Why the Left Must Oppose Nuclear Power

BY BOB BUZZANCO - SCOTT PARKIN

COUNTERPUNCH

 JUNE 16, 2023Facebook\Twitter

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LONG READ

Scott Parkin: Welcome to the Silky Smooth Sounds of the Green and Red podcast. I’m your co-host Scott Parkin in San Francisco, California today, and I’m joined by…

Bob Buzzanco: Bob Buzzanco in Niles, Ohio.

Scott: There’s been a, a bit of a conversation going on in the mainstream and left media that we’re talking about today, which is around nuclear energy, nuclear power, nuclear weapons.

The Green and Red Podcast is very decidedly anti-nuke, or no nukes, and we’re more than a little bothered about the of pro-nukes position that we’re hearing from other people who call themselves “leftists” and “socialists” and the like. So joining us today to talk about all of this and his book Atomic Days is Joshua Frank.

Welcome back to Green and Red, Josh.

Joshua Frank: Thanks for having me. Good to be here.

Scott: Josh is the managing editor of CounterPunch and he is the author of Atomic Days, the Untold Story of The Most Toxic Place in America. And maybe we could talk a little bit about that. The book talks a lot about the nuclear weapons production facility in Eastern Washington, in Hanford, Washington.

And, you know, just to kind of play off the title, Josh, why is it an untold story?

Joshua: Well, you know, the book has a lot of information in there that I don’t think is publicly available or wasn’t until we published the book. But more, it’s really just a kind of the peoples’ story of Hanford and of the weapons production site.

Maybe some of your listeners don’t know about Hanford was one of the three locations chosen during the Manhattan project and their job was to produce plutonium. The first commercial plutonium reactor was built in Hanford, the B reactor. The site produced plutonium for the first bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki.

And over the course of about four decades, it produced the majority of the plutonium that ended up in the atomic arsenal of the United States. But in, and that was mostly during the Cold War, at the end of the Cold War. It became a cleanup site almost overnight in the late 80s.

So a little bit about Hanford. Hanford’s in eastern Washington. It’s located along the Columbia River. It was chosen as a location because it was remote, it was sort of “out of sight, out of mind.” The Indigenous communities that were there and also some of the poor farm communities were easily removed. And it’s a very expansive area. It’s almost 600 square miles and it’s beautiful terrain, but it’s terrain that will never, in our lifetimes, unfortunately, be publicly accessible because it’s so toxic.

So when it was producing plutonium over the course of its lifetime, it also produced a ton of waste chemical waste, and obviously high-level radioactive waste. That much of that waste, the high-level radioactive waste in particular, is still out there. It’s sitting in these huge hulking underground tanks, 177 of them.

149 of those tanks are single-shelled tanks, and they still hold 56 million gallons of radioactive sludge. The problem, of course, is what to do with this stuff as we’ll talk about nuclear energy. It’s kind of the same problem with plutonium and other byproducts of the process of fission. But in the case of Hanford, we’re dealing with the aftermath of the U.S. war machine.

I like to say that the Cold War in many ways, it’s still bubbling out there. And these tanks, just to kind of talk about how perilous it is, the tanks really were only supposed to last a couple of decades. I mean, we’re going on a long time now. A lot of them were built in the 50s and 60s.

They’re only supposed to last until the early 80s at most. And, which I talk about a lot in the book. I mean, even early on, engineers were talking about that this is really a temporary solution for this problem that they did not have a long-term answer for. And of course, they don’t have a long-term answer to store nuclear waste anywhere.

But especially then, but of course, the quest to prop up the U.S. war machine and an atomic arsenal took precedence and was far more important than worrying about the aftermath. And so that waste out there is really in a bad situation. Two of the tanks right now are leaking into the groundwater supplies underneath them.

These tanks are six, seven miles from the Columbia River, so that groundwater will eventually reach the Columbia River, in many cases it already has. There were documented at least 67 leaks over the course, of Hanford’s lifetime. And then we had intentional releases of radiation.

We’ve had other accidents. I mean, it’s a horrible, horrible situation. And it is now the costliest environmental cleanup in world history. The price tag is at $677 billion right now. To put that in perspective, it was $450 billion, just a couple of years ago. So my guess is by the end of the decade it’ll be over a trillion dollars.

And not really any major work has been done. None of that high-level radioactive waste has been vitrified, which is what they’re planning on doing. And vitrification is really just like taking the stuff out of these tanks and turning it into glass so that it can be stored safely, or you know, as safely as it can be.

So it’s a really, really bad situation. And those two tanks that are leaking right now, the Department of Energy, which oversees the project, doesn’t have an answer for because there isn’t really good answers for this stuff, which is a huge problem. So the book really gets into all of this. It gets into the whistleblowers that are calling out the contractors and calling out the Department of Energy and also talking about the worst-case scenarios.

The leaking tanks are obviously a huge immediate problem. These tanks are producing hydrogen and they have to be continually off-gassed. Because if there’s a hydrogen buildup in one of these tanks and somehow there’s a spark that ignites it, or electricity goes down or something malfunctions, there’s a number of scenarios or could be an attack of some sort.

Several scenarios could lead to literally an atomic explosion. I mean, you have a hydrogen buildup in one of these tanks that explodes, and that radioactive material could spread far and wide. And not a lot of people know about this place. Even though we’re paying for it, a lot of people in the Northwest don’t really know what’s going on there.

So my hope is that that story that hasn’t really been told makes its way out with this book.

Scott: The efforts to clean it up are mostly actually being outsourced, correct? Right. Like there’s, there’s a lot of like Bechtel and, and others. I’m going to assume that’s part of the exorbitant cost.

Joshua: Yeah, absolutely. Bechtel really came up with this idea that’s now really central to all of the defense contracts and Department of Energy contracts called “cost-plus contracts.” And essentially, that is an open checkbook that the government has or that they have with the government.

You can kind of think about it if you’re remodeling your kitchen and the contractor gives you an estimate for $15,000, but it ends up being $25,000, well multiply that by billions and that’s essentially what has happened out at Hanford. The original estimates were reasonable compared to what they are now, and they really are getting paid to not get the job done in many cases.

And, and one whistleblower, Walter Tamosaitis, ended up being fired and sued and won [his lawsuit], and I wrote about his case about 10 years ago for Seattle Weekly. And he’s the central whistleblower calling Bechtel out and also the Department of Energy out for being complicit in this. And even more so on the technical side, the contractors kind of run the show out there.

The Department of Energy is just really understaffed. They don’t have the technical expertise to oversee every aspect of the cleanup. Because the Department of Energy’s underfunded, the money is being shelled out to the contractors but not to the Department of Energy. And the Department of Energy, much like the EPA and other agencies, especially under the Trump administration, were defunded.

It’s just making matters even worse.

Scott: And they put Rick Perry in charge of it. Which says a whole lot.

Joshua: Yeah, yeah, exactly. One scientist that I interviewed who goes on record is Donald Alexander who also I would consider a major whistleblower, at least from the Department of Energy side of things, talks about this.

He talks about how his staff, he’s now retired, but his staff really just didn’t have enough people to oversee all these aspects of the project. So, a lot of times, problems that arise could have been solved sooner, but they just didn’t have the mechanisms in place to catch it.

And it’s a problem that permeates the cleanup out there. And I think it’s important also to … I get this question a lot what does a “cleanup” look like? I mean, there are, aside from all that radioactive waste in those tanks, there are hundreds of billions of gallons of chemical waste that was literally dumped into the soil out there, during its process when it was making plutonium.

So, how do we remediate that? What does that look like? And I don’t think it’ll ever be cleaned up in the sense that it’s ever going to be what it once was, unfortunately. But cleanup to me means getting this to a place where we aren’t on the verge of a major radioactive accident. And right now, we are on the brink of that.

And every day that goes by it, it becomes greater.

Scott: Just thinking about the Columbia River, Portland is downstream from the Columbia River. This stuff leaks into the Columbia River then it’s a major metropolitan area that’s facing radioactive poisoning.

Joshua:. Yeah. And, and aside from that, I mean the, Columbia River there’s commercial fisheries.

The Columbia feeds tens of thousands of Northwest farmers. A major accident out there, aside from the slow leaking process that would build up over time … if we did have a major accident out there, the economy of the Northwest would just crumble.

And if this stuff were to go airborne, all bets are off. I think it could spread to the East Coast. Of course, just like when we have big fires in Northwest, there was smoke that covered Washington D.C. The radioactive particles would spread far and wide.

I think cities like Boise, Idaho, that are closer might become unlivable. The radioactive fallout could be so great. People don’t want to live there. I mean, it could be really devastating. And, of course, if there was an economic collapse in the Northwest, that would trigger a global economic crisis.

Not, and that’s just the economic side, right? I mean the environmental side and the toll on the environment and humans would be even greater. So yeah, it’s a scary situation.

