Fukushima Up Close, 13 Years Later

BY ROBERT HUNZIKER

 OCTOBER 13, 2023
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Fukushima nuclear accident. (2023, October 11).

The world is turning to nuclear power as a solution to global warming, but it is postulated herein that it is a huge mistake that endangers society. One nuclear meltdown causes as much damage over the long-term as a major war. Moreover, according to Dr. Paul Dorfman, chair of the Nuclear Consulting Group, former secretary to the UK Scientific Advisory Committee on Internal Radiation: “It’s important to understand that nuclear is very likely to be a significant climate casualty.”

Also, of interest: France’s Global Warming Predicament discusses nuclear energy’s vulnerability in a global warming world.

Beyond Nuclear International recently published an article about the status of Fukushima as well as an exposé of how the nuclear industry gets away with responsibility for radiation-caused (1) deaths (2) chronic conditions like cancer (3) genetic deformities: A Strategy of Concealment, September 24, 2023, by Kolin Kobayashi, who is a Tokyo-born France-based anti-nuclear activist journalist also serving as president of Echo-Exchange. Kobayashi’s work was posted by CounterPunch under the title: How Agencies That Promote Nuclear Power Are Quietly Managing Its Disaster Narrative.

The following synopsis, including editorial license that adds important death details which defy the nuclear industry’s bogus claims about nuclear safety, opens closed pathways to what’s really going on.

After thirteen years, the declaration of a State of Emergency for Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant still cannot be lifted because of many unknowns, as well as ubiquitous deadly radiation levels. The destroyed reactors are tinderboxes of highly radioactive spent fuel rods that contain more cesium-137 than eighty-five (85) Chernobyls. Cesium-137 in or near a human body erupts into a series of maladies, one after another in short order, depending upon level of exposure: (1) nausea (2) vomiting (3) diarrhea (4) bleeding (5) coma leading to death.

The spent fuel rods at the Fukushima nuclear reactor site are stored in pools of water on the top floor of compromised reactor buildings 100 feet above ground level, except for Unit 3 which completed removal of its spent fuel rods in 2019, an extremely slow, laborious process that’s highly dangerous.

Stored spent fuel rods in open pools of water are the epitome of high-risk. “If the 440 tonne vessel collapses, it could hit the storage pool next to it. If this pool is damaged, even partially, another major disaster could occur.” (Kobayashi) In that regard, there’s significant risk of collapse in the event of a strong earthquake. And Japan is one of the most earthquake prone countries in the world. “The city (Tokyo) government’s experts reckon there is a 70% chance of a magnitude 7, or higher, quake hitting the capital within the next 30 years.” (Source: Japan is Preparing for a Massive Earthquake, The Economist, August 31, 2023)

If exposed to open air, spent fuel rods erupt into a sizzling zirconium fire followed by massive radiation bursts of the most toxic material on the planet. It can upend an entire countryside and force evacuation of major cities. According to the widely recognized nuclear expert Paul Blanch: “Continual storage in spent fuel pools is the most unsafe thing you could do.” Paul Blanch, registered professional engineer, US Navy Reactor Operator & Instructor with 55 years of experience with nuclear engineering and regulatory agencies, is widely recognized as one of America’s leading experts on nuclear power.

Fukushima Daichi Nuclear Power Plant will remain a high-risk explosive scenario for decades ahead. After all, a program for future decommissioning is unclear and overall radiation guesstimates are formidable. All the structures where decommissioning will take place are highly radioactive and as such nearly impossible for the dangers to worker exposure.

TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) does not yet know the true extent of damage nor the complete dispersion of corium (molten magma from melted nuclear fuel rods in the core of the reactors). Although engineers believe they’ve located the corium in all three crippled units. For example, when unit 1 was surveyed by a robot, images showed many parts of the concrete foundation supporting the pressure vessel severely damaged by intense heat from corium. Corium, which is the product of the meltdown of fuel rods in the core of the reactor, is so hot that “corium lava can melt upwards of 30cm (12 inches) of concrete in 1 hour.” (Source: The Most Dangerous (Man-Made) Lava Flow, Wired, April 10, 2013)

Furthermore, on specific point: Researchers at Argonne National Laboratory created corium at 2000°C in an experiment. The experiment demonstrated that “cooling with water may not be sufficient” to halt damaging aspects of corium to concrete. According to the Argonne experiment: “One thing to remember — much of the melting of concrete during a meltdown occurs within minutes to hours, so keeping the core cool is vital for stopping the corium from breaching that containment vessel.”

In the case of Fukushima, TEPCO claims the corium did not breach the outer wall of the containment vessels, “although there is a healthy debate about this,” Ibid. Still, an open question remains. The crippled reactors are so hot with radiation that it’s nearly impossible to fully know what’s happening. Dangers of corium: “Long after the meltdown, the lava constituting the corium will remain highly dangerously radioactive for decades-to-centuries.” (Wired)

Regarding the decision to start releasing radioactive water from storage tanks at Fukushima, which water accumulates daily for purposes of keeping the hot stuff from igniting into an indeterminate fireball, the decision to release was approved by the International Atomic Energy Agency: “The IAEA does not have the scientific authority to make reference to the ecological impact of this water discharge, nor has it carried out such a long-term assessment. It is more of a political decision than a scientific one.” (Kobayashi)

Radiation Risks to Society

According to the World Nuclear Association, there were no fatalities due to radiation exposure at Fukushima. And as recently as 2021, Forbes magazine reported No one Died From Radiation At Fukushima: IAEA Boss. It is believed this is a lie and part of a massive coverup.

According to Green Cross (founded in 1993 by Mikhail Gorbachev, who repeatedly spoke out about interrelated threats humanity and our Earth confront from nuclear arms, chemical weapons, unsustainable development, and the human-induced decimation of the planet’s ecology): “Approximately 32 million people in Japan are affected by the radioactive fallout from the nuclear disaster in Fukushima… This includes people who were exposed to radiation and other stress factors resulting from the accident and who are consequently at potential risk from both long and short-term consequences… As with the Chernobyl nuclear accident, which impacted 10 million people, Japan is expected to see increased cancer risk and neuropsychological long-term health consequences.”

