It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Sunday, November 28, 2021
Unionized workers fight for better pay in post-pandemic economy
Mark Strassmann
Omaha, Nebraska — Part of America's Great Resignation is a Great Repudiation — workers are rising up and demanding better, as businesses struggle to find enough people to fill open positions.
A strike by more than 1,000 Kellogg's plant workers is in its seventh week. There are ongoing walkouts by coal miners in Alabama. Health care workers in Northern California are also on strike. John Deere recently settled with 10,000 striking workers, as did Mercy Hospital in Buffalo, New York.
"Workers definitely have more labor market leverage because employers need to hire," said Johnnie Kallas, a project director at Cornell University's Labor Action Tracker. "They're understaffed and therefore workers have more bargaining power."
At Kellogg's four plants in the U.S., workers are demanding an end to a two-tier pay structure the union conceded to in 2015 that pays new hires lower wages indefinitely.
"We're professional cereal makers," said mechanic Dan Osborn, who is among 1,400 Kellogg's workers on strike. "We've been doing it our whole lives. And they're not going to get anybody better than that."
"I feel we have the upper hand right now," added James Jackson, a mine operator on strike.
Maintenance mechanic Robert Jensen pointed to Nebraska's unemployment rate —1.9%, the lowest for any state in recorded history.
"There just aren't enough skilled craftsmen to fill all these openings," Jensen said.
Kellogg's said the strike has forced it to begin replacing workers.
"The prolonged work stoppage has left us no choice but to begin to hire some permanent employees to replace those currently on strike," Kellogg's said in a statement to CBS News.
Even as the weather gets colder and picketing gets old, Osborn said the employees won't give up their fight.
"We'll stay out here one day longer than they are willing to," he said.
Kenya tree felling sparks anger over Nairobi's new highway
Emmanuel Onyango - BBC News, Nairobi Sat, November 27, 2021 Decades-old ornamental palm trees are among those uprooted
Rubble, bare earth and tree stumps mark the route of a super highway under construction in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, upsetting environmentalists - especially in the wake of the COP26 summit.
Rows of mainly indigenous trees that once lined the route of the new four-lane 27km (16-mile) Nairobi Expressway have been felled as construction nears completion.
Ornamental palm trees - some of them planted soon after independence from British colonial rule in the 1960s - have not been spared either.
Last year a century-old fig tree targeted for removal was saved by the president after a public outcry - but campaigners' voices about the hundreds of others have been drowned out.
This old fig tree was spared the axe after a campaign to save it
"We previously geographically mapped out 200 trees marked for felling along Kenyatta Avenue alone. It's a sorry state of affairs," she told the BBC.
The devastation has already seen flocks of marabou storks and other birds that perched and nested on the trees migrate to tall buildings in the city centre. Suspension order ignored
The Chinese-financed highway, some of which is elevated, will link the main airport in the east to western suburbs. It is intended to make it easier to cross the city and free other roads from Nairobi's notorious traffic jams.
It also flagged its "major negative impact" on air and water quality during construction. Many marabou storks nest on trees in the city
In response government officials said the Chinese contractor building it would plant trees elsewhere - five for every one felled.
But this will not be in Nairobi - and environmentalists fear such promises may not be kept.
Nature Kenya's Paul Gacheru points out that little account is taken of how old the trees being felled are - and the time it took to grow them.
"They are doing beautification. They are putting some grass, some flowers. But the value of those flowers versus the tress that have been cut cannot be equal," said Mr Gacheru.
Ms Wathuti agrees: "The developers say: 'It's OK. We'll just plant new trees somewhere else.' But this is not OK and we know in our hearts that this is not OK. Every tree in the city counts and every tree in the city must live." Tree stumps can be seen all along the route
This iconic green space was saved in the 1990s by environmentalists, led by the late Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai, thwarting the then-ruling party's plan to build its huge HQ and shopping complex there.
The highway's design has subsequently been tweaked - but a coalition of environmental organisations, including Green Generation Initiative and Nature Kenya, went to court in June 2020 to stop the project, arguing that it had gone ahead without public consultation.
Yet construction and the chopping down of tress has continued, despite the law requiring a suspension of works pending the environment court's decision.
According to Mark Odaga, from Natural Justice - which is also part of the coalition, the problem comes down to details.
The report approving the project gave little away about how the China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) would deal with the environmental impact before, during and after construction.
"A public consultation would require them to give us that information," Mr Odaga told the BBC. Activist shot dead
Nairobi straddles forests to the west and savannah grasslands to the east, with three rivers running through it.
It is popularly known as the "Green City in the Sun", but its green spaces are being eaten up everywhere by commercial and infrastructural developments - it is not just the Nairobi Expressway to blame. It is the government's lack of consultation about big projects that upsets people
To the north and east, huge bypasses are being built that are spewing out red dust and rocks in already congested neighbourhoods.
To the south, a high-speed railway has been built through a national park, which activists say poses a threat to wildlife.
Trees lining roads in the suburbs have also been cut down to create space for giant billboards.
Without warning, Nairobi's Uhuru Park and Central Park were recently closed for three months - officially to be spruced up.
This has sparked consternation as photos have since emerged of building work going on there. Last year, Uhuru Gardens was similarly shut without warning - the authorities then explained it was to create a memorial area for independence heroes.
But again it is the lack of consultation that angers many residents.
And the odds are stacked against conservationists.
In July, prominent environmental activist Joannah Stutchbury was shot dead near her home in Nairobi.
The 67-year-old had been getting death threats for campaigning against the destruction of Kiambu Forest by developers eyeing the prime site on the outskirts of the city.
Critics say the government is barrelling ahead with the Nairobi Expressway because President Uhuru Kenyatta wants it finished before he leaves office - it is seen as his legacy project.
The CRBC has said it will open six months ahead of schedule in time for the elections next August.
But doubts too have been cast over whether the highway will really ease congestion in the city as motorists will have to pay a toll to use it. Some see it as a road for the rich in a city where most people use matatu minibuses to travel.
