Chevron, partners to fork out for carbon offsets for Gorgon LNG carbon capture shortfall


Dow Jones Industrial Average listed company Chevron (CVX)'s logo is seen in Los Angeles

Sonali Paul
Wed, November 10, 2021

MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Chevron Corp and its partners in the Gorgon liquefied natural gas (LNG) project in Western Australia have agreed to buy carbon credits likely to cost more than $180 million as a penalty for failing to meet a five-year target for carbon capture and storage (CCS).

The costs, which could amount to well over A$250 million ($184 million) based on Reuters calculations, will be shared with its Gorgon LNG partners - Exxon Mobil Corp, Royal Dutch Shell, and Japan's Osaka Gas, Tokyo Gas and JERA.

The A$3.1 billion Gorgon CCS project, the world's largest commercial CCS project, is being penalised by the Western Australian government for injecting far less carbon dioxide than planned since the LNG plant started up five years ago.

Chevron said in a statement that it would invest A$40 million in "lower carbon projects" and would buy and surrender 5.23 million greenhouse gas offsets to fulfill the Gorgon project's obligations to the state government, ideally by mid-July 2022.

"The package we have announced ... ensures we meet the expectations of the regulator, the community and those we place on ourselves as a leading energy producer in Australia," Chevron Australia Managing Director Mark Hatfield said in a statement.

Based on the current price of carbon offsets on the voluntary Australian spot market, which last week hit a record high of A$37 a tonne, 5.23 million offsets would cost at least A$195 million.

Amid short supply of Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs), Chevron is unlikely to meet its obligation just with those offsets and said in a report to the government it would also use other internationally verified carbon units and offsets.

Gorgon CCS was designed to inject up to 4 million tonnes a year of CO2. Since starting injecting CO2 in August 2019, three years later than scheduled, it has injected a total of about 5.5 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent.

The project was delayed by three years due to a range of technical problems.

($1 = 1.3563 Australian dollars)

(Reporting by Sonali Paul; additional reporting by Sameer Manekar in Bengaluru; Editing by Ramakrishnan M. and Kenneth Maxwell)

Earth Has a Second Moon—For Another 300 Years, At Least

Jeffrey Kluger
Thu, November 11, 2021, 

Full frame of the full moon at sunset with a sky with clouds.
The big guy has a little friend 

Credit - Getty Images; © Jose A. Bernat

It’s easy to be brand loyal to the moon. We’ve only got the one, after all, unlike Jupiter and Saturn, where you’d have dozens to choose from. Here, it’s luna or nada. Or not. The fact is, there’s another sorta, kinda moon in a sorta, kinda orbit around Earth that was discovered only in 2016. And according to a new study in Nature, we may at last know how it was formed.

The quasi-moon—named Kamo’oalewa, after a Hawaiian word that refers to a moving celestial object—is not much to speak of, measuring less than 50 m (164 ft) across. It circles the Earth in a repeating corkscrew-like trajectory that brings it no closer than 40 to 100 times the 384,000 km (239,000 mi.) distance of our more familiar moon. Its odd flight path is caused by the competing gravitational pulls of the Earth and the sun, which continually bend and torque the moonlet’s motions, preventing it from achieving a more conventional orbit.

“It’s primarily influenced just by the sun’s gravity, but this pattern shows up because it’s also—but not quite—on an Earth-like orbit. So it’s this sort of odd dance,” says graduate student Ben Sharkey of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, the lead author of the paper.

None of this means that Kamo’oalewa has to have especially exotic origins. The solar system is littered with asteroids, some of which are captured by the gravity of other planets and become more conventional—if fragmentary—moons. Others don’t orbit other planets in the common way but fall into line in front of them or behind them and pace them in their orbits around the sun, like the flocks of so-called Trojan asteroids that precede and trail Jupiter.
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Either way, Kamo’oalewa was bound to get attention because its composition posed a stubborn mystery. Asteroids tend to reflect brightly in certain infrared frequencies, but Kamo’oalewa just doesn’t. It’s dimmer somehow—clearly made of different stuff, which suggests a different origin.

To investigate the mystery, Sharkey, under the guidance of his PhD adviser, planetary scientist Vishnu Reddy, first turned to a NASA-run telescope in Hawaii routinely used for studying Earth-vicinity asteroids. But even through the usually reliable instrument, the infrared signature seemed too faint. Instead they switched to a University of Arizona-run monocular telescope that, as Sharkey says, could “squeeze every last ounce of photons out of that object.”

That produced better, clearer results, but still they were incomplete. The rock was made of common silicates like other asteroids, but they were common only in their general composition, not in their infrared signature, which remained stubbornly off.

At last, the answer suggested itself. If Kamo’oalewa was behaving like a sort of quasi-moon, perhaps it was an artifact of the actual moon. Earlier in Sharkey’s PhD program, one of his advisers published a paper on lunar samples brought back by the Apollo 14 mission in 1971. When Sharkey compared the data he was getting in his telescope with what the earlier geologists came up with in the rock lab, the results matched perfectly. The kind of space-weathering lunar silicates undergo when they’re still on the surface of the moon precisely accounted for the differences in the infrared reflectivity between common asteroids and Kamo’oalewa.

“Visually, what you’re seeing is weathered silicate,” says Sharkey. “The eons of exposure to space environment and the micrometeorite impacts, it’s almost like a fingerprint and it’s hard to miss.”

How Kamo’oalewa shook free of our lunar companion is no mystery. The moon’s been getting bombarded by space rocks for billions of years, resulting in all manner of lunar debris getting ejected into space (nearly 500 bits of which have made it to the surface of the Earth as meteorites). Kamo’oalewa is one such piece of lunar rubble that spiraled away from the moon. But rather than landing on Earth or simply tumbling off into the void, it found itself a quasi-satellite in its own right.

“We see thousands of craters on the moon, so some of this lunar ejecta has to be sticking around in space,” says Sharkey.

Kamo’oalewa won’t stick around all that long, as its current trajectory is not entirely stable. According to estimates from Sharkey and others, the object will remain an earthly companion for only about 300 more years—nothing at all on the cosmic clock—after which it will break free of its current gravitational chains and twirl off into the void. Originally a part of the moon, then a companion of Earth, it will spend the rest of its long life traveling on its own.

Elon Musk's SpaceX has spent nearly $1.8 million on political lobbying this year, more than Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin

Isobel Asher Hamilton

Wed, November 10, 2021

Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos (left) and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. Joe Raedle/Getty Images/Axel Springer

• Elon Musk's SpaceX has spent nearly $1.8 million on political lobbying this year, CNBC first reported.

• Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin has spent just under $1.4 million, data from Open Secrets shows.

• Blue Origin has been locked in a legal challenge with NASA over a SpaceX contract.

Elon Musk's SpaceX has spent more on political lobbying this year than rival billionaire Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, data suggests.

As first reported by CNBC, SpaceX has spent just under $1.8 million so far this year and Blue Origin has spent just under $1.4 million, data from Open Secrets, a nonprofit that monitors political lobbying expenditure, shows.

Musk said in a September tweet he prefers to "stay out of politics." He has been known to give his personal opinion on politics, however, calling lockdown measures "fascist" and attacking Joe Biden over the president's supposedly "biased" stance on unions.

SpaceX spent $2.2 million on lobbying in 2020 while Blue Origin spent $1.9 million in the same year, per the Open Secrets data.

SpaceX this year spent $590,000 directly lobbying lawmakers, including the Executive Office of the President, CNBC reported. The company also spent more than $210,000 on campaign contributions to bipartisan congressional candidates in the first half of 2021, CNBC said.

While SpaceX has spent more on political lobbying than Blue Origin, per the Open Secrets data, Blue Origin has been notably active in the courts.

SpaceX was awarded a $2.9 billion contract by NASA in April to help take US astronauts back to the moon. Blue Origin filed a challenge with the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in April but its case was rejected by the GAO in July.

Blue Origin also sued NASA in August but the US Court of Federal Claims ruled against Bezos' company on November 4.

NASA administrator Bill Nelson said Tuesday that NASA's target for getting astronauts to the moon by 2024 had been pushed back to 2025, and partially blamed Blue Origin's legal fights for the delay.

Rare 520-year-old coin found at site of first English settlement in Newfoundland

Thu, November 11, 2021

The rare silver coin is known as a Henry VII half groat or two-penny piece

Archaeologists in eastern Newfoundland have unearthed what could be the oldest English coin ever found in Canada.

The rare silver coin - around the size of a US nickel and just smaller than a 10p coin - was discovered at the historic site of Cupids Cove, the first English settlement in the nation.

Known as a Henry VII half groat or two-penny piece, it is believed to have been minted more than 520 years ago.

The coin is expected to go on display at the site in the 2022 tourist season.

"It is incredible to imagine that this coin was minted in England and was lost in Cupids over a hundred years later," said Steve Crocker, the provincial tourism, culture, arts and recreation minister, in a statement on Wednesday.

"It links the story of the early European exploration in the province and the start of English settlement."

A team of archaeologists studied the coin in consultation with a former curator of the Bank of Canada's Currency Museum and determined it had been minted in Canterbury sometime between 1493 and 1499.

Head archaeologist William Gilbert, who has led digs at the site since 1995, hailed the discovery as "a major find".

"Some artefacts are important for what they tell us about a site, while others are important because they spark the imagination. This coin is definitely one of the latter," Mr Gilbert said.

"One can't help but wonder at the journey it made, and how many hands it must have passed through."

In August 1610, a group of English settlers landed at what was then known as Cupers Cove, in Conception Bay, Newfoundland. They were led by a merchant from Bristol by the name of John Guy.

Within years, the colonists had built several structures there, including a fort, sawmill, gristmill and brew house.

In 2001, Mr Gilbert's team uncovered an Elizabethan coin at the same site, which was at the time considered to be the oldest English coin found in Canada.

The newly unearthed half groat is believed to be about 60 years older.

US Elementary school teacher draws praise with video breaking down his starting salary: ‘Teachers deserve better’

Dillon Thompson
Thu, November 11, 2021

An elementary school teacher in Ohio is sparking a widespread conversation about teachers’ salaries.

The viral moment began when Kyle Cohen, a fourth-grade teacher based in Cleveland, posted a TikTok sharing the total salary he made in his first year of work. The clip, in which Cohen revealed that he made $31,000 before taxes, immediately went viral and sparked a massive debate on the app.

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Many of the comments on Cohen’s video were supportive — with users arguing that teachers deserve much higher pay — but a few were critical. One comment, which pointed out that teachers “only” work for eight to nine months of the year, sparked a response from Cohen.

That clip went even more viral than the first. In it, Cohen broke down how many hours he works in a normal week — and how little he makes for each of those hours.

Cohen told In The Know that he posted the video to help “shed light on the current realities educators are facing.” He said he’d shared a similar clip on his YouTube channel (he posts similar content on Instagram as well) and decided to delve deeper into the concept — largely because of how these financial strains impact students.

“Students are experiencing more challenges than ever before as a result of the pandemic,” Cohen said. “If we don’t address these issues, it’s the students, our future leaders, who are going to face the consequences.”

In the TikTok, Cohen begins by explaining that he usually works about 50 hours a week, or roughly 200 hours each month. Then, he adds that he also puts in an “extra” 40 or so hours each month for lesson planning, parent-teacher conferences and other after-school events.

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Elementary school teacher draws praise with video breaking down his starting salary: ‘Teachers deserve better’ (yahoo.com)

“This week, for example, it’s 6 o’clock in the evening,” Cohen says from his classroom. “I have conferences that go until 8 o’clock. I also have conferences next week…”

Then, he crunches the numbers. He multiplies his 240 hours by the nine months he works each year, then divides that number into $31,000 — the salary he made in his first year. The result? Just $14 an hour.

In his video, Cohen was also quick to emphasize that he is “incredibly grateful” for his career and loves being a teacher. He also told In The Know that he knew what he was getting into — and he was never scared off by the job’s salary constraints.

“Teaching is always referred to as being an ‘underpaid job,'” he said. “Family and friends always made comments about the lack of salaries teachers get paid in this country. With that being said, I never allowed these comments to keep me from a field I knew I was meant to be in.”

Instead, Cohen just hopes his clips can start more conversations about how little most teachers make in a year.

“My hope in making these videos is to start some real conversations,” Cohen told In The Know. “Our teachers — and students — deserve the best, and it is the unfortunate reality that we are far from making this dream a reality.”

TikTok users were quick to come to Cohen’s support. His video is now full of praiseworthy comments as well as plenty of outrage.

“It should be $70K minimum for any teacher, regardless of grade level,” one user argued.

“Teachers deserve better,” another added.

“My God, this system needs to change,” another wrote.

The problem spans beyond just the U.S., though. In a recent study of teacher salaries worldwide, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) found that, in terms of pay, America actually rates higher than several other developed nations.

For example, the average starting salary for an American primary school teacher is close to $42,000, which was actually 10th among the 36 countries surveyed. The U.S. ranked above Canada, Sweden, Japan, Israel and more, while ranking behind nations like Germany, Spain and Denmark.

Japanese-Korean-Turkish language group traced to farmers in ancient China


Japanese-Korean-Turkish language group traced to farmers in ancient China

Wed, November 10, 2021,
By Will Dunham

(Reuters) - A study combining linguistic, genetic and archaeological evidence has traced the origins of the family of languages including modern Japanese, Korean, Turkish and Mongolian and the people who speak them to millet farmers who inhabited a region in northeastern China about 9,000 years ago.

The findings detailed on Wednesday document a shared genetic ancestry for the hundreds of millions of people who speak what the researchers call Transeurasian languages across an area stretching more than 5,000 miles (8,000 km).

The findings illustrate how humankind's embrace of agriculture following the Ice Age powered the dispersal of some of the world's major language families. Millet was an important early crop as hunter-gatherers transitioned to an agricultural lifestyle.

There are 98 Transeurasian languages. Among these are Korean and Japanese as well as: various Turkic languages including Turkish in parts of Europe, Anatolia, Central Asia and Siberia; various Mongolic languages including Mongolian in Central and Northeast Asia; and various Tungusic languages in Manchuria and Siberia.

This language family's beginnings were traced to Neolithic millet farmers in the Liao River valley, an area encompassing parts of the Chinese provinces of Liaoning and Jilin and the region of Inner Mongolia. As these farmers moved across northeastern Asia, the descendant languages spread north and west into Siberia and the steppes and east into the Korean peninsula and over the sea to the Japanese archipelago over thousands of years.

The research underscored the complex beginnings for modern populations and cultures.

"Accepting that the roots of one's language, culture or people lie beyond the present national boundaries is a kind of surrender of identity, which some people are not yet prepared to make," said comparative linguist Martine Robbeets, leader of the Archaeolinguistic Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany and lead author of the study published in the journal Nature.

"Powerful nations such as Japan, Korea and China are often pictured as representing one language, one culture and one genetic profile. But a truth that makes people with nationalist agendas uncomfortable is that all languages, cultures and humans, including those in Asia, are mixed," Robbeets added.

The researchers devised a dataset of vocabulary concepts for the 98 languages, identified a core of inherited words related to agriculture and fashioned a language family tree.

Archaeologist and study co-author Mark Hudson of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History said the researchers examined data from 255 archaeological sites in China, Japan, the Korean peninsula and the Russia Far East, assessing similarities in artifacts including pottery, stone tools and plant and animal remains. They also factored in the dates of 269 ancient crop remains from various sites.

The researchers determined that farmers in northeastern China eventually supplemented millet with rice and wheat, an agricultural package that was transmitted when these populations spread to the Korean peninsula by about 1300 BC and from there to Japan after about 1000 BC.

The researchers performed genomic analyses on ancient remains of 23 people and examined existing data on others who lived in North and East Asia as long as 9,500 years ago.

For example, a woman's remains found in Yokchido in South Korea had 95% ancestry from Japan's ancient Jomon people, indicating her recent ancestors had migrated over the sea.

"It is surprising to see that ancient Koreans reflect Jomon ancestry, which so far had only been detected in Japan," Robbeets said.

The origins of modern Chinese languages arose independently, though in a similar fashion with millet also involved. While the progenitors of the Transeurasian languages grew broomcorn millet in the Liao River valley, the originators of the Sino-Tibetan language family farmed foxtail millet at roughly the same time in China's Yellow River region, paving the way for a separate language dispersal, Robbeets said.

(Reporting by Will Dunham in Washington, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)

WAGE THEFT

Japan train driver sues over 49 cents in docked wages

Wed, November 10, 2021

Japan's railways are famously punctual

A Japanese train driver is suing his employer after he was docked 56 yen ($0.49; £0.36) in wages for causing a brief delay to the country's famously punctual rail system.

Train company JR West fined the man after a work mix-up in June 2020 caused a one-minute delay to operations.

It argued that no labour had been performed during the stoppage.

The employee is seeking 2.2 million yen ($19,407; £14,347) in damages for mental anguish caused by the ordeal.

According to the Japanese news site, Soranews24, the unnamed man was scheduled to pilot an empty train to Okayama station in the south of the country, but arrived at the wrong platform while waiting to take over from the previous driver.

By the time he realised his mistake and had rushed to the correct platform, the transfer between the two drivers had been delayed by two minutes, leading to a one-minute delay in the train's departure and a one-minute delay in warehousing the train at the depot.

JR West initially docked the man 85 yen ($0.75; $0.55), but later agreed to reduce the fine to 56 yen after the driver took the case to the Okayama Labour Standards Inspection Office.

However, the employee refused to accept the reduction and has argued that the delay caused no actual disruption to the timetables or passengers as the train was empty during the incident.

But the company says it applied the "no work, no pay principle", as it would for an employee's late arrival or an unexplained absence.

The driver took his case to the Okayama District Court in March, where he is now seeking damages.

Japan's rail system is known for its reliability. In 2017 a rail company issued an apology after one of its trains left a station 20 seconds early.

And if a train delayed by more than five minutes, passengers are issued with a certificate they can use as an excuse for being late.

 

Iran wants guarantee US will not leave renewed nuclear deal

TEHRAN, Nov. 12 (MNA) – Iran's top negotiator and Deputy Foreign Minister for Political Affairs Ali Bagheri Kani said that Iran requires a commitment that the US will not again leave the nuclear deal (JCPOA).

Ali Bagheri Kani in an interview with Guardian said that talks in Vienna between Iran and other signatories had failed to reach an agreement on a means of verifying that US sanctions had both been lifted and had a practical impact on trade with Iran.

“We need verification, and this remains unresolved. It is one of the issues that remains not finalised. It is not enough for the ink to be put on the agreement,” he said. Bagheri Kani did not rule out an independent body being responsible for verification.

Defending Iran's demand that the US give a guarantee that it will comply with the agreement, Bagheri Kani said, “This is about an agreement, not a policy. If there is a peace agreement between two states, it has the effect of a treaty. This is international law. It is not intended that domestic laws of the US can prevail over an international agreement. That is against international law.”

He added he wanted European powers to give their own guarantees that they will trade with Iran, regardless of the US position, possibly by using a blocking statute nullifying the effect of US sanctions on European firms that trade with Iran.

Bagheri Kani rejected that Iran had been stalling on the talks’ resumption in an effort to develop its own nuclear program, saying it was natural for a new government to take time to prepare its negotiating position and to hold bilateral talks with the other parties.

He reiterated calls for all US sanctions linked to the nuclear deal to be lifted.  “We are just saying that in accordance with the JCPOA the sanctions should be lifted. We did a deal, and our view is that it should be implemented.”

Bagheri Kani also ruled out discussions on Iran’s missile and security program being included in the agreement. He said, "The JCPOA has a clear framework and other issues are not relevant. We are not going to negotiate on our defence capabilities or our security.”

Asked if he was requiring the Vienna talks to go back to the start, he said, “What is important is not from where we started, but what is important is that we achieve a deal that has practical results for the parties. Our main objective is to remove the illegal sanctions that they have imposed on the Iranian nation in breach of UN resolutions. Any sanctions in breach of the JCPOA imposed by President Obama and President Trump have to be lifted. That is the agreement set out the JCPOA.”

The 2015 deal, more formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was signed by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council — the US, the UK, China, Russia, and France — plus Germany and the EU. Despite the International Atomic Energy Agency's acknowledgement of Iran's adherence to all of its obligations, the US government unilaterally withdrew from the agreement in May 2018.

The US government has imposed sanctions under various pretexts in line with its hostile goals against Iran and the advancement of its economic war against Iran.

Amid the indifference of the JCPOA parties toward continued US violations of the JCPOA, in December 2020, the Iranian Parliament passed the Law on "Strategic Action Plan to Counter Sanctions and Protect Rights of the People" that prompted the Iranian administration to restrict the IAEA’s inspections and accelerate the development of the country’s nuclear program beyond the limits set by the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement.

Iran has also increased the level of uranium enrichment beyond the level allowed under the JCPOA in accordance with the accord itself.

The current US administration has not yet fulfilled the promises Joe Biden made during his presidential elections campaigns to undo Trump's actions and return to the deal. In the meantime, Tehran has also stressed that the Biden administration's return to the agreement without lifting the sanctions is not important at all.

Meanwhile, Iran and the remaining signatories to the JCPOA known as the P4+1 with the indirect involvement of the United States have held six rounds of talks so far with no results. The Western powers made excessive demands during the talks and the talks were halted amid the change in the government in Iran till last Wednesday, the Iranian deputy foreign minister and the new top negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani announced that the Vienna talks will start on November 29 after a five-month halt.

ZZ/PR/ FN14000821000015

 

Arab states admit to Syria's victory in war: Nasrallah

TEHRAN, Nov. 11 (MNA) – Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah said Thur. that the rapprochement of Arab states to the Syrian government shows that they have been defeated in their war on the country.

According to Al-Manar, Hezbollah marks Martyr’s Day yearly on November eleventh. The day is considered an opportunity to recall the great martyr, Ahmad Kassir, who blew himself up in November 11, 1982, targeting the center of the Israeli military governor in the southern city of Tyre, and killing dozens of Zionist officers and soldiers.

At the start of his speech, Nasrallah hailed the role the martyrs played in the history of Islam and Resistance.

"Hezbollah has selected November 11 as Martyr Day because it refers to the date of the first martyrdom bombing operation carried out by the martyr Ahmad Kassir against the Israeli occupation forces in 1982," he said.

"Our Islamic values call on us to glorify the martyrs," he said.

The Hezbollah leader pointed to the visit of officials of Arab states to Damascus and said, "In recent days, it has been reported that the leaders of several Arab countries have contacted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad... An Emirati official traveled to Syria. These are achieved by the martyrs."

According to Nasrallah, Hezbollah martyrs liberated the prisoners as well as the occupied territories, deterred the enemy’s aggression, prevented the civil war in Lebanon, and defeated the takfiri terror in Syria.

Israeli enemy is periodically carrying out military drills for fear of Hezbollah capabilities, he said, adding that ‘Israel’ is worried about Hezbollah infantry’s ability to invade Galilee and fire precision-guided missiles.

He pointed to the US plots to create unrest in Lebanon and said that Hezbollah has foiled the US attempt to fully dominate Lebanon.

However, he said that Washington has influence over the Lebanese political factions while the country is standing on its feet and is still an independent entity thanks to Hezbollah's efforts.

Hezbollah will rely on the martyrs’ legacy and military power to deter any Israeli aggression on Lebanon, Nasrallah added.

Referring to the current dispute with Saudi Arabia, the Hezbollah leader said that he disagreed with the resignation of the Lebanese Information Minister George Kordahi.

He noted that Riyadh has problems with Hezbollah rather than the information minister.

Nasrallah added that Saudi Arabia's demands from Lebanon will not end after the resignation of Kordahi.

"The crisis that Saudi Arabia has started is part of a struggle against the Resistance," he said.

Nasrallah added that Riyadh serves the interest of Washington and Tel Aviv in Lebanon. 

He rejected Saudi Arabia's claim on Hezbollah's control over Lebanon, while he acknowledged that the Resistance group is the biggest political force in the country.

He pointed to the Saudi war on Yemen, saying that "Saudi Arabia has spent billions of dollars in Yemen over the past seven years. Today, the Saudis know very well that the defeat in Ma'rib would mean their total defeat in Yemen."

He also called for an impartial investigation on the blast in Beirut Port.

KI/Live

The truth about 3 core lies of American fascism

Brandon Bradford
November 11, 2021

The US has a fascism problem. In its culture, in its hero worship, in its ideological makeup. Donald Trump was the culmination of that.

His supporters tried to whitewash the specifics, but they believed in a fascist hierarchy. There's no other explanation. Even for the current Republican Party, made of power-craving vultures whose only plan for America is inflaming white race hatreds and removing rights (voting, reproductive, et al.), January 6 should have been too far.

Fascism isn't something I say lightly.

Abuses of power and cults of personality can happen across the spectrum, but the current version of conservatism is something fascism easily maps over. The starting point on the right is "fascism now or fascism later," and it's intertwined with conversations about politics and society we have everyday. They are repeated and fundamentally false.

 A few ideas you've heard more than once:

You'll get more conservative as you get older.

I'm socially liberal but fiscally conservative.

We need a race-blind society.


These ideas build off of one another, because their foundations aren't rested on ideals, but ends.

You'll get more conservative …

It's generally believed the left is young and idealistic while the right is pragmatic and logical. The presumption is as generations age and accumulate wealth, they give up challenging political and social systems because it's in their best interest to keep things going as-is. I've always found this idea unconvincing for a few reasons.

What it means to be a conservative has shifted drastically as the far-right radicalization of the Republican Party has progressed to the mainstream over the last two decades.
Society has tended to get more liberal each generation. The arc of US history, in attempts to live up to the ideals we preach, is constantly moving left.
Society is more aware of systemic issues in education, finance, law, energy, and societal exploitation. The GOP has no plan for any of these. It hasn't for 20 years. Its stance is to figure it out when in office. Hope the Democrats actually put some plans in place while they pivot for more power. It's culture wars all the way down.

Maybe if Millenials and Gen Z had the same access to wealth, the same investment in wealth's political advantages and the same ignorance to the power structures that mold American society — maybe if all that, then yeah. Maybe they would skew more conservative as they age.

Maybe if they had been raised without the awareness of how power structures pool resources, and of how laws around housing and finance exacerbate compounded advantages coming from wealth.However, given that Millenials and Gen Z on average are three to four times poorer than Baby Boomers, grew up with multiple financial crises as well as a melting planet in an interconnected world, they are far less inclined to be skewing to the right. Which leads to:

"I'm socially liberal but …"

What is presumed is that equality is disconnected from equity. The modern generation knows that's false. There's no equality without equity and without access. In an intertwined, positive-sum economy, there is no such thing as socially liberal but fiscally conservative.

That phrase is about prioritizing money. Infrastructure they dislike? Waste. Infrastructure they like (i.e., that supports their own wealth)? Vital. It's an amorphous, 10,000-foot term that falls apart under any scrutiny. It justifies propping up defense contractors while cutting down education. It's a smokescreen and it always has been.

"We need a race-blind society"

You've heard this from the right in phrases like, "I don't believe race exists, so I'm not going to acknowledge it," and on the left in, "If we fix class issues, we will fix race issues." They never seem to get to how, because you can't fix problems made specifically with race in mind by ignoring that it exists. All their solutions require magic or time travel.

It's this: Completely change the past and the inequities it contains. Or this: Completely change the minds and experiences of everyone on the planet, all at once. A race-blind society without fixing engrained inequities ends up treating democratic baselines — like freedom, respect and empathy — as finite resources that those in power will dole out at their convenience. Or the "market" will dole out to those who are deserving of them. I call this trickle-down equality.

Trickle-down equality is the same magical nonsense as trickle-down economics. It focuses on changing society in superficial ways that ultimately protect the systems exacerbating the root problems.

On the right, trickle-down equality manifests itself in respectability politics — the model minority myth or means-testing food stamps. On the left, trickle-down equality deradicalizes and undermines the core goals of a movement to placate entrenched communities in power.

If you find yourself rising up to the subjectively elite class, they will placate your worries with comforts instead of community. This often happens with movement leaders who find themselves with a captive audience, a platform, but didn't find the amount of political success they hoped for. Slowly whitewashed down to be toothless representations of the political group they are now paid to speak for, as pundits and podcast hosts whose brand is "fight the power" in-between appearances on CNN panels, "both sidesing" slavery.

Real equality — real equity — is about specifics. About actionable, comprehensive plans. About making sure plans address issues in ways that really do raise all boats. In the sometimes fractured coalition that is the American left, a sizable portion, over decades of in-fighting, has been centered around policies that leave communities behind.

Move left

Fascism paves over nuanced challenges inherent in fixing our country's problems — by ensuring those out of power don't have a choice.

To combat this, we must try to be cognizant of our worldview. We must be targeted in our support. We must listen to community allies. Most importantly, we have to be aware of how conservatives control the conversation. We cannot meet a mentality that doesn't believe in a democratic society in the middle. You want to fight fascism and push America towards the values it preaches? Move left, friend. Move left.