Qatar’s promise of ‘carbon-neutral’ World Cup raises doubts




Solar panels sit in front of Khalifa International Stadium, also known as Qatar's National and oldest Stadium, which will host matches during FIFA World Cup 2022, in Doha, Qatar, Saturday, Oct. 15, 2022. Organizers of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar have said the event will be soccer’s first “carbon neutral” event of its kind. FIFA and Qatari organizers say they will reduce and offset all the event's carbon emissions, which will be calculated once the games are over. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)

SUMAN NAISHADHAM
Mon, November 7, 2022 

WASHINGTON (AP) — In the 12-year run-up to hosting the 2022 men's World Cup soccer tournament, Qatar has been on a ferocious construction spree with few recent parallels.

It built seven of its eight World Cup stadiums, a new metro system, highways, high-rises and Lusail, a futuristic city that ten years ago was mostly dust and sand.

For years, Qatar promised something else to distinguish this World Cup from the rest: It would be ‘carbon-neutral,' or have a negligible overall impact on the climate. And for almost as long, there have been skeptics — with outside experts saying Qatar and FIFA's plan rests on convenient accounting and projects that won't counteract the event's carbon footprint as they advertise.

"It's not very helpful for this type of event to market itself as carbon-neutral,” said Gilles Dufrasne, a researcher at the Brussels-based non-governmental organization Carbon Market Watch, which authored a report questioning Qatar's sustainability plan. “It gives the impression that we can build massive state-of-the-art stadiums ... and fly people from all over the world to watch football matches and that’s somehow compatible with reaching climate targets."

COUNTING EMISSIONS

In an official report estimating the event's emissions, Qatari organizers and FIFA projected that the World Cup will produce some 3.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from activities related to the tournament between 2011 and 2023. That's about 3% of Qatar's total emissions in 2019 of roughly 115 million metric tons, according to World Bank data.

Qatar famously moved the tournament to the winter to protect players and spectators from extreme heat. Even so, the gas-rich nation will air condition seven stadiums that are open to the sky. For water, it will mostly rely on energy-guzzling desalination plants that take ocean water and make it drinkable to satisfy the more than 1.2 million fans expected to touch down for the monthlong event. The Gulf Arab sheikdom is normally home to 2.9 million people.

Qatar and FIFA say the largest source of emissions will be travel — mostly the miles flown from overseas. That will make up 52% of the total. Construction of the stadiums and training sites and their operations will account for 25%, the report said. Operating hotels and other accommodations for the five weeks, including the cruise ships Qatar hired as floating hotels, will contribute 20%.

But in its report, Carbon Market Watch said those figures are not the whole story. It said Qatar vastly underestimated the emissions from building the seven stadiums by dividing the emissions from all that concrete and steel by the lifespan of the facilities in years, instead of just totaling them.

“This is problematic,” Carbon Market Watch said, questioning the likelihood that Qatar, which is smaller than the U.S. state of Connecticut, would have erected seven large stadiums without the World Cup.

Qatar defended its math and said it has worked hard to avoid creating “white elephant” venues that often sit idle in host countries after a tournament has ended. It says it has developed plans for each stadium after the games are over.

“No other country has engaged so deeply with its citizens to ensure a sustainable legacy is left behind after a FIFA World Cup,” a spokesperson for the Qatari Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy said.

But last-minute hiccups continue to undercut the country's climate promises. For years, Qatar said the country's small size would reduce the amount of travel needed between stadiums and games. But despite all the construction, the country is still short of hotel rooms and thousands of fans who are unable to find lodging in Qatar will sleep in nearby Dubai — 45 minutes away by plane — and other Gulf cities.

Qatari organizers did not respond to a request for comment about whether they will count the flights in pollution totals, instead saying in a statement that any discrepancies would be explained after the World Cup.

A spokesperson for the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy called the methodology behind Qatar's carbon-neutral pledge “best in practice.”

CARBON OFFSETS QUESTIONED

Central to Qatar's plan to reduce World Cup emissions are carbon offsets. Sometimes called carbon credits, these promise to cancel out or absorb the same amount of greenhouse gases emitted by a company or event, so that it's as if the event emitted nothing.

In theory, that would mean every mile flown into the country and every construction project related to the games would be countered by an equal amount of carbon dioxide reduced by planting trees or improvements made elsewhere.

So far, Qatari organizers have pledged to buy 1.8 million carbon offsets from the Global Carbon Council, a Doha-based carbon credit registry where renewable projects are verified and listed. One carbon credit is equal to one metric ton of carbon dioxide avoided or removed from the atmosphere.

But carbon analysts have said the credits issued by the registry are of dubious quality because it's unclear that they are “additional,” or fund carbon-reducing projects that would not have otherwise existed. As renewable energy infrastructure grows cheaper and more common across the world, it becomes less likely that investing in them through carbon credits is actually benefitting the environment, experts say. Approved projects registered to Qatari World Cup organizers so far include wind and hydropower energy projects in Turkey and Serbia.

“They’re relying on arguably some of the lowest quality credits that exist today,” said Danny Cullenward, an energy economist and lawyer who directs policy at CarbonPlan, a California-based nonprofit that evaluates climate programs. He said there are “severe problems with additionality" with the credits Qatar and FIFA are using, which he evaluated.

Cullenward and other experts say carbon credits often promise more than they deliver. The global carbon credits market remains largely unregulated.

“It’s not clear that the strategy of carbon offsetting is actually meaningful,” Cullenward said.

QATAR'S EFFORTS

Still, Qatari organizers insist the country is on track to host the first carbon-neutral World Cup. They point to the visibly green elements of Qatar's clean purchases: 800 new electric buses, 16,000 trees and nearly 700,000 nursery-grown shrubs, plus a new 800-megawatt solar power plant that was recently connected to the grid.

“It's really enhanced the energy basket for Qatar,” said Saud Ghani, an engineering professor at Qatar University who designed the stadiums' air-conditioning systems. “Before we only burned gas to generate power.”

Organizers have repeatedly said the country's decision to offset the event's carbon emissions “should be recognized rather than criticized.”

Karim Elgendy, a fellow at London's Chatham House think tank who previously worked as a climate consultant for the World Cup, said Qatar's efforts at ‘greening’ the tournament “show a positive trend for a sporting event."

It indicates that Qatar, one of the world's top natural gas exporters, is taking steps to improve its climate credentials, Elgendy said. Even if the country is "doing that in a way that works with them.”

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Follow Suman Naishadham on Twitter: @SumanNaishadham

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AP World Cup coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/world-cup and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

Activists fear for Qatar workers as World Cup spotlight dims




A labourer uses headphones to talk on his mobile phone as the others prepare dinner at their accommodations in the old Musheireb district of Doha, Qatar, Sunday, April 28, 2019. With just days to go before Qatar hosts the World Cup, rights groups fear that a window for addressing the widespread exploitation of foreign workers could soon close. (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili)More

JOSEPH KRAUSS
Sun, November 6, 2022 

With just days to go before Qatar hosts the World Cup, rights groups fear that a window for addressing the widespread exploitation of foreign workers could soon close.

The long run-up to this month's World Cup has brought unprecedented scrutiny to the treatment of the millions of foreign workers in the Gulf Arab nation who built stadiums and other infrastructure, and who will staff hotels and sweep the streets during the world's biggest sporting event.

In the face of heavy international criticism, Qatar has enacted a raft of reforms in recent years, including the partial dismantling of a system that tied workers to their employers and enacting a minimum wage — changes praised by the U.N. as well as rights groups.

But activists say abuses ranging from unpaid wages to harsh working conditions in one of the hottest countries on Earth, are still widespread, and that workers — who are barred from forming unions or striking — have few realistic avenues to pursue justice.

