Extremism experts warn of echoes of Jan. 6 in rightist FASCIST response to FBI Mar-a-Lago raid

Caitlin Dickson

·Reporter

Sat, August 13, 2022 

Days before he was killed by police after allegedly firing a nail gun into an FBI field office in Cincinnati, the man whom officials have identified as Ricky Walter Shiffer appears to have posted online about wanting to kill FBI agents after the search at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

Screenshots taken from Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social, show that an account using Shiffer’s name, which appears to have been removed, posted a “call to arms” on Tuesday morning, hours after Trump confirmed the raid had taken place at his Florida residence a day earlier.

“We must not tolerate this one,” read one of the posts, which urged others to “be ready for combat” and to “respond with force.

“Kill the F.B.I. on sight,” the post said.

The same account appears to have posted its final “Truth” on Thursday morning, shortly after the attempted breach of the FBI’s Cincinnati office. Authorities said that Shiffer, who was wearing body armor and is believed to have been armed with an AR-15 as well as a nail gun, fled the scene after activating an alarm and led law enforcement officers on a chase that ended in a cornfield, where after a lengthy standoff, authorities say he was fatally shot by police.

The New York Times reported Friday that, for months before he attempted to attack the FBI office in Ohio, federal authorities had been looking into whether Shiffer, 42, of Columbus, had been involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Whether the Truth Social account with Shiffer’s name belonged to him has not yet been confirmed. But extremism experts and some federal law enforcement officials said the Cincinnati incident demonstrates the potential harm that can come from the kind of violent rhetoric that has been circulating online in the wake of the FBI’s search at Mar-a-Lago.

“The online trail left by the individual who engaged in that attack illustrates vividly how this type [of] rhetoric can motivate individuals toward real-world violence,” said Jared Holt, a senior research manager at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.

Holt told Yahoo News that he’s "observed high levels of apocalyptic, violent and conspiratorial rhetoric present in online pro-Trump communities following the search, contributing to a general environment of rage that is not dissimilar to the lead-up to the Capitol riot.

“Similarly to that period,” Holt said, “these expressions of anger are happening in plain sight online and being regurgitated by powerful Trump supporters in government and media.”

Supporters of former President Donald Trump gather near his residence at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., on Aug. 9. (Giorgio Viera/AFP via Getty Images)

Minutes after Florida Politics first reported Monday evening that the FBI had executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, Trump, who was in New York City at the time, took to Truth Social to announce that his “beautiful home” and private club in Palm Beach, Fla., was “currently under siege, raided and occupied by a large group of FBI agents.”

In a lengthy statement, the former president went on to decry the search and declare, without evidence, that he was the victim of “prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by the Radical Left Democrats who desperately don't want me to run for President in 2024."

News outlets soon reported that the raid had been related to an investigation into Trump's potential mishandling of classified documents. In May, a federal grand jury began investigating whether he had mishandled top-secret documents, including taking 15 boxes of material to the Florida resort.

Nonetheless, Trump’s outrage quickly reverberated across the right, with Republican lawmakers and conservative commentators echoing his claims of persecution.

It didn’t take long for some of the rhetoric around the Mar-a-Lago raid to turn violent. Within hours of Trump’s statement announcing the raid, social media users from Twitter to fringe platforms like Gab, Telegram and Truth Social were issuing calls for civil war and vowing to take up arms. Much of the vitriol was targeted at the FBI, prompting the head of the the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association to issue a statement Wednesday denouncing “the extreme threats of violence levied against agents at the Federal Bureau of Investigation this week.”

The federal magistrate judge who signed off on the warrant authorizing the search of Trump’s home also quickly became a target after his name was revealed in news reports.

Ben Popp, an investigative researcher with the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, said that he conducted an analysis of various platforms popular with extremists, such as image boards like 4chan and 8kun, Telegram groups and TheDonald, and found that use of the term “civil war” spiked on Aug. 9 — the day after the FBI’s search.

“The last time it spiked like that was, interestingly enough, in November 2020,” Popp said, after the contentious presidential election in which the incumbent, Trump, ultimately lost to Democrat Joe Biden. Popp said the recent resurgence in civil war discourse suggests that the search of Trump’s residence is serving as a similar rallying cry for his supporters.

Former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla. (Charles Trainor Jr./Miami Herald/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

In both scenarios, Popp said, the violent rhetoric spreading across fringe spaces could be traced directly to the baseless conspiracy theories and apocalyptic narratives promoted by Trump and his allies in mainstream forums, from Fox News to Twitter, which seek to paint Republicans as victims, whether of the biased media, vote-rigging Democrats or a politically motivated FBI.

Popp noted a tweet by Charlie Kirk, the founder of conservative advocacy group Turning Point USA, which described the search of Mar-a-Lago as “a military operation against a political dissident.” He described it as just one example of the kind of “apocalyptic narrative” apparently inspiring more explicit calls for violence.

