The New Right Wants Activist Judges to Rule, Not the People

Liberal “anti-populists” often portray grassroots democracy as more a threat than an asset. But as reactionaries turn to judges to win their political battles for them, it’s time the Left got serious about putting power in the hands of the majority.

People wait in line outside the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC, on February 21, 2023. (Jim Watson / AFP via Getty Images)


BYMICHAEL WILKINSON
03.05.2023
Jacobin

Interviewed in 1991, after more than a decade of Republican rule, liberal legal scholar Ronald Dworkin was asked whether he feared that, if the political tide changed, his model of an activist supreme court might be wielded by conservatives to strike down progressive legislation. Dworkin’s answer was revealing: yes, he had “nightmares” that it could happen; that placing his faith in the judiciary could be “betting on the wrong horse.”

He conceded that if this were to happen, it would weaken his faith in the principle of a powerful court overseeing a liberal interpretation of the constitution. But, he added, he wouldn’t be around to see that. And, he concluded, it was a gamble he was willing to take, because it was a structure worth preserving. He had elaborated this structure in his work in painstaking detail, advocating a principle of integrity centered on a “moral reading” of the constitution, which would be developed through the rulings of Herculean (liberal) judges.

Dworkin’s interviewer, human rights lawyer and academic Conor Gearty, then a strong opponent of judicial review, highlighted the precariousness of Dworkin’s apparently principled position in a system where political and judicial power were intertwined. He joked that perhaps Dworkin was willing to take the gamble in the hope he would be appointed to the Supreme Court by a future Democrat, President Mario Cuomo (father of the recent governor of New York). Gearty noted how grim prospects were from a progressive perspective: the celebrated constitutional right to abortion, protected since 1973 in Roe v. Wade, was in danger of being abolished over the next twelve months, the US Supreme Court having moved a long way from the liberal Warren Court of the 1950s and 1960s, and by the early 1990s having the numbers to overrule Roe.

Gearty was ahead of himself. In the ruling in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a year after his interview with Dworkin, the Supreme Court upheld the essentials of Roe and established that the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protected a woman’s right to an abortion prior to fetal viability. But fast forward thirty years, and in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organisation, decided in June last year after a controversial leak of the draft opinion, the court finally overturned Roe (as well as Planned Parenthood v. Casey).

With the appointment of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, controversially nominated by Donald Trump just before the 2020 presidential election, the ideological shift of the court had been cemented. But no legislation needed to be struck down for this conservative coup to take effect. Social conservatives had already passed legislation against abortion in several states, in anticipation of the ruling by a newly configured court. A challenge to one of these trigger laws, in Mississippi, had led to the ruling in Dobbs. With a majority of justices holding that there is no constitutional right to abortion, the green light was given to state legislation banning it. Doubts were also cast over the status of other rulings protecting constitutional rights, such as the right to same-sex marriage.

Had Dworkin’s worst nightmare come to pass? Not exactly, or, at least, not yet. The fear expressed in his 1991 interview was about progressive majorities being thwarted by conservative justices; Dobbs merely returned the issue to the states via a new, but in other ways traditional, interpretation of the Constitution. Some states have since adopted or begun to enforce laws banning abortion; but others have expanded abortion rights and amended state constitutions to include them, including California and Michigan. In Vermont, voters overwhelmingly chose to approve, by referendum, an amendment to guarantee sexual and reproductive freedoms, including the right to abortion. The backlash against Dobbs may well have politically benefitted the Democratic Party, boosting support for Biden and the Democrats in recent midterms.
Will of the Majority?

But the current situation is even more unsettling than the nightmares envisaged by Dworkin in 1991. Back then, the mainstream debate in Anglo-American constitutional theory took place on the terrain of the justification of constitutional review of legislation and over the so-called counter-majoritarian dilemma: Why should the judicial branch be entitled to overrule the will of the majority? It pitted scholars such as Dworkin against those keen to defend majoritarian democracy as represented by Westminster-style parliamentary regimes.

As a matter of US constitutional law, however, Dworkin’s antagonists were elsewhere. The justices spearheading the conservative turn of the Supreme Court, such as Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and now Barrett, are associated with “originalism,” the belief that the constitution should be interpreted as originally intended. In the interview with Gearty (as well as in his broader body of writing), Dworkin explicitly dismissed that theory, by arguing that it doesn’t answer, but merely defers, the key question: What is the best way of interpreting that intention given all the possible ways it could be understood?

That ambiguity, and the flexibility of meaning of the original text, allowed originalism to be taken up by an array of constitutional scholars, including progressives who argued that the meaning evolves to adapt to new circumstances. Some even proposed hybrids of originalism and living constitutionalism under the rubric of “living originalism.” While diverse in detail, a feature of these debates over constitutional interpretation was that the political radicalism of originalists, as well as of their adversaries, was limited by the authority vested in the constitution itself. To the counter-majoritarian problem, these scholars had an answer unavailable to Dworkin: the founding constitutional text is underscored by the authority of “the people,” whether dead or living.

The terms of the debate began to change after September 11, 2001, when it transpired that executive power posed the real threat to civil and political liberties, as waves of emergency measures were enacted, ostensibly in response to terrorist threats concurrent with the spread of the global “war on terror.” Measures would be pushed through with little or no oversight or parliamentary scrutiny, and often by liberal governments: from torture and drone attacks, to surveillance and detention without trial, liberties were traded off for security. The massive “infrastructure of fear” created in the wake of 9/11 survived, even as the threat dissipated. This was no tyranny of a legislative majority; it was a power grab by the executive.
New Right Project

During the most recent decade, liberals (in Europe as well as the United States) have been tormented by a more troubling prospect than a piece of rogue legislation or a discrete legal transgression: the fear that conservative populists will rip up the basic rules of the game in alliance with judicial elites, and with the vast administrative state built up over the previous decades at their disposal. It is against this background that a new brand of conservatism is emerging, which rejects fidelity to the constitution and, ironically, appropriates Dworkin’s work to circumvent it.

This New Right project speaks the language of judicial deference while embracing the tremendous power and governing apparatus of the administrative state. Unfettered by any allegiance to the constitutional text, or to the principle of popular sovereignty underwriting constitutional authority, it argues for a much more aggressive and unapologetic conservative agenda. It is based, like Dworkin’s project, on political morality, but it is directed in polar opposition to his liberal worldview and without any constraints of integrity.


This new constitutional theory is based not on a reading of the constitutional text at all, but on the principles of natural law as declared by medieval theologians such as Thomas Aquinas. It abandons the liberal emphasis on the equal protection of rights in favor of government directed toward the “common good.” But it doesn’t go far in saying what that means — beyond stipulating the rejection of progressive rights such as same-sex marriage and freedom of speech and dismissing libertarian rights to unfettered use of individual property. And it doesn’t advocate any project of explicit constitutional change to get there.

While confused as constitutional theory, politically, the idea of the New Right appears to be to unite a “post-liberal” bloc in the United States, galvanizing those alienated from liberal elites and seizing on the widespread discontent with the vast inequalities in American society (and replicated elsewhere). In this way it has attracted support beyond the conservative right. But it offers up no actual political economy to substitute for neoliberalism or to redress its various social deficits. Should it therefore be ignored, or dismissed because of its obvious opportunism?

A closer look suggests that the rub lies elsewhere. In the new battle lines being drawn, the terrain has shifted from the evergreen debate about the legitimacy of judicial review to the situational one of justifying unbound executive power. But “situational,” here, is given the broadest meaning; the moment of exception is not restricted to any imminent threat. The judicial power that Dworkin’s model appeared to celebrate is now to be manipulated to sanction dramatic and indefinite executive intervention, including the dictatorial powers necessary to restore social order and revitalize the common good. A conservative elite will replace the liberal elitism of the past decades, unleash itself from rhetorical ties to the existing settlement and overturn a century of mistaken constitutional practice.

How is this to be achieved? The New Right dismisses appeals to popular sovereignty, as well as day-to-day democratic legitimacy. It gives democracy no particular value. Deference to the legislature is urged only to the extent necessary to ensure the stability of the political settlement. But stability, it turns out, is highly subjective. In an emergency situation, it is trumped by considerations of natural law.

In an unsettling echo of German jurist Carl Schmitt, the exception justifies the use of extraordinary power to return to the norm, only the norm is now said to have been extinguished a century ago with the interwar break from classical jurisprudence and buried with the postwar progressivism that followed. Stability, though valued by conservatives, must not become fetishized. The true end of government is to secure the natural law as understood in Catholic social doctrine; institutional hurdles must give way.
Constitutional Renewal?