With nuclear radiation, the damage to humans shows up years later as cancer and/or deformity of newborns second/third generation. For example, only recently, the truth has come to surface about Chernobyl-related deaths, child deformities, and cancer 30+ years after the event. For example:

* A BBC Future Planet article d/d July 25, 2019, The True Toll of the Chernobyl Disaster: “According to the official, internationally recognized death toll, just 31 people died as an immediate result of Chernobyl while the UN estimates that only 50 deaths can be directly attributed to the disaster. In 2005, it predicted a further 4,000 might eventually die as a result of the radiation exposure… Brown’s research, however, suggests Chernobyl has cast a far longer shadow.”

* “The number of deaths in subsequent decades remains in dispute. The lowest estimates are 4,000; others 90,000 and up to 200,000.” (Source: Janata Weekly: Cuba and the Children of Chernobyl, May 7, 2023)

* According to an article in USA Today d/d February 24, 2022, What Happened at Chernobyl? What to Know About Nuclear Disaster: “At least 28 people were killed by the disaster, but thousands more have died from cancer as a result of radiation that spread after the explosion and fire. The effects of radiation on the environment and humans is still being studied.”

According to Chernobyl Children International, 6,000 newborns are born every year in Ukraine with congenital heart defects called “Chernobyl Heart.”

Fukushima Report: The stress-related effects of Fukushima evacuation and subsequent relocation are also a concern. The evacuation involved a total of over 400,000 individuals, 160,000 of them from within 20km of Fukushima. The number of deaths from the nuclear disaster attributed to stress, fatigue and the hardship of living as evacuees is estimated to be around 1,700 so far. (Source; Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant Disaster: How Many People Were Affected? 2015 Report, Reliefweb, March 9, 2015.

The Fukushima Report was prepared under the direction of Prof. Jonathan M. Samet, Director of the Institute for Global Health at the University of Southern California (USC), as a Green Cross initiative. Green Cross International: GCI is an independent non-profit and nongovernmental organization founded in 1993 by Nobel Peace Laureate Mikhail Gorbachev.

Over time, Japan is expected to see increased cancer risks and neuropsychological long-term health consequences. “The lives of approximately 42 million people have been permanently affected by radioactive contamination caused by the accidents in the Chernobyl and Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plants. Continued exposure to low-level radiation, entering the human body on a daily basis through food intake, is of particular consequence,” Ibid.

Fukushima Deaths

The cocksure pro-nuclear crowd has trumpeted Fukushima as an example of Mother Nature taking lives because of an earthquake and tsunami; whereas the power plant accident proves nuclear power can withstand the worst without unnecessary death and illness. According to nuclear industry reports, all the deaths (16,000) were the fault of Mother Nature, not radiation.

But people in the streets and on the ground in Japan tell a different story about the risks of radiation. They talk about illnesses and death. TEPCO itself has reported few radiation illnesses and no radiation-caused deaths but what if it’s not their responsibility in the first instance, as layers of contractors and subcontractors employ workers to cleanup the toxic mess. If “subcontractor workers die” from radiation exposure, so what? It’s not TEPCO’s responsibility to report worker deaths of subcontractors, and the subcontractors are not motivated to report deaths, which are not reported.

According to credible sources in Japan, death is in the air, to wit: “The ashes of half a dozen unidentified laborers ended up at a Buddhist temple in this town just north of the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant. Some of the dead men had no papers, others left no emergency contacts. Their names could not be confirmed, and no family members had been tracked down to claim their remains. They were simply labeled ‘decontamination troops’ — unknown soldiers in Japan’s massive cleanup campaign to make Fukushima livable again five years after radiation poisoned the fertile countryside… Hideaki Kinoshita, a Buddhist monk… keeps the unidentified laborers’ ashes at his temple, in wooden boxes and wrapped in white cloth.” (Source: Mari Yamaguchi, Fukushima ‘Decontamination Troops’ Often Exploited, Shunned, AP & ABC News, Minamisoma, Japan, Mar 10, 2016)

“The men were among the 26,000 workers — many in their 50s and 60s from the margins of society with no special skills or close family ties — tasked with removing the contaminated topsoil and stuffing it into tens of thousands of black bags lining the fields and roads. They wipe off roofs, clean out gutters and chop down trees in a seemingly endless routine… Coming from across Japan to do a dirty, risky and undesirable job, the workers make up the very bottom of the nation’s murky, caste-like subcontractor system long criticized for labor violations,” Ibid.

The following is part of an interview with Katsutaka Idogawa, former mayor of Futaba, Fukushima Prefecture. (Source: Fukushima Disaster: Tokyo Hides Truth as Children Die, Become Ill from Radiation – Ex-Mayor, RT, April 21, 2014):

SS (question): The United Nations report on the radiation fallout from Fukushima says no radiation-related deaths or acute diseases have been observed among the workers and general public exposed – so it’s not that dangerous after all? Or is there not enough information available to make proper assessments? What do you think?

Katslutaka Idogawa’s response: “This report is completely false. The report was made by a representative of Japan – Professor Hayano. Representing Japan, he lied to the whole world. When I was mayor, I knew many people who died from a heart attack, and then there were many people in Fukushima who died suddenly, even among young people. It’s a real shame that the authorities hide the truth from the whole world, from the UN. We need to admit that actually many people are dying. We are not allowed to say that, but TEPCO employees also are dying. But they keep mum about it.”

Mako Oshidori, interviewed in Germany, director of Free Press Corporation/Japan, investigated several unreported worker deaths, and interviewed a former nurse who quit TEPCO: “I would like to talk about my interview of a nurse who used to work at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) after the accident… He quit his job with TEPCO in 2013, and that’s when I interviewed him… As of now, there are multiple NPP workers that have died, but only the ones who died on the job are reported publicly. Some of them have died suddenly while off work, for instance, during the weekend or in their sleep, but none of their deaths are reported.” (Oshidori)

“Not only that, but they are also not included in the worker death count. For example, there are some workers who quit the job after a lot of radiation exposure… and end up dying a month later, but none of these deaths are either reported, or included in the death toll. This is the reality of the NPP workers.” (Oshidori)

During her interview, Ms. Oshidori commented, “There is one thing that really surprised me here in Europe. It’s the fact that people here think Japan is a very democratic and free country.”