Ms Wathuti says those in government should rather keep the health of the city in mind when considering their legacy. She says green spaces are the lungs of a city - areas that are also important for the mental health of its residents.
"I'm grieving because by cutting down trees to create more space for roads, we are undermining the children's and young people's sense of agency and meaning."
Louis Sahagún Sat, November 27, 2021 UC Riverside researchers plunge a corer from a raft into the Salton Sea to collect a sediment sample. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
Studying the complexity of mud on the ocean floor is a life’s work for Timothy Lyons, so when the tall and lean biogeochemist asks you to join an expedition in search of chemical mysteries buried deep beneath the waves, be prepared to get wet and dirty.
On a recent foray onto California’s largest and most troubled lake, Lyons rode a Zodiac skiff with a 15-horsepower engine across the Salton Sea against a backdrop of desolate mountains, dunes and miles of shoreline bristling with the bones of thousands of dead fish and birds.
As he approached the center of the lake with a clutch of passengers including two members of his laboratory at UC Riverside, Lyons said, “Cut the engine. Let’s grab some mud.”
Moments later, Caroline Hung, 24, and Charles Diamond, 36, dropped a coring device over the side, then hauled up a sample of sediment that was gray on the bottom, dark brown on top, and as gooey as peanut butter.
“The big problem at the Salton Sea is intermingled with that organic brown layer on top — and to be honest, it’s scary,” said Lyons, 63. “It’s loaded with pesticides and heavy metals — molybdenum, cadmium and selenium — that linger in greatest concentrations in deeper water.”
“That should worry people, because the Salton Sea is shrinking and exposing more and more of this stuff to scouring winds that carry them far and wide,” he added. “Our goals include mapping where these hazardous materials are located, and determining where they came from and what may become of them if trends continue.” UC Riverside professor Tim Lyons and doctoral student Caroline Hung prepare a corer on the Salton Sea to collect sediment for their research. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
For Lyons’ research team, filling blanks in existing data is an obsession, and it could have significant implications at a time when the air practically crackles with a volatile mix of environmental danger and economic opportunities promised by ongoing efforts to tap immense reserves of lithium, a key ingredient of rechargeable batteries.
Few dispute the need for swift action at the 343-square-mile lake straddling Imperial and Riverside counties, about 150 miles southeast of Los Angeles. Clouds of salty, alkaline toxic dust containing heavy metals, agricultural chemicals and powdery-fine particulates linked to asthma, respiratory diseases and cancer are rolling off newly exposed playa, threatening the health of thousands of nearby residents.
Delays and costs are mounting for many projects that were designed to be showcases of restoration and dust mitigation. Scientists say it’s because the projects were developed without consideration for heat waves, severe droughts and water cutbacks due to climate change, or for the constantly evolving underlying geology at the hyper-saline landlocked lake at the southern end of the San Andreas Fault, where shifting tectonic plates bring molten material and hot geothermal brine closer to Earth’s surface.
Now, large corporations investing in proposals to suck lithium out of the brine produced by local geothermal operations have revived hopes of jobs and revenue from land leases, with lithium recovery projects potentially supporting internships, education programs and environmental restoration projects for years to come.
The big question during a recent meeting sponsored by the Lithium Valley Commission, a group of lawmakers and community leaders organized to help guide decisions that could affect low-income communities surrounding the Salton Sea, was this: What’s in it for us?
“The lithium rush at the Salton Sea cannot be stopped,” said Frank Ruiz, Audubon California’s program director for the lake and a member of the lithium commission. Communities surrounding the Salton Sea, he said, “see that as a victory — a ticket to a better life.”
“If done correctly,” he said, “it will elevate the region by creating jobs, benefit the state and the nation by making geothermal energy more affordable, and lay the groundwork for negotiations aimed at ensuring that some of the royalties from lithium production and related land leases are used to support dust reduction and environmental restoration projects.”
Jonathan Weisgall, a spokesman for Berkshire Hathaway Energy, which was recently awarded a $6-million California Energy Commission grant for a demonstration project at a geothermal facility in the nearby community of Calipatria, agreed, but stopped short of guarantees.
“My passion is workforce development and economic opportunities in the clean energy sector,” Weisgall said. “We don’t want to bring in a workforce from outside Imperial County if we don’t have to.” "The big problem at the Salton Sea is intermingled with that organic brown layer on top — and to be honest, it's scary," says Tim Lyons, center. "It's loaded with pesticides and heavy metals." (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times) A core sample of Salton Sea sediment shows a gradual change from gray mud at the bottom to darker, organic-rich material caused by fertilizer runoff from farmland. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
The Salton Sea was created in 1905 when the Colorado River broke through a silt-laden canal and roared unimpeded for two years into a basin near Brawley then known as the Salton Sink.
Fishermen flocked to its barnacle-covered shores to catch corvina, croaker and sargo. Birds flocked to its wetlands, turning it into one of the most important stops along the Pacific Flyway for species including 90% of the migration’s white pelicans.
But the Salton Sea is a non-draining body of water — which is what makes it technically a sea and not a lake — with no ability to cleanse itself. Trapped in its waters are salt and selenium-laden agricultural runoff as well as heavy metals deposited over the last 116 years, authorities say.
Some scientists believed that 2018 would be the start of a profound environmental, public health and economic disaster for California.
The change was predicted in 2003 when the state Legislature promised to slow the shrinking of the lake as part of a successful effort to persuade the Imperial Irrigation District to sell some of its water to San Diego. Under the agreement, the district stopped sending fresh water into the lake on Dec. 31, 2017.
With relatively little water flowing in, the salinity level continues to rise. It is now at about 68 parts per thousand, authorities say. That’s nearly twice as high as the salinity of the Pacific Ocean, which is about 35 parts per thousand.
The Salton’s high salinity has made it inhospitable to tilapia, a primary food source for migrating birds; the fish has all but stopped reproducing. Visiting bird populations are a small fraction of what they once were.
