TURKIYE OCCUPIED KURDISTAN

Mehmet Karayılan: I call on our people to support the municipality

The co-mayor of Halfeti, Mehmet Karayılan, was removed from office by the Turkish regime and replaced by a trustee. He said that this approach is part of a strategic plan, calling for people to stand up for the city administration.


ANF
URFA
Thursday, 21 November 2024, 11:13

On 4 November, a so-called municipal coup took place in three Kurdish cities. The co-mayors of Batman (Êlih), Mardin (Mêrdîn) and Halfeti (Xelfetî) were deposed by the AKP-MHP regime and replaced by government-appointed trustees.

The co-mayor of Halfeti, Mehmet Karayılan (DEM party), talked to ANF about the regime's actions and the prospects for resistance against them.

Halfeti is a district town of strategic importance and, as the home of Abdullah Öcalan, also has significant symbolic value. It is striking that a trustee was appointed to Halfeti after the leader of the MHP, Devlet Bahçeli, a member of the coalition government with the AKP, had said that Öcalan should speak in parliament? Do you see a connection?

It is important to note that this is not just about Halfeti. For three terms, the will of the Kurdish people has been trampled on by trustees. So the latest appointment of trustees in three cities is a strategic goal. Hezbollah was organized in Batman in the 1990s and the AKP and HÜDA-PAR [the political arm of Hezbollah] are making great efforts to intimidate the population here. Nevertheless, Gülistan Sönük was elected co-mayor with a large share of the vote. I think the trustee was appointed by the system in Batman because it was unable to accept this defeat. In Mardin, Ahmet Türk, a very important Kurdish politician, a long-standing MP who held both the general chairmanship and the co-chairmanship, was elected co-mayor. The appointment of the trustee here is obviously intended to attack Kurdish politics also at a symbolic level.

Halfeti is the place where Mr Öcalan was born. It is also a district where Turks and Kurds live together. Therefore, it is in an important and strategic location. Here, the appointment of a trustee goes against the model of fraternal coexistence, in my opinion.

You came into office with the local elections held on 31 March, and built service structures. With the appointment of the trustee, these services were stopped. What do you think about this?

When we came into office, the situation in Halfeti naturally relaxed. This affected even the police and the military police. Because the trustee had built up a criminal network in Halfeti and established complete control over the bureaucracy. Land sales and speculation were at the highest level; communal land and communal properties, which actually belong to the people, were sold off and pastures destroyed. Halfeti is a multicultural and multi-ethnic region. But the trustee administration deepened polarization, corruption increased and drugs became widespread. I also see a connection with the strategic importance of Halfeti as Mr. Öcalan's hometown. But our people supported us. Immediately after the election, we began to offer the same services to everyone, regardless of whether they voted for or against us. We held meetings with the shop owners and created a city administration based on participation. When a new trustee was appointed, the first thing he did was cut down the mulberry tree opposite the town hall that had provided us all with shade. He deleted the Kurdish names from the city administration's social media accounts and closed the city administration building. Not just to us, but also to his own employees and the entire people.

What would you like to tell the people of Halfeti?

I would like to respectfully greet all those people who have not left our city council alone since the coup of 4 November, as well as those who have defended their will, and all those who cannot be with us physically but condemn the trustees. We will not accept this coup against our will and will continue to resist. We invite all our people to march to the city hall and defend their will.

Free Trade’s Legacy of Grief for Families of the Disappeared in Mexico

Shaylih Muehlmann

November 21, 2024
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Cover art for the book Call the Mothers: Searching for Mexico’s Disappeared in the War on Drugs by Shaylih Muehlmann

In Mexico today, thousands of families are searching for loved ones who have disappeared amid the violence associated with “the war on drugs.” Although disappearances in Mexico trace back to the Cold War and the repression of guerrilla movements in the 1960s and 1970s, they have expanded in scale and taken on new dimensions in the neoliberal era. Trade agreements like NAFTA, intended promote economic growth, have inadvertently fueled drug-trafficking across the U.S.-Mexico border, contributing to a crisis of violence that disproportionately impacts marginalized communities—those already vulnerable due to poverty and limited political power.

