THE CURSE OF THE NINETIES

John Deere Workers Remain on Strike and Reject Two-Tier Pay

Though the company offered raises and concession on health care and retirement, the union is standing firm. 

And so far, the public is behind them.

By Dave LeshtzTwitter

THE NATION
TODAY 

Members of the United Auto Workers strike outside of a John Deere plant in Ankeny, Iowa.

 (Charlie Neibergall / Associated Press)

DAVENPORT, IOWA—In October the United Auto Workers and Iowa’s labor movement were on the march.

Community support and sympathetic media were solidly behind the 10,100 striking John Deere and Company employees. Workers at America’s biggest maker of agricultural machinery were justifiably insulted by Deere’s initial contract offer of a 5 percent raise following a year of record-breaking profits. They had been deemed essential workers, but apparently none were as essential as Deere’s CEO John May, who made $15.6 million in 2020—a 160 percent raise.

Dozens of businesses contributed discounted meals, drinks, haircuts, chiropractic services, fishing gear, and even a free session at Davenport Axe Throwing. The Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union in North Liberty donated 8,000 pounds of food. RWDSU Local 110 Vice President Bob Dixon said, “It’s about corporate greed…. people need to come together as members and as employees to fight against that.”Top ArticlesREAD MOREIt’s in the Air





Iowa Senate Democratic Leader Zach Wahls and other Democratic legislators delivered strong statements of support, as did Iowa’s Federation of Labor, the Teamsters, the Iowa Farmers Union, and Senator Bernie Sanders. Secretary of Agriculture—and former Iowa governor—Tom Vilsack visited a picket line in Ankeny. “You deserve a fair price and a fair deal,” Vilsack told the workers. He thanked them for supporting his gubernatorial campaign in 1998: “The UAW was with me from the get-go. You don’t forget the people that were with you.”

Election Day in Iowa was also the day UAW members voted on a renegotiated contract, after overwhelmingly rejecting a tentative agreement on October 10. The second agreement between Deere and UAW leaders would give workers an immediate 10 percent raise with two additional raises of 5 percent over the course of a six-year contract. Workers would receive a bonus of $8,500 upon ratification of the contract. Deere also made some concessions on health care and retirement, but the two-tier salary system remained, with so-called “supplemental employees” paid substantially less than their coworkers doing the same jobs.

Many union members, anxious about their paychecks as the holidays approach, believe it is time to declare victory and get back to work. The majority disagree and voted down the second agreement by roughly 55 percent to 45 percent. Some say the rejection reflects a continuing dissatisfaction with their own leaders. Others blame uncertainty about the company’s Continuous Improvement Pay Plan, which is based on a complex incentive system. Many point to an overall sense that Deere management doesn’t respect them, despite their loyalty and hard work during the Covid pandemic.

Resentments hardened when Deere obtained an injunction to limit the number of picketers to four at any one time. The injunction went so far as to ban burn barrels for keeping warm at night. Tension spiked further when UAW member Richard Rich, a 56-year-old Deere warehouse inspector for 15 years, was struck and tragically killed by a car while crossing a poorly lit road near a picket line.

Public support doesn’t appear to have diminished, and Iowa unions continue to stand with the UAW. The Hawkeye Area Labor Council in Cedar Rapids, IBEW 405, and the Iowa City Federation of Labor are among those collecting and delivering household and hygiene items to strikers.

Deere management insists that the contract on the table is its “last, best, and final offer.” A Deere executive also issued a veiled threat, according to the Des Moines Register, to make up for the slack in domestic production by shifting some of the work to overseas factories. No word yet from Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds or Senators Charles Grassley and Joni Ernst—all Republicans—on how they feel about the prospect of jobs in their state being outsourced to workers in other countries.

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Will Iowa’s labor movement keep moving? The two sides are said to be talking, but the outcome is hard to predict. Most of today’s strikers are young, with little knowledge of Iowa’s militant labor history to inspire them. They aren’t aware that the UAW was preceded by the Farm Equipment Workers who organized John Deere over 70 years ago. (See The Long Deep Grudge: A Story of Big Capital, Radical Labor, and Class War in the American Heartland, by Toni Gilpin).

Several UAW members I’ve recently talked with were not aware that Iowa’s Republican-led legislature nearly abolished public-sector unions in 2017 by stripping the guts out of Chapter 20, an Iowa collective bargaining law that operated efficiently and fairly—with no strikes—since the 1970s. Despite the heroic efforts of the University of Iowa’s Labor Center to educate workers, we still have many miles to go.

The good news is that the Republican assault on collective bargaining in Iowa hasn’t worked. Unions must hold a recertification vote every time a contract is renegotiated, and more than 50 percent must vote Yes, with nonvotes counted as No votes. Against all odds, almost every union in the state has voted Yes to recertify.

It’s a rocky road, but the labor movement is marching on in Iowa.

John Deere workers in Orléans, France support strike by their American coworkers

Our reporters

WSWS.ORG

Yesterday, reporters for the World Socialist Web Site travelled to the John Deere tractor parts factory in Orléans, south of Paris, which employs some 800 workers. They discussed the ongoing month-long strike by more than 10,000 John Deere workers in the United States, who are opposing the efforts of the company and United Auto Workers union to impose a concessions-laden contract.

The Orléans Deere workers expressed their support and solidarity for their striking co-workers internationally and denounced the efforts of the company to pit workers against one another across national boundaries.

“They should continue to fight for their rights,” said Weigel, who has three years’ experience at Orléans. “Whether it is in the United States or in France, it is always the big companies that profit off of the workers, and then whine about having to raise wages by 1-2 percent.

Weigel holds a sign saying "John Deere workers in France support the strike in the USA"

“We should unite together against the multinational in order to not be their prey. The workers in different countries have to be able to help each other.”

Matthieu, who has eight years’ experience at the Orléans plant, said, “We’re in solidarity with the American workers, especially since we hear that they don’t get to go on strike very often. They negotiate for a period of several years. And we heard that the boss just got a 160 percent pay increase.”

“We have to have international solidarity,” he explained. “Here there are certain production lines that, every time we go on strike, the company threatens us that these jobs may be taken away elsewhere. It’s a constant blackmail against our jobs. They threaten us.”

He described the conditions for the workers in France. “Prices for everything are rising,” he said. “They’re announcing another year of exceptional profits for John Deere. Each time there is an annual bargaining meeting in April they announce profits, and they’re always considerable. Then they announce a 1 percent pay increase. There is high inflation but they tell us it is only 1.2 percent. Then they don’t understand why we would want to strike.

“They announce profits, the shareholders take everything, and they give us crumbs.”

In April this year, the Orléans plant was shut down for three days by Deere workers who were demanding increased bonuses and pay increases. “We wanted the bonus to not be a percentage of wages [which would give higher bonuses to management] but that the same sum would be paid to everyone.”

“The trade unions did not pay strike pay during the strike and when we struck for three days they asked the management only that the deduction from our salary be spread over three months,” he noted. Nor, in the case of the strike in the US, did the union seek to keep workers up to date about the struggle. “The trade unions did not come to see us saying there is a strike in the US,” he said. “We found out about it because it was in the news.”

“There is a growing anger,” Matthieu said. “The previous time there was a strike, there were only about 30 people who participated. This time there were over 200.”

Mélanie is a temporary worker at John Deere. A large portion of the Orléans plant workforce is made up of such temporary workers. They are hired via subcontractor agencies on short 18-month contracts, which they are unable to renew.

“What you describe about the trade unions in the United States, I have the impression that it is the same everywhere,” she said, referring to the corruption scandal that exposed millions of dollars in kickbacks to the UAW leaders by the giant automakers. “Here the unions organise little strikes, toward the employer they adopt a strong enough tone, but really there is nothing much more than that. They are even supposed to give a debrief meeting with us every month but they don’t do it. They could take all our questions to try to address problems, but it doesn’t happen.”

“Concretely I would say to the US workers to not give up. Everything comes to those who demand it. They shouldn’t give up because they are 10,000 fighting it.”

Benjamin, a temporary worker with three months at the plant, told our reporters: “We are following this closely. There is support for the strike here that is sure. If they can make things change, they need to improve their working conditions.”

PERSPECTIVE
John Deere strike at the crossroads

Jerry White
WSWS.ORG

The nearly month-long strike by 10,100 John Deere workers in Iowa, Illinois and other states is at a critical turning point. In the week since workers voted down a second company proposal backed by the United Auto Workers union, Deere has gone on the offensive.

