ULTRA RIGHT WING ZIONIST BROWN SHIRTS 

Israel approves 'national guard' sought by far-right security minister

Arab politicians have denounced the national guard as a 'militia' for Itamar Ben-Gvir, while some say new force could be used to crack down on protests against the government

Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir speaks to the media ahead of the weekly cabinet meeting in the prime minister's office in Jerusalem, 19 March 2023 (AFP)

By MEE and agencies
Published date: 2 April 2023 

Israel authorised on Sunday the setting up of a national guard under far-right security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has said it would focus on Arab unrest, while political rivals accused him of setting up a sectarian "militia".

The previous government had begun moves to set up an auxiliary police force to tackle internal political violence following pro-Palestinian protests in mixed Jewish-Arab areas during the Gaza Strip war of May 2021. That government fell before the force was finalised.

The exact powers of the new national guard will be discussed by a committee comprised of all Israeli security agencies, which will submit recommendations within 90 days, the prime minister's office said in a statement.

It was not immediately clear who would have direct authority over the national guard.

Israel's police chief, Inspector-General Yaakov Shabtai, has expressed misgivings about the new force in a letter to Ben-Gvir, local media reported.

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Ben-Gvir, a hardline Jewish settler from the occupied West Bank with past convictions for support for terrorism and incitement against Arabs - who make up 21 per cent of Israel's population - rose in politics partly due to the 2021 unrest.

Having moderated some of his positions, he wields an expanded law-and-order portfolio in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's religious-nationalist governing coalition.

'Militia'

Ben-Gvir has described the planned national guard in media interviews as an update of the previous government's initiative. Discussing its planned deployments, he named only Arab communities hit by riots or crime, in Israel as well as along the boundaries with the Palestinian West Bank.

"It will deal with this exclusively. The police does not deal exclusively with this. It's busy with a thousand and one things," he told Army Radio.

Arab politicians have denounced the national guard as a "militia" for Ben-Gvir. Other opposition figures have accused Ben-Gvir of wanting a new force to crack down on nationwide demonstrations against the government's judicial overhaul plan.

How Ben Gvir's 'private militia' threatens Palestinians and Israel's security

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"Why does the State of Israel - which has an army, police, military intelligence, the Shin Bet, Mossad, National Security Council, Prisons Service, riot police, a SWAT team - need another national guard?" Arab lawmaker Ayman Odeh wrote on Twitter.

Government funding will enable an initial intake of 1,850 personnel for the new force, Ben-Gvir said, adding that these could be seconded police officers and volunteers, including from the Arab sector.

He said that the national guard would take months to get off the ground and that he was trying to fill police posts in parallel.

Israeli police chief Shabtai questioned the need for the national guard and warned that any separation of it from the police hierarchy "could prove most costly and even harm the security of the citizenry", according to the Ynet news site.

Confirming the existence of the letter, Ben-Gvir said he would meet Shabtai on Monday and was open to the possibility of putting the national guard under the command authority of the police "if they're serious and really want it".
Netanyahu in weak position

The plan was part of a deal between Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir, who had threatened to resign after the prime minister paused a controversial plan to overhaul the judiciary following weeks of mass protests that brought the country to a stand-still on Monday.

Ben-Gvir agreed to the delay in return for allowing the creation of a national guard loyal to his ministry.

'Clearly, Netanyahu’s political standing is extremely weak. His polling numbers are at historic lows, and his own party is extremely resentful of him'

- Yonatan Touval, analyst

"Clearly, Netanyahu’s political standing is extremely weak," said Yonatan Touval, an analyst at the Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies (Mitvim), following the decision on the national guard.

"His polling numbers are at historic lows, and his own party is extremely resentful of him," added Touval speaking to Middle East Eye.

Ben-Gvir has long supported the creation of a national guard and wants to "have a paramilitary force directly under his command that he can deploy in mixed Arab-Israeli towns inside Israel," said Touval.

"It goes without saying that the force would focus on enforcing law and order on Arab residents whenever tensions and violence erupt," he added.

Ben-Gvir has already told police to crack down harder on anti-government protests that have rocked the country since January.

'Anti-Palestinian agenda'

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel has said: "We already saw what happened when Ben-Gvir wanted to suppress the protests; now one can only imagine what will happen when he has his own militias."

Palestinian citizens of Israel and those living in the occupied territories are also likely to fear the move, since it could likely be used against them.

"Giving a private militia to Kahanist minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is a convicted criminal, is likely to occasion a new low for Palestinian human security across the occupied Palestinian Territories," said Robert Andrews, the public relations officer at the human rights NGO the EuroPal Forum.

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Rabbi Meir Kahane was an Israeli-American who led a far-right group that gave rise to Kahanism, an extremist religious Zionist worldview premised on Jewish supremacy.

Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power party has in the past espoused Kahanist ideology and is an important coalition member in Netanyahu's ruling coalition.

"The decision to award the fascistic Ben-Gvir with a private militia will undoubtedly serve to embolden his clear anti-Palestinian agenda," Andrews told MEE.

In the last few months, Ben-Gvir has already introduced a series of draconian measures against Palestinians.

In February, Israel's parliament passed the first stage of a bill, introduced by the Jewish Power Party, to stop funding non-essential medical treatment for Palestinians in Israeli prisons.

Since joining Netanyahu's government late last year, the security minister has vowed to crack down on the treatment of Palestinian prisoners, whom he claims are being treated too well.

'Legal challenges'

Ben-Gvir has also ordered the closure of Palestinian prisoner-run bakeries in Israeli prisons and that detainees only be given four minutes to shower.

"With a private militia now under his absolute control, it is already clear - as per his statements thus far - that Ben-Gvir will use the group to further legitimise settler violence against Palestinian communities under the guise of ‘protecting law and order'," said Andrews.

"The Hilltop Youth, [an extremist religious-nationalist settler group], already routinely terrorise and attack Palestinian civilians and property with impunity," he added.

"One can expect Ben-Gvir’s militia to continue the acts of violence and terrorism against Palestinians, albeit while wearing uniforms and officially part of the state’s apparatus."

Despite such fears, Touval said that the decision to form the national guard is likely to be fought in the courts and Ben-Gvir’s control over it is still far from assured.

"The establishment of such a force is likely to meet legal challenges, especially if, as the latest plan states, the national guard is to be separate and independent of the police and subject directly to the Ministry of National Security and its minister, Ben-Gvir himself," said Touval.

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu Promised to Give a Racist Security Minister His Own Government Militia

Lloyd Green
Wed, March 29, 2023 

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Reuters

Last November, the far-right neo-Kahanist Itamar Ben-Gvir helped deliver Benjamin Netanyahu’s election victory. Once a fringe fixture of Israel’s radical right, he is now the country’s minister of public security. Unlike the late Meir Kahane, his hero, Ben-Gvir walks the corridors of power. Like Kahane, however, he finds himself at the eye of a continuous political storm.