Bob: I think, well, for a while now, especially since Three Mile Island, I think just the general public has been really concerned about nuclear power as well as nuclear weapons.

A big resistance to it, like “No Nukes,” but now it’s making a comeback. Even on the left or maybe especially on the left. And I just wonder why you think these folks like Jacobin and certain podcasts have gone all in. They’re portraying it as this kind of pro worker, anti-fossil fuel thing. But you know, I was raised in an era where no nukes was kind of a core value.

Joshua: Before I really get in, get into my sort of anger towards some of their positions, I do think that a lot of the younger generation on the left that haven’t been around long and don’t know a lot about the anti-nuke movement, they don’t understand the success of the anti-nuke movement of essentially putting the brakes on the proposals for hundreds of plants.

They don’t really understand Chernobyl, don’t understand Fukushima but are really, really frightened about climate change, rightfully so. And so, when the boosters of atomic energy come along and say, “oh, here’s an easy fix. This is a technology we’ve had forever,” and you believe the propaganda, right?

Which is that it, it’s safe, it’s reliable, it doesn’t produce CO2 emissions. All of these things are very attractive, I think, to some people that don’t hear the other side of it and the reality of atomic energy. I’d like to give some of them, at least, the benefit of the doubt that they haven’t been well informed.

But again, those people that are spewing propaganda are the ones that need to be challenged. And we all know who they are, and they are essentially mimicking the talking points that we’ve been hearing for decades. And they’re well-funded. And now using climate change as the scapegoat for pushing for “this is our future.”

I think we’re going to have to continue fighting. This propaganda that’s coming out of the pro-nuke left. And I think it’s very real. I think it’s dangerous and I think that, fortunately and unfortunately, if we see an accident at Zaporizhzhia. I mean, now in Ukraine, we’re learning that these nuke plants are tools of war and are forever going to be used as tools of war.

Putin set a very dangerous precedent there. What if there was an accident, an attack, if the backup generators fail? If several things happen, these conversations could change tomorrow. I mean, if you even believe all the rhetoric that we have an answer for the waste that uranium mining’s benign, they’re totally safe and reliable. No one, no one. Not even the biggest proponents of atomic energy are going to tell you that, these things are safe in a war zone. So, I mean there are just so many reasons to oppose this stuff.

Scott: Well, I have seen some of the propagandists actually saying that they are safe in a war zone.

Joshua: It’s momentary. They’ve said that the worst that can happen is that it can go offline. I think they are genuinely ignorant. Leigh Phillips said at one point to me that the worst that could happen at Zaporizhzhia was that the power could go offline. Yeah, I think there’s a lot more that could happen.

Scott: Back to the whistleblowers for a moment. some Indigenous activists have also been part of this sort of resistance to the lack of action on cleanup or whatever. Has there been any retaliation against some of the whistleblowers around Hanford?

Joshua: Oh yeah, yeah, big time. There’s been, you know when I was writing for Seattle Weekly and covering Hanford, there was a string of whistleblowers that each really faced different types of persecution.

Some of them in, in the case of Walter Tamosaitis, they silenced him by removing him from his post and then literally putting him in a basement office. And then he became an in-house consultant he would travel around the different sites. He worked for a contractor under Bechtel, a subcontract for Bechtel, and just ruined his life and ruined his career.

And he was just one example. Others were similarly silenced and reprimanded for speaking out. The DOE has gone after Bechtel for some of these things. They’ve paid fines. They’ve lost lawsuits and many times, you know, they do these payouts. They never have to admit guilt.

But the culture out there is very much the same. It’s still very secretive. And there’s just so much profit at stake. So these whistleblowers are a threat to that profit margin. And sometimes, getting the job done and meeting the deadlines on time is a disincentive because they don’t reach their benchmarks and get those extra payouts.

So the way these contracts are structured lend to an environment that is harsh towards whistleblowers, and that’s just sort of at the contractor level. The bigger level is, because the site operated like a covert military site for so long. That sort of secrecy around the whole cleanup still exists, and the government is good at, at keeping people in line, and they are constantly around managers and it’s really hard to get a grasp of what’s going on out there.

And that’s on purpose. So when you have some of these guys that are old-time engineers and scientists speaking out. We must listen to them. And they’re not always, you know, they’re not always progressives, these are mostly like conservative Republicans that are worried about taxpayer dollars and some of the things that we can agree on, you know?

And they’re also very worried about the safety at Hanford as well, and the risks that it poses. So, that’s the job of journalists, right? And others too, to try to get their stories out to the world because they certainly don’t make it easy to do.

Bob: Moving into this, this current resurgence in this, these, you know, kind of pro-nuclear arguments, it seems like what a lot of these people are saying, is this cleaner, it’s safe or it’s less expensive, and, and just wondered if you want to kind of give a, a brief description of what they’re saying and then we can kind of get into the larger issue of talking about what the reality is.

Joshua: Sure. Maybe I’ll put myself in their shoes for a second. Well, I think they focus on the CO2. Right? And I think that they downplay the risks that the waste poses as well. So what they’ll say is, “Look, we can it’s going to take tens of thousands of square miles of open space to put in solar panels.”

We could put a small plant. They call them SMRs now. Small modular reactors are all over the place and power everything endlessly. Wind power, solar power, that is really great when the wind’s blowing and the sun’s shining bit. What about at night? We need to have something that’s continuous.

And so we need something that compliments other renewable energies. And, nuclear is perfect for that. It’s also really safe. The accidents that have happened are really overblown. Chernobyl really didn’t kill as many people as they say Fukushima was avoidable. Not that big of a deal.

Three Mile Island didn’t hurt anybody. So, the accidents themselves are completely overrated, and it’s a lot of fear-mongering going on. Uranium mining, “yeah, it was really dirty and bad in the past and had some problems, but we can do it in a much better fashion, and mining for minerals that go into solar panels and wind turbines and everything else is also very impactful.”

Lithium mining has horrible effects too. So, we can’t ignore uranium mining. We should look at this whole picture here.

Scott: Jobs. Jobs, lots of jobs.

Joshua: Jobs, yeah. That’s right. And it’s jobs. Jobs for our plants are good, well-paying jobs.

Right. So yeah, I think those are a lot of the things that I hear consistently. And of course, this is, it’s a carbon-neutral energy source. There’s nothing better than that, right? So that’s, that’s, that’s the rhetoric that I hear a lot. Which, of course, can be debunked pretty easily. Uranium mining is, is horrible.

And, you know, I guess first to say that those of us that oppose nuclear energy don’t also see some of the negative impacts of renewables is ridiculous, right? I mean, of course we know that lithium mining can be horrendous, and we know all of these things and we probably are, hopefully, promoting de-growth and not just switching to other sources of energy.

And we understand the underpinnings of capitalism and how that plays into all of this and, of consumption, right? So to just think that like, oh, these people just because you well,  some of them are even more disingenuous, some of them will say, oh, you oppose atomic energy. That must mean you’re, you want coal energy everywhere. That kind of thing. And they’ll even go so far as they say that the anti-nuke movement was responsible for coal being as dominant as it is, which of course, is bullshit. Coal is dominant because it’s cheap. I mean, India was, and China continued to build coal plants because it’s really, really cheap, and it’s plentiful.

That’s why it’s happening, not because of the anti-nuke movement. But aside from that, when it comes to the climate change issue, there are a number of things that I think they are blatantly misrepresenting and ignoring. One is that it’s so much more expensive to promote atomic energy than it is to go and promote renewables.

Also, the timeframe for this stuff, if you believe the latest, like IPCC reports, we’ve gotta reduce by 2030 something like, I don’t even know what is it, 50% CO2 emissions. We can’t roll out nuke plants in time to meet those goals. It just isn’t feasible. And then, aside from that, it’s not reliable.

This is not a reliable energy source. I often look at France which they sort of put up on the pedestal as the perfect atomic nation in the world that it operates perfectly and everything’s great there. Well, that’s not true at all. Last summer, during the height of the European heatwave, half the plants in France were offline.

And they were offline because of corrosion issues, but a lot of them were offline because the rivers that they draw water from to cool down the reactors were too warm in some cases, too low to cool reactors down. So you have climate change, which is evaporating the rivers and making them too warm to cool down the reactors in the first place, so it’s not reliable.

And then, of course, the risks. And what the risks, and then of course, the waste. There’s no answer for the waste. None of them have an answer for permanently storing this waste safely for millennia. I don’t think a lot of people understand the dangers of plutonium and which I’ve learned a lot about in researching Hanford.

But this stuff sticks around. It’s radioactive for 250,000 years, so really, to keep it safely stored and if we had as many new plants as they want, thousands of them all over the world, we’re going to have so much plutonium. You’re going to have this stuff’s be around way after we’re gone, right?

