VP contender Walz fends off US misinformation over pro-LGBTQ stance

By AFP
August 28, 2024


Tim Walz faces a flood of misinformation ahead of the November election. - Copyright AFP KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI

Daniel Patrick Galgano and Anuj Chopra

A barrage of attacks on Tim Walz fueled by misinformation over his support for LGBTQ communities has failed to dent the US vice presidential candidate’s surging poll ratings, suggesting that voters are wearying of some “culture war” issues in a tight White House race.

The push, which includes false assertions that Walz signed a law protecting pedophiles, has been amplified by Donald Trump and top Republicans as political campaigning kicks into high gear ahead of the November 5 election.

Walz — the popular two-term governor of Minnesota — has also faced a torrent of misinformation about his legislative record on transgender rights and gender-affirming care.

Trump recently heaped scorn on Walz, saying he was “heavy into the transgender world.”

Trump’s supporters have mocked him as “Tampon Tim,” falsely asserting that he forced schools to make tampons and pads available in boys’ toilets, after he signed a law that requires schools to make the products available for free for menstruating students.

But — unlike an issue such as abortion, which has driven voters to polls at local, state and national levels since the Supreme Court overturned the right to the procedure in 2022 — the attacks appear to have failed to move the needle on Walz.

“People are getting ‘issue fatigue’ with regards to the culture wars,” Todd Belt, director of the political management program at George Washington University, told AFP.

“As the election gets closer, people want to hear out kitchen-table issues that have a material effect on their well-being.”

– ‘Real issues’ –

“Inflation is Americans’ most important issue,” said an Economist-YouGov poll in mid-August, with 26 percent expressing concern about prices.

When asked about other issues “important” to Americans, jobs and economy, immigration, healthcare and climate change were listed as the top answers.

Abortion, which many Americans regard as a hot-button culture war issue, appeared on the list, at sixth place.

“Voters are insisting that politicians focus instead on the real issues facing our nation, including inflation, abortion rights, and climate change,” said GLAAD president Sarah Kate Ellis.

Her statement followed a survey in March which concluded that campaigning on anti-transgender issues was a “losing strategy,” with candidates who frequently discuss them creating more opposition than support for their campaigns.

That has not stopped both Republicans and Democrats from putting the culture wars at the center of their campaigns, and in a volatile election cycle issues other than abortion could yet break through.

But for now, despite the hammering of his pro-LGBTQ record, Walz has stayed easily ahead of Republican vice-presidential nominee J.D. Vance in national polling.

– ‘People are tired’ –

Much of the rhetoric against Walz involves children, including a viral claim across social media that he signed a bill last year protecting pedophiles in Minnesota, AFP fact-checkers reported.

The false claim, which garnered tens of thousands of views on sites such as Instagram, deploy a long-standing disinformation trope tying the LGBTQ community to pedophilia.

While lawmakers did remove a reference to pedophilia in the state’s human rights law, experts including Naomi Cahn, a University of Virginia professor, said the move does not affect the “criminal laws concerning sexual contact with a child.”

Other posts falsely accuse Walz of allowing the state to terminate parental custody if trans children are stopped by their parents from receiving gender-affirming care.

“Tim Walz signed a bill that lets the state take away (your) kids… in the name of ‘gender affirming care,'” conservative talk show host Megyn Kelly wrote on the platform X, a falsehood that garnered over 2.5 million views and was widely shared by Trump supporters.

Walz battled such misinformation after he signed the Trans Refuge Bill last year, granting legal protection to transgender people who come to Minnesota to seek medical care, even if the treatment is illegal in their home state.

Top Republicans such as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin did see electoral success in past voting cycles by stoking anti-LGBTQ rhetoric.

But polls showed that — unlike Democrats with abortion rights — Republicans had little success mobilizing voters around anti-trans issues in the 2022 midterm elections.

“It’s not working right now” before the November election, Belt said, adding that “people are tired” of the messaging.

“You can’t win an election just by being against something.”

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

Haiti gangs ‘aren’t even worried’ by Kenyan police


By AFP
August 28, 2024

People walk past burning tires, during a demonstration against insecurity in Port-au-Prince, Haiti - Copyright AFP Clarens SIFFROY
Jean Daniel SENAT with Gerard MARTINEZ in Miami

Two months after the first Kenyan police officers arrived in Haiti, little progress has been made against the country’s rapacious gangs — and the buildup of an international policing mission appears stalled.

With UN backing and funding from the United States, the mission was supposed to bring order to a nation where armed groups control 80 percent of the capital, Port-au-Prince.

Yet the Kenyan police — now numbering 400 — and their Haitian counterparts have not recaptured any gang strongholds, with frustration palpable among city residents.

“The abuse from the gangs continues, and the bandits aren’t even worried,” motorcycle taxi driver Watson Laurent, 39, told AFP, adding he had been in favor of the international intervention.

“I thought they would restore peace and support our police who were overwhelmed,” he said. “I am very concerned. I can’t sleep at night because of the explosions.”

Violence-plagued Haiti was plunged into further turmoil after a coordinated gang uprising in February saw attacks on the international airport and police stations, and led to the resignation of prime minister Ariel Henry.

The Multinational Security Support Mission (MSS), which Kenya had stepped up to lead, was already in planning and was finally deployed to help Haiti tackle the soaring insecurity.

The first 200 Kenyans arrived in late June, with another 200 in July.

But the force has “neither the sufficient personnel nor the equipment to launch real offensive operations against the gangs,” Diego Da Rin, Haiti analyst at the NGO International Crisis Group, told AFP.

– ‘Get to work’ –

The Kenyans and the Haitian National Police have protected key buildings and facilities in Port-au-Prince, while gangs — accused of rape, murder and kidnapping — have largely held on to their territory.

The only major operation that the Kenyan police were involved in was at the end of July, when the 400 Mawozo gang took the town of Ganthier, 28 kilometers (18 miles) east of Port-au-Prince.

But ahead of the security forces’ arrival, gang members skipped town — only to retake Ganthier once the Kenyan and Haitian police left.

Kenyan police have said they have made “significant progress,” including helping take back “critical infrastructure, including the airport, from gang control” and opening “roads that have enabled the return of thousands of Haitians earlier displaced.”