They also worry about what happens after the monthlong tournament ends in December, when the international spotlight moves on and employers slash their payrolls.

Qatar says it leads the region in labor reforms and that progress will continue after the World Cup. Officials from the ruling emir on down have lashed out at critics, accusing them of ignoring the reforms and unfairly singling out the first Arab or Muslim nation to host the Cup.

Qatar, like other Gulf countries, relies on millions of foreign workers, who make up a majority of the population and nearly 95% of the labor force — everyone from highly paid corporate executives to construction workers.

Qatar has dismantled much of what is known as the “kafala” system, which tied workers to their employers and made it virtually impossible for them to quit or change jobs without permission. But rights groups say much of that system survives in different, more informal ways.

Workers often must pay exorbitant recruitment fees, taking on debt even before they arrive. And employers can still cancel visas or report those who quit for “absconding,” a criminal violation.

“If a migrant worker walks away from a job that hasn’t paid them in several months, there’s just a real risk that they’re not going to get that money back," said Michael Page, of the New York-based Human Rights Watch.

Equidem, a London-based labor rights group, recently released a lengthy report documenting abuses in more than a dozen World Cup hotels, where it says workers from Africa and Asia face sexual harassment, discrimination, wage theft and health and safety risks.

Ella Knight, a researcher at London-based Amnesty International, says many migrants working as security guards or domestic helpers go months or even years without a day off, despite laws mandating at least one per week.

“Impunity remains a massive problem, so employers are just not being held to account or not being penalized in a way that prevents abuses from being repeated," she said.

Qatari law bars workers from forming unions or staging protests, and authorities heavily restrict media access to laborers. Police detained at least 60 workers who struck over unpaid wages in August. Last year, two Norwegian reporters were detained while reporting on migrant workers.

Malcolm Bidali, a Kenyan security guard who had anonymously blogged about the plight of workers, was detained for three months — including 28 days in solitary confinement — and fined $6,800 before leaving the country last year.

In an article about his ordeal, he said Qatar's reforms “look splendid” on paper, but that the reality on the ground is different, with authorities seemingly more keen to silence dissent than penalize abusive employers.

“I can’t help but wonder what’s in store for migrant workers after the World Cup,” he wrote. “If workers still live in horrible conditions, if workers still go months without pay, if workers still can’t freely change jobs, if domestic workers still can’t get justice, what happens when no one’s looking?”

Qatar has defended its reforms and says it will continue to safeguard workers' welfare after the World Cup.

“Qatar has always acknowledged that work remains to be done, notably to hold unscrupulous employers to account — as is the case with any country around the world,” Ali Al-Ansari, Qatar's media attache in the United States, said in a statement. “We are already seeing the number of offences declining year-on-year as compliance increases among employers.”

Labor rights activists say Qatar still owes compensation to those who worked on World Cup infrastructure projects going back to the awarding of the tournament in 2010 — years before the reforms were enacted. Amnesty says authorities failed to investigate the deaths of workers during that period.

Amnesty and other rights groups now urge soccer's governing body FIFA to establish a $440 million fund — equivalent to the tournament's total prize money — to compensate workers, an appeal that several federations support. The global soccer body has said it is open to the idea.

Qatar established its own fund in 2018 to compensate workers who are injured on the job or who are not paid, which Al-Ansari said had paid out some $270 million this calendar year alone. He did not comment directly on the calls for a larger remedy fund.

Page, of Human Rights Watch, says the sizable payouts by Qatari authorities, which only cover claims in recent years, show the importance of establishing a larger fund to address the “very serious abuses” that took place in the several years before the reforms were enacted.

“If this is their stance now, in the heat of the spotlight, what is their position going to be — the Qatari authorities — after the World Cup, in terms of reforms and migrant worker protections, when the spotlight is off them? I think that’s really concerning,” he said.
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Follow Joseph Krauss on Twitter at www.twitter.com/josephkrauss

French building group summoned over Qatar working conditions


WCup Qatar Laborers 

NOT WEARING STEEL TOED BOOTS!!!

A Pakistani migrant laborer works on the corniche, overlooking the skyline of Doha, Qatar, Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2022. One of the world’s biggest sporting events has thrown an uncomfortable spotlight on Qatar’s labor system, which links workers’ visas to employers and keeps wages low for workers toiling in difficult conditions. 

(AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)More

SAMUEL PETREQUIN
Mon, November 7, 2022

French construction company Vinci said on Monday that one of its subsidiaries has been summoned by an investigating judge to answer charges that it did not respect the rights of migrant workers who were hired to build infrastructure for the World Cup in Qatar.

The charges relate to a complaint dating back to 2015 that was filed by French advocacy group Sherpa against Vinci Construction Grands Projets and the French executives of its Qatari subsidiary, including accusations of using “forced labor."

The Nanterre prosecutor had closed the case without further action in 2018, but Sherpa, which was joined by several former workers, filed a new complaint that led to the opening of a judicial investigation.

Qatar has faced intense scrutiny ahead of the tournament for its labor laws and treatment of hundreds of thousands of migrant workers, mostly from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and other South Asian countries.

Sherpa said it collected testimonies about the working conditions at some of the construction sites operated by Vinci’s subsidiary, which included working in temperatures over 45 C (113 F) with insufficient water, the withholding of passports, and lack of access to showers in accommodations.

Vinci has denied any wrongdoing and said Monday that none of the projects awarded to its Qatari unit QDVC has any connection to the World Cup in Qatar starting later this month.

“In fact, these projects were entrusted to QDVC before the competition was awarded to Qatar and mainly relate to transport infrastructures," Vinci said, adding that it did not sign any contract with the World Cup organizing committee to build any stadium or hotel in Qatar.

The construction group has, however, worked on some of the infrastructure that will be used during the World Cup, including the Doha metro connecting the airport with the historic city center, and the Lusail light-rail transit system transportation network.

Vinci said it is committed to “improve the living and working conditions of all workers at its construction sites, all around the world."

The group added that “respect for human rights and health and safety at work have been a priority for its staff since QDVC was formed in 2007."

The hearing by the Nanterre investigating judge has been set for Wednesday. Vinci complained about its timing, saying that facing charges just before the start of the World Cup amid huge media attention “might be rather unfavorable in terms of a dispassionate consideration of the facts."

Since FIFA awarded the tournament to Qatar in 2010, the country has taken some steps to overhaul the country’s employment practices. However, Human Rights Watch has urged Qatar to improve compensation for migrant workers who suffered injury, death and wage theft while working on World Cup-related projects.

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AP World Cup coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/world-cup and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

Philadelphia Home Depot workers vote to reject unionization


Shopping carts are parked outside a Home Depot in Philadelphia, Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2022. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Sun, November 6, 2022 at 1:45 AM·2 min read

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Home Depot workers in Philadelphia rejected the first store-wide labor union at the world's largest home improvement retailer Saturday night, a loss for a fledgling movement to organize at major U.S. companies.

Workers voted 165 to 51 against forming Home Depot Workers United, which would have represented 274 employees at the store, according to the National Labor Relations Board, which oversaw the voting. The company and union organizations have five days to file objections.

The defeat for the organizers could discourage activist workers who have successfully formed the first unions at big chains, including Amazon, Starbucks, Trader Joe’s and Apple, but have since suffered setbacks in getting collective bargaining off the ground or organizing more unions.

The Atlanta-based company employs about 500,000 people at its 2,316 stores in the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

Vincent Quiles, the Home Depot employee leading the unionization effort, told WHYY-FM that the attempt to organize workers had been a “tall order.”

“It wouldn’t be an easy fight to have," Quiles said. "But you do these things because you believe them to be right.”

Quiles previously said discontent with compensation, working conditions, understaffing and lack of training are among the grievances that spurred the effort to organize.

