Canadian cabinet ministers to talk tariffs with Trump's team in Florida

Canada's finance and foreign ministers flew to Palm Beach, Florida on Thursday to meet with officials of the incoming Trump administration to try to avoid a damaging trade war between Ottawa and Washington.


Issued on: 27/12/2024 -
By: NEWS WIRES

FRANCE24

Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs Melanie Joly responding to a question during a news conference in Ottawa, Noveber 1, 2024. 

© Adrian Wyld, the Canadian Press via AP


Key members of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's cabinet traveled to Florida on Thursday for talks with representatives of US President-elect Donald Trump, as Ottawa works to avert a potentially devastating trade war.

Newly appointed Finance Minister Dominic Leblanc and Foreign Minister Melanie Joly flew to Palm Beach, Florida, "to meet with officials from the incoming Trump administration," Leblanc spokesman Jean-Sebastien Comeau said in a statement sent to AFP.

Trump has vowed to impose punishing 25-percent tariffs on all Canadian imports when he takes office next month.

Trudeau has promised retaliatory measures should Trump follow through on his pledge, without providing specifics.

Trump has said the tariffs will remain in place until Canada addresses the flow of undocumented migrants and the drug fentanyl into the United States.

The meetings set for Friday will "focus on Canada's efforts to combat fentanyl trafficking and illegal migration," the statement said.

The ministers will brief Trump's team on Canada's new CAN$1-billion ($694-million) border security plan, which was devised in response to the tariff threat.

The meeting will also address "the negative impacts that the imposition of 25 percent tariffs on Canadian goods would have on both Canada and the United States," the statement added.

The statement did not mention who the Canadian officials would specifically be meeting with.

Trudeau's envoys headed to Florida as his government confronts an escalating crisis.

Leblanc was named finance minister earlier this month after the surprise resignation of Chrystia Freeland, who was also deputy prime minister.

In a scathing resignation letter, Freeland accused Trudeau of focusing on shortsighted handouts to voters instead of preparing Canada's finances to confront Trump's possible tariffs.

With his Liberal government trailing badly in polls to the Conservatives, some of Trudeau's former allies in parliament have urged him to resign.

Canadian media have named both Joly and Leblanc as potential contenders to lead the Liberal party should Trudeau go.

(AFP)

Times Report on IDF's Lack of Civilian Protections in Gaza 'Confirms What We All Knew'

"Glad the Times is covering the IDF's total lack of safeguards to prevent civilian casualties in Gaza, but outlets like Haartez and ⁦+972... had these stories months ago."


Mourners gather near the bodies of Palestinians killed in an Israeli strike in Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on December 13, 2024.
(Photo: Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto via Getty Images)


"Israel has adopted an understanding of the laws of war that cancels the category of civilian to serve its war of annihilation," said one observer.

Julia Conley
Dec 26, 2024
COMMON DREAMS 
Human rights advocates and journalists in the Middle East have warned since Israel began its assault on Gaza 14 months ago that the Israel Defense Forces, which heralds itself as "the most moral army in the world," has actually been operating far outside the bounds of international humanitarian law—targeting not just Hamas commanders and other armed militants in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack in October 2023, but accepting and encouraging the killing of thousands of civilians of all ages.

On Thursday, The New York Times published an extensive report on how the IDF operated in the earliest weeks of Israel's current escalation, during which more than 15,000 Palestinians—a third of the overall total so far—were killed in Israeli airstrikes and other attacks.

The report details an order that was given by IDF leaders on October 7, 2023, hours after the Hamas-led attack, that the Times said was not previously reported—and builds on extensive reporting by human rights groups like Amnesty International and news outlets such as +972 Magazine and Haaretz about the military's widespread killing of civilians, in many cases with U.S.-made weapons.

The order described in the Times report directed mid-ranking Israeli officers to strike thousands of junior Hamas fighters and minor military sites that had not been the focus of earlier campaigns, and gave them the authority to risk killing up to 20 civilians with each strike.

For some strikes that targeted senior Hamas leaders, the IDF was given the authority to kill more than 100 civilians, and in an order given on October 8, 2023, strikes on military targets in Gaza "were permitted to cumulatively endanger up to 500 civilians each day"—removing a previous limit.

Allowing the killing of more than 100 civilians for one commander crossed "an extraordinary threshold for a contemporary Western military," reported the Times, which has faced accusations of pro-Israel bias in its coverage over the past 14 months.

The newly reported orders reflect comments made by top Israeli government leaders in the early days of the IDF's bombardment, which were reported on at the time by Common Dreams and other outlets. Then-Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on October 10 that he had "released all the restraints" on Israeli troops, and President Israel Herzog asserted days later that there were no civilians in Gaza who were "not involved" in the Hamas attack.