Most of that progress took place before their arrival, said Da Rin.

Many ordinary Haitians are angry.

“The MSS needs to get to work,” said Yverose Amazan, a shopkeeper. “This situation has gone on too long.”


– Where are the others? –


With a price tag of $600 million, the MSS is supposed to total 2,500 officers from Bangladesh, Benin, Chad, the Bahamas, Barbados and Jamaica — yet only the Kenyans have arrived, and with just 400 of their planned 1,000 officers.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for more funding, with the latest figures showing only $21.6 million out of the $85 million pledged has been received.

Meanwhile the United States has contributed more than $300 million in funds and equipment, including armored vehicles.

The gang uprising was just the latest shock to hit a country grappling with the compounding effects of political crises, natural disasters and poverty.

Nearly 600,000 people have been displaced in Haiti, according to the United Nations, while some 4.5 million do not have enough to eat.

The prospects may look grim, but Amazan hopes the police mission “does something” by the time school starts in mid-September.

“I would like to be able to move around my country, as was the case before the proliferation of the gangs,” she said.

One quarter of China’s energy now comes from clean sources: white paper


By AFP
August 28, 2024

China said its wind and solar capacity overshot a target set by President Xi Jinping nearly six years ahead of schedule 

- Copyright AFP/File GREG BAKER

A quarter of all the energy China consumes now comes from clean sources, according to research published Thursday, as Beijing rapidly pivots its huge economy to a greener footing.

The country is the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, though has in recent years emerged as a global leader in renewable energy.

It has pledged to bring its emissions of planet-warming carbon dioxide to a peak by 2030 and to net zero by 2060.

A white paper published Thursday said the proportion of “clean energy” in total national consumption rose from 15.5 percent to 26.4 percent over the past decade, according to state news agency Xinhua.

Wind and solar capacity increased by ten times over the same period, Xinhua quoted the document as saying.

It said China was responsible for over 40 percent of annual additions to global renewable energy capacity since 2013.

“China has… achieved historic breakthroughs in green and low-carbon energy development,” the white paper said.

Under the Paris climate accord, countries have pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions with a view to keeping global temperature rises below 1.5 Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

China has won plaudits for its efforts to rapidly ditch polluting energy sources such as coal, but has also resisted calls to act even more ambitiously.

Last week, its wind and solar capacity overshot a target set by President Xi Jinping nearly six years ahead of schedule.

Mismatched development in the country’s renewables sector also means a significant amount of energy gets wasted, while turbulence in the domestic solar industry has pushed some firms into dire financial straits.

China’s solar sector blazes trail in commitment to renewables


By AFP
August 28, 2024

China is building almost twice as much wind and solar capacity as every other country combined - Copyright AFP GREG BAKER

Rebecca Bailey with Matthew Walsh in Beijing

Hundreds of rows of gleaming panels blanket swathes of scrubby sand at sunset in a remote northern Chinese desert — once the biggest solar farm in the world.

On the edge of the forbidding Tengger desert, the solar park produces 1.5 gigawatts of power — but it has since been eclipsed and the largest is now further west with more than double the capacity.

China, the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, is building almost twice as much wind and solar capacity as every other country combined.

Last week, its wind and solar capacity overshot a target set by President Xi Jinping nearly six years ahead of schedule.

The vast solar arrays in the Ningxia region are a testament to a state-led industrial policy that has driven that breakneck growth.

South of the regional capital Yinchuan, huge lorries roar down a highway flanked by photovoltaic panels and wind turbines stretching to the horizon.

Ningxia, like much of China’s northwest, is sparsely populated and sun-soaked, pockmarked with small farms, vineyards and hulking power stations.

This geography makes it a prime location for generating solar power, which is then sent to China’s eastern and southern provinces where electricity demand is highest.

“China’s solar energy is developing at an unprecedented pace and scale,” said analyst Wu Di from Peking University’s Institute of Energy.

The country increased its installed solar capacity by more than 55 percent last year, according to the National Energy Administration.

China now accounts for over 40 percent of the total installed capacity worldwide, said Wu.

– ‘Need for coal waning’ –

Beijing aims to bring emissions of planet-heating carbon dioxide to a peak by 2030 and to net zero by 2060, part of its commitments under the Paris climate accord that seeks to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

“Carbon can’t peak unless incremental consumption demand is covered entirely by incremental growth in clean energy,” said David Fishman, a senior manager at the Lantau Group specialising in China’s power sector.

“Incremental solar capacity growth is an important part of making sure all power demand growth is met by clean sources.”

The government only permitted around nine gigawatts of new coal power in the first half of 2024, a year-on-year reduction of 83 percent, according to a report published this month by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.

“With new renewable energy installations now capable of meeting all incremental power demand in China, the need for new coal is waning,” the Finland-based independent research group said.

But it also warned that construction continued on existing coal projects, potentially slowing Beijing’s energy transition.

– Industry shake-out –

The blistering pace at which extra solar capacity has been added has not quite been matched by developments in the power grid, causing some energy to be lost — a phenomenon known as curtailment.

In May, Fitch Ratings said this could continue to rise in the near term, with the solar curtailment rate for the first quarter of 2024 increasing to four percent.

“In the future, in order to control the solar curtailment ratio within a reasonable range, China still has lots of work to do,” said Wu.

Transferring power from west to east is also “not the most cost-effective approach”, said Gao Yuhe from environmental group Greenpeace East Asia.

Besides the behemothic parks in the north, China’s solar revolution has also relied on distributed solar energy — smaller panels set onto rooftops in residential and commercial areas, which reduce transmission losses.

But even this smaller-scale infrastructure needs upgrading to cope with recent increased capacity, said Wu.

Long backed by generous government subsidies, China’s domestic solar-panel industry is struggling with a global oversupply crisis that has driven down prices and pushed some firms into bankruptcy.

Fishman, of the Lantau Group, said the intense competition “is good news for builders, who continue to benefit from the cheapest panels the world has ever seen”.

“Once a few of them go toes-up because they can’t endure the competition, the market should stabilise,” he added.

Chinese subsidies have also created friction with global trading partners, with the EU launching an investigation to discern whether the subsidies have helped homegrown firms undercut European rivals.