While such “rhetoric is not violent in nature, it’s certainly fueling the violent comments we’re seeing in different spaces online,” Popp said.

Kirk’s tweet was in line with calls to dismantle the FBI from far-right Republican lawmakers like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., or Florida Sen. Rick Scott’s comments comparing the FBI to the Gestapo in an interview with Fox Business. Moderate Republicans who have previously acknowledged how Trump’s words can inspire harm in the real world were also willing to jump to the former president’s defense.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., who said immediately after Jan. 6 that Trump “bears responsibility” for the Capitol riot, issued a statement Monday declaring that the Justice Department had “reached an intolerable state of weaponized politicization,” and threatening to launch an investigation if Republicans win back control of the House in the upcoming midterm elections. Even former Vice President Mike Pence, who was personally targeted by the violent mob on Jan. 6, expressed “deep concern” at what he called the “appearance of continued partisanship by the Justice Department.”

This persecution narrative has formed the basis for a variety of violent posts that have popped up on many of the websites where Trump supporters discussed plans for Jan. 6, such as the pro-Trump message board TheDonald. It also seems to be drawing in some of the same people.

In addition to Shiffer, who had not been charged in connection to Jan. 6, NBC News revealed that at least one user who posted about “civil war” on TheDonald following Monday’s raid is currently awaiting sentencing for his participation in the Capitol riot.

“I think these insurrectionist attitudes haven’t gone away since Jan. 6, it just takes events like this for that to bubble back to the surface,” said Popp.

Popp and Holt, however, noted that there are some key differences between the violent rhetoric stemming from the FBI search and that seen in the lead-up to Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump called his supporters to come to Washington for a “wild” protest to oppose the congressional certification of Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.

Most notably, in contrast to Jan. 6, the violent discourse in recent days has not focused on a singular event or call to action. Popp and Holt predict that any action inspired by the raid is likely to be smaller and less concentrated than the insurrection that drew hundreds to the Capitol last year.

“My leading concern at this time is that the hyperbolic rhetoric could motivate individuals to act violently while believing they are doing so for a broader cause, as we have already witnessed in the attempted breach of an FBI facility in Cincinnati on Thursday,” Holt said.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland delivers a statement at the Department of Justice on Aug. 11. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Federal law enforcement officials are equally concerned.

“[The] bureau is on edge,” said an FBI source, who spoke to Yahoo News on background after the attempted attack on the FBI office in Ohio. “We are all on edge.”

Another official with the Department of Homeland Security said the incident in Cincinnati was “just further evidence that false narratives can lead to real threats and violence.”

FBI Director Christopher Wray issued a statement Thursday condemning the “unfounded attacks on the integrity of the FBI,” which he said “erode respect for the rule of law and are a grave disservice to the men and women who sacrifice so much to protect others.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland echoed Wray’s statement at a press conference Thursday, where he announced that the Justice Department had submitted a motion to unseal a search warrant and property receipt from the FBI’s search of Trump’s Florida home.

“I will not stand by silently when their integrity is unfairly attacked,” said Garland, who noted that he “personally approved the decision to seek a search warrant in this matter.”

Ari Lightman, professor of digital media and marketing at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College, said the violent rhetoric stemming from the Mar-a-Lago raid is just the latest escalation of an extreme polarization on the right that has been on the rise since at least 2008, with the election of former President Barack Obama.

Lightman told Yahoo News that while talk of a new civil war is “really troubling,” perhaps more troubling is the rhetoric from lawmakers and right-wing media figures eroding public trust in all government institutions, whether the FBI or the public school system.

This lack of trust, he said, fuels extremism and perpetuates the notion that “the only way through this is not through discussion or debate, it's through violence.”

Even after a man was killed after attempting to break into the FBI office in Cincinnati, the current campaign to condemn the FBI showed no signs of slowing down. At a press conference on Capitol Hill on Friday morning, members of the House Intelligence Committee’s Republican minority struggled to strike a balance between condemning violence and expressing support for rank-and-file FBI agents, while simultaneously accusing the agency’s leadership of “brazen politicization.”

Meanwhile, rather than release the search warrant himself, Trump spent Friday suggesting that the FBI planted evidence on his property and demanding the release of the documents related to the search of Mar-a-Lago, while pre-emptively attempting to discredit any damning information they may reveal.

By the time the judge ordered the release of documents related to the raid on Friday afternoon, the discussion on platforms like Truth Social and others that hosted some of the most violent rhetoric in the immediate aftermath of the search had turned to a new conspiracy theory positing that such threats, and the attempted attack on the FBI office in Ohio, had been part of a “false flag” orchestrated by the FBI itself.