On Monday, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, placed a temporary hold on his bid to degrade the country’s judiciary. To garner Ben-Gvir’s support, Netanyahu made a jarring concession that left critics seething and Ben-Gvir grinning—he would hand control of the National Guard (presently a unit of the Border Patrol) over to the ministry of national security, which is currently run by Ben-Gvir (the Border Patrol would then be subsumed into the reconstituted National Guard).

If Bibi’s Attacks on Democracy Continue, Biden Should Consider Withholding Aid to Israel

That’s a ton of clout for any one person, particularly Ben-Gvir, who decades earlier was declared by Israel’s military as unfit to serve.

In the end, Netanyahu may fail to honor his pledge. Funds might not be allocated. The government might fall. For the moment, however, the prospect of Ben-Gvir at the helm of a state-backed militia sets plenty of nerves on edge.

“It could be very dangerous,” a senior police official told Ha’aretz.

Earlier this week as throngs protested outside the Knesset, the unnamed official pondered whether “the minister would have sent companies from the National Guard to deal with the protesters, it looks bad.” (For the record, Kobi Shabtai, the police commissioner, opposes Ben-Gvir’s bid.)

Ben-Gvir said the Guard would be focused on “extortion in areas with criminal organizations and ‘mixed’ cities,” which The Jerusalem Post said is “a clear implication of focusing on Israeli-Arab crime,” adding, “National guard members would be issued guns and be considered combat police.”

Combat police under the control of a racist security minister, patrolling Arab neighborhoods. What could go wrong?

The specifics of his proposal have yet to be laid out, let alone finalized. But the events of the past few days have stoked fear that a National Guard in Ben-Gvir’s hands would serve as a cross between a personal praetorian and a band of bully-boys.

Remember when Donald Trump told the neofascist Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by”? Well, they ended up being the primary instigators of violence at the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

For all of his talk of law and order, Ben-Gvir also has fans among “La Familia,” a right-wing booster club of Jerusalem’s Beitar soccer team. The group also brings its share of menace and law breaking.

“Ben-Gvir’s militias from La Familia are going wild right now on the streets of Jerusalem. Looking for Arabs to beat up,” Merav Michaeli, the leader of the opposition Labor Party tweeted. Part of the group then beat an Arab cab driver. “There are eggs, there are knives, there are weapons. We are on our way to Jerusalem,” one hooligan bragged on video.

“This is the man that Netanyahu promised to set up for him his own militia with regular salaries at the expense of the state,” she added.

Israelis Are Trying to Save a Democracy That Never Existed

In a letter addressed to Yoav Gallant, the supposedly fired defense minister, Merav Cohen, a member of the opposition Yesh Atid party, urged that he classify La Familia as a terror group. (For the moment, Gallant still appears on the job.)

As Israel approaches its 75th anniversary, it’s worth recalling when David Ben-Gurion, the country’s first prime minister, made clear that the state would alone possess the monopoly on armed violence.

At the outset, the nascent government worked with Menachem Begin—leader of the Irgun Underground, a right-wing paramilitary group that committed numerous deadly bombings in Israel’s infancy—to integrate his troops into the newly formed Israel Defense Forces. In June 1948, Begin inked a formal agreement, but things did not proceed smoothly.

Armed confrontation between the Irgun and the Palmach (an elite force attached to the Haganah, the official pre-state underground) followed in what would become known as the Altalena Affair, an attempt by the Irgun to smuggle weapons. A sunk ship, standoff, deaths, and arrests followed. In September 1948, Begin disbanded the Irgun.

For decades, he then led the parliamentary opposition. Rule of law and democracy mattered. (Begin became prime minister in 1978).

But it wasn’t just the right-wing engaging in violence.

In November 1948, Ben-Gurion ordered the Palmach to be dismantled. Its alumni, “Palmachniks,” included Yitzhak Rabin, a future Labor prime minister, and Yigal Allon, a foreign minister and an interim prime minister.

Current relations between the U.S. grind loudly. On Tuesday, President Joe Biden announced that Netanyahu would not be at the White House anytime soon. The president also stressed that Israel’s favored status is directly tied to its commitment to democracy.

This Is Israel’s Most Dire Week Since the Yom Kippur War

An alarmed Netanyahu pushed back at 1am local time, saying in a series of tweets: “I have known President Biden for over 40 years, and I appreciate his longstanding commitment to Israel. The alliance between Israel and the United States is unbreakable and always overcomes the occasional disagreements between us…Israel is a sovereign country which makes its decisions by the will of its people and not based on pressures from abroad, including from the best of friends.”

Ben-Gvir, for his part, was thoroughly unimpressed. “Israel is an independent country and no longer a star on the U.S. flag,” he remarked.

The Daily Beast.

Palestinian cities in Israel go on strike over killing of Palestinian doctor

The general strike is in response to Israeli forces killing Mohammed al-Osaibi at the gates of the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex on Friday

Mourners carry the body of Palestinian Mohammed al-Osaibi, during his funeral in the Bedouin village of Hura in southern Israel on 2 April 2023 (AFP)

By Fayha Shalash in
Ramallah, occupied Palestine

Published date: 2 April 2023

Palestinian cities and towns across Israel on Sunday observed a one-day strike following a call by the High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel in response to the killing of Mohammed al-Osaibi, a Palestinian doctor who was fatally shot by Israeli forces.

Eyewitnesses said police shot Osaibi 10 times at the Chain Gate (Bab al-Silsela), one of the gates to the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex in the Old City of Jerusalem, on Friday evening after he tried to prevent them from harassing a woman trying to re-enter the mosque.

Israeli police said in a statement that the man tried to grab a soldier's weapon and was subsequently shot and "neutralised". Osaibi was a 26-year-old resident of the bedouin town of Hura in the Naqab (Negev) region in southern Israel.

Osaibi's family has disputed the police account of his death and demanded to see CCTV footage, Israeli media reported. Osaibi had recently earned his medical degree in Romania and returned to his hometown a month ago, the family said.

The Israeli police, meanwhile, stood by their original version of events and issued another statement on Saturday afternoon saying that the site of the attack was not covered by surveillance cameras.

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Following an emergency meeting on Saturday in Hura, the High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel called for a strike that includes all municipalities, public educational facilities and shops in Palestinian cities and towns in Israel.

"There are attempts to [push forward] a fabricated Israeli scenario to distort the truth and hide the evidence, which points to the Ben Gvir police and condemns them for committing the heinous crime against Mohammed al-Osaibi," the committee said in a statement in reference to National Security Minisiter Itamar Ben Gvir.
'It will not go unnoticed'

Palestinians, who have called Osaibi's killing "an execution", responded to the strike in great numbers, closing their shops and holding marches and vigils, where pictures of the doctor were raised.

Writer and political analyst Saher Ghazzawi said scenes from the strike brought back memories of the comprehensive strike that took place in Palestinian towns and cities in Israel in the early days of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in October 2000.

'Palestinian public opinion rejects the occupation police's account... this crime will not go unnoticed'

- Saher Ghazzawi, writer and analyst

"It isn't inconceivable to see things develop and take the same direction of escalation and the ignition of the Palestinian street. There's an atmosphere of tension being felt by Palestinian society following the murder of the young doctor," he told Middle East Eye.