Beijing denies that its industrial policies are unfair and has initiated a series of probes into European imports in apparent retaliation.

Brazil judge threatens to suspend X within 24 hours

By AFP
August 28, 2024


Elon Musk's X. — © AFP

A Brazilian Supreme Court judge threatened Wednesday to suspend X, formerly Twitter, if CEO Elon Musk doesn’t name a new legal representative for the social media site’s operations in the country.

Earlier this month Musk shut down X’s business operations in Brazil while preserving access to the social media site for users after accusing the judge of threatening the company’s previous legal representative.

In an order made public Wednesday, judge Alexandre de Moraes ordered Musk “to appoint the company’s new legal representative in Brazil within 24 hours.”

“In the event of non-compliance with the order, the decision provides for the suspension of the social network’s activities in Brazil.”

Moraes has spearheaded the battle against disinformation in South America’s largest nation, clashing with Musk along the way.

Musk and other critics have said Moraes is part of a sweeping crackdown on free speech.

Justifying the shutdown of the offices, Musk said that had X complied with de Moraes’s orders, “there was no way we could explain our actions without being ashamed.”


Brazil Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes ordered Elon Musk to name a new legal representative in the country or face X being shut down there – Copyright AFP/File EVARISTO SA

Moraes previously had ordered the suspension of several Twitter accounts suspected of spreading disinformation, including those of supporters of former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, who tried to discredit the voting system in the 2022 presidential election, which he lost.

In April, X admitted that several users of blocked accounts had managed to circumvent the restrictions.

Musk is also the subject of a judicial investigation into an alleged scheme where public money was used to orchestrate disinformation campaigns in favor of Bolsonaro and those close to him

Banned but popular: The apps that have been blocked the most


ByDr. Tim Sandle
August 28, 2024

DIGITAL JOURNAL


Meta says Russian operation called 'Doppelganger' has persisted in efforts to undermine support for Ukraine by using fake accounts on social media

 - Copyright AFP Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV

A new study shows that the most popular app that is banned in multiple countries is Facebook with 3.05 billion monthly users. Following this, TikTok stands out as an app that may become banned in the US for 170 million users in the country.

PUBG Mobile closes the ranking as the only game on the list of the most popular banned apps.

Researchers based at Linkee.ai conducted a study to rank the most popular apps that are currently banned in other countries.The information about monthly world and US users and revenue was collected from Statista. Google searches in the US were added for additional context.

App	Type	Monthly Users	US Users	Revenue Total 2023	Revenue US 2023	Banned in
Facebook	social media	3.05B	175M	$134.9B	$61.2B	China, Iran, North Korea, Myanmar, Russia, Turkmenistan and Uganda
Whatsapp	messaging app	3.03B	98M	$1.24B	$40M	China, North Korea, Syria, Qatar and the UAE
Youtube	video sharing	2.7B	239M	$31.5B	$18B	North Korea, partial ban in Germany, China, North Korea, Thailand, Malaysia
Intagram	social media	2B	133.5M	$50.58B	$60.3B	China, Vietnam, North Korea, Turkey
Google	search engine	1.5B	276M	$305.6B	$256B	China
WeChat	messaging app	1.3B	4M	$16.4B	$71.4M	India, partial ban in Canada, UK, New Zealand (government devices)
TikTok	social media	1B	170M	$120B	$16B	India, partial bans in Nepal, New Zealand, Taiwan, Indonesia
Twitter	social media	335.7M	76M	$3.4B	$1.75B	China, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Russia, and Turkmenistan
Baidu	browser	667M	7.5M	$14.57B	164M	India
Spotify	music service	602M	100M	$13.2B	$1.43B	China, Ethiopia, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Iran, Iraq, Myanmar, Cuba and Venezuela

From the above table, Facebook is the most popular app that is banned in other countries with 3.0 billion monthly users all over the world. It is currently banned in China, Russia, Iran and North Korea among other countries but it still brought over $130B in revenue last year.

Whatsapp takes the second place in the ranking of the most popular banned apps, getting 3.03 billion monthly users, closely trailing Facebook. Popular messenger is similarly banned in China and North Korea, but it is also not allowed in Syria, Qatar and UAE. Whatsapp has less users in the US with 98 million but it is more searched online than Facebook, gathering over 5M queries in a month.

Youtube is third with 2.7 million monthly users all over the world. Youtube is the most searched app online to download with over 10M queries as well as second most used app in this ranking, losing only to Google. Currently Youtube is banned only in North Korea but it also faces partial bans and content restrictions in China, Thailand, Malaysia and even Germany.

Instagram takes the fourth place with 2 billion monthly users, a billion less than WhatsApp or Facebook. Instagram earned $60.3B dollars in revenue in 2023 and $45B dollars came from the users in the United States. While hugely popular in the US, the app is banned in Vietnam, North Korea, China and Turkey.

Google is fifth in the ranking of the most popular apps banned in other countries, having 1.5B monthly users. The popular search engine has the most users in the ranking, accounting for 276 million monthly users. Google also has the biggest revenue with over $305 billion earned last year. Currently Google is banned only in China.

South Korea court to rule on embryo plaintiff climate case

By AFP
August 28, 2024


Children play in a water fountain during a heatwave in Seoul. The country's constitutional court will decide Thursday a case brought by child plaintiffs against official carbon emmission goals -

Copyright AFP ANTHONY WALLACE

A groundbreaking climate case brought against the South Korean government by young environmental activists who named an embryo as a lead plaintiff is set to be decided Thursday by the country’s Constitutional Court.

In Asia’s first such case, the plaintiffs claim South Korea’s legally binding climate commitments are insufficient and unmet, violating their constitutionally guaranteed human rights.

A similar youth-led effort recently succeeded in the US state of Montana, while another is being heard at the European Higher Court.

The case — known as “Woodpecker et al. v. South Korea” after the in-utero nickname of an embryo, now toddler, involved — includes four petitions by children.

In 2021, South Korea made a legally binding commitment to reduce carbon emissions by 290 million tons by 2030 — and to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

To meet this goal, the country needs to reduce emissions by 5.4 percent every year from 2023 — a target they have so far failed to meet.