If the hope is that the end justifies the means, the “bet” taken by the New Right appears quite different from the originalists’ one — and a far heftier gamble. But why take the bet at all? Conservatives have largely been able to pursue their projects or at least frustrate those of their opponents using the vehicles of the Constitution and the existing institutions of power. It was the electoral college that put Trump into the White House, not the popular vote.

The New Right suggests no program of democratic or constitutional renewal. As Corey Robin noted in the lead up to the 2020 presidential elections, “Conservatism has ceased to be a political project capable of creating hegemony through majoritarian means.” And despite the appropriation of liberalism’s jurisprudential hero, neither will it be able to do so through judicial fiat alone. If not through constitutional or through majoritarian means, then how? From the perspective of this new movement, Dworkin’s mistake was not to bet on Hercules, but to put Hercules in the wrong role. Its remaining hope appears to lie with an authoritarian figure of Herculean power to restore the natural order of things in a period of deep crisis for the US system of constitutional government. Are all bets off?

Liberals themselves have long given up pushing for a vibrant democracy or, like Dworkin, they have an awkward relationship with it; often preferring to double-down on constrained versions of democracy in their rhetorical battles against populism. It has been critical legal scholars in the United States who have consistently argued that the Constitution was never meant to install a democracy (an argument flatly rejected by liberals like Dworkin) and who now insist that the United States needs radical constitutional renewal in order to overturn political elitism and embrace majoritarianism and grassroots democracy.

In his seminal work in jurisprudence, Dworkin projected the constitutional contest as a two-horse race, between Court and Congress. He missed the threat of expanding executive power. But in seeing only a contest between institutional authorities, he also missed the diminishing status of democracy in practice. He was betting not only on the wrong horse, but on the wrong race.

CONTRIBUTOR
Michael Wilkinson is a professor of law at the London School of Economics and author of Authoritarian Liberalism and the Transformation of Modern Europe.

We Need to End Colonialism, Not Defend ‘Jewish Democracy’

The current protest movement in Israel is an internal Zionist dispute that seeks to preserve "democracy" without challenging settler colonialism, apartheid, and Jewish supremacy over Palestinians.

March 5, 2023

Source: MondoWeiss


Since Israel’s Minister of Justice, Yariv Levin, announced sweeping “reforms” in Israel’s judicial system, intended to nullify the power of the Supreme Court to declare laws unconstitutional and to pack the judiciary with political appointees, a regime based on settler colonialism, apartheid and Jewish supremacy over Palestinians has been debating how to preserve itself as “a democracy”. A growing protest movement has arisen calling for civil disobedience, including “militant” statements of defiance by former senior political, security and military officials.

No one can predict how this confrontation will end. It is clear, however, that it represents solely an internal Zionist dispute. The protests never reference the other side of Israeli “democracy”: the exclusion of Arab citizens, who the “opposition” leaders make clear are neither welcome to join the protests nor are even considered a legitimate part of the political system. On the contrary. The leadership of the opposition believes that conspicuous participation of Palestinians in the demonstrations might actually harm their struggle against the government, since it gives the ruling coalition of Netanyahu, Ben Gvir and Smotrich a pretext for smearing the protests as “anti-Zionist”. And, needless to say, those who struggle to “preserve democracy”, the Zionist “liberals”, have never even pretended to recognize the national and democratic rights of the Palestinians living under a cruel regime of colonial apartheid in the 1967 Occupied Territories, the refugee camps and the Exile.

Regardless whether the coalition and the opposition in Israel reach a settlement or whether the rifts that have developed within the state and the settler society will remain incurable, our Palestinian people continue their struggle and their legendary steadfastness. Nonetheless, given the political realities, a debate has arisen within the political elite of the 1948 Palestinians over how to best respond to the events. Leaders of some Arab political parties and a handful of activists do call for participation in the demonstrations of the Zionist opposition. The overwhelming majority of our people, however, refrain from participating, realizing the moral contradiction and political harm that such participation entails.

We are not observing a class struggle. The colonial project and the privileges it provides to the settler society prevent the development of class consciousness. Nor is it a struggle over the solutions required to end the crimes of occupation, colonialism and apartheid or to end the suffering of the Palestinian people. Rather, we are witnessing merely a struggle over who shapes and controls the apartheid system, all with the aim of preserving Jewish supremacy and colonial rule. And, for Palestinians, it matters little who does control the court system. Whether liberal or conservative Zionists, the Israeli courts, from the lowest to the highest, will continue to legitimize and enforce the crimes of expulsion, massacres, and ethnic cleansing, all of which are essential to preserving the Israeli state apparatus’ control over the Palestinian majority between the River and the Sea.

For all these reasons, Palestinian citizens refuse to participate in demonstrations aimed at protecting “Jewish democracy”. Palestinians and the Jews who oppose apartheid and settler colonialism must continue building a united resistance movement; they must not get distracted by “protests” that only legitimize a fake democracy and in fact strengthen its repressive system of colonization and control. A genuine movement of liberation requires a long-term resistance strategy, a national and human liberation vision. It should unite those who live in Palestine and those who were expelled by the Zionist movement and its embodiment, the state of Israel. This movement should pose a clear alternative: building a single democratic state in historic Palestine on the ruins of the apartheid regime and its criminal offshoots.

This is the real alternative to participating in a protest movement intended to preserve a racist colonial regime. It is a realistic alternative, demanding long, hard struggle. But it leads us in the right political direction, unlike protests that only offer cosmetic improvements to an unjust and violent system of oppression. This goal can only be achieved by a Palestinian national, democratic movement, after rebuilding itself, recovering its liberating, humane vision and mobilizing around a political program – in our view, that of a single democratic state over all of historic Palestine. It requires the articulate combination of internal popular struggle with external struggle as represented by the boycott strategy and the force of international solidarity.

We Aren’t Talking Enough About Wage Theft


Every year, $50 billion are stolen from American workers by their bosses. The Left and labor should be working tirelessly to pass anti-wage-theft legislation at every level of government.


On January 9, Denver City Council unanimously voted to pass Resolution 22-1614, an anti-wage-theft bill that significantly increases Denver workers’ ability to reclaim wages stolen by their bosses. (Alvaro Gonzalez / Getty Images)

Denver City Council started 2023 on the right foot. On Monday, January 9, the council unanimously voted to pass Resolution 22-1614, an anti-wage-theft bill that significantly increases Denver workers’ ability to reclaim wages stolen by their bosses.

Almost four years in the making, Resolution 22-1614 is not only a victory for the Mile High working class but an opportunity for the American left as a whole. By advocating for similar anti-wage-theft bills across the country, socialists will be able to simultaneously protect workers, punish offending businesses, and rise above the culture war noise to show the working class that the Left is the only political force seriously committed to improving their material conditions.
The Denver Bill

“Wage theft” is broadly defined as when a boss doesn’t pay a worker what is legally owed. Its most common forms are minimum wage violations, unpaid overtime, forcing employees to work through meal breaks, illegal paycheck deductions, and straight-up theft. When taken together, these offenses reach a staggering amount. According to the research of the Denver City Council, up to $728 million is stolen from Colorado workers every year.

In addition to taking money out of individual workers’ pockets, stolen wages compound to deprive working-class communities of much-needed economic activity and taxes to fund crucial social programs such as schools, transportation, and health care. Instead, stolen wages are stashed in the bank accounts of thieves, far from the places they are needed most.

But thanks to the efforts of Denver’s labor unions, left-wing groups like Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and DSA-backed city councilors, Resolution 22-1614 now severely hampers would-be criminals by empowering workers to easily reclaim what is rightfully theirs while punishing businesses that steal from Denver’s working class.


The new bill gives aggrieved workers two paths to reclaim stolen wages. The first is through the Denver Labor office, which will investigate the claim and has the ability to charge employers wages owed plus 12 percent interest. The second option is the right of private action, which enables workers to sue in court for treble damages, attorney’s fees, reinstatement of employment, and $100 for every day they went with wages unpaid.

In addition to these avenues, the bill also increases the statute of limitations for wage theft to three years, expands the definition of “worker” to include independent contractors (Uber drivers, DoorDashers, etc.), and institutes “up the chain” restitution, enabling workers to pursue wages from businesses that hired their direct employer.

With clear restitution processes, stern penalties, and expanded protections, Denver’s Resolution 22-1614 is the gold standard model of anti–wage theft legislation. The Left should look to replicate it in every city and state in America.
The National Issue

Unfortunately, wage theft is not confined to the Rocky Mountains. The research conducted by Denver City Council found that up to 68 percent of low-wage, city-based US workers suffered at least one wage-theft violation during the typical workweek. According to the Economic Policy Institute, up to $50 billion is stolen from American workers through wage theft every year. For comparison, the FBI estimates the total value of 2019 robberies to be $482 million, meaning employers stole one hundred times more from Americans than did traditional thieves.