Ghazzawi said that the tension comes in tandem with the racist practices and statements of the Israeli government and political parties "against everything that is Palestinian".

The vigils that took place in many Palestinian cities in Israel, at crossroads and town entrances, on Saturday, are expected to continue well into Sunday after Osaibi's funeral in his hometown, and are likely to turn into a mass demonstration.

"Palestinian public opinion completely rejects the occupation police's account that condemns the victim, so this crime will not go unnoticed," Ghazzawi said.

Osaibi is an only child, and was caring for his ailing father as he worked to get certified in Israel. As the whole town came to a standstill following the news of his death, Osaibi's family opened their home to mourners, as they waited for the Israeli authorities to release their son's body.

Ibrahim al-Osaibi said that the family rejects the police's claims that his cousin had tried to snatch the weapon of one of its forces. He added that Osaibi was unarmed and had tried to free the Palestinian woman being assaulted by the police.

"We consider it a crime, by all standards, for a young man to be shot just because he tried to defend a woman who was being subjected to abuse," said Ibrahim al-Osaibi.
'Field executions'

Israeli Prime Minister Bejamin Netanyahu has, meanwhile, praised the doctor's killing and said the police had "prevented an attack in the area".

Israel-Palestine: What's driving tensions in the West Bank?

Read More »

The committee, an umbrella organisation representing Israel's Palestinian citizens, called for a special investigation committee to look into Osaibi's killing.

It also encouraged a massive turnout to his funeral in protest against all "occupation policies, oppression and racial discrimination".

The Mizan Foundation for Human Rights described Osaibi's killing as "a heinous crime" and part of "a systematic policy based on field executions and the killing of Palestinians".

"The policy of easily pulling the trigger against Palestinians has become a rooted 'culture' in the psyche of the Israeli security services, and a systematic policy that feeds on an atmosphere of incitement [and] murder," Mizan said in a statement.

Since the beginning of the year, Israeli forces have killed at least 87 Palestinians, including fighters and civilians, in the deadliest start to a year since 2000, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

On Saturday, Israeli forces killed 23-year-old Palestinian Mohammed Baradyah after he allegedly conducted a car-ramming attack near the town of Beit Ummar, north of Hebron, wounding three Israelis.

The weekend's escalation threatens to end a relative lull during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan so far, a period that usually witnesses an increase in confrontations between Israeli forces and Palestinians, especially in East Jerusalem as Israel tightens restrictions against Palestinians in the area.

Family of Arab Israeli killed at Al-Aqsa dispute police claims

Hiba ASLAN
Sun, April 2, 2023 


The family of an Arab Israeli medical student shot dead by police at Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque compound rejected on Sunday claims by the force that he grabbed and fired an officer's gun.

Medical student Mohammed al-Asibi was killed late Friday, hours after worshippers marking the Muslim holy month of Ramadan held prayers at the sacred site.

Israeli police said the 26-year-old "managed to take the gun (from an officer) and fire two bullets" before being shot dead by officers.

The force said Sunday that Asibi's DNA was found "on the (loading) slide and handle of the pistol", providing "unambiguous" proof that officers "acted courageously".

As mourners gathered Sunday in Asibi's Bedouin village of Hura, in southern Israel, his family said he had travelled to Jerusalem only to pray.

"We reject the police's story, which is false and slanderous," said one of his sisters, who requested anonymity due to fear of retaliation.

She described her brother as a "polite and well-mannered person who loved helping others and (had) a peaceful personality".

Raam, the Israeli parliament's Islamist party, noted in a Facebook post claims from "witnesses" who said Asibi had gone to the aid of a woman who was in a scuffle with police.

Asibi was reaching the end of his medical studies in Romania and had just renewed his residency visa ahead of his final exam, his family said.

Relatives told AFP that police raided their home after the shooting, interrogated his parents and seized Asibi's personal belongings.

The head of Hura's municipal council, Habis al-Atawneh, said his community "all believe that the young man was executed."

- No footage of shooting -

Doubts have been raised over the shooting in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, particularly because police said there was no footage of the shooting at the heavily-surveilled compound.

A police spokesman told AFP on Sunday that the incident happened in a surveillance camera blind spot, while the officer whose weapon was grabbed by Asibi did not have time to turn on his body camera.

Police earlier rejected the notion of a woman being involved, saying Asibi was at the mosque compound alone and therefore "aroused suspicion".

"He was questioned by the police and asked to leave the Temple Mount compound since it was after closing hours, and then carried out the aforementioned attack," their statement added, using the Jewish name for the site.

The compound in Jerusalem's Old City is the most sacred site for Jews and the third-holiest place for Muslims.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday gave "full backing to the Israel police for thwarting the terrorist on the Temple Mount."

Waleed Alhwashla, from Raam, was among Arab lawmakers attending Asibi's funeral on Sunday.

He said parliamentarians were in touch with foreign diplomats to "internationalise the issue of the Arabs of the Negev (in southern Israel) and the issue of the martyr Mohammed."

Asibi's Bedouin community is part of Israel's Arab minority, which makes up around 20 percent of the population and many of whom identify as Palestinian.

Businesses in the village shut Sunday as residents went on strike to protest Asibi's killing, an action also observed in other Arab-Israeli communities, according to local media.

Asibi is one of more than a hundred people killed so far this year in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

His death followed a relative lull in the violence since Ramadan began on March 23.

In addition to him, the conflict has claimed the lives of 88 Palestinians, including militants and civilians, since the start of the year.

Separately, fourteen Israelis, including members of the security forces and civilians, and one Ukrainian have been killed over the same period, according to an AFP tally based on official sources from both sides.

ha/rsc/jjm/it

Israeli police fatally shoot man at Jerusalem's holiest site

IOF ISRAEL OCCUPATION FORCE

Israeli police deploy in the Old City of Jerusalem after shots were fired in the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Saturday, April 1, 2023. (AP Photo/ Mahmoud Illean)

ASSOCIATED PRESS
ISABEL DEBRE
Fri, March 31, 2023 

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli police shot and killed a man who they alleged tried to snatch an officer’s gun at an entrance to a Jerusalem holy site early Saturday, raising fears of further violence during a time of heightened tensions at the flashpoint compound.

Later Saturday, the Israeli military said a Palestinian driver rammed his vehicle into a group of Israelis in the occupied West Bank. Israeli medics said three people were wounded, two seriously, and the alleged attacker was shot dead.

In Jerusalem's police shooting, Palestinian worshippers at the entrance to the site on Saturday morning had a different account, saying that police shot the man at least 10 times after he tried to prevent them from harassing a woman who was on her way to the holy compound, home to Al-Aqsa Mosque in the heart of Jerusalem’s Old City — the third holiest shrine in Islam. The compound, revered by Jews as the Temple Mount, is also the most sacred site in Judaism.

The police said the slain man was 26-year-old Mohammed Alasibi from Hura, a Bedouin Arab village in southern Israel. The village council called for a thorough investigation of his killing and a general strike Saturday in protest.