Mako’s full interview “The Hidden Truth about Fukushima”

Alas, two hundred U.S. sailors of the USS Ronald Reagan filed a lawsuit against TEPCO, claiming that they experienced leukemia, ulcers, gall bladder removals, brain cancer, brain tumors, testicular cancer, dysfunctional uterine bleeding, thyroid illness, stomach ailments and other complaints extremely unusual in such young adults. One sailor died from radiation complications. Among the plaintiffs was a sailor who was pregnant during the mission. Her baby was born with multiple genetic mutations.

The sailors that filed the suit participated in “Operation Tomodachi,” providing humanitarian relief after the March 11th, 2011 Fukushima disaster based upon assurances that radiation levels were okay. But that was a lie.

Ultimately, and unsurprisingly, the 9^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the sailors’ appeal.

In summation, the final word is left to Kolin Kobaryashi: “The international nuclear lobby, which represents only a minority, has the influence and money to dominate the world’s population with immense power and has now united the world’s minority nuclear community into one big galaxy. Many of the citizens who have experienced the world’s three most serious civil nuclear accidents have clearly realized that nuclear energy is too dangerous. These citizens are so divided and conflicted that they feel like a helpless minority.”

“Former prime ministers Junichiro Koizumi and Naoto Kan called on the European Union on Thursday to pursue a path toward zero nuclear power, with the bloc planning to designate it as a form of “green” energy in achieving net-zero emissions by midcentury.” (Source: Ex-Prime Ministers Koizumi and Kan Demand EU Choose Zero Nuclear Power Path, The Japan Times, Jan. 27, 2022)

“Five former Japanese prime ministers issued declarations that Japan should break with nuclear power generation on March 11, the 10th anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami that triggered a nuclear disaster in Fukushima Prefecture… Former prime ministers Morihiro Hosokawa, Tomiichi Murayama, Junichiro Koizumi, Yukio Hatoyama and Naoto Kan signed and released their declarations during the conference. Among them, Koizumi, Hatoyama and Kan took to the podium and shook hands… In his declaration titled ‘Don’t hold back on reversing a mistake: A zero-carbon emission society can be achieved without nuclear power plants,’ Koizumi said, ‘When it comes to the nuclear power plant issue, there is no ruling party or opposition party. Nuclear power plants expose many people’s lives to danger, bring financial ruin, and cause impossible-to-solve nuclear waste problems. We have no choice but to abolish them.” (Source: 5 ex-Japan PMs Call for Country to End Nuclear Power Use on Fukushima 10^th Anniversary, The Mainichi, March 12, 2021)

Japan PM Kishida Orders New Nuclear Power Plant Construction, Nikkei Asia, August 24, 2022.

Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

Share the Wealth vs. Waste the Wealth

BY SAM PIZZIGATI

OCTOBER 17, 2023

In 2020, the Trump tem’s last full year, U.S. households annually making over $1 million faced fewer tax audits than households with incomes low enough to qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit. That had never happened before.

But the blame for this plutocratic about-face, a new Americans for Tax Fairness report makes clear, doesn’t belong to the Trump crew alone. Rich people-friendly members of Congress gave Donald Trump his tax-cutting playbook. Ever since 2010, they had been squeezing the IRS budget big-time, forcing the agency “to drastically pull back on auditing the ultra-wealthy.”

How drastically? Between 2010 and 2020, audits on millionaires dropped a whopping 92 percent.

Our rich have taken full advantage. Close to a thousand taxpayers making over $1 million per year, Senator Ron Widen from Oregon has just pointed out, haven’t even bothered “to file tax returns over multiple recent years.”

Widen, the chair of the Senate Finance Committee, wants to see the IRS devote more of the $80 billion increase in funding the agency gained last year — after President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law — to helping increase the audit rate on America’s richest.

Republicans in Congress, meanwhile, are pushing a budget for next year that would chop IRS funding by $67 billion. That deep a cut, Americans for Tax Fairness calculates, would leave the nation right back where the Trump gang left it: with millionaires pocketing one-sixth of the nation’s household income getting audited less than 1 percent of the time.

But even if we had an IRS with the auditing capacity to take on our super rich, those rich would have little real cause for concern. Yes, many rich do currently cheat on their taxes. But most rich don’t have to cheat or even cut corners. Our deepest pockets can legally sidestep any significant tax bill, thanks to a wide constellation of loopholes their lobbyists have managed to shoehorn into federal tax laws.

One example of the games rich people can now play — and always win: the donate-to-nonprofits dodge.

Most of us hear the word “nonprofit” and think Red Cross or some other familiar charity. These traditional charities fall under section 501(c)(3) of the U.S. tax code. People who donate to 501(c)(3)s can get an income tax deduction for their donations.

Other nonprofits — most notably those that come under the tax code’s 501(c)(4) — can’t offer their donors a charitable deduction at income tax time. But these C4 nonprofits can engage in activities that have next to nothing to do with providing charitable services. They can own companies indefinitely, as Forbes details, and benefit private individuals. They can lobby lawmakers as much as they want and “get directly involved in politics.”

This flexibility that C4s offer became particularly attractive to America’s deepest pockets in 2015. Lobbyists bankrolled by the billionaire Koch family wiggled into the tax law that year a charming little loophole that lets our super rich take shares of stock they own that have appreciated handsomely in value and pass these shares to C4s — without having to pay either a gift tax or a capital gains tax on the share transfer.

The C4 receiving these hefty gifts of shares, Forbes adds, “can then sell the stock, capital gains tax–free, or hold on to it indefinitely, reaping the dividends.”

Thanks to this loophole, note investigative journalists Judd Legum and Tesnim Zekeria, billionaires like Charles Koch can now use their allied C4s “to spend as much money as they want on political campaigns without disclosing their spending or paying taxes.”