The investigation, said University of Edinburgh political scientist Nicola Perugini, "confirms what we all knew."



The Times reported that the family members of Shaldan al-Najjar, a senior commander in Palestinian Islamic Jihad, were some of the first casualties of Israel's new operating procedures in Gaza. A two-month-old baby was among 20 of al-Najjar's family members who were killed in an airstrike in October 2023, and the severed hand of one of his niece's was found in the rubble of the family home.


Mid-level Israeli officers were required to get approval for strikes from senior commanders if a target was close to a site like a school or healthcare facility, but those targets were "regularly approved."


The Times based its reporting on dozens of military records and interviews with more than 100 soldiers and officials, including 25 IDF members who helped approve or vet targets.


The report details how the Israeli air force "raced through" a database of hundreds of militants and military sites that had been compiled from extensive vetting, and put pressure on the military to quickly find thousands of new targets.


The IDF also largely stopped its use of warning shots to give civilians time to flee an area before a large-scale strike, and significantly increased risks to civilians by using 1,000- and 2,000-pound bombs.

The military told the Times in a statement that its soldiers have "consistently been employing means and methods that adhere to the rules of law."


The Times' reporting comes less than two weeks after the death toll in Gaza was reported to have passed 45,000. A United Nations analysis in November found that women and children made up 70% of the people killed in the enclave between October 2023 and April 2024.

On December 18, Haaretz reported that the IDF has adopted a point of view that "everyone's a terrorist" in Gaza—a report, policy expert Assal Rad said, that was unlikely to be covered by Western news outlets.



At +972 Magazine, journalist Yuval Abraham has written at least twice since October 2023 about the IDF's use of artificial intelligence systems to generate large numbers of targets in Gaza. As Common Dreamsreported in December 2023, an AI-driven system called the Gospel was used to produce 100 targets in a single day, leading IDF sources to compare Gaza to a "factory" where the maximum number of casualties—whether of militants or civilians—was accepted and encouraged.

About 37,000 Palestinians and their homes—potentially with family members inside—were marked by another AI system called Lavender in the first weeks of the war, Abraham reported in another article in April.

In that article Abraham emphasized, similarly to the Times, that up to 100 civilian deaths were allowed for every killing of a senior Hamas commander.

"Glad the Times is covering the IDF's total lack of safeguards to prevent civilian casualties in Gaza," said podcast host and former Obama White House staffer Tommy Vietor, "but outlets like Haartez and ⁦+972... had these stories months ago."

'Major Victory': New Law Makes NY Second State to Hold Big Polluters Accountable

"The billions begin to add up. This is, more or less, how the states slowly and then quite rapidly took down the tobacco industry," said climate leader Bill McKibben.


People hold signs during a press conference on the Climate Change Superfund Act at Pier 17 on May 26, 2023 in New York City.
(Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

Julia Conley
Dec 26, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

Climate advocates in New York on Thursday celebrated a "massive win" for working people, youth, and the climate as Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul made the state the second to pass a law to make fossil fuel giants financially responsible for the environmental damages they cause.

Hochul signed the Climate Change Superfund Act into law after years of advocacy, delivering what Blair Horner, executive director of the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG), called "a welcome holiday gift for New York taxpayers."

The law is modeled on the 1980 State and Federal Superfund law, which requires corporations to fund the cleanup of toxic waste that they cause, and will require the largest fossil fuel companies, which are responsible for a majority of carbon emissions since the beginning of this century, to pay about $3 billion per year for 25 years.

The money—which otherwise would have to be paid by taxpayers, many of whom are already suffering from the extreme weather caused by fossil fuel emissions—will be used to restore and safeguard wetlands, upgrade public infrastructure, improve storm water drainage systems, and pay for climate disaster recovery efforts.



The law will "reinvest $75 billion into the communities most impacted by toxic air pollution, record-breaking storms, and dangerous heatwaves," said Theodore Moore, executive director of the Alliance for a Greater New York.

Lee Wasserman, director of the Rockefeller Family Fund, which lobbied for the new law, told The New York Times that "nothing could be fairer than making climate polluters pay."

New York state Sen. Liz Krueger (D-28), who sponsored the legislation, told the Times that repairs from extreme weather disasters and climate adaptation is projected to cost half a trillion dollars in New York by 2050.

"That's over $65,000 per household, and that's on top of the disruption, injury, and death that the climate crisis is causing in every corner of our state," Krueger said.

State Rep. Phara Souffrant Forrest (D-57) said the new law adopts a "they broke it, they bought it" approach for climate disasters and fossil fuel emissions.



New York taxpayers learned in 2024 that they would be funding $2.2 billion in climate-related infrastructure repairs and upgrades, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimates $52 billion would be needed to protect New York Harbor.