The only fish in the Salton Sea today are inch-long desert pupfish and hybrid tilapia. Scientists say even these will survive only near the mouths of rivers and canals once the salinity level reaches 70 parts per thousand, which is expected within the next few years.
A study by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation concluded that doing nothing to keep the Salton Sea viable could end up requiring nearly $10billion in mitigation projects.
Critics point to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Red Hill Bay project on the Salton Sea as an example of what has not been accomplished. The restoration program was designed to create more than 500 acres of shallow marine habitat for migratory shorebirds at the sea’s southern end in Imperial County, using water from a nearby river and a 183,000-pound steel barge equipped with pumps anchored a mile offshore.
Six years of delays have added costs to the project’s original $5.3-million budget. But it may never cross the finish line because of a series of unforeseen problems that have cropped up as the Salton Sea recedes and the flows of its tributaries decline. For example, the Alamo River is no longer considered a source of water for the project because its flows have fallen below an inlet that was designed to guide water into the proposed marine habitat. UC Riverside researchers Tim Lyons, Charlie Diamond and Caroline Hung, from left, launch a skiff into the Salton Sea. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
As of November, the Fish and Wildlife Service has spent roughly $1million in grants and budget allocations on the project, federal officials said. A $3.3-million grant awarded by the California Wildlife Conservation Board to help complete the work requires that the Fish and Wildlife Service secure a 25-year lease agreement with the Imperial Irrigation District by Dec. 31, said Pam Bierce, a spokeswoman for the federal agency.
On top of that, a year ago the Imperial County Air Pollution Control District slapped the irrigation district, which owns the property, with an order to deal with dust emanating from the work site. The irrigation district responded with surface-roughening techniques that reduced dust by 90%.
“The Red Hill Bay project was a solution to a problem that existed 15 years ago,” said Tina Shields, water department manager at the irrigation district. “The design doesn’t work anymore because it is a dynamic place and conditions have changed.”
Beyond that, CalEnergy Resources Ltd., a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway Energy, has a preexisting lease for the entire surface area of the project.
In a recent response to questions from Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Coachella), the irrigation district said it “will work with CalEnergy to incorporate their plans for geothermal energy and lithium development on a commercial scale for the benefit of the local community and the rest of California.”
The Salton Sea remains an environmental war zone like no other. Lyons’ team aims to collect information that can help stakeholders make the best decisions moving forward.
His team members’ recent venture into the Salton Sea got off to a wobbly start when they gathered in bulging life vests at one of the few remaining places where a boat can be put into the water: a remote stretch of ankle-deep shallows and ooze.
After several minutes of pushing and pulling their little skiff into deeper water, they climbed aboard and set out on tea-colored water as smooth as glass. Their goal was 30 feet below the surface.
“It is an exciting time to be investigating the contents of the mud we’re pulling up out of the water,” Hung said. “In it are pieces of information that could help bring environmental justice to local communities.”
Scientists ask the public to help count walrus from space M.A. Jacquemain Fri, November 26, 2021, Walrus Day on November 24th marked the launch of an initiative that enlists the public in identifying walrus in images from space as part of an ongoing census of the animal. The project, Walrus from Space, invites members of the public to examine some of the almost 600,000 satellite images taken of coastal areas in the territory of the Atlantic and Laptev walrus populations. Participating “walrus detectives” will contribute to the census of these species that scientists will continue for five years.
One of the major goals of the project, run by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the British Antarctic Survey, is to learn more about how walrus populations are being impacted by climate change.
“This project represents the development of a new technology to conduct cost-effective, non-invasive monitoring of walrus from space,” Brandon Laforest, senior specialist of Arctic species and ecosystems at WWF-Canada, told the Weather Network.
Laforest added, “By collecting thousands of images of known walrus haulouts, we can monitor how many walrus there are at different locations of the year, track the use of these habitats over time, and contribute this data to Inuit-led research projects to better understand how walrus are responding to the climate emergency and increased shipping presence in the Arctic.”
Walrus, like polar bears, depend on sea ice for various aspects of their survival—birthing, molting, access to food supplies—and walrus populations have had to adjust as the extent and duration of the sea ice shrinks in the Arctic.
Though walrus prefer to haul-out on the sea ice, they have always had to rely on beaches, rocky shores, and other land-based haulouts through the summer season. But recently, as confirmed by a 2017 report from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, walrus have been hauling out on land more frequently and in larger groups.
The result is that walrus often come in closer contact with shipping, industry, and tourism—all of which continue to encroach on the Arctic as the sea ice shrinks—disrupting behaviour and closing off even many land-based haulouts for the notoriously skittish creatures.
It also means that walrus must regularly travel greater and greater distances to their food sources, further straining populations that are flagged on the IUCN’s Red List as “vulnerable” and considered to have a status of Special Concern by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada.
Past attempts to call attention to the plight of the polar bear’s homelier neighbour have not gone without controversy — in particular the episode in the documentary Our Planet, depicting a scene of overcrowding in the Pacific walrus population on a Russian beach off the Chukchi Sea.
The scene records walrus trampling each other, scaling up a cliffside to escape the mass of bodies, and tumbling over the cliff-face to gruesome deaths, and is characterized as a stark consequence of climate change.
Critics called it sensational and out of context, as walrus falls have been recorded before (though never by the dozens, as in this case) and because clips of a less crowded haulout were interspersed in the video with the teeming beach.
Such controversy could be put to rest by the answers the walrus census will provide.
Acknowledging that “we need to know more” about how walrus are affected by the climate crisis and with an aim to have the public “help scientists spot changes over time,” the project doubles as outreach and research.
Walruses in Russia Staffan Widstrand/The Image Bank Unreleased/Getty Images
Pacific walruses crowd a beach on Arkamchechen Island. | Location: Arkamchechen Island, Chukot Autonomous District, Russia. (Staffan Widstrand/The Image Bank Unreleased/Getty Images)
After a brief training tutorial provided online after a user registers an account, participants are asked to scan images covering a 200m x 200m area — squares of rugged coastline or crystalline icy sea that come to seem, while viewing one after the other, like Arctic-themed abstract art.