The goal of such an operation, according to users, was to create a pretext for President Biden to declare martial law and, ultimately, incite a civil war.

Jana Winter contributed reporting.

Park Lawn sinks as lower death rate cools Q2 cemetery demand

Noah Zivitz

Managing Editor, BNN Bloomberg

Aug 12, 2022

Park Lawn Corp. shares tumbled as much as 10.15 per cent on Friday after the funeral home and cemetery operator’s latest results disappointed investors as a slowing pandemic-era death rate rippled through its operations.

The Toronto-based company, which had 276 locations spanning 16 American states and three provinces as of May 16, late Thursday said its second-quarter net profit was flat at $5.8 million. On an adjusted basis, its profit sank 34.7 per cent to $0.19 per share. Analysts tracked by Bloomberg were expecting $0.34 in per-share adjusted profit.

Revenue also missed expectations by a wide margin at $75.9 million for the second quarter, compared to an estimate for $101.1 million. The top-line performance represented 5.4 per cent year-over-year growth thanks to acquisitions; so-called organic revenue fell during the quarter.

“As the death rate normalized over the second quarter, we experienced a meaningful decrease in national mortality which affected our cemetery operations more significantly than our funeral homes. Specifically, we saw a decrease in our at-need cemetery sales as a direct result of the decrease in the death rate,” said Park Lawn chief executive officer J. Bradley Green in a release.

Park Lawn was on a steep growth trajectory in recent years as COVID-19 took hold. In the second quarter of 2020, for instance, the company’s second-quarter revenue surged 44.6 per cent year-over-year.

Its shares soared 160 per cent from April 1, 2020 to their recent high in early January; since then, the stock shed 28.18 per cent of its value through the close of trading Friday.

“COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. appear to have reached a fairly steady rate, breaking from the prior pattern of waves, unless the recent uptick continues to surge. Assuming no further waves materialize, as we lap comparable periods with much more elevated volumes, Park Lawn faces stiff [comparison],” wrote National Bank of Canada analyst Zachary Evershed in a note to clients Thursday night.

“We note, however, that loosened restrictions allow for larger services and [Park Lawn] has increased pricing, likely providing a partial offset,” he added.

Evershed has an outperform recommendation (the equivalent of a buy) on Park Lawn shares, and a price target of $45.00 per share.

All nine analysts tracked by Bloomberg have buy recommendations on Park Lawn, with a consensus 12-month price target of $44.75 per share, representing a potential return of 49.2 per cent.

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• Canadian trade minister vows to keep pushing U.S. on global tax deal

Stephen Wicary, Bloomberg News

Now Showing

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Aug 12, 2022

Canada’s trade minister praised US passage of a landmark tax and climate-change bill, playing down the potential for conflict over what was left out of it.

Mary Ng said legislation approved Friday afternoon by the House of Representatives represents a diplomatic victory for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government. She led the push against an earlier proposal that would have restricted electric vehicle tax credits to cars and trucks built by unionized US workers, making it harder for Canadian auto plants to compete.  

“This recognizes the importance of the integrated supply chain that has always been Canada and the United States in making automobiles,” Ng said by phone from her district in suburban Toronto. “It’s really good for workers and it’s really good for jobs.”

The Inflation Reduction Act that’s now headed to President Joe Biden’s desk includes language that applies the incentives to vehicles built anywhere in North America. But it was stripped of a change that would have brought the US in line with a global deal on a 15 per cent minimum corporate tax.

Canada intends to impose a so-called digital services tax of its own on big technology companies, if a global tax pact falls apart without US support. Ng’s counterpart in Washington, Trade Representative Katherine Tai, has warned Canada not to follow through with a digital tax, arguing it would discriminate against US companies.    

“We’re not going to go it alone unless we have to, and that isn’t until 2024,” Ng said Friday. “We’re going to work very hard with the OECD and the United States to get that multilateral arrangement across the finish line.”

Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers decried the stripping of the minimum corporate tax from the Democratic-led bill this week, telling Bloomberg Television the global deal “may well collapse” as a result. 

Ng declined to pile on to that criticism. “What we are very pleased with is what is in this bill that has been passed,” she said, arguing it fulfills the road map Biden and Trudeau agreed to on “working together on the recovery from COVID-19, protecting jobs and committing to fight climate change.” 

She added that the bill passed Friday “meets the obligation of USMCA and CUSMA” -- as the overhauled North American free-trade agreement is known in the US and Canada, respectively. The earlier version with the exclusionary EV tax credits didn’t, she said. 

Op-Ed: Europe and North America beware — Droughts don’t just go away


By Paul Wallis
August 13, 2022

The Po River is Italy's largest reservoir of freshwater and much of it is used by farmers. — © Piero CRUCIATTI AFP

The headlines are screaming the unthinkable. The Rhine, Danube, and Po Rivers are shrinking. Crops are being very badly affected. Shipping and movement of goods are being hit hard. Shortages of materials are damaging already stretched supply chains.