And while any dime stolen from any worker is an inexcusable crime, like most forms of exploitation, the most common victims of wage theft are the most marginalized. As women, migrant workers, and workers of color are the most likely to have their wages stolen, anti-wage-theft protections are a social justice issue as well as a labor one.

With wage theft posing a daily threat to the United States’ working class, left-wing and labor groups across the country should make the passage of anti-wage-theft bills a top priority. While some areas do have existing anti-wage-theft legislation — and there’s the “Wage Theft Prevention and Wage Recovery Act of 2022” currently sitting in the House of Representatives — it’s evident that what’s already in place isn’t enough to stop this pervasive threat. Given the pressing need to protect US workers’ hard-earned pay, socialists should look to implement anti-wage-theft protections at every level of government.

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Legal protection is not the only benefit such a push would bring. In addition to combating injustice, advocating for anti-wage-theft bills would draw a clear line between the political actors who actually seek to help workers and those who employ pro-worker rhetoric to obscure their reactionary politics. To the detriment of the Left, the pro-capitalist establishments of both major political parties are adept at parroting pro-labor sentiments, diverting working-class attention and sapping the socialist movement of potential supporters.

Donald Trump and the Republicans position themselves as “a working-class party” by scapegoating immigrants as the cause of wage stagnation. Meanwhile they cut corporate taxes and endanger workers with deregulation, as seen in the horrific East Palestine train disaster. And as we saw from President Joe Biden’s decision to preemptively break the railroad workers’ strike earlier this year, the Democratic Party rests on its union-endorsement laurels while doing very little for workers themselves.

It could be a long time before socialists have the power to bring about an effective anti-wage-theft bill at the national level. Introducing them to local polities is both more attainable and promising, as political tribalism and the distortions of corporate media are much less prevalent at the lower levels.

Once anti-wage-theft bills are before state legislatures and city councilors, there is little room to waver. Either the politicians are for protecting workers, or they stand with the thieving bosses. If they choose the former, the Left has just delivered important legislation protecting the marginalized and curtailing corporate theft. And if politicians choose the latter, they will be revealed as anti-worker politicians who talk for labor but walk for the bosses. Both outcomes have the potential to bolster our project of building a fighting working class.

CONTRIBUTOR
Joe Mayall is a writer from Denver, Colorado. His work can be found at JoeWrote.com

The Tragic Lives of the Communists Trapped in Stalin’s Shadow

Communists who came to the Soviet Union seeking refuge found themselves caught up in the madness of the Stalinist purges. But many, argued Isaac Deutscher, still couldn’t think of breaking with the system that Stalin created and ended up working for their former persecutors.

Following the death of Josef Stalin on March 5, 1953, his friends and political colleagues, including a number of communist leaders from Central and Eastern Europe, gather at the tribune of the Moscow mausoleum. (Keystone-France / Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)

BY ISAAC DEUTSCHER
03.05.2023

 Jacobin 

The historian Isaac Deutscher was a member of the Polish Communist Party until he was expelled for opposing Stalin’s political line in the 1930s. In this essay, first published as “The Tragic Life of a Polrugarian Minister” in 1952, Deutscher wrote about the fate of East European communists who had been imprisoned in the Soviet Union, accused of treachery and espionage, only to be put in power by Stalin’s army and secret police after the war. Deutscher’s fictitious “Polrugaria” was a composite of several East European countries, including his native Poland.

Polrugaria need not be exactly located on the map. Enough that it lies somewhere in the eastern reaches of Europe. Nor need the name of Vincent Adriano, a high Polrugarian official, be looked up in any Who’s Who, for he is a half-real and half-imaginary character. Adriano’s features and traits can be found in some of the people who now rule the Russian satellite countries, and not a single one of his experiences related here has been invented.

It need not be specified what post Vincent Adriano holds in his government. He may be the president or the prime minister or the vice-premier, or he may be only the minister of the interior or the minister of education. In all likelihood he is a member of the Politbureau, and he is known as one of the pillars of the People’s Democracy in Polrugaria. His words and doings are reported in newspapers all over the world.

It is common to refer to men of Adriano’s kind as “Stalin’s henchmen,” “Russian puppets,” and “leaders of the Cominform fifth column.” If any of these labels described him adequately, Adriano would not be worth any special attention. To be sure, he is unavoidably something of a puppet and an agent of a foreign power, but he is much more than that.
Formative Years

Vincent Adriano is in either his late forties or early fifties — he may be just fifty. His age is significant because his formative years were those of the revolutionary aftermath of the First World War. He came from a middle-class family that before 1914 had enjoyed a measure of prosperity and believed in the stability of dynasties, governments, currencies, and moral principles. In his middle or late teens, Adriano saw three vast empires crumble with hardly anybody shedding a tear.In his middle or late teens, Vincent Adriano saw three vast empires crumble with hardly anybody shedding a tear.

Then he watched many governments leap into and tumble out of existence in so rapid and breathtaking a succession that it was almost impossible to keep account of them. On the average, there were a dozen or a score of them every year. The advent of each was hailed as an epoch-making event; each successive prime minister was greeted as a savior. After a few weeks or days, he was booed and hissed out of office as a misfit, scoundrel, and nincompoop.

The currency of Polrugaria, like the currencies of all neighboring countries, lost its value from month to month, then from day to day, and finally from hour to hour. Adriano’s father sold his house at the beginning of one year; with the money he received he could buy only two boxes of matches at the end of that year. No political combination, no institution, no established custom, no inherited idea seemed capable of survival.


Moral principles, too, were in flux. Reality seemed to lose clear-cut outline, and this was reflected in the new poetry, painting, and sculpture. The young man was easily convinced that he was witnessing the decay of a social order, that before his very eyes, capitalism was succumbing to the attack of its own deep-seated insanity.

He was aroused by the fiery manifestos of the Communist International signed by Lenin and Trotsky. Soon he became a member of the Communist Party. Since in Polrugaria the party was savagely persecuted — the penalties for membership ranged from five years’ imprisonment to death — the people who joined it did not do so, in those days, for selfish or careerist motives.

Adriano, at any rate, gave up without hesitation the prospect of a secure career in the academic field to become a professional revolutionary. He was prompted by idealistic sympathy with the underdog and by something he called “scientific conviction.” Studying the classics of Marxism, he became firmly convinced that private ownership of the means of production and the concept of the nation-state had outlived their day, and further, that they were certain to be replaced by an international socialist society which could be promoted only by a proletarian dictatorship.

Proletarian dictatorship meant not the dictatorial rule of a clique, let alone of a single leader, but the social and political predominance of the working classes, “the dictatorship of an overwhelming majority of the people over a handful of exploiters, semifeudal landlords and big capitalists.”

Far from disowning democracy, the proletarian dictatorship, so he thought, would represent its consummation. It would fill the empty shell of formal equality, which was all that bourgeois democracy could offer, with the content of social equality. With this vision of the future he plunged deep into the revolutionary underground.
Hard and Rusty Edges

We need not relate in detail Adriano’s revolutionary career — its pattern was, up to a point, typical. There were the years of his dangerous work in the underground, when he lived the life of a hunted man without name or address. He organized strikes, wrote for clandestine papers, and traveled all over the country studying social conditions and setting up organizations.Adriano organized strikes, wrote for clandestine papers, and traveled all over the country studying social conditions and setting up organizations.

Then came the years of prison and torture and of longing in solitude. The vision of the future that had inspired him had to be somewhat adulterated with expedients, tactical games, and tricks of organization — the daily business of every politician, even of one who serves a revolution. For all that, his idealism and enthusiasm had not yet begun to evaporate.

Even while imprisoned he helped sustain in his comrades their conviction, their hope, and their pride in their own sacrifices. Once he led several hundred political prisoners in a hunger strike. The strike, lasting six or seven weeks, was one of the longest ever known.

The governor of the prison knew that in order to break it he had first to break Vincent Adriano. Guards dragged the emaciated man by his legs from a cell on the sixth floor down the iron staircase, banging his head against the hard and rusty edges of the steps until he lost consciousness. Vincent Adriano became a legendary hero.

With some of his comrades, he at last managed to escape from prison and make his way to Russia. Inasmuch as he spent several years in Moscow, it is now often said and written about him that he belongs to that “hard core of Moscow-trained agents who control Polrugaria.” Such words, when he happens to read them, bring a sadly ironical smile to his lips.

When Adriano arrived in Moscow in the early 1930s, he was not among the chief leaders of the Polrugarian party. Nor was he greatly concerned with his place in the hierarchy. He was more preoccupied with the confusion in his own mind that arose when he first compared his vision of the society of the future with life in the Soviet Union under Stalin.

