Tens of Thousands of Israelis Join Anti-government Protests

February 11, 2023 
Associated Press

Tens of thousands of Israelis protest against the plans by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's new government to overhaul the judicial system, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Jan. 21, 2023.

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL —

Tens of thousands of Israelis took to the street in several cities across the country Saturday, protesting judicial overhaul plans by Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

Critics say measures introduced by the new hardline government would weaken the Supreme Court, limit judicial oversight and grant more power to politicians. Protesters say that would undermine democracy.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a toast after the new government is sworn in at the parliament, in Jerusalem, Dec. 29, 2022.

The rift over the power of courts is deepening as the government is set to introduce some of the legislations in parliament Monday amid calls for partial strikes by businesses and professional groups.

For the sixth week, protesters pressed on with large rallies, with the main one in the central city of Tel Aviv and several smaller gatherings in other cities.

Tens of thousands take to streets of Israel opposing proposed judicial overhaul

Reuters
February 11, 2023


JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of Israelis took to the streets on Saturday for a fifth week of protests against judicial overhaul plans by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's new government which critics say threaten democratic checks on ministers by the courts.

The plans, which the government says are needed to curb overreach by judges, have drawn fierce opposition from groups including lawyers, and raised concerns among business leaders, widening already deep political divisions in Israeli society.

"We (are) ...here in order to demonstrate against the government of Israel under Netanyahu, which in our belief is against democracy and are going to do anything they can in order to take out democracy of Israel," said Illan Bendori, 70, at a protest in Tel Aviv.

Netanyahu has dismissed the protests as a refusal by leftist opponents to accept the results of last November's election, which produced one of the most right-wing governments in Israel's history.

"We are ...very proud of our democracy and he wants to make Israel something else. We will not agree, we will do everything in our power to stop it," Hadar Weis, 61, told Reuters at the protest in Tel Aviv.

The protesters say Israeli democracy would be undermined if the government succeeds in pushing through the plans, which would tighten political control over judicial appointments and limit the Supreme Court's powers to overturn government decisions or Knesset laws.

Additional protests and partial strikes are called for Monday when a first reading of the proposals is set to take place in the parliament.

Israel's N12 news released a poll on Saturday revealing that 62% of Israelis want the proposed judicial plans to be either paused or halted all together.

(Reporting by Emily Rose; editing by Jason Neely)

Robert Reich: Why America Forgot About Economic Power – OpEd

 February 12, 2023  

By Robert Reich

Several of you have asked me why America went so quietly from democratic capitalism — the economic organization that dominated American life from 1933 through the late 1970s — to the corporate capitalism that has dominated it since the Reagan Administration and which Joe Biden is starting to reverse. 

The answer has a lot to do with Keynesianism. It removed the issue of economic power from American politics, along with the struggle between capital and labor. 

How? Let me start by telling you a bit about John Maynard Keynes himself. 

A Cambridge University don with a flair for making money, a graduate of England’s exclusive Eton prep school, a collector of modern art, the darling of Virginia Woolf and her intellectually avant-garde Bloomsbury Group, the chairman of a life insurance company, later a director of the Bank of England, married to a ballerina, Keynes — tall, charming, and self-confident — nonetheless transformed the dismal science into an engine of social progress.

Born in 1883 to John Neville Keynes (a noted Cambridge economist) and Florence Ada Keynes (who became mayor of Cambridge), young John Maynard was a brilliant student but didn’t immediately aspire to either academic or public life. He wanted to run a railroad. “It is so easy … and fascinating to master the principles of these things,” he told a friend, with his typical immodesty. But no railway came along, and Keynes ended up taking the civil service exam. His lowest mark was in economics. “I evidently knew more about Economics than my examiners,” he later explained.

Keynes was posted to the India Office but the civil service proved deadly dull, and he soon left. He lectured at Cambridge, edited an influential journal, socialized with his Bloomsbury friends, surrounded himself with artists and writers, and led an altogether dilettantish life until Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated in Sarajevo and Europe was plunged into World War I. Keynes was called to Britain’s Treasury to work on overseas finances, where he quickly shined. Even his artistic tastes came in handy. He figured a way to balance the French accounts by having Britain’s National Gallery buy paintings by Manet, Corot, and Delacroix at bargain prices.

His first brush with fame came soon after the war, when he was selected to be a delegate to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919-20. The young Keynes held his tongue as Woodrow Wilson, David Lloyd George, and Georges Clemenceau imposed vindictive war reparations on Germany. But he let out a roar when he returned to England, writing a short book, The Economic Consequences of the Peace. The Germans, he wrote acerbically, could not possibly pay what the victors were demanding. Calling Wilson a “blind, deaf Don Quixote” and Clemenceau a xenophobe with “one illusion — France, and one disillusion — mankind” (and only at the last moment scratching the purple prose he had reserved for Lloyd George: “this goat-footed bard, this half-human visitor to our age from the hag-ridden magic and enchanted woods of Celtic antiquity”), an outraged Keynes prophesied that the reparations would keep Germany impoverished and ultimately threaten all Europe with another war.

His little book sold 84,000 copies, caused a huge stir, and made Keynes an instant celebrity. But its real import was to be felt decades later, after the end of World War II. Instead of repeating the mistake made almost three decades before, the U.S. and Britain bore in mind Keynes’ earlier admonition. The surest pathway to a lasting peace, they then understood, was to help Germany and Japan rebuild. Public investing on a grand scale would create trading partners that could turn buy the victors’ exports and also build solid middle-class democracies.

Yet Keynes’ largest influence came from a convoluted, badly organized, and in places nearly incomprehensible tome published in 1936, during the depths of the Great Depression. It was called The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money.