Hours after the incident, the muddy stone alleyway leading to Al-Aqsa Mosque was still stained with blood. Alasibi's family said he was a physician who had recently passed his exams and earned his M.D. in Romania. He returned to his hometown a month ago, his cousin said, and was caring for his sick father as he worked to get certified in Israel.

“He is a polite, kind man from a family of doctors who was going to Al-Aqsa for spiritual reasons,” his cousin Fahad Alasibi said. “If you want us to believe that he tried to attack police, then show us the security footage.”

A police spokesperson pushed back on Palestinian accounts, insisting there was no woman walking to the compound at midnight because the complex was closed to visitors under an agreement with an Islamic trust called the Waqf controlled by Jordan.

Nonetheless, a few dozen people have been trying to sleep at the mosque overnight during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, prompting Israeli police to intervene and try to evict the worshippers.

The police spokesperson said Alasibi first aroused suspicion walking toward the shuttered compound. After being stopped for questioning, the spokesperson said Alasibi jumped on one of the officers and grabbed his gun, managing to fire two bullets toward policemen as the officer struggled to restrain him. Police described the incident as an attempted terrorist attack and said they shot and killed him in self-defense. No officers were injured. The spokesperson said there was no camera on the inner wall of the compound that could have captured the incident.

Palestinian worshippers at the compound Saturday disagreed. Noureddine, a 17-year-old who lived in the neighborhood and declined to give his last name for fear of reprisals, said he saw Alasibi confront police who had stopped a female worshipper on her way to Al-Aqsa Mosque. Alasibi’s relationship to the woman was not clear. He said some kind of disagreement broke out between Alasibi and the officers before he heard a dozen shots ring out.

“Nothing could justify that many shots,” he said, pointing to chaotic footage he filmed that showed Palestinian vendors and worshippers screaming at the sound of bullets being fired in rapid succession. “They were fired at close range.”

His cousin Fahad said Alasibi was worried about making the trip from Israel's Negev desert to Al-Aqsa because his ailing father relied on him. “But he went because praying there during Ramadan means a lot to him," he said.

The city's contested compound has been a focus for clashes in the past, particularly in times of turmoil in Israel and the West Bank. This year, as violence surges in the occupied territory under the most right-wing government in Israeli history, fears of an escalation in Jerusalem have mounted with the start of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. Israeli police have boosted their forces as tens of thousands of Muslim worshippers flock to Al-Aqsa Mosque for prayers.

On Friday, more than 200,000 Palestinians gathered at the compound for noon prayers, which passed peacefully.

Noureddine said police forced Palestinian vendors and worshippers out of the area after the incident, beating him and others with batons. Israeli police briefly closed the site before reopening it for dawn prayers.

Confrontations at the hilltop compound have triggered wider violence in the region in the past. Clashes at the site in May 2021 helped fuel the outbreak of a bloody 11-day war between Israel and Gaza Strip's Hamas rulers.

This year's convergence of Ramadan with the Jewish holiday of Passover could increase the possibility of friction as the Old City hosts a massive influx of pilgrims.

For the past year, Israeli-Palestinian fighting has surged in the occupied West Bank. At least 86 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli or settler gunfire this year, according to an Associated Press tally. Palestinian attacks against Israelis have killed 15 people in the same period. Israel says most of those killed have been militants. But stone-throwing youths protesting police incursions and people not involved in the confrontations have also been killed.

Dutch government pauses nitrogen emissions policy after pro-farming party’s election win

REACTIONARY INDUSTRIAL AGRIBUSINESS 

AKA FARMERS

Arthur Scott-Geddes
Sat, April 1, 2023 

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte visits a dairy farm before a discussion with farmers about the nitrogen plans in Koudum - AFP

The Dutch government has agreed to pause its plan to drastically cut nitrogen-based emissions after a pro-farming party delivered a major upset in provincial elections.

Mark Rutte, the Dutch Prime Minister, on Friday announced that the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) party, one of his coalition partners, wants to renegotiate the commitment to halving the country’s nitrogen emissions by 2030.

Keen to protect his environmental credentials, Mr Rutte said the public should not think the coalition was putting the brakes on its emissions policy.

“The opposite is true, we are actually accelerating,” he said. “Nevertheless, there are opposing views in the Cabinet.”

Wopke Hoekstra, the CDA leader and Dutch Deputy Prime Minister, said: “2030 is not feasible for us.”

Pressure from the looming deadline, he said, “has pushed the solution further away”.

The Netherlands is one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases in Europe, with farming accounting for 46 per cent of its total emissions.

The government’s pledge to cut nitrogen emissions in 2019 ignited a dispute with the country’s farmers, who fear for their livelihoods.

Farmers holding a blockade to protest against government plans that may require them to reduce livestock - AFP

The government has tried to convince farmers to reduce their livestock herds or leave the industry in order to cut back on nitrogen use.

But the farmers have hit back with repeated protests, using their tractors to blockade roads, airports and supermarkets around the country.

In some cities, as many as 40,000 protesters have gathered to oppose the government’s plan, sometimes fighting police in violent, running battles.

The farmers, through a new party set up in 2019, were also the big winners in last month’s provincial elections, winning 15 out of 75 seats and becoming the largest force in Parliament’s high chamber.

The election was a major blow for Mr Rutte’s People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, and was seen as a referendum on the Prime Minister’s rule.

Mr Rutte has said he soon wants to open a government buy-out scheme to compensate farmers who opt to leave the industry.

The government created a £22 billion programme to buy out farming businesses at 100 per cent of their value, but it remains to be seen whether many farmers will opt in to the scheme.

Richard Branson's Virgin Orbit Collapses

The British billionaire's rocket company is ceasing its operations. Its stock has fallen by more than 89% this year.

LUC OLINGA
APR 1, 2023 10:03 AM EDT

It is a blow that will resonate throughout the British aerospace industry for a long time.

Great Britain had bet on Virgin Orbit, the company of billionaire Sir Richard Branson, to become a space power. But these ambitions, which manifested themselves in the development of a satellite manufacturing industry, have just taken a huge blow.

The company is ceasing operations "for the foreseeable future” after failing to secure a funding lifeline, only five years after it was created, CEO Dan Hart told employees on March 30, according to CNBC.

"Unfortunately, we’ve not been able to secure the funding to provide a clear path for this company,” Hart said, according to an audio recording of the meeting.
'No Choice'

"We have no choice but to implement immediate, dramatic and extremely painful changes,” Hart said, adding that this would be "probably the hardest all-hands that we’ve ever done in my life.”

Virgin Orbit (VORB) didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

The company confirmed in a regulatory filing that it is laying off 85% of its workforce, or 675 employees, "in order to reduce expenses in light of the company's inability to secure meaningful funding."

Those impacted are located in all areas of the firm, according to the document filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Virgin Orbit said it estimates that it will incur aggregate charges of approximately $15 million, consisting primarily of $8.8 million in severance payments and employee benefits costs, and $6.5 million in other costs primarily related to outplacement services.