He hardly dared admit, even to himself, the extent of his disillusionment. This, too, has been so typical in the experiences of men of his kind that we need not dwell on it. Typical, too, were the truisms, the half-truths, and the self-delusions with which he tried to soothe his disturbed communist conscience.

Russia’s inherited poverty, her isolation in a capitalist world, the dangers threatening her from outside, the illiteracy of her masses, their laziness and lack of civic responsibility — all this and more he evoked to explain to himself why life in Russia fell appallingly short of the ideal.

“Oh,” he sighed, “if only the revolution had first been victorious in a more civilized and advanced country! But history has to be taken as it is, and Russia is at least entitled to the respect and gratitude due the pioneer, whatever that pioneer’s faults and vices.” He did his utmost not to see the realities of life around him.
Beast of Burden

Then came the great purges of 1936–38. Most leaders of the Polrugarian party who had lived as exiles in Moscow were shot as spies, saboteurs, and agents of the Polrugarian political police. Before they died, they (and even their wives, brothers, and sisters) were made to bear witness against one another.

Among the dishonored and the executed was one who more than anybody else had aroused Adriano’s enthusiasm and sustained his courage, who had initiated him into the most difficult problems of Marxist theory, and to whom Adriano had looked up as a friend and spiritual guide.

Adriano, too, was confronted with the usual charges. By a freak of fortune, however, or perhaps by the whim of the chief of the GPU, Yezhov, or of one of Yezhov’s underlings, he was not made to face a firing-squad.Adriano could not reconcile himself to the fact that he, the proud revolutionary, was being used as a beast of burden in the country of his dream.

Instead, he was deported to a forced-labor camp somewhere in the subpolar north. With many others — Trotskyites, Zinovievites, Bukharinites, kulaks, Ukrainian nationalists, bandits and thieves, former generals, former university professors and party organizers — he was employed in felling trees and transporting them from a forest to a depot.

Frost, hunger, and disease took their toll of the deportees, but the ranks were constantly filled with newcomers. Adriano saw how people around him were first reduced to an animal-like struggle for survival, how they next lost the will to struggle and survive, and how finally they collapsed and died like flies. Somehow his own vitality did not sag. He went on wielding the axe with his frostbitten fingers.

Every third or fourth day it was his turn to harness himself, along with fellow prisoners, to the cart loaded with timber and to drag it across the snow- and ice-covered plain to the depot several miles away. Those were the worst hours. He could not reconcile himself to the fact that he, the proud revolutionary, was being used as a beast of burden in the country of his dream.

Even now he still feels a piercing pain in his heart whenever he thinks of those days — and that is why he reads with a melancholy smile the stories about the mysterious “training in fifth-column activity” he received in Russia.
Shouting Into the Ether

With a shred of his mind he tried to penetrate the tangle of circumstances behind his extraordinary degradation. At night he argued about this with the other deportees. The problem was vast and confused beyond comprehension. Some of the deported communists said that Stalin had carried out a counterrevolution in which every achievement of Lenin’s revolution had been destroyed.Some of the deported communists said that Stalin had carried out a counterrevolution in which every achievement of Lenin’s revolution had been destroyed.

Others held that the foundations of the revolution — public ownership and a collectivist economy — had remained intact, but that instead of a free socialist society, a terrifying combination of socialism and slavery was being erected on those foundations. The outlook was therefore more difficult than anything they could have imagined, but there was perhaps some hope, if not for this generation then for the next.

Stalinism, it was true, was casting grave discredit upon the ideal of socialism, but perhaps what was left of socialism might still be salvaged from the wreckage. Adriano could not quite make up his mind, but he was inclined to adopt this latter view.

Events now took a turn so fantastic that even the most fertile imagination could not have conceived it. One day, toward the end of 1941 (Hitler’s armies had just been repulsed from the gates of the Russian capital), Adriano was freed from the concentration camp and taken with great honors straight to Moscow.


The Kremlin urgently needed East and Central European communists capable of broadcasting to the Nazi-occupied lands and of establishing liaison with the underground movements behind the enemy lines. Because of their country’s strategic importance, Polrugarians were especially wanted.

But not a single one of the chief leaders of the Polrugarian party was alive. The few less prominent ones who had been dispersed in various places of deportation were hurriedly brought back to Moscow, rehabilitated, and put to work. The rehabilitation took the form of an apology from the Security Police to the effect that the deportation of Comrade So-and-So had been a regrettable mistake.

Several times a week, Adriano, facing the microphone, shouted into the ether his confidence in the Land of Socialism, extolled Stalin and his achievements, and called on the Polrugarians to rise behind the enemy lines and prepare for liberation.
Faithless Tutelage

He sensed sharply the incongruity of his situation. He was now a propaganda agent for his jailers and torturers, for those who had denigrated and destroyed the leaders of Polrugarian communism, his friend and guide among them. At heart he could neither forget nor forgive the agony and the shame of the purges. And with a part of his mind he could never detach himself from the people he had left behind in the north.Adriano was eager to help defeat the Nazis, and for this, he felt, it was right to join hands ‘with the devil and his grandmother’ — and with Stalin.

But he could not refuse the assignment. Refusal would have amounted to sabotage of the war effort, and the penalty would have been death or deportation. Yet it was not merely for life’s sake that he was doing his job. He was eager to help defeat the Nazis, and for this, he felt, it was right to join hands “with the devil and his grandmother” — and with Stalin.

Nor was this merely a matter of defeating Nazism. Despite all he had gone through, he clung to his old ideas and hopes. He was still a communist. He looked forward to the revolutionary ferment that would spread over the capitalist world after the war.

The more severe his disillusionment with the Soviet Union, the more intense was his hope that the victory of communism in other countries would regenerate the movement and free it from the Kremlin’s faithless tutelage.

The same motives prompted him to agree to a proposal, which Stalin personally made to him a few months later, that he should organize a Polrugarian Committee of Liberation and become its secretary. It was certain that the Red Army would cross into Polrugaria sooner or later. The Committee of Liberation was to follow in its wake and become the nucleus of a provisional government.

Adriano’s hands were full of work. He was now in charge of liaison with the Polrugarian Resistance. He issued instructions to the emissaries who penetrated the enemy lines or were parachuted behind them.

He received reports from the guerrillas in the occupied country and transmitted them higher up. He arranged that leaders of the noncommunist and even anti-communist parties be smuggled out of the country and brought to Moscow. And he induced some of them to join the Committee of Liberation.
The Two Adrianos

The sequel is known. The Committee of Liberation became the provisional government, and then the actual government of Polrugaria. The noncommunist parties were squeezed out one by one and suppressed. Polrugaria became a People’s Democracy.Moscow, for its own reasons, was telling the Polrugarians that they should not look too much to Russia as their model.

Adriano is one of the pillars of the new government, and so far nothing seems to foreshadow his eclipse. He has not found the way out of the trap; neither has he been crushed in it.

There are two Vincent Adrianos now. One seems never to have known a moment of doubt or hesitation. His Stalinist orthodoxy has never been questioned, his devotion to the party has never flagged, and his virtues as leader and statesman are held to be unsurpassed.

The other Adriano is almost constantly tormented by his communist conscience, a prey to scruple and fear, to illusion and disillusionment. The former is expansive and eloquent, the latter broods in silence and hides even from his oldest friends. The former acts, the latter never ceases to ponder.

From 1945 to 1947, the two Adrianos were almost reconciled with each other. In those years the Polrugarian party carried out some of the root-and-branch reforms that for decades had been inscribed in its program. It attacked the problem of Polrugarian landlordism. It divided the large semifeudal estates among the land-hungry peasants. It established public ownership of large-scale industry.

It initiated impressive plans for the further industrial development of a sadly underdeveloped country. It sponsored a great deal of progressive social legislation and an ambitious educational reform. These achievements filled Adriano with real joy and pride. It was, after all, for these things that he had languished in Polrugarian prisons.

In those years, too, Moscow, for its own reasons, was telling the Polrugarians that they should not look too much to Russia as their model, that they ought to find and follow their own “Polrugarian road to socialism.” To Adriano, this meant that Polrugaria would be spared the experience of purges and concentration camps, of abject subservience and fear.

Communism, intense industrial and educational development, and a measure of real freedom to argue with one’s fellow and to criticize the powers that be — this seemed to be the achievement of an ideal.
Roads to Socialism

What disturbed him even then was that the people of Polrugaria were showing little enthusiasm for the revolution. To be sure, they saw the advantages and on the whole approved them. But they resented the revolution that was being carried out over their heads by people whom they had not chosen and who did not often bother to consult them and who looked like stooges of a foreign power.