Our current tax code abounds in shady tricks like this C4 maneuvering, tricks that let our super rich take dollars that should be filling the public purse and move them into the bank accounts of “nonprofits” dedicated to doing whatever they can to keep our wealthiest ever more wealthy.

How do the rich justify this massive tax code manipulation? We simply can’t count on our government, these rich insist, to spend our tax dollars sensibly. The rich make this point at every opportunity they can.

Harold Hamm, for instance, has fracked his way to a fortune now worth close to $20 billion. The thought of paying taxes outrages him almost as much as the $975 million that a divorce settlement eight years ago had him shelling out to his second wife.

“I haven’t seen anything,” says Hamm, “to lead me to believe that the government has done very well with the money America has already given them.”

This billionaire emphasis on “government waste” has served, over the years, to justify cutting taxes across the board, even for the wealthiest among us. But this “government waste” line seems to be losing some oomph.

The main reason? The enormously wasteful spending of our rich has become considerably more conspicuous. We now have entire publications devoted to chronicling how opulently the rich operate, at every level of their lives. Their private jets. Their multiple mansions. Their cute little trinkets.

In Los Angeles, as Mansion Global reports, we have the architect Paul McClean specializing in transparent-bottom “multi-level” swimming pools that give the wealthy and their house guests “the illusion of floating in the air.”

“It’s fun to see people swimming overhead,” says McClean of his aquatic creations.

Also fun for our most fabulously fortunate: splurging on their pets with everything from $152 designer poop-bag holders and $1,100 wooden doggie bowls to $12,000 miniature playhouses.

These same rich, of course, seldom miss an opportunity to splurge on themselves. True Residential offers fridges that can run over $25,000.

“Most of our customers are not looking to keep up with the Joneses,” muses Chelsea McClaran, the True Residential brand manager. “They’re looking to have something that nobody’s ever seen before.”

Maybe one day we’ll be able to give these rich something they figured they would never ever see: an America seriously striving to become a much more equal place.


Sam Pizzigati writes on inequality for the Institute for Policy Studies. His latest book: The Case for a Maximum Wage (Polity). Among his other books on maldistributed income and wealth: The Rich Don’t Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph over Plutocracy that Created the American Middle Class, 1900-1970 (Seven Stories Press).

How California’s Fast-Food Workers Won $20 an Hour

BY SONALI KOLHATKAR

OCTOBER 16, 2023
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Photograph Source: Allan Ferguson – CC BY 2.0

More than half a million fast-food workers in California are about to get a raise—not because of the voluntary generosity of their bosses, but as a result of a hard-won labor victory. Governor Gavin Newsom on September 28 signed AB 1228 into law; its title says it all: “Fast Food Council: health, safety, employment, and minimum wage.”

As a result of this new law, the state of California will form a council, which will include worker representatives, to oversee health, safety, and workplace matters for fast-food workers and to decide their minimum wage. Further, the law pushes up the minimum wage for such workers to $20 an hour starting next April after which the council will determine subsequent annual increases.

That starting point of $20 an hour is significantly more than the state’s already relatively high minimum wage of $15.50 an hour (one that’s set to increase to $16 in January 2024). California’s fast-food workers will now be among the highest-paid low-wage workers in the nation.

The origins of this momentous victory can be traced back to a movement that began on the opposite side of the country more than a decade ago. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU)’s Fight for $15 campaign, launched in the form of a walkout in New York City in 2012 demanded a wage floor that, at the time, sounded audacious. While it’s no longer terribly bold to demand $15 an hour in an economy where inflation has disproportionately impacted low-wage workers and where billionaires continue to enjoy unimaginable riches, consider this: there are more than a dozen states in the U.S. where the minimum wage remains pegged to the ridiculously paltry federal minimum of $7.25 an hour.

The Fight for $15 movement used a clever alliteration to change the narrative on what low-wage workers deserved to earn. Earning its fair share of well-deserved criticism for not building explicit “worker power,” SEIU has poured millions of dollars of resources into the movement, playing the long game toward building a national fast-food workers’ union, one that has yet to materialize.

In the interim, SEIU has championed the idea of forming sector-specific councils at the state level, which is what AB 1228 is centered on. The New York Times described this as, “sectoral bargaining, in which workers and management negotiate wages and conditions across an entire industry as opposed to at individual companies, often location by location.” By forming alliances with state representatives, organized labor can demand regulations of industries where workers are routinely abused and exploited without having to wait for union representation.

Starbucks workers understand the challenge of organizing unions one restaurant at a time. While workers at hundreds of the coffee chain’s locations have successfully petitioned to join Starbucks Workers United (SWU), none have been able to sign a union contract with Starbucks yet. The company has violated so many labor laws so fast that the federal National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has been unable to keep up.

All Starbucks has to do is fire workers known to lead union organizing drives and then ignore the NLRB’s demand to negotiate if and when a complaint is filed. The current labor laws are toothless in the face of such aggressive union-busting.

The fast-food industry is even more challenging. Unlike Starbucks, fast-food corporations tend to operate on a franchise model, which helps parent companies avoid liability for labor violations at individual restaurants. According to a 2021 report by the UCLA Labor Center, fast-food workers routinely “experience physical assault, harassment, intimidation, threats, and verbal abuse.” Further, “Restaurant workers have the highest rates of sexual harassment of any industry.”

That ability to intimidate workers is key to why unionization efforts have failed (Fight for $15’s original sentiment was “$15 and a union”). It’s one thing to demand higher wages by walking out for a day—which many workers have risked their jobs to do numerous times—and it’s another thing to organize for permanent union protection.

The fast-food industry is so antagonistic to labor organizing that it threatened to go directly to voters in a high-stakes gamble at the ballot box when Newsom signed an earlier version of the new labor law in 2022 that included holding parent companies responsible for its franchises. An industry-funded proposition slated for the November 2024 California ballot would have asked voters to rollback the labor law.

Democratic as the state’s ballot measures are on paper, moneyed interests have tested the system time and again, realizing that massively well-funded public relations campaigns to deceive voters into backing corporate interests offer a great ROI (return on investment) to preserve shareholder profits.