The online experience is fitted with a handy zoom feature and image adjustment for sharpness, brightness, and contrast, to assist with the vagaries of walrus identification: walrus haul-out on coasts in groups as tiny as five and as large as 100,000; they might appear bright red or dull grey; they can be mistaken for patches of water, rocks, or rusty barrels — when photographed from space.
It also becomes clear that having participants sort through thousands of images is a way to help scientists eliminate the inadequate photographs — images ruined by cloud cover or some other blockage. (There is even a button to identify a “poor image.”)
But this correspondent, anyway, felt a great responsibility peering into image after image for the tell-tale brownish blotches; and an elated feeling when, on a rocky shore, the blotch was almost certainly walrus. (Though on the leaderboard I am in 5485th place, and dropping.)
The project is one of many recent initiatives to focus on the impacts of climate change on walrus. Others include one by the Chukchi Indigenous peoples to restrict flights over haulouts, coastal management by Indigenous groups in Alaska, and projects led by Inuit researchers in Nunavut and supported by WWF-Canada’s Arctic Species Conservation Fund. “One study is using camera traps and drones to better understand how walrus use their haulouts and how they react to passing ships which are known to disrupt walrus while they are resting,” Laforest explained.
“The other is analyzing walrus for the presence of microplastics which have been shown to accumulate in Arctic marine food webs through the drifting of plastic pollution to the Arctic.”
Yet the Walrus from Space initiative is a rare chance for the public to make a meaningful contribution to climate science.
“In the midst of the climate emergency, and fresh off of COP26, many people are worried about the state of our planet and eager to help but often left wondering what they could actually do to support the conservation of wildlife that live in such faraway places as the Arctic,” Laforest stated.
“We hope to engage half a million people worldwide…harnessing the motivation of desktop conservationists around the world to improve our knowledge of walrus haulouts and work towards the protection of these important habitats.”
Wrongfully Convicted Black Man Is Entitled to No Money from The State After 43 Years In Prison, Now a GoFundMe Has Raised Over $1M: ‘You Deserve Every Penny!’
Despite being a victim of the state, he will not receive any form of compensation from the state in restitution. However, a GoFundMe launched by the Midwest Innocence Project over the summer with a goal of $7,500 has far surpassed the goal of the nonprofit corporation.
On Tuesday, Nov. 23, Kevin Strickland was exonerated by a “Show Me” state judge of an over 40-year murder conviction he received in 1979. Evidence that was previously ignored was brought forward by a Jackson County prosecutor and was key in gaining Strickland’s new freedom. Kevin Strickland speaks to reporters after being released. (Screengrab Kansascity.com)
The state’s attorney Jean Peters Baker spoke on this victory, saying, “To say we’re extremely pleased and grateful is an understatement. This brings justice — finally — to a man who has tragically suffered so so greatly as a result of this wrongful conviction.”
As Strickland exited the Western Missouri Correctional Center, he spoke about his emotions to a group of reporters.
“I’m not necessarily angry. It’s a lot. I think I’ve created emotions that you all don’t know about just yet,” the now 62-year-old shared. “Joy, sorrow, fear. I am trying to figure out how to put them together.”
He further committed himself to work in criminal justice reform, in hopes that he can prevent this from “happening to someone else.”
The presiding judge, James Welsh, said that he was presented with “clear and convincing evidence” that “undermines the Court’s confidence in the judgement of conviction.”
The community has also rallied around Strickland’s story to help him return to some normalcy as he begins to reintegrate into society. The GoFundMe has reached the $1.1 million mark, just $100,000 short of a new $1.2 million goal. Many donors contributed $5,000 each.
One donor left a comment demanding change: “This release after so many years of incarceration without compensation is wrong on so many levels. This practice only endorses a bad practice by prosecutors and will do little to help others similarly situated. There has to be some accountability for decisions that are made even in error. Let’s change the laws!”
Another was elated for Strickland, “You deserve every penny , I can’t even imagine 43 years taken away Your a millionaire now !!”
Strickland, who has always maintained his innocence all along, was convicted without any physical evidence linking him to the murders. The court sent him away for nearly two-thirds of his life based on the testimony of one woman — who later recanted her testimony on her death bed.
His younger brothers Roland Strickland and Warren Thornton said this has been a 43-year nightmare. KSHB records Strickland as saying, “I’ll never forget that time, that day, that month. My birthday is in April. I had just turned 16, and you take my brother away for life,” he said. “He wasn’t even a man. He’ll probably tell you he was, but I mean, age-wise, he was a boy. He was 18.”
Strickland also revealed that while his brother was sentenced in 1979, he had been locked up before the trial.
Thornton shared, “He wasn’t able to see his daughter, his son. He never got to see any of my children. The way the world has changed, the simple things that we take for granted, he didn’t have had any of those. Forty-three years of advancement he’s missed out on.”
While he missed out on seeing the children in the family grow up, the most painful thing he missed out on was not seeing his mother before her death on Aug. 21, 2021. Rosetta Thornton was 85.
“She was a fighter, but right now she’s crying — she’s crying in joy, she’s smiling at him, and it’s not supposed to be like that,” Strickland said. “It’s painful that she held on for so many years to see her son come home innocent like he said he was and she couldn’t make it.”
As compensation statutes for those wrongfully convicted vary, depending on the state, Missouri, according to State Rep. Richard Brown, has “one of the strictest compensation laws in our nation.”
The state’s compensation law, according to Bakersfield.com, will only allocate payments to prisoners who proved their innocence through a specific DNA-testing statute. The state will not even offer him support in securing counseling or therapy for the trauma he experienced while in prison. Nor will he be eligible to receive social services like statewide publicly funded health care.
The prosecutor that worked to free Strickland says that Missouri should expand its compensation law, “especially when the system knows it made the mistake.”
Now, Strickland is relying on the support of the public and nonprofits, who are raising money on his behalf.
