Federal appeals court rules that mine can be built on sacred Apache land Oak Flat

By Vaughan Jones

Published: Saturday, June 25, 2022 - 10:09am

Updated: Sunday, June 26, 2022 - 9:37am

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Coverage of tribal natural resources is supported in part by Catena Foundation

Kevin Hurley/Cronkite News

Oak Flat, known to the Apache as Chi’Chil’Ba’Goteel, was federally protected until

 it became part of a land swap approved by federal officials in 2014.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Friday ruled that Canadian-based Resolution Mining Company can build a copper mine on sacred Native American land east of Phoenix.

Oak Flat, located in Tonto National Forest, is considered sacred land by the Apache people, but the court ruled that the plaintiff, Apache-Stronghold, didn’t show substantial burden on religious exercise.

Dr. Wendsler Nosie Sr. is the founder of Apache-Stronghold.

“We’ve vowed to appeal the case to the Supreme Court. So, that's going to be the next direction we take. It’s unfortunate, because, you know, I think not only us here, but a lot of people put their faith and hope into the judicial system,” said Nosie.

Nosie says the issue is one of religious freedom, as well as an environmental matter.

“My sleeves have now come up, you know. Like everyone else, you know, you always want to put faith and hope in the system. But when it comes to Indian country, they continue to destroy the fabric of who we are,” said Nosie.

Two other lawsuits are pending, one by the San Carlos Apache Tribe, and one by the Arizona Mining Reform Coalition and the Center for Biological Diversity, the second of which cites water quality issues and damage to the surrounding environment as a result of construction.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This story has been modified to correct then name of the company Resolution Mining Company.

Why we must nationalize Big Oil

Opinion by William S. Becker, opinion contributor -

 Saturday June 25,2022

© Provided by The Hill 

During the financial crisis in 2008, the federal government protected the economy by bailing out companies it considered “too big to fail.” Normally, the government protects the economy from companies that are too big to exist. Companies that prevent competition by dominating an industry are called monopolies. The Justice Department or Federal Trade Commission use federal anti-trust laws to break them up.

But what should the government do about companies that use deception to dominate a market to the detriment of the economy and the long-term welfare of the American people? What should it do when an industry repeatedly violates the public trust?

In other words, what shall we do about the oil industry? By covering up its knowledge that its products are destabilizing the climate, funding a denial campaign and pressuring Congress not to address global warming, big oil should have lost its social license to operate long ago.

Instead, it has used its influence and cash to sustain billions of dollars in annual taxpayer subsidies (nearly $6 trillion for fossil fuels in 2020) and cut-rate permits to extract oil and gas from public lands. For years, these practices suppressed the ability of clean substitutes like solar and wind energy to compete. More recently, the industry has opposed carbon pricing, which would correct market signals by better reflecting the actual social and environmental costs of carbon fuels.

The American people also underwrite the industry by sacrificing their health to air pollution, suffering through economic recessions triggered by spikes in oil prices and losing the services of degraded or destroyed ecosystems. Those “subsidies” cost more than $635 billion annually, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

To discourage Congress from supporting President Biden’s climate-action agenda, the six biggest oil and gas companies spent nearly $120 million on 746 lobbyists last year, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense. As of April, they spent almost $50 million on campaign contributions to candidates in this year’s elections. To burnish their image despite, oil companies spent $10 million on Facebook ads in 2020. The five largest companies spent $36 billion to promote themselves from 1986 to 2015, peaking when Congress nearly passed a carbon-pricing bill in 2010.

The International Energy Agency says the world’s path to net-zero carbon by 2050 includes no new oil and gas fields or coal mines beyond those already committed last year. Nevertheless, the industry reportedly plans scores of new oil and gas projects that would push global carbon emissions beyond the limits of the Paris climate accord.

Clear and present damage

The U.S. Energy Information Administration says if current energy policies continue, fossil fuels will still dominate America’s energy mix in 2050, crude oil production will set records, and natural gas exports will drive the production of that fuel. The nation’s cost would be $2 trillion a year by 2100, according to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Climate-related weather disasters in the U.S. have already cost $765 billion in the last five years, including $145 billion last year.