The highest profile case in point is the 2020 California ballot measure Proposition 22, which allowed rideshare and delivery companies like Uber and Lyft to treat their employees as individual contractors, and therefore exempt them from standard labor protections. The industry spent upward of $200 million to pass Proposition 22—the most expensive ballot battle at the time—and prevailed, even in a state that embraces labor rights.

Likely realizing that the fast-food industry could hire armies of PR consultants, marketing experts, and election campaigners to similarly convince voters that the 2022 labor law was not in their best interest, the governor’s office brought labor and fast-food to the negotiating table. AB 1228 was the result of a compromise that was struck: the legislature would pass a new version of the bill without the threat to the franchise model in exchange for the fast-food companies withdrawing their ballot measure to undo the entire law.

On the one hand, the passage of this new labor law proves that a corporate oligarchy still has far too much sway on our democratic processes, using money and resources as weapons to undermine people’s rights.

On the other hand, it also proves that there is no need to capitulate to corporate employers and that an alliance between organized labor and lawmakers can move the needle on workers’ rights. Further, the fact that this battle took place in California, the nation’s largest, and the world’s fourth-largest economy, creates a strong precedent for the rest of the nation.

Most importantly, more than half a million low-wage workers struggling in one of the most exploitative industries in the nation will shortly get a decent pay bump and enjoy a measure of protection from the forthcoming council.

This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Sonali Kolhatkar is the founder, host and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV (Dish Network, DirecTV, Roku) and Pacifica stations KPFK, KPFA, and affiliates.

AI: Profit vs. Freedom

BY RICHARD D. WOLFF

Artificial Intelligence (AI) presents a profit opportunity for capitalists, but it presents a crucial choice for the working class. Because the working class is the majority, that crucial choice confronts society as a whole. It is the same profit opportunity/social choice that was presented by the introduction of robotics, computers, and indeed by most technological advances throughout capitalism’s history. In capitalism, employers decide when, where, and how to install new technologies; employees do not. Employers’ decisions are driven chiefly by whether and how new technologies affect their profits.

If new technologies enable employers to profitably replace paid workers with machines, they will implement the change. Employers have little or no responsibility to the displaced workers, their families, neighborhoods, communities, or governments for the many consequences of jobs lost. If the cost to society of joblessness is 100 whereas the gain to employers’ profits is 50, the new technology is implemented. Because the employers’ gain governs the decision, the new technology is introduced, no matter how small that gain is relative to society’s loss. That is how capitalism has always functioned.

A simple arithmetic example can illustrate the key point. Suppose AI doubles some employees’ productivity. During the same work time, they produce twice as much as before the use of AI. Employers who use AI will then fire half of their employees. Such employers will then receive the same output from the remaining 50 percent of their employees as before the introduction of AI. To keep our example simple, let’s assume those employers then sell that same output for the same price as before. Their resulting revenues will then likewise be the same. The use of AI will save the employers 50 percent of their former total wage bills (less the cost of implementing AI) and those savings will be kept by employers as added profit for them. That added profit was an effective incentive for the employer to implement AI.

If we imagine for a moment that the employees had the power that capitalism confers exclusively on employers, they would choose to use AI in an altogether different way. They would use AI, fire no one, but instead cut all employees’ working days by 50 percent while keeping their wages the same. Once again keeping our example simple, this would result in the same output as before the use of AI, and the same price for the goods or services and revenue inflow would follow. The profit margin would remain the same after the use of AI as before (minus the cost of implementing the technology). The 50 percent of employees’ previous workdays that are now available for their leisure would be the benefit they accrue. That leisure—freedom from work—is their incentive to use AI differently from how employers did.

One way of using AI yields added profits for a few, while the other way yields added leisure/freedom to many. Capitalism rewards and thus encourages the employers’ way. Democracy points the other way. The technology itself is ambivalent. It can be used either way.

Thus, it is simply false to write or say—as so many do these days—that AI threatens millions of jobs or jobholders. Technology is not doing that. Rather the capitalist system organizes enterprises into employers versus employees and thereby uses technological progress to increase profit, not employees’ free time.

Throughout history, enthusiasts celebrated most major technological advances because of their “labor-saving” qualities. Introducing new technologies would deliver less work, less drudgery, and less demeaning labor. The implication was that “we”—all people—would benefit. Of course, capitalists’ added profits from technical advances no doubt brought them more leisure. However, the added leisure new technologies made possible for the employee majority was mostly denied to them. Capitalism—the profit-driven system—caused that denial.

Today, we face the same old capitalist story. The use of AI can ensure much more leisure for the working class, but capitalism instead subordinates AI to profiteering. Politicians shed crocodile tears over the scary vista of jobs lost to AI. Pundits exchange estimates of how many millions of jobs will be lost if AI is adopted. Gullible liberals invent new government programs aimed to lessen or soften AI’s impact on employment. Once again, the unspoken agreement is not to question whether and how the problem is capitalism nor to pursue the possibility of system change as that problem’s solution.

In an economy based on worker coops, employees would collectively be their own employers. Capitalism’s core structure of enterprises—the employer versus employee system—would no longer prevail. Implementing technology would then be a collective decision democratically arrived at. With the absence of capitalism’s employer versus employee division, the decision about when, where, and how to use AI, for example, would become the task and responsibility of the employees as a collective whole. They might consider the profitability of the enterprise among their goals for using AI, but they would certainly also consider the gain in leisure that this makes possible. Worker coops make decisions that differ from those of capitalist enterprises. Different economic systems affect and shape the societies in which they operate differently.

Across capitalism’s history, employers and their ideologues learned how best to advocate for technological changes that could enhance profits. They celebrated those changes as breakthroughs in human ingenuity deserving everyone’s support. Individuals who suffered due to these technological advances were dismissed as, “the price to pay for social progress.” If those who suffered fought back, they were denounced for what was seen as anti-social behavior and were often criminalized.