Canada's powerful maple syrup cartel is facing a shortage so bad it had to tap into 50 million pounds of strategic reserves
Hilary Brueck Thu, November 25, 2021 They call it "Québec's liquid gold."Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Canada's maple syrup cartel drained about half of its strategic stockpile this year.
A short harvest season, coupled with increasing demand, drove the move.
"We need to produce more maple syrup," a spokeswoman said.
Canada's maple syrup cartel can't keep up.
The Quebec Maple Syrup Producers, known as the maple syrup "cartel" because they control such a large share of the market, is draining 50 million pounds of the sweet liquid gold from its reserve, about half of the entire strategic stockpile, Bloomberg reported.
"We need to produce more maple syrup," spokeswoman Helene Normandin told Bloomberg. "The reserve is there to make sure that we are always able to sell and offer this product."
The QMSP, a consortium of more than 11,000 Canadian producers, is dealing with rising demand and dwindling supply. A warm spring this year resulted in a shorter syrup harvest, cutting output by 24%, Bloomberg said. It's the first time in three years that the QMSP has needed to tap its reserve.
"We're seeing people cook more at home, and use more local products,'' Normandin said, referencing the COVID-19 pandemic as one reason demand for the sweet gooey stuff has surged.
Team Canada drinks maple syrup on March 18, 2018 in Montreal, Quebec.Minas Panagiotakis / International Skating Union via Getty Images
The Canadian syrup cartel controls more than 70% of the maple syrup supply worldwide. US maple syrup production, while a much smaller share of the market, is also down this year.
Just over a decade ago, the Canadian syrup stockpile fell prey to the maple syrup heist of the century. As Vanity Fair later reported, roughly 540,000 gallons of syrup (about 12.5% of the stash) were quietly siphoned out of storage. The heist cost more than $13 million USD, making it the costliest heist in Canadian history.
'MAYBE' TECH Snam buys stake in Algerian gas pipelines to pave way for hydrogen highway
Eni's logo is seen in front of its headquarters in San Donato Milanese Stephen Jewkes Sat, November 27, 2021
MILAN (Reuters) -Italy's Snam has agreed to buy a stake in pipelines carrying Algerian gas into Italy in a move that could pave the way for hydrogen imports from Africa into Europe.
Europe's biggest gas infrastructure group said on Saturday it would pay energy company Eni 385 million euros ($436 million) for a 49.9% stake in the pipelines to jointly control the assets with its fellow Italian company.
Snam, which makes most of its money from managing Italy's natural gas transport grid, has pledged to spend more on new, clean business lines such as green hydrogen.
Like other European gas grid operators, it is upgrading its national network to be hydrogen ready.
"In the future, North Africa could also become a hub for producing solar energy and green hydrogen," Snam CEO Marco Alvera said in a joint statement with Eni.
Snam, which runs most of Italy's gas storage facilities, also owns 20% of the TAP pipeline that carries Azeri gas into Italy.
The deal reflects the accelerating pace of planning taking place in the global oil and gas industry, keen to adapt as governments and activists ramp up the pressure to slash greenhouse gases.
Eni is working on spinning off a series of oil and gas operations into new joint ventures to help reduce debt and fund its shift to low-carbon energy.
"This transaction allows us to free up new resources to be used on our energy transition path," Eni Chief Executive Claudio Descalzi said.
Eni, one of the biggest foreign oil and gas producers in Africa, has a series of strategic agreements with Algerian state-owned energy group Sonatrach.
Italy imports more than 90% of its overall gas needs and Algerian gas currently accounts for around 30% of flows.
The pipeline companies involved in the deal posted net income of around 90 million euros in 2020.
Snam was advised by UniCredit, while Eni was advised by Rothschild.
($1 = 0.8836 euros)
(Reporting by Stephen JewkesEditing by Giselda Vagnoni and Mark Potter)
Prince to turn on charm in Barbados after BLM 'lit spark' to cast off Queen
Jack Hardy Sat, November 27, 2021 The Queen inspects a guard of honour in Barbados in 1977 - Anwar Hussein/Getty
When Barbados cuts ties with the British crown after nearly 400 years, it will be a largely symbolic moment, but one that will nonetheless be greeted by discontent in a political climate shaped by Black Lives Matter.
The Caribbean country becomes a republic on Monday, when the Queen will be replaced as head of state by a president, in a move that threatens to destabilise the Commonwealth realms over which she still reigns.
It will also formally end a connection that has existed between the two countries since English ships first arrived on uninhabited Barbadian shores in 1625, followed by settlement two years later.
But a long shadow has been cast by the brutal, centuries-long slave economy that was established on the island by the British and political observers believe it has helped create the conditions of popular support for republicanism in modern Barbados.
This discontent was further fanned when the BLM cause swept the globe last year and forced many societies to reckon with the crimes of their past.
In Barbados, a statue of Lord Nelson - which predates the monument in Trafalgar Square - was removed from Bridgetown’s National Heroes Square after his past support for the slave trade was thrust back into the public spotlight.
It had a “galvanising effect in terms of nationalism” in the months before the republic was declared, according to Peter Wickham, a Barbadian political analyst.
“It’s maybe led us to this point where we’ve said, ‘let’s take a further step in terms of nationalism’ - perhaps Black Lives Matter has lit a spark,” he said.
Now, with the Prince of Wales due to arrive in Bridgetown on Monday to witness the dawn of a new republic, racial justice campaigners have trained their sights on the royal family. Planned protests against Prince Charles
BLM’s Barbados branch is among several political groups who plan to stage a protest on the day Prince Charles arrives in the country - to condemn his involvement in the republic celebrations.
They view as particularly controversial the decision by Mia Mottley, the country’s prime minister, to award him the Order of the Freedom of Barbados, the country’s highest honour.
“It’s rubbing salt in the wounds,” said Lalu Hanuman, a lawyer who has helped organise the protests.
He claimed a tangible link still exists between the Royal family and slavery, as Kensington Palace was bought by King William III, one of the main shareholders in the Royal African Company, which shipped hundreds of thousands of slaves across the Atlantic.
“The Royal family has a lot of slave blood on its hands,” he said.