Big Oil has made a show of concern. In 2021, 12 of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies pledged to achieve “net-zero emissions” in their operations. However, research soon found “the industry’s magnitude of investments and actions does not match discourse” and “accusations of greenwashing appear well-founded.”

What should the federal government do? First, it should acknowledge that the quickest and most effective way to stabilize the climate is not to waste more time trying to decarbonize carbon fuels; instead, it should facilitate a shift to genuinely clean and renewable energy.

Second, it should fix America’s energy market by eliminating policies that distort price signals. With prices that accurately reflect full lifecycle benefits and costs, renewable resources would advance more quickly because they are free, inexhaustible, ubiquitous and naturally clean.

Third and most important, the government should nationalize Big Oil. That would allow the government to manage the industry’s drawdown, a process the private sector is ignoring. A coalition of climate-action groups showed the world’s 60 largest banks financed nearly $4 trillion in fossil energy projects over the last five years, investments that could be stranded and lead to more requested taxpayer bailouts when the carbon bubble pops.

“If ever there was an industry that merited nationalization, the fossil fuel industry is it,” columnist and podcaster Thom Harman writes. A significant number of analysts agree.

What is nationalization?

A government nationalizes an industry when it takes control and manages it. The U.S. government has done this many times, including in 1989 to rescue the savings and loan industry and in 2008 when it bailed out banks, investment houses and insurers.

“The United States has a long and rich tradition of nationalizing private enterprise, especially during times of economy and social crisis,” researcher Thomas Hanna notes. Since World War I, the federal government has nationalized railroads, telegraph and telephone networks, arms manufacturing, gold markets, military aircraft production, coal mining, steel mills, airport security, mortgage companies, automakers, the production of other raw materials, and even more than a dozen foreign-owned companies.

“We will likely need to take over and decommission the large fossil fuel extraction corporations that are both one of the leading causes of climate change and one of the primary institutional impediments to addressing,” Hanna concludes.

In one scenario, the federal government could buy a controlling interest in the three most dominant oil companies, ExxonMobil, Chevron and Conoco. The cost would be around $350 billion, a trivial amount compared with unmitigated climate change or the $5 trillion the government spent on COVID-19 relief, the nation’s defense budget this year ($778 billion), or fossil fuels’ $630.5 billion annual damages to public health and the environment.

The federal government typically nationalizes companies to save them. In this case, it must nationalize Big Oil to save us all from a future we don’t want.

William S. Becker is a former U.S. Department of Energy central regional director who administered energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies programs, and he also served as special assistant to the department’s assistant secretary of energy efficiency and renewable energy. Becker is also executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project, a nonpartisan initiative founded in 2007 that works with national thought leaders to develop recommendations for the White House as well as House and Senate committees on climate and energy policies. The project is not affiliated with the White House.

Australia’s Gas Crisis Proves It’s Time to Renationalize Energy

Politicians and energy companies say there’s a gas supply crisis, but huge price increases are caused by profiteering private corporations. It’s long past time to renationalize them.


A power plant in Gladstone, Queensland, Australia, photographed in 2009. (LBM1948 / Wikimedia Commons)

BY DANNY WARDLE

JACOBIN

06.25.2022

Across most of Australia, energy bills have been rapidly increasing as a result of a global spike in coal and gas prices. The short-term causes are obvious: the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent sanctions on Russia have reduced the global supply of coal and gas. In addition, roughly a quarter of Australia’s inefficient and outdated coal-fired power stations have gone offline due to unplanned maintenance and outages. Along with peak demand for heating due to cold weather, the result is surging energy prices.

To alleviate the pressure, the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) stepped in to impose price caps in Queensland, South Australia, New South Wales, and Victoria. The only problem is the big gas and coal companies to decided that they weren’t interested in taking a hit to their profits in order to supply domestic consumers. They withdrew supply from the market, threatening blackouts across Australia’s eastern states.