After the failed union vote, Home Depot spokesperson Margaret Smith told WHYY, “We’re happy that the associates at this store voted to continue working directly with the company. That connection is important to our culture, and we will continue listening to our associates and making The Home Depot a great place to work and grow.”

Quiles has filed a complaint of unfair labor practices with the NRLB, alleging managers engaged in inappropriate surveillance and interrogation tactics against union supporters. Quiles has said managers followed him around the stores and tried to disrupt any conversations he tried to have with co-workers, even if it wasn't about the union.

Instead, Quiles said he relied on TikTok videos, group text messaging and e-mailing to campaign for the union.

Home Depot has denied the complaint’s allegations.

Fierce legal fights have characterized organization efforts at other companies.

Amazon has filed more than two dozen objections in an attempt to undo the Amazon Labor Union's surprise election victory at a Staten Island warehouse last spring, the group's only successful attempt so far to form a union. The ALU, meanwhile, has filed more than two dozen charges with the NLRB accusing Amazon of unfair labor practices.

Starbucks is negotiating contracts at a handful of the more than 250 stores where workers have voted to unionize, but the company has asked the NLRB to temporarily halt other elections because of alleged misconduct.

The labor relations board has filed a complaint against Chipotle alleging the restaurant chain unlawfully closed a store in Augusta, Maine, and fired its workers for union activity.

Doug Mastriano’s Prophets In Pennsylvania
A shocking weekend with the supporters of the nominee for governor — full of swords, demons, and wild prophecies — shows the theocratic future of the GOP.

By Christopher Mathias
Nov 4, 2022, HUFFPOST

ILLUSTRATION: BENJAMIN CURRIE/HUFFPOST; PHOTO: GETTY

LONG READ

PENNSYLVANIA — LifeGate Church is nestled in a wooded area of Elizabethtown, 6 miles from the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant that partially melted down in 1979, almost rendering this pretty patch of central Pennsylvania along the Susquehanna River a radioactive wasteland. The church was formed in 2010, and now a half-acre of trees behind the building lay on their sides, cut down to make room for an expansion that will include a new youth center.

On an overcast Sunday morning last month, about 80 congregants pulled into the parking lot underneath brilliant orange and yellow foliage and filed in through the church’s red front doors, sharing warm greetings and smiles. I also pulled into the parking lot, glancing in the rearview mirror to see a car pulling in behind me with a sticker on its front windshield declaring, “CRT MARXISM SUCKS.”

I was welcomed by Pastor Don Lamb, a tall, gray-mustachioed man who had recently recovered from a heart attack. (He’d collapsed in a nearby diner and technically died, he told me. But people rushed to his aid and performed a “miracle,” resuscitating him.) Lamb had made it clear before I arrived at LifeGate that he was wary of journalists like me, but that the church would stand by its promise to welcome anybody for Sunday service. I took my place in the rows of adjoined chairs as a full band — keyboardist, guitar player, bass player, drummer — started to play worship songs. The congregants rose to their feet, some with palms facing upward and eyes closed, singing.

Lamb then introduced a visitor to the day’s service, Calvin Greiner, a middle-aged white man from over in Lititz who claims to receive prophetic visions from God. Greiner walked to the front of the room carrying a long sword and grabbed hold of the microphone.

“I was instructed years and years ago to make a sword and to put on it specific words,” Greiner said. He recited the sword’s inscription. “Anointed and appointed. Worship. Warfare. Prayer. Intercession by the direction of the Lord Jesus Christ,” he said. “The other side says, The sword of the Lord — my name’s not on here — it’s The sword of the Lord. The sword of the Spirit.”

“This was in the office of Doug Mastriano — some of you might know him — for 225 days,” Greiner continued. Mastriano, of course, is a state senator and Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania.

Greiner explained how God recently told him to retrieve the sword from Mastriano’s office in Harrisburg, take it to Philadelphia, where a pastor at a church blessed it, and then to the nation’s capital. “God said, ‘After Philly, this must go to D.C. This must go to my Capitol in D.C. from Harrisburg,’” Greiner recalled, his voice breaking.

But before D.C., God told him to stop at LifeGate, where he’d meet a man named Jim Emery, a church member who had worked as security for Mastriano during his campaign.

Greiner invited Emery and a couple of other men to join him at the front of the church, where they laid their hands upon the sword and began to pray as the guitarist strummed a soft melody.

“Oh Lord and heavenly father, we thank you and pray to you that you gave us this sword to bind the powers of Satan and cast it out!” one of the men said. “As this sword moves to Washington, I pray by the powers of the Holy Spirit you will send your angels in and around that building, Lord. And you will touch the mighty Angel of God and find the power of Satan in Washington and run him out of town, Lord!”

The guitarist continued playing as Greiner closed the prayers by exclaiming: “So let God arise! Let his enemies scatter! Let those who hate God flee right now!”

Lamb took hold of the microphone again.

“We welcome you all to LifeGate, the church in the country that’s trying to affect the country,” he said. “We truly believe that God has called the church to be more than a house of offerings, a house of sermons, a house of hymnals. This will be a house of activating people to be engaged in the world we will live in.”

Lamb asked the congregation: “How many of you look forward to the return of Christ?” The crowd erupted into cheers and amens.

“That’s coming,” Lamb assured them, “but you got work to do until then.”

Doug Mastriano, GOP nominee for governor of Pennsylvania, holds a sword at an event hosted by QAnon conspiracy theorists in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in April 2022.
RIGHT WING WATCH

In April, Mastriano spoke at an event in Gettysburg hosted by believers in the QAnon conspiracy theory. He told the crowd that he would be the next governor of Pennsylvania because “my God will make it so.”

The event’s organizer, Francine Fosdick, then gave him what she called “the Sword of David.” She explained that she was giving him the sword because of the “warfare” Mastriano would have to wage on the campaign trail. “You’ve been fighting for our country, and you’re fighting for our religious rights in Christ Jesus,” Fosdick told him.

“Oh yeah,” Mastriano replied, holding up the blade. “Where’s Goliath?”

Mastriano’s campaign did not answer any questions for this story, including whether this sword was the same one I saw at LifeGate.

Mastriano has run an insular campaign for governor, often outright refusing to engage questions from a mainstream media eager to press him about his apocalyptic Christian worldview. He has preferred instead to remain in a conservative media bubble, almost solely granting interviews to far-right figures like Steve Bannon.

To better understand Mastriano, I traveled to central Pennsylvania to see the Christian nationalist extremists in his orbit up close. His supporters, some of whom are self-anointed “prophets,” see Mastriano as ordained by God to be governor of the Keystone State at a crucial moment in American history. Along the way, I joined a traveling far-right roadshow and neo-Charismatic Christian revival called the Great ReAwakening, hosted by former Trump national security adviser Gen. Michael Flynn and Oklahoma businessman Clay Clark.

It’s a festival of MAGA and QAnon conspiracy theories — about the 2020 election, vaccines, the COVID pandemic, 5G, critical race theory and a globalist cabal of Democratic Satan-worshiping pedophiles — so outlandish that it’d be easy to dismiss as fringe if it weren’t regularly attracting thousands of people. It’s also routinely endorsed by some of the most powerful Republican figures in the country, including Mastriano.

If polls, not prophecies, are to be believed, Mastriano will be clobbered by his Democratic opponent, Josh Shapiro, in Tuesday’s election. But his likely defeat shouldn’t distract from what Mastriano represents: The ongoing radicalization of the Republican Party into a sect that sees its victory as inevitable and predestined from above, and which paints its opponents as the literal incarnations of the Devil in need of vanquishing. In this view, democracy is merely a roadblock in a divine quest for domination.

Waiting For Mastriano

Early on a Friday morning last month in Manheim, a small town in the fertile farmland of Lancaster County, a few thousand people — almost all white, most middle-aged — entered the sprawling Spooky Nook Sports complex, laying their coats down on white folding chairs as a band on stage broke into song.