The concerns that are foremost in the minds of British officials, however, is how the country will stay relevant in the Caribbean as its historic, constitutional bonds grow increasingly frayed.
Scott Furssedonn-Wood, the British high commissioner for Barbados, pictured below, is all too aware of the importance of a royal charm offensive at this critical juncture. Scott Furssedonn-Wood with a portrait of The Queen - Heathcliff O'Malley for The Telegraph
The diplomat, himself a former deputy private secretary to Prince Charles, told The Telegraph: “This moment has posed a challenge to us, in that it requires us to lean into this and say, ‘well, actually, we’ve got to make sure this relationship is one that is relevant’.
“We breathe new life into it, we reinvigorate it, we don’t take anything for granted, we don’t rest on past assumptions.”
The presence of Prince Charles - who is a guest of Ms Mottley - demonstrates “at the highest possible level” the commitment Britain still has to Barbados, he added, with the two nations united by shared interests on issues such as climate change.
“I spent four years travelling around the world with the Prince of Wales and I’ve seen what an extraordinary impact these visits can have,” he said.
Despite such optimism, it remains striking just how few traces of the Queen - as serving head of state and the nation’s final monarch - remain in the cultural fabric of Barbados, which became independent in 1966.
There will be no statues that need tearing down, nor portraits in need of removal from the walls of public offices when the island officially begins a new era at midnight on November 30. Her Majesty has not featured on a banknote here since 1973.
Indeed, one of the few places where a portrait of the Queen still remains on the island is in the residence of the high commissioner, where her picture towers over the hallway.
Such a marked absence from modern Barbadian consciousness has meant many who live on the island admit to not fully understanding what a new republic actually means.
Yet those closest to the political process are in little doubt that this represents a key moment in Barbadian national life.
They include John King, a Birmingham-born calypso singer turned minister in the Barbados government with responsibility for culture and national development. ‘Independence completes the circle’
Speaking in his office on the outskirts of Bridgetown, he said the achievement of full constitutional independence was “completing the circle”.
He said: “Freedom to lead yourself is important. If it wasn’t, then England would still be part of Rome.”
He is among many Barbadians who have bristled at the suggestion - made by Tom Tugendhat, the Tory MP, among others - that the country’s republican mood was conditioned by China, after the superpower began heavily investing in the island.
“This, in my mind, is one of the biggest reasons why there is animosity oftentimes between Britain and the former colonies,” he said.
“It is exactly the mindset of a colonial master - that, as a sovereign nation, you still have no concept of doing things on your own, obviously someone else is pushing you in a particular direction. It is just a monumental insult.” The transition to a republic appeared, on the face of it, to be uncontentious when it was formally pushed through last year by the Barbados Labour Party, which had won every seat in the lower house of its parliament in the 2018 election.
What this display of political consensus masked was resentment brewing at a deeper societal level - among the many still loyal to the Queen on the island, or who resent that Barbados is cutting itself adrift from a powerful ally.
One local driver reflected, simply: “Barbados is too small not to have anyone to rely on.”
Before long, a new campaign group opposing the republic - Barbadians for Constitutional Monarchy - sprung up and has since attracted hundreds of supporters.
Alexander Clarkson, a spokesman for the group, told The Telegraph: “We felt Barbados benefited hugely from being, in effect, a ‘crowned republic’ with all the benefits of full executive, legislative and judicial independence but with the monarchy acting as a constitutional backstop - beholden to neither political cronyism or short-term interests.
“It avoided concentrating even more power with the elites. Elizabeth II was monarch by the grace of God. [Sandra Mason, the new head of state] is now president by the grace of Mia Mottley.”
The fallout from events in this corner of the West Indies will be watched closely by the remaining Commonwealth realms, where the Queen’s role of head of state is increasingly insecure, particularly in the Caribbean. Opinion polling in Jamaica indicates that a majority would now support a republic, with the ruling Jamaica Labour Party saying that it could take a decision on the move soon.
Richard Drayton, Rhodes professor of imperial history at King’s College London, said: “I’m absolutely confident that this will have implications for Jamaica.
“I think that this will, in some ways, accelerate the momentum towards a change to a republican Jamaica and probably also other islands.”
Saturday, November 27, 2021
U.S. stonewalls probe into security firm that allegedly spied on Assange for CIA, says Spanish judge
MADRID — The Justice Department has failed to respond to multiple requests from Spanish authorities for help in an investigation into a local security firm suspected of being used by the CIA to conduct aggressive — and potentially illegal — surveillance of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
“I am not so pleased about it,” said Santiago Pedraz, the investigating judge in charge of the case, in an exclusive interview with Yahoo News, when asked about the failure of officials in Washington so far to cooperate with his probe. “They have absolutely not answered anything.”
Since June of last year, Spanish judges have sent three requests for information to the Justice Department primarily seeking information about the ownership of IP addresses believed to be in the United States that had access to files documenting Assange’s activities while he was holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, according to copies of the requests reviewed by Yahoo News.
Despite a mutual legal assistance treaty (MLAT) between the U.S. and Spain pledging to assist each other in criminal investigations, none of the Spanish requests have yet elicited any substantive responses from the United States, the judge said. Instead, Justice Department lawyers have asked Spanish authorities for more information about the basis for the inquiry before taking any action.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London in 2016. (Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP)
Chief among those puzzle pieces is whether U.S. intelligence officials — as Assange’s lawyers have alleged — arranged for the Spanish security firm UC Global to violate Spanish privacy and bribery laws by installing cameras and hidden microphones inside the Ecuadorian Embassy, including in a women’s bathroom where Assange would sometimes take meetings. This in turn allowed the company to secretly record or otherwise eavesdrop on conversations that Assange had with his lawyers, doctors, advisers, journalists and others, including in one case a U.S. congressman, according to internal documents from the Spanish case.
“We want to find out what was done with this material,” Pedraz said. He pointed to the CIA’s potential role as a principal “theory” that “we are trying to investigate.” He did not rule out, however, that there could be other explanations for the alleged data transfer.