Keynes’ basic idea was simple. In order to keep people fully employed, governments needed to spend when the economy slows. The private sector won’t spend or invest enough. As economic activity declines, businesses naturally reduce spending and investing, setting in motion a vicious cycle: less investment, fewer jobs, less consumption, and then even less business spending and investing. Governments must pick up the slack through deficit spending. 

Keynes had a hard sell, even in the depths of the Depression. Most economists of the era rejected his idea and favored balanced budgets. Most progressive politicians, meanwhile, focused their attention on the evils of concentrated economic power — and opted either to break up big corporations through antitrust laws or to regulate corporations. But neither neoclassical economics nor progressive politics seemed up to the task of pulling the nation and the world out of the deep economic hole. “Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist,” Keynes wrote.

Keynes’ visit to the White House in 1934 to urge Franklin Roosevelt to do more deficit spending was not a blazing success. “He left a whole rigmarole of figures,” a bewildered FDR complained to Labor Secretary Frances Perkins. “He must be a mathematician rather than a political economist.” Keynes was equally underwhelmed, telling Perkins that he had “supposed the President was more literate, economically speaking.”

But by 1938, FDR embraced the only new idea he hadn’t yet tried, that of the bewildering British “mathematician.” As he explained in a fireside chat, “We suffer primarily from a failure of consumer demand because of a lack of buying power.” It was therefore up to the government to “create an economic upturn” by making “additions to the purchasing power of the nation.”

Not until the U.S. entered World War II did FDR try Keynes’ idea on a scale necessary to pull the nation out of the doldrums — and Roosevelt, of course, had little choice. The big surprise was just how productive America could be when given the chance. Between 1939 and 1944 (the peak of wartime production), the nation’s output almost doubled. And unemployment plummeted — from more than 17% to just over 1%.

Never before had an economic theory been so dramatically tested. Even granted the special circumstances of war mobilization, it seemed to work exactly as Keynes predicted. The grand experiment even won over many Republicans. America’s Employment Act of 1946 — the year Keynes died — codified the new wisdom, making it “the continuing policy and responsibility of the Federal Government … to promote maximum employment, production, and purchasing power.”

And so the federal government did. Within a few years it was accepted wisdom that government could “fine-tune” the economy, pushing the twin accelerators of fiscal and monetary policy (lowering taxes and interest rates) to avoid slowdowns, and applying the brakes (raising taxes and interest rates) to avoid overheating. All questions of power, and the appropriate balance between capital and labor, were smoothed over (and swept under the rug) by Keynesian demand management. In 1964, Lyndon Johnson cut taxes to expand purchasing power and boost employment. In 1971, Richard Nixon famously proclaimed, “we are all Keynesians now.”

With Keynesianism seemingly smoothing out the business cycle and bringing on an era of growth and widespread prosperity, Ronald Reagan’s shift from democratic capitalism to corporate capitalism did not seem nearly as jarring as it later proved to be. 

Yet over the next four decades, the steadily increasing concentration of corporate power combined with widening inequalities of income and wealth — the central concerns of progressive reformers from Teddy Roosevelt to his fifth cousin, Franklin — finally overwhelmed the capacities of Keynesianism to balance the economy. 

Fiscal and monetary policies have proven no match for corporate monopolies and oligopolies able to keep prices high while depriving workers (who are also consumers) of the incomes needed to buy what is produced. 

Deficit spending on the scale necessary to avoid recession has caused the national debt to explode. Interest rate reductions necessary to avoid recession — essentially pushed down to zero — have proven unsustainable. Inflation has eroded wages, robbing workers of purchasing power. Interest rate hikes to counteract inflation are punishing workers by making it expensive to borrow and are risking another recession. 

Keynesian “demand management” of the economy is still necessary, but inadequate. It is once again necessary to address economic power, as Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson did at the start of the last century. Antitrust laws must be used to break up giant corporations and stop the wave of mergers and acquisitions. Labor laws must be utilized to strengthen labor unions. Other laws and regulations should encourage worker cooperatives, collectives, worker ownership, and other sources of countervailing power. 

As FDR described the economic challenge during the presidential campaign of 1932, it is the task “of distributing wealth and production more equitably, of adapting existing economic organizations to the service of the people.”

Robert B. Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies, and writes at robertreich.substack.com. Reich served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, for which Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. He has written fifteen books, including the best sellers "Aftershock", "The Work of Nations," and"Beyond Outrage," and, his most recent, "The Common Good," which is available in bookstores now. He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine, chairman of Common Cause, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and co-creator of the award-winning documentary, "Inequality For All." He's co-creator of the Netflix original documentary "Saving Capitalism," which is streaming now.

Thousands join latest round of Portuguese teachers’ protests

School teachers demonstrate for better salaries and working conditions in Lisbon, Portugal, 

LISBON, Feb 12 — Thousands of teachers from across Portugal marched through the streets of Lisbon yesterday in the latest round of protests demanding higher pay and better working conditions.

More than 150,000 people took part in the rally, according to the National Federation of Teachers (Fenprof), the profession’s main union.

“This is probably the biggest demonstration of teachers” in Portugal, said Fenprof secretary general Mario Nogueira.

“We are outraged,” Augusto Figueiredo, a technology teacher from Rio Maior, about 100 kilometres north of Lisbon, told AFP.

“Miserable salaries, discriminatory appraisals, inhuman schedules... this is the reality of our profession today,” added the 64-year-old.

“We’re really tired, no one is listening to us, this government needs to listen to us,” Joao Tristao, a sports teacher, told AFPTV.