 

The company expects to recognize the majority of these charges in the first quarter of 2023. The layoffs will be substantially complete by April 3.

"In addition, the company may incur other charges or cash expenditures not currently contemplated due to unanticipated events that may occur, including in connection with the implementation of the workforce reduction," Virgin Orbit warned.

These developments have accelerated the fall in Virgin Orbit's stock. The stock started the year at $1.85. It is currently trading at around 20 cents. This is a decline of 89.1% in just three months. It's a spectacular stock market rout for a company that went public, via a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, with a valuation of nearly $4 billion in December 2021.

Virgin Orbit only has a stock market capitalization of $67.4 million at the time of writing.

Founded in 2017 and based in California, Virgin Orbit suffered a major setback earlier this year when an attempt to launch the first rocket into space from British soil ended in failure. Virgin Orbit was the company organizing this mission, in collaboration with the British Space Agency and Spaceport Cornwall, which aimed to launch nine satellites into space, which would have been a major first for the UK. An “anomaly” prevented the rocket from being put into orbit.

"The data is indicating that from the beginning of the second stage first burn, a fuel filter within the fuel feedline had been dislodged from its normal position," Virgin Orbit explained mid-February. "Additional data shows that the fuel pump that is downstream of the filter operated at a degraded efficiency level, resulting in the Newton 4 engine being starved for fuel. Performing in this anomalous manner resulted in the engine operating at a significantly higher than rated engine temperature."
Unique Method

Virgin Orbit was not the same in the days following this failure.

In mid-March, the company had suspended its operations while it held discussions on possible sources of financing and explored strategic opportunities. It had indicated a few days later that it had resumed its activities.

Virgin Orbit stood out from rivals like Elon Musk's SpaceX. It wants to offer a fast and adaptable space launch service for small satellites weighing between 300 and 500 kg, a growing market.

The 21-meter Virgin Orbit rocket, dubbed LauncherOne, does not take off vertically, but is attached under the wing of a modified Boeing 747 called "Cosmic Girl”. Once the correct altitude is reached, the plane releases the rocket, which starts its own engine to push itself into space and to place its cargo in orbit.

Launching a rocket from an airplane is easier than a vertical take-off, because theoretically a simple airstrip is enough, instead of an expensive space launch pad, experts say. In summary, the advantage of this launch method is that it is more flexible and less expensive to put satellites into orbit than vertical rocket launchers.

Sir Richard Branson's space ambitions are now supported only by Virgin Galactic, which aims to send tourists into space.

Long Beach's Virgin Orbit lays off 675 people, 85% of its workforce

Samantha Masunaga
Fri, March 31, 2023 at 2:39 PM MDT

A repurposed Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747 aircraft named Cosmic Girl, carrying Virgin Orbit's LauncherOne rocket, takes off from Spaceport Cornwall at Cornwall Airport Newquay in England. (Ben Birchall / Associated Press)

Richard Branson's Virgin Orbit is laying off about 675 employees, or 85% of its workforce, as the air-launched rocket company failed to find funding to sustain its operations.

Most of the affected employees were based in Long Beach and Mojave.

The Long Beach company plans to spend $8.8 million in severance payments and employee benefit costs and an additional $6.5 million on outplacement services and other related costs, according to a company filing Thursday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

To fund the severance and outplacement costs, Virgin Orbit sold a $10.9-million senior secured convertible note to Virgin Investments, the investment arm of Branson's Virgin Group, according to the filing.

The layoffs will be "substantially" complete by Monday. The remaining employees will focus on making progress on the company's next LauncherOne rocket, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to comment. That rocket is in production and nearly complete.

Virgin Orbit did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The layoffs come two weeks after the company said it would pause operations and put most of its staff on furlough while it looked for additional cash.

Virgin Orbit faced a tough market for fundraising, with higher interest rates and greater reluctance from investors to fund technology that wasn't a sure-fire bet. Other small-satellite launch companies have also faced financial struggles this year, including Alameda-based Astra, which received a delisting warning from the NASDAQ late last year for having a share price below $1 for 30 consecutive days.

Virgin Orbit Holdings' stock traded for a little over $7 a share last year at this time. On Friday, the stock closed at 20 cents.

Virgin Orbit had hoped for a lifeline from private investor Matthew Brown, but talks between the two broke down late last week, according to CNBC.

The company launches small satellites via a rocket that blasts off from beneath the wing of a modified Boeing 747 aircraft. Virgin Orbit had four successful launches before a failure earlier this year that resulted in the loss of its customers' satellites.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Virgin Orbit officially shutters its space launch operations

In the end, only four of its six attempts ended with satellites in orbit.

Henry Nicholls / reuters

Andrew Tarantola
·Senior Editor
Thu, March 30, 2023 

Virgin Orbit’s days of slinging satellites into space aboard aircraft-launched rockets have come to an end Thursday. After six years in business, Virgin’s satellite launch subsidiary has announced via SEC filing that it does not have the funding to continue operations and will be shuttering for “the foreseeable future,” per CNBC. Nearly 90 percent of Virgin Orbit’s employees — 675 people in total — will be laid off immediately.

Virgin Orbit was founded in 2017 for the purpose of developing and commercializing LauncherOne, a satellite launch system fitted under a modified 747 airliner, dubbed Cosmic Girl. The system was designed to put 500 pounds of cubesats into Low Earth Orbit by firing them in a rocket from said airliner flying at an altitude of 30,000 - 50,000 feet. Despite a string of early successes — both in terms of development milestones and expanding service contracts with the UK military, LauncherOne’s first official test in May of 2020 failed to deliver its simulated payload into orbit.

A second attempt the following January in 2022 however was a success with the launch of 10 NASA cube sats into LEO, as was Virgin Orbit’s first commercial satellite launch that June. It successfully sent seven more satellites into orbit in January 2022 and quietly launched Space Force assets that July.

In all, Virgin Orbit made six total flights between 2020 and 2023, only four successfully. The most recent attempt was dubbed the Start Me Up event and was supposed to mark the first commercial space launch from UK soil. Despite the rocket successfully separating from its parent aircraft, an upper stage “anomaly” prevented the rocket’s payload from entering orbit. It was later determined that a $100 fuel filter had failed and resulted in the fault.

As TechCrunch points out, Virgin Group founder, Sir Richard Branson, “threw upwards of $55 million to the sinking space company,” in recent months but Start Me Up’s embarrassing failure turned out to be the final straw. On March 16th, Virgin Orbit announced an “operational pause” and worker furlough for its roughly 750 employees as company leadership scrambled to find new funding sources. The company extended the furlough two weeks later and called it quits on Thursday.

“Unfortunately, we’ve not been able to secure the funding to provide a clear path for this company,” Virgin CEO Dan Hart said in an all-hands call obtained by CNBC. “We have no choice but to implement immediate, dramatic and extremely painful changes.”