Adriano knew to what extent the presence of the Red Army in Polrugaria had facilitated the revolution. Without it, the forces of the counterrevolution, with the assistance of the Western bourgeois democracies, might have reasserted themselves in bloody civil war, as they had done after the First World War.He who has been an outcast in Stalin’s Russia has watched with a shudder as his ‘Polrugarian road to socialism’ has become more and more the Stalinist road.

But he reflected that a revolution without genuine popular enthusiasm behind it is half defeated. It is inclined to distrust the people whom it should serve. And distrust may breed dark fear and terror as it had done in Russia.

Yet, although he saw these dangers, he hoped that through honest and devoted work for the masses, the new Polrugarian government could eventually win their confidence and arouse their enthusiasm. Then the new social order would stand on its own feet. Sooner or later the Russian armies would go back to Russia. Surely, he thought, there must be another road to socialism, perhaps not exactly a Polrugarian one, but not a Russian and a Stalinist road either.

In the meantime, Vincent Adriano did a few things that were understood only by the initiated. He sponsored in Polrugaria a cult to glorify the memory of his old friend and guide who had perished in Russia, although Moscow had not officially rehabilitated the latter’s memory. The biography of the dead leader can even now be seen displayed in Polrugarian bookshops, side by side with the official life of Stalin. Since the circumstances of the martyr’s death are not mentioned in the biography, only the older communists are aware of the hidden implications of this homage.


Adriano has also set up a special institute which looks after the families of all the Polrugarian communists who perished in Moscow as “spies and traitors.” The institute is called the Foundation of the Veterans and Martyrs of the Revolution. Such gestures give Adriano a measure of moral satisfaction, but he knows that politically they are irrelevant.

As the two camps, East and West, began to marshal their forces and as the leaders on both sides, each in their own ways, confronted everybody with a categorical “who-is-not-with-me-is-against-me,” Adriano’s prospects darkened. If he could have had his way, Adriano’s answer would have been a hearty “plague o’ both your houses.”

He who has been an outcast in Stalin’s Russia, a beast of burden in one of his concentration camps, he to whom every copy of Pravda, with its demented hymns to Stalin, gives an acute sensation of nausea, has watched with a shudder as his “Polrugarian road to socialism” has become more and more the Stalinist road. Yet he does not see how he can depart from it.
History’s Irrational Forces

He takes it for granted that all the West can offer to East and Central Europe is counterrevolution. The West may extol freedom and the dignity of man (and who has explored the meaning of these ideals as tragically and thoroughly as Adriano?), but his gaze is fixed on the gulf he sees between Western promise and fulfilment. He is convinced that in his part of the world every new upheaval will bring more rather than less oppression, more rather than less degradation of man.At times, Adriano would be happy to give up his high office and withdraw into obscurity. But the world has become too small.

He is willing to concede that those who speak for the West may be quite sincere in their promises, but he adds that he has retained his old Marxist habit of disregarding the wishes and promises of statesmen and of keeping his eyes on social and political realities. Who among the Polrugarians, he asks, are ready to rally to the banners of the West? There may be a few well-meaning people among them, but these will be the dupes.

The most active and energetic allies of the West in Polrugaria are those who have had a stake in the old social order, the privileged men of the prewar dictatorship, the old soldateska, the expropriated landlords and their like. These, should the West win, will form the new government, and, in the name of freedom and of the dignity of man, let loose a White terror the like of which has never been seen.

Adriano had known their terror once, also. But that was at a time when the old ruling class believed that their rule would last forever, and when their self-confidence prevented their terror from becoming altogether insane. Now, if they came back, they would be mad with fear and revenge. The real choice, as he sees it, is not between tyranny and freedom, but between Stalinist tyranny, which is in part redeemed by economic and social progress, and a reactionary tyranny which would not be redeemed by anything.

At times, Adriano would be happy to give up his high office and withdraw into obscurity. But the world has become too small. He cannot seek asylum in the West. This, in his eyes, would be not much better than treason — not to Russia, but to his ideal of communism. Nor can he withdraw into obscurity. Resignation and withdrawal on his part would be a gesture of opposition and defiance, and this the regime he has helped to build would not allow.

How much is there in common between the young man who once set out with Promethean ardor to conquer history’s insanity as it manifested itself in capitalism and the middle-aged cabinet minister who vaguely feels that history’s irrational forces have overpowered the camp of the revolution, too, and, incidentally, driven him into a trap?

He does his best to bolster his own self-respect and to persuade himself that as statesman, dignitary, and leader he is still the same man he was when he championed the cause of the oppressed and suffered for it in the prisons of his native land. But sometimes, while he solemnly receives delegations of peasants or salutes a colorful parade, a familiar sharp pain pierces his heart; and suddenly he feels that he is merely a pathetic wreck, a subpolar beast of burden.

CONTRIBUTOR
Isaac Deutscher was a Polish historian whose works included Stalin: Biography of a Dictator and a three-volume study of Leon Trotsky: The Prophet Armed, The Prophet Unarmed, and The Prophet Outcast.

OLD FASHIONED CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Corruption-trial coverage getting little attention

Charita M. Goshay, The Repository
Sun, March 5, 2023 

Former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder leaves the Federal Courthouse with Mark Marein, Householder’s attorney, after a day at the courthouse during his trial for racketeering conspiracy on Thursday, Feb. 2, 2023, in Cincinnati. Larry Householder and former Ohio Republican Party chair Matt Borges are charged with racketeering in an alleged $60 million scheme to pass state legislation to secure a $1 billion bailout for two nuclear power plants owned by FirstEnergy

We're in the midst of an era in which the means and ability to communicate has never been easier, yet serious stories and the coverage of the things which really matter often have to fight for readers' attention.

To borrow from the Irish writer Seamus Deane, we appear to be stuck somewhere between "Boredom and Apocalypse."

Currently, former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder is on trial for racketeering, accused of orchestrating a $60 million bribe from FirstEnergy officials, who buttonholed the legislature in 2019 to approve House Bill 6, which granted the utility a $1.3 billion subsidy for two nuclear power plants while increasing consumer rates and reducing subsides for clean/renewable energy projects.

Mathematically speaking, it's a cheap date.

But few if any folks have been paying much attention to Householder's trial, we must suppose because it's not entertaining enough, though House Bill 6 is literally taking money out of their pockets. According to Democratic state Reps. Casey Weinstein of Hudson and Jeffrey Crossman of Parma: "Ohioans continue to pay $287,000 every single day for subsidies that bail out an out-of-state coal plant and are tied to the largest public corruption scandal in state history. The subsidies are estimated to cost Ohioans up to $1.8 billion by 2030."

A plugged nickel

We know from experience that lessons unlearned are often repeated. Ohio has a Murderers' Row of misappropriation by top officials, including former Attorney General Marc Dann, Canton-born Deputy State Treasurer Amer Ahmad, and legendary House Speaker Vern G. Riffe Jr.

Householder is the second consecutive Ohio House speaker to land in trouble, following Cliff Rosenberger, who resigned his post in 2018 during an FBI investigation of his travel expenditures and his dealings with the payday loan industry, which was waging a battle to kneecap any attempt to regulate its practices.

Ohio scandals:From pancaking and Coingate to ECOT and House Bill 6: 50 years of Ohio public corruption cases

In 2005, the Toledo Blade broke "Coingate," a scandal in which $50 million of Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation funds was sunk into rare coins, a feat engineered by Tom Noe, a big-dog fundraiser, friend of Gov. Robert Taft, and who just happened to be a coin dealer.

Noe, whose companies made at least $1 million off the state, ended up in prison over illegal campaign contributions. Taft, and two of his staffers acquired criminal records for violating the state's ethics laws for failing to report gifts they received from Noe.

The media gets blamed for a lot. People who tend to have the most to hide are often the loudest complainers, sowing seeds of distrust along the way. In some cases, the criticism is warranted, even welcome, but who's at fault for decades of Statehouse corruption?

Who keeps voting for ambivalence?

Cornfed Machiavellis:Being Buckeyes doesn't mean we should act like nuts

The first draft of history

Reporting on state government is a thankless job because, even when it's done, it's far down the totem pole of stories getting read.

Yet, even if no one ever reads the stories, they matter because you have a right to know. Newspapers have a civic duty and an obligation to be the repository of record. It's the reason for their very existence.

They matter because newspapers remain, as Mark Twain put, "the first draft of history."

They matter because it's your money. For example, the FBI has launched a pay-to-play investigation of ECOT, the state's shambolic Electronic School of Tomorrow, which still owes you $117 million. The bureau, which also is looking into the workings behind the bill legalizing sports betting, has declared Ohio as one of the most politically corrupt in the country, describing the Householder case in "a league all its own," but Buckeyes don't appear to be bothered by that status.