Teachers are calling for an improvement in the terms of tenure and career progression, and salaries to keep pace with inflation.

They also want their real working hours to be taken into account.

“This working time must be recognised,” said Maria da Luz Ribeiro, an English teacher who worries about “the future of teachers and schools in Portugal”.

“I was forced to work longer to try to improve my pension,” said the 68-year-old, who stopped working last year.

Yesterday’s national demonstration comes after a series of protests and rotating strikes by region, which have led to school closures.

The ministry of education insists the teachers’ strike movement has run out of steam since the end of January.

The ministry is set to meet unions for a new round of talks next week. — AFP

Portugal teachers take to streets as wave of discontent intensifies


By Catarina Demony and Miguel Pereira

Reuters
February 11, 2023

LISBON (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of teachers took to Lisbon's streets on Saturday in one of the biggest protests in Portugal in recent years as the Socialist government faces a wave of discontent over the cost of living crisis.

"(We) have been badly treated for a long time," said Portuguese language teacher Maria Coelho, 55, as she held a banner reading "Respect" at the protest organised by the FENPROF union.

"We are here today and we will be here for many more to come," she added.

The union said it expected more than 100,000 people to take part in the protest. No police estimate of attendance was immediately available.It was the third time in less than a month that teachers and school workers have held mass demonstrations in Portugal.

Teachers on the lowest pay scale make around 1,100 euros ($1,174.25) per month but even teachers in higher bands typically earn less than 2,000 euros. They also want the government to speed up career progression.

"I feel robbed every day of my life," said special needs teacher Albertina Baltazar. "(We want) respect for our profession."

Education Minister Joao Costa said negotiations with teachers' unions were ongoing and that they hoped to reach an agreement soon.

A year after Socialist Prime Minister Antonio Costa won a majority in parliament, he is facing a slump in popularity and street protests not just by teachers but by other professionals.

Portugal is one of Western Europe's poorest countries, with government data showing more than 50% of workers earned less than 1,000 euros per month last year. The minimum wage is 760 euros per month.

Portugal's biggest umbrella union, the CGTP, held several protests and strikes across the country on Thursday against rising prices and urged the government to increase workers' pay.

Nurses have also been striking due to lack of career advancement and doctors are expected to walk out for two days next month.

On Feb. 25, the movement 'Fair Life' is encouraging people to protest in Lisbon over the cost of living crisis. Inflation is close to three-decade highs.

House prices in Portugal rose 18.7% in 2022, the biggest increase in three decades, and rents have also increased significantly.

"If we are persistent and if we do not abandon the fight I'm convinced the government will really have to listen to us," said Carlos Faria, a 47-year-old primary school teacher.

($1 = 0.9368 euros)

(Reporting by Catarina Demony, Miguel Pereira and Pedro Nunes; editing by Jason Neely)

NORAD

Trudeau ordered U.S. fighter jet to shoot down object over northern Canada


By —Associated Press

Feb 11, 2023

OTTAWA, Ontario (AP) — Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Saturday that on his order a U.S. fighter jet shot down an unidentified object that was flying high over the Yukon, acting a day after the U.S. took similar action over Alaska.

WATCH: U.S. shoots down object that crossed into airspace near Alaska

North American Aerospace Defense Command, the combined U.S.-Canada organization that provides shared defense of airspace over the two nations, said it had detected an object flying at a high altitude over northern Canada. It wasn’t immediately clear how high up it was flying or what it was.

Trudeau said he also spoke with President Joe Biden, who himself ordered the downing of an unidentified object over remote Alaska on Friday.

A spokesman, Maj. Olivier Gallant, said both Canadian and U.S. jets operating as part of NORAD had been deployed. The jets were scrambled and it was a U.S. jet that shot it down.

F-22 fighter jets have now downed three objects in the airspace above the U.S. and Canada over seven days, a stunning development in the skies that is raising questions on just what, exactly, is hovering overhead and who has sent them.

At least one of the objects downed was believed to be a spy balloon from China, but the other two have not yet been identified. Trudeau said that Canadian forces would recover the wreckage for study.

READ MORE: How spy balloons work, and what information they can gather

The down came a day after White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said an object roughly the size of a small car was shot down in remote Alaska. Officials couldn’t say if it contained any surveillance equipment, where it came from or what purpose it had.

Kirby said it was shot down because it was flying at about 40,000 feet (13,000 meters) and posed a “reasonable threat” to the safety of civilian flights, not because of any knowledge that it was engaged in surveillance.

According to U.S. Northern Command, recovery operations continued Saturday on sea ice near Deadhorse, Alaska.

In a statement, the Northern Command said there were no new details on what the object was. It said the Alaska Command and the Alaska National Guard, along with the FBI and local law enforcement, were conducting search and recovery.

“Arctic weather conditions, including wind chill, snow, and limited daylight, are a factor in this operation, and personnel will adjust recovery operations to maintain safety,” the statement said.

Last Saturday, U.S. officials shot down a large white balloon off the coast of South Carolina.

The balloon was part of a large surveillance program that China has been conducting for “several years,” the Pentagon has said. The U.S. has said Chinese balloons have flown over dozens of countries across five continents in recent years, and it learned more about the balloon program after closely monitoring the one shot down near South Carolina.

China responded that it reserved the right to “take further actions” and criticized the U.S. for “an obvious overreaction and a serious violation of international practice.”

The Navy continued survey and recovery activities on the ocean floor off South Carolina, and the Coast Guard was providing security. Additional debris was pulled out Friday, and additional operations will continue as weather permits, Northern Command said.