As with previous technological breakthroughs, AI places on society’s agenda both new issues and old contentious ones. AI’s importance is not limited to the productivity gains it achieves and the job losses it threatens. AI also challenges—yet again—the social decision to preserve the employer-employee division as the basic organization of enterprises. In capitalism’s past, only employers made the decisions whose results employees had to live with and accept. Maybe with AI, employees will demand to make those decisions via a system change beyond capitalism toward a worker-coop-based alternative.

SEPTEMBER 25, 2023

Richard Wolff is the author of Capitalism Hits the Fan and Capitalism’s Crisis Deepens. He is founder of Democracy at Work.

 

CASR Condemns Indian Government’s Repression of Palestine Solidarity Protests

in India — by Campaign Against State Repression — 17/10/2023

CASR (CAMPAIGN AGAINST STATE REPRESSION ) STRONGLY CONDEMNS THE INDIAN STATE’S BRUTAL REPRESSION ON PALESTINIAN SOLIDARITY DEMONSTRATIONS ALL OVER INDIA TO SHOW LOYALTY TOWARDS ISRAEL

Unlawful attacks by the Indian government have intensified since the 7th October 2023 Palestinian resistance against the Zionist entity of Israel, against all who are coming in solidarity with the Palestinian people. In Uttar Pradesh, four students at Aligarh Muslim University were booked under IPC’s Sections 153A (promoting enmity among different groups), 188 (disobedience to order promulgated by public servant) and 505 (statements conducting to public mischief) for taking a pro-Palestine march. Students at Jamia Millia Islamia University were detained, and their posters were torn by the police for a demonstration in support of Palestine. In Kashmir, the Jamia Masjid in Srinagar was pre-emptively shut down prior to its Friday prayers out of fear that pro-Palestine protests would emerge after the conclusion of the prayers. Chairperson of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference Mirwaiz Umar Farooq has once again been placed under house arrest as part of this pre-emptive clampdown. In Karnataka, Aslam Basha was detained for a WhatsApp status in support of Palestine. Activists associated with Revolutionary Workers’ Party of India, Shivani Kaul, Prasen, Baban Thoke, Ashay, Shashank, Dhananjay were put under house arrest and then subsequently detained in Delhi, Allahabad, and Mumbai when they called for a protest on October 13. In Mumbai, activists Ruchir and Supreeth suffered physical injuries at the hands of the police and were detained too. Eight other activists were detained in Delhi for similar reasons. In Allahabad, members of Disha Students Organization were detained too while in Telangana, Bhargavi, Hina, Sreeja, Sam, Geetha, Anita, Mahipal and Anand were detained. On 16th October, in Delhi, various civil society and intellectuals called for a citizen’s protest at Jantar Mantar but people were detained before they could make it to Jantar Mantar, including Delhi University’s Professor Saroj Giri. The police brought forth large cohorts of male and female constables in a display of the desperation of the government to clamp down on this protest. These cohorts attacked and detained people joining the protest which also included various trade union activists. A Delhi University student was chased down by the police and physically assaulted. She was then detained.

The Indian government has made a mockery of its own mandates in this conflict, with the Minister of External Affairs re-iterating India’s old diplomatic position of supporting Palestinian self-determination and the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state yet brutal undemocratic suppression of all coming in support of Palestine is being undertaken by the government. In AMU, the university authorities and the police have gone so far as to say that Narendra Modi’s tweet, which offered its support to Israel, is the ‘stand of the country’ and any protest in support of Palestine and its self-determination is deemed to be in contravention to the law of the land, which happens to be determined by a tweet of the Prime Minister. Based on this tweet, the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has already ordered the police to clamp down on any social media or any other statement in support of Palestine. India’s formal position has little meaning in the eyes of Brahmanical Hindutva fascist forces who are using this to foster violence towards Muslims in India. Indian law has taken a backseat, with the police suppressing pro-Palestine demonstrations based on the tweets of the Prime Minister. An atmosphere of fear-mongering and of Zionist support is being built by this suppression of Palestinian support, even when Palestine’s just right to self-determination is recognized by the United Nations too.

Campaign Against State Repression condemns the Zionist attacks and the war crimes committed by Israel on the people of Palestine and further condemns the undemocratic actions of the Indian state in support of these attacks and against Palestinian self-determination.

CASR demands immediate release of all persons detained by the police.

Campaign Against State Repression
(AIRSO,AISA, AISF, APCR,BASF, BSM, Bhim Army, Bigul Mazdoor Dasta, bsCEM, CEM, CRPP, CTF, Disha, DISSC, DSU, DTF, Fraternity ,IAPL, Karnataka Janashakti, LAA,Mazdoor Adhikar Sangathan, Mazdoor Patrika, , Morcha Patrika, NAPM, NBS, Nowruz, NTUI, People’s Watch, Rihai Manch, Samajwadi Janparishad,Smajwadi lok manch, Bahujan Samjavadi Mnach, SFI, United Against Hate, WSS,Y4S)

‘Sacrifice Zones’: The New ‘Jim Crow’ That’s Sickening and Killing People of Color 

by Reynard Loki — 13/10/2023

A product of entrenched, historic racism, “sacrifice zones”—designed to site pollution hot spots within communities of color—are a front line in a largely silent, often deadly, and steadily growing health crisis across the United States.

The Black Lives Matter movement and the COVID-19 pandemic have highlighted how systemic racism disproportionately places danger and harm on low-income and minority populations. One harsh reality of this systemic racism is the existence of “sacrifice zones”: Communities located near pollution hot spots that have been permanently impaired by intensive and concentrated industrial activity, such as factories, chemical plants, power plants, oil and gas refineries, landfills, and factory farms.

As noted by the Climate Reality Project, an environmental nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., “These areas are called ‘sacrifice zones’ because the health and safety of people in these communities [are] being effectively sacrificed for the economic gains and prosperity of others.”

Designated by corporations and policymakers, these areas are a product of environmental racism: the systemic social, economic, and political structures—including weak laws, lack of enforcement, corporate negligence, and limited access to health care—that place disproportionate environmental health burdens on specific communities based on race and ethnicity.