"On top of that, we’ll need $75-100 billion to protect Long Island, and $55 billion for climate costs across the rest of the state," said NYPIRG. "The state comptroller has predicted that more than half of local governments' costs will be attributable to the climate crisis."

Looking at the industry and its $1 trillion in profits over the last four years, one would never know that the emissions of the world's largest polluting corporations have helped rack up $5.4 trillion in climate damages over the last 26 years.

"Our future is on fire, New York is on fire, and meanwhile the fossil fuel industry is bringing in trillions of dollars in profit year after year," said Keanu Arpels-Josiah, organizer for Fridays for Future NYC. "It's high time for them to pay their fair share in New York. The signing of the full Climate Superfund Act, as youth across the state have advocated for year after year, is a critical step toward that—let this be the beginning of a shift on climate from this governor."

NYPIRG emphasized that the costs will not fall back on consumers.

"According to experts, because Big Oil's payments would reflect past contributions to greenhouse gas emissions, oil companies would have to treat their payments as one-time fixed costs," said the group.

New York is the second state to pass a law ensuring big polluters will play for climate damages. Vermont passed a similar law over the summer—a year after a federal emergency was declared across the state after a storm dumped two months' worth of rain in just two days, causing historic and devastating flooding.

Jamie Henn, director of Fossil Free Media, said the Climate Change Superfund Act "kicks open the door for more states to follow."



Similar legislation has been proposed in states including Maryland and New Jersey.

Krueger told The Wall Street Journal earlier this year that she would "prefer this all be done at the federal level," but as author and 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben wrote Thursday, Hochul's signing of the Climate Change Superfund Act answers the question: "How do we proceed with the most important fight in the world, when the most important office in the world is about to be filled by a climate denier, and when there's a Congress with no hope of advancing serious legislation?"

"One important answer is: We go state by state, and city by city, making gains everywhere we still can," said McKibben, less than a month before President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration.

"And now those other states may join in too. The billions begin to add up. This is, more or less, how the states slowly and then quite rapidly took down the tobacco industry," he wrote. "So—many many thanks to the people who but their bodies on the line these past days, and those who have worked so hard for years to get us here. This may be what progress looks like in the Trump years."

'It’s in a lot of labor contracts': Trump's plans for gov't workers headed for brick wall

Erik De La Garza
December 26, 2024 

RAW STORY

President-elect Donald Trump’s threat to fire thousands of federal workers unless they return to their office spaces will be met with fierce resistance from employees – and their union contracts, according to a Washington Post report.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought a rise in companies moving employees to work-from-home schedules and some have yet to return to their offices – including scores of federal employees who Trump vowed to fire last week unless they come back.

But putting an end to pandemic-era policies and ushering in even stricter federal office guidelines likely won’t come “with the stroke of a presidential pen,” according to reporter Lisa Rein

“Trump’s expected return-to-office mandate faces furious resistance from federal employees, many of whom are covered by union agreements that guarantee work-from-home policies — including some contracts extended in recent weeks by outgoing Biden officials eager to blunt Trump’s impact on the workforce,” Rein wrote in the WaPo report.

Collective bargaining contracts, many of which include provisions for telework, are extended to about 56 percent of the civil service – and a record 10 percent of federal jobs are designed as fully remote, the report said.


“It’s in a lot of labor contracts,” Cathie McQuiston, deputy general counsel at the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the largest union representing federal workers, told the publication of the telework arrangements. “And at a lot of these agencies, the reality is, they don’t have the place to put people to force them back five days a week.”

McQuiston predicted that return-to-office mandates would also be extremely costly and undercut the Trump administration’s goal to cut government spending and personnel.

Besides the challenge of union contracts, Trump’s work-from-home mandate will encounter one more hurdle: a lack of space at some agencies for employees to work.

“According to the report issued by the OMB in August, departments including the U.S. Agency for International Development, Justice, Veterans Affairs, Treasury, the Internal Revenue Service and the Environmental Protection Agency have reduced their real estate footprints since the pandemic emergency ended — and plan to shed still more square footage, with officials citing low employee occupancy as a prime factor,” according to the Post.

AMERIKA

'Concentration camps': Border czar says Trump to detain migrant families

Jessica Corbett,

 Common Dreams
December 27, 2024


Incoming Border Czar Tom Homan REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo/File Photo

Adding to alarm over U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's immigration plans, his "border czar" toldThe Washington Post in an interview published Thursday that the administration plans to return to detaining migrant families with children.

Tom Homan, who served as acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during Trump's first term, said that ICE "will look to hold parents with children in 'soft-sided' tent structures similar to those used by U.S. border officials to handle immigration surges," the Post summarized. "The government will not hesitate to deport parents who are in the country illegally, even if they have young U.S.-born children, he added, leaving it to those families to decide whether to exit together or be split up."