This move forced AEMO to suspend the National Electricity Market in its entirety, instead imposing a system where the market operator sets fixed prices and can demand the energy companies to provide supply. It’s clear-cut proof that privately owned energy production and distribution has failed — and it makes the case for public ownership obvious and pressing.
Profiteering Corporations

Australia is one of the world’s top three exporters of coal and natural gas. Given this, the idea that the nation is facing a “gas shortage” is absurd. It’s precisely because most Australian gas is exported that we’re facing this crisis.

For decades, both Liberal and Labor governments have made agreements encouraging the overseas sale of gas by private suppliers like Santos, which runs the Gladstone LNG plant in Queensland. Thanks to the rising global price of gas, these firms have made huge profits. But this has also exposed Australian gas markets to the volatility of global gas prices, particularly impacting the eastern states. At the end of the day, ordinary Australians are paying the price for the gas companies’ superprofits.

Santos CEO Kevin Gallagher insists that the industry cannot “conjure up gas magically.” Yet Santos had no problems exporting 23.28 million tons of gas last year. Indeed, overall gas production massively increased under previous Coalition governments, while domestic gas consumption only increased slightly. Because Australian gas companies export roughly 80 percent of the gas they produce overseas, increasing production boosted profits but did little to prevent today’s crisis.

This is why we aren’t facing a supply problem; we’re facing a profit problem. Private energy companies have no interest in meeting the local population’s energy needs if it’s not profitable enough.
Tax Their Superprofits

Chris Bowen, Labor’s federal minister for climate change and energy recently convened a meeting of state energy ministers. They agreed to look into giving the AEMO the power to buy and store gas, to be used in times of crisis. There is merit to this proposal. Western Australia, which has managed to avoid the crisis so far, has a domestic reserve policy that ensures that 15 percent of all domestically produced gas is reserved for domestic use. When the Varanus Island gas explosion decimated Western Australia’s gas supply in 2008, those domestic reserves allowed the domestic supply of gas to the state to continue. And unlike most of the eastern states, Western Australia completely owns its electricity supply system.

However, this is hardly a short-term solution to the current price spike, as Bowen has acknowledged. He’s wrong, however, to claim that “there’s no easy fix this year.” There are plenty of things that the government could do to alleviate the crisis. For starters, the government could follow UK prime minister Boris Johnson and introduce a windfall profit tax on energy companies. The rationale is simple: if gas companies are making massive short-term profits thanks to the war in Ukraine, then those extra profits should be shared. Ordinary people shouldn’t be left freezing in the cold while gas producers make windfall gains.

Using taxes to redistribute these profits could help people to pay their expensive energy bills and alleviate cost-of-living pressures. Shamefully, however, Chris Bowen recently told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that the Anthony Albanese government has decided to rule out a windfall profit tax. It’s hardly unexpected, however. Like the Coalition, the Australian Labor Party is in the pocket of the oil and gas industry — just last year fossil fuel companies donated $392,354 to Labor.

The further lesson from the current crisis should be clear: the Australian National Electricity Market has been an unmitigated disaster for ordinary people. The waves of privatization that began in the 1990s led to higher prices, less reliable access to electricity, and worse efficiency. As the Electrical Trades Union’s acting national secretary, Michael Wright, has pointed out, “the current regulatory system fails us during the good times, with rampant profiteering and price gouging, and fails us when times are bad.”

Private coal and gas has only ever been good for the large corporations that get to extract enormous profits from utilities.

The problems with the Australian National Electricity Market need to be addressed at their core. The government should scrap it, nationalize the gas companies, and nationalize the energy distribution monopolies. The shortages and price spikes that we’re facing today simply wouldn’t be happening if the eastern states hadn’t privatized their electricity grids in the 1990s and early 2000s. Besides, essential goods like water, gas, and electricity ought to be publicly owned and operated for the purposes of meeting people’s basic needs.

The cost of renationalizing the energy industry is hardly a problem. Purchasing a profitable asset means that it will eventually pay for itself. The only real cost, therefore, would be the interest paid on the debt to purchase it, a fact that even critics of nationalization are willing to acknowledge. And considering fossil fuel subsidies already cost the government an absurd $11.6 billion last year, it’s not as if governments are unwilling to spend big to keep the industry afloat.