In the US the Big Drought has been going on for years. The water shortage has arguably generated more conspiracy theories than action. The European drought, however, has hit relatively quickly, and very hard. The Rhine is at incredibly low levels.

In a global context, drought is affecting the northern hemisphere. China is also suffering from a drought affecting grain production. The net picture is of a global food chain under a lot of stress at many points in basic production.

If this goes on for a few years, things could get a lot worse. Reduced melt in the Alps has long been predicted as causing major issues for the Rhine and Danube.

The difference between meteorological droughts and hydrological droughts

A meteorological drought is basically lack of rain and snow precipitation. A hydrological drought is systemic, related to water management, and often coincides with lack of rain.

The trouble here is that in Europe water-dependent systems are being hit simultaneously with the effects of lack of water. In Western Europe, this is atypical. Europe has been undergoing a series of droughts since 2014, but not on this scale. According to at least one source, the current environment is the worst for 2000 years.

A short character analysis of droughts.

This is what drought is all about. In Australia, we’re all too familiar with big, long, droughts. Generally speaking, they start locally and spread. Heat does make them a bit worse, but the real problem is the lack of circulation of moisture. The water cycle is severely disrupted. The process takes at least a few years. That’s when things are normal.

A new NOAA study in the Journal of Climate warns that in the already warm and frequently dry southern Great Plains and Southwest, climate change will make these “hot droughts” significantly hotter – and longer – than they used to be. 

Image – NOAA, Public Domain

There is such a thing as a drought cycle, and it’s considered regular or semi-regular. Actually, you could also say it’s a matter of degrees of difference. A dry spell isn’t drought or anything like it. A real drought is never a short-term thing.

A big drought is a lot worse and its effects are wide-ranging. It’s a matter of scale and the compound effects of drought. In a major drought, the topsoil blows away. The soil nutrients also blow away. The soil biome is either destroyed or dormant.

It’s similar to desertification. Soil types in Europe vary a lot, but none of them are likely to escape unscathed in a serious drought. Agriculture changes the character of soils and specializes in them.

Those specialized soils, obviously, won’t take well to a total lack of water for years. Heat is very good at breaking down organic materials. Simply preserving the soils can be difficult.

Rebuilding these soils afterwards is what you’d call “an acquired taste”. It’s not like you can just get a watering can and everything springs back to life. The soil biology may restart, but what’s left of it? You see how complex this can get.

This “soil rehab” is also likely to be expensive and time-consuming. The supply chain won’t just spring back to life, either. In a long drought, businesses may not be around afterwards.

Damage control during a drought? It’s not easy.

It’s a dangerous economic cycle, and it’s pretty much inevitable that some businesses will be on the wrong end of it. Drought relief as required at the time and systemic drought recovery are essential to minimize the damage.

Sky farms and enclosed spaces that capture soil and plant moisture transpiration and recycle it are arguably the best options for maintaining production. There’s a catch, though; these things take time to set up, and the volume of production, obviously, can’t be the same as open fields without massive investment.

Big monocultures are particularly vulnerable, and most global grain, vegetable and fruit production is still done this way. That’s the elephant in the bathtub here. Old-style agriculture can’t really handle droughts. The methods must change.

Permaculture is the all-round, does-everything option, but it involves drastically different land management. This is “integrated farming”, using multiple plants to support each other. It does work, but it’s the exact opposite of corporate farming.

Corporate farming really isn’t tooled up to do this type of farming. That’s a pity because permaculture grows multiple crops whereas standard industrial farming only grows one crop.

Harvesting and recycling water are also essential. That water won’t come often, and it’s priceless. Recycling wastewater is also critical to long-term management.

The exceptional drought in the American West has lowered the water level in Lake Mead to just 27 percent capacity. Image -WildfireTigress (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The future could be a lot shorter than you think

There’s a very bleak, but possible scenario here. If agriculture and water supplies go offline at the same time for any extended time, the entire food supply chain will progressively degrade.

That means:

Land degradation severely reduces available land for viable farming

Reduced production capacity according to scale.

Food price rises and shortages.

Industrial supply disruption at all levels. (Industry uses more water than anyone else.)

Basic resources degradation due to water supply irregularities

Severe impacts on quality of life worldwide.

Possible famines and large numbers of “food refugees” in deprived areas.

A major northern hemisphere drought lasting for 10 years could easily do all this. No soothsaying required; this is quite possible. Billions of people can be seriously affected in that short a time frame.

Just one more thing:

Humans can only survive for 3 days without water.

Simple enough?

Cryptocurrencies are gaining ground across Africa. That’s both good news and bad

Representations of cryptocurrencies in this illustration taken January 24, 2022. 

 photo: Dado Ruvic/Reuters

Cryptocurrencies have become popular in African and other developing countries.