 

Statement on Today's Actions by North American Aerospace Defense Command

Feb. 11, 2023 |

Statement on today's actions by NORAD attributed to Pentagon Press Secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder:

"Following a call between the Prime Minister of Canada and the President of the United States, President Biden authorized U.S. fighter aircraft assigned to North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) to work with Canada to take down a high-altitude airborne object over northern Canada today. NORAD detected the object over Alaska late Friday evening. Two F-22 aircraft from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska monitored the object over U.S. airspace with the assistance of Alaska Air National Guard refueling aircraft, tracking it closely and taking time to characterize the nature of the object. Monitoring continued today as the object crossed into Canadian airspace, with Canadian CF-18 and CP-140 aircraft joining the formation to further assess the object. A U.S. F-22 shot down the object in Canadian territory using an AIM 9X missile following close coordination between U.S. and Canadian authorities, to include a call today between Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and Minister of Defence Anita Anand. As Canadian authorities conduct recovery operations to help our countries learn more about the object, the Federal Bureau of Investigation will be working closely with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police."

What the heck! Third mystery object shot down over North America


A US Air Force F-22 brought down the latest aerial intruder over the Arctic. 

The New Daily@TheNewDailyAU Feb 12

US and Canadian specialists are combing the sea ice off northern Canada for the wreckage of a suspected balloon destroyed by a US fighter plane – the third such incident in two weeks.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted that the unidentified object was flying high over northern Canada when spotted by the NORAD defence network.

A NORAD spokesman, Major Olivier Gallant, said both Canadian and US warplanes operating as part of NORAD had been deployed.

On Twitter, Trudeau announced: “I ordered the take down of an unidentified object that violated Canadian airspace. @NORADCommand shot down the object over the Yukon. Canadian and U.S. aircraft were scrambled, and a US F-22 successfully fired at the object.”
Trudeau’s gratitude

In a second tweet, Trudeau said: “I spoke with President Biden this afternoon. Canadian Forces will now recover and analyze the wreckage of the object. Thank you to NORAD for keeping the watch over North America.”

A suspected Chinese spy balloon spent nearly a week flying through Canada and US airspace before it was shot down by US warplanes off South Carolina last Sunday.

The US military shot down a second object in Alaskan airspace on Friday, though authorities have not provided details on what it was.

US Navy crewmen retrieve the first downed balloon off the South Carolina coast. Photo: US Navy

According to US Northern Command, recovery operations continued on Saturday both near Deadhorse, Alaska, and off South Carolina.

In a statement, the Northern Command said there were no new details on what the object was that a US fighter jet shot down over Alaska.
Hunting the debris

It said the Alaska Command and the Alaska National Guard, along with the FBI and local law enforcement, were conducting search and recovery.

“Arctic weather conditions, including wind chill, snow, and limited daylight, are a factor in this operation, and personnel will adjust recovery operations to maintain safety,” the statement said.

“Recovery activities are occurring on sea ice.”

It added that the Navy continued survey and recovery activities on the ocean floor off South Carolina, and the Coast Guard was providing security.

Additional debris was pulled out on Friday, and additional operations would continue as weather permits, the statement said.

-AAP

 

Blazing Green Lasers Spotted Over Hawaii; Japan Blames Chinese Satellite For The ‘The Matrix Code’


ByAshish Dangwal

February 11, 2023

On January 28, a camera from a telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii’s tallest peak, photographed what seemed to be a curtain of blazing green lasers floating across the island’s night sky.

Japanese astronomers believe a Chinese weather satellite was responsible for beaming down green laser flashes.

The National Astronomical Observatory of Japan first shared a video of a string of lights that resembled the green code from The Matrix on January 28.

Initially, the organization’s researchers said that the topographic laser caused the light show on NASA’s ICESAT-2 satellite, which is employed to monitor sea ice and forests.

However, NOAJ updated its YouTube description, stating that NASA’s satellite was not the source of the lasers over Hawaii. The updated video identified a Chinese Daqi-1/AEMS satellite launched a year ago as “the most likely candidate.”

The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation stated in a news release from 2021 that the Daqi-1/AEMS satellite is used to detect nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and ozone in addition to carbon dioxide.

Dr. Anthony J. Martino, a NASA scientist working on ICESat-2 ATLAS, was quoted in the video description as indicating that the light show was not caused by their instrument but by others.

His colleagues, Dr. Alvaro Ivanoff et al., ran simulations of the satellite trajectories carrying instruments of a similar nature and identified the Chinese Daqi-1/AEMS satellite’s ACDL instrument as the most likely option.

“We really appreciate their efforts in the identification of the light. We are sorry about our confusion related to this event and its potential impact on the ICESat-2 team,” the update stated.

Another eerie sight was seen in the night sky over Hawaii earlier in January. According to the media reports, the launch of a new Space X satellite was the origin of a mysterious blue light in the form of a vortex hovering among the stars.

This innocuous update gained attention online after two airships were shot out of the sky by F-22s in the past week. According to Pentagon authorities, one of the items was a balloon used by China to spy on the US. Officials in China asserted that it was a weather balloon.

The Biden administration said it was built to intercept communication on the ground as it traveled from Montana to the east coast at 60,000 feet over US airspace.

On January 10, an F-22 downed an unidentified airship flying 40,000 feet above Alaska. Its origin and function are unknown. According to US officials, the object might be dangerous for commercial planes.
Chinese Daqi-1 Satellite

Similar to ICESat-2, the Chinese Daqi-1 satellite was launched in April last year to study the atmosphere. That indicates that it is orbiting the planet to keep an eye on atmosphere pollution and the level of carbon in the atmosphere.

