everyday citizens as an ATM machine for its delusional, monomaniacal pursuit of hegemony over the entire planet. We the people never voted for this psychopathic agenda, one which smacks of master race conquest. THIS MECHANISM will sufficiently drain the Treasury so that unnecessary DOD spending is impossible, and most importantly, extricate the crazies from the toxic dump they’ve turned our once-democratic institutions into.

Please repeat after me: No excuses. No compromise. No fear.

Aussie/UK/US pact threatens global efforts to stem spread of nukes

A “terrible decision” for nuclear non-proliferation

On September 15, 2021 the American, British and Australian leaders announced a new strategic partnership, with the acronym AUKUS, intended to improve security in the Indo-Pacific.

President Biden stated:

Today, we’re taking another historic step to deepen and formalize cooperation among all three of our nations, because we all recognize the imperative of ensuring peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific over the long term.

This partnership comes with the further “bombshell” announcement that the United States and the UK will transfer highly sensitive nuclear-propulsion technology to Australia. Writing in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, in an article entitled The new Australia, UK, and US nuclear submarine announcement: a terrible decision for the non-proliferation regime, Sébastien Philippe states:

Such a decision is a fundamental policy reversal for the United States, which has in the past spared no effort to thwart the transfer of naval reactor technology by other countries, except for its World War II partner, the United Kingdom….
If not reversed one way or another, the AUKUS decision could have major implications for the nonproliferation (sic) regime.

Philippe recalls American opposition to Canadian efforts in the 1980s to acquire French or British nuclear-powered submarines, although he overstates the role of the USA in Canada’s cancellation of the programme.

RI President Peggy Mason, then working in the office of Foreign Minister Joe Clark, comments:

The arrogant, heavy-handed American reaction gave Canadian nuclear-powered sub proponents the rallying cry of “arctic sovereignty”, making it harder for those of us within the Foreign Ministry opposed to this plan on non-proliferation grounds to make our case.
What ultimately killed the deal, however, was the spiralling cost since neither the French nor the British had under-ice capable submarines.

On the content of the nuclear non-proliferation concerns that were conveyed to Canada at the time by officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Philippe explains:

[T]he nonproliferation treaty has a well-known loophole: non-nuclear weapon states can remove fissile materials from international control for use in non-weapon military applications, specifically to fuel nuclear submarine reactors. These reactors require a significant amount of uranium to operate. Moreover, to make them as compact as possible, most countries operate their naval reactors with nuclear-weapon-usable highly enriched uranium (HEU) fuel.
With tons of weapons-grade uranium out of international safeguards, what could go wrong?

Arms control experts have long been concerned about the naval propulsion loophole, particularly when Brazil in the 1960s began its long (and still-ongoing) effort to acquire nuclear-propelled submarines.

Whether it is Brazil or Australia that is first to deploy a nuclear-powered naval submarine, that country will be the first non-nuclear weapons state party to the NPT to remove fissile material — uranium — from international safeguards to non-monitored military use.

Potential cascading effects of this decision

Philippe speculates on the potential demonstration effect of this action by Australia, heretofore considered a staunch defender of the nuclear non-proliferation regime. Among the highly negative effects he outlines are:

France may relax its position on not transferring naval reactor technology to Brazil as they continue to help that country build its first nuclear-powered attack submarine;
South Korea may ask the USA or other nations for an arrangement similar to Australia’s, citing threats from North Korea;
Russia could begin new naval reactor cooperation with China to boost that country’s submarine capabilities; and
Nuclear-armed India and Pakistan could explore new transfer opportunities in relation to this technology.

Note that Iran in 2012 expressed interest in enriching uranium to HEU levels for a possible submarine programme.

Philippe concludes:

Until now, it was the US commitment to nonproliferation that relentlessly crushed or greatly limited these aspirations toward nuclear-powered submarine technology.
With the new AUKUS decision, we can now expect the proliferation of very sensitive military nuclear technology in the coming years, with literally tons of new nuclear materials under loose or no international safeguards. [emphasis added]

Huge technical hurdles, unknown costs lie ahead for Australia

There are huge technical hurdles for Australia to overcome, given its almost complete lack of civilian nuclear power infrastructure. And the cost is “anyone’s guess”.

But the biggest challenge will undoubtedly be that of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Even if Australia voluntarily agrees to international monitoring, Philippe describes the IAEA dilemma:

The agency, which is currently battling to prevent Iran from acquiring enough fissile material to build a nuclear weapon—25 kilograms (0.025 ton) of HEU according to the internationally agreed standard—will have to figure out how to monitor and account for 100 to 200 times that amount without gaining access to secret naval reactor design information.

The AUKUS agreement provides 18 months for the parties to hammer out the details. In the meantime, domestic opposition is brewing and the current Australian Prime Minister is struggling in the polls.

China and France denounce US nuclear sub pact with Britain, Australia

The title above is also a 16 September 2021 Reuter’s headline, demonstrating that this ill-conceived deal has united in opposition both a close American ally and the very adversary that the new defence pact is intended to guard against.