And how are you going to keep that safe? How are you going to, even the ideas of putting it in tombs and storing it deep underground, what’s that going to look like in a hundred thousand years, you know, let alone 250,000 years. And then, on top of that, this stuff can be used in bombs. Once plutonium goes through the fission process, or uranium goes through the fission process, produces plutonium, you’re already one step closer to being able to use that in an atomic warhead. So proliferation is a huge, huge issue. And for anybody on the left that doesn’t see the connection between atomic energy and atomic bombs is completely ignorant or completely disingenuous financially.

They’re linked. They’re linked in France, they’re linked to the US, and they always will be. And then they’re, they’re linked scientifically. I mean, you can’t have one without the other. And the governments are always going to be in charge of this stuff because of the risk of proliferation. So you can’t separate those two issues, and there’s no other energy source that, poses these kind of problems.

And I, you know, I challenge anybody that’s proponent of this that also wants to de-escalate. It’s a threat of nuclear annihilation to address these issues and I haven’t seen anybody do it very well.

Bob: What’s striking is in the last few months we’ve had all these train derailments. And you know, what’s kind of proved the government does nothing to inspect these things and doesn’t have a solution to it.

In Texas, where I spend a lot of time, people froze to death, you know, during, during a cold snap. Why is there this sense that somehow nuclear energy is going to be regulated or made safe by the same people who can’t keep a railroad on the tracks?

Joshua: Yeah, and this isn’t to say, think about that waste when they’re transporting it.

Bob: I think one, wasn’t one of the derailments going to pick up nuclear waste?

Joshua: Yeah, one of them was right. Yeah. And this actually going back to Hanford back in the 80s and some of the Indigenous struggles there. Hanford at that time, along with Yucca, was being eyed as a depository repository for waste, high-level waste.

And the Yakima Nation led by Russell Jim, who I have a chapter about in the book, fought back against this. They said basically, “Hanford is toxic enough. We don’t need to shovel more radioactive waste into Hanford.” And part of that was also they were fighting railroads and transportation routes through Yakima Nation to Hanford.

And they knew back in the 80s; you can’t just put it on the truck and haul it around and think that it’s no, no risk of an accident. It’s a huge issue and they were able, they were successful and they blocked Hanford from receiving more waste. And, over that, during that fight the public was given tens of thousands of previously secret documents and we learned a lot about what had been going on at Hanford. But anyway, fast forwarding to the transportation of waste, I mean, that’s another issue. And there’s think if we had hundreds and hundreds of these plants that were all, even if they somehow approved Yucca Mountain and you have all these railroads and all these routes going in to, to Yucca, even if we believed that the storage would be safe, which it never would be.

All that transportation poses its own risks. I mean, there are just so many problems around all of these issues around this technology that it’s like a no-brainer. I feel like for those of us that are concerned about the future of the planet, if it somehow was even carbon neutral, which of uranium mining is not carbon neutral? It’s very carbon intensive, but let’s say that it was, let’s say that everything’s carbon neutral. You still have all these other problems. And if the concern is about the future health of the planet, how can you ignore the rest of this stuff? I just find it mind-boggling.

Scott: There’s the amount of time that it would take. We have a timeline around climate urgency. 20 years, 50 years, what have you. And so, a return to nuclear energy in the U.S. You’re not going to be able to meet those timelines. But then also there’s the cost. My understanding is that Wall Street doesn’t actually have any interest in funding it.

No. The nuclear buildout, a new nuclear buildout doesn’t seem like the government wants to do it. And then I’m not quite sure if international financial institutions like the World Bank want to make loans to do that anywhere. It’s probably not in the US And so I’m kind of curious where they also think this is going to be funded from.

Joshua: Yeah. Well, I mean, they always point to the funding going into renewables and that there are subsidies for that and tax breaks. They look at Biden’s last big bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, which was $480 billion to renewables, but tucked into that is the ability to keep existing nuke plants open.

I don’t know what their answer is for that. Ultimately, I think that they don’t care about the price tag, and I think that they think that this is worth every penny that’s poured into it, and they don’t see it taking away from existing renewables. They see it as complimenting that which, of course it’s not.

It’s totally taking away from other things that we could be doing. But I think it’s also having this discussion about one versus the other, at least on the left. And from an environmental perspective. In my view, it takes away from some of the bigger, probably even more challenging conversations that we need to be having about our lifestyle and our society in general, and our consumptive nature and how we should be thinking about restructuring our cities, restructuring our transportation the way we grow food and how we travel.

You know, all of these things need to be part of the conversation and not just how do we switch from coal to nuclear or natural gas to solar. I mean, I think that there’s a bigger conversation that needs to go on, and I think it’s our duty on the left and as environmentalists to talk about this.

And I don’t think that they want to address that. I mean, a lot of these so-called leftists that are pro-nukers have no problem with it. They are pro-growth. They’re pro-consumption. They’re not that different, ultimately from the capitalist class, and I think that needs to be challenged as well.

Bob: Pro-air conditioning and all this other kind of stuff. Right. I guess that’s, that’s one thing that’s been striking because I’ve talked to MSNBC liberals who are pro. But also plenty of people I know who are like DSA folks who have jumped on the bandwagon and as you pointed out, invoke France as the template for what the US could do.

And, and you’ve just talked about safety, but aren’t there health concerns as well? I think you mentioned some of these that were cancer rates spiked and the groundwater’s, polluted, toxic.

Joshua: Oh, oh, absolutely. I mean, if you could even just follow some of the regulatory agencies and the watchdogs and the things that are happening. I mean, there’s every day, there’s another issue with some of these plants. The existing plants in the US in particular, are old. And they constantly need to be fixed. There’s constantly problems.

Even here in California, Gavin Newsom has kept Diablo Canyon open. But meanwhile, Diablo is a huge, huge risk, right? It’s on a fault line. It’s way past its lifespan. It sits right on the ocean. There are so many problems in and around that area, even down close to where I am at San Onofre, the waste that’s there, it’s just sitting there.

So you have these, you have these big old tanks that are holding this waste. In dry casks many, many times near water sources. If the electricity goes down, somehow, if there’s an earthquake, the people in and around that area are gonna be immediately impacted. And that’s the same case with the San Louis Obispo folks up around that area are going to be immediately impacted, up in Oregon the Trojan plant that was shut down about 20 years ago.

That the waste from that plant is still sitting there in these dry casks. Well, there’s a big plan to roll out these small modular reactors up and down the Columbia River downstream from Hanford. It’s just bonkers stuff. But each one of those facilities would also produce waste, which would then go over and be stored at where the waste from Trojan is stored.

And this is close to the mouth of the Columbia River. And this stuff, geologically speaking, is going to last a long time. Well, it also sits in a subjection zone. There’s going to be a huge earthquake there at some point. It could be tomorrow; it could be 10,000 years or a hundred thousand years.

But it’s going to happen eventually, and that radioactive material in those tanks is going just to be gone. If you live near a plant and there are higher rates of thyroid cancers and things like that, there’s all also this other problem with this waste and, and then, the radiation that’s in and around it and the inability to keep it safe forever.

It’s just an impossibility, and there’s no answer for it.

Scott: We’ve talked on this some already but on the extraction side. I follow left media and left podcasts and there’s lot of stuff they talk about that I agree with. When it comes to extraction around fossil fuels and Standing Rock or Line 3,they were all in, they were very supportive of that.

Yeah. And it’s just, it’s amazing to me when we, when we get into talking about new uranium extraction, All of a sudden becomes it’s jobs for Indigenous people and it’s safe. And I find that really troubling how easy it is to just flip that switch. You know? I think that, that one particular pro-nuke propagandist, Lee Phillips was actually talking about how First Nations people in Ontario, who were working in uranium mines. The tribal government supported it and voted for it and it was jobs and they were all safe and they were happy about it.

The tribal governments are often very much aligned with the actual government. They are run by corporate lobbyists. It’s just amazing to me that this sort of issue, particularly around exploitation of Indigenous folks and even just workers in general is has a blind eye turned to it.

Joshua: Yeah. And they also ignore the history of it. Yeah. The Navajo, the Dine’ here in the U.S. and the Southwest is so well-documented the impacts that uranium mining had on Indigenous laborers for decades. The high rates of lung disease, the heart attacks were greater than the population that didn’t work in the minds that smoked cigarettes.

I mean, they’re so much epidemiological evidence of how horrific these mining incidents were. And then, then of course, there’s the accidents that happen in the mines. It’s, it was a brutal, brutal enterprise and they ignore the nuclear colonialism aspect of atomic energy and atomic production in general.

And that’s troubling. And of course, if they were to have their way, all of these Indigenous lands would be completely exploited for uranium mining. And that in and of itself should be a non-starter for all of us, right? But for them, it’s like a game on and they mask it as creating jobs.

Well, does that mean that we should completely support all extractive industries because it creates jobs? No, obviously, but in their minds, I guess, you know, they’re propaganda. I think that the best way to counter that is to tell the stories and tell this history, especially among the younger, like DSA-type folks, because I don’t think a lot of these kids and the ones I’ve talked to that are in their twenties, don’t know about this stuff because it’s never been taught to them and never, never read about it.