Impacted employees will reportedly receive severance packages, according to Hart, including a cash payment, continued benefits and a “direct pipeline” to Virgin Galactic’s hiring department. Virgin Orbit’s two top executives will also receive “golden parachute” severances which were approved by the company’s board, conveniently, back in mid-March right when the furloughs first took effect.

Dominion Will See Fox News In Court After Judge Rules the Election Lies Were ‘Crystal Clear’

Kyle Barr
Fri, March 31, 2023 

Members of Rise and Resist participate in their weekly "Truth Tuesday" protest at News Corp headquarters on February 21, 2023 in New York City. Text messages and emails between various Fox News hosts and network executives obtained during a defamation lawsuit brought by voting machine company Dominion against Fox NewsMore

Frequent protesters stood in front of the Fox News building in New York City last month with signs citing court documents stemming from the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit.

Fox News will be forced to defend its promotion of the “Big Lie” in court, as a Delaware judge ruled that a jury would need to decide whether there was “actual malice” in how the network let election disinformation loose upon its millions of viewers.


On Friday, Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis ruled that Dominion Voting Systems has not yet proved Fox acted with libelous intent by promoting the election was stolen from former President Donald Trump. At the same time, the judge ruled against Fox News and Fox Corporation’s attempts to quash the lawsuit. He further gave Dominion the benefit that Fox’s statements, by themselves, could constitute defamation.

Dominion kicked up the hornet’s nest when it brought its $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News back in 2021. The company has said it’s seeking recompense for lost profits due to the lies spread about the company. Dominion has filed similar lawsuits against ultra-conservative networks like Newsmax and OAN.

Davis wrote that Dominion has met the burden of proof to show that all of Fox’s promoted statements about the voting machine company were all lies. The judge added the evidence is “CRYSTAL clear [emphasis his] that none of the Statements relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true.” A trial is set to start sometime in April.

The court held two hearings earlier this week to discuss the matter. In its summary judgment request, Fox News has tried to argue that its promotion of the big lie was just common journalist practice by discussing the election allegations coming from Trump. The network further claimed its reporting was protected under the First Amendment, and that there’s precedent protecting news sites from allegations later proven false.

On the flip side, Dominion argued Fox was actively promoting the big lie by publishing and promoting top election deniers.

Defamation suits like this hang on the thin thread of proving that one side had “actual malice” in its speech, meaning it acted knowing the information was false or acting with reckless disregard to a statement’s truth. It’s an incredibly hard burden of proof for plaintiffs in defamation cases, though at least Dominion has a lot of ammunition to fire at Fox, mostly from hosts’ and guests’ own lips.

The document retreads much of what came out in texts and emails from Fox executives and hosts. The main faces at Fox News regularly complained about Trump and the election conspiracy, calling it “shockingly reckless” and complaining about election conspiracists like Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani. In records from Fox Corporation Chair Rupert Murdoch’s deposition, the venerable scion of conservative media around the globe said he could have stopped Fox News from bringing on the election conspiracists, but chose not to.

Gizmodo

Delaware jury to decide if Fox is liable for defaming Dominion

Tom Hals, Jonathan Stempel and Helen Coster
Fri, March 31, 2023 

Workers clean up the burnt remains of a Christmas tree outside the News Corp. and Fox News building in New York

By Tom Hals, Jonathan Stempel and Helen Coster

WILMINGTON, Delaware (Reuters) - A jury will decide whether Fox Corp defamed Dominion Voting Systems with false vote-rigging claims aired by Fox News after the 2020 U.S. election, a Delaware judge ruled on Friday, dealing a setback to the media company that had sought to avoid a trial in the $1.6 billion lawsuit.

Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis denied motions from Fox and partially granted Dominion motions to resolve the issue of defamation liability ahead of the scheduled April 17 trial date. The ruling puts the high-profile case in the hands of a jury that will determine whether Fox acted with actual malice and whether Dominion suffered any damages.

The trial, to be held in Wilmington, is expected to last roughly four weeks. It is possible the parties could still settle the case. Davis heard arguments from both sides during a two-day pretrial hearing on March 21 and 22.

“This case is and always has been about the First Amendment protections of the media’s absolute right to cover the news," Fox said in a statement. "Fox will continue to fiercely advocate for the rights of free speech and a free press as we move into the next phase of these proceedings.”

Dominion said it was gratified by the ruling and looked forward to the trial.

This is one of the most closely watched U.S. defamation lawsuits in years and involves one of America's largest cable networks, home to many prominent conservative commentators.

Denver-based Dominion sued New York-based Fox Corp and Fox News in 2021, accusing them of ruining its reputation by airing false claims by former President Donald Trump and his lawyers that its voting machines were used to rig the outcome of the election against him and in favor of Democrat Joe Biden.

Dominion has said in court filings that internal emails, texts and deposition testimony demonstrate that Fox personnel at every level - from producers to hosts, all the way up to Chairman Rupert Murdoch - knew the election-rigging claims were false and aired them anyway in pursuit of ratings as they lost viewers to far-right outlets that embraced Trump's claims.

Dominion argued this met the "actual malice" standard to win a defamation case under which a plaintiff must prove a defendant knowingly spread false information or acted with reckless disregard for the truth.

Davis, however, said actual malice will be determined by the jury.

The judge ruled in Dominion's favor on some elements of defamation including that the allegedly defamatory statements by Fox concerned Dominion, that the statements had been published by Fox and were false.

"The evidence developed in this civil proceeding demonstrates that (it) is CRYSTAL clear that none of the statements relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true," wrote Davis, using all capital letters for emphasis.

Fox has argued that its coverage of the election claims was protected by press freedoms enshrined in the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment because it was newsworthy and properly framed as opinion or unproven allegations. Fox also has argued that Dominion's suit advances an overly broad interpretation of U.S. defamation law and is a threat to freedom of the press.

Lawyers for Fox also have invoked the legal doctrine of "neutral reportage," which holds that the press cannot be held liable for publishing newsworthy allegations in a neutral way.

Davis, however, said in his ruling the doctrine would not shield Fox from liability, because the network did not conduct disinterested reporting.

Fox faces a similar lawsuit by voting-technology company Smartmatic, which is seeking $2.7 billion in damages from Fox Corp, the cable network, Fox hosts and guests.

(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delawared; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Bill Berkrot)

Fox lawsuit highlights effects of conspiracies on Dominion





 A woman points at Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer during the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors general election canvass meeting, Nov. 28, 2022, in Phoenix. Dominion Voting Systems has been ensnared in a web of conspiracy theories that have undermined public confidence in U.S. elections among conservative voters. (AP Photo/Matt York, File)

ASSOCIATED PRESS
CHRISTINA A. CASSIDY and JONATHAN J. COOPER
Thu, March 30, 2023

PHOENIX (AP) — In Arizona’s most populous county, elected officials are bracing for what could happen when it comes time to replace its $2 million-a-year contract for voting equipment.

Officials in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, say they have no concerns about their current vendor, Dominion Voting Systems. The problem is that the company has been ensnared in a web of conspiracy theories since the 2020 presidential race that have undermined public confidence in U.S. elections among conservative voters, led to calls to ban voting machines in some places and triggered death threats against election officials across the country.