Since Trump beat Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris last month, migrant rights advocates have reiterated concerns about the Republican's first-term policies—such as forced separation of families—and his 2024 campaign pledges, from mass deportations to attempting to end birthright citizenship, despite the guarantees of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Homan—who oversaw the so-called "zero tolerance" policy that separated thousands of migrant kids from their parents—said: "Here's the issue... You knew you were in the country illegally and chose to have a child. So you put your family in that position."

Harris and President Joe Biden have come under fire for various immigration policies, but their administration did stop family detention—and when it was reported last year that the White House was weighing a revival of the practice, 383 groups urged the president to keep the pledge he made when he took office "to pursue just, compassionate, and humane immigration policies."

Under Biden, the government ended mass worksite immigration raids and—eventually—the "Remain in Mexico" policy that stopped asylum-seekers from entering the United States. Homan told the Post that the next Trump administration should bring them back.

Less than a month before Trump's inauguration, Biden is now facing pressure to "use the power of the pen to protect those seeking sanctuary from the coming deportation machine that will crush the human rights of our immigrant neighbors and those who have dreams of finding refuge here," as Amnesty International USA executive director Paul O'Brien put it earlier this month.

The Post reported that "of all the border hard-liners in the incoming administration, Homan is perhaps the most cognizant of the limits of the government's ability to deliver on promises of mass deportation—and the potential for a political backlash."

Those hard-liners include dog-killing Republican South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, Trump's pick to lead the Department of Homeland Security; family separation architect Stephen Miller, the president-elect's homeland security adviser and deputy chief of staff for policy; and Caleb Vitello, the next acting ICE director whom Miller previously tried to install at the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

"We're going to need to construct family facilities," Homan told the newspaper. However, he also said: "We need to show the American people we can do this and not be inhumane about it... We can't lose the faith of the American people."

Critics of the next administration have suggested that—although Trump won the Electoral College and the popular vote last month—pursuing the GOP immigration policies, including "concentration camps" for migrant families, will anger the public



"Decent people all over the world will hate this country... and they should," media columnist and Brooklyn College professor Eric Alterman said on social media in response to the Post's reporting.

Author and New York University adjunct associate professor Helio Fred Garcia said: "Trump's next border czar previews performative cruelty. In the first term it included kidnapping of children from their parents and returning the parents to their home countries, with no record of which kids came from which parents. A crime against humanity."

Lee Gelernt, an ACLU attorney who has argued many major immigration cases, told the Post that "the incoming administration has refused to acknowledge the horrific damage it did to families and little children the first time around and seems determined to once again target families for gratuitous suffering."

"The public may have voted in the abstract for mass deportations," he added, referring to the November election, "but I don't think they voted for more family separation or unnecessary cruelty to children."

NOTE THE TRANSEXUAL MOTHERS OF INVENTION

'To spread disinformation': Republican confesses GOP plan to attack voting rights

A protester holds a sign saying "Trump wins" at a rally in support of U.S. President Donald Trump at the Oregon State Capitol in Salem, Oregon, U.S. January 6, 2021. REUTERS/Terray Sylvester

Jessica Corbett

Common Dreams

December 27, 2024

A key GOP lawmaker made clear in an interview published Thursday that Republicans plan to push for a pair of their voting-related bills when they take control of both chambers of Congress and the White House next month.

Congressman Bryan Steil (R-Wis.), who campaigned for U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), chairs the Committee on House Administration. He shared the GOP's plans for the American Confidence in Elections (ACE) Act and the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act in comments to The Associated Press.

"As we look to the new year with unified Republican government, we have a real opportunity to move these pieces of legislation not only out of committee, but across the House floor and into law," he said. "We need to improve Americans' confidence in elections."

The AP pointed out that "Republicans are likely to face opposition from Democrats and have little wiggle room with their narrow majorities in both the House and Senate. Steil said he expects there will be 'some reforms and tweaks' to the original proposals and hopes Democrats will work with Republicans to refine and ultimately support them."

Steil's ACE Act, which "includes nearly 50 standalone bills sponsored by members of the House Republican Conference," is "the most conservative election integrity bill to be seriously considered in the House in over 20 years," according to his committee

Dozens of organizations wrote to Steil and Rep. Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.), the panel's ranking Democrat, last year that "we believe Congress has an important role to play in safeguarding free and fair elections and ensuring all Americans have the freedom to vote. Rather than furthering this goal, the ACE Act would be a substantial step backwards."

"The act would nationalize harmful and unnecessary restrictions on voting rights and roll back many of Washington, D.C.'s current pro-voter laws," the coalition explained. "Instead of proceeding with this legislation, Congress should take actions that will help voters and promote democracy such as passing legislation that will strengthen protections against discrimination in voting and expand access to the ballot for all communities."