And of course, Leigh Phillips and the rest of the Jacobin crowd aren’t going to write much about this or talk about it or interview those on the ground that are impacted by it or talk to those who’ve had a relative die of thyroid cancers, and they’re not going to like really address this stuff. So, I think it’s our job to put this information out there, and I’m glad you’re all doing it.

Because it’s unfortunately now the battles that are still being fought. I think that we thought we won a lot of these battles. But, they’re being resurrected again, all to fight climate change. And it’s really disheartening to see.

Bob: About what percentage of Americans, if you know, have access to some kind of energy plan with solar, wind power available

Joshua: To them? You mean just like on a local municipal?

Bob: Yeah, just a rough ballpark. How widespread is it? Because we hear a lot of public relations about this shift to renewables, and you see corporations with commercials, you know, all the time talking about how green they are.

And the whole green idea has been commodified.

Joshua: But yeah, how many Americans actually could do that? Choose that a lot. You know, it gets really muddy because of how we define renewables. Aside from taking all the atomic energy aspect out of it, which sometimes gets lumped in renewables and sometimes it doesn’t.

But things like dams, right? I mean, dams are, believe it or not, the number one renewable energy in the world as far as power generation goes. But as, Scott will talk about, I mean, the dams are not renewable in the sense that they usually require huge logging. They require a complete reconfiguration of rivers.

In the case of the huge Three Gorgeous dam in China that displaced millions of people they’ve had horrific flooding. They had to cut down native redwood forests. I mean, but it’s considered renewable. So I don’t know. So when we talk about renewable in that sense, I think it’s difficult.

So I guess to answer your question, it’s a difficult question to answer because of how we define renewables now as far as gets to like local subsidies and things for like solar panels in places like California, which was a long, long time leader in solar installations on rooftops, Newsom and the electric lobby here has pushed against that because ultimately, putting solar on your roof is fighting against the dominant grid.

And so when these SoCal Edison and the and PG&E lose their power essentially, they don’t control the grid. That’s a big threat to their profit margins. And they don’t want us having solar on our rooftops. And they’ve made it harder to do so in the state. It’s happened in Arizona, it’s happened elsewhere.

So there’s been a real pushback against rooftop solar in particular, which has been a horrible thing because PG&E and others would rather see investments going into huge solar plantations out in the Mojave Desert, eating up public lands and destroying habitat for tortoises and all kinds of plants, Joshua trees, and everything else.

But that doesn’t change the structure of how their profit margins are inflated because they still will control the flow of energy. They don’t want us producing energy. So, you know, getting into this conversation about decentralizing the grid is another one that even the pro-nuke folks don’t want to have.

But it’s central to the future if we’re if we’re gonna fight climate change.

Bob: Someone I know in Arizona has solar and the state imposes a fairly hefty user fee every month on them.

Joshua: Yeah, we have solar on our house. I don’t have a battery or anything, but it’s we’re sort of now going to be grandfathered in with our power during the day when we produce more than we use goes back onto the grid.

And traditionally, we would get credits for that paid for by the power company. And then at the end of the cycle, are essentially we at night when we’re pulling off the grid. We usually zero out. We’ve usually produced enough during the day to compensate for what we use at night, but that’s going to be harder to do now for new construction or people that are putting solar on their homes.

Here, they’re not going to get those, those same rates, which is a disincentive to put solar on your roof in the first place, which is the whole point of why they’re going after this. And there, they’ve mimicked the legislation, in California after the legislation in Arizona and used those same tactics to push back against rooftop solar.

So Gavin Newsom is keeping Diablo open and making it harder to put solar on, on your roof. You can see where who’s putting butter on his bread.

Scott: With Gavin, we can also talk about how he talks a big game on not approving permits for fracking and or extraction in different parts of the state and offshore, and yet, still picks a lot of money from the Western State Petroleum Association. Even though it’s liberal green, California, it’s still run by the oil and gas lobby in Sacramento in many ways.

Joshua: Oh, absolutely.

Bob: I have one final thing. This is just brief. If you’re talking to someone who would consider him or herself a socialist or a leftist and who’s just heard Lee Phillips go on this Ad campaign for nuclear power, how would you briefly tell them that they’re wrong?

What would you briefly say to them to make an argument? Part of this is for me, because I’m seeing this a lot lately, where people who I trust and respect on this issue, you know, really kind of gone over.

Joshua: Yeah, well, they probably have watched the Oliver Stone documentary or something. I would say that there’s two things going on. There’s one of the sort of the hypotheticals of atomic energy, which I think a lot of the people that support it are on that side of things about in this hypothetical camp.

And then there’s the realistic camp, which I think is the one that we all should be in, which is understanding the history of atomic energy, the risks that it poses, and also the reality that it is connected to nuclear weapons. So if you’re worried about proliferation, you have also to oppose atomic energy. I use the analogy that you can’t oppose the war on terror but support Pentagon spending. Right? It doesn’t, that’s not how it works in the real world. And that’s very much the same thing when we were talking about energy versus weapons in France, the biggest holder of the biggest nuclear arsenal in Europe, in the United States, the biggest one in the world.

Both industries are deeply connected. There’s a reason why that is, of course, because the stuff that goes into making these weapons, making these reactors and the waste that they produce, they’re all connected to the weapons industry. The same contractors are building the same reactors for plutonium-grade fuels.

What, we don’t have to produce any more plutonium in this country because we’ve made so much of it at Hanford. But that’s why it’s controlled by those same industries. So, if you’re worried about proliferation, you should also be worried about, how atomic energy feeds into that and the potential for this getting into the wrong hands, right?

They would like to see these plants all over the world. Well, who can say that what’s going to be like in a hundred years if there’s all this plutonium sitting around, and who gets their hands on it? I mean, that, to me, is a real danger. That’s the first thing I would say to someone on the left.

The second thing I would say is there’s no answer for this waste. How how can you ever support an industry that’s going to produce something that’s dangerous for 250,000 years that we don’t have an answer for? We don’t have a permanent repository for this stuff now in this country. And most of the waste that these plants produce is still sitting there on site where all these plants exist.

So you don’t have an answer for what to do with this waste. And that’s a huge problem. And the risks are, are really great. And so I think those, to me, those are the two things that I like to at least bring up as issues. And then, of course, the other one is uranium mining, because, they often come at us with, “this is a carbon neutral energy source.”

Well then how can you justify, first of all, it’s not, when you look at the whole life cycle of a nuclear plant and how much fossil fuels are burned in construction of these facilities, let alone what’s going on in with the mining operations. I mean, the, the denser the uranium ore is the more carbon is needed to extract the uranium from that ore.

It’s a very, very carbon-intensive process. And you can’t deny that, and there’s no getting around that. So, you know, I think that’s another issue that some at least might be receptive to because they’re, they’re greatly concerned about climate change. So those are the three things I would talk about.

And then of course, just the reality that, you know, yeah, hypothetically we could get this all done quickly if we had all this money. We only focused on atomic energy. But in reality, this is never going to happen in time. Even if we were to believe all the propaganda, it’s never going to happen in time to make a difference when it comes to the climate.

And that’s another big one as well.

Bob: Yeah. I’ve been telling people to watch The Simpsons and ask if they want, Homer is their safety inspectorl He might be better than some of them out there if they were allowed to do this.

Joshua: Yeah. And then, lastly, I don’t want to downplay the risks of these plants in war zones.

Of course, Ukraine is the prime example, right? But Taiwan, they have nuke plants, and that may be a battleground between China and the US in the coming years. And who’s to say that those plants aren’t going to be used as tools of war? And we have plants in the Middle East. I mean, all these plants pose risks beyond any kind of comprehension because they’ve never been used like this before.

They’ve never been in a war zone, an active plant, in a war zone like this. So, if we had, think, if we had thousands of these plants all over the place, and how that could even be monitored and controlled is, you know, it’s impossible. So that’s another thing that I would bring up when talking about them.

I mean, even the worst of fossil fuels as imposed the same risks in a war zone. It’s, and, and no one would argue otherwise.

Scott: Yeah. The other thing I like to talk about too is, and because I’m a bit of a movement historian and an organizer is that some of the best organizing that happened in the US in the last half century was the anti-nukes movement.

As an organizer in the anti-fossil fuel movement, whether it’s extraction or it’s plants or other infrastructure, was like very much modeled on like what we saw at Seabrook, New Hampshire in the seventies. Diablo Canyon, Rocky Mountain Flats. Places like that.

And a lot of my mentors were those organizers who took big risks as some of the first SLAPP suits, (strategic litigation against public participation). Civil suits were against anti-nuke activists at Diablo Canyon.

The was a powerful movement and the disingenuous way in which some of the pro-nuke left people in particular I expected from the industry, but the way in which they sort of attack and just, you know, disregard that, that powerful in history is very troubling.