If no changes are made, the plaintiffs argue, future generations will not only have to live in a degraded environment, but will also have to bear the burden of undertaking massive greenhouse gas reductions.

This, the case claims, would mean that the state has violated its duty to protect their fundamental rights.

Similar climate cases globally have found success, for example, in Germany in 2021, where climate targets were ruled insufficient and unconstitutional.

But a child-led suit in California over alleged government failures to curb pollution was thrown out in May.

The lawyer for one 12-year-old plaintiff told AFP that the age of the plaintiffs helped hammer home people’s desperation for change, and urged the court to rule in their favour.

“This lawsuit is not just a symbolic lawsuit, but a lawsuit that we can and must win,” Youn Se-jong said.

“The essence of the climate lawsuit is no different from the numerous constitutional issues related to fundamental rights that the Constitutional Court has judged, such as conscientious objection to military service or right to abortion,” Youn said.

“If we delay our response to reduce the burden of climate change, that burden will be passed onto future generations.”

'Head-spinning': Pulitzer-winning historian says 2024 election unlike any since 1968

Daniel Hampton
August 28, 2024 

A Pulitzer Prize-winning presidential historian shared Wednesday why she feels the 2024 election cycle is the most "head spinning" she's seen in decades. (Screengrab via CNN)

A Pulitzer Prize-winning presidential historian shared Wednesday why she feels the 2024 election cycle is the most "head-spinning" she's seen in decades.

Presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin appeared on CNN's "OutFront" with Erin Burnett. Burnett asked if this election season — with the assassination attempt, Joe Biden's unceremonious exit from the race following a disastrous debate performance and the first Black and Asian woman winning the Democratic nomination — has left Goodwin's head "spinning."

"Without question," replied Goodwin.

She compared the last eight weeks to the 1968 convention and election.

"Everybody thought Lyndon Johnson was the nominee to be the candidate running against the Republican, who turns out to be Richard Nixon once again. They thought that there was no chance that anyone could undo him. He then decides to withdraw from the race on March 31. And then it looks like it's going to be a debate between Robert Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy. Then Martin Luther King is killed, Robert Kennedy is killed. And then you get to that Democratic convention," she said, where Democrats "lost that election that day."

"I lived through that time," she said. "It was head-spinning then, it's head-spinning now."

Goodwin said she has confidence that whether Kamal Harris or Donald Trump wins, the country will rise above.

"This is why history is so important!" she said. "It's why I love it so much."

She said the country needs history.

"We need perspective. We need their lessons. We need their hope!" she said.

Watch the clip below or at this link.

Amid soaring temps, heat-related deaths have more than doubled since 1999

Jessica Corbett, 

Common Dreams
August 27, 2024 

Heat waves rise near a heat danger warning sign in Death Valley National Park, Calif. David McNew/Getty Image

As 55 million people in the U.S. Midwest faced heat alerts on Monday, research published in the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Medical Association showed that heat-related deaths in the country rose 117% between 1999 and 2023.

"The current trajectory that we're on, in terms of warming and the change in the climate, is starting to actually show up in increased deaths," lead author Jeffrey Howard, an associate professor of public health at the University of Texas at San Antonio, toldUSA Today. "That's something that we hadn't had measured before."

Using a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention platform, Howard and co-authors from Pennsylvania State University and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences analyzed all deaths from those 25 years coded for "hyperthermia of newborn," "effects of heat and light," or "exposure to excessive natural heat" as either a contributing or underlying cause of death.

They found 21,518 deaths for the full period, with 1,069 in 1999. The lowest annual figure was in 2004 (311) and the highest was in 2023 (2,325). Last year was the hottest on record globally and scientists are already warning that this year is expected to continue that trend.

"As temperatures continue to rise because of climate change, the recent increasing trend is likely to continue."

Last year broke the record that was set in 2016—a year that's also significant in the new study: "The number of heat-related deaths... showed year-to-year variability, with spikes in 2006 and 2011, before showing steady increases after 2016."

Howard toldCBS News that "it is likely that continued increases in average temperatures, the number of 'hot days,' and the frequency and intensity of heatwaves could be playing a role" in the rise since 2016.

"There is also a social and behavioral component as well," he added, "including differences in access to air conditioning, outdoor work, the number of unhoused individuals, and things like that."

The researcher noted that Arizona, California, Nevada, and Texas had the highest heat-related deaths—which he said is "not terribly surprising because we know that these are some of the hottest regions in the country, but it does reinforce that the risk varies regionally."

The paper warns that "as temperatures continue to rise because of climate change, the recent increasing trend is likely to continue. Local authorities in high-risk areas should consider investing in the expansion of access to hydration centers and public cooling centers or other buildings with air conditioning."

The authors also acknowledged limitations of their research—including "the potential for misclassification of causes of death, leading to possible underestimation of heat-related mortality rates; potential bias from increasing awareness over time; and lack of data for vulnerable subgroups"—meaning the true death toll could be higher.

A legal memo published in June by the watchdog Public Citizen detailed how local or state prosecutors could bring criminal charges against oil and gas companies for deaths from extreme heat made more likely by the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency.


"These victims deserve justice no less than the victims of street-level homicides," said Aaron Regunberg, senior policy counsel for the group. "And this memo shows that prosecutors have a path to secure that justice, if they choose to pursue it."

'Alarming' rise in deadly lightning strikes in India: scientists

Agence France-Presse
August 27, 2024 

Lightning illuminates the night sky during a storm in the Indian town of Guwahati on March 31

 (Biju BORO/AFP)

Climate change is fuelling an alarming increase in deadly lightning strikes in India, killing nearly 1,900 people a year in the world's most populous country, scientists warn.

Lightning caused a staggering 101,309 deaths between 1967 and 2020, with a sharp increase between 2010 and 2020, a team of researchers led by Fakir Mohan University in the eastern state of Odisha said.

"The results indicate a steady increase in lightning activity in India, positioning it as a major killer among climate change-induced natural disasters," it said.

While the report looked at data on deaths, not the number of strikes, it said "lightning activity in India is becoming increasingly unpredictable".

Data showed that the average annual fatalities per Indian state rose from 38 in the period 1967 to 2002, to 61 from 2003 to 2020 -- a period when the country's population has also rapidly grown to 1.4 billion people.