However, there’s a much more important reason to nationalize the electricity sector: it opens the possibility of the government planning a transition to renewable energy. Taking for-profit private companies out of the picture would free up the billions of dollars they receive from the government in subsidies. If you add existing fossil fuel revenues, which are currently privatized, it would make available a considerable funding pool to power a just transition to renewable energy.

Although in the short-term, we are still reliant on the environmentally destructive gas industry, in the long term, it must be eliminated. As Matt Bruenig from the People’s Policy Project has pointed out, it’s exactly industries like these that ought to be publicly owned and managed. The private market has already shown it can’t lead us towards decarbonization — and now, it can’t even guarantee a reliable supply. It’s time to renationalize energy.

Danny Wardle is a PhD candidate at the Australian Catholic University and a member of the Victorian Socialists

“Forbidden Loves and Secret Lusts”: Rose Library hosts exhibition featuring queer pulp fiction

by Madi Olivier | 2 days ago | Campus Life

In celebration of Pride month, Emory University’s Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library is showcasing queer pulp fiction books in an exhibition called “Forbidden Loves and Secret Lusts: Selections from the Golden Age of Queer Pulp Fiction.” 

The exhibit, which includes about 30 rare books about lesbian and gay relationships — as well as images of accompanying artifacts like cover art and movie posters — is located on the 10th floor of the Robert W. Woodruff Library.

“Forbidden Loves and Secret Lusts” will be available until Oct. 7, the first day of the Atlanta Pride festival. The Rose Library will host its second annual drag show at 7:00 p.m. on Oct. 5 in the Woodruff Library’s Jones Room to close out the exhibit, according to Rose Library Associate Director Carrie Hintz.

“We are holding it … so it can kind of bridge both of those pride moments,” Hintz said.

Photo courtesy of Carrie Hintz

The displayed pulp fiction books — which are cheap, mass-produced works of fiction often about sensational subjects — are primarily from the 1950s through the mid-1960s, and include the lesbian novels “The Price of Salt” by Patricia Highsmith, “I am a Woman” by Ann Bannon and “Never Love a Man” by Dominique Napier. There are several books featuring gay men, including spy thrillers and cowboy stories, which were popular genres at the time.

Hintz said some nonfiction pieces, which are “billed as inside the secret lives of gay men and lesbians,” are also included. 

The queer pulp fiction exhibit is Hintz’s brain child. She wrote her master’s thesis on lesbian pulp fiction novels and helped establish “Forbidden Loves and Secret Lusts” as the first full exhibit dedicated to queer pulp fiction at Emory.

“It’s an idea that I’ve had in my head for a while now, seeing the collections that we have and knowing what kind of stories I could tell with these books,” Hintz said. 

Emory has been collecting original copies of queer pulp fiction for years, but recently bought and borrowed reprints of some of the novels, which were made by feminist presses in the 1980s and early 2000s, Hintz added.

“We have always focused on queer pulp collections on the original books from the 1950s and 1960s, but I also wanted to show the ways that these novels, at least some of them, had lives beyond that period of history,” Hintz wrote.

Most of the books were published in the “golden age” of queer pulp fiction, Hintz noted. Books were expensive in the 1940s, as they were often only available as hardcovers at book stores in major cities. However, literature became more accessible in the 1950s with the rise of mass-produced pulp fiction — the small, cheap fiction books were sold in lunch counters, drug stores and cigar shops.  

There are accounts, Hintz explained, of queer women finding these books on racks at the drugstore and realizing for the first time that other lesbians exist and the feelings they had were normal. 

“They weren’t completely isolated,” Hintz said. “For a lot of people, these books were really extremely important forms of representation and the first time that they’ve ever seen queer desire represented at all in their lives.”

Photo courtesy of Carrie Hintz

However, the books were published amid government censorship. United States obscenity laws, which still exist today, prohibit the distribution of “obscene matter,” including inappropriate language and representations of sexual abuse. At the time the queer pulp fiction books were written, homosexuality was often considered obscene, so a book ending with a happy lesbian or gay relationship would be “condoning an immoral lifestyle, Hintz explained. 