Joshua: Yeah. I mean, I’ve long thought that it’s our duty on the left to build on the successes of the past, not tear them down. Right? And that’s exactly what they’re doing. But maybe it is because those movements were so successful that they’re so threatened by them even to this day, right? That those of us that don’t buy into it are going to continue that legacy. And that’s a big threat to them. And I think that’s great.

I think they should be afraid because we’re not going anywhere.

Scott: Josh, it’s been great talking to you.

Joshua: Thanks so much for having me. It’s been awesome.

Bob Buzzanco and Scott Parkin host The Green and Red Podcast.

N.B. premier stands by changes to school LGTBQ policy, says he does not want an election

Story by Jessica Mundie • CBC - June 18,2023



New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs is maintaining his support of the changes his government has made to Policy 713, which was designed to protect LGBTQ students, despite rising tensions in the legislature.

In an interview on Rosemary Barton Live, Higgs said he is trying to "find a path forward" in regards to managing the changes, but backpedalled on a statement he made on June 8, when he said he was willing to call an election on this issue.

"I don't want to go to an election and that isn't my intent to do that," he said.

The growing controversy in the New Brunswick legislature has stemmed from the government's review of and changes to Policy 713, which established minimum standards for schools to ensure a safe, welcoming and inclusive environment for LGBTQ students.

Among the changes sparking debate is that students under 16 now need to get their parents' permission to have teachers and staff use their chosen names and pronouns.

Higgs defended the change, saying information about a child should not be hidden from their parents.

"We're trying to find a path forward to protect the children and to involve the parents when the time is right and have the right people engaged in that process," he said.

The threat of an election on this issue was brought up by Higgs after he faced a rebellion from several of his top cabinet ministers in response to the policy review.

Six ministers and two backbench MLAs refused to attend the June 8 morning sitting of the legislature "as a way to express our extreme disappointment in a lack of process and transparency," they said in a statement.

Since then, one of the eight ministers has resigned from Higgs' cabinet.

On Thursday, after hearing Higgs speak in the legislature about his conviction that gender dysphoria has become "trendy," and how he believes increased acceptance of it is hurting kids and excluding parents, former cabinet minister Dorothy Shephard got up and left the chamber.

In an interview on Power & Politics, Shephard said her departure was a "long time coming" and that she has had concerns about the government's approach to certain topics, like Policy 713.

"I just decided that it was time," she said. "I didn't feel I could accomplish anything more in this cabinet with this premier."

Shephard is critical of Higgs' leadership style, saying it is "difficult" and that he does not "form relationships easily."

Shephard is the third minister to resign from cabinet, the other two being former education minister Dominic Cardy, who resigned in October 2022 and now sits as an independent, and former deputy premier Robert Gauvin, who resigned in February 2020 and now sits as a Liberal.

In response to Shephard's criticism, Higgs said that he recognizes that decisions made in the legislature will not all be unanimous, but the majority of caucus agreed they needed to "find a path forward" on Policy 713.

"If our process is that every time there is a tough issue and we don't agree with where the majority of caucus had gone to, walking away is not the solution," he said.

Alex Harris, a transgender high school student in New Brunswick, said in an interview on Rosemary Barton Live that he is most concerned about the change made to the self-identification clause in the policy.

Harris, who is now over the age of 16, came out before the policy change. At the time, his teachers were able to use his preferred name and pronouns at school and then use his old information when talking to his parents.

"It actually made it easier for me to come out to my parents because I knew I had a safe space at school even if that didn't go well," he said.


Opponents of the review of Policy 713 demostrate outside the New Brunswick legislature.

 (Radio-Canada)© Provided by cbc.ca

When Harris did come out to his parents he said it went well, but he said he knows people who may not have the same experience. He said he has "tons" of friends who came out at school before the changes to Policy 713 and now have to ask their parents for permission to have their teachers use their chosen name or pronouns.

"That is terrifying to them because their parents would not be safe to come out to," said Harris.

Part of the change to the self-identification clause in the policy is that if students are fearful or object to informing their parents of their change in preferred name and pronouns, they can work with guidance counsellors or school social workers and psychologists to get to a place where they feel comfortable telling them.

Harris said this development is "troubling."

"For most people who are concerned about this policy, it's not that they need to get to a place where they can talk to their parents, it's that their parents aren't at a place where they will be accepting of them being trans," he said.

A 16-year-old pocketed $50,000 for her award-winning discovery in the brains of people who died by suicide

Story by insider@insider.com (Adam Barnes) • June 18,2023

Natasha Kulviwat, 16, conducted her research project at a Columbia University lab. 

Natasha Kulviwat

Natasha Kulviwat recently won $50K at the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair.
She is 16 years old and a high school student with a passion for studying suicide prevention.
She researches the brains of people who died by suicide to identify biomarkers.

Natasha Kulviwat is no ordinary high schooler. Starting last August, she spent six months in the lab at Columbia University studying the brain tissue of people who died by suicide.

Her research investigated if any biomarkers — physical and measurable substances in the brain — might help explain and, perhaps someday, prevent suicide.

Ultimately, her work won her the Gordon E. Moore Award for Positive Outcomes for Future Generations and $50,000 for college expenses at the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair, an international competition for pre-college students organized by the Society for Science.

Identifying biomarkers of suicide in the human brain

Kulviwat found differences in the brains of 10 people who died by suicide compared to the control group: 10 people who died of other causes.

The brains of those who died by suicide, which were donated for study by their next of kin, contained higher numbers of inflammatory cytokines.



Brain tissue of people who died by suicide showed differences compared to a control group. Kulviwat cut this tissue with an instrument called a vibratome. Natasha Kulviwat© Natasha Kulviwat

Cytokines create inflammation as a normal part of your immune system's response to pathogens. But your body can also release them when there is no threat — during chronic stress, for example — and that can cause excessive inflammation.

Too much inflammation in the body over time can have many negative effects — it's implicated in conditions like heart disease, cancer, and autoimmune disease. In this case, Kulviwat's research suggests that inflammation affected a specific protein in the brain known as claudin-5.

Claudin-5 is usually found in cells that make up the blood-brain barrier (BBB) — playing an important role in regulating what substances can pass from the blood into brain cells.

But Kulviwat found elevated levels of claudin-5 in other parts of the brain — in the neurons and microvessels — of those who died by suicide, indicating there was a breakdown of the BBB.

That means foreign agents in the blood can now get into functional areas of the brain, which can be neurotoxic, she said. The results suggest elevated levels of claudin-5 in the brain might serve as a biomarker of suicide risk.

Can biomarkers be a new way to measure suicide risk?

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suicide risk is usually evaluated by looking at things like a history of depression or other mental illness, life circumstances such as adverse childhood events or job loss, and other subjective psychological factors — like impulsivity or a sense of hopelessness.

Though treatments for suicidal behavior exist, including psychotherapy and medications, suicide rates have mostly increased over the last 20 years. In 2021, more than 48,000 people died from suicide. And there were an estimated 1.7 million attempts.

With suicide being such a major public health concern, Kulviwat's research joins a number of studies looking for biomarkers of suicide.

A review of the research, published in 2021, found some potential biomarkers — including chemicals involved in the body's stress response or that interact with serotonin — but none of the studies looked at claudin-5.

Kulviwat and other researchers hope that identifying a physiological process involved in suicide — that is, looking at suicide as not only a psychological issue — might help more accurately predict who is at risk than current methods and aid in developing more targeted pharmaceutical treatments for prevention.

Interestingly, in her research, Kulviwat found that some psychiatric medications used to help suicidal patients with issues like depression or anxiety, like Lexapro and benzodiazepines, don't strongly interact with claudin-5 — but some anti-inflammatory medications do. What's more, in some cases, psychiatric medications can even increase suicide risk.

Kulviwat said, of course, that doesn't mean we should just give out anti-inflammatories to people who may be contemplating suicide. More research is needed, but Kulviwat said she's "trying to see if it might be worth identifying an alternative."

Dr. David Feifel is a neurobiologist and professor emeritus of psychiatry at the University of California San Diego. He is also the medical director of the Kadima Neuropsychiatry Institute — where he utilizes newer treatments like ketamine and transcranial magnetic stimulation for mental health conditions. He said Kulviwat's results were interesting, but noted they should be treated as a correlation, not causation.

Feifel said the brain abnormalities Kulviwat found could be the result of a more fundamental abnormality, and claudin-5 may have no direct link to suicide.

"Before having any impact on the field, her findings have to be replicated in larger samples," Feifel said.

Kulviwat also noted that her study was "very preliminary," and that the sample size wasn't that high. But she plans to continue the research.

"I'm going to be co-author on a National Institute of Health grant with my lab. We're going to try to drill into this research more since the pilot study gave promising results, and then we'll see where that takes us."

Why study suicide?