To accomplish this, Daqi-1 is equipped with five instruments: the ACDL—Aerosol and Carbon Dioxide Detection Lidar.

The term “Lidar” stands for laser imaging, detection, and ranging, and it functions somewhat similarly to sonar. However, it uses laser beams to map the area rather than sound waves.

And it is thought that these lasers illuminated the sky over Hawaii at the end of January. With regard to ACDL, it is capable of launching dual-wavelength lasers at particular wavelengths to find distinct compounds in the Earth’s atmosphere.

The amount of time it takes for these laser beams to bounce back reveals details about the atmosphere and Earth below. For instance, by generating two alternating lasers in the 1572 nanometer wavelength range, ACDL can determine how much Co2 is in the Earth’s atmosphere.

Japanese astronomers said the green laser lights spotted over Hawaii in January were likely from a Chinese weather satellite. Photo: YouTube

The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, which produced Daqi-1, stated in a news release from March 2021 that Daqi-1 “Daqi-1 can monitor fine particle pollution like PM2.5, pollutant gasses including nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and ozone, as well as carbon dioxide concentration.”

In the future, China will launch a number of Daqi satellites that will be used to track atmospheric pollution, support environmental authorities with remote sensing data, and aid scientific investigations into global climate change.

Daqi-1 will be coupled to other satellites, such as Daqi-2, to monitor greenhouse gases and aid China in reducing carbon emissions.

 

From Deforestation to Restoration: Policy Plots Path to Amazon Recovery

 

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s new president, took office and promised to halt deforestation and to restore degraded land but plans to regenerate deforested areas remain unclear.

February 11, 2023 by Mongabay Leave a Comment

By André Schröder

• Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s new president, took office and promised to halt deforestation and to restore degraded land but plans to regenerate deforested areas remain unclear.
• The Science Panel for the Amazon at the COP27 climate summit provided the scientific basis to guide debates and decisions around the large-scale recovery of deforested and degraded areas.
• The most significant opportunity for large-scale and low-cost restoration is concentrated in public forests, protected areas and Indigenous lands that have suffered recent degradation.
• For areas with high levels of degradation, especially on private lands, productive restoration models capable of providing sustainable economic development are the main bet.

At his inauguration on Jan. 1 as Brazil’s new president, Inácio Lula da Silva reiterated a promise to reach zero deforestation and to recover degraded land. He’d already made the same commitment in a speech at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt in November — an event that the outgoing president, Jair Bolsonaro, notably missed.

The plans to restore state control over the rainforest to curb deforestation and other criminal activity after four years of Bolsonaro’s policies are already in place. But projects to restore forests and degraded farmlands remain sketchy.

Some attempts to provide greater detail emerged from the Science Panel for the Amazon (SPA)  at COP27, which presented the policy brief “Transforming the Amazon through ‘Arcs of Restoration.’” The report provides the scientific basis to guide debates and decisions around the large-scale recovery of deforested and degraded areas of the Amazon Rainforest. Reversing the current destruction is crucial to climate change mitigation, biodiversity conservation, and the social well-being of local populations, but the effort depends on multiple factors, starting with halting deforestation.

“There’s a great opportunity for restoration because of a great need,” Jos Barlow, a professor of conservation science at Lancaster University in the U.K. and one of the report’s authors, told Mongabay by phone. “This policy brief helps reduce the risks of the effort failing, of the proposed actions not generating the expected benefits.

Approximately 17% of the Amazon has already been deforested. Another 17% is in various stages of degradation from selective logging, fire, forest fragmentation, bad land use, and other disturbances. According to experts, restoration efforts can work in these degraded areas, where primary forest is still present in the landscape.

“We have different degradation scenarios in the Amazon, and we need to know how to act in each of the spaces,” Joice Ferreira, a researcher at the western Amazonian branch of Embrapa, Brazil’s agricultural research agency, told Mongabay by phone. Ferreira was also a co-author of the policy brief.

An obvious first step

The worst of the degradation is concentrated in the region known as the Arc of Deforestation, along the eastern and southern edges of the Brazilian Amazon, where rates of forest loss have been the highest in recent decades. This part of the rainforest suffers from land grabs, illegal logging, mining in protected areas, and other crimes that drive a boom-and-bust economy. This climate of criminality has been bolstered by Bolsonaro’s environmental policies, which emboldened those destroying the rainforest and led, among other disasters, to the intentional burning of large areas on the “day of the fire.”

Given the current scenario, experts say the first step to fixing the problem is to restore the rule of law in the Brazilian Amazon, by strengthening environmental protection and rooting out criminal elements to prevent new areas from being deforested and degraded.

“It doesn’t make sense to invest in an area for restoration while degradation occurs next door,” Pedro Brancalion, a professor of forest sciences at the University of São Paulo, another co-author of the report, told Mongabay by phone. “It is essential to isolate fire, prevent cattle access, and control other illegal processes.”

Other governance actions are also considered essential, such as allocating staff and funding to implement laws and policies on restoration plans. These include the new Forest Code and the National Plan for Native Vegetation Recovery. The policy brief also calls for resolving conflicts over land tenure and articulating rigorous commitments between those who produce commodities in the Amazon and the countries that import those commodities — especially beef and soy, the main drivers of agriculture-led deforestation in the Amazon.

Danielle Celentano, an environmental consultant who studies restoration, said policies must be created at the local rather than federal level, given that the Amazon is diverse and requires specific restoration solutions in different locations. “The approach for small farms of poor producers is not the same as for large farms,” she told Mongabay by phone. “We have to create local leadership capable of making these articulations and taking decisions.”