To avoid appearing as if the authors support homosexuality, the stories often ended in tragedy — lovers died, converted back to heterosexuality or were institutionalized to allow publishers to produce a more “moralistic” book, Hintz explained. These endings often acted as a warning to readers by telling them what could happen if they engaged in same sex relationships.

“Some of the books are sympathetic or were written by queer people, but many more were trashy, sensation novels that didn’t even attempt to depict real queer people and their lives, loves and desires,” Hintz wrote. “There were certainly just as many dehumanizing or harmful depictions in these books as there were positive and sympathetic ones, and the conversion plots are very common and particularly pernicious and isolating for readers.” 

But the books’ endings did not deter LGBTQ people from reading them. Queer pulp fiction, especially those depicting lesbian relationships, skyrocketed in popularity in the 1950s and 1960s, both for the representation they gave to closeted readers and for the connections they fostered in the real world. 

“If someone’s showing someone a particular title, it could be a way of saying, kind of flagging, ‘This is who I am, are you like this too?’” Hintz said. “It was such a key way for people to understand themselves, understand the world and understand a different way that they could fit into it than they may have without these novels and without these books.”

The Rose Library’s drag show will feature entertainers from Atlanta and across the South, according to Hintz. It is separate from the Student Programming Council’s October drag show, which features student performers. 

Hintz wrote in a June 21 email to the Wheel that the Rose Library decided to host the drag show to “celebrate our rich holdings” that document LGBTQ history, culture, politics and activism. Drag history is included in “Forbidden Loves and Secret Lusts,” which showcases materials such as recordings of ‘The American Music Show,’ the local cable program where Drag Queen RuPaul Andre Charles kickstarted his career.

“​​The choice to do a drag show originated in the Rose Library’s desire to highlight the ways our collections connect to living cultures and subcultures that our students, guests, researchers, faculty and staff can participate in,”  Hintz wrote. “As far we know, the Rose Library was the first academic research library in the country to host a drag show.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Madi Olivier

News Editor | Madi Olivier (she/her, 25C) is from Highland Village, Texas, and is planning on majoring in psychology and minoring in rhetoric, writing and information design on the pre-law track. Outside of the Wheel, she can be found listening to Hozier and Rainbow Kitten Surprise, binge-watching Criminal Minds or trying to pet the Emory cats.

Was biblical Solomon a good or a bad king?
JUNE 25, 2022 BY RICHARD OSTLING

THE QUESTION:

According to the Bible, was Solomon a good or a bad king?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

Both.

With the political challenges afflicting the leaders of Britain, France, Israel, Nigeria, Ukraine, the U.S., and other nations, it’s interesting to look back to the rulers in the Bible even though their ancient monarchies were radically different. Among them King Solomon, whose 40-year reign began 2,993 years ago, ranks with his father David in significance.

This ever-fascinating figure, portrayed onscreen by the likes of Yul Brynner (1959) and Ben Cross (1997), led Israel to its zenith of peace, prosperity, cultural sophistication and international stature. And yet a 2011 biography by Wheaton College President Philip Ryken demeans him with the title “King Solomon: The Temptations of Money, Sex, and Power.” Various Jewish legends outside the Bible both exaggerate his magnificence and the opposite, claiming his subjects rejected him and he died penniless.

I Kings 1 – 11 and parallels in II Chronicles 1 – 9 are the primary sources on his career (here using the Jewish Publication Society translation). King David and Bathsheba lost their first child, a son, as divine retribution for the adultery, homicide and deceit that led to their marriage. Solomon (whose name meant “peace” or “wholeness,” also named Jedidiah, meaning “beloved of the Lord”) became their oldest son and favorite.

David had prior sons by other polygamous wives and the oldest, Adonijah, had a strong dynastic claim to the throne, but the aging David had instead designated Solomon, who was probably age 14 when he took charge. The young king mastered palace intrigue and eventually executed Adonijah and his key supporters. “Thus the kingdom was secured in Solomon’s hands.”