Somewhere, Charles Ponzi is weeping with envy.

Charita M. Goshay is a Canton Repository staff writer and member of the editorial board. Reach her at  charita.goshay@cantonrep.com. On Twitter: @cgoshayREP

AUSTRALIA

Colourful WorldPride march closes Sydney Harbour Bridge as PM joins the throng


ByLinda Morris
March 5, 2023 —

Among the vast crowd of 50,000 people who made their way across the Sydney Harbour Bridge on Sunday morning, one activist for gender diversity stood alone.

“I’ve got me a spot in the front, and a nice frock. No heels,” said Norrie, the Sydney resident who took on the NSW Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages in the High Court nine years ago and became the first person to win the right to be declared a person of non-specific gender.

“I was the first person in NSW to be declared non-binary. Until then, the assumption had been that you were either male or female,” they said. “This walk is a celebration of how much queer people have gone mainstream, and I’m loving that.”

Sunday’s Pride march shut down the Sydney Harbour Bridge for seven hours as the rainbow-hued crowd made its way from Milsons Point to the Cahill Expressway and The Domain and Hyde Park in what is believed to be the largest public turnout for inclusion since 250,000 people walked the bridge for Indigenous reconciliation in 2000.

It was the penultimate event of the 17-day global WorldPride festival, which arrived in Sydney on February 17 on its first visit to the Southern Hemisphere. The festival wrapped up on Sunday with a live music concert in The Domain, with performers including G Flip and Altar Boy. An estimated half a million people attended the festival’s 300-plus events.

Attended by politicians of most persuasions, activists and celebrities, the bridge walk had been organised to celebrate the right of the LGBTQ community to “claim their own sexuality and self-defined identity, and the right to live those identities without fear or stigma while protesting the ongoing barriers faced by these communities”.

A crowd of 50,000 people who made their way across the Sydney Harbour Bridge on Sunday morning.

It was a fitting end to “the most wonderful celebration we’ve had in this country” said restaurateur and chef Kylie Kwong.

“When I think back to when I was coming out 35 years ago, you know, when I was 15 to 19 years old, there was certainly not this visibility and support around the community,” she said. “As some of the community leaders have said, Sydney WorldPride literally saves lives.”

Sunday’s walk was led by 45 “rainbow champions” – influential Australians, representing each of the 45 years since the first Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras as well as its original participants, known as the ’78ers.

The march was the penultimate event of the 17-day global WorldPride festival.

One of those original protestors, Anne Rauch said the WorldPride march felt like a repeat of “what we did in ’78”. “This is about global equality and there’s a whole lot of countries that haven’t progressed. People who identify as gay are killed for that reason.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong joined the early morning crowd that gathered on the bridge to loud cheers, making slow progress as the PM stopped repeatedly to pose for selfies.

Albanese said the bridge walk was a moment of great symbolism.“It’s about saying everybody should be valued for who they are and that our society is strengthened by its diversity. It’s a celebration of that but also an acknowledgement, being led by the ’78ers that social change doesn’t happen in a uniform way. And it’s not easy, and people have made great sacrifices.”

Actress and comedian Magda Szubanski said she was participating to celebrate five years of marriage equality. “I’m here to celebrate with my people, which is all people, let’s face it.”

Szubanski said she was not out to overtly change minds: “We just go on being ourselves and hopefully they’ll realise, you know, it’s more fun to be with us than against us.”

Among those who turned out were mother and son Shelley and James Argent. James came out to his mother in 1996 when it could be physically dangerous to declare yourself gay in public.

Bearing a sign, “Proud of my gay son”, Shelley Argent said her advice to other parents was simple: “Understand that it’s the hardest thing a child ever does, coming out to their parents, so be patient. Even if you don’t understand, look for support, look for your questions to be answered.

GALLERY

Gallery: Sydney WorldPride 2023 - Oxford Street Party

“Put on a happy face because if the child sees you looking sad, the child feels bad, and they don’t want to disappoint their parents.”

PHOTO CREDIT:EDWINA PICKLES

MARKET ANARCHY

How Tesco and Sainsbury's obsession with Aldi fuelled Britain's fruit and vegetable rationing crisis

Daniel Woolfson
Sat, March 4, 2023 

fruit and vegetable shelves empty in supermarket rationing crisis - DANIEL LEAL/AFP via Getty Images

It began innocuously: a handful of social media users queried why they couldn’t find tomatoes in their local shops.

But what started as mild annoyance soon escalated into something much more serious: Tesco, Asda, Aldi and Morrisons began rationing tomatoes, cucumbers and other salad vegetables as shortages hit the supermarket sector. Restrictions are still in place almost two weeks later.

February’s shortages were blamed on bad weather spells in Morocco and Spain, which damaged crops and delayed harvests.

Yet farmers in Britain say there are more deep-seated problems at work. Many complain that continued pressure from supermarkets to lower prices has brought Britain’s agricultural sector to its knees and left the country vulnerable to shortages.

Farmers blame endless price wars between British supermarkets and German discounters Aldi and Lidl, which have left producers with a raw deal.

Pressure on profit margins has only grown over the last 18 months as the prices of feed, fertiliser and energy have surged in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Faced with soaring costs and squeezed prices for their products, many farmers are cutting back on production or giving up altogether.

“If growers are not making a profit, they’re not going to do it,” says Ali Capper, the owner of 200-year-old Stocks Farm.

“This sector is losing money – growers are not idiots.”

Capper, who grows hops and apples in Worcestershire, says Brexit made the UK overly reliant on imported fruit and vegetables from markets like Morocco. However, she believes aggressive negotiating from the supermarkets is “the number one reason why there are shortages”.

A December survey by Sustain found some farmers were left with a profit of less than 1pc after supermarkets and intermediaries such as packers and distributors took their cut.

“Why should their children take on debt or sell their businesses to service debt?” says Capper, “Many are multi-generation family businesses.”

Supermarket price wars are not new. However, the cost of living crisis has supercharged competition in the sector by putting a rocket under the growth of German discounters Aldi and Lidl.

Combined, the two now account for roughly 17pc of the UK grocery market and last year Aldi overtook Morrisons to become Britain’s fourth largest supermarket.

British grocers have responded with lower prices. Tesco became the first supermarket to explicitly price match Aldi in 2020, and currently does so on 600 products. Sainsbury’s price matches 300 of its products against Aldi, expanding the range of linked items in January.

Asda and Morrisons do not match explicitly but have been competing on price.

Often the easiest way to lower prices is to push suppliers to sell at the lowest levels possible.

Retail expert David Sables says: “The reality is [producers] are being hit not just by Tesco and Sainsbury’s but Asda, Morrisons and absolutely everybody for the same reason.”

The scale of the supermarkets means they have a lot of negotiating power, with many farmers often reluctantly accepting deals for fear of losing the major retailers as customers if they say no.

Jack Ward, chief executive of the British Growers Association, says: “[Price wars] have gradually… eroded all of the value out of the fresh produce sector.

“In 2014, carrots were 80p a kilo. By 2017, they were 60p a kilo and at the start of 2022 they were 40p a kilo. Today they’re on sale at 50p a kilo.”

“Four years of general inflation and a year of super-inflation and we’re still expected to sell them 10p a kilo cheaper than they were five years ago.”

Supermarkets are not accused of any illegality and all abide by the Groceries Code, which is a set of guidelines meant to ensure that food producers are treated fairly. Aldi tops the Groceries Code Adjudicator's (GCA) ranking of best behaved supermarkets, with Tesco second.

Sables says: “The truth of the matter is that where Aldi may not squeeze suppliers too hard, it's because their business model lends itself to keeping the price down.”

Aldi has smaller stores with lower rents than Tesco or Sainsbury’s. The retailer also stocks a smaller range of products on shelves, which keeps costs down. Lower overheads put less pressure on the prices it pays for stock.

“Everybody knows if you’re pitching to Aldi you’ve got to come in low, but they don’t have to squeeze or be unreasonable or pressurising,” says Sables.

“When the other [retailers] – with their range choices and sophistication and bigger stores and higher stockholdings – try to compete on pricing, of course they have to put pressure on the suppliers.”

The National Farmers Union (NFU) has repeatedly warned of an escalating crisis in British food, highlighting the failure to give growers a fair deal as a key issue. In December, it said Britain was “sleepwalking” into a food security crisis.

“The consequences of undervaluing growers can be seen on supermarket shelves right now,” says NFU president Minette Batters. “This is a reality we’ve been warning the Government about for many months.

“Without urgent action there are real risks that empty shelves may become more commonplace.”