That’s according to a policy brief released recently by UNCTAD, a United Nations agency. Significant proportions of Kenya (8.5%), South Africa (7.1%) and Nigeria’s (6.3%) populations are using these digital currencies.

In June, the Central African Republic adopted bitcoin as a legal tender.

The report warns that widespread use of unregulated digital currencies poses danger to the continent’s financial system. In an interview with The Conversation Africa, Iwa Salami, an expert in financial technology law and regulation, examines the future of digital currencies in Africa.

Why is cryptocurrency becoming popular in Africa?

Cryptocurrencies have gained acceptance among a large proportion of the low-income population that was, previously, financially marginalised. Most banks in Africa were not accessible to this segment. Even when they were, low-income account holders were discouraged by high transaction costs.

Another factor is economic stagnation compounded by debt crises and political instability in African economies since the era of independence. This has resulted in weak currencies ravaged by inflation in countries like Kenya and Nigeria.

Cryptocurrencies promised to address both financial exclusion and the problem of weak domestic currencies.
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Representations of cryptocurrencies are seen in this illustration, August 10, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

Cryptocurrency gives everyone with access to a mobile device and internet connectivity the opportunity to engage in activities similar to those conducted through financial institutions and intermediaries. That includes payments, sending remittances and making investments.

Investment is particularly inviting to the technically savvy. It gives them the opportunity to hold assets that aren’t affected by rising inflation and depreciating domestic currencies.

Cryptocurrencies are also quicker, cheaper and easier to use than conventional methods. That’s because the technology facilitates peer-to-peer transactions rather than relying on intermediaries. These currencies were more accessible than traditional banks during the pandemic and lockdowns. This further drove their use and growth across Africa

What does a high number of people holding cryptos imply?

This can facilitate economic activity in African countries. People with no access to banks and banking services are able to pay for goods and services using cryptos.

Crypto transactions are also believed to be a more secure way of transacting. Unless someone gains access to the private key for your crypto wallet, they cannot sign transactions or access your funds.

The system also facilitates transparency. All cryptocurrency transactions take place on the publicly distributed blockchain ledger. There are tools that allow anyone to look up transaction data – including where, when, and how much of a cryptocurrency someone sent from a wallet address.

But there are risks, too. What are those?

First, cryptocurrencies are very complex. They require a bit of technological astuteness to embrace. A significant proportion of the adult population in sub-Saharan Africa (34.7%) is illiterate and may not be able to grasp it. This, to a certain extent, turns the financial inclusion argument on its head.

Secondly, although it is argued that the blockchain is a more secure way of transacting, the downside, of course, is that if you lose your private key there’s no way to recover your funds. This is a threat that does not exist if you have a bank account.

Thirdly, cryptocurrencies have had a history of volatility, (as is currently being experienced in the crypto market). This has adversely affected retail investors, especially those who do not understand this type of asset class.

Another issue of profound concern to African states is the potential threat to monetary sovereignty. Should crypto ever be more widely used than domestic fiat currency, national monetary agencies such as central banks may not be able to steer their economies to a path of growth using monetary policy. Such policy is, after all, primarily administered through domestic currencies.

An associated threat is the weakening of effective capital controls in African states. These are needed to prevent capital flight from domestic economies. Any weakening can result in significant volatility in currency rates and the rapid depreciation of domestic currencies.

There are also threats to financial stability. This could arise from significant exposure that financial institutions, like banks, have to crypto firms such as through loans. Regulation in some African countries, such as Nigeria addresses this by restricting transactions between banks and crypto assets service providers.

What is the future of cryptocurrencies in Africa?

Despite the ongoing downturn in the market, cryptocurrency represents the future of finance and financial transactions. And there are indications that cryptocurrencies are here to stay which is seen from their increasing recognition by countries. At one extreme, the governments of El Salvador and the Central African Republic have adopted bitcoin as legal tender, although the implementation and impact of this on their broader economies have been faced with severe criticisms.

Others, such as Nigeria, have recognised the need for state representation of digital currencies in the form of central bank digital currencies. Many other countries are now exploring this option.

It is important to note, however, that the uptake of central bank digital currencies has been very low in developing countries that have rolled them out. There are also ongoing investigations by countries into the economic impact of central bank digital currencies and whether adoption is the right approach.

But if cryptocurrencies are to live up to their promise, both on the African continent and elsewhere, there must be a globally co-ordinated and holistic approach to regulation, since transactions are global. Although some action on this front is emerging, the current fragmented approach to regulation across the world is not ideal.

* Iwa Salami is a Reader (Associate Professor) in Law, University of East London.