There are two alternative roads confronting workers. On the one hand, Deere and the UAW are dead set on getting a contract through that throttles workers’ incomes and allows the company to continue to reap record profits. They will continue to conspire and use every weapon and dirty trick at their disposal to divide workers and crush their resistance.

Striking Deere workers outside of a John Deere plant, Wednesday, Oct. 20, 2021, in Ankeny, Iowa. 

(AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

But the path to the strike’s victory exists and is this: Workers taking the initiative into their own hands, establishing rank-and-file organizations at every plant and warehouse, and appealing directly to autoworkers and Deere workers in the US and internationally to mobilize in support of their struggle, which has the potential to impact the fate of all workers.

The company has launched a media blitz, with top executives fanning out to tout their supposedly generous offer and suggesting its defeat by a 55-45 percent margin was largely due to a minority of unreasonable workers. With the UAW failing twice to push through its demands, Deere has sent text messages directly to workers in a naked effort to divide them and force a re-vote on the deal, which management insists is its “last, best and final” offer.

The walkout has caused serious delays in the shipment of replacement parts farmers need to keep their Deere equipment running during the last few weeks of the harvest season. After the contract was defeated, management announced it was stepping up its strikebreaking “customer service continuity plan,” which includes deploying supervisors, engineers and other salaried workers to its facilities and ramping up production at factories outside the US.

While Deere officials publicly declare they still want an agreement to bring back the current workers, they have not ruled out hiring scabs to replace the strikers. “If we walk through this and the information that’s in front of folks, the deal that’s in front of them, doesn’t work for them, we have to figure out how we continue to serve our customers going forward,” Cory Reed, president of Deere’s Worldwide Agriculture & Turf Division, said in a Des Moines Register article published Monday. “That planning is always ongoing.”

Far from mobilizing the union’s 400,000 members to oppose these strikebreaking threats, the UAW is forcing the Deere workers to fight the multinational giant alone. After its second deal with the company was voted down, the UAW International issued a perfunctory three-sentence announcement, declaring it would resume meetings with Deere management—not the workers—to “discuss next steps.”

The UAW has imposed a complete information blackout on Deere workers and has not even acknowledged any of its closed-door discussions with the Deere bosses. Meanwhile, it is continuing to keep Deere workers on starvation rations of $275 a week in strike benefits despite a strike fund—paid for with workers’ dues—valued at nearly $800 million.

There is no doubt that UAW officials are plotting with corporate management to wear down the resistance of workers and force a re-vote on the same deal, or a slightly modified one that still fails to meet workers’ demands.

With Deere expected to rake in nearly $6 billion in profits this year—at least 62 percent more than its previous record in 2013—striking workers are determined to secure a $10 an hour raise to offset more than 25 years of UAW-backed wage concessions and protect their families from the rising cost of fuel, food and other basic necessities. They also want to restore fully paid retiree health care benefits for every generation of workers, which the UAW gave up in 1997.

The UAW is determined not to win the strike, but to defeat it. UAW President Ray Curry, Vice President Chuck Browning and the rest of the affluent business executives at the UAW’s “Solidarity House” headquarters know a victory for the Deere workers would spark a far wider rank-and-file rebellion against the UAW. Workers at Caterpillar, Volvo and Mack Trucks, at GM, Ford and Stellantis, at auto parts suppliers Dana, Faurecia and Lear, and countless other locations all work under contracts with divisive tiered wage and benefit systems and other oppressive conditions, imposed by the same bribe-taking UAW officials through lies, threats of job losses and outright vote rigging.

The battle at Deere is part of what is developing into the largest strike wave in the US and internationally in generations. Since the beginning of the year, there have been more than 150 strikes in the US, involving workers from virtually every sector of the economy. Thousands—including Deere workers; Kellogg’s workers; nurses and other health care workers in California, West Virginia and Massachusetts; Alabama coal miners; Scranton, Pennsylvania teachers and Columbia University grad students—are currently on strike. Another 30,000 Kaiser Permanente health care workers in California and Oregon are set to strike on November 15, and 60,000 film and production workers, who were ready to strike last month, are voting on a deeply despised sellout contract this weekend.

These are part of a growing wave of international struggles—including strikes by teachers, nurses and other public sector workers in Canada, Portugal, Sri Lanka, Mexico and other countries, as workers seek to combat the austerity measures capitalist governments are imposing to pay for massive corporate and bank bailouts.

The conditions are emerging for these struggles to be unified into a powerful industrial and political counteroffensive by the working class against decades of eroding living standards and the explosion of social inequality.

These militant struggles are being fueled by the response of capitalist governments all over the world to the pandemic, which has prioritized profit over lives. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the wealth of billionaires in the US alone has risen by 70 percent—from nearly $3 trillion to over $5 trillion—even as 89 million workers lost their jobs, 47 million people were infected with COVID-19 with unknown long-term consequences, and more than 776,000 died.

After being forced to risk their lives, workers all over the world are refusing to accept wages that fail to keep up with inflation, exhausting schedules that rob them of their family life and health, and the lies of company executives and union bureaucrats who say there is no money to meet their just demands.

In every struggle which is taking place or emerging, the biggest obstacles to workers’ unification are the corporatist unions, which function as a labor police force and partners in the exploitation of the working class. That is why increasing numbers of workers, including educators, health care workers, Amazon workers, and auto and auto parts workers at Volvo Trucks, Dana, Deere and the Detroit automakers, are joining the growing network of rank-and-file factory and workplace committees, which reject the authority of the pro-company unions and fight for the independent interests of the working class.

On Saturday, workers at an online meeting sponsored by the World Socialist Web Site voted to establish the Deere Strike Rank-and-File Solidarity Committee to mobilize the broadest support for the striking workers.

To fight transnational corporations like Deere, workers need a global strategy. The striving of workers for international solidarity has been expressed by the Deere workers in Mannheim, Germany, who have repeatedly voiced their support for their brothers and sisters in the US. In May, the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) was founded to coordinate the growing struggles of the working class across all national borders.

The fight against capitalist exploitation is inseparable from a fight to eliminate the pandemic and end the sacrifice of human life for corporate profit. The growing wave of strikes and struggles across the world must be developed into a conscious political struggle to establish workers’ power and reorganize economic life based on socialist planning and production for human need, not private profit.

Vikings’ ocean-crossing voyage strictly business

By: Gwynne Dyer
Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2021
OPINION


IT was already known that the first and only verified Norse settlement in North America was at L’Anse aux Meadows, at the northern tip of Newfoundland. The specialists even assumed that it happened in the early 11th century, because the Norse sagas more or less said so. But the traditional carbon-14 dates were all over the place.

The Dutch-led team of archaeologists who solved the riddle used three pieces of wood from the settlement that had been cut by metal (and therefore Viking) tools. They found a specific tree ring in each piece that had been hit by a massive burst of cosmic radiation in AD 993, and then counted tree rings outwards to the last growth ring in the year the trees died: 28 more rings, so 1021.

Clever work and a solid date at last, but we already know from the sagas that the site was only inhabited for a few years. Many people also suspected that "Vinland," as the Norse called it, was never meant to be a permanent colony.

Nevertheless, it’s striking how this obscure bit of archaeological news has been amplified in the media, presumably because it provides opportunities for homilies about the evils of colonialism. Wrong target. Leif "The Lucky" Ericsson and his comrades were actually just interested in trade.

The settlements back in Greenland that the Norse at L’Anse aux Meadows came from had only been founded themselves one generation before, in AD 985. There were probably fewer than 1,000 Norse in Greenland in 1021, and the last thing on their minds would have been to set up another settlement a further 1,500 km by sea from Europe.

"By sea," because Norse longships kept in sight of land whenever possible. It’s only 750 kilometres as the bird flies from Greenland to Newfoundland, but the longships sailed north up the Greenland coast, a short hop across open ocean to Baffin Island, west along the Baffin coast, another brief ocean passage, and then south down the Labrador coast to L’Anse aux Meadows.

So what motivated them to go so far? Timber, for one thing, as there are few trees in Greenland and none big enough to make keels for ships or roof beams for houses. But there was plenty of good timber in southern Labrador and Newfoundland. Just go and cut some, and come home again. Why did they need a year-round base at L’Anse aux Meadows?

Because they needed trade goods to pay for all the things they had to import from Europe: grain, iron, wine, glass and luxury goods. So having discovered a whole new region, it seemed worthwhile to take a look around and see what low-bulk, high-value resources it might have to offer.