Because people of color and low-income groups in the United States are most likely to live in sacrifice zones, they breathe polluted air, drink contaminated water, and are exposed to a variety of toxic chemicals and particulate matter. More than 50 percent of residents who live near hazardous waste are people of color, with Black Americans 75 percent more likely to live near these sites. Considering these facts, it is no surprise that communities of color have a higher chance of dying from environmental causes than white people.

“Thirty-nine percent of the people living near coal-fired power plants are people of color, so what’s absolutely true is that there are a disproportionate number of people of color living next to these plants,” then-senior director of the environmental and climate justice program at the NAACP, Jacqueline Patterson, told Yale Environment 360 in June 2013. Speaking after the release of an NAACP report on the disproportionate effects of coal-fired plants on minorities, Patterson further added that “[s]eventy-eight percent of African Americans live within 30 miles of a coal-fired power plant. We also discovered that Latino communities, as well as Indigenous communities and low-income communities, are more likely to live next to coal-fired plants.”

Entrenched Inequity

Sacrifice zones are a consequence of an “extractive development model” supported by self-serving government officials who want to create job and income opportunities provided by polluting industries rather than avoiding irreversible damage caused by these industries to communities of color. “Sacrifice zones are the result of many deeply rooted inequities in our society. One of these inequities takes the form of unwise (or biased) land use decisions, dictated by local or state officials, intent on attracting big industries to the town, county, or state, in an effort to create jobs and raise tax revenues,” wrote Steve Lerner in his 2012 book Sacrifice Zones: The Front Lines of Toxic Chemical Exposure in the United States. “When decisions are made about where to locate heavily polluting industries, they often end up sited in low-income communities of color where people are so busy trying to survive that they have little time to protest the building of a plant next door. Those who make the land use decisions that govern sacrifice zones typically designate these areas as residential/industrial areas, a particularly pernicious type of zoning ordinance.”

“In these areas, industrial facilities and residential homes are built side by side, and few localities have adequate buffer zone regulations to provide breathing room between heavy industries and residential areas,” Lerner continued.

The polluting environment results in an increased prevalence of health problems among residents living near heavy industries. “The health impact of this patently unwise zoning formula is predictable: [R]esidents along the fenceline with heavy industry often experience elevated rates of respiratory disease, cancer, reproductive disorders, birth defects, learning disabilities, psychiatric disorders, eye problems, headaches, nosebleeds, skin rashes, and early death. In effect, the health of these Americans is sacrificed, or, more precisely, their health is not protected to the same degree as citizens who can afford to live in exclusively residential neighborhoods,” stated the book.

The Center for Health, Environment & Justice, a nonprofit environmental activism group based in Falls Church, Virginia, asserted that “[d]ue to redlining, low property values, and other social factors, these communities have historically consisted of [low-income] and/or minority populations.”

The group pointed out that “federal air policies regulate facility emissions one stack at a time and one chemical at a time. Impacted communities, however, are exposed to the cumulative impact of multiple pollutants released over an extended period of time from a cluster of facilities.”

Executive Action

President Joe Biden has made environmental justice a priority in his administration, issuing an executive order on how to tackle climate change on January 20, 2021, his first day in office. In the order, Biden directed the federal government to “advance environmental justice” where agencies “failed to meet that commitment in the past.”

On January 27, 2021, Biden signed another executive order that created a White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council to address the environmental impacts of systemic racism specifically. “We must deliver environmental justice in communities all across America,” the order said. “To secure an equitable economic future, the United States must ensure that environmental and economic justice are key considerations in how we govern.”

A separate executive order directed federal agencies to prioritize racial equity in their work, which incorporates racial and environmental justice across the federal government. However, without congressional action on the legislative front, another president could reverse these orders.

Biden’s $2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure plan includes provisions that address longstanding racial inequities, including “$20 billion to ‘reconnect’ communities of color to economic opportunity.” In addition, the proposal provides for funds to replace lead water pipes that have harmed communities of color in cities like Flint, Michigan, and to clean up environmental hazards that have harmed Hispanic and tribal communities.

Launched in January 2021, Biden’s Justice40 Initiative encompasses 146 programs within the Department of Energy (DOE)—far more than any other federal department. Together, these programs instruct the DOE to make decisions and fund renewable and fossil fuel projects with the consideration of how they will affect historically disadvantaged communities.

“We at the Department of Energy historically have done a terrible job, honestly,” said Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm at Greentown Labs, a Houston incubator for startups, in March 2023. “Only 1 percent of funding has gone to small, minority, and disadvantaged businesses.” She added, “We have had these structural inequalities, inequities in the past, and we’re trying to remedy that through embedding sort of structural equity into these programs.”

“We’ll create good jobs for millions of Americans… and we’ll do it all to withstand the devastating effects of climate change and promote environmental justice,” Biden said in his 2022 State of the Union address.

Progress at the federal level has been slow, even though the executive branch has been aware of the systemic issues for decades. In a 2004 report, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said that “the solution to unequal protection lies in the realm of environmental justice for all Americans. No community, rich or poor, [B]lack or white, should be allowed to become a ‘sacrifice zone,’” while quoting Robert D. Bullard, who was then a professor at Clark Atlanta University.

On April 21, 2023, President Biden signed an executive order directing all federal agencies to work toward “environmental justice for all” and improve the lives of communities across the nation that have been most impacted by climate change and toxic pollution. The order established a new White House Office of Environmental Justice to coordinate revitalized efforts across the government meant to achieve environmental justice.

“For far too long, communities across our country have faced persistent environmental injustice through toxic pollution, underinvestment in infrastructure and critical services, and other disproportionate environmental harms often due to a legacy of racial discrimination including redlining. These communities with environmental justice concerns face even greater burdens due to climate change,” the April 21 order stated.

Kristine Stratton, president and CEO of the National Recreation and Park Association (NRPA), praised the order. “NRPA commends the Biden administration for its action that prioritizes a renewed commitment to the climate, ensuring healthy communities and environmental resilience for all,” Stratton said in a press statement. “We are thrilled to learn of the establishment of the Office of Environmental Justice at the White House, to help coordinate efforts toward protecting vulnerable communities impacted by environmental injustice. We must ensure all people benefit from spaces that are not only resilient and regenerative but also transformative at the community level.”