** This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

Gustavo Petro’s Victory Brings an Opportunity To Reverse Inequality in Colombia


Running on a platform of gender equity, progressive taxation, and environmental protection, Colombia’s first leftist president could bring much-needed change to a deeply unequal nation.

August 14, 2022 by Inequality 


By Omar Ocampo

On June 19, the Colombian public elected Gustavo Petro and Francia Márquez as the nation’s first leftist president and Black vice president. To many, their historic victory symbolizes a potential end to a structural contradiction that has afflicted Colombia’s democracy for the past one hundred years: the paradoxical coexistence of a stable representative democracy and high levels of political repression and violence, particularly towards movements and parties working to build a more progressive and equal society.

One does not need to look very far into the past to find evidence of collective targeting of known political detractors. For example, over 4,000 activists, leaders, and presidential candidates of the first openly leftist and oppositional party, Unión Patriótica, were systematically assassinated after achieving some initial electoral success at the local and regional level in the mid-1980s. Supporters, too, were targeted. Civilians were forcibly displaced or killed by illegal armed groups with the explicit goal of violently reorganizing districts and municipalities to deny Unión Patriótica a local or regional base of support. Traditional political elites and their wealthy patrons made it clear that alternative political projects grounded in social justice were not to be tolerated even in a competitive democracy.

And while the threat of political violence has not ceased, analyst and current Colombian Senator Ariel Ávila recently remarked that the struggle to create a political space for the excluded and marginalized has resulted in the ascendancy of Petro and Márquez. As an Afro-Colombian environmental activist, Márquez and her connections to grassroots social movements increased Afro-Colombian and indigenous voter participation in the Pacific region of the country, ensuring a strong base of support for an egalitarian political program, that guaranteed their victory.

That a former activist and the son of farmers are now leading one of the most influential countries in Latin America is especially notable given the country’s deepening inequality. A report published by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 2018 revealed that social mobility for low-income families in Colombia is extremely low. In fact, it is almost nonexistent. It takes the bottom 10 percent a mind-boggling eleven generations to even come close to the country’s mean income. If we define the length of a generation to be 25 years, it requires 275 years for a low-income family to enter the middle-class.

For perspective, Colombia declared its independence from Spain 212 years ago in 1810.

Current official government statistics look equally grim. Despite some economic growth in the last three quarters of 2021, the poverty rate, currently at 39.3 percent, is higher today than it was eight years ago. The country is also home to the most devalued currency in Latin America. The official Gini Index is 54.2, making Colombia one of the most unequal countries in the world. The UN’s World Food Programme, meanwhile, recently classified Colombia as a “hunger hotspot” with food insecurity now affecting 7.3 million Colombians and 1.1 million Venezuelan migrants.

It should come as no surprise then that the politics of change triumphed over the politics of continuity. What is needed now is a program that expands economic opportunities, increases access to state and social services, promotes social mobility, and improves the material conditions of the most vulnerable and working-class communities so they can live a dignified life.

Petro and Márquez’s domestic platform emphasizes the need to transition away from the current status quo of endemic inequality towards a society that is a guarantor of human rights and social justice. Redistribution of wealth and power is on the agenda, but as noted by Petro in his victory speech, wealth needs to be created for it to be equitably redistributed.

The commitment to close all inequality gaps – economic, gender, racial, and LGBTQ – will be institutionalized with the creation of Ministry of Equality. Petro and Márquez envision an institution ensures pay equity and empowers women-headed households by guaranteeing a basic income above the poverty line. They also propose to establish a National System of Care that recognizes, renumerates, and redistributes care work.

As gender parity is central to achieving transformational change, the Petro-Márquez administration also aims to ensure that women make up half of all political appointees at every level and every branch of government to democratize decision-making.

In an interview with Noticias Caracol. Vice President-elect Márquez highlighted how the traditional and national political class had forgotten or purposefully ignored the peripheral regions of the country. “My task is to guarantee the rights of those from the excluded and marginalized territories, to guarantee the rights of Afro-descendant, raizal, palenquera, and indigenous populations.” The government of change pledges to combat structural racism, to protect their economic and territorial rights, and preserve their native languages.

The Petro-Márquez platform also vows to implement progressive forms of taxation. They propose to increase the taxes of the 4,000 wealthiest individuals in the country, precisely directed at unproductive assets like vacant fertile land. According to Wealth-X’s database, there are currently 4,740 individuals with a net worth of at least $5 million USD in wealth. The combined wealth of this class in 2021 was $104.3 billion USD.

The triumph of Gustavo Petro and Francia Márquez provides Colombia with a unique and important opportunity to begin the process of reversing the country’s deep-rooted and multi-faceted inequalities. Their platform is ambitious, and it will undoubtedly face opposition in the Congress, but this only serves to highlight the necessity to organize and continue the work because the status quo will not up its privileges and ill-gotten gains on its own accord.