While that bill didn't get a floor vote in the House this session, Rep. Chip Roy's (R-Texas) SAVE Act did—it was passed by the House 221-198 in July. Every Republican present voted for the bill and all but five House Democrats rejected it.

However, Democrats narrowly controlled the Senate, so the SAVE Act—which would require proof of U.S. citizenship to vote in federal elections—never went further in Congress, despite GOP attempts to tie it to government funding.

Morelle suggested to the AP there could be bipartisan support for some voting policies—such as federal funding for election offices, restricting foreign money in U.S. races, and possibly even identification requirements with certain protections for voters—but he also called out Republicans for spreading conspiracy theories about widespread voting by noncitizens in November.

"You haven't heard a word about this since Election Day," he noted. "It's an Election Day miracle that suddenly the thing that they had spent an inordinate amount of time describing as a rampant problem, epidemic problem, didn't exist at all."

Speaking broadly about voting bills, Morelle told the AP that "our view and the Republicans' view is very different on this point."

"They have spent most of the time in the last two years and beyond really restricting the rights of people to get to ballots—and that's at the state level and the federal level," he added. "And the SAVE Act and the ACE Act both do that—make it harder for people to vote."

Responding to the reporting on social media Thursday, lawyer and Democracy Docket founder Marc Elias said that "Trump is an autocrat. The GOP wants these 'changes' to spread disinformation, justify election denialism, and gain partisan advantage."

"Democrats need to oppose this effort," he warned. "If the GOP enacts new voter suppression laws, I can promise we will sue and win."

Trump’s ‘Made in USA’ Bitcoin Is Promise Impossible to Keep

LIKE ALL HIS PROMISES

By David Pan

December 26, 2024 

Mining equipment in the test mine of the Cormint Bitcoin mining facility in Fort Stockton, Texas. (Jordan Vonderhaar/Photographer: Jordan Vonderhaar/)

(Bloomberg) -- As Donald Trump prepares to fulfill a lengthy list of campaign promises, the president-elect’s vow to ensure that all remaining Bitcoin is “made in the USA” may prove to be one of the most challenging to keep.

Trump made the pledge in a post on his Truth Social account in June after meeting at Mar-a-Lago with a group of executives from crypto miners, the companies whose massive, high-tech data centers do the work that facilitates transactions on the blockchain in exchange for compensation paid in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies. The gathering was a key juncture in Trump’s transformation from a crypto skeptic to one of the industry’s strongest allies.

“It is a Trump-like comment but it is definitely not in reality,” said Ethan Vera, chief operating officer at Seattle-based Luxor Technology, which provides software and services to miners.

While seen widely as a symbolic pledge of support, it’s near impossible in practice since blockchains are decentralized networks in which no one controls or can be banned from participating in the process. On a practical basis, the sector is becoming increasingly competitive as large-scale operations pop up across the world to get a slice of the tens of billions of dollars in revenue generated each year by the industry.

Russian oligarchs, Dubai royal families and Chinese businessmen in Africa are some of the freshest competitors. Deep pockets and access to vast amounts of power are spurring them to join in on the lucrative but energy-intensive process. About 95% of the 21 million Bitcoin that will ever be created have already been minted, though the hard cap on production isn’t expected to be met for about 100 years.


The Bitcoin mining sector in the US has morphed into a multi-billion dollar industry over the last several years as the token saw exponential increases in prices. However, the total computing power generated from US-based miners is well below 50% and it is impossible to power the entire network by domestic companies, according to industry analysts.

While there is no public data to indicate the sources of computing power from each region across the world, large crypto-mining service providers such as Luxor tend to have good insight on the makeup. They have more specific information on mining locations through their software that aggregates computing power to increase chances for miners to get Bitcoin rewards.

US miners such as CleanSpark Inc. and Riot Platforms Inc. were quick to support Trump, banking on the former-president to ease scrutiny on the environmental impact of the high-energy use process, curb competition from overseas and to roll back what they view as restrictive guidelines under the Biden administration. Trump’s support of crypto helped to generate about $135 million in campaign contributions during the last election cycle, the most by any one industry.

“President Trump campaigned on a vision for America to remain the world leader in the next frontiers of technology, from cryptocurrency to AI,” Trump-Vance Transition spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement. “The Trump-Vance administration will work with industry titans and unleash our talent and resources to ensure American leadership and innovation in every facet of the cryptocurrency industry, from mining to end-use solutions.”

Despite rapid expansion in the US and the latest bull run in the crypto market, economic sanctions by the US and rampant inflation in some emerging economies have spurred overseas miners to ramp up their operations even more.