Currently finishing up her junior year in high school, Kulviwat began researching suicide her freshman year — looking at possible psychological contributors — like impulsivity and lowered ability to cope with change.

But for this project, "I wanted to venture into the neurobiological perspective because not a lot of studies do that," she told Insider.

Part of her interest in suicide research comes from volunteering with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and attending Out of the Darkness Walks — events that help raise awareness and provide support to people who have lost loved ones to suicide.

Hearing different perspectives and questioning why suicide research isn't progressing as much as other fields — like cancer or infectious diseases — inspired her research, she said.

She said one of the hardest parts of the project was juggling academic responsibilities, her personal life, and the lab work. She often had to choose her research over time with friends — working in the lab until late in the night and over the holidays. Kulviwat said, laughing, that she even had to sometimes miss her high school classes to work in the lab.

What's next?

Kulviwat already has research in mind for her next project. She plans to look at how medications like anti-inflammatories interact with claudin-5 in an animal model. This research might offer clues to developing alternative treatments in cases of a BBB breakdown and suicide risk.

She said the prize money is a great help towards college, but overall it hasn't changed much for her. "I'm still like a regular high schooler. I haven't taken my standardized tests yet. I'm still trying to pass my classes, trying to keep my GPA up."

Kulviwat hopes to attend medical school in the future and become a pediatrician or pediatric psychiatrist.

"In order to make sure we have a strong foundation and make sure our youth are okay — I think that's really imperative to do, and I think it's important not to overlook that," she said.

Canada, Ontario reach historic $10 billion proposed First Nations treaty settlement

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Leaders of the Robinson Huron Treaty Litigation Fund say they've reached a proposed $10-billion settlement with the governments of Ontario and Canada over unpaid annuities for using their lands.

The fund, which represents the 21 Robinson Huron First Nations, announced Saturday that the proposal will resolve claims only tied to past unpaid annuities which stretch back more than 170 years.

The Robinson-Huron Treaty was signed in 1850 and committed to paying the First Nations groups annual amounts tied to resource revenues, but the annuity only increased once in 1875 when it rose from about $1.70 per person to $4 per person. It hasn't increased since.

The proposed out-of-court settlement will see the federal government pay half the sum, while the other half will come from the province.

Spokesperson Duke Peltier, who represents the Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory, noted the 21 First Nations came together in 2012 to seek a settlement through the courts, but that ultimately one was reached at a negotiation table after talks began in April 2022.

"We know reconciliation cannot be achieved in the courtroom," he said in a statement.

"Canada and Ontario heard us and met us at the negotiation table to make this proposed settlement a reality."

In 2018, the Ontario Superior Court ruled that the Crown had an obligation to increase annual payments under the Robinson-Huron Treaty to reflect revenue derived from the territory.

Related video: Ceremony opens announcement of $10B settlement in Robinson-Huron Treaty territory (cbc.ca)   Duration 0:40  View on Watch

"Our communities have struggled economically, culturally, and socially because of this breach of Treaty," said Chief Dean Sayers of the Batchewana First Nation.

"We see this settlement as an opportunity to show the commitment of both Canada and Ontario to respect and implement our rights affirmed in the Treaty."

Marc Miller, federal Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations, issued a statement on Saturday saying he hopes the settlement marks an advancement in efforts to "address past wrongs and strengthen our treaty relationship for the future."

Sayers said all sides will come up with a deal on how to share the revenues generated from resources in the future.

"We do have the extension of co-operation between Canada, Ontario and our 21 First Nations to sit down and hammer out a go-forward deal in regards to how we're going to share in the revenues generated from the resources, as per an interpretation of the Treaty promise — the new promise," he said in a phone interview.

Sayers said the hope is to have a formal deal signed later this year, but until then communities must hold discussions in order to answer residents' questions.

"There needs to be more awareness in regards to the collectivity of the treaty, the historical perspective of the treaty, how and why we landed where we did with the overall eventual agreement," Sayers said. "So there is a lot of communication that hasn't happened as well."

A series of information sessions will be held with the First Nations community. Retired Ontario Court of Appeal judge Harry LaForme will lead the sessions, with the goal of preparing a report of recommendations within eight months. LaForme is Anishinabe and a member of the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation in southern Ontario.

The federal and provincial governments will also conduct a review to seek approval for signing the proposed settlement.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 18, 2023.

David Friend, The Canadian Press

Australian Senate paves way for landmark referendum on Indigenous voice in constitution

Story by Reuters • June 18,2023

 A depiction of the Australian Aboriginal Flag is seen on a window sill in Sydney

© Thomson Reuters

By Praveen Menon

SYDNEY (Reuters) -Australia's Senate passed legislation on Monday that paves the way for the country to hold a landmark referendum later this year on whether to recognise its Indigenous people in the constitution.

In a final vote in the upper house of parliament, 52 voted in favour of the bill while 19 voted against, allowing the bill to be passed with an absolute majority.

The referendum will ask Australians whether they support altering the constitution to include "Voice to Parliament", a committee that can advise the parliament on matters affecting its Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people.

"Parliaments pass laws, but it's people that make history," Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in a news conference after the bill was passed.

"This is your time, your chance, your opportunity to be a part of making history," he said.

Albanese will now have to set a referendum date, expected to be between October and December. It will be the first referendum Australians will vote on since 1999 when they rejected the establishment of a republic.

Aboriginal people, making up about 3.2% of Australia's near 26 million population, track below national averages on most socio-economic measures and are not mentioned in the constitution. They were marginalised by British colonial rulers and not granted full voting rights until the 1960s.

Lawmakers supporting the bill clapped and cheered as the final numbers of the vote were read out in the house.

"It is a very simple request....to be recognised in the constitution," Malarndirri McCarthy, an Indigenous woman and Labor Party senator told the house.

"A majority of the Indigenous people want this to happen," she said.

Support for the constitutional change has been wavering in the recent weeks.

Getting constitutional change is difficult in Australia. The government must secure a double majority in the referendum, which means more than 50% voters nationwide, and a majority of voters in at least four of the six states must back the change.

In the past there have been 44 proposals for constitutional change in 19 referendums, and only eight of these have passed. Most notably, a 1967 referendum on indigenous rights saw a record Yes vote.

The government has been backing the referendum and has staked significant political capital on it. Top sporting codes and several major corporations have proclaimed support for the campaign.

Albanese said he is confident that "a positive campaign will produce a positive result."

Groups opposing the constitutional change have argued that it is a distraction from achieving practical and positive outcomes, and that it would divide Australians by race.

"If the yes vote is successful, we will be divided forever," said Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, the opposition spokesperson for Indigenous affairs. The main opposition Liberal Party is asking people to vote "no" in the referendum.

Independent Indigenous Senator Lidia Thorpe, who has also been a vocal opponent of the bill, said the change will only create a "powerless advisory body".

(Reporting by Praveen Menon; Editing by Michael Perry)

CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERIKA
More than 1 million dropped from Medicaid as states start post-pandemic purge of rolls



More than 1 million people have been dropped from Medicaid in the past couple months as some states moved swiftly to halt health care coverage following the end of the coronavirus pandemic.

Most got dropped for not filling out paperwork.

Though the eligibility review is required by the federal government, President’s Joe Biden’s administration isn’t too pleased at how efficiently some other states are accomplishing the task.

“Pushing through things and rushing it will lead to eligible people — kids and families — losing coverage for some period of time,” Daniel Tsai, a top federal Medicaid official recently told reporters.

Already, about 1.5 million people have been removed from Medicaid in more than two dozen states that started the process in April or May, according to publicly available reports and data obtained by The Associated Press.

Florida has dropped several hundred thousand people, by far the most among states. The drop rate also has been particularly high in other states. For people whose cases were decided in May, around half or more got dropped in Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Nevada, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah and West Virginia.

By its own count, Arkansas has dropped more than 140,000 people from Medicaid.

The eligibility redeterminations have created headaches for Jennifer Mojica, 28, who was told in April that she no longer qualified for Medicaid because Arkansas had incorrectly determined her income was above the limit.

She got that resolved, but was then told her 5-year-old son was being dropped from Medicaid because she had requested his cancellation — something that never happened, she said. Her son’s coverage has been restored, but now Mojica says she’s been told her husband no longer qualifies. The uncertainty has been frustrating, she said.

“It was like fixing one thing and then another problem came up, and they fixed it and then something else came up,” Mojica said.

Arkansas officials said they have tried to renew coverage automatically for as many people as possible and placed a special emphasis on reaching families with children. But a 2021 state law requires the post-pandemic eligibility redeterminations to be completed in six months, and the state will continue “to swiftly disenroll individuals who are no longer eligible,” the Department of Human Services said in statement.

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders has dismissed criticism of the state’s process.

“Those who do not qualify for Medicaid are taking resources from those who need them,” Sanders said on Twitter last month. “But the pandemic is over — and we are leading the way back to normalcy.”