US-China competition is not what the battle against climate change needs

Set against the estimated multi-trillion-dollar cost of dealing with global warming, Washington’s US$430 billion in a recently passed bill is hardly overwhelming

Furthermore, the prospects for global climate action do not look bright when the world’s top two carbon emitters, the US and China, can’t cooperate

Anthony Rowley
Published:  14 Aug, 2022

US Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer speaks during a news conference about the Inflation Reduction Act outside the US Capitol in Washington on August 4. Photo: AFP

The much-feted Inflation Reduction Act passed by the US Senate last week is more about the United States playing catch-up on climate change than it is about inflation. It is welcome on the grounds that every little bit counts, yet the US is still being outspent by China on climate remediation.

The US$430 billion price tag on the legislation – of which US$370 billion is for fiscal outlays on climate change over the next 10 years – is hardly inconsequential. But set against the estimated multi-trillion-dollar cost of dealing with global warming, neither is it overwhelming.

It is hoped, by experts such as Dan Lashof, US director of the World Resources Institute, that the American initiative will induce China, currently the biggest global emitter of greenhouse gases, and others to increase their targeted spending on climate change.

Some of these other nations, not least India, do need to do more in this regard because, as Bruno Carraso, director general for sustainable development and climate change at the Asian Development Bank, noted during a panel discussion I moderated at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan in Tokyo recently, the Asia-Pacific region produces more than half of global carbon dioxide emissions.

As Carrasco put it, the battle against climate change “will be won or lost” in the Asia-Pacific region.

But before anyone can be sure how much more Asia – or indeed the US, the European Union and other regions – needs to contribute, we need to get a better handle on what the global cost of climate change mitigation and adaptation will really be. At present, this is almost anyone’s guess.

Estimates range from hundreds of billions a year to US$100 trillion over 30 years, depending on whether they come from the United Nations, the World Bank, the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), or other institutions. Morgan Stanley has said US$50 trillion of investment is needed over the next three decades in renewable energy, electric vehicles, carbon capture, hydrogen production and biofuels.

Confusion over costs also arises from the fact that no one is clearly in charge of organising who does what or who pays how much when it comes to dealing with the existential threat of climate change. That in turn is symptomatic of the sadly fractured state of international relations.

Ironically, at the same time that the US was basking in the triumphal glow of taking the lead on climate change, by virtue of the Biden administration’s spending package, China was publicly eschewing cooperation with the US on climate issues as a result of rising tensions over Taiwan.

Some have suggested that this development may actually benefit Planet Earth and save its inhabitants from extinction; certainly, if major powers seek to outdo one another on climate change mitigation, the result could be a lot more positive action.

This seems to imply that, on climate issues as in the diplomatic sphere, “America is back”, to quote US President Joe Biden. But the prospect of the world’s two largest economies and carbon dioxide emitters, the US and China, carving up the world between them on climate change is absurd.

What I termed in the title of a recent book I wrote as “the global battle for infrastructure” is highly applicable now to the climate fight. China went ahead and launched its Belt and Road Initiative, whereupon the US, along with European allies, launched a belated, competitive response.

The result? An uncoordinated series of plans – for everything from railway gauges to power grid design – that hardly serves the cause of efficient logistics designed with global welfare in mind. This process has been exacerbated by the advent of rival US and China supply chains.

At the UN climate change conference, COP27, to be held in Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt in November, the US and China can be expected to confront each other, rather than cooperate on climate change, while other nations like India look on in dismay. Prospects for COP27 do not appear bright unless other powers such as Europe, whose record on climate change alleviation is good, or an alliance of Asian, Latin American and African nations, can mediate between the US and China and break their deadlock.

Even then, there are enemies within as well as from outside to be grappled with in the struggle to slow or halt climate change. The internal enemy could be reluctance on the part of the public to accept the necessary changes in lifestyle, as the ADB’s Carrasco observed.

“We need to be honest that there will be significant changes to our lifestyles” with a particular need for “intergenerational changes” in this regard, he said.

Alongside the passive reluctance to accept the implications of climate change for human behaviour, others are actively seeking to prevent climate action using sophisticated and cynical methods, according to Fletcher Harper, executive director of GreenFaith, a multi-faith climate movement.

Corporate lobbying against climate change action is carried out via low-profile influence peddling (or buying) campaigns that can thwart efforts to strengthen regulation of emissions, Dylan Tanner, executive director of Influence Map, a UK-based climate monitoring organisation, has suggested.

The battle is huge and it will need more than political initiatives from individual nations – be it the US or China – to marshal the global forces needed to win it. Rival armies will need to come together and fight shoulder to shoulder.