“I have concerns over my own personal security if we re-enlist Dominion,” Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican elected in 2020, said in a court filing. “It went from a company that nobody had heard about to a company that is maybe one of the most demonized brands in the United States or the world.”

That sudden turnabout in fortunes for the Colorado-based voting machine company is at the heart of a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit it has filed against Fox News, with the trial scheduled to begin in mid-April. Dominion claims Fox defamed it by repeatedly airing false claims about the company’s voting machines and software. Court records and testimony revealed that several Fox hosts and executives didn’t believe the claims pushed by former President Donald Trump and his allies since the 2020 election but continued to air them, in part because they were worried about losing viewers.

Fox has argued the network was reporting on allegations that were newsworthy as Trump and his Republican allies contested his loss to Democrat Joe Biden. The network has said Dominion has been overstating its value, could not have suffered damages in the amounts it is claiming and has played down security concerns about its machines. Fox lawyers also argue that documents produced in the case show Dominion is in a solid financial position.

“The case has no merit, and the outrageous damage claim only highlights its naked attempt to suppress legitimate speech protected by our Constitution," Fox said in a statement.

Dominion has been presenting evidence that it says shows lost contracts and business opportunities over the past two years. It cites misinformation as the reason officials in some counties in Nevada, Pennsylvania and Tennessee have terminated their contracts with it while counties in Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Jersey and Ohio have opted against renewing.

One expert, in a report submitted by Dominion in November as part of its lawsuit, estimated the company had experienced nearly $16 million in lost profits from customers that either terminated their contracts early or decided not to renew.

The same estimate projected Dominion has already suffered $72.3 million in lost opportunities, which includes potential contract extensions, additional equipment sales and service contracts with existing customers, and new business.

Overall, the expert estimated the company had experienced a $920 million decline in value, which includes the estimated taxes the company would have to pay if it were awarded damages. The expert also estimated additional future lost opportunities that have yet to be detailed publicly.

“The evidence will show that Dominion was a valuable, rapidly growing business that was executing on its plan to expand prior to the time that Fox began spreading and endorsing baseless lies about Dominion voting machines,” Stephanie Walstrom, a Dominion spokeswoman, said in a statement.

The company's challenges haven’t ended, as conspiracies about the last presidential election have permeated much of the Republican Party. Trump allies continue to travel the country meeting with community groups and holding forums to promote election conspiracies.

The conspiracies have been cited by some county officials, who say they are responding to constituent concerns, as justification for refusing to certify election results and have fed attempts to decertify or ban voting equipment.

“People aren’t acting rationally,” said Lawrence Norden, an election security expert with the Brennan Center for Justice, which has advocated for more voter access and money for election offices. “They are canceling contracts at great expense to their taxpayers.”

Not included in the Dominion expert’s report are more recent actions, including in Shasta County, California, where the board of supervisors terminated its contract with Dominion early. At a meeting in January, the board cited a loss in public confidence in the machines, which are used in the county to tabulate paper ballots marked by hand.

In 2020, Trump won Shasta County with 65% of the vote.

“Dominion has to prove to me that we have a free and fair election,” said Board of Supervisors Chair Patrick Henry Jones, who led the effort to end the contract. “Just because we’re all sitting up here and elected doesn’t mean we had free and fair elections every single time.”

The board is now pursuing a plan to count ballots by hand, a process experts consider to be less accurate and more time-consuming in all but the smallest of jurisdictions. Trump ally Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO, has promised to support their efforts to get rid of their voting machines.

In an interview, Lindell said he was prepared to help cover the costs of any lawsuits Shasta County might face.

“They are within their rights of going to paper ballots and a hand count,” Lindell said. “They have to be courageous, or we are not going to get rid of these machines.”

Cathy Darling Allen, the elected Shasta County clerk and registrar of voters, has defended the voting equipment and blamed “disproven conspiracy theories” for undermining the county’s election system and staff. She has warned the county was in danger of not being able to conduct elections.

“Their actions have placed the security of our elections at risk and created a dangerous precedent encouraging outsiders to undermine our elections at the county level,” Darling Allen wrote in testimony to Congress this month.

She estimated that hand-counting all ballots in a presidential election with 50 contests on the ballot would cost at least $1.6 million and require hiring nearly 1,300 temporary employees. The county has more than 111,000 registered voters.

Election security experts were concerned that the market for voting machines already was limited before the 2020 election, dominated by three companies. One Dominion competitor, Election Systems & Software, has not reported contract cancellations but has also been forced to defend its reputation amid the voting machine conspiracies.

In a recent hearing, Erin Murphy, an attorney for Fox, told the Delaware Superior Court judge presiding over the defamation case that Dominion has “a real speculation problem” regarding its claims for damages and said Dominion’s lost-profits argument appears to be based on the presumption that it would have won every contract it sought had it not been for Fox’s coverage of the election fraud allegations.

That ignores the fact that Dominion’s rivals have sometimes offered lower bids or more attractive technology, Murphy said. Fox has highlighted internal communications, including a chat in which one Dominion employee said, “God our products suck,” as well as a federal advisory outlining potential vulnerabilities reported in a Dominion system.

Arizona's Maricopa County has been at the forefront of the conspiracy theories about Dominion. The GOP-controlled Legislature in 2021 used its subpoena power to seize the county’s voting equipment and hired a firm run by Trump supporters to comb through it in search of evidence the machines were compromised. The firm found none, and Doug Logan, who oversaw the project, conceded in a private text message that surfaced in an unrelated lawsuit that “the Dominion machine is actually quite precise." Nevertheless, distrust remains rampant.

Dominion’s executive vice president of sales, Waldeep Singh, said in a court filing that the situation in Arizona has made it impossible to do business there. He blamed conspiracy theories for scuttling the company’s chances of winning business in Yavapai County, a conservative rural county north of Phoenix.

“All I can tell you is, based on my experience and our trajectory at the time in Arizona, we were trending in a very positive direction,” Singh said.

Now, he said, “I don’t think we’ll win anything in Arizona again.”

___

Cassidy reported from Atlanta. Associated Press writers Randall Chase in Wilmington, Delaware; David Bauder and Jennifer Peltz in New York; and Nicholas Riccardi in Denver contributed to this report.

Norfolk Southern’s Push for Profits Compromised Safety, Workers Say

Peter Eavis, Mark Walker and Niraj Chokshi
Sun, April 2, 2023

Alan Shaw, president and CEO, Norfolk Southern Corporation, center, testifies during a Senate Commerce Committee hearing in Washington, March 22, 2023. (Pete Marovich/The New York Times)

Norfolk Southern once had so few accidents and injuries that it won the rail industry’s prestigious E.H. Harriman safety award for 23 years in a row until it was retired in 2012. But in the past decade, the company has gone from an industry leader to a laggard.

The rate at which its trains are involved in accidents and its workers are injured on the job has soared, putting it at or near the bottom on those safety measures among the country’s four largest freight railroads. Employees, former workers and some rail experts blame decisions by executives to cut thousands of jobs and put pressure on employees to speed up deliveries in a drive to bolster profits.