More than 93 million people nationwide were enrolled in Medicaid as of the most recent available data in February — up nearly one-third from the pre-pandemic total in January 2020. The rolls swelled because federal law prohibited states from removing people from Medicaid during the health emergency in exchange for providing states with increased funding.

Now that eligibility reviews have resumed, states have begun plowing through a backlog of cases to determine whether people's income or life circumstances have changed. States have a year to complete the process. But tracking down responses from everyone has proved difficult, because some people have moved, changed contact information or disregarded mailings about the renewal process.

Before dropping people from Medicaid, the Florida Department of Children and Families said it makes between five and 13 contact attempts, including texts, emails and phone calls. Yet the department said 152,600 people have been non-responsive.

Their coverage could be restored retroactively, if people submit information showing their eligibility up to 90 days after their deadline.

Unlike some states, Idaho continued to evaluate people's Medicaid eligibility during the pandemic even though it didn't remove anyone. When the enrollment freeze ended in April, Idaho started processing those cases — dropping nearly 67,000 of the 92,000 people whose cases have been decided so far.

“I think there’s still a lot of confusion among families on what’s happening,” said Hillarie Hagen, a health policy associate at the nonprofit Idaho Voices for Children.

She added, “We’re likely to see people showing up at a doctor’s office in the coming months not knowing they’ve lost Medicaid.”

Advocates fear that many households losing coverage may include children who are actually still eligible, because Medicaid covers children at higher income levels than their parents or guardians. A report last year by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services forecast that children would be disproportionately impacted, with more than half of those disenrolled still actually eligible.

That's difficult to confirm, however, because the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services doesn't require states to report a demographic breakdown of those dropped. In fact, CMS has yet to release any state-by-state data. The AP obtained data directly from states and from other groups that have been collecting it.

Medicaid recipients in numerous states have described the eligibility redetermination process as frustrating.

Julie Talamo, of Port Richey, Florida, said she called state officials every day for weeks, spending hours on hold, when she was trying to ensure her 19-year-old special-needs son, Thomas, was going to stay on Medicaid.

She knew her own coverage would end but was shocked to hear Thomas’ coverage would be whittled down to a different program that could force her family to pay $2,000 per month. Eventually, an activist put Talamo in contact with a senior state healthcare official who confirmed her son would stay on Medicaid.

“This system was designed to fail people,” Talamo said of the haphazard process.

Some states haven't been able to complete all the eligibility determinations that are due each month. Pennsylvania reported more than 100,000 incomplete cases in both April and May. Tens of thousands of cases also remained incomplete in April or May in Arizona, Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, New Mexico and Ohio.

“If states are already behind in processing renewals, that’s going to snowball over time," said Tricia Brooks, a research professor at the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families. "Once they get piles of stuff that haven’t been processed, I don’t see how they catch up easily.”

Among those still hanging in the balance is Gary Rush, 67, who said he was notified in April that he would lose Medicaid coverage. The Pittsburgh resident said he was told that his retirement accounts make him ineligible, even though he said he doesn’t draw from them. Rush appealed with the help of an advocacy group and, at a hearing this past week, was told he has until July to get rid of about $60,000 in savings.

Still, Rush said he doesn’t know what he will do if he loses coverage for his diabetes medication, which costs about $700 a month. Rush said he gets $1,100 a month from Social Security.

In Indiana, Samantha Richards, 35, said she has been on Medicaid her whole life and currently works two part-time jobs as a custodian. Richards recalled receiving a letter earlier this year indicating that the pandemic-era Medicaid protection was ending. She said a local advocacy group helped her navigate the renewal process. But she remains uneasy.

“Medicaid can be a little unpredictable,” Richards said. “There is still that concern that just out of nowhere, I will either get a letter saying that we have to reapply because we missed some paperwork, or I missed a deadline, or I’m going to show up at the doctor’s office or the pharmacy and they’re going to say, ‘Your insurance didn’t go through.’”

___

Lieb reported from Jefferson City, Missouri, and DeMillo from Little Rock, Arkansas. Also contributing were AP reporters Anthony Izaguirre in Tallahassee, Florida; Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; and Arleigh Rodgers in Bloomington, Indiana. Rodgers is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

David A. Lieb And Andrew Demillo, The Associated Press

Despite brand boycotts and backlashes, Pride events see solid corporate support

Story by Sara Ruberg • June 18, 2023

Some corporate sponsors have kept lower profiles at Pride celebrations this year, but most have not tightened their purse strings or ditched LGBTQ causes in the face of conservative blowback, event organizers and advocates say.

Many Pride organizers across the country say high-profile brand backlashes, restrictive legislation and heightened threats against LGBTQ people have fueled record crowd turnout this year. While that has often meant spending more to keep attendees safe, the polarized climate has also kept sponsorship dollars flowing to Pride events and the groups they support.

Nearly 78% of U.S. Pride organizers surveyed this year by InterPride, a network of Pride events around the world, said their corporate sponsorships either rose or held steady since last year — higher than the 62% global figure — while 22% reported declines.

Indy Pride, which organizes official celebrations in Indianapolis, faced new difficulties in the run-up to this year’s festivities. One corporate sponsor pulled its logo from an event, and another raised questions about a youth Pride carnival it had agreed to sponsor after getting “blasted” on social media, said executive director Shelly Snider.

NBC News
Majority of Americans comfortable seeing LGBTQ people in ads, report finds
View on Watch    Duration 6:53

Most of the Pride organizers NBC News spoke with, including Snider, declined to identify corporate sponsors that shrunk their involvement or visibility, concerned about alienating important financial backers. Like Indy Pride, Pride organizations are typically nonprofit organizations that also offer year-round services to the LGBTQ community, such as grants, educational events and support for political activism.

Indy Pride’s security costs have tripled, Snider said, and its events have beefed up their safety protocols.

“We’ve hired extra security, gone through ‘stop the bleed’ training in case there is an active shooter,” she said. “This is new to this year. I didn’t think when I took this job that we would have to [learn how to] use a tourniquet, but here we are.”

Even so, Indy Pride raised a record $641,000 and saw crowds swell to an estimated 60,000 at its festival and parade last weekend, putting the event at full capacity.



A couple kisses Saturday, June 10, 2023 during the Indy Pride Festival at Military Park in Indianapolis. (Clare Grant / IndyStar / USA TODAY)© Clare Grant

The mix of changes Snider and other organizers described paint a more complicated picture than recent headlines around brands’ scrambles to respond to anti-LGBTQ backlash — like that faced by Bud Light and Target — may suggest. While some businesses have walked back their ties to LGBTQ events and causes, including Pride-related marketing, many more have maintained or increased their support.

Josh Coleman, president of Central Alabama Pride in Birmingham, said some longtime corporate sponsors dropped out this year, including Wells Fargo. Others have demanded more input on where their branding appears. But donations have held steady this month, he said, in part because more local and regional sponsors have filled the gaps left by larger companies’ retreats.

“It’s been a little frustrating,” Coleman admitted. “Some folks use allyship when they want to.”

Overall, though, “we’ve seen an uptick in support throughout the year,” he said. “More people are showing up and out, including allies.”

In Tennessee, where a federal judge recently rejected a drag ban that state Republicans enacted earlier this year, corporate backing for Memphis’s Mid-South Pride hasn’t suffered.


McKenna Dubbert and Sophie Fuller lie on a blanket during the Franklin Pride TN festival, Saturday, June 3, 2023, in Franklin, Tenn. (George Walker IV / AP)© George Walker IV

“We had issues,” festival director Vanessa Rodley said in an email, but after the judge temporarily blocked the measure from taking effect in late March, “we saw a wave of new sponsors that wanted to show support. There are a few we never got back, but thanks to our community stepping up and new sponsors, we were able to make it.”

A handful of major brands, including Kroger and Terminix, didn’t return as Mid-South Pride sponsors after making $7,500 and $3,500 contributions, respectively, in 2022, the group’s public sponsor lists in recent years show.

But others, such as Nike, Ford, Charles Schwab and Tito’s Vodka, either matched or upped their previous-year investments, which ranged from $5,000 to $10,000 apiece. And regional businesses, including a mortgage brokerage and a dentistry practice, jumped in this year with $5,000 sponsorships.

A Wells Fargo spokesperson said the bank “is a longstanding supporter of the LGBTQ+ community” and still “sponsoring parades in cities across the country.”

After being contacted by NBC News, a Kroger spokesperson said the grocery chain “discovered a recent retirement left the [Memphis] parade without a contact at the company” and reached out to Mid-South Pride organizers. “We provided a contact from which to request support for this year or a future event.”

Terminix didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Some advocates warn that any pullback in the visibility of corporate support during Pride Month — especially by the most well-known brands — risks signaling that LGTBQ consumers are expendable. Others have long called for fewer rainbow-slathered logos and more substantive, if quieter, support from private-sector allies.