Lightning strikes are common in India during the June-September monsoon rains, which is crucial to replenishing regional water supplies.

But scientists say their frequency is increasing due to rising global temperatures, unleashing a cascade of extreme weather events.

Higher air temperatures create more water vapour, which after it cools at altitude, creates electric charges that spark lightning.

The high number of fatalities in India is also due to ineffective early warning systems and a lack of awareness of how to reduce the risk, the report added, published in the international journal of Environment, Development and Sustainability.

Mass fatalities from a single strike are common, such as when farmers shelter in groups from lashing rain under a tree.

The report said the data on recorded deaths from lightning indicates "an increasing trend, with the last two decades showing the highest increase", calling it "an alarming development".

The "rising trend of extreme climate conditions is likely to exacerbate the situation", it added, with a "pressing need" for policy changes to mitigate the impact.

Project 2025 would lower taxes for the rich and hike them for everyone else: analysis

Edward Carver, Common Dreams
August 28, 2024 


The Center for American Progress on Tuesday released an analysis of the tax plans in Project 2025, a right-wing manifesto whose authors have close ties to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, showing that conservatives aim to lower taxes on corporations and the rich while raising them on working- and middle-class Americans.

The liberal research and advocacy group, which published the analysis as part of a series of in-depth articles on Project 2025, found that the right-wing plan would raise income taxes for the median family of four by about $3,000, cut taxes by at least $1.5 million for a household earning more than $10 million per year, on average, and cut the corporate tax rate to 18% from 21%, an already historically low rate instituted by Republicans in 2017.

The analysis, authored by Brendan Duke, a senior director of economic policy at CAP, shows that, of households with a married couple and two children, only those earning more than $170,000 per year would see a tax break under the Project 2025 plan.

"This analysis lays bare how the extreme, conservative Project 2025 plan is more of the same from conservative leaders—delivering handouts to the wealthy and corporations on the backs of working people," Kobie Christian, a spokesperson at Unrig Our Economy, an advocacy group, said in a statement.

The Project 2025 plan would consolidate seven tax brackets into just two—15% and 30%—on the grounds that it would "simplify" the tax code. However, CAP says that the existing number of tax brackets don't create any additional complexity and are easily dealt with by tax-filing software. Moreover, 70% of tax filers only deal with the two lowest tax brackets—10% and 12%—"so they effectively are already in a two-bracket system," Duke wrote.

CAP's findings about the impact of Project 2025's tax proposals on median earners are in keeping with those of the Democrats on the U.S. congressional Joint Economic Committee, who released a similar analysis earlier this month.

CAP included projections of the impact that Project 2025 would have on median income earners in each state and in the District of Columbia. Only in D.C., a high-earning area, were median earners projected to pay lower taxes under the right-wing plan; in all 50 states, their taxes went up.

It's unclear how popular the Project 2025 tax plans would be. Polling from Navigator Research, a progressive polling firm, in February showed that the vast majority of Americans favor increasing taxes on the rich and large corporations.

In addition to the immediate tax plans laid out above, Project 2025 also puts forth a long-term plan to replace all income taxes with a value-added tax—a flat, regressive proposal endorsed by some U.S. House Republicans. In addition to the injustice of such a plan, it may also be impractical. CAP found that it would require a value-added tax—similar to a sales tax—on everything, even essential items such as groceries and healthcare, of at least 45%, if it were to replace lost government revenues, and warned that this would cause inflation.

Project 2025 policy agenda is a 920-page manifesto written by right-wing groups including the Heritage Foundation. The plan has drawn intense media attention in recent months and has proven unpopular with the American public, leading Trump, who was president from 2017 to 2021, to repeatedly try to distance himself from it. However, 140 of his former administration officials helped create the manifesto.

Stephen Moore, a Heritage Foundation fellow and an outside economic adviser to Trump, helped write Project 2025 tax plan, according to Duke. Moore drew scrutiny this week for questioning the need for the child tax credit.

Project 2025 Provides a GOP Blueprint for Destroying America’s Labor Unions and the Rights of America’s Workers

By Lawrence S. Wittner

August 28, 2024

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

The approach of Labor Day provides an appropriate time to reflect upon how Donald Trump and his MAGA Republicans, if restored to power, will deal with the American labor movement.

Much of the evidence on this score is available in Project 2025, a 922-page public policy agenda, produced by the Heritage Foundation, for the first 180 days of a new Republican administration. Ever since 1981, this exceptionally wealthy, conservative, and powerful Washington think tank has been churning out blueprints for incoming Republican administrations. In fact, the Heritage Foundation performed the same service for the first Trump administration, bragging after only a year that the Trump White House had implemented nearly two-thirds of its proposals.

The Project 2025 policy agenda is far-ranging and includes many of the nostrums advanced by rightwing Republicans, including abolishing the U.S. Department of Education, slashing taxes for the wealthiest Americans and corporations, building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, further restricting abortion, increasing oil and gas production, maintaining a “biblically based” definition of marriage and family, and ending diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.

But few of the project’s recommendations are as extreme as those dealing with America’s unions and the workers they represent.

For example, Project 2025 calls for banning public employee unions―unions representing teachers, librarians, firefighters, postal workers, police, clerks, trash collectors, and other public sector workers. As 32.5 percent of public sector employees belong to unions, they constitute the most highly unionized portion of the American workforce. Thus, the abolition of their unions would eliminate nearly half the union membership in the United States.

Nor would the rest of the nation’s union members, composed of private sector workers (only 6 percent of whom belong to unions), fare much better under this Heritage Foundation scheme. Most notably, Project 2025 advocates empowering the states to ban labor unions. Even partway through existing contracts, unions could be terminated. Furthermore, it would become illegal for employers to voluntarily recognize unions, while businesses would be allowed to create their own sham company unions.

Stripped of their access to union representation and the benefits unions bring, American workers would face still further losses of long-standing rights. Project 2025 calls for allowing the states to ignore the federal minimum wage and overtime pay laws, as well as for eliminating child labor rules that protect children from working in mines, meatpacking plants, and other hazardous workplaces. In these and other ways, Project 2025 promotes a return to the distant past, before the advent of legislation to prevent the abuse and exploitation of American workers.