A DOJ spokeswoman wrote in an email that “as a matter of policy,” the department doesn’t comment on its correspondence with foreign governments over MLAT requests. Legal experts say that the MLAT process can often be frustratingly slow — especially when it requires, as in this case, federal prosecutors to seek court orders for the information the foreign government is seeking. Still, T. Markus Funk, a former federal prosecutor who wrote a guidebook about the MLAT process for the U.S. court system, said the fact that the Justice Department hasn’t responded to the Spanish requests over a 17-month period seems “unusually slow.” He added: “This seems to be outside of what would be normal.”
The investigation by Spanish police, which has been extensively reported in the Spanish press, has taken on new significance in recent weeks in the aftermath of a Yahoo News report documenting how the CIA, under its then-director Mike Pompeo, launched in 2017 a covert operation to cripple WikiLeaks that included ultimately aborted plans to abduct Assange in a so-called “snatch operation.” CIA officials, incensed by WikiLeaks’ publication of sensitive agency hacking documents, even discussed — but never implemented — a plot to assassinate Assange, according to former U.S. intelligence officials knowledgeable about the CIA’s operation.
A screengrab from a Jan. 5 article in El País.
While White House lawyers put the brakes on the most extreme measures Pompeo had pushed, the CIA did undertake other aggressive actions, including arranging to obtain audio and visual recordings of Assange inside the embassy as well as spying on some of his associates, according to the Yahoo News report. Pompeo, in his only public comments on the article, acknowledged that “pieces of it are true,” and called on the Justice Department to criminally prosecute the sources who spoke to Yahoo News for disclosing classified information. (The CIA has consistently declined to comment on any aspect of its targeting of Assange and WikiLeaks and did so again in response to an inquiry for this article.)
The CIA’s targeting of the WikiLeaks founder — and allegedly arranging to eavesdrop on his meetings and conversations inside the Ecuadorian Embassy — may not be surprising, given that Pompeo in his first speech as CIA director had publicly declared WikiLeaks to be a “non-state hostile intelligence service.”
But the agency’s actions have emerged as a potential roadblock to the Justice Department’s efforts to extradite Assange to the United States to face criminal charges that he published classified documents — including the identities of sensitive sources for the U.S. government overseas — in violation of the World War I-era Espionage Act.
Assange’s lawyers have seized on the Yahoo News report, raising it repeatedly before a British appeals court in October as fresh grounds to deny the Justice Department’s request. “This is a case of credible evidence of U.S. government plans developed at some length to do serious harm to Mr. Assange,” Mark Summers, one of Assange’s lawyers, said during a hearing on the extradition case.
A court artist sketch of Julian Assange, center back, his attorneys and lawyers for U.S. authorities at the Old Bailey in London for a hearing in Assange’s extradition case. (Elizabeth Cook/PA Wire via ZUMA Press)
Although much about events at the Ecuadorian Embassy remains murky, the key to unraveling that evidence may now rest with the outcome of the Spanish investigation. The probe began in April 2019 when Assange, after having taken refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy for seven years, was evicted by that country’s new leadership. He was immediately arrested by the British and then charged by federal prosecutors in Alexandria, Va., in an 18-count indictment for what Justice Department officials described as “one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States.”
At that point, three employees of UC Global came forward to Spanish police to tell a strange but intriguing story: They had been directed by the company’s owner, David Morales, a former Spanish special forces officer, to secretly record Assange’s conversations by installing hidden microphones concealed in fire extinguishers in the embassy. They also asserted they had covertly downloaded data from the cellphones of his visitors, and swiped copies of Assange’s written notes. At one point, they claimed, they were instructed to steal the diaper of a baby believed to be Assange’s son in order to perform a DNA test on the baby’s feces to establish his paternity. (Informed that such a test was not practicable, the plan was dropped.)
One of the witnesses asserted in a written statement to police that Morales also discussed with employees a plan to unlock the embassy doors to facilitate a “kidnapping” of Assange or “even the possibility of poisoning Mr. Assange,” according to a copy of the statement reviewed by Yahoo News. All of these proposals “Morales claimed to be evaluating with his contacts in the United States,” the statement said.
After interviewing the witnesses and reviewing computer data they provided, Spanish police in September 2019 arrested Morales and searched his home and offices, seizing computers, servers, mobile phones and other material. He was later released on bail and is awaiting the completion of the criminal investigation to learn whether he will be formally charged.
One of the former employees said in an interview with Yahoo News here that the purpose of the surveillance was made clear when Morales gathered his small workforce together after a trip to the United States, where he attended a Las Vegas gun show. UC Global had been contracted to provide security at the embassy by SENAIN, the Ecuadorian intelligence service. But, Morales told the group, “all the information was not for the Ecuadorian Embassy, it was for the United States,” said the former employee, who spoke on the condition that he not be publicly identified. (The three employees have been given status as “protected witnesses” in the case, shielding their identities from public view.)
UC Global owner David Morales arrives at Spain’s High Court in Madrid in 2020. (Emilio Naranjo/EFE via ZUMA Press)
Morales, according to the employee, also told the group that “we have moved to the dark side,” and “he mentioned the CIA.” (In a declaration filed with the court, the witness said Morales had told the employees that in exchange for their surveillance of Assange, “U.S. intelligence” would arrange for the company to get lucrative “contracts all over the world.”) The disclosure troubled the employee and his colleagues. “I realized this was like a bomb that was about to explode,” he said.
Among the meetings the UC Global employees were directed to eavesdrop on was a visit Assange had in August 2017 with Dana Rohrabacher, then a Republican congressman from southern California, according to the employee. Rohrabacher, an avid Trump supporter who repeatedly expressed sympathy for Russian President Vladimir Putin, suggested to Assange that he might be able to get him a presidential pardon if he publicly identified an internal Democratic Party insider as his source for party emails WikiLeaks published during the 2016 election — rather than Russian operatives as the U.S. intelligence community had concluded.