“Way maker, miracle worker, promise keeper, light in the darkness. My God that is who you are,” the band sang as the crowd joined in. They wore T-shirts emblazoned with slogans like “Jesus is my Savior, Trump is my President,” and “FAUCI LIED.”

Pastor Dave Scarlett took the stage, flanked by half a dozen people holding shofars — rams-horn trumpets traditionally used by Jews in religious ceremonies. In recent years the far-right has appropriated the instrument for its battle cry, a way of commencing “spiritual warfare.” Shofars were seen frequently during the violent Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“Let’s go to war,” Scarlett told the crowd, the shofars sounding off seven times.

So began the 17th stop of the Great ReAwakening tour. Attendees were told by speaker after speaker that they — the true, real Americans — are under attack on all fronts, and their salvation lies in seizing political and cultural institutions to pave the way for the Second Coming of Christ.

Many speakers claim they have a direct line to God. Bo Polny describes himself as an “experienced cycles timing analyst” in “Gold, Silver and Cryptocurrency” who uses “prayer and prophetic dreams” to forecast the markets.

“The U.S. Stock Market Crashed 38% in March 2020, as forecast,” his website claims. “NEXT comes the OCTOBER 2022 WORLD ECONOMIC COLLAPSE followed by the return of President Trump… how will Bitcoin, Gold, Silver and Cryptocurrencies react in the turmoil? Become a PRIVATE MEMBER TODAY and get all the DETAILS!” (A 14-day trial is “only” $99.)

Polny spoke at the Great ReAwakening show on Oct. 21. After a hard-to-follow explanation about the Biblical significance of the number “24,” Polny told the crowd that something big was going to happen soon, on Nov. 24 — perhaps the crash of the American dollar. “The system is a fraud, people!” Polny said. “It’s a fraud. Haggai 2:8 states that ‘the silver and the gold are mine, saith the Lord.’ Not the U.S. dollar!”

He then added: “The seven mountains that are built — the financial system, the church, education, the government, arts, entertainment, media — all of it is coming down, and seven new mountains will be built!”

The crowd — which knew this prophecy well — cheered.

The “Seven Mountains Mandate” is at the core of the New Apostolic Reformation. This relatively new evangelical movement believes in miracles, the supernatural, and the existence of modern-day apostles and prophets. It’s a movement characterized by Christian dominionism, the belief that Christians must gain control of the “seven mountains” of societal influence to form a perfect world. Only then, the prophecy goes, can Christ return to Earth.

This theocratic philosophy makes no room for equal governance in a pluralistic society like that of the United States. Yet the GOP candidate for governor of the country’s fifth largest state is a devotee. Though Mastriano has attempted to distance himself from New Apostolic Reformation, he has appeared repeatedly on the campaign trail with its apostles and prophets, allowing them to lay hands on him in prayer.

Mastriano was scheduled to speak at this Great ReAwakening in Manheim — organizer Clay Clark said Mastriano’s campaign asked to include him on the speaker list — but he wouldn’t appear until the end of the second day of the conference, after 16-plus hours of songs, baptisms, healing ceremonies and the casting out of demons.

And wild speeches like Polny’s.

“We’re about to witness the Third Seal of Revelation,” Polny told the Great ReAwakening crowd. “The angel of death is coming to visit these people before the end of the year.”

A graphic appeared on the screen behind him showing photos of Hilary Clinton, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, President Joe Biden, Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), billionaire George Soros, former First Lady Michelle Obama, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and others.

CURSE MAGICK

This graphic was projected onto a screen at the far-right Great ReAwakening show in Manheim on Oct. 21, prophesying that the "angel of death" will visit 24 political figures by the end of the year.
COURTESY BRIAN KAYLOR

“These people are going down!” Polny exclaimed as the audience cheered and clapped. “These people who think they are pharaohs! Present-day pharaohs who you shall never see again!”

“This is coming with the greatest wealth transfer in human history,” he continued, making sure to plug his business. “Gold and silver are going to explode in value…”

Polny’s hit list, which included many of the MAGA movement’s stated political opponents, was taken from “Julie Green Prophecies,” according to the graphic on the projector.

Green, a fixture of the Great ReAwakening tour, is a “prophet” whose prophecies are reliably pro-Trump. They are sometimes violent too, like her prophecy that God — any minute now — is going to strike down Democratic politicians “for their planned pandemic, shortages, inflation, mandates and for stealing an election.” She has also falsely alleged that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “loves to drink the little children’s blood” and that the federal government is performing “human sacrifices.”

She nevertheless enjoys a close relationship with Mastriano. The GOP nominee for governor once shared a video of Green prophesying that Pennsylvania is a “hornet’s nest of corruption” but that “I, the Lord, am cleansing your state.”

Mastriano has been photographed with Green and once invited her to give a prayer at a campaign rally. At the Patriots Arise conference in Gettysburg — where Mastriano accepted his sword — Green delivered another prophecy. “Yes, Doug, I am here for you, and I have not forsaken you,” Green said, speaking as God. “The time has come for their great fall; for the great steal to be overturned. So, keep your faith in me.”

Self-declared "prophet" Julie Green, who enjoys a close relationship with Mastriano, speaks at the Great ReAwakening in Manheim.
COURTESY OF BRIAN KAYLOR

I knew all this about Green when she took the stage at the Great ReAwakening in Manheim. I did not expect to witness how much her followers adored her and how excited they were to watch her reveal prophecies on stage.

“Says God, ‘you can’t stop my son, who is the rightful president, and his name is President Donald Trump…” she said, as the crowd broke into hysterical cheers. “He is on his way back, and how he takes his position back on center stage, you will never see that coming because you won’t see me coming. And I am with him.’”

Green said that Trump’s return to the White House might happen before 2024. “God said he can take this country back in unconventional ways. He doesn’t need an election to do it,” she added.

Later, I saw Green wafting around the conference like a celebrity. She, at times, placed her hands on people’s heads, casting out their demons, causing her followers to break down in tears and even collapse. She and other “prophets” performed these rituals frequently.

They claimed to heal the sick. A woman in a wheelchair stood up and walked, saying this Great ReAwakening was the first time she’d done so in 13 years.

Attendees are prayed over during a worship and prayer time at the Great ReAwakening America Tour.
PHOTO BY JABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST VIA GETTY IMAGES

Valeri Boland, who coordinates volunteers for Mastriano’s campaign in Dauphin County, told me I had a demon.

I had been watching the failed U.S. Senate candidate Kathy Barnette speak on stage when Boland sat next to me. She had seen my tweets about the conference. She whispered in my ear that they were “trash” and “full of lies,” pointing her finger toward my chest. She said she would pray for me to have a “radical encounter with God” so that the “demons inside me” causing me to lie would leave.

She went back to her seat. Twenty minutes later, she found me again and apologized, offering to pray with me, an invitation I declined. She was joined by Francine Fosdick, the QAnon believer from Gettysburg who had gifted Mastriano the sword. The pair both wore “Mastriano” pins on their shirts and launched into a series of conspiratorial rants that they asked me not to record — including about the COVID vaccine and the Georgia Guidestones — while trying to convince me to accept Jesus into my heart.

I walked over to where various MAGA vendors were hawking their wares. There were prophetic paintings, one of Jesus hugging an American flag and another of a lion, surrounded by American flags, and the text: “What storm Mr. President? You’ll find out” — an apparent reference to the QAnon “storm” prophecy that Trump will mass-arrest his political enemies one day.

Other vendors sold $100 metal crosses, handbags shaped like guns, and “Trump is still my president, but Christ is King” sweatshirts. There were various questionable health supplements for sale, vitamins and anointing oils, and a blanket that purportedly protects you from 5G’s radioactive waves.