China’s opposition is two-fold, citing both nuclear non-proliferation concerns and an “obsolete cold war zero sum mentality”. In the words of the Foreign Ministry spokesperson:

The nuclear submarine cooperation between the US, the UK and Australia has seriously undermined regional peace and stability, intensified the arms race and undermined international non-proliferation efforts.
The export of highly sensitive nuclear submarine technology to Australia by the US and the UK proves once again that they are using nuclear exports as a tool for geopolitical game and adopting double standards. This is extremely irresponsible.

As for France, whose $90 billion dollar contract with Australia for diesel-powered subs was summarily cancelled to make way for the nuclear-powered subs, one quote from Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian suffices to underscore the intensity of their reaction:

It’s a stab in the back. This unilateral, brutal, unpredictable decision is very similar to what Mr. Trump used to do.

And this condemnation was followed on Friday by France taking the extraordinary step of recalling its ambassadors to the US and to Australia.

New Zealand PM: these subs will not be permitted in our waters

As for Australia’s neighbour, New Zealand, while careful not to criticize the new defence pact per se, Prime Minister Ardern made it clear that the nuclear-powered subs would not be welcome:

New Zealand’s position in relation to the prohibition of nuclear-powered vessels in our waters remains unchanged.

In the view of Ceasefire.ca, the agreement to transfer highly sensitive nuclear technology and nuclear material to Australia should be condemned on both arms control and non-proliferation grounds and we concur with the following conclusion by Sébastien Philippe:

It is difficult to understand the internal policy process that led the Democratic Biden administration to the AUKUS submarine announcement. It seems that just like in the old Cold War, arms racing and the search for short-term strategic advantage is now bipartisan.

Whither Canada?

Like New Zealand, Canada has soft-pedalled the significance of this new pact, and made no public comment on the negative non-proliferation implications.

That Conservative leader Erin O’Toole would seek Canada’s participation in this misconceived deal is entirely unsurprising.

What is truly astonishing and disturbing, however, is the apparent concurrence of NDP leader Jagmeet Singh:

The pact seems like a potential avenue to add more pressure [on China]. Canada was absent.

Since the NDP has a strong, long-standing position in support of nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament, we can only assume that Singh was not briefed on the highly problematic implications of the AUKUS deal for containing the spread of nuclear weapons.

Election Call:

We call on all federal parties to recommit publicly to the goals of nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament enshrined in the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).

The growing chasm between China and the USA

For some balance and context that is utterly lacking in most Canadian media coverage of China, we draw readers’ attention to an excellent webinar hosted by the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy (IPD) entitled Ambassador Chas Freeman: The Sino-American split.

The event webpage includes a transcript of the ambassador’s opening remarks as well as a link to the full webinar. The ambassador concludes his opening statement thusly:

And that is why it distresses me as an American to say that, while China will not gain from the Sino-American split, the United States seems likely to lose from it.

We strongly recommend reading the opening remarks in their entirety, as well as listening to the one-on-one discussion between Ambassador Freeman and Dr. Wenran Jian, an IPD advisor, by clicking here.

Call from across party lines to end Canadian arms sales to Saudi Arabia

So long as the arms continue to flow, this war is just going to get worse

Four former members of Parliament, from four different parties, joined together to pen an opinion piece for the Ottawa Citizen urging Canada to stop arming Saudi Arabia. They are Libby Davies (NDP), Daniel Turp (BQ), Douglas Roche (PC) and Adam Vaughan (Liberal).

They write:

[A]s former members of Parliament from four of Canada’s five major political parties, we find ourselves in agreement on a pressing foreign policy issue that must transcend party lines: Ending Canada’s arms exports to Saudi Arabia must be a priority of the next government, regardless of its political stripe….
The next government of Canada should follow in the footsteps of several European countries and immediately suspend arms exports to Saudi [Arabia], expand humanitarian assistance to Yemen, and play a diplomatic role in bringing an end to this brutal conflict.

Upcoming webinar on Afghanistan on 23 September from 11:00 to 12:30 EST

Further to our many recent posts on the situation in Afghanistan, we are pleased now to announce a webinar hosted by the University of Ottawa Centre for International Policy Studies (CIPS) and the Fragile States Research Network entitled Afghanistan 360 Degrees… So Now What? The poster accompanying the event announcement reads in part:

Join us for a deeper look at Afghanistan and the post-9/11 path to 2021 and beyond.

Professor and development practitioner Nipa Banerjee will moderate a discussion featuring former Afghanistan Ambassador to Canada Omar Samad and current Rideau Institute President Peggy Mason. This will mark the first public engagement together for Samad and Mason since their online Globe and Mail moderated discussion on 18 May 2006.

Don’t miss this timely discussion! To register on Eventbrite, click here.

Photo credit: Wikimedia (UK Trafalgar class nuclear-powered submarine)

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