“Visibility is the least important,” said Bruce Starr, CEO of the marketing agency BMF. “What are you actually donating and giving” to support LGBTQ causes year-round matters more, he said.

In Auburn, Alabama, Pride on the Plains President Seth McCollough said one of the group’s three corporate sponsors gave money this year but asked to not be thanked or recognized publicly.

“It was kind of surprising to me,” McCollough said, but added, “I guess I understand where they are coming from.”

McCollough said Pride on the Plains hasn’t lost its biggest corporate backers even though state lawmakers advanced anti-drag and anti-trans bills this year.

Among them is Target, which drew national attention for pulling some Pride merchandise last month after store employees were threatened. The retailer continues to be a top sponsor and provides volunteers to Pride on the Plains, McCollough said. But while big businesses can often contribute larger sums, the group relies on smaller companies for most of its funding anyway.


Pride month merchandise at the front of a Target store in Hackensack, N.J.

 (Seth Wenig / AP file)© Provided by NBC News

Many Pride celebrations facing difficulties are in the Midwest and South, regions that have seen a wave of Republican-led anti-LGBTQ legislation this year. Organizers in bluer states haven’t experienced much difference.

Pride officials in New York City, home to the first Pride March, in June 1970, said this year would be on par with last in terms of arranging sponsors and security. But Pride organizers in Charleston, South Carolina, said they’ve seen a significant drop in funds and sponsorships post-pandemic, after setting records in 2019.

Kendra Johnson, executive director of Equality NC, said threats against the community and Pride events have risen dramatically throughout North Carolina.

“I’m 52 — I’ve never seen it like this,” Johnson said, citing threats of violence and cases in which she said organizers were doxed. Johnson’s LGBTQ advocacy group doesn’t plan Pride festivities, but she said some organizers in the state have told her of sponsors pulling out of local events.

Ron deHarte, co-president of the United States Association of Prides, an umbrella group representing nearly 100 organizers across the country, acknowledged that many groups face growing challenges.

“We’re hearing that there are a few organizations that have made their own decision to modify their programs or cancel based on legislation, out of fear of government action” by some state authorities, he said.

But many sponsors remain committed after years of support for the LGBTQ community, despite the criticism that often comes with it. Tense political climates, as well as presidential election years, tend to drive enthusiasm and attendance at Pride celebrations because many people become more engaged, deHarte said.

“This certainly isn’t the worst we’ve seen,” he said, “and we’ve continued to survive for decades.”

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

How 'the ineluctable rise of worldwide free market capitalism' has been a 'stunning failure': columnist

OXFORD, ENGLAND - FEBRUARY 18: A protester holds a sign criticizing the inequality of 15-minute cities as protesters gather in Broad Street on February 18, 2023 in Oxford, England. The concept of 15-minute cities suggests that all services, amenities, work, and leisure are accessible a 15-20 minute walk or cycle from a person's front door. Protesters argue that the measures will ghettoise areas and restrict their freedom to move around as they want to. Car journeys will be restricted at certain times of the day and will be policed by number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras and fines 

(Photo by Martin Pope/Getty Images).

Maya Boddie

June 18, 2023

Writing in Sunday's New York TimesNew York Times, global economics correspondent Patricia Cohen broke down how financial globalization proves that "almost everything we thought we knew about the world economy was wrong."

Cohen notes the stark contrast between "the world's business and political leaders'" optimistic outlook on the global economy during the 2018 "annual economic forum in Davos," to "now, as the second year of war in Ukraine grinds on and countries struggle with limp growth and persistent inflation, questions about the emerging economic playing field have taken center stage."

The columist points to the "heady triumphalism that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991," adding, "Associated economic theories about the ineluctable rise of worldwide free market capitalism took on" a sense "of invincibility and inevitability," as "open markets, hands-off government and the relentless pursuit of efficiency would offer the best route to prosperity."

READ MORE: The world economy is changing. People know, but their leaders don't

During that time, Cohen continues, "There was reason for optimism," noting, "During the 1990s, inflation was low while employment, wages and productivity were up. Global trade nearly doubled. Investments in developing countries surged. The stock market rose."

She then emphasizes, "It was believed that a new world where goods, money and information crisscrossed the globe would essentially sweep away the old order of Cold War conflicts and undemocratic regimes," but "there were stunning failures as well," as "globalization hastened climate change and deepened inequalities."

Cohen acknowledges even though "the financial meltdown in 2008 came close to tanking the global financial system," it wasn't until the Covid-19 pandemic, that "the rat-a-tat series of crises exposed with startling clarity vulnerabilities that demanded attention."

READ MORE: A Pride Month reminder: Corporations are not allies

Furthermore, she notes "the consulting firm EY concluded in its 2023 Geostrategic Outlook, the trends behind the shift away from ever-increasing globalization 'were accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic — and then they have been supercharged by the war in Ukraine.'"

Cohen adds:

The economic havoc wreaked by the pandemic combined with soaring food and fuel prices caused by the war in Ukraine have created a spate of debt crises. Rising interest rates have made those crises worse. Debts, like energy and food, are often priced in dollars on the world market, so when U.S. rates go up, debt payments get more expensive.

She emphasizes, "as the dust has settled, it has suddenly seemed as if almost everything we thought we knew about the world economy was wrong, referencing a recent World Bank analysis, saying, "Nearly all the economic forces that powered progress and prosperity over the last three decades are fading," adding, "The result could be a lost decade in the making — not just for some countries or regions as has occurred in the past — but for the whole world."

READ MORE: Washington's $849 million capital gains windfall shows 'taxing the rich is a really good idea'

Cohen's article continues at this link (subscription required).

Donnie Creek wildfire in B.C. now the largest recorded in province's history

Blaze southeast of Fort Nelson covers nearly 5,344 square kilometres, remains out of control

CBC
Published on Jun. 18, 2023

The Donnie Creek wildfire in northeastern British Columbia has now surpassed the 2017 Plateau fire as the largest individual fire, by area burned, ever recorded in the province's history.

It was sparked on May 12 by lightning, according to the B.C. Wildfire Service (BCWS), and covers an area of 5,343.88 square kilometres as of 10 a.m. PT on Sunday. It is still not responding to suppression efforts and remains out of control, according to the BCWS.

Before this year — which has seen an unusually early start to fire season — the largest single fire was the 2017 Plateau fire near Williams Lake, an amalgamation of several smaller fires that burned a total of 5,210 square kilometres.

The wildfire is burning 136 kilometres southeast of Fort Nelson, and 158 kilometres north of Fort St. John, in the province's Peace River region.

RELATED: We know the human costs of wildfires, but what about our wildlife?

BCWS fire information officer Marg Drysdale said the blaze was "extremely active" on Sunday and that in some pockets, the fire was so aggressive it was burning the tops of trees — what is called "Crown fire" behaviour.

"We have cooler conditions today," she said on Sunday morning. "But this fire is so large that there's different weather patterns and different weather conditions on different parts of the fire."

Drysdale said that if the 948-kilometre-long perimeter of the fire was stretched out, it would go from Fort St. John in northeast B.C. all the way to Kamloops in the Central Interior.

While the blaze isn't burning near major population centres, it has resulted in evacuation orders for a sparsely populated region primarily used by the forestry and oil and gas industries.

It was burning two kilometres away from the critical Alaska Highway route at a point north of Trutch, B.C. Evacuation orders and alerts are in place for a 160-kilometre stretch of the road.

"Our objectives are to protect and keep the Alaska Highway open because we understand what an important corridor that is for many people," Drysdale said.

Crews conducted planned ignitions around the perimeter of the fire, near the highway, on Friday. The BCWS says the fire perimeter is currently holding at that spot, but warmer weather conditions are expected to return on Thursday.
Drought, high temperatures are factors in fire size

The Donnie Creek blaze is not as large as the 2018 Tweedsmuir complex of fires, nor the 2017 Hanceville-Riske Creek complex, which burned 3,015 and 2,412 square kilometres, respectively. However, wildfire officials say because those complexes consisted of multiple fires burning in separate but nearby areas, they are not considered a single blaze.

The Plateau fire complex in 2017, which also consisted of nearby fires, burned an area of 5,451 square kilometres.

The Donnie Creek fire now covers an area 1.8 times the size of Metro Vancouver. Drysdale said the Peace region began early May facing drought conditions, and there hasn't been the precipitation that would have helped ward off large fire starts in the spring.

"The fire started in May, which is during what we call spring dip. So, the area hadn't greened up and vegetation hadn't accepted the moisture that it normally does," she said.

"We saw 30 degree temperatures in the spring. And we've had high and continuous winds throughout."

More than 80 fires are burning across B.C. as of 12 p.m. PT on Sunday, and 25 of them are considered out of control.

Thumbnail courtesy of B.C. Wildfire via CBC.

The story was written by Akshay Kulkarni and origially published for CBC News

Visit The Weather Network's wildfire hub to keep up with the latest on the active start to wildfire season across Canada.