To do that, they needed the year-round base, because they could not get out of their fjords back home in Greenland until the sea-ice retreated in late May. That didn’t leave enough time to sail to L’Anse aux Meadows, explore farther south, and get home again before the autumn freeze-up. The crews had to over-winter in Newfoundland.

They explored the St. Lawrence River and what is now Canada’s Maritime provinces. They may have made it down to the New England coast. There were clashes with the "Skraelings," they called the native inhabitants, and even among the Vikings themselves. (They were quarrelsome people.) At least one Norse baby was born in North America.

But they found nothing as valuable as the walrus ivory they were already hunting at Disko Bay far up the Greenland coast, and the ivory from there was covering the cost of their imports. So they wound the Vinland operation up, went home, and lived happily ever after — until the climate turned against them three centuries later.

No villains, no victims, no harm done. An utterly inconsequential outcome of the first contact between Europeans and the Americas. Although Vinland appeared on European maps as early as 1070, no European bothered going there again for half a millennium.

So you can imagine my dilemma when the Newfoundland Museum asked me 20 years ago to write a guide to a major exhibition on the Vikings and the Skraelings in Vinland. (I’m a Newfoundlander, I’m a freelancer, and we look after our own.) How can you make a big deal out of this damp squib?

Well, the ancestors of all modern human beings came out of Africa about 60,000 years ago. Some turned left and headed into Europe, where they were stopped by the Atlantic, too broad to cross. Others turned right, and populated Asia, Australasia and eventually the Americas via the land-bridge in the Bering Strait.

But the descendants of the ones who turned left never saw the descendants of those who turned right again until AD 1021 in Newfoundland. Full circle. Will that do?

Gwynne Dyer’s new book is The Shortest History of War.

Nalleli Cobo: the young activist who led her LA neighborhood against big oil


Nalleli Cobo in front of the oilwell near her home that regulators have ordered to be permanently closed and secured. Photograph: Jessica Pons/The Guardian

The outspoken

After forcing the closure of an oilwell that was making her family and community sick, Cobo seemed about to become a household name – but then she fell seriously ill

by Nina Lakhani
Wed 10 Nov 2021 

At the age of nine, Nalleli Cobo started getting nosebleeds so severe that she had to sleep sitting up so as not to choke on the blood. Then there were the stomach cramps, nausea, headaches and body spasms, which made walking difficult. For a time she wore a heart monitor as doctors struggled to understand what was wrong.

But it wasn’t just Cobo. The nine-year-old was growing up in University Park, a low-income, majority-Latino neighborhood in Los Angeles, the smoggiest city in the US, which ranks highest in the country for deaths linked to air pollution. She and her three older siblings were raised by her Mexican mother, grandmother and two great-grandparents. (Her father was deported to Colombia when she was three.) And suddenly, almost her entire family was ill – including her mother, who developed asthma at 40, as did her grandmother at 70.

We won, and it was 10 times more awesome because it was the youth demanding our right to a livable futureNalleli Cobo

It was the same story throughout the neighborhood: previously healthy children were suddenly missing school and spending hours at the emergency room, but nobody knew why. Not long afterwards a foul smell engulfed the community. It was like rotten eggs, recalls Cobo, and so nauseating that they had to keep the windows closed at all times. Sometimes it smelled like artificial guava or chocolate, mixed with rotten eggs.

Cobo’s mother works for Esperanza Community Housing, and she enlisted the organisation to help investigate. It turned out the stench was caused by the oilwell located 30ft (9 metres) from the family home. The oil company Allenco had ramped up drilling. (The guava and chocolate odours were the company’s attempt to alleviate the problem.) At Esperanza’s request, the campaigner group Physicians for Social Responsibility sent a group of toxicologists to meet the community and explain the health threats posed by the oilwell.

“That’s when we started connecting the dots between the oilwell, the smell and sick kids,” says Cobo. Now 20, she is speaking to me on a video call from her bedroom in LA, while cuddling her five-month-old fluffy white puppy, Albondiga, which means meatball in Spanish. “It’s when I started learning the ropes of activism.”

Cobo in a family photograph. 

Photograph: Courtesy of Nalleli Cobo

Cobo and her mother started knocking on doors and co-founded People Not Pozos (People Not Wells) – a grassroots community group, which filed complaints to regulators, shared stories at town hall meetings and testified at city hall and other government hearings. Cobo was a natural storyteller – honest, passionate and compelling – but recalls how it wasn’t always easy to be heard. “I was often dismissed as a silly little girl, like my story didn’t matter because I didn’t know all the science or all the fancy terms.”

Inspired by her mother’s activism, she refused to give up. “My mom always told me that I had to be an important member of the community. If sharing my story was going to help create change, why would I stay silent?”

Cobo’s youth and persistence captured the attention of local media, lawmakers and A-list celebrities. A barrage of local and federal investigations was launched. When environmental protection officials spent a short time at the site, they too got ill.

Then, on a chilly November evening in 2013, when Cobo was 12 years old, the phone rang. The family was having dinner – Mexican potato soup, she remembers. By the time Cobo’s mother put the phone down, she was crying at the extraordinary news: Allenco was suspending operations at the well.

Cobo was beside herself with joy. “I started screaming: ‘We did it, we did it,’ ran to the window and opened it for some fresh air – something so basic that we hadn’t been able to do for years,” she says.

The change when the drilling stopped was almost instant. “It was like day and night. My nosebleeds stopped, no more headaches or heart palpitations, I didn’t need my inhalers every day. All the kids started to feel better. I’ll never forget that moment,” says Cobo.

The victories kept on coming for Cobo and her community. In September, Los Angeles County supervisors voted unanimously to phase out oil and gas drilling and ban new drill sites in the unincorporated areas of the most populous county in the US. More than 1,600 active and idle oil and gas wells, which are mostly located in communities of colour, could be closed over the next few years.

‘I’ve always wanted to be president.’

 Photograph: Jessica Pons/The Guardian

But the industry is expected to oppose the unprecedented move and the fight is far from over, says Cobo. “I dream of a world where all urban oil drilling is read about in history books. A world with 100% clean renewable energy, where people can breathe the air outside without getting sick, and open their faucet and drink the water because it’s clean. That’s the world I’m fighting to achieve, a better and safer one for all of us.

“A lot of times when you’re in this fight they make you feel like you’re going to lose, and there are moments when I break down and cry. But I am a person of faith, so I think about David and Goliath, and that’s how this story is going to end. Me and my community, we are David; the oil industry, the broken regulatory system, the billionaires are all Goliath, but their tactics won’t stop my community from fighting.”

A 2020 analysis by the nonprofit FracTracker Alliance found that about 2.2 million people in California live within half a mile of an oil or gas well; another 5 million live within one mile. More than 60% of the 25,000 drilling permits issued by the state between 2015 and 2020 were in majority-Latino communities.

In 2015, the South Central Youth Leadership Coalition, which Cobo co-founded, joined other organisations to sue the city of Los Angeles for rubber-stamping oil projects in communities of colour. As a result, the city adopted new requirements for drilling applications to ensure compliance with state environmental review rules and to protect vulnerable communities. The oil industry countersued and lost.

“We won, and it was 10 times more awesome because it was the youth demanding our right to a livable future,” says Cobo, who has spoken out about environmental racism – the dumping of polluting and hazardous industries such as toxic chemical plants, fossil-fuel sites and highways in places where people of colour and indigenous communities live, work and play.

“It’s heartbreaking and infuriating how these industries and billion-dollar corporations have gotten away with poisoning us. The way the oil industry sees us is as just a little speck, but we’re humans.”

Cobo knows fossil fuel companies aren’t the only bad guys. “Our elected officials have a lot of power, but we vote them in and it’s their job to represent us. When they get into these positions of power, too many forget that. We need to work hard to humble them, remind them.”

Amid pressure from the community, as well as growing media and celebrity attention, the city of Los Angeles filed multiple lawsuits against Allenco. In 2020, the state oil and gas regulators ordered the site to be permanently closed and secured. The company, which has said that it has invested heavily in environmental safety and should be allowed to restart operations, has appealed. (Neither the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office nor Allenco responded to requests for comment.)

As a practising Catholic, Cabo is upset that the Roman Catholic archdiocese, which owns the land, leased it to Allenco. “They teach us we must protect God’s creation, that we have to stand up for others and do what Jesus would do, so why are they being hypocrites? Ultimately the archdiocese is choosing profit over people’s health; that’s not what Jesus would do, plain and simple.” (The Los Angeles archdiocese did not respond to questions.)