Criticism of Federal Regulation

In an opinion piece published by the Houston Chronicle on April 2, 2023, Robert D. Bullard, the founding director of the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice, criticized federal regulators for paying lip service to impacted communities of color. He wrote: “Communities of color and low-income communities have long felt the adverse impacts of the fossil fuel industry and the climate crisis it caused, but most of those communities didn’t have a seat at the environmental justice roundtable,” referring to a March 2023 meeting of stakeholders organized by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) “to better incorporate environmental justice and equity considerations into its decisions.”

Bullard pointed out that FERC—an independent federal agency within the Department of Energy that regulates the interstate transmission of electricity, gas, and oil, as well as natural gas terminals and hydropower projects—has approved “roughly 20 new or expanded gas export terminals… slated to come online in communities across the Gulf Coast within the next decade.” These projects will only worsen the already heavily polluted, hazardous, and unhealthy region known as “Cancer Alley” (named for the region’s elevated cancer rates) for the minority groups living in these fenceline communities.

Using data processing software and Environmental Protection Agency modeling tool, ProPublica mapped the spread of cancer-causing chemicals from various sources throughout the U.S. between 2014 and 2018. It found that areas where a majority of the residents were people of color experienced 40 percent “more cancer-causing industrial air pollution on average than tracts where the residents are mostly white.”

“The commission [FERC] offers little more than pleasantries with regard to justice and equity as it races to approve more polluting facilities in Black, Indigenous, Latino, and other communities of color across the country. Nothing has changed. Our communities are still being sacrificed,” wrote Bullard. According to him, if FERC’s actions were truly fair and equitable, then the farce of holding an environmental justice roundtable wouldn’t be needed, and the commission would not be approving export gas projects if it were actually serious about mitigating the negative ecological impacts suffered by the BIPOC communities as a result of these projects.

Calls for Legislation

On April 6, 2021, the Hip Hop Caucus, a nonprofit advocacy group that tackles issues relating to health care, education, and environmental and social justice, launched a public petition urging Congress to pass legislation that protects communities of color from the health risks posed by environmental degradation.

The petition is cosponsored by several other advocacy groups, including Progress America, Friends of the Earth Action, Coalition on Human Needs, Evergreen Action, and Progressive Reform Network. “Corporate polluters demand human sacrifices,” wrote Mike Phelan, a spokesman for Progress America, in an email about the petition sent on April 3, 2021. “They each have a choice between profits and pollution―and every time, they choose profits.”

In her 2014 book This Changes Everything, Naomi Klein wrote about sacrifice zones, stating that “running an economy on energy sources that release poisons as an unavoidable part of their extraction and refining has always required sacrifice zones—whole subsets of humanity categorized as less than fully human, which made their poisoning in the name of progress somehow acceptable.”

Natural Disasters Increase Racial Inequality

Natural disasters like earthquakes and those tied to climate change, like wildfires, floods, and hurricanes, actually increase racial inequality.

A 2018 study by sociologists Junia Howell of the University of Pittsburgh and James R. Elliott of Rice University in Houston, Texas, found that white Americans who experience disaster accumulate significantly more wealth than any other group after experiencing a natural disaster.

“If you’re white, over time, you’re actually going to accumulate more than if you never had that disaster in the first place. But for [B]lack people, for Latinos, for Asians—it’s not true,” said Howell to LAist.

Ironically, while people of color are more likely to experience the negative impacts of climate change, they support and participate in climate action more than white people.

Environmental Racism: Clear and Present Danger

In 2018, scientists at the EPA’s National Center for Environmental Assessment released a study in the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH) called “Disparities in Distribution of Particulate Matter Emission Sources by Race and Poverty Status.” The report confirmed that environmental racism presents a clear and present danger to people of color across the United States, as they are much more likely to live near polluters.

The study found that poor communities (those living below the poverty line) have a 35 percent higher burden from particulate matter emissions than the overall U.S. population. The health burden carried by nonwhites was 28 percent higher than the overall population, while African Americans had a 54 percent higher burden. The researchers cited economic inequality and historic racism as significant factors that determined the location of facilities emitting particulate pollution.

Particles less than 10 micrometers in diameter that are inhaled can become embedded deep in the lungs and enter the bloodstream. Such particle pollution exposure can cause a number of health impacts, including aggravated asthma, decreased lung function, irregular heartbeat, and heart attacks. For people with heart or lung disease, inhaling these particles can even lead to premature death.

Referring to the study published in the AJPH, then-director of the Environmental Justice Program at the Sierra Club, Leslie Fields said, “This report illustrates how people of color and people with limited means have been grossly taken advantage of by polluters who don’t care about the misery they cause,” according to a statement issued by the environmental nonprofit in 2018. “The disadvantages that come with those health issues, like missing school, create a cycle of poverty and lack of access to opportunity that spans generations and shapes every part of the experience of being a person of color or low-income person in the United States.”

Examining the study in an article for Colorlines, Ayana Byrd wrote that environmental racism “has been called the new Jim Crow and continues to target Black, Latinx, Native, Asian, and other communities of color, subjecting them to generations of poor health outcomes.”

While executive actions from the White House can help to tackle environmental racism and bring the issue into the national conversation, eliminating the existence of sacrifice zones beyond a presidential term requires strong legislation from local, state, and federal lawmakers.

Reynard Loki is a co-founder of the Observatory, where he is the environment and animal rights editor. He is also a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute, where he serves as the editor and chief correspondent for Earth | Food | Life. He previously served as the environment, food, and animal rights editor at AlterNet and as a reporter for Justmeans/3BL Media covering sustainability and corporate social responsibility. He was named one of FilterBuy’s Top 50 Health and Environmental Journalists to Follow in 2016. His work has been published by Yes! Magazine, Salon, Truthout, BillMoyers.com, Asia Times, Pressenza, and EcoWatch, among others. He volunteers with New York City Pigeon Rescue Central.

This article was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute.