Try and try again: South Korean Opposition plans new impeachment push against President Yoon Dec 14

A protester holding a cardboard depicting the face of South Korea's President Yoon Suk Yeol takes part in a protest calling for his ouster outside the National Assembly in Seoul on December 8, 2024. — AFP pic

Sunday, 08 Dec 2024 

SEOUL, Dec 8 — South Korea’s main opposition party said Sunday it will try again to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol after his declaration of martial law.

Meanwhile police arrested the defence minister in charge of the martial law operation, and the interior minister resigned. Both they and Yoon are being investigated for alleged insurrection.

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Yoon averted impeachment late Saturday as huge crowds braved freezing temperatures in another night of protests outside parliament to demand the president’s ouster.

Opposition parties proposed the impeachment motion, which needed 200 votes in the 300-member parliament to pass, but a near-total boycott by Yoon’s People Power Party (PPP) doomed it to failure.

Lee Jae-myung, leader of the main opposition Democratic Party (DP), said Sunday that they will try again on December 14.

“Yoon, the principal culprit behind the insurrection and military coup that destroyed South Korea’s constitutional order, must either resign immediately or be impeached without delay,” Lee told reporters.

“On December 14, our Democratic Party will impeach Yoon in the name of the people.”

‘Soft coup’

In exchange for blocking his removal from office, Yoon’s People Power Party (PPP) said that it had “effectively obtained (Yoon’s) promise to step down”.

“Even before the president steps down, he will not interfere in state affairs, including foreign affairs,” PPP leader Han Dong-hoon said Sunday after a meeting with Prime Minister Han Duck-soo.

This will “minimise the confusion to South Korea and its people, stably resolve the political situation and recover liberal democracy”, Han told reporters.

But Lee and the National Assembly speaker Woo Won-shik, both from the opposition Democratic Party (DP), on Sunday called the arrangement illegal.

“For the prime minister and the ruling party to jointly exercise presidential authority, which no one has granted them, without participating in constitutional processes to address unconstitutional martial law, is a clear violation of the Constitution,” Woo said.

“The power of the president is not the personal property of President Yoon Suk Yeol,” said Lee.

“Isn’t this another coup that destroys the constitutional order?”

Kim Hae-won, a constitutional law professor at Pusan National University Law School, called it an “unconstitutional soft coup.”

“In reality, a political party is merely a private political entity, and handing over the president’s functions to an entity that is neither a constitutional institution nor a state body seems like an action that disrupts the state’s rights,” Kim told AFP.

Sorry

On Saturday before the vote, Yoon, 63, reappeared for the first time in three days and apologised for the “anxiety and inconvenience” caused by his declaration of martial law.

But he stopped short of stepping down, saying he would leave it to his party to decide his fate.

Massive crowds – police said there were 150,000 people, organisers one million – gathered outside parliament to pressure lawmakers to oust the president.

Many wore elaborate outfits, carrying home-made flags and waving colourful glow sticks and LED candles as K-pop tunes blasted from speakers.

“Even though we didn’t get the outcome we wanted today, I am neither discouraged nor disappointed because we will get it eventually,” said protester Jo Ah-gyeong, 30, after the impeachment vote.

“I’ll keep coming here until we get it,” she told AFP.

Insurrection

Regardless of the political situation, police are investigating Yoon and others for alleged insurrection over the extraordinary events of Tuesday night.

Early Sunday police arrested Kim Yong-hyun, who quit as defence minister on Wednesday and was slapped with a travel ban, reports said.

Interior Minister Lee Sang-min on Sunday tendered his resignation which was accepted, Yoon’s office said.

Declaring martial law late Tuesday, Yoon said it would safeguard South Korea “from the threats posed by North Korea’s communist forces and eliminate anti-state elements plundering people’s freedom and happiness”.

Security forces sealed the National Assembly, helicopters landed on the roof and almost 300 soldiers tried to lock down the building.

But as parliamentary staffers blocked the soldiers with sofas and fire extinguishers, enough MPs got inside – many climbed walls to enter – and voted down Yoon’s move.

The episode brought back painful memories of South Korea’s autocratic past and blindsided its allies, with the US administration only finding out via television.

“This is a country we’ve spent our entire lives building,” Shin Jae-hyung, 66, who suffered arrest and torture in the 1970s and 80s as he battled successive military-led regimes, told AFP. 

Million people protest to demand South Korean president’s resignation

Right wing president Yoon Suk Yeol attempted a half-baked coup on Tuesday

Anger on the streets of Seoul in South Korea

By Thomas Foster
Saturday 07 December 2024   

SOCIALIST WORKER  Issue

A wave of resistance gripped South Korea on Saturday after right wing president Yoon Suk Yeol attempted a half-baked coup this week.

Around one million people rallied in front of the parliament in the capital Seoul to demand Yoon’s resignation. Protesters chanted, “Impeach, impeach, impeach Yoon Suk Yeol,” and, “Illegal martial law Yoon Suk Yeol, step down.”

The South Korean parliament is voting on impeachment, which requires 200 of the 300 MPs’ votes. The centre left Democratic Alliance has 192 MPs and Yoon Suk Yeol’s conservative People’s Power (PPP) Party has 108. Currently the conservative party MPs are holding the line against voting for impeachment.

Workers’ Solidarity, Socialist Worker’ sister newspaper in South Korea, reports, “A huge wave filled the street in front of the National Assembly. It was truly a spectacular sight. The determination to somehow carry out impeachment today is overflowing everywhere.

“People are talking about how disgusting it is that someone who has committed so many crimes is doing everything he can to keep his seat without any shame. You can see young people everywhere telling their friends who ask if they can go now how to come right away.

“Even in weather, where white breath comes out as the sun sets, people are increasing in numbers.

“Right now, the area in front of the National Assembly is packed. People cannot move from the Kookmin Bank, where the main stage is set up, all the way to Yeouido Station. The side streets, alleys, and Yeouido Park in between are crowded with people.

“There are so many people that the main stage cannot accommodate all the participants. Everyone is shouting at the top of their lungs, ‘Yoon Suk Yeol step down,’ ‘Impeach Yoon Suk Yeol,’ ‘Arrest Yoon Suk Yeol,’ and, ‘Disband the People Power Party.’

“In front of the National Assembly building, all ten lanes of the street are filled with people sitting down.”

Kang Jeong-nam, head of the Seoul branch of the railway union, had been on strike for three says and spoke from the main stage. When he apologised for the inconvenience caused to the train users, shouts of “it’s okay” erupted from all over the line.

“The railway workers’ strike represents not only their demands, but also their wish for Yoon Suk Yeol’s resignation,” Workers’ Solidarity reported.

Oh Sang-hoon, an activist at the Samsung Group union Solidarity, said, “Workers have been on the verge of death from union suppression since Yoon Suk Yeol became president.

“The Yoon Suk Yeol government violently dragged down the chairman of the Korean Metal Workers’ Union who was on a high-altitude sit-in protest on a steel tower. They took him to prison while he was bleeding profusely.

“If martial law had been implemented, the members of the National Assembly would have been taken to prison while bleeding profusely.”

The first speech at the march was given by KCTU union federation chair Yang Kyung-soo. “Yoon Suk Yeol is most afraid of the union between the KCTU and the citizens. In order to not repeat history, let’s kick out Yoon Suk Yeol today and send him to prison,” he said.

Jin Young-jong, co-chair of the civic group Solidarity Conference, immediately called for impeachment. “This is the place where I used my whole body to block the martial law troops rushing toward the National Assembly,” he said.

“Let’s drag that person out of the place before 100 hours have passed since martial law was declared. If it is rejected today, we will open a bigger square.”

Kim Jong-myeong, chair of the more right wing Federation of Korean Trade Unions, condemned the People Power Party. “I give the People Power Party one last warning,” he said. “Shouldn’t we protect our last conscience that can protect the lives of the people? We will fight at the forefront to ensure the people’s victory.”

Protesters have also gathered outside of the People Power Party headquarters, demanding its disbandment.

Earlier in the day, striking public transport workers rallied in Seoul. Tens of thousands of people gathered, including 11,000 railway workers, other workers, college students and young people.

No Dong-hwan, head of the Seoul locomotive crew union branch, said, “This is Yoon Suk Yeol stabbing us in the ribs. How can we just sit back and do nothing? We will fight hard and definitely win.”


South Korea: Yoon Suk Yeol who plotted martial law must step down

“The speakers resolved to put an end to Yoon Suk Yeol, who has attacked labour rights and public services throughout his term,” Workers’ Solidarity reported.

The KCTU also held a Yoon Suk Yeol resignation march, with the participation of 15,000 trade unionists.

After a short rally, the union members marched vigorously, chanting , “Arrest the insurgent Yoon Suk Yeol,” and, “Let’s bring down Yoon Suk Yeol and achieve great social reforms.” They then joined the main march.

Around 2,500 workers gathered at the metal workers’ union rally held in front of the Seoul Employment and Labor Office. They then moved to the front of the parliament building.

Around 1,000 students gathered at the university rally earlier in the afternoon. Seo-yoon Lee, a student at Konkuk University, said, “Even if the impeachment motion is passed today, it is not the end” and that they must fight until he steps down completely.”

Noh Min-young, a student in the Department of Life Sciences, said, “The response from university students was explosive. Yesterday, our school held a student general meeting for the first time in eight years and 2,400 people voted on resolutions and follow-up actions.”

Workers’ Solidarity said, “Today, It was difficult to pass the impeachment. However, people continue to raise their voices and continue the rally without wavering. It is clear that the anger of the participants is anger that has been building up for years.

“Under the Yoon Seok-yeol administration, countless ordinary people have suffered economic hardship, felt humiliated and alienated.

“Regardless of the outcome of the impeachment vote, the People Power Party’s protection of Yoon Seok-yeol’s coup will only increase resentment against the government and the ruling party as a whole.”

“People may demand that those in power who do not give up anything give up everything.”

South Korea: Motive emerges for President Yoon’s failed self-coup

By Won Youngsu
Published 9 December, 2024

[Editor’s note: This article as written just prior to the mass mobilisation held in Seoul on December 6 and failed impeachment vote against President Yoon Suk Yeol later that day. A follow up article covering these events will be published later today.]

More details continue to emerge regarding the motivation behind President Yoon Suk Yeol’s spectacular failed self-coup on December 3.

A potential motive was revealed on December 6 when footage was released of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) deputy director leading troops into the National Election Committee (NEC) headquarters amid Yoon’s declaration of martial law.

According to Yoon’s defense minister, Kim Yong Hyun, the purpose of the attack was to secure evidence of supposed electoral fraud that had occurred in the April general election. Yoon’s People Power Party (PPP) suffered a huge defeat in those elections, with its parliamentary bloc reduced to a minority.

Extreme right-wing YouTubers had circulated fake news of the NEC committing electoral fraud. Though clearly false, it appears Yoon — trapped in his extreme right mindset — and his co-conspirators believed the fake news was real and used it as a pretext for their attempted self-coup.

While providing some motivation for the plot, it does not make it any less insane.
PPP: Oust Yoon or commit political suicide?

In a speech to the nation on the morning of December 7, Yoon said he wanted to “sincerely apologise to the people who were shocked” by his actions, adding he would “leave it up to [the PPP] to stabilise the political situation in the future, including my term of office.” Yoon also ruled out any further attempt to impose martial law.

Having expressed opposition to impeachment yesterday, some PPP leaders, in particular party leader Han Dong-hoon, shifted positions today — most likely after finding out they were among those on a list of people to be arrested had the self-coup succeeded.

Others on the arrest list included Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) leader, judges from the Supreme Court of Justice, an anti-government broadcaster, and a civil society organisation leader. Also on the list were several politicians, including all parliamentary leaders except the House Speaker, who heads the pro-Yoon faction within the PPP.

Han briefly met with Yoon on the afternoon of December 6 to encourage him to resign, with two other PPP leaders also visiting him to relay the party’s general mood in support of his resignation. But no agreement was reached.

Han is now seeking to persuade PPP MPs to support impeachment. So far two PPP MPs have expressed their support for such a course, but at least eight PPP MPs are needed to secure the required two-thirds vote for impeachment.

Meanwhile, opposition MPs — who rejected Yoon’s apology — and parliamentary staffers remain inside parliament, with no plans to leave in case Yoon tries anything again. Parliament will reconvene on December 7 at 5pm to see if enough votes can be mustered for impeachment.

For now, nothing is certain about Yoon’s fate. But with the United States government and international media outlets joining in the choir of criticism against Yoon’s crazy behaviour, it seems his days are numbered. What remains to be seen is how far the PPP is willing to go in terms of committing political suicide by continuing to stand by Yoon.
People have their say

About 50,000 protesters gathered to pressure the PPP into voting for impeachment on December 6.

Protest organisers expect the December 7 rallies — set to kick off at 1pm — will see about 200,000 take to the streets.

KCTU leaders have declared an indefinite general strike. While the KCTU says it will organise some 200,000 workers to go on strike nationally, so far the reach of its call has been limited. A protest organised by the KCTU yesterday in front of the PPP headquarters mobilised about 500 people.

Several unions, such as the railway union, have taken the opportunity to go on strike for their own demands. The Korean Metal Workers’ Union (KMWU) held a national 2-hour strike over December 5 and 6, claiming that at least 70,000 workers went on strike the first day.

Won Youngsu is an activist, Marxist and labour studies researcher. He is the Director of Pnyx – Institute of Marxist Studies in Korea.

 

Israel and Apartheid South Africa Were the Closest of Friends

The mutually beneficial relationship between Israel and apartheid South Africa was not just about the arms trade. It was an ideological affinity about how to treat unwanted populations.

By Antony Loewenstein

December 8, 2024

Source: Tribune

Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion meets with South African prime minister Daniël François Malan in Tel Aviv, Israel, on June 15, 1953. (Hans Pinn / Wikimedia Commons)

The contradictions at the heart of the State of Israel have had little impact on its success. This can be seen in Israel’s relationship with Africa. Many African states had backed Israel after 1948 in what they saw as a noble anti-colonial struggle. They related to its cause. One of the least-known aspects of this dynamic, just before the Six-Day War, was Israel’s support for the campaign against white minority rule in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. Israel condemned the regime led by white nationalist Ian Smith after his unilateral declaration of independence in 1965 and supported a military and civilian boycott of the regime.

Israel’s advocacy was not due to a love of African self-determination but was, rather, a calculated decision to gather support in Africa against what it perceived as Arab and communist “defamation.” Israel was also interested in exploiting Africa’s natural resources and immediately set about building relationships with pliant leaders in the Central African Republic after it declared independence from France in 1960.

Declassified documents from the Israel State Archives indicate that it provided training to rebel groups fighting racism in Rhodesia, though the exact nature of the training is unknown; some officials backed armed struggle. When the first leader of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, visited Israel in 1964, he thanked the Jewish state for its support of his resistance movement and expressed a desire for his fighters to get Israeli training in guerrilla warfare.

After 1967, Israel’s interest in liberation movements waned, and its support for them became far less effective as it turned into an occupier itself. However, there was no better political, military, diplomatic, and ideological alliance between like-minded nations than the one between Israel and apartheid South Africa. The apartheid regime in Pretoria took power in 1948 and soon put in place Nazi-style restrictions on non-whites, from forbidding marriage between the races to barring blacks from many jobs.

By the time the South African and Israeli governments cemented a political, ideological, and military relationship in the 1970s, often centered on weapons developed and tested by the Israeli military, many in the ruling Israeli Likud Party felt an affinity with South Africa’s worldview. As journalist and author Sasha Polakow-Suransky writes, it was an “ideology of minority survivalism that presented the two countries as threatened outposts of European civilization defending their existence against barbarians at the gate.”

A prominent Jewish South African dissident was Ronnie Kasrils, who played a senior role in uMkhonto weSizwe, the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC), and served as the minister for intelligence between 2004 and 2008 in an ANC government. He told the Guardian that the comparison between the two nations wasn’t accidental. “Israelis claim that they are the chosen people, the elect of God, and find a biblical justification for their racism and Zionist exclusivity,” he said:

This is just like the Afrikaners of apartheid South Africa, who also had the biblical notion that the land was their God-given right. Like the Zionists who claimed that Palestine in the 1940s was “a land without people for a people without land,” so the Afrikaner settlers spread the myth that there were no black people in South Africa when they first settled in the seventeenth century. They conquered by force of arms and terror and the provocation of a series of bloody colonial wars of conquest.

Doing Good Business in Inequality

The relationship became so close by the mid-1970s that Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin invited South African prime minister John Vorster to visit, including a tour of Yad Vashem, the country’s Holocaust memorial. Vorster had been a Nazi sympathizer and member of the fascist Afrikaner group Ossewabrandwag during World War II; in 1942, he proudly expressed his admiration for Nazi Germany. Yet when Vorster arrived in Israel in 1976, he was feted by Rabin at a state dinner. Rabin toasted “the ideals shared by Israel and South Africa: the hopes for justice and peaceful coexistence.”

Both nations faced “foreign-inspired instability and recklessness.” A few months after Vorster’s visit, the South African government yearbook explained that both states were facing the same challenge: “Israel and South Africa have one thing above all else in common: they are both situated in a predominantly hostile world inhabited by dark peoples.”

The relationship between the nations was broad but also sworn to secrecy. In April 1975, a security agreement was signed that defined the relationship for the next twenty years. A clause within the deal stated that both parties pledged to keep its existence concealed. Alon Liel, a former Israeli ambassador to Pretoria and head of Israel’s foreign ministry’s South Africa desk in the 1980s, said that the relationship between Israel and South Africa was vital for the defense industries of both countries, turning them into major global players.

Liel argued that many in the Israeli security establishment convinced themselves that Israel as an occupying nation could not have survived without Afrikaner support. Liel and another former Israeli ambassador to South Africa, llan Baruch, wrote in 2021 that Israel was an apartheid state that took inspiration from pre-1994 South Africa.

“We created the South African arms industry,” Liel explained:

They assisted us to develop all kinds of technology because they had a lot of money. When we were developing things together we usually gave the know-how and they gave the money. After 1976, there was a love affair between the security establishments of the two countries and their armies. We were involved in Angola [South Africa never recognized the country’s 1975 independence and supported its opponents] as consultants to the [South African] army. You had Israeli officers there cooperating with the army. The link was very intimate.

Hostility to International Opinion

Israel ignored the United Nations Security Council–imposed arms embargo on South Africa while telling the world that it was complying. The deputy director of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Hanan Bar-On, sent a telegram to the ministry director, David Kimche, on August 29, 1984, in explanation:

The Israeli policy . . . is that we do not in any way admit [such sales] to an Israeli or to a foreign actor and certainly not to an American Congressman, even if he is considered a friend and the relationship with him is supposedly intimate.

The most secretive aspect of the relationship was the mutual support given to each other’s nuclear capability. France and Britain provided essential materials in helping Israel develop nuclear weapons, and full-scale production began after the Six-Day War. With an abundant supply of uranium, South Africa had a solid base on which to build its own stockpile, but Israel provided technical expertise.

According to former Israeli intelligence officer Ari Ben-Menashe, South Africa allowed Israel to test nuclear weapons in the Indian Ocean in 1979, though Israel denied doing so. Israel even offered to sell nuclear warheads to South Africa in the 1970s (in a deal that never went ahead). Declassified documents indicate that South Africa wanted the weapons to potentially hit neighboring states, as a deterrent from attack.

South African prime minister P. W. Botha and Israeli defense minister Shimon Peres colluded in an agreement to keep the deal completely secret. A 1974 letter from Peres to South Africa claimed that they both had a “common hatred of injustice,” and he pushed for a “close identity of aspirations and interests.” By the 1980s, Israel was South Africa’s main arms supplier. Washington was not initially fully aware of the extent of Israel’s nuclear collaboration with South Africa, and Israeli secretiveness continues to this day; its nuclear facility at Dimona has never been inspected by the International Atomic Energy Agency. (Israel is presumed to have more than two hundred nuclear weapons.)

During the first meeting between US president Joe Biden and then Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett in August 2021, Washington reaffirmed the long-standing understanding that it would not pressure Israel to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or to give up its weapons. Israel agreed not to conduct any nuclear tests or threaten nuclear strikes while maintaining its “nuclear ambiguity.”

In 1971, the New York Times columnist C. L. Sulzberger wrote that Israel and South Africa had become so close that he had heard an unconfirmed rumor that “a South African mission flew to Israel during the Six Day War to study tactics and use of weapons.” Vorster told the columnist that Israel faced its own “apartheid problem,” namely, how to manage the Arabs. “Neither nation,” wrote Sulzberger, “wants to place its future entirely in the hands of a surrounding majority and would prefer to fight.”

The mutually beneficial relationship was not just about the ability to make money from the defense sector. It was an ideological affinity about how to treat unwanted populations. South Africa’s Bantustans inspired many in the Israeli elite as a viable model for Palestine. This was the desire to isolate “undesirable” Palestinians in noncontiguous enclaves cut off from the rest of the country — in other words, like today’s West Bank, where 165 Palestinian “enclaves” are strangled by Israeli colonies, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and violent settlers.

During apartheid, Israeli diplomats were instructed across the world to tell the media that the Jewish state didn’t recognize the Bantustans. This was a lie, as a telegram by the deputy director of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Natan Meron, on November 23, 1983, proved: “It is no secret that Israeli political figures and public figures are involved in one way or another, directly or indirectly, in economic activity in the Bantustans.”

The practice of using apartheid-era rhetoric to defend Israeli occupation remains alive to this day. During the 2019 Israeli election campaign, opposition leader Benny Gantz criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for banning US congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib from entering Israel and the Palestinian territories. Instead, Gantz said, both women should have been allowed to see “with their own eyes” that “the best place to be an Arab in the Middle East is in Israel . . . and the second-best place to be an Arab in the Middle East is the West Bank.”

This was reminiscent of South African apartheid leader John Vorster’s statement to the New York Times in 1977 that “the standard of living of the South African Black is two to five times higher than that of any Black country in Africa.” One of the architects of apartheid in South Africa, former prime minister Hendrik Verwoerd, wrote in the Rand Daily Mail in 1961 that “Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state” after taking Palestine from the Arabs who “had lived there for a thousand years.” Ariel Sharon was a known fan of Bantustans, and he was one of the biggest advocates of the construction of Israeli settlements from the 1970s and wanted to adapt them into the West Bank.

Former Israeli ambassador Avi Primor wrote in his autobiography about a trip to South Africa in the early 1980s with Sharon, then a defense minister, recalling how much he was taken by the Bantustan enterprise. Former Italian prime minister Massimo D’Alema told Haaretz in 2003 that Sharon had explained to him that the Bantustan model was the most appropriate for Palestine.

An Architecture of Global Control

Toward the end of South Africa’s apartheid regime and the first democratic election in 1994, Israel was one of the last nations to maintain a relationship with the white minority regime. The Israeli defense establishment had long become entranced by its own propaganda and believed that apartheid would last forever. Nelson Mandela took notice. In a 1993 speech to the delegates of the Socialist International, Mandela said: “The people of South Africa will never forget the support of the state of Israel to the apartheid regime.”

Israel’s mission from the beginning was to allegedly be a beacon in a century that suffered catastrophically from the perils of ethnonationalism. Today Israel provides inspiration, ideologically and with military and intelligence equipment, to further its missionary zeal to find and create like-minded countries. None will be the same as Israel, but its model of jingoism and unashamed pride in preferencing the Jewish people above all else is like an easily transportable toolkit that can be adapted to a multitude of countries and scenarios.

US and Israeli officials are present in many nations around the world, training, arming, or pressuring local officials to enforce their policies on immigration, counterterrorism, and policing. The Global North, including the United States, the European Union (EU), Australia, and Israel, ruthlessly enforces its power, controlling four-fifths of the world’s income, because there’s no interest in sharing its wealth.

This architecture of control has to be managed not only at home but also around the globe with reliable client states; external borders are physically invisible but ideologically powerful. It includes Israel keeping Palestinians in a ghetto, Australia forcibly sending refugees on boats to remote and dangerous Pacific Islands, the EU deliberately allowing non-white migrants to drown in the Mediterranean, and the US repelling people from Latin America who are often fleeing policies in their home countries that were designed in Washington.

Sanders Explains Why He's Voting Against the New $850 Billion Pentagon Budget

"We do not need to spend almost a trillion dollars on the military, while half a million Americans are homeless and children go hungry," Sen. Bernie Sanders writes in a new op-ed.


U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) speaks at a news conference on November 19, 2024 in Washington, D.C.
(Photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Jake Johnson
Dec 08, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Sunday announced his opposition to an annual military policy bill that would authorize a Pentagon budget of nearly $850 billion, a sum that the progressive senator from Vermont characterized as outrageous—particularly as so many Americans face economic hardship.

"We do not need to spend almost a trillion dollars on the military, while half a million Americans are homeless and children go hungry," Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote in an op-ed for The Guardian after the House and Senate released legislative text for the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2025.

Sanders continued:

In this moment in history, it would be wise for us to remember what Dwight D. Eisenhower, a former five-star general, said in his farewell address in 1961: "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." What Eisenhower said was true in 1961. It is even more true today.

I will be voting against the military budget.

The senator's op-ed came hours after lawmakers from both chambers of Congress unveiled the sprawling, 1,813-page NDAA for the coming fiscal year. The legislation's topline is just over $895 billion as lawmakers from both parties push annual U.S. military spending inexorably toward $1 trillion, even as the Pentagon fails to pass an audit.

The U.S. currently spends more on its military than the next nine countries combined, and military spending accounts for more than half of the nation's yearly discretionary spending, according to the National Priorities Project.

Sanders wrote Sunday that "very few people who have researched the military-industrial complex doubt that there is massive fraud, waste and cost over-runs in the system." One analysis estimates that over 50% of the Pentagon's annual budget, the subject of aggressive industry lobbying, goes to private contractors.

"Defense contractors routinely overcharge the Pentagon by 40%—and sometimes more than 4,000%," Sanders continued. "For example, in October, RTX (formerly Raytheon) was fined $950 million for inflating bills to the DoD, lying about labor and material costs, and paying bribes to secure foreign business. In June, Lockheed Martin was fined $70 million for overcharging the navy for aircraft parts, the latest in a long line of similar abuses. The F-35, the most expensive weapon system in history, has run up hundreds of billions in cost overruns."




The NDAA could have some trouble getting through the divided Congress—but not because of the proposed size of the Pentagon budget.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said in a statement that the legislation includes language that would "permanently ban transgender medical treatment for minors" and other provisions that are expected to draw Democratic opposition.

Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement Saturday that "anti-equality House Republican leaders are hijacking a defense bill to play politics with the healthcare of children of servicemembers."

"This cruel and hateful bill suddenly strips away access to medical care for families that members of our armed forces are counting on, and it could force servicemembers to choose between staying in the military or providing healthcare for their children," said Robinson. "Politicians have no place inserting themselves into decisions that should be between families and their doctors. We call on members of Congress to do what's right and vote against this damaging legislation."

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Bipartisan Plan to “Reform” Energy Permits Is a Brazen Giveaway to Fossil Fuels

Leading supporters of permitting reform either have a business interest in it — or have effectively been bribed.

By Basav Sen , 

Truthout

December 8, 2024

Homes sit in the shadow of the Inglewood Oil Field on September 25, 2024, in Los Angeles, California.Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images


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This summer, a bipartisan bill sponsored by Senators Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) and John Barrasso (R-Wyoming) to expedite the permitting of energy infrastructure cleared the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. A similar bill is being considered by the House Committee on Natural Resources.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) reportedly wants to bring the Manchin-Barrasso bill to the floor for a vote during the “lame duck” session before January. A version of “permitting reform” could become law soon.

Senators Manchin and Barrasso, the American Petroleum Institute, and other supporters of these bills claim that there’s a crisis of energy availability, affordability and reliability in this country. And they blame that crisis on restrictive permitting processes for energy infrastructure.

But none of this is true.

The U.S. is a net exporter of both crude oil and its derivatives, as well as natural gas. We produce more than enough fossil fuels to meet domestic demand. Likewise, we generate enough electricity on a monthly basis to meet domestic demand. Our power grid is highly reliable, with infrequent, short service interruptions mostly attributable to distribution line problems (such as downed power lines during a storm).

Even when energy availability crises do occur, insufficient generation capacity isn’t the cause.

During the 2021 Texas freeze, all generation facilities, of every kind, struggled togenerate enough power, and adding more capacity wouldn’t have helped. The Texas grid’s overreliance on natural gas in particular made it more vulnerable to gas supply disruptions because of frigid weather — and its isolation from the rest of the U.S. grid made it harder for Texas to import power from neighboring states. Worse still, corporate profiteering through generating artificial scarcity to drive up natural gas prices may have played a role.

The summer 2024 blackout during Hurricane Beryl was caused by downed power lines, exacerbated by the failure of Texas utilities to make their distribution infrastructure more resilient in the face of climate change. New generation or transmission infrastructure wouldn’t have prevented this blackout.


The U.S. is a net exporter of both crude oil and its derivatives, as well as natural gas. We produce more than enough fossil fuels to meet domestic demand.

Americans do experience energy affordability issues, but none of them have to do with permitting of energy infrastructure. Crude oil prices soared in the summer of 2022, when a combination of factors including collusion and price fixing by some in the industry and supply disruptions caused by the Russia-Ukraine war led to a price spike. Lack of production and refining infrastructure wasn’t to blame.

Natural gas prices showed similar trends, driven by some of the same factors. In fact, by expanding liquefied natural gas exports, the Senate bill may even increase domestic prices for natural gas, making utility bills higher.
Greenwashing Fossil Fuel Development

In addition to greenlighting more fossil fuel development, some backers of “permitting reform” also claim that weakening environmental standards will facilitate the rapid buildout of renewable energy and transmission lines for it.

Several studies have identified the key obstacles to the buildout of renewable energy. One is the wait time for generation projects to get connected to the power grid, which is known as the interconnection queue. As of 2022, there were about 2,000 gigawatts of capacity in the interconnection queue, of which 95 percent were from wind, solar and storage projects.

Bureaucratic delays at grid operators and utilities, not environmental regulation, were the culprit here. Another key obstacle is understaffing and lack of capacity in permitting agencies.

But more than 95 percent of renewable energy projects already face a streamlined federal environmental review process, or do not undergo review at all, because they usually aren’t polluting and controversial. There’s simply no credible evidence that restrictive environmental laws are causing delays in bringing renewable energy online.

Likewise, the need for a massive transmission buildout to facilitate renewable energy expansion is exaggerated. There’s huge potential for expanding distributed renewable energy in or near major centers of electricity demand.

Proponents of the Senate bill point to modeling claiming that the benefits of renewable energy and transmission line expansion will outweigh increased emissions from expedited permitting for fossil fuel projects, and more fossil fuel leasing on public lands and waters.

However, the modeling is flawed. By relying on official government data, it undercounts emissions of methane in oil and gas drilling and transportation, as shown by numerous peer-reviewed studies. This is a serious shortcoming, because methane is a short-lived but powerful climate pollutant — 81 times more powerful than carbon dioxide over a 20-year window and 28 times more powerful over a 100-year window.

Further, the modeling makes unfounded assumptions about climate benefits from U.S. liquefied natural gas exports replacing coal in importing countries. There’s evidence that lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions of liquefied natural gas, including methane leakage and emissions from the liquefaction process, are actually worse than emissions from coal — and that the climate damage from liquefied natural gas exports outweighs any economic benefits.
Fossil Fueled Lobbying

The push for more fossil fuel infrastructure is contrary to science. Every credible international body with expertise on this issue, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the International Energy Agency and the UN Environment Programme, agrees on the need to stop building new fossil fuel infrastructure.

It’s also contrary to justice. Indigenous, Black, Brown and poor white communities have long borne the brunt of air and water pollution from the U.S. fossil fuel industry and the resulting health consequences. Adding to this burden would be outrageous.

There’s no excuse to ease permitting for fossil fuels along with renewable energy.

The chorus of establishment voices pushing for “permitting reform” without considering the evidence can be partly attributed to groupthink. But some of them may be acting in bad faith.

The American Petroleum Institute supports the Manchin-Barrasso bill, which should tell you everything you need to know about who’s behind this push.

Sen. Joe Manchin received more oil and gas campaign money than any other member of the Senate or House for years — and owns a coal company. Sen. John Barrasso is the third highest recipient of oil and gas industry money in all of Congress in the current election cycle. Rep. Bruce Westerman, lead sponsor of the House bill, received more than $300,000 in oil and gas campaign money, making the industry his top contributor.

In other words, leading supporters of permitting reform either have a business interest in it — or have effectively been bribed.

If Congress wants to make policy in the public interest, using the best available evidence, they need to reverse course. They need to pass legislation banning new fossil fuel infrastructure and instead requiring the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to reform interconnection procedures to clear the backlog in connecting renewables to the grid.

Instead of gutting the National Environmental Policy Act and other environmental laws to benefit polluting energy projects, they should pass legislation that provides funding to permitting agencies to hire more staff with relevant expertise, and requires more transparency and community engagement. There’s already a bill that does exactly that.

The job of those who care about the climate is to compel Congress to do it.

Unions Brace Themselves as Trump Prepares to Defang Labor Board

Trump’s NLRB will likely be filled with lawyers from the union-busting world hell-bent on rolling back workers’ gains.

By Michael Arria , 

Truthout

December 8, 2024

Workers picket in front of the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Westwood, California, on November 20, 2024.Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images


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In November, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) sided with Amazon workers in ruling that it is illegal to force workers to attend mandatory anti-union propaganda sessions, upending a doctrine of U.S. labor law that has existed since 1948.

The anti-union propaganda sessions, which are formally referred to as “captive audience meetings” are a controversial practice that has long been used to deter unionization drives.

“These coercive meetings are well-known union-busting tools, and the practice has no place in America’s workplaces or in our democracy,” AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said in a statement celebrating the NLRB’s role in ending the practice.

The celebration will presumably be short-lived, however, as the incoming Trump administration is expected to revert the board to the pro-business, anti-union agency that it was during his first term. This means workers’ rights will inevitably be rolled back and much of the progress made over the past four years could be lost.
Potential Firings

It’s hard to know exactly how long the process of realigning the NLRB will take, but most labor experts and leaders expect Donald Trump, upon arriving in the White House, to sack General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, who steered the board in a pro-worker direction via 26 issued memorandums. There’s precedent for such an action, as President Joe Biden dumped Trump’s General Counsel Peter Robb on his first day in office. That move was challenged in court but was ruled to be legal.

“One of the first anti-union moves we’d expect would be that he will fire pro-labor appointees at federal agencies, beginning with Jennifer Abruzzo,” the Economic Policy Institute’s Director of Government Affairs and Advocacy Samantha Sanders told Truthout. “As general counsel at the NLRB, Abruzzo is arguably one of the most effective forces for workers in the Biden administration, and has taken a lot of proactive steps to defend workers’ rights to form unions and to hold employers accountable for illegal union-busting activities.”

“Her office has taken action to put checks on employers monitoring and surveilling workers, getting workers rehired if their employer fires them for trying to form a union, and protecting undocumented workers’ rights to join together with their colleagues to form unions, among other actions,” she continued.

This is where things get a bit trickier. That court ruled that federal law doesn’t protect the board’s general counsel because they act as a prosecutor, but it does protect the other members. This certainly doesn’t mean that Trump won’t try to fire other members of the board.


The incoming Trump administration is expected to revert the board to the pro-business, anti-union agency that it was during his first term.

The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (sometimes referred to as the Wagner Act) states that members can potentially be removed over “neglect of duty or malfeasance in office, but for no other cause,” and some conservatives are pushing for Trump to use the loophole to immediately upend the court. This would lead to some legal drama, as the act would have to run through Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, a Supreme Court precedent that’s been on the books for almost 90 years.

In an article for OnLabor, Teamsters staff attorney Kevin Vazquez points out that this obstacle might not deter an unpredictable figure like Trump or be especially relevant given the right-wing Supreme Court.

“Although Humphrey’s Executor remains controlling precedent, the current unitary-executive-curious Court has made clear that it holds the decision in low esteem, and a majority of Justices may well embrace the opportunity to further narrow or even outright overrule it,” writes Vazquez. “Indeed, in recent years, the Court — three members of which were appointed by Trump — has demonstrated little concern for disregarding or overturning precedent and scant interest in reigning [sic] in Trump’s excesses or stifling the Republican Party’s authoritarian pretensions. All told, whether the Supreme Court would protect the NLRB from Trump’s overriding ambition to remake the federal government in his own image is, unfortunately, anyone’s guess.”

The Washington Post has reported that multiple Trump advisers have discussed the possibility of firing all the Democratic members of the board.

There is currently one vacant spot on the board and Chair Lauren McFerran’s term is up in December. Biden has nominated her for a third term, but she needs to be confirmed by the Senate. Sanders has noted that the Trump administration actually renominated her for a second term in 2019 and was confirmed with some Republican votes. “It is critical that Congress reconfirms her before the end of the year so that the board can at least maintain a quorum to keep hearing cases,” Sanders told Truthout.
Union Elections

Union elections doubled during the Biden years. “We are seeing underserved, vulnerable populations actually feeling empowered to elevate their voices and be heard (and) to demand a seat at the bargaining table, whether that’s through established labor organizations or homegrown ones,” Abruzzo recently told a panel.

Trump’s NLRB will undoubtedly be filled with lawyers from the union-busting world hell-bent on stifling this momentum. We can anticipate the new board to overturn the decision on Cemex Construction Materials Pacific, which established a new framework for employers bargaining with workers.

For nearly 50 years employers could either voluntarily recognize a union or require a secret-ballot election. This created massive problems for workers, as employers could repeatedly break the law in order to diminish support for the organizing effort. There wasn’t a huge downside of being found violating labor law, as it simply initiated another election.

In August 2023, the NLRB ruled on a case between the Teamsters and a cement company called Cemex and rejected the existing precedent. The board said that if a majority of workers sign up to join a union, the employer can either recognize the union or file a petition to hold an election within two weeks. If the employer misses the deadline, the NLRB can order the company to recognize the union. If the employer invalidates the election by committing labor law violations, the NLRB forces the company to recognize the union and start bargaining a contract.

This decision was cited in a number of bargaining orders and unfair labor practice complaints, but it also yielded tangible wins.

For instance, workers at the Red Rock Resort in Las Vegas were inundated by anti-union propaganda from their pro-Trump employer after a majority of them signed cards to join the Culinary Workers Union. These efforts included an anti-union website, promises of new benefits if the organizing drive was defeated, and complimentary steaks in the break room all branded with the phrase, “VOTE NO!”


“One of the first anti-union moves we’d expect would be that he will fire pro-labor appointees at federal agencies.”

These antics managed to keep the union’s vote total under 50 percent, but the NLRB ruled that the company’s “egregious misconduct” meant that it had to immediately recognize the union and start bargaining.

We can also expect the “Quickie Election” precedent to be overturned. This rule was adopted under Obama in 2014 and reduced the amount of time between the filing of a representation petition and a union election. The move deprived businesses of opportunities to pressure workers into voting no. It was largely eliminated by the GOP-controlled board in 2019, but was restored by Biden in August 2023.

After the rule was reinstated, the anti-union law firm Morgan Lewis (which Amazon has employed to quash organizing efforts) published a message to employers warning that the move could lead to a unionization boom.

“Combined with other limitations on employer speech that the NLRB’s General Counsel is pursuing, as well as the risk that the Board has created for employer campaigns in Cemex, it is important for employers to thoughtfully prepare for campaigns so that they are ready to hit the ground running,” the message read.
“Abusive” Conduct Rules, Severance Agreements

The Lion Elastomers decision, which gave workers some leeway to use heated language while engaging in protected activity, will also presumably be reversed.

One of the Trump NLRB’s most notorious moves was its General Motors decision, which overturned a 70-year precedent protecting a workers’ right to occasionally use strong language. Biden’s board had restored the precedent through a ruling concerning a union steward who worked at a Texas rubber plant for 40 years. He had been fired for allegedly making heated comments during a couple of safety committee meetings. In one instance he told a manager that they weren’t doing their job. The Biden NLRB ordered the company to rehire the worker with full back pay going back to his termination.

The Biden board also returned to a longstanding precedent in its McLaren Macomb decision, which prohibits employers from offering severance agreements that require workers to waive their labor rights. “It’s long been understood by the Board and the courts that employers cannot ask individual employees to choose between receiving benefits and exercising their rights under the National Labor Relations Act,” McFerran said after the decision.

It’s probable that Trump will roll back that precedent again. Many also expect his board to bring forward cases that would roll back recent decisions like Stericycle, which established tougher standards for workplace rules, and Miller Plastic Products, which made it easier for a single worker’s action to be considered “concerted.”

In the case of Stericycle, unions are now able to challenge company rules that intimidate workers from organizing or holding protests. In Miller Plastic Products the board returned to a long-established test for determining whether workers are engaging in protected concerted activity when they organize to improve their working conditions.
The Right Is Trying to Defang the Board, or Eliminate It Entirely

There might be cause for concern beyond the overturning of rulings. The board is currently facing several legal challenges from the right aimed at stripping away its legal authority.

In November, Amazon and SpaceX (a company founded and run by Trump adviser and megadonor Elon Musk) argued in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that the NLRB should be sapped of any power.

Amazon’s lawsuit stems from a union election that occurred at a New York City warehouse in 2022, which it claims the NLRB illegally involved itself in, in part because it initiated administrative litigation against the company to reinstate a fired union organizer. Musk’s company launched its lawsuit after the NLRB accused the company of illegally firing workers who wrote an open letter criticizing Musk.

These developments might prove to be relevant as Trump has picked Musk to help lead a commission devoted to gutting regulations and federal agencies (among other things). Not only does the billionaire have a history of antagonism toward unions, he also joked with Trump about firing workers during an interview with the returning president.

“You’re the greatest cutter,” said Trump, presumably referring to the SpaceX workers who were fired after criticizing Musk. “I look at what you do. You walk in and say, ‘You want to quit?’ I won’t mention the name of the company but they go on strike and you say, ‘That’s OK. You’re all gone.’”

This jovial attitude toward union-busting is prevalent on the right. We’ll soon find out how thoroughly it will envelop labor law in the United States.