Stricter rules and laws concerning drilling practices have come into effect at every level of government in California – city, county and state – after years of permits being greenlit without any environmental impact assessments. But permits to extract fossil fuels are still being approved, and the problem is so much bigger than one state.

Nalleli Cobo speaking at a climate rally outside the Los Angeles 

city hall in February 2020. 

Photograph: SOPA Images/Alamy

Last month, when it seemed half the US was on fire or flooded, the Biden administration announced that, to comply with a court ruling, it would open millions of acres for oil and gas exploration in the Gulf of Mexico. It claimed the recent UN report warning the climate crisis was spiralling out of control was not “sufficient cause” to revise the environmental impact analysis conducted by the Trump administration.

“It’s so frustrating…,” says Cobo. “The science is there, we’re being poisoned, our lives are being shortened, we’re sick, when will it be enough for them?”

Cobo has met a long list of celebrities, but her personal favourite is Jane Fonda. “She’s always on it, looking to do more – she’s such a badass. Jane genuinely wants to create change; she doesn’t just turn up for the selfie.”

At an event with the actor Joaquin Phoenix last year, Cobo was loudly cheered after she declared her run for the White House … in 2036. She wasn’t joking. “I’ve always wanted to be president, ever since my mom bought the Elmo book about the first female president. I think politics is such a beautiful thing, if done properly.”

Inevitably, Cobo has been compared to the Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, whom she met in 2019 at the LA climate march. Then, it seemed that Cobo was also about to become a household name, with her face on posters for the global youth climate strike. But then she got ill.

In early 2020, at the age of 19, she was diagnosed with a rare type of cancer, so advanced and aggressive that surgeons removed her entire reproductive system – six organs and 22 lymph nodes – which was followed by gruelling rounds of chemotherapy and radiotherapy. It has been hugely traumatic.

“The only thing I’ve ever been 1,000% sure about in my life is wanting to be a mom, so I froze my eggs before undergoing the radical hysterectomy,” she says. But she was only diagnosed after five years of struggling to get doctors to take her worsening menstrual problems seriously. Cobo wonders about the role systemic inequalities played in her getting sick, and the delay in getting treatment.

She has been cancer-free for six months, but suffers from episodes of severe pain and fatigue, making it difficult for her to get out of bed some days. Yet she says she will not give up her fight. She turns 21 in December and plans to restart college in January, having missed two years, though concerns about the impact of stress on her long-term health are forcing her to rethink a lifelong ambition to become a civil rights lawyer. Instead she’s considering a career as a medical sonographer. “Even though I can’t get pregnant, I could help make sure women have the safest and healthiest pregnancy possible,” she says. Whatever she ends up doing, serving her community remains the goal.

New Membrane Technology From Osmoses Could Make Carbon Capture Feasible

MIT spin-off Osmoses may have the answer to low cost carbon capture technology.


Carbon Capture Technology. Image credit: European Union

BySteve Hanley
Published 2 days ago

Carbon capture is an idea that doesn’t get much love here at CleanTechnica headquarters. Whenever the topic comes up, the minions who bring you the clean tech news of the day wrinkle their noses as if a noxious odor just invaded our work space.

We see it as a scam cooked up by the fossil fuel companies to divert our attention away from the fact that the Earth is overheating because of the pollution created when coal, oil, and methane are burned. The flim flam goes like this — “Let us burn every molecule of fossil fuel we can find now and we promise, cross our hearts and hope to die, we will find some magic way to suck all that crud back out of the atmosphere later, God willing and the creek don’t rise. Trust us!”

Basically, we think carbon capture is a lie told by fossil fuel companies to slow down the push for meaningful climate action, so it’s somewhat of a surprise when we hear about something that suggests carbon capture might actually work. The technology relies primarily on membranes that allow oxygen to pass through, but not pollutants like carbon dioxide and methane. The problem is, those membranes cannot tolerate harsh industrial environments and tend to break down quickly.

Hello, Osmoses

Meet Osmoses, an MIT spinoff started this year by Francesco Benedetti and Holden Lai. On its website, the company says, “Efficient and sustainable separations are critically needed to cut costs and emissions in the chemical industry and enable sustainable energy solutions. With exceptional stability, productivity, and selectivity, Osmoses molecular filters can separate molecules 100,000 times smaller than the thickness of human hair.”

Recently, the company raised $3 million in funding to pursue its research and scale up its technology for commercial applications, thanks in large measure to The Engine, an MIT investment vehicle that supports new technology ventures like Osmoses. The money will accelerate its mission to eliminate energy waste with efficient separation technology, reducing production costs and CO2 emissions.

“Today, molecular separations represent 15% of global energy use and generate 16% of CO2 emissions annually. While gas separation processes are critical for the more than 13,000 chemical and power plants operating in the U.S., the traditional approaches to purify methane, hydrogen, and oxygen are not only a source of significant energy waste, but also very costly for production companies,” Osmoses says.

The company claims its membrane platform technology integrates easily with existing energy infrastructures and solves the inherent trade-off between permeability and selectivity. It is stable in industrial conditions and delivers up to 5 times the selectivity and 100 times the permeability of conventional membranes.

“There’s an increasing need for gas separation membranes and the global category will continue to surge in the coming years, representing a $10 billion and growing market opportunity overall,” says Benedetti.

“We’ve developed and proven the viability of Osmoses’ materials platform to overcome traditional membrane challenges, to deliver membranes offering the most sustainable alternative to thermal processes. Our molecular filters can be manufactured at scale using established techniques, consume 40% to 60% less energy than commercial alternatives, and most importantly, deliver excellent separation.

“Osmoses’ solution is not just critical for reduced emissions, but for maintaining domestic industry and job growth. Without such a cost-effective solution, these tasks could be exported to countries with less stringent emissions targets, which is not good for the U.S. and not good for our planet.”

The Osmoses platform addresses the rising demand for biogas and hydrogen, as well as the increasing need for CO2 removal. It provides a cost effective, high performance technology that supports the global renewable energy transition. It can increase the sustainability of existing energy infrastructures such as natural gas, decarbonize new and existing industries in power generation and materials manufacturing, and enable carbon-free energy solutions like hydrogen.

“Osmoses has the potential to fully decarbonize the hardest sectors of the economy — industrial material production — which together account for upwards of 30% of U.S. CO2 emissions,” says Michael Kearney of The Engine in a press release.

Holden Lai, co-founder and CTO of Osmoses, says, “The technology is proven in the lab and we are excited to take it to the next stage of testing at scale through collaboration with manufacturers and industrial partners. Delivered through modular units, the platform is an easy transition with existing infrastructure and will accelerate, streamline, and improve margins for commercial pursuit of natural and biogas upgrading, carbon capture powered by oxy-fuel combustion, and hydrogen recovery opportunities.”

Technology For Today

On its website, Osmoses says,

“Membrane separation technology that matches the performance of incumbent methods could drastically reduce energy consumption in the chemical, energy, and petrochemical sectors. Using membrane technology to purify hydrogen and renewable natural gas would also accelerate the replacement of coal for electricity generation. Across industries, replacing absorption and distillation with membrane technology for separations can reduce annual U.S. energy costs by $4 billion and eliminate 100 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions.”

It claims this new technology presents an opportunity to re-imagine and rebuild America’s energy infrastructure in the post-pandemic era while creating new jobs. “Green and readily available alternative energy sources, such as hydrogen and renewable natural gas, will only see widespread adoption if cost-competitive with conventional sources. Osmoses wants to be part of this revolution.”

The company says its technology has the ability to:

Promote carbon dioxide removal from natural gas and biogas while reducing energy consumption by more than 40% and cutting methane loss by more than 70% compared to current commercially available membrane systems.

Reduce the cost of oxygen-nitrogen separation in nitrogen and oxygen production by 10% relative to leading membrane systems.

Dramatically reduce the cost of hydrogen purification by using Osmoses’ highly selective membranes.

Greatly reduce the cost of carbon dioxide capture.

The Takeaway

Is this new membrane technology from Osmoses a magic bullet that will let fossil fuel companies continue to pour waste products into the atmosphere? Not quite. But it brings another tool to the fight to decarbonize human activities, and for that we should be grateful. It is unknown at this time whether the company’s technology could make large-scale carbon capture cost effective. Expect to hear more about this company in the near future.