“There is huge growth coming up in a few different markets,” said Taras Kulyk, chief executive of Synteq Digital, which is one of the largest brokers for specialized computers for Bitcoin mining. Eastern European countries such as Kazakhstan are seeing more demand, and “sales into Asia, Africa and the Middle East are all on the rise,” Kulyk said.

Large sales in Asia point to an increase in Bitcoin mining activities in China after a sweeping ban on such operations by the government in 2021. A loosening stance on crypto from Russia is also spurring a resurgence of the industry in the country, according to Kulyk.

For some African and South American countries, margins from Bitcoin mining are much larger compared to their US peers. Pockets of cheap energy are spread across Africa with hydro power-rich Ethiopia being one of the fastest growing crypto mining hubs on the continent. The US dollar-denominated mining revenue has provided a way to keep local operators in countries like Argentina out of the inflation spiral and preserve their savings.

Even US miners have embarked on overseas expansion as power costs in states such as Texas rise. MARA Holdings Inc., the largest miner by market cap, announced plans to form a joint venture with a local firm owned by a sovereign wealth fund in Abu Dhabi. The venture aims to build out one of the largest mining farms in the Middle East.

The operations within the US are not entirely dedicated to domestic miners either. Many miners provide hosting services, in which anyone either from the US or overseas can buy machines and pay the operations to run them and earn Bitcoin.

And there is another headwind Trump risks bringing upon the US miners. A trade war with China would likely raise the cost of Bitcoin mining machines, most of which are manufactured by a Chinese company Bitmain, especially given the fact machines are one of the two major expenses for miners besides electricity. But for many miners, the benefits from Trump outweigh the harm.


“Trump is probably the best thing for Bitcoin mining that could ever happen,” Kulyk said. “He is a pro-energy and pro-economic growth type of president.”

--With assistance from Stephanie Lai.

(Adds comment from a Trump spokesperson in the ninth paragraph.)

©2024 Bloomberg L.P.

'Please take care of us': Pennsylvania Trump voter begs GOP not to cut Social Security

Matthew Chapman
December 26, 2024 

RAW STORY

Social Security Cards and Money (Shutterstock)

Residents of unincorporated New Castle, Pennsylvania, drove a surge in support for Donald Trump in 2024. Now, they're counting on him not to cut their Social Security benefits, The Washington Post reported.

New Castle used to be a booming industrial town, and a century ago it was a bastion of support for Democratic politicians, said the report: "Before Trump won New Castle, the city had last backed a Republican presidential candidate in 1956, when voters narrowly supported Dwight D. Eisenhower (R) over Adlai Stevenson (D), according to Andrei Pagnotta, a resident who has spent years studying the region’s election results. But the city changed dramatically as factories closed and younger residents moved to more vibrant urban areas ... The city’s population of 21,000 is roughly half what it was during its peak in the 1940s."

One resident who plans to switch to the Republican Party and backed Trump despite disagreeing with him on social issues, Lori Mosura, says that she was driven to do so by money being tight. “He is more attuned to the needs of everyone instead of just the rich,” she said. “I think he knows it’s the poor people that got him elected, so I think Trump is going to do more to help us.”

Trump is infamous for having run a series of scams on the vulnerable, including a fake university that defrauded people with promises of training to become a real estate tycoon. His nominee to be attorney general is a former Florida law enforcement official who dropped a probe into that case around the same time a group supporting her candidacy accepted a gift from Trump's charitable foundation, since shut down.

As for her message to Trump now, Mosura said: “We helped get you in office; please take care of us. Please don’t cut the things that help the most vulnerable.”

For his part, Trump has repeatedly pledged not to touch Social Security or Medicare. However, his "Department of Government Efficiency" task force headed up by billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy has pledged to cut more than $2 trillion from the federal budget, and experts have warned there is no possible way to do this without cutting key entitlement programs like Social Security.

Why CA farmers who backed Trump are 'reckoning with an uncomfortable contradiction'

Bodega, California in the Sonoma Valley in 2013 (Wikimedia Commons)

Alex Henderson

December 26, 2024

ALTERNET

Once a red state, California has been heavily Democratic since the 1990s. Vice President Kamala Harris narrowly lost the 2024 election to President-elect Donald Trump, but she carried California by 20 percent (according to the Associated Press).

Yet some Californians in the agricultural industry backed Trump because of his promise to lift water restrictions.

In an article published the day after Christmas, Politico's Camille von Kaenel reports that California farmers "could soon enjoy bumper crops" but are "reckoning with an uncomfortable contradiction": Trump " also campaigned on mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, who make up at least half of the state's agricultural workforce."

READ MORE: Musk supporters outraged after he backs importing 'super talented engineers'

Chris Reardon, vice president of policy advocacy for the California Farm Bureau Federation, told Politico, "To say it would have an impact on California would be an understatement. We just don't know yet."