Restoration in action

Large-scale forest restoration in the Brazilian Amazon isn’t commonplace yet, and will require strategic planning based on up-to-date data to work out. “Today, we have an extremely undesirable universe of incomplete information that hinders more intelligent planning,” Rita Mesquita, a researcher and graduate program coordinator at National Institute for Amazonian Research (INPA), told Mongabay by phone.

Restoration projects must also strike a balance between climate solutions and biodiversity conservation, two efforts that don’t always track with each other, she said. Reforestation for carbon capture, for example, is typically focused on planting as many trees as possible, without any consideration for creating an actual habitat for wildlife. These initiatives also need to consider models that can benefit the people living in the areas to be restored, Mesquita added.

Plans are most effective when implemented at the landscape or watershed level, the researchers said, with an immediate effect on the protection of biodiversity and water resources. But areas where advanced degradation is already feeding back into a vicious cycle of climate impacts can’t be ignored either, as in the southern portion of the Amazonas state and the southeast of Pará state.

“Choices need to be made because the scenario is very complex,” Mesquita said. “I think this debate still needs to be started to clarify the maximum possible benefit from the restoration actions.”

Experts agree on one point: the most significant opportunity for large-scale and low-cost restoration is concentrated in public forests, protected areas, and Indigenous lands that have suffered recent degradation. These areas have healthy primary forests around them and can regenerate without human intervention.

“Before all, you must look at areas where the forest can recover naturally, where there are good seed sources and lands that are not yet tired from misuse,” Barlow said.

Where the degree of degradation is more severe, it’s possible to accelerate natural regeneration with timely interventions, such as planting specific seedlings, controlling vines and other unwanted plants, and preventing fires.

“The assisted restoration is an important model because we want the benefits of recovery on a human time scale,” Brancalion said. “We already have a set of actions to accelerate the natural process.”

To restore a forest from seedlings and recover its carbon-capturing capacity to 80% of its pre-degraded state takes 20 years, he said. “Already in the second or third year, we have good recovery of the soil, the vegetation cover, the movement of fauna.”

The challenge of large-scale restoration intensifies when the goal involves severely degraded lands, as suggested by Lula, where the rainforest landscape is broken up by vast clearings — lands burned or abandoned after years of improper use. Recovering this fragmented ecosystem is difficult, slow and expensive, but a growing number of solutions are emerging.

Experts say the priority for severely degraded land is landscape healing: reconnecting fragments of forest to restore vegetation cover and ecological processes. This work can be done by creating seedling islands (known as nucleation), seeding large areas, or combining both techniques. One innovative example was carried out on a former cattle ranch in Cotriguaçu municipality, in Mato Grosso state, in the heart of the Arc of Deforestation, where an ecological corridor for wildlife was created after 20 years.

However, Brancalion said the best bet to restore areas that are highly degraded, especially on private lands, is productive restoration that can provide sustainable economic development for local populations and break the boom-and-bust economic model associated with burning and deforestation.

“We think of the restoration as an activity, a new land use. It is an illusion to think that we will achieve ambitious goals without a profitable model that makes the producer give up the destructive processes of today,” Brancalion said. “We have to think with landowners about restoration models that meet environmental objectives and are also productive.”

Agroforestry future?

Agroforestry is growing increasingly popular as one of the main models for restoring forests while allowing income generation. The Alliance for the Restoration in the Amazon, a coalition of Brazilian and international institutions working to promote forest recovery, identified 1,643 such projects in 2022, almost all small-scale. Although agroforestry doesn’t result in the complete recovery of the forest, these initiatives offer environmental benefits, especially with the restoration of vegetation cover and the sustainable use of soil and water.

“Agroforestry systems don’t solve major biodiversity or carbon issues, but there is still an improvement,” Barlow said. “To address large-scale restoration, we must think about all the existing systems.”

The main advantage of agroforestry is the focus on human welfare, by ensuring food security, employment, and income for families who live in degraded and poor areas of the Amazon. “The restoration agenda has the chance to create a new paradigm, but it needs to focus on people,” said Celentano, the environmental consultant. “It is necessary to address the social aspect of the Amazon so that the restoration models do not become a new vector of social conflicts.”

Agroforestry systems offer tremendous flexibility when it comes to the crops and other products that users can benefit from. Low-impact timber extraction, açaí berries, medicinal plants, corn, coffee, cocoa, pumpkins, and beans are just some examples already being produced in various parts of the Amazon. By employing a diverse model, farmers become more resilient to economic crises and price fluctuations, which reduces the chance they will return to activities associated with fire and deforestation.

Judson Ferreira Valentim, who coordinates Embrapa’s Amazon program that offers a kit of solutions for rural producers in the region, said the success of agroforestry systems depends on public policies. Besides technical support, landowners need to access credit and the markets through cooperatives and associations. “The producers need help to leave the culture of fire aside to adopt these new systems,” he said.

The Science Panel for the Amazon cites Brazil’s National School Feeding Program, which buys large quantities of agroforestry products and contributes to strengthening that supply chain, as an excellent example of an incentive policy. The SPA policy brief also highlights the importance of empowering local communities, women, and youth, considered vital elements for driving change.

One potential risk with agroforestry systems is when income gets so attractive that the project loses its restoration focus. To avoid that, it’s necessary to assess the quality of the restoration, experts say. A new publication offers recommendations for monitoring this through a series of ecological and socioeconomic indicators of restoration: measuring the contribution to mitigating climate change, conserving biodiversity, and generating quality of life, work and income.