Tiny grains, severe damage: Hypervelocity dust impacts on a spacecraft produce plasma explosions and debris clouds

by American Physical Society

Measurements of electric fields, magnetic fields, and camera images reveal the plasma 

explosions and clouds of debris created when very high velocity dust impacts the Parker 

Solar Probe spacecraft. By watching the dispersal of these small plasma and debris clouds,

 scientists can learn about how larger clouds of dust and debris are blown away from stars

. Credit: NASA

The Parker Solar Probe spacecraft, NASA's newest and most ambitious effort to study the sun, has broken a lot of records: it has gotten closer to the sun than any other spacecraft to date, its instruments have operated at the hottest temperatures, and the probe is the fastest human-made object ever. But those records come at a cost: The spacecraft is moving so fast that running into even a tiny grain of dust can lead to serious damage.

New research by scientists at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado, Boulder and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) examines collisions between the Parker Solar Probe spacecraft and dust. Led by David Malaspina, a researcher at LASP, and Assistant Professor in the Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences Department at the University of Colorado, the team drew on electromagnetic and optical observations from Parker Solar Probe to produce the most complete picture yet of how hypervelocity dust impacts may damage a spacecraft and disturb its operations.

Traversing near-sun space at up to 180 kilometers per second (about 400,000 miles per hour), Parker Solar Probe plows through the densest region of the zodiacal cloud. The zodiacal cloud is a thick, pancake-shaped dust cloud that extends throughout the solar system and is made up of tiny dust grains shed from asteroids and comets. As Parker Solar Probe barrels through this region, thousands of tiny (about 2 to 20 microns in diameter, or less than a quarter of the width of a human hair) dust grains strike the spacecraft at hypervelocity (faster than 6,700 miles per hour). Upon impact, the material that makes up the dust grains and the spacecraft surface is heated so much that it first vaporizes, then ionizes. Ionization is a process where atoms in the vaporized material are separated into their constituent ions and electrons, producing a state of matter called plasma. The rapid vaporization and ionization creates a plasma explosion lasting less than one thousandth of a second. The largest of these impacts also generate clouds of debris that slowly expand away from the spacecraft.

In the new study, Malaspina and colleagues used antennas and magnetic field sensors to measure disturbances to the electromagnetic environment around the spacecraft produced by dust impact plasma explosions (Figure 1). The findings could lead to new insights into space weather around the sun. For example, these measurements allowed the team to study how these plasma explosions interacted with the solar wind, or the stream of ions and electrons that the sun generates on a constant basis.

"With these measurements, we can watch the plasma created by these dust impacts be swept away by the flow of the solar wind." Malaspina said. He added that learning how this "pick up" process works on a small scale may help scientists better understand how larger plasma regions, such as those in the upper atmospheres of Venus and Mars, are swept away by the solar wind.

The findings also have major implications for the safety of Parker Solar Probe and spacecraft that will come after it.

The team observed how metallic flakes and paint chips knocked loose during collisions with dust drifted and tumbled near the spacecraft. Those pieces of debris created streaks in the images taken by navigational and scientific cameras on Parker Solar Probe.

"Many image streaks look radial, originating near the heat shield," said study co-author Kaushik Iyer of APL, referring to the large shield that protects Parker Solar Probe from the intense heat near the sun. The study also reports that some debris scattered sunlight into the Parker Solar Probe navigation cameras, temporarily preventing the spacecraft from determining how it was oriented in space. That can be a dangerous prospect for a spacecraft that relies on precise pointing of its heat shield to survive.

Parker Solar Probe was launched in 2018 and has completed nine full orbits of the sun. Before its prime mission ends in 2025, it will complete another 15 orbits.

As Parker Solar Probe continues its journey of exploration near the sun, it can now add one more record to its long list: most sand-blasted spacecraft. 

The results of this study will be presented on November 11, 2021, at the 63rd Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Plasma Physics in Pittsburgh, PA.

Researchers get a look at the sun's dusty environment

More information: Abstract: TO06.00006. Rapid plasma bursts and lingering debris clouds driven by hypervelocity dust impacts on Park Solar Probe: and unintentional active experiment in the inner heliosphere

Provided by American Physical Society 

Hypervelocity dust impacts cause plasma explosions on Parker Solar Probe

But the spacecraft is still doing fine.

By Charles Q. Choi 

SPACE.COM

An artist's depiction of Parker Solar Probe studying the sun. (Image credit: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory)

The fastest spacecraft ever flown, NASA's Parker Solar Probe, regularly experiences high-speed collisions with dust particles that create explosions of plasma, a new study finds.

Launched in 2018, the Parker Solar Probe is NASA's latest and most ambitious effort to investigate the sun. To date, it has gotten closer to the sun than any other mission; its equipment has operated at the hottest temperatures of any spacecraft; and the probe is the fastest human-made object ever.

However, the extraordinary speed at which the Parker Solar Probe flies — about 447,000 mph (720,000 kph) during its closest approaches to the sun — means that running into even a tiny grain of dust can trigger explosions, which could make the probe the most sand-blasted spacecraft ever.



Measurements of electric fields, magnetic fields, and camera images reveal the plasma explosions and clouds of debris created when very high velocity dust impacts the Parker Solar Probe spacecraft. By watching the dispersal of these small plasma and debris clouds, scientists can learn about how larger clouds of dust and debris are blown away from stars. 

(Image credit: NASA/JHUAPL/LASP)

"The Parker Solar Probe has been struck by dust tens of thousands of times," study lead author David Malaspina, a space plasma physicist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, told Space.com. "During its ninth orbit of the sun, of 24 total planned orbits, there were periods where the Parker Solar Probe was struck by a hypervelocity dust grain every 12 seconds on average."

To learn more about the kind of havoc these collisions might wreak, the researchers analyzed data gathered by the probe's antennas and magnetic field sensors. The result is the most complete picture yet of how hypervelocity dust impacts — ones that occur at more than 6,700 mph (10,780 km/h) — may damage a spacecraft and disturb its operations.

While flying near the sun, the Parker Solar Probe barrels through the densest region of the zodiacal cloud. This thick, pancake-shaped cluster of dust, which extends throughout the solar system, is made up of tiny dust grains from asteroids and comets.

As the spacecraft hurtles through this cloud, thousands of dust grains about 2 to 20 microns wide strike it at hypervelocity, generating explosions that last less than a thousandth of a second. In comparison, the average human hair is about 100 microns wide.

Upon impact, the dust grains and the impacted spacecraft surface get heated so much that they vaporize and then fragment into electrons and ions, forming plasma, the same state of matter that makes up stars and lightning.

"While most dust impacts cause only small effects, a few are very high energy, creating the debris and dense plasma clouds that we focused on in this research," Malaspina said. "We identified about 250 of these very high-energy impacts during the first eight orbits of Parker Solar Probe around the sun."

The largest of these collisions also generate clouds of debris that slowly expand away from the probe.

"Dust impact plasma clouds have been observed on spacecraft since the 1980s, when Voyager passed through the ring plane of Saturn, but no impact plasma cloud observed prior to this has been dense enough to cause such clearly measurable effects," Malaspina said.

As much as dust is pummeling the Parker Space Probe, it remains operational, Malaspina noted. "Most of the dust grains that strike the spacecraft are very small," Malaspina noted. "While this very efficiently sandblasts the spacecraft surface, the risk of encountering a dust grain large enough to cause a catastrophic failure remains low."

This new data can help scientists tinker with spacecraft designs to better protect them from hypervelocity impacts, as well as the resulting plasma and debris, Malaspina said.

For example, researchers may want "to carefully consider the fragmentation properties of exterior materials under hypervelocity impacts," he explained. "This is particularly true for missions where uninterrupted star camera navigation is important, or where electromagnetic attraction of spacecraft debris to spacecraft surfaces may be a concern."

This research is also helping scientists map the structure and density of the interplanetary dust cloud near the sun, "which has never been done with direct spacecraft measurements," Malaspina said. "This can inform updated models of this environment and drive more accurate predictions of dust impact danger on any future missions."

In addition, these findings could lead to new insights into space weather around the sun. For example, the measurements allowed the team to study how these plasma explosions interacted with the solar wind, the stream of particles flowing from the sun. This information, in turn, can shed light on how larger amounts of plasma, such as those found in the upper atmospheres of Venus and Mars, are swept away by the solar wind, Malaspina said.

The scientists will detail their findings Nov. 11 at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society's division of plasma physics in Pittsburgh. They have also submitted their work to the Astrophysical Journal.