One woman, who had hurt her wrists working as an Amazon delivery driver, showed me the bottle of “micronic silver” she had just bought, which she claimed instantly stopped her pain.

Mastriano’s campaign had a booth amidst all this snake oil where supporters could sign up to volunteer. A nervous campaign worker moved aside as I took photos of the booth, stacked with literature about Mastriano’s pledge to restore “voting integrity,” “end mask and vaccine mandates,” and “put parents in charge of education.” I asked the campaign worker if Mastriano would still speak at the conference, and she said probably not. He was too busy. Clark, the conference organizer, kept telling me that Mastriano was still on the schedule.

“I identify as a man today — is it OK to be in here?” a man in the men’s bathroom loudly joked as he used a urinal, with three other grown men next to him guffawing. (Nearly every speaker at the conference had gone after transgender people, some calling gender dysphoria the work of the devil.)

Outside, I found Pennsylvania state Rep. Dave Zimmerman, who I’d interviewed a few weeks prior at a small rally for Mastriano in Harrisburg. At that rally, he had admitted to being subpoenaed by the FBI, likely over his involvement with Mastriano’s scheme to install fake electors after the 2020 election to give the presidency to Trump.

I showed Zimmerman a photo of the “angel of death” prophecy that had been projected on stage, making sure it was close enough so he could read the text above the faces of the 24 people prophesied to die in the next couple of months: “Angel of Death coming for them by year-end. ’TREASON will be written on them for ETERNITY.”

Is this OK? I asked Zimmerman. He demurred.

“I don’t know what was said. But there’s no question there’s, you know, there’s good things, and there’s bad things happening in our country, and some individuals promote good things, and some individuals promote bad things.”

I asked him: “Do you believe in modern-day prophets who have a direct line to God?”

”You know, throughout the Old Testament, New Testament scripture, God used prophets, and I’m sure he’s using prophets today as well. There’s clearly prophets that can talk to God, I’m sure,” Zimmerman said.

“QAnon’s actual core is that you need mass murder to save America, and that part hasn’t died.”

- Thomas LeCaque, associate professor of history at Grand View University

Outside the building, I eavesdropped as about a dozen attendees smoked cigarettes while chatting about their favorite far-right media personalities.

“I go to sleep listening to InfoWars.”

“That BS with the Sandy Hook lawsuit fucked him over.”

“We were listening to Ben Shapiro on local radio — he talks too fast, though.”

“Tucker Carlson — he is so funny sometimes. He just cracks me up. And that laugh of his!”

Lisa, from Elizabethtown, lit a second cigarette after agreeing to explain her “Save The Children” T-shirt to me. The Illuminati, she said, are harvesting adrenochrome from the blood of sex-trafficked kids in underground tunnels. She’d seen video evidence of these rituals via DuckDuckGo — a Pennsylvania-based search engine. She turned around so I could see the back of her shirt, replete with a map of “THE TUNNEL SYSTEM OF THE UNITED STATES.”

A woman at the Great ReAwakening event shows off a shirt mapping out underground tunnels across the U.S. where she believes the Illuminati are harvesting children's blood.
CHRISTOPHER MATHIAS / HUFFPOST

This conspiracy theory is at the heart of QAnon, the authoritarian fantasy that one day Trump will destroy this cabal of pedophiles, who incidentally are his political foes. Support for QAnon was evident at the Great ReAwakening — with one speaker leading the crowd in reciting the movement’s slogan, “Where we go one, we go all.” But it was far less pronounced than it might’ve been at a MAGA event two or three years ago.

I called Thomas LeCaque, an associate professor of history at Grand View University who studies apocalyptic religion and political violence, to ask him whether this was because QAnon’s brand, with all of its wild prophecies and numerologies, and its association with the Jan. 6 insurrection, had simply become too toxic. “I think it’s much worse than that,” he said. “I think QAnon became so normalized in the far right that you don’t need the specific banners of Q to announce it’s already there.”

When you peel away all the “genuinely batshit crazy prophetic aspects,” LeCaque explained, QAnon at its core is a “mass murder fantasy” about the coming “storm” when all of the MAGA movement’s enemies will be arrested and lynched.

“The ideology that your enemies are literal monsters and that something needs to be done about them — that part has unfortunately become far too mainstream,” LeCaque said. “I think that’s the part that should worry us a lot more. Like it’s really easy to make fun of QAnon in its purest state, but QAnon’s actual core is that you need mass murder to save America, and that part hasn’t died.”

Hand gun- and rifle-themed American flags, hats and other MAGA gear is sold during the ReAwaken America Tour.
PHOTO BY JABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST VIA GETTY IMAGES

Inside the conference, there was excitement about the arrival of Trump’s adult son. “Does anybody in this room not think that we won Pennsylvania?” Eric Trump asked the crowd after taking the stage. “It was the biggest fraud.”

He then gave a speech similar to the ones he’s given at other ReAwaken tour stops — the election was stolen, Christianity is under attack, liberals are indoctrinating your kids in schools — before taking out his phone and calling his dad.

Eric Trump held the phone to the microphone so the crowd, growing ecstatic, could hear the former president say, “We love you. We’re going to bring this country back because I think our country has never been in such bad shape as it is now.”

The crowd started to chant: “Trump! Trump! Trump!”

Then Eric Trump thanked Clark, the conference’s organizer, who had joined him on stage. “I love you guys,” he told Clark, “the job you’ve done…” The crowd started to cheer loudly for Clark. I was close enough to the stage to see the tears welling up in Clark’s eyes.

Clark is a far-right podcaster and business consultant from Tulsa, Oklahoma, who believes that a 2013 prophecy from a self-anointed Christian “prophet” named Kim Clement about “a man by the name of Mr. Clark and… another man by the name of Donald” was about him and Trump.

He interpreted this prophecy as a call from God to launch the Great ReAwakening, holding the show’s first iteration in Tulsa last April. He has used the tour to push the unhinged conspiracy theory that the COVID vaccine is a trick by billionaire Bill Gates to alter our DNA, making the number of genes a variant of the devil’s number — 666, also known as the “Mark of the Beast.”

“The shot, the injection, the bioweapon, what is being called the vaccine —everyone needs to look this up — it’s called SM-102,” Clark said. “A core ingredient of the shot, SM-102, also contains a technology called luciferase—Lucifer race.”

Now, here he was being thanked by Eric Trump in front of thousands of people. “He doesn’t need to be doing this crap, and neither do I, frankly,” Eric Trump said of Clark. “But the guy doesn’t stop because he loves this nation, and he loves everything this country stands for. And you are incredible at everything you put together.”

After Eric’s speech, many in the crowd started to filter out of the Spooky Nook complex, walking back to their cars as the sun set. A middle-aged white couple named Carl and Lori were driving a red, white and blue pickup truck covered in decals spelling out, “Doug Mastriano For Governor.”

“He’s gonna do all he’s gonna say he’s gonna do,” Carl said of Mastriano. “No same-sex marriage, no killing babies, that’s the main thing, and taking care of the schools and not having teachers teaching what they’re teaching. All this transgender goings-ons and all that crap.”

Carl loved all the speakers at Great ReAwakening. Lori particularly liked the prophet Julie Green.

“She’s a very good, strong Christian woman,” Lori said. “God speaks to her.”

Carl from Hershey, Pennsylvania, stands with his truck, which is covered in decals supporting Mastriano, in Manheim on Oct. 21.
CHRISTOPHER MATHIAS / HUFFPOST

On day two of the Great ReAwakening, I met Micki Witthoeft, the mother of Ashli Babbitt, the woman fatally shot by Capitol police as she tried to crawl through a shattered window into the Speaker’s Lobby during the insurrection.