Moreover, to safeguard the implementation of the Heritage Foundation’s rightwing agenda, Project 2025 champions firing as many as 50,000 federal government workers and replacing them with Trump loyalists.

Not surprisingly, once the extremist proposals in Project 2025 began to attract negative publicity, Donald Trump scrambled to distance himself from it. “I know nothing about Project 2025,” the Republican presidential candidate declared. “I have no idea who is behind it.”

Nevertheless, the connections between Trump and Project 2025 were hard to disguise. A CNN investigation revealed that at least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration helped write or had a hand in the Heritage Foundation game plan, including six of Trump’s former Cabinet secretaries. In fact, the person overseeing the entire project, Paul Gans, had served as a top official in the Trump White House.

Embarrassed by the growing controversy over Project 2025, key participants scurried for cover. Gans suddenly retired from the project in July, announcing that, given the election season, he would “direct all my efforts to winning bigly.”

Upon Gans’s departure, Kevin Roberts, the director of the Heritage Foundation and a leading Trump ally, took command of Project 2025. But Roberts, too, facing unpleasant public scrutiny and Democratic Party criticism, sought to downplay Project 2025’s connection to Trump and the Republican Party. This included postponing, until after the election, the publication of his forthcoming book, which contained a revealing foreword by J.D. Vance. In the foreword, the GOP vice-presidential candidate observed that “the Heritage Foundation isn’t some random outpost on Capitol Hill; it is and has been the most influential engine of ideas for Republicans from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump.”

Only two years before, Trump himself emphasized his staunch and continued partnership with the Heritage Foundation. Attending a foundation event, he remarked: “This is a great group, and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detailed plans for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America, and that’s coming.”

In addition, if anyone had any doubts about what Trump and his MAGA Republicans would do in the future about workers’ rights, they had only to look at the labor record of the first Trump administration. That record included sabotaging America’s labor unions, presiding over massive plant closures and job losses, blocking workers’ wage gains, and undermining the health and safety of American workers.

Consequently, the nation’s labor movement saw Trump’s past record and agenda for the future for what they were. In a statement issued on July 18, 2024, Liz Shuler, president of the national AFL-CIO, declared: “In his first term as president, Donald Trump was a disaster for workers and our unions.” Moreover, “the Trump Project 2025 Agenda lays out his plan to turbocharge his anti-worker policies, eliminate or control unions, and eviscerate labor laws and workers’ contracts.” Consequently, “a second Trump term would put everything we’ve fought for―good jobs, fair wages, health care, retirement security, worker security―on the chopping block.”

Indeed, Project 2025 provides a powerful reminder to the labor movement and its supporters of how important it is to defeat the election of Trump and his MAGA Republicans this November.


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Lawrence S. WittnerWebsite

Lawrence ("Larry") Wittner was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, and attended Columbia College, the University of Wisconsin, and Columbia University, where he received his Ph.D. in history in 1967. Thereafter, he taught history at Hampton Institute, at Vassar College, at Japanese universities (under the Fulbright program), and at SUNY/Albany. In 2010, he retired as professor of history emeritus. A writer on peace and foreign policy issues, he is the author or editor of twelve books and hundreds of published articles and book reviews and a former president of the Peace History Society. Since 1961, he has been active in the peace, racial equality, and labor movements, and currently serves as a national board member of Peace Action (America's largest grassroots peace organization) and as executive secretary of the Albany County Central Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO. On occasion, he helps to fan the flames of discontent by performing vocally and on the banjo with the Solidarity Singers. His latest book is Working for Peace and Justice: Memoirs of an Activist Intellectual (University of Tennessee Press). More information about him can be found at his website: http://lawrenceswittner.com

Trump surrogate refuses to disavow RFK Jr's suggestion COVID was a racial bioweapon

Matthew Chapman
August 28, 2024

A campaign aide for former President Donald Trump deflected Wednesday over whether the campaign supports conspiracy theories put forth by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (Screengrab via MSNBC)

A campaign aide for former President Donald Trump deflected Wednesday over whether the campaign supports conspiracy theories put forth by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Corey Lewandowski refused to give a straight answer when confronted by MSNBC's Ari Melber over whether the campaign stands behind Kennedy's many fringe theories now that the Trump campaign is using him as a surrogate.

"I'll remind everyone, RFK Jr. has said that COVID itself was made to target 'both Caucasians and Black people,' that he 'won't take sides on 9/11,' that the CIA controls the American press," said Melber. "How much of this should we understand to be the Trump campaign's position, and can you tell us what role RFK Jr. would play in health policy? We're hearing reports he could be involved in the transition team."

"Well, RFK Jr. has been someone who's been very steadfast in making sure that when it comes to the decisions that affect your body, you get to choose, and what we saw was government mandates, whether you're a government employee at the local level, the state level or the federal level, being forced to take an injection in order to save your job, and RFK was against that," said Lewandowski."

At that point, Melber interjected.

"You're talking about policy, and you are referring to something that is true, there was a wide national debate about government requirements. I would just mention, I asked you, though, about RFK's actual conspiracy theories. Are you going to tell me that you and Donald Trump think COVID was hatched to target people by race, or are you going to reject that part of his agenda?"

Lewandowski declined to answer directly, saying Kennedy is "a big man" who has "been on television a number of times to answer his own questions."

"What I am here to tell you is that he has a microphone to an audience who's very concerned that the government-mandated vaccines into their children and themselves in order to keep their jobs, and there's real Americans who lost their jobs and their livelihoods because of what the government did to them, and I think when it comes to RFK, specifically those moms who have young children, they're very concerned about what is being injected into their children, whether it's through the food supply or through these vaccines, and RFK has an opportunity to go out and talk about the fact that he was right," said Lewandowski. "The government should not have had to mandate those. We don't know the full impact of what was mandated by the government on the long-term repercussions that it could potentially cause, so we're very much in line with RFK on that position."

Watch the video below or at the link here.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

US ‘ceasefire’ plans are a trick to gift Israel Palestinian land

United States and Britain continue to aid Israel's genocide

United States secretary of state Antony Blinken is a con-artist 

(Picture: Chad J. McNeeley)

Tuesday 27 August 2024

 SOCIALIST WORKER

Issue 2920

A gigantic fraud is taking place over the collapse of a supposed ceasefire deal in Gaza. Israel and its Western backers blame Hamas, but the real reason is that Israel made a deal impossible.

Key sticking points in the talks included Israel demanding that it would keep troops in the Philadelphi Corridor. The Corridor is a nine-mile stretch of land along Gaza’s southern border with Egypt.

The idea that Israel would remain in the Corridor is an explicit violation of a 2005 agreement governing the area. It forbids Israeli deployment there.

Hamas insisted that any agreement should include the freedom of return for Gaza residents to their homes.

It also wants relief and reconstruction for Gaza—and a captive-prisoner exchange deal.

During talks in Cairo, Hamas’s delegation demanded that Israel be bound by what was agreed at earlier talks on 2 July.

That plan had been laid out by United States president Joe Biden and backed by a United Nations Security Council resolution.

Francesca Albanese, a UN official for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, said, “History repeats itself. “Israel is using negotiations to eat up other portions of what remains of Palestine.

“Under the guise of ‘ ceasefire negotiations’ Israel is trying to create the conditions for permanent occupation and more land grabs.

“Those familiar with Palestine’s history recognise in what is happening to the Palestinians under Israel’s unlawful occupation, the pattern of settler colonialism.”

Israel has now confined 1.7 million displaced Palestinians into a mere tenth of Gaza’s area, according to Gaza’s government.

This drastic reduction in living space comes amid new evacuation orders from the Israeli military, further restricting the areas deemed “safe” for civilians.

In a statement released last week, the Gaza authority condemned the Israeli military’s actions as “some of the most heinous crimes against civilians in Gaza”.
Hamas says Britain has ‘contributed’ to genocide

In the first statement of its kind, the Palestinian resistance group Hamas has zeroed-in on Britain’s secret role in supporting Israel’s genocidal assault in Gaza.

Hamas said that British intelligence operations have directly contributed to the deaths of thousands of women and children in Gaza, according to the Quds News Network.

In December last year, the British Ministry of Defence announced that it would conduct surveillance flights over Israel and Gaza.

It said they would “provide intelligence to Tel Aviv as part of hostage rescue efforts”.

The ministry claimed that these surveillance aircraft were unarmed, did not have a combat role and were solely tasked with locating Israeli prisoners.

Two months ago, a senior Israeli official disclosed that a British spy team had been deployed to Israel since the beginning of its bombing campaign last October.

This revelation, highlighted in a New York Times newspaper report, also noted that both British and US spies have been operating in Israel throughout the genocide.

The Israeli official stated that the intelligence provided by Britain had given Israeli forces a significant advantage.
British medics in Gaza with message for Starmer

Dozens of British‑based doctors, nurses and medical professionals who worked in Gaza have called on Keir Starmer to halt arms sales to Israel.

In an open letter coordinated by the rights group International Centre of Justice for Palestinians, the health workers warned the prime minister and foreign secretary David Lammy that continuing arms sales could put them in violation of international law.

They said ending the sales is “morally as well as legally right”.

“It is difficult for many of us to recount the scenes we witnessed in Gaza, not least of all in the knowledge that many of the injuries we treated may have resulted from the use of weapons systems and components supplied from Britain,” the letter read.

The letter also noted that “with only marginal exceptions, everyone in Gaza is sick, injured or both”.

Citing domestic British law, international humanitarian law and Britain’s own Strategic Export Licensing Criteria, the signatories stressed that it was imperative to halt the sales.
Israeli bombs targeting more schools

Israeli bombs slammed into the al-Ezz Bin Abdul Salam school on Monday, the latest school‑turned‑shelter it has attacked.

Gaza’s civil defence agency said on Wednesday last week that Israeli bombs killed at least four people and wounded 18 at the Salah al-Din school.

It had been sheltering displaced Palestinians. Palestinian journalist Hossam Shabat noted bitterly, “Another school massacre in northern Gaza. This is being done on purpose to empty out the remaining population.

“For the past ten months, Israeli occupation forces have been trying to ethnically cleanse northern Gaza.

“They have bombed us, starved us and are now targeting the most populated areas. These people are not interested in a ceasefire they are only interested in killing Palestinians.”

Israel has repeatedly attacked Gaza’s schools, hospitals and universities. Injuring Within a ten-day period in August, Israeli forces struck five schools in Gaza City, killing more than 179 people and injuring scores more.

Israel killed at least 15 people at the Dalal al-Mughrabi school on 1 August. Two days later, Israeli strikes on Hamama and al-Huda schools killed 17 people and injured more than 60.

On 4 August, Israeli missiles murdered at least 30 people in the Nassr and Hassan Salameh schools in the Nassr neighbourhood in Gaza City.

Israel bombed Abdel Fattah Hamouda and az‑Zahra schools, killing 17 people on 8 August. On 10 August, Israel hit Gaza City’s al-Tabin school, killing more than 100 displaced Palestinians.

Palestine protest diary

Sat 31 Aug Divest for Palestine day of action at councils. Details at tinyurl.com/Divest3108

Sat 7 Sept, 12 noon central London—national demonstration

Sat 21 Sept, 12 noon Liverpool—protest at Labour Party conference

UK

What We Think

Resist Starmer’s push to make workers pay

Starmer is trying to make working class people pay for the mess that the Tories left behind

Keir Starmer on the phone to his rich buddies (Picture: No10)

Tuesday 27 August 2024

SOCIALIST WORKER Issue 2920

Remember when soaking Rishi Sunak stood outside Downing Street to announce the election while “Things Can Only Get Better” blasted in the background? On Tuesday Keir Starmer swept away hope of speedy change and laid out that things are going to get worse (see page 3).

“I won’t shy away from making unpopular decisions now if it’s the best thing for the country in the long term,” he said. “We can’t go back to business as usual.” Starmer is preparing us for Labour’s “painful” October budget—and to make working class people pay for the chaos the Tories left behind.

Things will be getting worse for ordinary people—not politicians, bosses or bankers. That’s a political choice.