RELATED STORIES
—NASA sun spacecraft whizzes through 9th solar flyby
—Parker Solar Probe: Mission to touch the sun
—Space weather: Sunspots, solar flares & coronal mass ejections

Heinz serves up ketchup made from "Martian" tomatoes

By David Szondy
November 09, 2021

Heinz Marz ketchup was made from tomatoes grown under Martian conditions
Florida Tech

Thanks to a pilot project by Heinz and a team of researchers led by Andrew Palmer at the Florida Institute of Technology, when astronauts set up outposts on Mars they may be able to make their own ketchup using locally grown tomatoes.

One of the biggest hurdles to launching even limited expeditions to Mars is the massive problem of logistics. If astronauts have to carry all the fuel, propellants, air, water, spare parts, and food for a trip that could take over two years, it would require a small fleet of huge ships that are basically spacefaring freighters and tankers.

To overcome this, planners are putting a lot of emphasis on the idea of living off the land so that crews can use Martian resources to produce what they need. One example of this is finding ways to grow food in the soil of the Red Planet, just like Matt Damon's character in the science fiction thriller The Martian.

The Red House recreated Martian conditions
Florida Tech

All that Damon grew in his fictitious Mars habitat were potatoes, but Heinz wants to provide future "Martians" with real ketchup to go with them. To demonstrate this, the company has unveiled its Heinz Tomato Ketchup, Marz Edition, which was made from tomatoes that were grown under the same condition as would be found at a Mars outpost.

The result of a two-year collaboration with Florida Tech, the research team used a greenhouse called the Red House to grow an initial batch of 30 tomato plants selected from Heinz's large seed catalog. These were planted in 7,800 lb (3,538 kg) of Martian analog soil gathered from the Mojave desert and illuminated with red LED lights. They were also grown in the atmosphere, temperature control, and regular irrigation that would be expected in an outpost's greenhouse on Mars.

An initial pilot study involving 30 plants and a follow-up effort where the team planted 450 tomato plants in individual buckets took 2,000 hours. The result was hundreds of tomatoes, but the technique is far from perfected because the expanded test had a poorer yield. This indicates that Martian tomato farming could be improved by growing the plants in troughs instead of pots, introducing a wider variety of microbes, and adding various plants to impair the spread of diseases.


The prototype Mars ketchup
Florida Tech

The harvested tomatoes were used by Heinz to produce a limited run of prototype bottles of Heinz Tomato Ketchup, Marz Edition at its California research facility, one of which was flown to an altitude of 23 miles (37 km), where it was subjected to temperatures of -94 °F (-74 °C). As to how the out of this world ketchup tastes, only a handful of people working at Heinz know.

In addition to helping the first Mars explorers make their fries a bit more palatable, the research can also help people back on Earth grow food in marginal soils.

"What this project has done is look at long-term harvesting of food," says Palmer. "Achieving a crop that is of a quality to become Heinz Tomato Ketchup was the dream result and we achieved it. Working with the Tomato Masters at Heinz has allowed us to see what the possibilities are for long-term food production beyond Earth. There is much we can learn by working with one of the biggest food companies worldwide."

The video below introduces Heinz Tomato Ketchup, Marz Edition.

Crown broke 1850 land treaties with First Nations, Ontario Court of Appeal rules

SEAN FINEJUSTICE WRITER

PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 8, 2021

The Ontario Court of Appeal ruled Friday that the minuscule continuing payments violated the 1850 land treaties’ promise to share the resource wealth from the territory.

COLIN PERKEL/THE CANADIAN PRESS

Ontario’s highest court has ruled that the Crown violated the terms of treaties from 1850 by capping annual payments at a few dollars per person to Indigenous peoples who ceded a vast area of the northern part of the province.

The Ontario Court of Appeal ordered a yet-to-be determined amount of compensation that could be in the billions of dollars, and that could come from Ontario, the federal government, or both.

Under the terms of the treaties, the Crown has been paying 23 First Nations just $4 per year for each of their members, in exchange for resource-rich territory the size of France. The land is located on the north shores of Lake Huron and Lake Superior, and it stretches as far north as Hudson Bay. The annual payment has not increased since 1875. In 1850, an initial lump sum of a few thousand dollars was also paid to the communities involved.

The Ontario Court of Appeal ruled 5-0 on Friday that the minuscule continuing payments violated the treaties’ promise to share the resource wealth from the territory, and sent the case back to the trial judge for the next phase: determining how the sharing should be done, and how much money it would mean for the 40,000 Anishinaabe descendants of the First Nations that ceded the territory. Which government is responsible for paying out the money is also to be determined in the next phase.

The appeal court recommended negotiations among the parties. “True reconciliation will not be achieved in the courtroom,” it said.

No place like home: On claiming land that is not our own

To understand why the land remains Indigenous, look to history

The Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General said its counsel are reviewing the decision, and that it would be inappropriate to comment because the matter is within the appeal period and before the courts.

The federal government has said it will negotiate if Ontario comes to the table. The First Nations involved have also agreed to negotiate. The court did not put a figure on the amount of money at stake, but Harley Schachter, a lawyer who represented the Red Rock and Whitesand First Nations in the case, said he expects it will be in the billions, and will address inequities in living standards.

The wealth to be shared includes government revenues connected to the use, sale or licensing of land and water in the treaties’ territory, including mineral and lumber revenues. That wealth includes both future and past revenues.

The trial judge, Ontario Superior Court Justice Patricia Hennessy, determined that the parties to the treaties had a common intention to share revenues, over and above the individual annuities, by means of collective payments to the chiefs and their tribes.

“This is not just money that goes out the window,” Mr. Schachter said in an interview. “This is an investment in a people, and everybody wins. It’s not a zero-sum game. If reconciliation is achieved, all of Canada’s the winner.

He added that he hopes Ontario will not ask the Supreme Court of Canada to hear an appeal. It has 60 days to file such a request.

“I’m hoping the Premier and cabinet will step in and say, ‘Enough’s enough. We have the business of reconciliation to attend to.’”

Catherine Boies Parker, a lawyer representing Anishinaabe beneficiaries of the treaties, also urged Ontario not to appeal.

“It is time to stop looking to the courts for assistance in avoiding your constitutional obligations,” she said, adding that there is no reasonable prospect the Supreme Court would disagree that governments had failed to share the wealth. The courts, she said, have authority to order compensation for those who were wronged.

Ontario argued the Crown has “unfettered discretion” over whether to increase the annual payments, meaning the courts could not review any government decisions related to the treaties’ compensation. In June, 2019, Justice Hennessy ruled that the Crown had acted dishonourably, and that the courts could not only review the payments but supervise to make sure governments pay compensation for treaty violations. Ontario challenged her ruling at the Court of Appeal. The federal government, which had taken different positions on some issues than Ontario, did not.

Justice Hennessy heard from historians, chiefs, elders and experts in Anishinaabe law as she analyzed the history of the treaties and the contemporaneous understanding on both sides. The Anishinaabe believed in reciprocity and renewal of relationships with the British, for whom they had fought in the War of 1812. (Some of the warriors helped negotiate the 1850 treaties.) Their wampum belts had images of two figures holding hands as part of two links in a chain.

The appeal court highlighted poor living conditions for Indigenous peoples in Northern Ontario, which it linked to the failure to share.

“The ‘share’ promised is to be determined not only based on the extent of Crown revenues but also with reference to the relative wealth and needs of the different communities,” the court said. “Obviously, the Anishinaabe would not have expected their communities to suffer a range of deprivations, including substandard housing and boil water advisories, while non-Indigenous communities thrived. Nor was it likely, based on the Anishinaabe principles discussed by the trial judge, that the Anishinaabe would have wished to enjoy great personal wealth while their fellow Canadians suffered deprivation.”

“Discretion is near and dear to the Crown, so I could see that being a motivation for Ontario to appeal,” said Thomas Slade, a lawyer for the Blood Tribe, which intervened in the case. “But the timing couldn’t be worse in terms of the calls on governments to stop fighting First Nations in court and to pursue meaningful reconciliation.”

Last month, the federal government asked the Supreme Court to hear an appeal of a child-welfare ruling involving Indigenous peoples, in which billions of dollars are at stake. Ottawa had faced pressure from the Canadian Bar Association and Indigenous groups not to appeal. The government said that it would hold settlement talks during a pause in litigation.