“Agroforestry systems have a huge potential for restoring degraded areas associated with sustainable development,” said Celentano, editor of the publication. “It’s necessary to find models that take both objectives into account, without distorting the proposal to an overly commercial bias, with few products.”

Mesquita, from INPA, said it’s crucial to establish restoration goals in the Amazon. “Successful restoration is much longer than I have seen in some modeling studies,” she said. “To think that restoration is a simple path is an optimistic message that we should not be giving.”

Amid the debates about forest restoration in the Amazon, the new administration has hinted it also plans to convert some degraded lands, especially abandoned pastures, into agricultural areas. The proposal would allow an increase in Brazil’s food production without further deforestation.

Carlos Favaro, Lula’s new agriculture minister, said the government will open credit lines to recover degraded areas and promote good agricultural practices. “The idea is that in 20 years we can double the productive area and take the pressure off deforestation.”

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This post was previously published on news.mongabay.com and under a Creative Commons license CC BY-ND 4.

 

Nobel Prize Winner Stiglitz Wants 70% Tax on Top Incomes

 

Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz is concerned about increasing social inequality in the world. The gap between rich and poor is widening.

February 11, 2023 by Scoop.me Leave a Comment

By Kontrast.at

Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz is concerned about increasing social inequality in the world. The gap between rich and poor is widening. To reverse the trend, he calls for the super-rich to pay a higher income tax and a wealth levy. He says introducing a special global tax rate of 70 percent for top earners “would clearly make sense.”

“People at the top might then work a little less if you tax them more. But on the other hand, our society benefits from a more egalitarian society with greater cohesion,” the former World Bank chief economist explained in Oxfam’s “Equals” podcast, summarized by the British newspaper The Guardian.

Current top tax rates are much lower than what Stiglitz has in mind. A few examples

• In the U.S., the top tax rate is 37 percent for incomes above $539,901.
• The top tax rate in the U.K. is 45 percent on annual incomes above 150,000 pounds.
• In Austria, the rate is 55 percent, but only for annual incomes above one million euros.
• In Germany, the top tax rate is paid from an annual income of around 278,000 euros—it is 45 percent.

Only four European Countries have a wealth tax: Spain, Norway, Switzerland, and Belgium.

Joseph Stiglitz: Getting rich is a question of chance—not performance

Stiglitz explained in the podcast that such a new, higher top tax would lead to more redistribution—but at the same time one must also tax wealth fairly. Because that way, the richest people in the world would make a fair contribution, whose wealth has been accumulated over generations. According to Stiglitz, a global wealth tax would have an even greater impact in combating social inequality.

“We should tax wealth more heavily, because a lot of the wealth is now inherited. For example, the young Walmart’s inherited their wealth“, Stiglitz cited as an example.

“One of my friends describes it as winning the sperm lottery. You got the ‘right’ parents. I think we have to realize that most billionaires got a lot of their wealth just by luck.“

The Nobel Prize winner considers U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren’s proposals for a 2 percent tax on wealth of more than $50 million and a 3 percent tax on wealth of more than $1 billion “very reasonable.” He believes that would “really do a lot to raise revenue that could be used to alleviate some problems our country faces.“

The crisis has made rich even richer

According to Stiglitz, the Corona pandemic has exacerbated social inequality around the world to an “astonishing” degree and “both exposed and exacerbated global inequalities.“

“AT A TIME WHEN SO MANY PEOPLE’S LIVES HAVE BEEN SO DIFFICULT, WHEN THEY HAVE LOST THEIR JOBS, WHEN FOOD PRICES HAVE RISEN AND OIL PRICES HAVE RISEN, IT IS SHOCKING HOW MANY PEOPLE AND RICH COMPANIES HAVE MADE OFF LIKE BANDITS,” STIGLITZ CRITICIZED.

Oxfam study: For the first time in 25 years, extreme wealth and extreme poverty are growing simultaneously

A recent Oxfam study showed that nearly two-thirds of the wealth accumulated since the pandemic began has gone to the richest 1 percent. The charity found that the best-off will have amassed $26 billion in new assets by the end of 2021. That’s 63 percent of all new wealth, with the rest going to the remaining 99 percent of people.

As a result, for the first time in 25 years, the rise in extreme wealth has been accompanied by an increase in extreme poverty.

The charity said that a tax of up to 5 percent on multimillionaires and billionaires could raise $1.7 trillion a year for the world. That, in turn, would be enough to lift 2 billion people out of poverty and end world hunger.

“WHILE MILLIONS OF PEOPLE DON’T KNOW HOW TO PAY FOR FOOD AND ENERGY, THE CRISES OF OUR TIME ARE BRINGING GIGANTIC INCREASES IN WEALTH FOR BILLIONAIRES AND BILLIONAIRES’ WIVES,” SAID OXFAM SPOKESMAN MANUEL SCHMITT.

200 super-rich call for global wealth taxes

More than 200 members of the super-rich elite have written to governments around the world in the run-up to the World Economic Forum in Davos calling on them to “tax us, the super-rich, now” to tackle the crisis of inequality. “Patriotic Millionaires”, “Tax me Now” and “Millionaires for Humanity” were behind the campaign.

Among the signatories are Disney heirs Abigail and Tim Disney and “Hulk” actor Mark Ruffalo. Marlene Engelhorn from Austria also participated in the protest—she delivered the letter on site.

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Previously Published on scoop.me with Creative Commons License.

ONTARIO

Workers striking over lackluster wages from Patry


Fri, February 10, 2023 

xA group of about 15 workers represented by Labourers International Union of North America (LiUNA) Local 183 are striking over what they say are unfair wage packages being paid by Jay Patry Enterprises.