Witthoeft carried a small, 19-year-old dog named Fuggles in a backpack as she walked around the conference. She wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the letters “J4J6” — Justice For Jan. 6 — next to a photo of her daughter outside the Capitol building.

“That’s my daughter an hour before she was murdered by the United States government,” Witthoeft said.

This was her fourth time at a Great ReAwakening event. She was here with Randy Ireland, who led the New York chapter of the Proud Boys, a violent neo-fascist gang that played a major role in the insurrection. She and Ireland had joined forces to raise awareness about the mistreatment of Jan. 6 prisoners, who they said were being “robbed” of their due rights under the Constitution.

Every month they host a candlelight vigil outside the prison in D.C. where a few dozen alleged insurrectionists are being detained. “We pray,” Witthoeft said. “We sing hymns. We have call-ins from the prisoners that we put out over livestream through a microphone and the telephone, and then at nine o’clock, we all sing the National Anthem.”

I asked her how she felt about the Great ReAwakening.

“I think there’s a lot of different people here with a lot of different messages, but one consistent message is we need God in this country. We need God in our lives. We need God to move us forward in our paths, individually and collectively. And so I believe, you know, it’s a feel-good moment for a lot of people that are here.”

Micki Witthoeft, mother of Ashli Babbit, wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the letters “J4J6” — Justice For Jan. 6 — next to a photo of her daughter outside the Capitol building.
CHRISTOPHER MATHIAS / HUFFPOST

Nearby people lined up to be healed by prophets, to have their demons cast out. Over on the main stage, a murderer’s row of bigots, grifters, COVID-deniers, and QAnon influencers gave speeches. It became clear that Mastriano wasn’t going to show. He was speaking at a rally up in Scranton and likely wouldn’t have time to get here. Not that he was going to sway any voters here, anyway. He had their votes. His campaign workers packed up their booth and walked out of Spooky Nook.

In his scheduled time slot, Donné Clement Petruska, the daughter of the late “prophet” Kim Clement, took to the stage and played videos of her dad “prophesying” Sept. 11, the rise of ISIS, and the election of Trump.

The crowd oohed and aahed.

The Sermon

The next morning at LifeGate church in Elizabethtown, Pastor Pete Ogilvie used part of his sermon to talk about the Great ReAwakening conference. “It was like drinking water from a firehose, the release of all the information and things — I couldn’t take it all in,” he said.

“It was a disturbing conference,” he said. “It was lovely and disturbing all at once.”

I had come to LifeGate because of its close ties to Mastriano and its involvement with the GOP. Lancaster Online, the local newspaper, had reported that four LifeGate members, including one with direct ties to an armed militia, had been working as a security team for Mastriano on the campaign trail. One of them, Jim Emery, along with two other LifeGate members — Stephen and Danielle Lindemuth, who were at the Jan. 6 rally that turned into the insurrection — also won seats on the local school board.

The church was making real inroads into local politics. I noticed Emery sitting in the back of the church during the sermon, holding the sword that had recently been in Mastriano’s Harrisburg office. Emery raised the sword aloft when he felt moved by the pastor’s words.

“These are the things that we come against in the name of Jesus, that we wage war with, and these are the things that we will declare victory over today!” Ogilvie declared. On the wall behind him, a projector displayed a long list of the church’s enemies:

“Mail-in Ballots, Dominion Machines, Election Day lasting longer than a week, Stolen elections, An illegitimate Administration in the WH….Human-Trafficking, Fentynol flooding our country, opioid addiction rampant, sexual immorality being the standard, Greed, Satanic Worship… Doctrines of demons, Critical Race Theory in our schools, Porn in our libraries, Boys competing in girl’s sports, pronoun protocols, Liberal media lies and canceling the conservative voices…”

Ogilive clicked through to the next slide:

“Medical Tyranny, Mask mandates, Vaccination Mandates, Covid Testing… Clause Schwab, George Soros, Fauci, Bill Gates, Hunter Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Tom Wolf, Richard Levine, Gerry Nadler, the Jan. 6 Committee, Liz Cheney, The rest of the swamp in Both Parties, and Both Houses of Congress and the Senate….”

Then he began to pray.

“Lord, we believe that all these enemies of Your Word will fall, all your enemies will cower,” Ogilive said.

Someone in the back of the church blew through a shofar.

“Lord, we thank you, we only have enemies because you have enemies,” he added. “All your enemies are under your feet, and therefore they’re under ours.”



Christopher Mathias
Senior Reporter, HuffPost

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2022/11/canadian-university-makes-new-review-of.html

Exclusive - COP27: IMF chief says $75/ton carbon price needed by 2030

 IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva attends an interview, in Berlin


Mon, November 7, 2022 
By Simon Jessop, Seham Eloraby and Valerie Volcovici

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (Reuters) - The price of carbon needs to average at least $75 a ton globally by the end of the decade for global climate goals to succeed, the head of the International Monetary Fund told Reuters.

Speaking on the sidelines of the COP27 climate talks in the Egyptian coastal resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said the pace of change in the real economy was still "way too slow".

Recent analysis by the World Bank-affiliated group suggests the sum total of global national commitments on reducing climate-damaging emissions would see them fall just 11% by mid-century.

"Unless we price carbon predictably on a trajectory that gets us at least to [a] $75 average price per ton of carbon in 2030, we simply don't create the incentive for businesses and consumers to shift," she said.

While some regions such as the European Union already price carbon at above that level - the EU's benchmark price is around 76 euros a tonne - other regions such as the U.S. state of California see carbon allowances selling for just under $30 per ton, while some have no price at all.

"The problem is that in many countries, not only in poor countries, across the world, the acceptance of pricing pollution is still low," she said, a situation made worse by the current environment of high living costs.

But Georgieva said there were different routes a country could take. The world's second biggest emitter, the United States, for example is unlikely to establish a national price on carbon given stiff political opposition to carbon taxes and 'cap-and-trade' systems.

"Just focus on equivalency. Whether the U.S. opts to impose a carbon cost through regulation and rebates rather than through tax or trade, that should not matter. What should matter is the price equivalent."

She cited the IMF's proposal for a carbon price floor and the proposal floated by Germany of a 'carbon club' of the world's biggest economies, which would coordinate how members measure and price carbon emissions and enable cooperation in slashing emissions in the largest industrial sectors.

"Whether there would be a breakthrough at this COP or after, it has to be soon because we are virtually running out of time to be successful in this transition."

(Reporting by Simon Jessop, Seham Eloraby, Valerie Volcovici; Editing by Katy Daigle and Toby Chopra)

Philippines lifts ban on sending workers to Saudi Arabia


Mon, November 7, 2022 at 5:21 AM·2 min read


MANILA, Philippines (AP) — The Philippines lifted a ban on the deployment of workers, including maids and construction workers, to Saudi Arabia on Monday after steps were taken to reduce frequent abuses, officials said.

Labor officials stopped sending workers to the oil-rich kingdom a year ago due to the abuses, including the non-payment of wages to thousands of Filipino construction workers, and the coronavirus threat.

Susan Ople, who heads the country’s newly established Department of Migrant Workers, said months of negotiations with Saudi Arabian officials have led to an agreement on additional safeguards, including the adoption of a standard employment contract that provides insurance coverage for workers for non-payment of salaries and allows workers to change employers in the case of abuse.

“Under a new employment contract that ensures greater workers’ protection, our workers would now be able to find gainful employment in one of the world’s biggest labor markets,” Ople said in a statement.

More than 189,000 Filipino workers were deployed to Saudi Arabia in 2019 before the coronavirus pandemic hit. Other top destinations of Filipino workers include the United States, Singapore, Japan, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom.

A more transparent and fair arrangement for settling disputes between workers and employers will be adopted in Saudi Arabia and human trafficking complaints will be handled directly by Saudi officials who focus on the problem for a better response, Filipino officials said.