Despite that turbulent start, Solomon like his father was devoted to the one true God and his commandments as the foundation of the regime. A crucial moment occurred several years into Solomon’s reign. God appeared to the king in a dream and asked what gift he desired. Solomon replied that he was “a young lad with no experience in leadership” and therefore needed most “an understanding mind to judge your people, to distinguish between good and bad.” God was pleased that Solomon above all sought wisdom and justice, not riches or military power, and Solomon was to also receive those other gifts in abundance.

Solomon’s military buildup produced a relatively peaceful era, while business acumen and diplomacy fostered international trade and resulting wealth. John Van Seters of the University of North Carolina was notably skeptical about the history in the Jewish Bible, for instance questioning that Solomon’s realm actually stretched from Mesopotamia’s Euphrates River down to Egypt. But he said the commercial gains under Solomon are “attested by a marked rise” in material culture documented by archaeologists.

The Bible says Solomon’s intelligence dazzled Arabia’s Queen of Sheba and that he created a vast collection of songs and proverbs. His mystique was so compelling that non-biblical lore would later portray fantastical events, described at length in the Jewish Encyclopedia here: https://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/13842-solomon/.

A further aspect, too complex to examine in this article, is scholars’ vigorous discussion about Solomon’s role in the composition and compilation of the biblical “wisdom” books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon (a.k.a. Song of Songs or Canticles), and several of the Psalms. These words became his most lasting heritage.

The king was also renowned for lavish building projects, especially the long-promised Temple as the focus for worship. David informed Solomon that he would build the Temple because God had told David that as a warrior in “great battles . . . you have shed much blood on the earth in My sight,” whereas under Solomon God would “confer peace and quiet on Israel” (I Chronicles 22:7-9).

David also ordered up a grand royal palace for himself, new city walls, and general beautification. Inevitably, these public works imposed heavy burdens on the populace, such that II Chronicles 10:3-4 reports “all Israel” protested forced “harsh labor” and the “heavy yoke” (i.e. taxes). Sounds like modern-day political strife.

According to I Kings chapter 11 (material that the parallel history in II Chronicles omits), Israel later experienced spiritual disintegration as Solomon’s devotion to the one God eroded. The Bible recounts that foreign wives “turned away Solomon’s heart after other gods” and he “did not remain loyal to the Lord like his father David.”

This narrative tells us Solomon took “700 royal wives and 300 concubines”! Some of the marriages doubtless established valuable political alliances, as was common with ancient regimes. Whether those sensational numbers were literal or symbolized regal authority, Solomon clearly spurned God and his admonition (in Deuteronomy 17:17) that Israel’s king “shall not have many wives, lest his heart go astray, nor shall he amass silver and gold to excess.” The materialistic sins of Solomon are echoed by today’s dictators.

The result of all this was that when Solomon died the kingdom was already on a path to civil rebellion that under his successors ended the golden age. This permanently destroyed the united kingdom and produced the ruinous conflict between the northern kingdom of Israel over against southern Judah.

SEE 

 https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2007/04/passover-song.html

Greta Thunberg urges society to ‘set things right’ in Glastonbury climate speech

The crowd listens to climate activist Greta Thunberg speaking on the Pyramid Stage during the Glastonbury Festival

 at Worthy Farm in Somerset (Yui Mok/PA)

SAT, 25 JUN, 2022 - 19:20

NAOMI CLARKE, PA ENTERTAINMENT REPORTER

Greta Thunberg has called on society to take on its “historic responsibility to set things right” with the global climate crisis during her speech at Glastonbury.

Speaking from the Pyramid Stage, the 19-year-old environment activist told the crowd she feels there is still hope for the world to choose a path which is “sustainable” and “leads to a future for everyone”.

Ms Thunberg opened her speech with a stark warning of the current climate situation, saying: “We are in the beginning of a climate and ecological emergency. But the biosphere is not just changing, it is destabilising, it is breaking down.

“The delicately balanced natural patterns and cycles that are a vital part of the systems that sustain life on earth as we know it are being disrupted, and the consequences could be catastrophic.