The NFU has urged government and industry to intervene and make the supply chain fairer for farmers and growers.

Batters says: “We saw it with eggs, they do not have contractual relationships that are fit for purpose.”

Shortages of eggs last year were widely attributed to the ongoing outbreak of avian flu in the UK. But some farmers claimed it was because they were not getting a good enough deal from the supermarkets.

Suppliers who believe they are being mistreated by retailers can complain officially by lodging a complaint with the GCA.

Speaking earlier in 2022, Mark White, the adjudicator himself, said he was “concerned that the pressure has impaired relationships and created wider problems”.

Batters says: “Farmers and growers are extremely reluctant to speak up. There is a fear of being delisted. It is a really challenging environment.”

However, some on the supermarket side say it is just as challenging for retailers. These businesses too are facing major increases in costs, ranging from energy to wages.

Higher costs and elevated levels of customer switching, driven by the cost of living crisis, have left major retailers fighting to sustain themselves.

A senior retail industry source says: “If big supermarkets don’t [compete], soon we’re going to find that Aldi and Lidl are the big supermarkets.”

Sables says: “Farmers may very well say this is down to Aldi [but] everybody’s fuel and heating and fertiliser costs have gone up because of the war in Ukraine… that’s got nothing to do with Aldi.”

A Sainsbury’s spokesman said: “We have always believed in close collaboration with our farmers and in paying them fairly.

“As inflationary pressures rise, we have supported our farmers and producers financially, as well as investing to keep prices low for customers throughout this financial year. We have longstanding partnerships with our suppliers to ensure long term confidence and investment into the sector.”

Tesco has given millions of pounds of additional support for the pig, egg and milk sectors over the last year and raised the price it pays for potatoes and chilled vegetables.

Andrew Opie, director of sustainability at the British Retail Consortium (BRC), says: “Retailers have long established relationships with the farmers in the UK and beyond, and they understand they need to pay a sustainable price for these goods.”

However, Ward, of the British Growers Association, says the UK’s current problems with food production require a much broader rethink of the way the nation eats.

“We need to find a more sustainable way of trading fresh produce," he says. "When I say sustainable, that's got to be sustainable in terms of viability for small producers, in terms of the social impact, food prices, and sustainable in terms of not imposing a negative impact on the environment.”

Factbox-Willow oil and gas project in Alaska sparks green opposition



Fri, March 3, 2023 

(Reuters) - Environmental and climate activists are rallying online against ConocoPhillips’ proposed Willow oil and gas drilling project in Alaska as the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden weighs whether to greenlight the controversial plan.

A petition on Change.org opposing the project has gathered over 2 million signatures, while the hashtag #StopWillow has been trending in social media posts.

Here are some details about the project:

WHAT IS THE WILLOW PROJECT?

The Willow project is a $6 billion proposal from ConocoPhillips' to drill oil and gas in Alaska. It would be located inside the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, a 23 million-acre (93 million-hectare) area on the state's North Slope that is the largest tract of undisturbed public land in the United States.


WILL IT BE APPROVED?

President Joe Biden's administration said in February it would support a scaled-back version of the project.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) published the project's final environmental review last month, selecting a "preferred alternative" that would include three drill sites and less surface infrastructure than originally proposed. ConocoPhillips had initially wanted to build up to five drill sites, dozens of miles (km) of roads, seven bridges and pipelines.

A final decision could come as soon as this month.

The project had been initially approved by the Trump administration, but a federal judge in Alaska in 2021 reversed that decision, saying the environmental analysis was flawed.

WHAT IS ITS ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT?

According to BLM's analysis, the design it endorsed would reduce the project's impact on habitats for species like polar bears and yellow-billed loons.

But environmental groups remain staunchly opposed, arguing the project conflicts with the Biden administration’s promises to fight climate change and poses a threat to pristine wilderness.

"The Willow project would have a devastating effect on public lands and our climate, and approving it after passing the largest climate bill in history would be a giant step in reverse," the Sierra Club said in a February press release, referring to the Biden administration's Inflation Reduction Act.

"Allowing Willow to move forward will pose a threat to some of Alaska’s last undisturbed wilderness, to the populations of wildlife that call it home, and to the public health of nearby communities and makes it harder to achieve our climate goals. We must end new leasing on public lands and conserving more nature to secure our climate future," it added.

BLM's parent agency, the Interior Department, has emphasized that the selection of the preferred alternative was not a final decision on approval of the project, adding that it had "substantial concerns" about Willow's impact on greenhouse gas emissions and wildlife.

In a statement, ConocoPhillips said the design preferred by BLM represented "a viable path forward" for Willow and said it was ready to begin construction "immediately" upon approval.

WHY IS WILLOW IMPORTANT FOR ALASKA?

The Willow project area holds an estimated 600 million barrels of oil, or more than the amount currently held in the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the country's emergency supply.

The project is important to Alaska's elected officials, who are hoping it will help offset oil production declines in a state whose economy relies heavily on the drilling industry.

ConocoPhillips has said the project would deliver up to $17 billion in revenue for federal and state governments and local Alaska communities.

The Biden administration has also been urging U.S. oil companies to invest in boosting production to help keep consumer energy prices in check.

(Reporting by Richard Valdmanis; Editing by Aurora Ellis)

If Joe Biden can open massive new oil fields, then so can Britain


Matthew Lynn

TELEGRAPH
Sun, March 5, 2023 

President Joe Biden talks to reporters after a lunch with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Senate Democrats about his upcoming budget and political agenda, at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, March 2, 2023.

 (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) 

It would be the biggest new oil field in decades. It could supply as much as 2pc of all the oil needed by the United States. And it would be large enough by itself to make a significant difference to the global price, dealing yet another blow to Vladimir Putin’s collapsing war machine in Ukraine.

Over the next couple of weeks, President Joe Biden is expected to approve the Willow Project, a vast new fossil fuel development in Alaska. Despite the fierce opposition of environmental protesters, Biden has decided that the US, and indeed the world, still needs oil.

If the Left-leaning, climate-friendly Biden can approve new energy projects, why can’t we do the same in the UK? No one could possibly accuse Biden of being a climate change denying reactionary. And yet in the US, unlike most of Europe, the debate about energy still has some vague connection to reality.

It recognises that it will take a while and cost a lot to switch to renewables. In the meantime you will need oil and gas – and you might as well produce it yourself rather than buy it from Saudi Arabia.

With plenty of reserves available in this country, perhaps it is time the UK learnt a lesson from Biden – and started to open up some new oil and gas fields of our own.

President Biden is not ignoring climate change or in hock to the oil industry. He is spending so much money on putting the US at the forefront of the shift to green energy that every other country in the world is complaining about the support he is offering.

From subsidies for electric vehicles, to investment in wind and solar power to building the infrastructure for carbon neutral heating, industrial and transport systems he is spending hundreds of billions of dollars to hit net zero as quickly as any other country. On any measure you care to look at, the Biden White House takes this stuff seriously.

And yet, despite that, he is about to approve the biggest new oil field in years. Led by the energy giant ConocoPhillips, the Willow Project in Alaska has the capacity to generate 180,000 barrels of oil a day, or 1.5pc of the US’s total energy needs.

It will add an extra third to Alaska’s annual production. Unsurprisingly, there has been an outcry from environmental activists, with opposition petitions attracting more than a million signatures, and accusations that Biden is breaking his election pledge not to allow new oil drilling on federal land (which, in fairness, has more than an element of truth to it).

Even so, the president is poised to ignore all that and approve the project. Drilling could start before the end of the year.

So if the United States, which is largely energy independent, can decide to go ahead with developing new fossil fuels, then why can’t we do the same in the UK?

It is about being realistic. Renewable energy capacity takes a long time, and it will be years before we can switch heating systems and cars to electricity.

In the meantime, we will still need oil and gas, and we might as well produce it ourselves, creating wealth, jobs and tax revenues in the process, instead of buying it from Russia or Saudi Arabia instead. In Washington, that is just obvious. In London, unfortunately, it still isn’t.

The UK ought to get over its bone-headed opposition to new energy production. In the North Sea, producers have been harassed and taxed out of existence.

Nicola Sturgeon’s Scottish government did everything in its power to stop new licences being approved, even though it is one of the country’s most important industries. Windfall taxes have been slapped on the sector, with the Labour Party calling for those to be even higher.

When energy giants such as Shell or BP announce bumper profits – hardly a surprise when energy prices are so high – they are vilified, and face calls for even stiffer levies. In response, projects have been put on hold, and investment stalled.

Shell said last year it was ‘reviewing’ (corporate speak for scrapping) the money spent in the North Sea, and so has Norway’s Equinor. We can hardly complain if output is falling.