Ople said Saudi Arabian officials will visit the Philippines this month for a joint review of salaries of Filipino workers and resume discussions on complaints over the unpaid salaries of thousands of Filipino construction workers dating back to 2016.

About a tenth of the Philippines’ 109 million people work and live overseas and the large amounts of money they send home have helped keep the country's consumption-driven economy afloat for decades. Last year, a record $31 billion was sent home, bolstering the recovery of the Philippine economy, which slumped in its worst post-World War II recession in 2020 due to prolonged coronavirus lockdowns.

The downside of the largely poverty-driven diaspora has been continuing reports of abuses and exploitation, especially of maids, that have sometimes led to serious injuries or deaths and sparked uproars in the Philippines.

Philippine officials are under increasing pressure to do more to monitor the safety of Filipino workers worldwide. There have also been calls for the government to boost employment and living standards at home, where millions live in poverty, so that fewer people need to abandon their families and find work abroad.

Illinois Amendment 1: right to collective bargaining measure

Hannah Getahun

Sun, November 6, 2022 

• Amendment 1 would alter the state's constitution to add a right to collective bargaining.

• Proponents say that the amendment will protect anti-union opposition.

• Opponents argue that the law gives unions too much power.

A "yes" on Amendment 1 would alter the state's constitution to give people the right to collective bargaining.

Ballot measure details

Amendment 1 would add language to the state's constitution that gives employees the fundamental right to organize and collectively bargain at their workplaces to negotiate "wages, hours, and working conditions."

It also prohibits any law that would interfere with unionization efforts at workplaces, including right-to-work laws that allow workers to avoid paying union fees and prohibits union requirements at jobs.

The measure needs 60% of voters' approval to alter the state constitution.

Support and opposition

Vote Yes For Workers Rights is leading the support for Amendment 1. Supporters include the Illinois Federation of Teachers, other local unions, and Democratic lawmakers.

Supporters argue that this will enshrine the right to unionize and protect employees from anti-union initiatives and laws that would make collective bargaining more difficult.

Opposition to this measure includes the Illinois Policy Institute and the Illinois Republican Party, which argues that the amendment will give union organizations too much power and make it more difficult for business owners to operate in the state.

The money race

According to Illinois State Board of Elections filings, $13.6 million has been raised in support of Amendment 1. So far, there has been no committee registered to collect contributions to oppose the measure.

Amendment 1: Voters in Tennessee will decide if mandatory union membership and fees should be legal

Hannah Getahun
Sun, November 6, 2022 

Getty Images; Insider

Amendment 1 would alter the state's constitution to prohibit mandatory union participation at workplaces.

Proponents say that the amendment will give workers more options in the workplace.

Opponents argue that the law strives to kill union power in Tennessee.

A "yes" on Amendment 1 would alter the state's constitution to prohibit mandatory union participation and fees at workplaces.

Ballot measure details

Amendment 1 would add language to the state's constitution that gives employees the fundamental right to refuse to join a labor union and/or pay union fees at their workplace.

The measure would make it illegal for workplaces to add union membership as a requirement to work at their company.

Support and opposition

Vote Yes on 1 is leading the support for Amendment 1. Supporters include the Republican Gov. Bill Lee, most Republican lawmakers, and the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce.

Supporters argue that Amendment 1 will protect workers rights by allowing them to be employed anywhere without being forced into a union or to pay union dues that they don't want to pay. They also argue that this is good for the state's economy.

Vote No on 1 is the committee registered in opposition for this measure. Opponents include most state Democrats and union groups such as the AFL-CIO.

These groups argue that the amendment will weaken union organizations that rely on mandatory fees to stay afloat while legally representing everyone in the company.

Without mandatory fees, they argue, workers will be able to "freeload" the benefits of union representation without paying.

The money race

According to Ballotpedia, $198,100 has been raised in support of Amendment 1 while $43,133 has been raised to oppose it.

Nobel laureate Paul Krugman says 'true' US inflation may have cooled to below 4% - and points to falling rental prices and slowing wage growth as proof


Theron Mohamed
Mon, November 7, 2022 

Paul Krugman

The rampant inflation that has roiled the US economy this year may be fading, Paul Krugman said.

The Nobel Prize-winning economist pointed to a cooling rental market and slowing wage growth.

Underlying inflation may have dropped as low as 3%, Krugman said.

Sliding rental prices and slowing wage growth suggest red-hot US inflation may be waning, Paul Krugman has said.

"More evidence of a rapidly cooling rental market," Krugman tweeted on Saturday. He was referring to Zumper's October National Rent Report, which found that national median rents for one- and two-bedroom units fell in 61 of the 100 largest US cities between September and October.

The Nobel Prize-winning economist proposed that core Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation, which excludes food and energy prices, might be overestimating how quickly the cost of shelter is rising. While the index rose by 6% on an annualized basis over the past three months, its "true" level could be around 4%, he said.

"Combined with slowing wage growth, there's a good case that substantial disinflation is happening, but not captured (yet) by the standard measures," he added.

Headline US inflation surged to a 40-year high of 9.1% in June, and remained above 8% in September. Soaring prices have spurred the Federal Reserve to hike interest rates from near zero in March to a range of 3.75% to 4%, in an effort to drag inflation down to its 2% target. However, higher rates have driven down asset prices and raised the prospect of a painful recession.

Krugman flagged other evidence of a softening rental market at the end of October. He pointed to Apartment List's national rent index dropping 0.7% in October - the gauge's largest monthly drop since it launched in 2017. The index also dipped in September, marking only its second monthly decline since the start of 2021.

"More evidence that rental rates are rolling over," Krugman tweeted. "Latest data are consistent with market rent inflation back down to historical norms of ~3 percent, maybe lower.

"With a lag, this will translate into much lower core inflation as measured by the BLS," he added, referring to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The veteran economist and columnist has also suggested that US wage growth is slowing, reducing upward pressure on prices. For example, he highlighted the nonfarm-payroll data released on Friday, which showed average hourly earnings growth declined over the past three months.

"Smoothed wage growth is only a bit above pre pandemic level," he tweeted, adding that worker productivity also improved.

"Given what's happening to wages and productivity, I don't see any way to make the case, as some have, for underlying inflation of 6 or even 7 percent," he said. "This looks <4, possibly even as low as 3."

Krugman has previously warned the strong US dollar and higher rates will weigh on exports and housing demand, causing the US economy to contract. He's also cautioned the Fed may have gone too far with its hikes and put the economy in unnecessary danger.

Canadian support for climate change initiatives lags ahead of COP27: Ipsos

Irelyne Lavery - Yesterday

Ahead of the COP27 forum, Canada appears to rank near the bottom of 34 countries when it comes to public support for measures to help tackle climate change, a new poll suggests.


The American continent is seen on a revolving globe in a booth at the convention center hosting the COP27 U.N. Climate Summit, Saturday, Nov. 5, 2022, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. The city will host the COP27 U.N. Climate Summit starting on Nov. 6, and scheduled to end on Nov. 18.© (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

When asked about support for a range of initiatives governments could propose, such as subsidies for clean technology and providing incentives to invest in green financial products, Ipsos polling of citizens from 34 countries indicates support among Canadians ranks between the 27th and 31st spots.

Read more:

On COP27 eve, climate activists block private jets from leaving Amsterdam airport

Video: COP27 starts, puts climate compensation on agenda for 1st time

“These results are shocking,” Sanyam Sethi, vice president of Ipsos Public Affairs, told Global News. “Canadians are not as engaged as they should be in the climate debate.”

“While there is support in many counties on a lot of these initiatives, what we’re seeing in Canada is very, very different,” she added.

The results come ahead of the 27th annual Conference of the 198 Parties of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change — better known as COP27 — in Egypt.