Climate activist Greta Thunberg speaking on the Pyramid Stage during Glastonbury Festival (Yui Mok/PA)

“And no, unfortunately, this is not the new normal. This crisis will continue to get worse until we manage to hold the constant destruction of our life-supporting systems, until we prioritise people and planet over profit and greed.”

The activist referenced the rise in CO2 emissions and how “fundamental changes to our societies” were required if the targets of the Paris Agreement were to be met.

Addressing the actions taken by global leaders, Ms Thunberg said: “World leaders have been very busy. They have actively created loopholes and benefited the industries of destructive industries.”

She said she feels society has come to “expect” world leaders to lie, adding: “We should be fighting for people and for nature, but instead we are fighting against those who are set on destroying it.

Today our political leaders are allowed to say one thing and do the exact opposite. They can claim to be climate leaders, while at the same time expand their nation’s fossil fuel infrastructure.”

However, the climate activist said the situation is not without hope, adding that she feels there is still time to choose a path which is “sustainable” and “leads to a future for everyone”.

The teenager said: “Instead of looking for hope, start creating that hope yourself. We are approaching a precipice, and I would strongly suggest that all of those who have not yet been greenwashed out of our senses stand our ground.

The crowd listens to climate activist Greta Thunberg speaking on the Pyramid Stage (Yui Mok/PA)

“Do not let them drag us another inch closer to the edge, not one inch. Right here and right now is where we stand our ground.”

Addressing the thousands of festival-goers in the crowd, Ms Thunberg said: “You and I have been given the historic responsibility to set things right.

“We have the unfathomable great opportunity to be alive at the most decisive time in human history. The time has come for us all to tell the story and perhaps even change the ending.

“Together we can still avoid the worst consequences and start to heal the wounds that we have inflicted.

“Together we can do the seemingly impossible. But make no mistake, no-one else is going to do this for us. This is up to us here and now. You and me.”

She finished her speech by leading chants where she said “climate” and got the crowd to respond back by saying “justice”.

Following her speech, Erin Rudkin, a 32-year-old from Manchester, said you could tell the Glastonbury audience was captivated by the speech as you could “hear a pin drop” in the crowd.

She told the PA news agency: “I hope that she can really resonate with a lot of people, that there is some more change off the back of what she has just said because everything she just said is absolutely true.”

Social worker Steve Bradshaw, 40, told PA he feels that Ms Thunberg, who has Asperger’s, is an “incredible role model for the neurodiverse community”.

He added that her comments on climate change are “incredibly empowering” and that it is “important that more people are talking about” the topic.

Ms Thunberg’s speech was followed by a set by pop rock band Haim, with Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds taking to the Pyramid Stage after them.

On Saturday evening, Paul McCartney will become Glastonbury Festival’s oldest solo headliner a day after Billie Eilish became the youngest ever solo artist.

Sir Paul McCartney on stage at Cheese and Grain in Frome, Somerset, the night before his headlining appearance at the Glastonbury Festival (MJ Kim/2022 MPL Communications Ltd/PA)

The former Beatle’s headline show will come exactly a week after he celebrated his 80th birthday and after more than 60 years of making music.

Ahead of his history-making set, Sir Paul delivered a surprise preview performance at an intimate venue in Frome, Somerset, where he played some of his best-known solo material.

The singer previously said that his tour and Glastonbury performance will be full of hits from his time in The Beatles and his later group Wings, as well as some of his most popular solo material.

McCartney’s performance is expected to attract an especially large crowd and could rival those of The Rolling Stones in 2013 and Adele in 2016.

Crowds gather outside the Cheese and Grain in Frome, Somerset, to see Sir Paul McCartney perform on Friday (Connie Evans/PA)

The Stones will spend Saturday performing to tens of thousands of fans at the British Summer Time festival in London’s Hyde Park.

The Pyramid Stage has already hosted an array of talent including Haim, AJ Tracey, Easy Life, Joy Crookes and Les Amazones d’Afrique.