As I conducted research for my new book Call the Mothers, on women searching for their disappeared relatives in Mexico, I was struck by how deeply intertwined free trade policies and the crisis of disappearances have become. Trade agreements like NAFTA and its successor, USMCA (United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement), created conditions that allowed criminal organizations to thrive—and ordinary people have paid the price.

While NAFTA was designed to open up economic opportunities and strengthen North American trade, it also created new channels that could be exploited by organized crime. By facilitating cross-border commerce and reducing trade barriers, NAFTA provided new routes for drug smuggling, allowing criminal organizations to expand their influence and power. As Mexico faced an increase in drug trafficking and criminal activity, the response from both Mexico and the United States leaned heavily toward militarization, with initiatives like the Mérida Initiative funneling resources into Mexico’s security forces to combat this surge.

Ironically, this militarized approach has only deepened the violence. Under pressure to secure the flow of trade and protect corporate interests, the militarized strategy quickly shifted from targeting drug cartels to influencing many aspects of life in Mexico, especially for the most vulnerable communities. Disappearances—a practice with a long history in Latin America during times of political repression—reemerged and took on new dimensions. Today, victims of disappearances are no longer limited to political activists or dissidents. They include a broad spectrum of individuals, from Indigenous people and migrants to professionals and human rights defenders. And the perpetrators include both organized crime and security forces.

Indigenous and rural communities, in particular, have suffered the impacts of this convergence between violence and free-trade policies, as neoliberal reforms made their lands and resources lucrative targets for exploitation by corporate interests and criminal enterprises alike. Amidst this violence and impunity, the line between state and non-state actors often blurs, as corruption and collusion between authorities and drug-trafficking organizations become pervasive. In this climate, disappearances have become tragically commonplace, with entire communities left vulnerable to both exploitation and violence.

As we mark the 30th anniversary of NAFTA, it’s important to ask: “What does free trade cost?” For the families of the disappeared in Mexico, the price has been incalculable—a legacy of violence, profound grief, and enduring impunity. In Call the Mothers, the stories of those navigating this devastating reality reveal how free trade’s promises have left too many families searching for justice and resolution.

This post was originally published on the University of California Press blog and is reprinted here with permission.

Nigeria's Richest Man Confronts ‘Oil Mafia’ With New $20B Refinery

By Alex Kimani - Nov 19, 2024

The $20 billion Dangote Refinery, with a capacity of 650,000 barrels per day, began producing gasoline in September 2024.

The refinery faces resistance from Nigeria’s entrenched "oil mafia," oil theft, and limited crude supply from NNPC.

Oil theft remains a major problem for the Nigerian energy sector, and could hinder the refinery from buying all of its crude locally.


Two months ago, Nigeria’s beleaguered energy sector witnessed a very significant event: the Dangote Oil Refinery began producing gasoline and selling it domestically to Nigeria's state oil firm, Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC), marking the first time in decades Africa’s largest oil producer is refining its own crude. The state-of-the-art $20 billion refinery was launched in January 2024, but only began producing gasoline in September, expected to reach full operations in November. The giant refinery has a capacity to process 650,000 barrels of crude per day, more than enough for the country’s needs. To sweeten the deal further, the facility is buying crude and selling refined fuels in Nigeria in the local currency, saving the country’s much-needed foreign exchange, especially the US dollar.

Unfortunately for Aliko Dangote, Africa’s second richest man and owner of the refinery, his bold move has put him on a collision course with what he refers to as Nigeria's ‘oil mafia’.

"I knew there would be a fight. But I didn’t know that the mafia in oil, they are stronger than the mafia in drugs," Mr Dangote told an investment conference in June.