The workers are part of a project set to build a 230 unit apartment building at 2274 Princess Street, just west of Sydenham Road.

For the striking members the issue is simple: they haven't had a raise under Patry since 2019 and the developer is said to be paying markedly less than his competitors for similar or identical work.

Jason Ottey, Director of Government Relations and Communications for LiUna Local 183, says the union has been trying to negotiate a new collective agreement with Patry for years, but that he refuses to meaningfully enter discussions.

"Coming to a negotiation and then proposing a ridiculous offer and not meaningfully trying to bargain to reach a settlement is never going to produce a favourable outcome," Ottey said.

"What we're asking is for Patry to bring the wages of his employees up to that of his competitors."

Ottey says agreements between the union and two other developers, IN8 and Homestead Land Holdings, are paying near parity to one another while wages and benefits under Patry have fallen far behind.

He says that pay differential only continues to become exacerbated as the two sides fail to renew a collective agreement, leading the union to feel that a strike is the best and only recourse.

Ottey says Patry is enjoying extra profits by not re-negotiating, but it comes at the expense of LiUNA's members.

"This differential that Patry is enjoying quite frankly," Ottey said.

"It's obviously harming our members who in today's high cost of living environment deserve to have an increase and deserve to be paid what other people who are performing the work in a similar area are being paid."

Workers have been picketing in front of the job site's entrance, next to the Jiffy Lube on Princess Street.

Ottey said while labour disputes aren't uncommon, from his understanding the union's relationship with Patry has been a frustrating one for quite a long time.

"Local 183 has a long history of representing workers in the residential construction market... we're used to negotiating very complex agreements with longstanding agreements that we have with our contractors," Ottey said.

"I do know there's a certain level of frustration in his unwillingness to meaningfully sit down and negotiate a collective agreement that is fair and equitable to our members on site."

Several requests for comment from Jay Patry Enterprises have gone unanswered.

Owen Fullerton, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, YGK News

UK

RMT union rejects ‘final offers’ from Network Rail and train operating companies

ALAN JONES AND SAM BLEWETT, PA

10 February 2023, 

The biggest rail workers’ union has rejected what the Transport Secretary has described as the “best and final offers” aimed at resolving the long-running disputes over pay, jobs and conditions.

Mark Harper described the move by the Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT) to reject the proposals from Network Rail and the train operating companies as “a kick in the teeth for passengers”.

He said it is clear “no realistic offer” will be accepted by the union as hopes faded that the dispute will be resolved any time soon.

Mick Lynch, the RMT’s general secretary, said they had to reject the “dreadful offers” after a consultation of his members and vowed to keep up industrial action for “as long as it takes”.



The RMT said its executive decided to reject both offers on the basis that they do not meet members’ expectations on pay, job security or working conditions.

The union said it was seeking an “unconditional” pay offer, a job security agreement and no detrimental changes being imposed on members’ terms, conditions and working practices.

The union said it believes Network Rail’s plans for maintenance were unsafe, unhealthy for staff and unworkable. Network Rail rejects the union’s claims.

But Mr Harper said: “The RMT’s rejection of these best and final offers is a kick in the teeth for passengers across the country and their own members, who having been ordered to take strike action are now being blocked from having a say on their own future.

“It is now clear that no realistic offer is ever going to be good enough for the RMT leadership.”

The RMT said it will now seek further meetings with Network Rail and the Rail Delivery Group to try to achieve a negotiated settlement.

Mr Lynch said: “We have carried out an in-depth consultation of our 40,000 members and the message we have received loud and clear is to reject these dreadful offers.

RMT general secretary Mick Lynch said it was ‘now time for the employers and the Government to listen to railway workers’ (Kirsty O’Connor/PA)

“Our members cannot accept the ripping up of their terms and conditions or to have safety standards on the railway put into jeopardy under the guise of so-called modernisation.

“If our union did accept these offers, we would see a severe reduction in scheduled maintenance tasks, making the railways less safe, the closure of all ticket offices and thousands of jobs stripped out of the industry when the railways need more investment, not less.

“Our industrial campaign will continue for as long as it takes to get a negotiated settlement that meets our members’ reasonable expectations on jobs, pay and working conditions.”

Both Network Rail and the Rail Delivery Group have offered a pay deal worth 9% over two years.

The Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association (TSSA) said its members will vote on the same offer it has received from the Rail Delivery Group.

A TSSA spokesman said: “Members involved in this long-running dispute will now have the chance to vote on whether what the train companies have come up with is enough to address their demands.

“What is on the table now is a result of careful negotiations and the commitment of our members in their determination to demonstrate our collective industrial strength.”

A Rail Delivery Group spokesman said: “Our passengers and many hard-working RMT members will be deeply dismayed that the union leadership has opted to reject our fair proposals without putting out a vote to their full membership in a democratic referendum.

“Having listened to the union’s concerns during recent negotiations, we went back to the table with substantial changes to give colleagues a minimum pay increase of at least 9% over two years – rising to over 13% for the lowest paid – which they will now miss out on without even having had an opportunity to have their say. We removed driver-only operation and gave an improved job security offer.

“The railway’s financial crisis is not going away. We remain willing to engage, but the RMT leadership must now accept the urgent need to make the railway fit for the future for both our people, and the communities the railway serves.”

Tim Shoveller, Network Rail chief negotiator, said: “The RMT’s leadership is condemning its members to a further round of fruitless, pointless and costly strikes, for passengers, for employees and for the economy.

“We have made multiple concessions, compromises and offers, while the RMT has shifted on nothing.

“It’s time for a second referendum on our new, revised offer and time to end this and work together to rebuild our railway.”