The summit begins Sunday in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

On Thursday, four days before the start of the conference, U.N. Security General Antonio Guterres warned that the planet is headed toward irreversible “climate chaos.”

He said COP27 “must be the place to rebuild trust and re-establish the ambition needed to avoid driving our planet over the climate cliff,” noting that the most important outcome of the summit is to have “a clear political will to reduce emissions faster.”

Video: Alberta’s oil and gas industry prepares for COP27

Ipsos surveyed about 1,000 Canadians, of which, 55 per cent said they would approve the subsidizing of green technologies by the government, Ipsos's research found.

Only 51 per cent supported modifying pricing to make environmentally-friendly products cheaper.

Most other policy suggestions only showed support from less than one-third of Canada.

Support among citizens in the United States, Germany, France and Brazil also ranked low when it came to the policies proposed, Sethi said.

Countries such as Mexico, Chile and Columbia were at the top.

Although support among the total number of Canadians surveyed was low, the data also indicates younger age groups and women were more likely to back the proposals, according to Sethi.

With so many other concerns on the table for Canadians, including fears of a looming recession, climate change just doesn’t seem to be at the top of the agenda, she said.

“It’s a matter of what’s more important right now and important enough to overshadow everything else,” said Sethi.

“Inflation is a concern in many other countries and they are still taking action and they are forging ahead on climate action."

To bring more engagement to the matter, Canada needs to see a “rigorous communication and education campaign,” according to Sethi.

The research shows that 59 per cent of Canadians believe the government is responsible for educating the public on climate change.

Read more:

COP27: Big business under pressure to channel money into climate change fight

This falls largely in line with trends observed in other nations. However, Canadians also said scientists have an important role to play in educating the country on the issue.

“(Scientists) are the second-most-looked-upon authority to lead climate change,” said Sethi.

More than 120 world leaders will attend this year’s U.N. climate talks that begin Sunday and go until Nov. 18. Over 40,000 have registered to attend.

The U.N.'s Guterres has warned the stakes are high: "COP27 must lay the foundations for much faster, bolder climate action now and in this crucial decade, when the global climate fight will be won or lost."

These are the results of a 34-country survey conducted by Ipsos on its Global Advisor online platform. Ipsos interviewed an international sample of 22,528 adults aged 18-74 in the US, Canada, Republic of Ireland, Israel, Malaysia, South Africa, and Turkey, 20-74 in Thailand, 21-74 in Indonesia and Singapore and 16-74 in all other countries between 26th August and 9th September 2022.

The sample consists of approximately 1,000 individuals in each of Australia, Brazil, Canada, mainland China, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Spain, and the U.S., and 500 individuals in each of Argentina, Belgium, Chile, Columbia, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Peru, Poland, Romania, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Sweden, Thailand, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.

The precision of Ipsos online polls are calculated using a credibility interval with a poll of 1,000 accurate to +/- 3.5 percentage points and of 500 accurate to +/- 5.0 percentage points. For more information on Ipsos’ use of credibility intervals, please visit the Ipsos website.

--With files from the Associated Press

Video: COP27: Drone shows climate activists’ huge protest poster near German castle

BC

Re-assigning specialist teachers causing stress, may lead to violence in classrooms: union

Susan Lazaruk - Yesterday - Vancouver Sun

A provincewide teacher shortage may be putting B.C.’s most vulnerable students at risk as specialist teachers are often being reassigned to fill in for absent teachers, says a union for one of B.C.’s largest school districts.

Lizanne Foster, president of the Surrey Teachers Association.

The Surrey Teachers Association says specialist teachers, including those who provide extra teaching help for children with learning or physical disabilities, behavioural problems, autism or dyslexia, are regularly asked to fill in when a substitute teacher isn’t available.

That leaves the students who rely on the specialist teachers without their usual help, said the association’s vice-president, Lizanne Foster.

“It’s quite cruel in one sense, what’s happening in our classrooms,” she said. “When the kids have big emotions,” they need the specialist teacher they are familiar with and who know how to calm them down.

Without that support, “that’s when you have students throwing things and flipping things and biting,” incidents that sometimes require a “room clear,” she said.

Re-assigning specialist teachers to fill in for absent teachers is “absolutely happening elsewhere” and has for years, said Clint Johnston, president of the B.C. Teachers Federation.

“It affects lots of students and lots of teachers,” he said. But, “I would be very cautious about drawing any direct link” between violence in the classrooms and the teacher shortage.

Teachers and the Education Ministry agree that the solution is more teachers.

“We know some long-standing hiring pressures remain in areas, including for specialist positions,” B.C.’s education minister, Jennifer Whiteside, said in an emailed statement.

She also said the province has acted on “all the recommendations” from a 2017 report from a task force on recruitment and retention of teachers after the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in favour of the BCTF in a court battle over class size and composition.

“For example, our government invested $3.5 million in 2018-19 to create new seats in teacher education programs, adding close to 250 new spaces to bring in more teachers in high demand positions and we’ll continue to invest” in education, she said.

The ministry also said it created an education program that mixes online and in-person learning for students who may not live near universities, changed certification standards to allow internationally trained teachers to work while training and reduced processing times for certification.

In Prince George, “We have had a shortage for about six years and every year it gets worse,” said Daryl Beauregard, president of the Prince George District Teachers Association.

He said there has been a “significant increase in violence especially over the last year and there are a lot of things going on in society and that comes in to schools. But it’s hard to conclude a cause and effect” to a teacher shortage.

He said it is clear students aren’t getting the support they need when a specialist teacher is reassigned.

In Surrey, “We are getting calls to our office from teachers in utter and complete distress,” said Foster. The calls have been coming from new teachers and veterans. “They’re saying, ‘I cannot cope.’ What shocked us was it was happening at the beginning of the (school) year. That usually happens in May or June.”

According to one of those specialist teachers who works in Surrey, student “behaviour can sometimes be violent because these students don’t have a lot of words to express their wants and needs and they can get quite physical to express their upset.”

The teacher requested anonymity because she wasn’t sure how employer would react to her speaking publicly and she didn’t want to risk identifying individual students with her comments.

She and Foster also said the district has a policy of not replacing the specialist teachers unless they are absent for more than three days, which they said further imperils the students that depend on them.

Surrey school district depends upon 1,500 names in the teachers on-call list and when none are available, teachers or sometimes principals are asked to fill in because continuity of care for students is paramount, spokeswoman Ritinder Matthew said in an email.

The district intends to increase the number of on-call teachers and has created 40 new specialty teacher positions to add to the 1,650 on staff, a difficult task because of the lack of qualified candidates.

Foster said in Surrey there have been 58 violence on the job claims filed with WorkSafeBC since the beginning of this school year, twice the average.

But the district said there has been seven such claims this school year, which are “time lost and/or health care claims,” and said it is only slightly higher than previous years. Matthew said the higher number refers to incidents reported to the district, which could include witnessing two students fighting.

Beauregard said the Education Ministry needs a provincewide strategy to tackle the shortage because B.C. teachers are being lost to Alberta. He said he knows of one B.C. teacher got a raise of $17,000 a year by moving to Medicine Hat.

Johnston said the recently negotiated settlement members will be asked to ratify this month is part of the solution to attract and keep teachers in B.C. The terms haven’t been disclosed but he said the wage increase is a “decent start. It certainly helps, it closes a large chasm” in pay compared to other provinces.

He said the province has to come up with other creative solutions to attract and keep teachers because the 250 extra positions for teacher training it created years about five years ago aren’t being filled anymore.

He said there has to be improvements to help for teachers living in B.C., an expensive province, and reduce “untenable” workloads. The province should consider loan forgiveness and housing subsidies for teachers, he said.

slazaruk@postmedia.com