Von Kaenel notes that Trump's incoming second administration is "likely to undo a Biden-era rule that increased labor protections for temporary farmworkers under the H2-A visa."

Antonio De Loera, communications director for the United Farm Workers, told Politico, "Anything that happens needs to first do right by the workforce that is here, the current workforce that has been feeding us for decades."

De Loera continued, "We will not allow that workforce to be discarded and replaced by expansion of an exploitative gap worker program…. The main thing we're doing across the organization is trying to just reassure workers and empower workers, so that they're not scared by this rhetoric into accepting working conditions that are dangerous."

Read the full Politico article at this link.

Americans 'seem to be catching on' to harsh reality of Trump's campaign pledge: columnist

Erik De La Garza
December 26, 2024 

RAW STORY

Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump works behind the counter during a visit to McDonalds in Feasterville-Trevose, Pennsylvania, U.S. October 20, 2024. Doug Mills/Pool via REUTERS

Americans are starting to wise up to the harsh reality that President-elect Donald Trump has no plan – and never did – to cut prices and bury inflation woes, according to a Washington Post columnist.

And that could result in an expensive four years for consumers – many of whom fearing high prices are already stocking up on goods, Catherine Rampell wrote in an opinion piece Thursday for the Post.

“A day late and a dollar short, Americans are realizing that President-elect Donald Trump plans to short them a few dollars. That’s right: Since the election, U.S. consumers have become more likely to say they expect prices to rise next year,” Rampell wrote.

While Trump ran his 2024 campaign on appealing promises to bring everyday prices that have skyrocketed for consumers in recent years down, he acknowledged in a Time magazine interview only after winning that election that he could do no such thing, Rampell reminded readers.

“I’d like to bring them down,” Trump told Time magazine. “It’s hard to bring things down once they’re up. You know, it’s very hard.”

The only thing surprising about the admission from Trump “is that he said it out loud,” Rampell wrote.

“One thing Trump didn’t acknowledge, however, is how his economic agenda — tariffs, deportations, tax cuts, and kneecapping the Federal Reserve — could worsen the problem that voters hired him to solve,” according to the columnist. “But Americans seem to be catching on anyway.”

Rampell pointed to a University of Michigan nationwide survey that measures consumers about their views on the economy. It found a surge in participants since the election reporting “that now is a good time to purchase big-ticket items, because prices will probably rise.”


“We don’t know for sure what’s driving these shifts in consumer views,” Rampell added. “Most likely, Americans are absorbing news coverage of Trump’s proposed tariffs and their potential to raise prices on food, cars, apparel, appliances and other common household purchases.”

Trump’s threats of mass deportations could also drive up fruit, vegetable and dairy prices, she warned. And, Rampell concluded, Trump could easily worsen increased prices consumers are already facing in the face of other geopolitical and supply-chain issues.

'Unacceptable Tragedy': 10,000+ Migrants Died Trying to Reach Spain This Year

"These figures are evidence of a profound failure of rescue and protection systems," said one campaigner.


African migrants prepare to be rescued in the Mediterranean Sea on October 25, 2022.
(Photo: Vincenzo Circosta/AFP via Getty Images)

Brett Wilkins
Dec 26, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

More than 10,000 migrants died while trying to reach Spain this year—a more than 50% increase from 2023—according to a Spanish advocacy group's annual report published this week.

The NGO Caminando Fronteras (Walking Borders) said in its Monitoring the Right to Life—2024 report that 10,457 migrants died en route to Spain via the Atlantic Ocean or the Mediterranean Sea this year. Victims included 1,538 children and adolescents and 421 women. Victims hailed from 28 mostly African nations, with some coming from as far afield as Iraq and Pakistan.

"These figures are evidence of a profound failure of rescue and protection systems," the group's founder, Helena Maleno, said in a statement. "More than 10,400 people dead or missing in a single year is an unacceptable tragedy."

Walking Borders said its report "documents the deadliest period on record, with devastating figures averaging 30 deaths a day," up from an average of 18 deaths per day in 2023.

According to the report:
The Atlantic route, with 9,757 deaths, remains the deadliest in the world. Tragedies have increased, especially on the Mauritanian route, consolidating this country as the main departure point to the Canary Islands. The Algerian route, in the Mediterranean, is the second deadliest according to our records, with 517 victims. The Strait of Gibraltar has taken up to 110 lives, and another 73 have been lost on the Alboran route. In addition, 131 vessels were lost, with all persons on board.

Spain's Interior Ministry said earlier this month that, as of December 15, 57,738 migrants successfully reached the country this year by sea, an all-time high.