‘Incredible moment in . . . history’

Anishinabek leaders applaud ruling on Robinson Huron Treaty, seek negotiations with the province

Author of the article: PJ Wilson
Publishing date: Nov 09, 2021 

Mike Restoule, left, chair of the Robinson Huron Treaty Litigation Fund, Chief Duke Peltier of Wiikwemkoong, Chief Dean Sayers, Batchewana First Nation and David Nahwegahbow, co-lead counsel for the Robinson Huron Treaty Litigation Fund, address the media, Tuesday, on a recent court decision. Screen capture

The federal government has indicated it is ready to negotiate a settlement in the Robinson Huron Treaty annuities case.

Now, Chief Duke Peltier says, it is “time for the leaders of Ontario to embrace the reality, embrace the faces, embrace our history and also to embrace the rule of law relating to the Robinson Huron Treaty” and meet the leaders of the Anishinabek Nation and work on a settlement.

Speaking at a news conference Tuesday morning, Peltier, Chief Dean Sayers of the Batchewana First Nation, chair of the Robinson Huron Treaty Litigation Fund Mike Restoule and David Nahwegahbow, co-lead counsel for the litigation, said it is past time to reach a settlement.

The treaty, signed between the Crown and the Anishinabek in 1850, specified that both settlers and First Nations people were to “benefit from the resources” of the land, to “share the wealth of the territory,” Peltier said, and Ontario courts have ruled that the province must implement the augmentation clause, which ensured any increase in the revenue from lands within Robinson-Huron Treaty territory would be evenly distributed to the treaty signatories.

The annuity, initially set at $1.60 a year, was increased to $4 a year in 1874. It has remained at that level since.

“We have been successful in gaining the support of the courts in the first two appeals” filed by the province, the most recent decision being handed down by the Ontario Court of Appeal Friday.

“We unanimously reject the majority of the arguments raised on appeal,” the appeal court said in its 300-page plus ruling. “We dismiss Ontario’s appeal from the Stage Two proceedings in its entirety.”

“We believe we should immediately begin meaningful negotiations to implement the decision of Ontario’s courts of law,” Peltier said.

Nipissing MPP Vic Fedeli received a petition organized by supporters of the litigation fund Friday, calling for an end to the province’s appeals on the issue. A third stage of appeals is scheduled to be heard by the court in September, 2022.

Friday’s decision, Sayers said, is “an incredible moment in the history of our lands here in Canada,” and all Ontarians are “witnessing beautiful history unfold.”

He said the Anishinabek people are “reclaiming our inheritances.”

The province, Sayers said, “must come equipped to the table” to negotiate a just and equitable agreement.

“True reconciliation will not be achieved in the courtroom,” he said.

Sayers also pointed out that the Anishinabek people have received “overwhelming support from civic leaders” in the Robinson Huron Treaty region, which covers a significant portion of Northern Ontario from Sault Ste. Marie to North Bay and north to Kirkland Lake.

“Ontario is hanging on to an untenable position,” Sayers said, and he has met with Ontario Premier Doug Ford in an attempt to end the court cases.

He said Ford has agreed to meet with the Anishinabek leaders again.

“We truly want to go down the road of partnership” with the province, Sayers said.

The province has not yet responded to the court ruling or to the petition.

“We have won every step of the process to this point,” Restoule said, vowing to continue with court cases in the future, or to sit down and negotiate with the province.

“If litigation is what Ontario wants, we will go there.”

CAPITALI$M IS CRISIS OF OVERPRODUCTION

AUSTRALIA
Thousands of avocados dumped in South West due to massive oversupply


Monday, November 8th, 2021
By Monique Welhan

Thousands of avocados have been dumped at the Manjimup tip.

 PIC: Save our Donnelly River/Facebook

Avocado growers in the South West have been forced to dump their fruit due to a huge oversupply and a lack of workers.

A photo posted to Facebook by Save our Donnelly River shows thousands of avocados rotting at the Manjimup tip.

The bumper crop season paired with labour shortages due to the COVID-19 pandemic means avocados with minor blemishes that would make it onto supermarket shelves in previous years are now being dumped.

The oversupply is bringing down the prices of avocados with a 5.5kg tray now selling for just $18 compared to $50 last year.

According to ABC News, 8.2 million trays of avocados are expected to be picked in WA this season — a 233 per cent increase on last year's crop.

BORN AGAIN COVID SPREADERS
'We are kind of a hot zone': Amherst Nova Scotia residents worry after spike in COVID-19 cases after faith-based event

Heidi Petracek
CTV News Atlantic Reporter
Follow | Contact
Published Nov. 9, 2021 

AMHERST, N.S. -

COVID-19 testing has popped up at the Amherst Fire Department, bringing out residents concerned about case counts.

"With the amount of cases, we are kind of a hot zone, so its better to be safe than sorry," said resident Stephanie Chapell.

Fellow resident Joseph Murphy says he's worried.

"It does worry me a lot about them opening up the border, too," he said.

The area has seen a recent increase in cases, with 53 active as of Tuesday.

There is also growing concern over an outbreak at East Cumberland Lodge, a long-term care home in nearby Pugwash, N.S.

There is community spread, says public health, as a result of a faith gathering in the area last month, although it won't confirm where.

"It was a multi-day gathering and there was approximately 100 people that attended the gathering," Dr. Shelley Deeks, Nova Scotia's deputy chief medical officer said on Monday.

One Amherst church did hold such an event in late October.

The pastor for Gospel Light Baptist Church would not speak to CTV News on camera, but Pastor Robert Smith calls what happened "unfortunate" and told CTV the event followed the rules for faith gatherings, which do not require proof of vaccination.

He says parishioners did what 811 told them to when they learned of an exposure.

"On Friday, Dr. Strang did reach out to faith-based leaders to clarify when proof of vaccine requirements are needed," Deeks said.

Smith says 70 per cent of parishoners at the church are fully vaccinated, and the church is working with Nova Scotia Public Health.

Health officials say the outbreak at East Cumberland Lodge is linked to a faith event.

Seventeen residents at the home have tested positive, along with two employees. One resident is in hospital.

"East Cumberland Lodge was one of the members who have had excellent uptake on their vaccinations," said Michele Lowe of Nursing Homes of Nova Scotia Association, the group representing care homes in the province.

Lowe says all residents, and 96 per cent of staff at the lodge have their shots, but community spread, means heightened concern.

"This is where, as a community, we need to support people to get tested through rapid testing," Lowe said.

That is something the area's MLA says should have been happening here sooner.

"Public health and government took away asymptomatic testing from us here," said Elizabeth Smith-McCrossin.

And, she says, take-home test kits aren't widely available either.

"Fully available in HRM, but not in rural Nova Scotia," Smith-McCrossin said

Listen to honey bees shriek a warning to their hive when murder hornets approach

Scientists have compared the calls, named 'antipredator pipes', to fear screams and panic calls

Author of the article:Devika Desai
Publishing date:Nov 10, 2021

Giant 'murder' hornets attack a honey bee hive in Vietnam 

PHOTO BY HEATHER MATTILA/WELLESLEY COLLEGE

Bees have developed their own version of a fire alarm to warn their hive of predatory murder hornets, a new study has found.

Once they’ve spotted a lurking giant or murder hornet, Asian honey worker bees will immediately string along series of panic calls — termed as “antipredator pipes” — which harsher and more irregular in their frequency.

Giant hornets or even Asian hornets which are closely related to the murder hornets recently discovered in North America are known to prey on bees and often send out scouting insects to search for hives to prey on. On finding one, the scout then returns to inform its nest, which then track the hive and often slaughter the entire colony.

“Antipredator pipes share acoustic traits with alarm shrieks, fear screams and panic calls of primates, birds and meerkats”, the study explains.

These pipes, scientists explain in their study published on Wednesday in the Royal Society Open Science journal, are actually vibroacoustic signals made by raising their abdomens, buzzing their wings and flying about “frantically.”

“These sophisticated defences require timely predator detection and swift activation of a defending workforce,” the authors wrote in the study

“Vibroacoustic signals likely play an important role in organizing these responses because they are transmitted quickly between senders and receivers within nests.”

Lead researcher Heather Mattila, professor of biological sciences at Wellesley College, Massachusetts and her team studied interactions between giant hornets and Asian honey bees in Vietnam for over seven years, by placing microphones in hives belonging to local beekeepers. The study collected almost 30,000 signals made by the bees over 1,300 minutes of monitoring.

“[Bees] are constantly communicating with each other, in both good times and in bad, but antipredator signal exchange is particularly important during dire moments when rallying workers for colony defense is imperative,” researchers wrote in their study.

In some cases, scientists observed that the signals prompted the worker bees at the hive’s entrance to go into defence mode, either attacking the scouting hornet by forming a ball around it to heat it to death or spreading animal dung on the hive to repel predators — the first document use of a tool by bees.