The record on fracking has been even worse. Even though it enabled the US to be independent in energy, and although Texas has hardly been convulsed by earthquakes, in this country it has been effectively banned despite the fact we have vast reserves of shale oil and gas in the North.

Liz Truss’s doomed pro-growth government briefly tried to revive it, but was shot down in a hail of opposition. The result? The UK has a huge deficit in energy, importing £2 billion more a month in oil alone than we export. But, heck, who cares. Apparently it is better to just buy energy from Qatar, or indeed from Biden’s America, than produce the stuff ourselves.

That is ridiculous. It doesn’t make any difference to the environment whether the oil is extracted in this country or somewhere else.

Nor does running down oil capacity do anything to speed up green technology. It just puts us at risk of shortages when supply is tight. Biden at least has the guts to realise we will still need oil for a while longer, and it might as well be American oil instead of anyone else’s.

It might be too much to hope for from anyone in charge of British energy policy – but it is time we took a lesson from Washington and approved some new energy projects in this country as well.

Archaeologists in Israel left red-faced after it transpired that a unique 'ancient' inscription was carved last summer

Isobel van Hagen
Sun, March 5, 2023 

In this article:
Darius the Great
King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire from 522 to 486 BCE

The Darius inscription, which was announced as inauthentic on Friday

Shai Halevi/ Israel Antiquities Authority

An inscription bearing the name of a Persian king is "not authentic," the Israel Antiquities Authority said.


In a demonstration, an expert in ancient inscriptions had etched the words into the shard last summer.


The Antiquities Authority said they take "full responsibility for the unfortunate event."

Antiquities authorities in Israel backpedaled on Friday after they announced a supposedly ancient inscription of the name of a Persian king was "not authentic."

It turned out an expert in ancient Aramaic inscriptions had etched the words into the shard last summer.

The finding of what was thought to be the first-ever discovery of an inscription with King Darius the Great's name received considerable publicity when it was announced on Wednesday. The supposed shard of pottery was found by a hiker last December in Tel Lachish National Park 25 miles southwest of Jerusalem.

The inscription on the shard of pottery reads, "Year 24 of Darius," according to a government press release on Wednesday. This would have dated the inscription to 498 BC — or 2,500 years ago.

Darius the Great was the father of King Ahasuerus — an important figure in the Jewish tradition linked to the story of Purim, which is celebrated next week.

But after news broke about the seemingly serendipitous finding, an expert came forward to explain that she herself had carved the words into the shard, according to the Associated Press.

The expert, who was not named by the Antiquities Authority, was giving a demonstration to students at an archeological site where a Canaanite city once stood and left the modified pottery behind last August.

"The Israel Antiquities Authority takes full responsibility for the unfortunate event," said Professor Gideon Avni, the authority's chief scientist, according to Israeli news outlet i24.

"In terms of ethical and scientific practices, we see this as a very severe occurrence," he said.

The authority said in a statement they believed the researcher had left the shard "unintentionally and without malice," but that it was also "careless," which led to a "rare mistake" that "distorted the scientific truth."

The piece of pottery was found to be ancient after being thoroughly examined in a laboratory, the Associated Press reported, which seemingly added to the confusion. The authority also said it would now review all of its procedures and policies.

Darius I ruled the ancient Persian Achaemenid Empire from 522 BC until his death in 486 BC.

ECO ACTIVISM IS NOT TERRORISM

Activists and groups gear up for week of action against Georgia’s ‘Cop City’

Timothy Prattin Atlanta
Sun, March 5, 2023 

Photograph: Michael Reynolds/EPA

A broad range of individuals and activist organizations, from a local rabbi to Black Voters Matter, Atlanta-area residents and people from across the US, are gearing up for a “week of action” this week to defend a forest south-east of the city in Georgia, as part of a movement protesting a project dubbed “Cop City”.

Related: ‘Assassinated in cold blood’: activist killed protesting Georgia’s ‘Cop City’

The protest comes less than two months after police shot and killed activist, Manuel Paez Terán, or “Tortuguita”, one of dozens camped in the forest. The fatal shooting of an environmental protester, the first of its kind in US history, raised the movement’s profile nationally and internationally.

It also ratcheted up tensions between local government and law enforcement officials on the one hand, and the diverse coalition of individuals and groups seeking to protect the forest. “This is the first week of action since the state killed someone,” said Marlon Kautz, an organizer with the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, which provides bail and other resources to protestors who have been arrested. “The entire character, mood and status of the struggle has transformed dramatically … [and] feels much more real – to us, and to the state.”

A key issue is whether this Week of Action – which includes a music festival in the forest; a Jewish shabbat, or Friday evening, service; herbal workshops; and a “know your rights” workshop – will draw people back to camping and tree-sitting in the forest.

There’s also the question of whether various marches also scheduled – including one led by a handful of Black-led organizations – will result in more arrests on the state “domestic terrorism” charges that 18 activists are already facing.

The land in question is called South River forest on municipal maps, and “Weelaunee forest” – a Muscogee (Creek) word meaning “brown water” – by activists. At least 85 acres of the forest is under threat from the $90m police and fire department training center opponents of the project have labeled “Cop City”.

Another 40 acres is under threat from Ryan Millsap, former owner of Blackhall Film Studios, who made a deal with DeKalb county in 2020 to swap the land, in use as a public park, for another piece of land nearby. That deal is on hold due to a local environmental group’s lawsuit, and residents of surrounding neighborhoods continue to use the park for recreation.

The two parts of the forest are divided by a stream, Intrenchment Creek, which is the municipal name of the public park. The pair of threats to the forest led dozens of “forest defenders” to camp in the woods on both sides of the creek starting in late 2021. Tortuguita was camped on the Intrenchment Creek Park side on 18 January, when dozens of officers from the Atlanta and Dekalb county police departments, the Georgia bureau of investigation (GBI), Georgia state patrol and, possibly, the FBI, swept through the forest, with the goal of clearing activists.

The GBI, now tasked with investigating the shooting, said that Tortuguita fired a gun first at a state trooper. The agency also released a document appearing to show that the activist purchased the gun. Despite the presence of the multiple agencies, the GBI has also said there is no body-cam or other footage of the shooting.

Since the shooting, the forest seems to be cleared of tree-sitters and campers on both sides of the creek, according to activists. The city of Atlanta, which owns the land where “Cop City” is planned, announced in a recent press conference that Dekalb county, where the land is located, had granted what’s known as a “land disturbance permit” – meaning work on the training center could begin.

And while Tortuguita’s death – the first time US law enforcement has killed an environmental activist while protesting – brought attention from international media, members of Congress, and global environmental organizations, Atlanta-area residents opposed to the training center have recently turned to local government.

A member of a “community stakeholder advisory committee” meant to provide local input into the training center has resigned in protest against Tortuguita’s killing. Another member lodged an appeal against the land disturbance permit with a county zoning board that will be heard in April, claiming that work on the training center will drive sediment into the creek, in violation of the Clean Water Act and state law.

Meanwhile, the specter of “forest defenders” possibly arriving during the Week of Action led local Clayton State University to send an email to students, warning them against being drawn by the week’s activities to attempt entering the site of the planned training center – which is being guarded by more than 100 Atlanta officers around the clock, at a cost of $1m monthly, according to a recent court filing.

“The APD and Georgia Bureau of Investigations have taken a zero-tolerance stance on protestors who attempt to enter the property of this proposed training location,” read the email, “[and protesters] will be arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.” The email said nothing about the public park area of the forest.

Most of the neighborhoods surrounding the forest have large Black populations, and local government has overlooked the area for decades, leading to industrial and other kinds of pollution.

Kamau Franklin, founder of Community Movement Builders, a grassroots organizing group, is helping organize a march of Black-led organizations during the Week of Action to draw attention to the opposition in his community to a training center that he sees as accelerating police militarization and brutality, as well as overlooking community input in how best to use the land.

This would help put a lie to the “outside agitator” trope that Georgia governor Brian Kemp, Atlanta mayor Andre Dickens and others have used to describe opposition to “Cop City”, based on the out-of-state addresses of most forest defenders arrested to date, he said.

“The idea is to have a march with Black-led groups, centered in Atlanta history, and the protest movements we’ve always been a part of,” Franklin said.

Although there is no way to know how many people will show up for the week’s events, or from where – there’s no tickets to buy or sell, and all work is being done autonomously and largely, anonymously – Sam, part of the Atlanta Community Press Collective, an anonymous group of activists who use journalistic methods to monitor “Cop City”, said they’ve received queries from Spain, Canada, New York, Minnesota and California in the last week alone.

“I have the impression there’s going to be a lot of people and a diversity of events that’s probably the most accurate representation of the breadth of this movement all along,” they said.