Walking Borders denounced what it called "the main causes of this increase in shipwrecks and victims," including "the omission of the duty to rescue, the prioritization of migration control over the right to life, the externalization of borders in countries without adequate resources, the inaction and arbitrariness in rescues, [and] the criminalization of social organizations and families."

The group also noted "the situations of extreme vulnerability" that push migrants "to throw themselves into the sea in very precarious conditions."

These include "violence, discrimination, racism, deportations, and sexual violence," as well as "being forced to survive in extreme conditions" prior to departure.

"The number of victims continues to grow and the act of documenting deaths or preserving the victims' memory carries the threat of persecution and stigmatization," the publication states, adding that the dead migrants' voices "can be heard in this report, crying out at their disappearance and death and questioning their fate. They call for justice and an end to impunity."

Workers Seek Shelter As Hanford Nuclear Complex Issues Leak Alert

By Alex Kimani - Dec 23, 2024, 



Workers at the Hanford nuclear site were ordered to take cover on Friday after a large holding tank with ammonia vapor was discovered to be leaking near the vitrification plant in the 200 East Area. Workers in that area were told to shelter in place with doors, windows and ventilation closed while other workers were told to avoid the 200 East Area. The Hanford Site is a decommissioned nuclear production complex operated by the United States federal government on the Columbia River in Benton County in the U.S. state of Washington

The 200 East Area has a vitrification plant, built and commissioned to treat the tank waste for disposal. The waste was left from the past production of plutonium from World War II through the Cold War for America’s nuclear weapons program. Today, there are 177 underground storage tanks on the Hanford Site, holding about 56 million gallons of highly radioactive and chemically hazardous waste.

The Hanford incident highlights the ongoing challenges of dealing with nuclear waste. Currently, there are thousands of metric tons of used solid fuel from nuclear power plants worldwide and millions of liters of radioactive liquid waste from weapons production sitting in temporary storage containers, some of which have begun leaking their toxic contents. Nuclear waste is notorious for the fact that it can remain dangerously radioactive for many thousands of years.

Thankfully, the world is now closer to finding a permanent solution to its nuclear menace: Finland has built the world’s first deep-earth repository where it will bury nuclear waste for 100,000 years starting 2026. Dubbed ‘‘Onkalo’’, the repository is entombed in a bedrock more than 400 meters below the forests of southwest Finland. The facility sits atop a warren of tunnels sited next to three nuclear reactors on the island of Olkiluoto, approximately 240 kilometers from the capital of Helsinki. The Onkalo project is based on the so-called “KBS-3” method developed by the Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company. KBS-3 is based on a multi-barrier principle whereby if one of the engineered barriers were to fail, the isolation of the radioactive waste is not compromised.

“Basically, the Onkalo project is that we are building an encapsulation plant and disposal facility for spent fuel. And it’s not temporary, it’s for good,” Pasi Tuohimaa, head of communications for Posiva, told CNBC via videoconference. Posiva is tasked with the responsibility of handling the final disposal of spent nuclear fuel rods at Onkalo.

By Alex Kimani for Oilprice.com

Russia Expands Global Nuclear Footprint Despite Western Pushback

By Tsvetana Paraskova - Dec 23, 2024


Russia is looking to maintain its position as “one of the biggest builders of new nuclear plants in the world,” a top envoy of Russian President Vladimir Putin told the Financial Times in an interview published on Monday.

“We are building more than 10 different units around the world,” Boris Titov, Putin’s special representative for international cooperation in sustainability, told FT.

“We need a lot of energy. We will not be able to provide this energy without using . . . nuclear,” the official said.

This type of energy is safe and low-carbon, Titov added.

Russia currently has nuclear power plants under development and construction in countries such as China, India, Iran, Bangladesh, Egypt, and Turkey, among others.

Russia’s ambitions to boost its global influence in nuclear power fleets come as the West seeks to diminish its dependence on Russian nuclear fuel and technology.

Yet, the Western countries will need additional incentives and sanctions on Russia to reduce their dependence on the Russian supply of nuclear fuel, according to French company Orano, one of the top Western suppliers of enriched uranium.

“To entirely disconnect from Russia, we need new capacities, and industrial groups will only invest if they have long-term contracts,” Orano’s CEO Nicolas Maes told the Financial Times in an interview in October.

France’s Orano and Urenco, a consortium created in 1970 by the governments of Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK, are the main Western competitors of Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy firm Rosatom.

Europe has not sanctioned Rosatom or Russian nuclear fuel supplies as dozens of nuclear power stations in the eastern EU member states have been built by Russian companies and supplied with Russian nuclear fuel.

As many countries are now looking to nuclear power to cut emissions and reliance on imports of oil and gas, they would need to cut their dependence on enriched uranium from Russia.

But in order to reduce reliance on Russia, western contractors and suppliers would need visibility over the long-term demand, the chief executive of France’s Orano told FT.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com