It’s unclear the signals do in fact indicate preparation for a specific type of defence, but as a whole, scientists suggest the the bee pipes are a “rallying call for collective defense.”

Scientists also found ‘striking differences’ in the way the bees responded to two types of predators – the giant hornet which attack in numbers and a smaller hornet species which hunts solitarily. The anti-predator pipes didn’t sound as much as for the latter, suggesting that the response may have been specifically developed for the larger, more dangerous predator.

“Colony soundscapes showcase the diversity of (the bees’) alarm signalling repertoire, including a novel antipredator pipe made by workers when (giant hornet) workers were present at nest entrances,” the study states.

“This research shows how amazingly complex signals produced by Asian hive bees can be,” behavioural ecologist Gard Otis was quoted by science website EurekaAlert! .

“We feel like we have only grazed the surface of understanding their communication. There’s a lot more to be learned.”

Captured on video: Bees pipe out alarms to warn of “murder hornet” attacks

When murder hornets approach an Asian beehive, everyone can hear the screams.

JENNIFER OUELLETTE - 11/9/2021, 

Wellesley College researchers have identified a sound that Asian honeybees use to warn the hive of a "murder hornet" attack.

Asian honeybees (Apis cerana) produce a unique alarm sound to alert hive members to an attack by giant "murder hornets," according to a new paper published in the journal Royal Society Open Science. For the first time, scientists at Wellesley College have documented these so-called "anti-predator pipes," which serve as clarion calls to the hive members to initiate defensive maneuvers. You can hear a sampling in the (rather disturbing) video, embedded above, of bees under a hornet attack.

“The [antipredator] pipes share traits in common with a lot of mammalian alarm signals, so as a mammal hearing them, there's something that is instantly recognizable as communicating danger,” said co-author Heather Mattila of Wellesley College, who said the alarm signals gave her chills when she first heard them. “It feels like a universal experience.”

As I've written previously, so-called murder hornets rocketed to infamy after November 2019, when a beekeeper in Blaine, Washington, named Ted McFall, was horrified to discover thousands of tiny mutilated bodies littering the ground—an entire colony of his honeybees had been brutally decapitated. The culprit: the Asian giant hornet species Vespa mandarinia, native to Southeast Asia and parts of the Russian Far East. Somehow, these so-called "murder hornets" had found their way to the Pacific Northwest, where they now pose a dire ecological threat to North American honeybee populations.

FURTHER READING Attack of the Murder Hornets is a nature doc shot through horror/sci-fi lens

There are other species of Asian giant hornets, too. They are apex predators and sport enormous mandibles that they use to rip the heads off their prey and remove the tasty thoraxes (which include muscles that power the bee's wings for flying and movement). A single hornet can decapitate 20 bees in one minute, and just a handful can wipe out 30,000 bees in 90 minutes. The hornet has a venomous, extremely painful sting—and its stinger is long enough to puncture traditional beekeeping suits. And while Asian honeybees have evolved defenses against the murder hornet, North American honeybees have not, as the slaughter of McFall's colony clearly demonstrated.

Mattila has been studying honeybees for 25 years, fascinated by their organization and ability to communicate, and she turned her attention to Asian bees in 2013. "They have evolved in a much scarier predator landscape," she told Ars, pointing to the 22 known species of hornets worldwide for whom Asia is a particular hot zone. Many of these species rely on insects like honeybees to grow their colonies, so they are among the bees' most relentless predators. The deadliest of all are the giant hornets (aka, "murder hornets") because they coordinate in groups to attack beehives.

"As humans, I think there is something fundamentally attractive about understanding predator-prey interactions," said Mattila. "Humans are both predators and prey, depending on the situation, so we've evolved under analogous circumstances as the bees. We can recognize their plight in the face of giant hornets."

Last year, Mattila and her team documented the first example of tool use by honeybees in Vietnam. The researchers discovered that Asian bees forage for animal dung and use it to line the entrances to their hives—a practice dubbed "fecal spotting." It serves as a kind of chemical weapon to ward off giant hornets. Mattila and her team found that hornets were far less likely to land on or chew their way into hives with entrances lined with animal dung.

How Honeybees use animal poop as a chemical weapon to protect hives from giant “murder hornets."

While Mattila and her team were in Vietnam for the dung study, they noticed that noise levels in the hives increased dramatically whenever the giant hornets approached. "We could hear the bees' sounds from several feet away," she said. "So we started popping microphones into colonies so that we could eavesdrop on them." They also took extensive video recordings of activity in the apiaries of local beekeepers.

Ultimately, they collected some 30,000 signals made by the bees over 1,300 minutes and then translated those sounds into spectrograms for analysis. Bees produce a surprisingly complex array of sounds, which they perceive either as air-particle movements they detect with their antennae or as vibrations they detect via special organs in their legs. So bee signals are "vibroacoustic" and are transmitted within colonies as both airborne sounds and vibrations.

There are hisses, for example, usually made by all the bees at once as they lower their bodies and move their wings in near-synchrony, Mattila said. They hiss constantly, but more so when hornets are present, and the exact purpose of the hissing is not yet fully understood.

"Hisses in other animals are often used to intimidate a predator, but that is not likely the case with bees, mostly because they hiss a lot without predators, too," said Mattila. "One idea that has been proposed (not by us) is that hissing helps to momentarily hush the colony because bees stand still for a beat after a hiss. It might help workers perceive other sounds in the nest if most bees stop moving for a second."


Enlarge / Giant murder hornets attack a honey bee hive in Vietnam.
Heather Mattila/Wellesley College

Piping signals accounted for the vast majority (about 95 percent) of the signals in the data set, but there was considerable variability, according to the authors. So-called "stop signals" were the most common (62 percent of the piping signals in the data set). These are produced when a worker vibrates its wings or thorax, typically in response to predator attacks, when fighting over a food source, and during swarming. "Stop signals are really short, [with a] relatively even frequency, and often delivered to other workers via a head butt," said Mattila. Asian honeybees produce more stop signals when hornets appear, and they will change the properties of those signals depending on the type of hornet that is attacking.

Although they are also produced by vibration of the wings or thorax, the newly discovered antipredator pipes are distinct from stop signals. They are harsher and more irregular, with abruptly shifting frequencies. Those colonies used in the study that were attacked by giant hornets were much noisier and frenetic, said Mattila, compared to the relative quiet and calm of the control colonies.

The bees under attack would run about frantically, often congregating at the hive entrance to form defensive "bee carpets." The mode of defense depends in part on the species of attacking hornets. Bees have also been known to form "bee balls" to kill attacking hornets collectively via overheating and suffocation. In fact, the authors wrote, "We observed workers attempt to bee ball a [hornet of the Vespa soror species] immediately after she killed a nest mate that was making antipredator pipes at the [hive] entrance." By contrast, the smaller Vespis velutina hornet attacks alone, targeting individual bees as it hovers in front of hives. The bees typically respond with coordinated "body shaking" as an intimidating visual display.

Enlarge / Biologist Heather Mattila of Wellesley College examines a group of honeybees.
Wellesley College

There was also a broad categorization of piping signals known as "long pipes" that accounted for 34 percent of all the piping signals in the data set. These lack the rapid and unpredictable frequency modulation of the antipredator pipes, according to the authors. "When frequency changed over the duration of these pipes, it did so in smooth sweeps," they wrote. Nor was the long pipe signaling affected by the type of hornet attack.

“[Bees] are constantly communicating with each other, in both good times and in bad, but antipredator signal exchange is particularly important during dire moments when rallying workers for colony defense is imperative,” the authors wrote. Furthermore, when they make those signals, the bees expose a pheromone-producing gland, suggesting they may employ multiple communication strategies to grab the attention of their nest mates. A future focus of Mattila's research will be investigating the role this gland might play in organizing the bees' response to hornet attacks.

The ongoing pandemic has limited field work for the time being, but Mattila says her team has been mailing giant hornets to their labs around the world and have even brought on some new collaborators. Currently, the researchers are re-analyzing the hornet attack videos from the perspective of the hornets rather than the bees. "We're trying to figure out how they disseminate pheromones to recruit their nest mates to a group attack," she said. "These hornet pheromones are key stimuli that bees would be paying attention to—in addition to the alarm signals they produce for each other—to determine what kind of hornet is attacking them."

DOI: Royal Society Open Science, 2021. 10.1098/rsos.211215 (About DOIs).