UC Global employees secretly copied WhatsApp messages from Rohrabacher’s cellphone, which he was required to leave at the door, listened in on the meeting through a crack in the door (the microphones were not yet functional) and wrote up a detailed report that they understood was to be shared with the CIA, the former employee said. Rohrabacher did not respond to requests for comment.
In an email exchange with Yahoo News, Morales adamantly denied the allegations by the whistleblowers, saying the claims that he discussed the kidnapping or poisoning of Assange were “lies” and that he never told his employees the surveillance of the WikiLeaks founder was on behalf of U.S. intelligence. “I never said that,” he said, adding that the allegations by three of his employees were “sensationalist” conspiracy theories “like a spy film script.”
The surveillance that UC Global conducted at the Ecuadorian Embassy was done under the firm’s contract with the Ecuadorian intelligence service and was done because the Ecuadorians had become concerned about some of Assange’s activities, Morales insisted. “The Ecuadorian government has the complete right to take the actions that [it] considers [it needs] to prevent the protection of their interests, especially with a person that was interfering continuously against their foreign affairs issues,” he wrote. He later added: “What the SENAIN or the Ecuadorian government did with the information ... if they share or not with other entities ... that is not my responsibility.”
But Fidel Narváez, who served as first secretary of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in 2017 and 2018, disputed portions of that account, saying he and his Ecuadorian colleagues were completely unaware that conversations within the embassy were being secretly recorded. “It was obvious they were trying to collect information” on Assange and his visitors, he said. Morales was pointing the finger at Ecuador because “it’s the only way out” for the company — “to say it was Ecuador instructing them to do the spying,” he added.
Fidel Narváez, a former senior diplomat at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in 2019. (Victoria Jones/PA Wire via ZUMA Press)
The former employees had no communication with anybody at the CIA and have no direct evidence to back up the statements they attributed to Morales. Instead, they added yet another layer of intrigue: Another of Morales’s clients at the time was one of the world’s biggest casino companies, Las Vegas Sands, then owned by Sheldon Adelson, the late billionaire who had been for years one of the Republican Party’s largest donors.
As the employees told it, Morales took direction from one of the Las Vegas Sands’ senior security officials, Zohar Lahav, an Israeli American who previously worked as a security officer at the Israeli Consulate in Miami. And the purpose, they allege, was to funnel surveillance videos — and other information that UC Global had scooped up about Assange — to the CIA through Las Vegas Sands. (Among the requests the Spanish authorities have made to the Justice Department is an opportunity to question the security official.)
A Sands spokesman declined comment. But a source familiar with the company’s dealings with UC Global confirmed that Las Vegas Sands had a contract with the Spanish firm to provide personal security for Adelson when he was traveling on his yacht in the Mediterranean. (Such security was covered as part of Adelson’s compensation package, the source said.) But the source dismissed the idea that the company’s dealings with UC Global had anything to do with the CIA, saying that such connections — which have been alleged before — were “out of a James Bond film.”
Then-President Donald Trump with Las Vegas Sands CEO Sheldon Adelson ahead of his address to the Israeli American Council National Summit in Hollywood, Fla., in 2019. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
The source also declined to comment on whether Lahav is still working for Las Vegas Sands. Messages sent to Lahav’s cellphone by Yahoo News were unanswered.
On June 19, 2020, José de la Mata Amaya, the original judge in charge of the case, sent the first Spanish request for assistance to the Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs, asserting that investigations by Spanish police showed “there is a serious probability of the existence of offenses that could constitute an offence against privacy and against client/attorney confidentiality,” he wrote, citing provisions of the Spanish criminal code, according to a copy of the request reviewed by Yahoo News.
In particular, the judge asked for Justice Department prosecutors to provide information about the ownership and geolocation data on five IP addresses that, he wrote, accessed the server of UC Global for three days in January 2018. He asked the DOJ to respond “as soon as possible.”
“We had a chance to review and understand the seriousness of the allegations in this very interesting espionage and bribery investigation,” a Justice Department lawyer, Sandra Barbulescu, wrote back on July 16, 2020. She then pointed out that in order to provide the information the Spanish requested, the Justice Department would need to file applications with the U.S. courts that would require Spanish authorities to answer a series of questions, including: the basis for the Spanish contention that the IP addresses were granted access to the UC Global recordings; the grounds for their suspicions about Morales, to whom it is believed he was transferring data; whether he was an agent of a foreign power; and perhaps most importantly, “What was the purpose of the spying?”
Over the course of the next year and a half, Spanish authorities provided two responses to the Justice Department’s questions, laying out some of the evidence obtained from the whistleblowers as well as sending another request for a videoconference interrogation of the Las Vegas Sands security official. When those went unanswered, the Spanish sent a “reminder” on July 6, stating that the earlier queries hadn’t produced any substantive replies.
The Spanish authorities still haven’t heard back, said Pedraz, the judge overseeing the case, in the recent interview. (The Spanish have also sent requests to the British government — which has jailed Assange while he awaits a ruling on the U.S. extradition request — seeking a video statement from the WikiLeaks founder. The statement was taken by the Spanish police, but British officials have so far blocked requests to take statements from Assange’s lawyers, whose meetings with their client were allegedly recorded.)
Julian Assange as he leaves Southwark Crown Court in London in 2019. (Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
But cyber experts say that even if the Justice Department finally does respond, it’s not clear how much Spanish authorities will learn that could solve the underlying mystery at the heart of the case. It is not uncommon for cyber actors — whether they be intelligence services or hackers — to mask their IP addresses, and “false positives” could often result.
And at least one of the IP addresses requested by the Spanish belongs to the Shadowserver Foundation, a nonprofit that uses former intelligence and law enforcement personnel to identify bots, malware and the vulnerabilities of computer networks. “We’re an organization that scans the entire internet every day,” said one of the foundation’s law enforcement liaisons, who asked not to be identified by name. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we would show up on the logs of every computer in the planet.”
Yahoo News correspondent Zachary Dorfman contributed reporting to this story.
Cover thumbnail photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP, via El País