Lance Johnston is among the critics. Johnston was a Norfolk Southern engineer, or train driver, in the St. Louis area for more than 25 years until he was fired after a dispute in 2021 with his manager about problems with a train’s brakes.

That July, he said, he started a shift at the A.O. Smith rail yard in Granite City, Illinois, just across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, and found that his locomotive had defective brakes. After notifying a supervisor of the problem, Johnston said, he was told to use the locomotive, even though the defect was in violation of Norfolk Southern regulations and could, he said, make it hard to control the train and even lead to a derailment.

“When the equipment’s defective, the equipment’s defective,” he said in an interview last week. “You stop what you’re doing, and you fix it.”

Norfolk Southern’s operations have been under federal scrutiny since one of its trains carrying hazardous substances derailed in February in East Palestine, Ohio. Johnston said he believed that the operations had really begun deteriorating about four years ago, around the time the company said it would adopt efficiency measures known in the industry as precision scheduled railroading. He said the cutbacks meant there were not enough people to repair and maintain trains.

Since 2012, the size of Norfolk Southern’s workforce has dropped 39%, a bigger decline than at any of the other three large U.S. freight rail companies — BNSF, CSX and Union Pacific. Meanwhile, Norfolk Southern’s accident rate, which measures the number of accidents against the miles a company’s trains have traveled, soared 80%, the largest increase by far among the four railroads, though Union Pacific’s rate has been consistently higher. Rail accidents include derailments, collisions and fires.

Norfolk Southern’s injury rate for employees on duty has also risen, and over the past 10 years it has been, on average, significantly worse than those recorded by the other three large U.S. railroads. The injury rate did improve last year, and is better than the rates at other railroads, including Canadian companies that operate trains in the United States.

“It’s my goal to work with our new operations leadership team, union leadership and our front-line employees to further strengthen Norfolk Southern’s safety culture and make it the best in the industry,” CEO Alan H. Shaw said in a statement.

He added that Norfolk Southern’s derailments last year were its fewest in 20 years and that its injury rate was the lowest in 10 years. A representative for the railroad said its accident rate had gone up in part because its trains now traveled fewer miles.

Johnston said the safety concern he had raised was particularly important because the trains he had typically worked on traveled through residential areas in the St. Louis area. (The train that derailed in East Palestine started at a neighboring rail yard in Illinois.)

Johnston was fired soon after the dispute and has filed a whistleblower complaint with the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration claiming that he was fired for raising a safety issue.

Norfolk Southern declined to comment on Johnston’s OSHA case and his account of being fired. In a letter to OSHA, a lawyer representing the company said it had fired Johnston for “unbecoming” conduct based on an “insubordinate, threatening and profane outburst toward his supervisor.”

Since 2018, Norfolk Southern workers and former employees have filed 267 whistleblower complaints with OSHA, the most of any of the large freight railroads. The agency, which enforces whistleblower protection laws, including those in the rail industry, opened an investigation into 239 of the complaints.

In the same period, CSX had 204 complaints, followed by 198 from workers at Union Pacific and 138 at BNSF.

Norfolk Southern’s safety practices and culture are the subject of a special investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board. In opening the review, the board cited the East Palestine derailment and other recent incidents in which three workers were killed. The board is aiming to determine if “there’s something more systemic going on” at the company that caused those and other accidents, said Jennifer Homendy, the board’s chair.

The Federal Railroad Administration, the top rail regulator, is also investigating the company. Congress has held hearings, and lawmakers have introduced bipartisan bills that would impose tougher safety standards on all railroads, especially those that carry hazardous substances. And the Justice Department said Friday that it had sued the railroad, asking it to pay cleanup costs and additional penalties for the East Palestine derailment.

Rail experts said Norfolk Southern’s turn toward demanding more of fewer workers and pushing them to work faster was part of an industry trend. Under pressure from hedge funds and other investors, the largest freight railroads have aggressively sought to run their operations more efficiently over the past decade.

Precision scheduled railroading generally involves sticking to a strict operating schedule; cutting staff and assets like train cars, locomotives and rail yards; and running fewer but longer trains. Canadian National pioneered it in the late 1990s under its CEO, E. Hunter Harrison, who later took his hyper-efficient approach to Canadian Pacific and CSX.

In 2018 and 2019, Kansas City Southern, Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern announced plans to incorporate at least some of the principles advanced by Harrison, who died in 2017.

Those changes have been a boon to railroad investors and executives. Norfolk Southern’s profits have soared, and over the past five years it has paid shareholders nearly $18 billion through stock buybacks and dividends. On Friday, Norfolk Southern said Shaw’s pay more than doubled last year to $9.8 million. In his statement, he said his pay and that of other executives would now be based partly on safety metrics.

But the industry’s efficiency drive has so angered railroad workers that they nearly walked off the job last fall, threatening to imperil the U.S. economy. That strike was averted after Congress and President Joe Biden imposed a contract that many workers found sorely lacking because it did not guarantee them paid time off for illness or medical appointments.

“It’s profit over everything, not just safety,” Mark Wallace, a top official with the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, said in reference to the entire rail industry. “It’s profit over customer service. It’s profit over employee satisfaction.”

Bill Tucker, a lawyer in Birmingham, Alabama, has been representing freight workers in cases against employers for 45 years. Norfolk Southern is the worst offender among the large railroads, he said.

One suit that Tucker filed in federal court in 2021 on behalf of two Norfolk Southern workers, Shane Fowler and Kelvin Taylor, asserts that a manager threatened to discipline the men after they reported safety issues that violated the Federal Railroad Administration’s defect and safety rules.

In the lawsuit, the two men said their manager had demanded that they remove the “bad order” tags, which are used to flag defective cars, from two cars. The complaint states that Fowler and Taylor reported their manager to the Norfolk Southern Ethics and Compliance hotline for safety violations. Soon after, the workers were themselves charged with safety violations, which they said they hadn’t committed.

Fowler and Taylor, who still work at the company, said through Tucker that they had no comment. “Morale on the railroads in general, and at Norfolk Southern in particular, is abysmal,” the lawyer said. “It’s just awful.”

Laws that govern the railways push employees with grievances to use internal company hearings, limiting their ability to take disputes to court. As a result, critics of the industry say, railroad companies find it easier than other businesses to dismiss employees and their complaints.

Some workers said that despite such problems they liked rail work. Johnston, the fired train engineer, wants to reclaim his job.

On the day of the dispute in 2021, he operated the locomotive with defective brakes until a federal regulator, doing inspections in the yard, noticed the problem and said the engine had to be taken out of service until repairs were done.

Later that day, having been told that the brakes were fixed, Johnston discovered that one was still defective, he said. He got into an argument with his supervisor and used his cellphone to take a photograph of the defect, which can be a violation of Norfolk Southern rules.

“I expected to be punished,” Johnston said, “but I didn’t expect to be terminated.”

c.2023 The New York Times Company