Anthony Rowley is a veteran journalist specialising in Asian economic and financial affairs. He was formerly Business Editor and International Finance Editor of the Hong Kong-based Far Eastern Economic Review and worked earlier on The Times newspaper in London

Pelosi and plutocracy: A case study into U.S.'s existential question

Keith Lamb
Opinion 

 14-Aug-2022

U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) signs The PACT Act during a bill enrollment ceremony in her ceremonial office at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., August 9, 2022. /CFP

Editor's note: Keith Lamb is a University of Oxford graduate with a Master of Science in Contemporary Chinese Studies. His primary research interests are China's international relations and "socialism with Chinese characteristics." The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

In an essay by the former Singaporean statesman and academic Kishore Mahbubani, he raises the case for the U.S. being a plutocracy which he calls "America's existential question." Citing quantitive research he demonstrates that policy is made for the super wealthy rather than the common man. Consequently, the U.S. has an idealized democratic electoral facade covering its plutocracy.

This plutocracy enforces a false consciousness over the majority through the concentration of media ownership. Political lobbying and funding of political parties and think tanks, which amounts to legalized corruption, give them direct control over the levers of power. Through financing think tanks, public debate and future policy is conditioned. Of course, there is also traditional "cash for services" corruption.

Nancy Pelosi is a product of this systemic plutocracy. One direct form of corruption has been her husband's "run of trading luck." Before Pelosi arrived in China's Taiwan region, my hypothesis was that she could be using the trip to line her own family pockets. Already, this prediction appears to be coming true.

Unreported by the mainstream media and by Nancy Pelosi's delegation was that her son Paul Pelosi Jr. accompanied her to Taiwan. Paul Pelosi Jr., who has been involved in a number of fraudulent companies, was first spotted with his mother because he was wearing the same tie that he wore on his Ukraine trip.

Considering a democratic electorate might believe they have the right to know where their tax money is going we should ask why Paul Pelosi Jr. presence was covered up. This notion is particularly prudent when one considers the trip could potentially ignite a World War.

I contend that Paul Pelosi Jr., backed by the political power of his mother, went to talk business. The Blitz writes that despite never having had a proper job, since the advent of the Democrats coming back into power, he was coincidently put on the board of two tech companies that specialize in lithium batteries. Considering the Pelosi family's "interest" in tech companies this doesn't look good. I suggest a keen eye is kept on Taiwan's battery companies such as ProLogium which seeks to expand into Europe and the U.S. in 2023.

Nancy Pelosi's trip to Taiwan wasn't just a crude alignment of her family's personal financial interests. In fact, it's far more systemic than that. The American Report details that the lobbying company Gephardt Government Affairs, whose motto is "Strategy Access Results" received a commission of over $3 millioN from Taiwan authorities to lobby Nancy Pelosi.

The fact is that cash from Taiwan's independence forces has been flooding the U.S. "democratic system" for some time now. A report by Responsible Statecraft calls this funding "omnipresent and rarely disclosed." Mint Press News has detailed how this money is also used to control the Western think-tank machinery.

U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrives at Lower House's plenary session at the National Diet in Tokyo, August 5, 2022. /CFP

On a domestic level, lobbying has a nefarious impact on democracy. Take the U.S. prison industrial complex which seeks to persuade the government to lock up more Americans and convert tax dollars into private profit. However, on an international level, with arms companies pushing for war, the consequences could be even worse for those who receive a dose of U.S. "democracy."

Taiwan independence forces donate to influential pro-hegemonic think tanks headed by former CIA and defense officials like the Brookings Institute, the Atlantic Council, and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI). Money also flows to the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation which has been instrumental in promoting the "Xinjiang genocide and slavery" lies. This in turn works towards cementing a false consciousness amongst Westerners that the U.S. and its allies commit war in the name of a righteous cause.

Make no mistake the aim is to profit from arms sales and potential wars which are sold using the "China threat" advertising campaign. Coincidently, money has been granted from the Atlantic Council to an academic employed by the Taiwan military, who advises Taiwan to "work more closely with the U.S." and as such purchase U.S. weapons. Then, ASPI which concocts reports on China's human rights is also funded directly by the military-industrial complex as well as tech companies like Google and Facebook.

For the sake of world peace and development, this democratic facade must be called out. Already, in the Global South, where the full brutal impact of U.S. "democracy" has been felt, false consciousness propped up by U.S. soft power is on the wane. As such, the road to common prosperity has been chosen by over 100 countries that have signed up for the Belt and Road Initiative.

However, in the U.S. while the election of Donald Trump and the storming of the Senate is representative that some are conscious of a plutocratic swamp real democratic change and democratic control of state apparatus nevertheless remains lacking. This is because the U.S. is mired in an elitist-backed culture war used for the purpose of divide and rule.

Corruption in plain sight and the fermenting of global disorder characterized by Pelosi's "case study" will not change until a mass democratic people's movement overcomes the reactionary narrative of the right and the gaslighting of liberal elites to solve America's existential question.