There will also be musical stars across the festival’s multiple stages, with US pop star Olivia Rodrigo and rapper Megan Thee Stallion both playing on the Other Stage.

Mercury-winner Celeste will play the West Holts Stage, with The Hoosiers headlining the Avalon Stage and Jessie Ware closing The Park Stage.

Billie Eilish performs on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury Festival (Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP)

Eilish gave an electrifying headline performance on the Pyramid Stage on Friday to end the first day of performances at Glastonbury.

Her appearance was a landmark moment for the festival as she became Glastonbury’s youngest ever solo headliner.

Zimbabwe healthcare workers temporarily call off wage strike


A nurse serves a meal to a patient lying on a bed in a medical ward at a local hospital in Harare on 26 April 2022.
PHOTO: Jekesai NJIKIZANA/AFP

Zimbabwean healthcare workers halted a five-day-old pay strike and returned to work on Saturday, but union leaders warned they would resume the walkout if the government failed to make an improved wage offer within two weeks.

Thousands of nurses and doctors at state-run hospitals in the southern African country are demanding a hefty raise and wages in US dollars due to a slide in the local currency and brisk inflation that has eroded the value of their earnings.

They went on strike on Monday after rejecting a government offer to double their local currency wages, saying the 100% hike would not even compensate for annual inflation that jumped to 131.7% in May.

"The leaders of the Health Associations ... have resolved to temporarily adjourn the industrial action and request the healthcare workers to resume service," union leaders said in a letter sent to government's Health Service Board on Friday.

They warned that they would "have no option left but to withdraw service without notice" if the government did not offer "meaningful" salary hikes within the next 14 days.

Under Zimbabwean labour law, essential workers have to seek permission to strike, but the union leaders say they would not need to do so if they decided to resume this week's walkout.

Most of the country's nurses earn 20 000 Zimbabwe dollars ($53) a month, according to the Zimbabwe Nurses' Association.

They are demanding monthly pay of $540, which is equivalent to what they received in 2018 before the local currency slumped.

Former South African president rejects probe report implicating him in graft

Recently released 'State Capture' report finds Jacob Zuma guilty of plundering state resources during his 9-year tenure

Hassan Isilow |25.06.2022


JOHANNESBURG

Former South African President Jacob Zuma on Saturday rejected a recent report that found him guilty of plundering state resources during his tenure.

Addressing a media briefing in Johannesburg on behalf of the former president, Zuma Foundation spokesman Mzwanele Manyi said Zuma rejected the "State Capture" report and views it as unlawful.

The report, which was published by a government-established judicial commission of inquiry known as the State Capture Commission, was the fruit of "a poisoned tree. It was wrong from the start," Manyi said in the presence of Zuma's legal team.

He said Zuma had asked Judge Raymond Zondo, who headed the State Capture Commission investigating corruption during Zuma's nine years in office, to recuse himself but that he refused.

Manyi accused the judge of having a bias against Zuma.

He said former President Zuma instructed his legal team to report Zondo, the newly-appointed chief justice of South Africa, to the Judicial Services Commission for investigation.

Zuma's lawyer Dali Mpofu said the former president could not attend the media briefing because of his parole conditions which barred him from attending gatherings unless at his place of residence.

The 80-year-old former president was arrested in July last year after he refused to appear before the State Capture Commission and was jailed for 15 months.

He was, however, released two months later on medical parole.

Zuma is accused of enabling friends, especially three Indian-born businessmen known as the Gupta brothers, to influence officials in granting them lucrative state contracts and taking control of most state operations and finances.

He claims innocence and denies these claims.

Earlier this month, South African authorities confirmed that two members of the wealthy Indian Gupta family accused of defrauding the country have been arrested in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Rajesh and Atul Gupta were arrested while the third brother, Ajay Gupta, who is also on Interpol's wanted list, is still at large.

The brothers, who enjoyed close relations with Zuma, fled South Africa for Dubai with their families shortly after Zuma resigned in 2018.

The Ministry of Justice and Correctional Services said discussions between various law enforcement agencies in the UAE and South Africa are underway to have the fugitives returned to South Africa.