Labour doesn’t need to keep the two-child benefit cap, snatch the winter fuel allowance from millions of pensioners and slash funding from key services to fill the “£22 billion black hole”. Stopping funding for war would save billions. Britain has given £4.6 billion to Ukraine’s war drive, plus a further £2.5 billion this year.

Military spending is 2.2 percent of Britain’s GDP. But Labour will raise spending to 2.5 percent to a total of £87 billion a year.

Above all, Labour won’t tax the rich. A 2 percent wealth tax on assets over £10 million could generate £24 billion a year and affect just 0.04 percent of people.

Applying the same rate of tax on income to capital gains—a tax on the profit when the rich gains from selling second homes and businesses—would generate £16.7 billion a year. Ending subsidies for oil and gas companies would generate £2.2 billion a year.

And around £10 billion could be generated by taxing the rich who get huge breaks for paying into private pension schemes. But relying on Labour to tax the billionaires isn’t enough.

We need to dismantle the system that creates vast wealth inequality. That means launching an assault against the bosses and their system—and going beyond the narrowness of trade union leaders.

Pushed on BBC Radio 4 to comment on Labour’s plans, TUC union federation general secretary Paul Nowak fell dutifully in line. He could have been mistaken for a Labour spokesperson.

Nowak said, “This is a serious message from a serious prime minister that his government is committed to putting right what went wrong over 14 years.”

And he said that unions wouldn’t push for higher public sector pay than the pay review bodies recommended. We can’t sit around and wait for things to potentially get better. Starmer said that national strikes “crippled” the country.

Workers need to use this power. If things are getting worse for us, we should make it much worse for Starmer.

Macron Refuses to Appoint Left-Wing Prime Minister, Sparking Call for Protest

By Sharon Zhang

August 28, 2024

Source: TruthOut




The decision has made the left furious, saying that Macron is bucking democratic norms to refuse the left power.French President Emmanuel Macron officially rejected naming a prime minister from the left-wing coalition that triumphed in the country’s snap election in June, sparking anger from left-wing leaders and advocates who say that Macron is exercising a dangerous power grab.

Macron issued a statement on Monday saying that he would not be appointing a prime minister from the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) coalition, which won a plurality of seats in France’s election — a historic win for the French left. He claimed that any prime minister representing NFP would be immediately voted out by the National Assembly.

To many on the left, the statement showed Macron’s refusal to give up power despite his coalition’s loss, and his outright opposition to allowing left-wing rule.

Many have pointed out that, if the left-wing pick would be immediately voted out, then he should just allow that to happen rather than refuse to appoint a left-wing candidate to begin with; leading French paper Le Monde said that Macron should appoint a left-wing leader in the “interest of democracy.”

The decision has infuriated the left. Leaders of La France Insoumise (LFI), which won roughly 75 of the 178 seats belonging to NFP in the election, have characterized Macron’s actions as a “coup” and the party has called for protests against Macron. The leader of the country’s Communist party has also called for an uprising.The Green party and Socialist party leaders have said that they will not participate in negotiations with Macron due to his refusal to work with the left. “This election is being stolen from us,” Green party leader Marine Tondelier said.

As president, Macron is responsible for naming a new prime minister after power shifts in elections, but he has dragged his feet on doing so. For weeks, he refused to meet with NFP’s candidate, the Socialist Party’s Lucie Castets.

Meanwhile, on Monday, he met with the far right coalition’s leader, Marine Le Pen — potentially in hopes that he could peel off members from the right in order to shirk the left and form a coalition of the center-left and center-right, or even the far right, that reject the left. Le Pen’s party, the Rassemblement National, was expected to win June’s election and is known for its extremist right-wing views. Though the party rebranded itself in 2018, its original formation was made up of fascist collaborators and military officers trying to maintain France’s colonial empire.

The NFP did not win a majority in the National Assembly, which requires 289 seats under a single coalition or party for a majority. However, it is a major bucking of the norm for Macron to not at least try to co-lead with a member of an opposing party, known as cohabitation.

The NFP ran on a platform of raising France’s minimum wage, undoing the raising of the legal retirement age and building affordable housing.

'This election is being stolen from us': French left calls mass protest against Macron

David McBrayer
August 27, 2024

Leftist parties in France on Tuesday accused President Emmanuel Macron of election theft and announced mass protests after he rejected Nouveau Front Populaire's proposed candidate for prime minister, even though the left-wing coalition won the most seats in a snap parliamentary contest last month.

The left-wing parties that formed NFP in June to fight off the surging far-right expressed outrage at Macron's decision, with the Jean-Luc Mélenchon-led La France Insoumise (LFI) Party condemning Macron's dismissal of a leftist government as a "coup" and urging a "firm response from French society."

The party specifically called for "a large demonstration against Macron's coup on September 7" and expressed "hope that the political, union, and allied forces committed to the defense of democracy will join this call."

Marine Tondelier, the leader of France's Green Party, said Tuesday that "this election is being stolen from us" and declared that "the people must get rid of Macron for the good of democracy."

"He is chaos and instability," Tondelier added.

The French political system has been engulfed in chaos since Macron called snap elections in June after his party performed dreadfully in European Parliament elections in June as Marine Le Pen's far-right, xenophobic National Rally surged.

While the French left and Macron allies successfully teamed up last month to prevent the National Rally from seizing control of the nation's government, NFP's stunning victory in the snap election created a new dilemma for Macron, who has been openly hostile to the left since taking office in 2017.

Macron claimed Monday that a leftist-led government "would immediately have a majority of more than 350 MPs against it, effectively preventing it from acting."

"In view of the opinions expressed by the political leaders consulted, the institutional stability of our country means that this option should not be pursued," said Macron, ruling out the NFP's candidate for prime minister, Lucie Castets.

Protesting Macron's decision, leftist leaders boycotted a fresh round of negotiations on Tuesday, with Tondelier saying that "we're not going to continue these sham consultations with a president who doesn't listen anyway... and is obsessed with keeping control."

"He's not looking for a solution, he's trying to obstruct it," said Tondelier.

In a social media post on Monday, Mélenchon pledged to move ahead with an impeachment motion against Macron, calling for a "swift and firm" response to the French president.

"The president of the republic has just created a situation of exceptional gravity," Mélenchon wrote.