"They don’t want the trade to stop. It’s a cartel. Dangote comes along and he’s going to disrupt them entirely. Their business is at risk,” says Mr Emmanuel, a Nigerian oil expert.

According to the BBC, since oil was discovered in the West African nation in 1956, the country’s downstream sector has largely been a cesspit of shady deals with little accountability by the NNPC. For decades, Nigeria has been producing and exporting its crude which is then refined abroad. NNPC swaps Nigeria’s crude oil for refined products, including petrol, which are shipped back home. Incredibly, it only started publishing its accounts five years ago, despite the fact that oil revenue accounts for nearly 90% of Nigeria’s export earnings. In other words, until recently, only the NNPC knew exactly how much money changed hands and who was involved in these "oil swaps".

Dangote’s new refinery should definitely be a boon for the country. Unfortunately, its arrival has coincided with developments completely out of his control. Since the 1970s, the NNPC has been subsidizing fuel prices for local buyers. Every year, the state-owned firm has been gradually clawing this money back by depositing lower royalty payments with the Nigerian treasury. However, Nigeria’s new President Bola Tinubu was forced to scrap the subsidy in 2023 after it cost the government $10bn, more than 40% of the total money it collected in taxes. Further, he stopped the policy of artificially propping up the value of the naira, and let market forces determine its value. Nigerians are now paying ~$2.30 per gallon of gasoline, dirt-cheap by U.S. standards but triple what they were paying just a couple of years ago.

Only time will tell whether the Dangote Refinery is able to achieve its full potential. Nigeria is the home of the famous Bonny Light crude, a light-sweet crude oil grade produced at the Bonny oil hub and an important benchmark crude for all West African crude production. Bonny Light has particularly good gasoline yields, which has made it a popular crude for U.S. refiners, particularly on the U.S. East Coast. Two years ago, Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCGROUP) CEO Melee Kyari revealed that Nigeria is losing nearly all the oil output at oil hub Bonny,

“As you may be aware, because of the very unfortunate acts of vandals along our major pipelines from Atlas Cove all the way to Ibadan, and all others connecting all the 37 depots that we have across the country, none of them can take delivery of products today. The reason is very simple. For some of the lines, for instance, from Warri to Benin, we haven’t operated for 15 years. Every molecule of product that we put gets lost. Do you remember the sad fire incident close to Sapele that killed so many people? We had to shut it down, and as we speak, we have a high level of losses on our product pipeline,” he said.

Oil theft remains a major problem for the Nigerian energy sector, and could hinder the refinery from buying all of its crude locally.


“NNPC doesn’t have enough crude for Dangote. Despite all this instruction to give ample supply of crude to the refinery, NNPC can’t supply Dangote with more than 300,000 barrels per day," says Mr Akinosho of the Africa Oil+Gas Report told BBC.

Meanwhile, the oil and gas multinational divestment from the Niger Delta that kicked off over a decade has hit a peak. Numerous oil and gas majors have exited the Nigerian market over the past few years despite Africa’s largest economy opening its doors for wider exploration courtesy of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) 2021. Nigeria’s oil production has declined to 1.3 million barrels per day currently from around 2.1 million barrels per day in 2018.

By Alex Kimani for Oilprice.com

It's time for Democrats to declare class warfare

Thom Hartmann
November 18, 2024

ALTERNET

If my hypothesis from yesterday — that Democrats best way to win elections and regain political power is to engage in class warfare against the GOP and the billionaires that fund it — the immediate question is, “How?”

The last century has seen two presidents engage in class warfare in a big and direct way that not only won them multiple elections but also altered the electoral map of America: Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. There are multiple lessons to learn from both.

When FDR came into power in March of 1933, the nation was in shambles because of a decade of Republican mishandling of the economy. In the early 1920s, Republican President Warren Harding dropped the top income tax rate from 91% down to 25% and loosened oversight of Wall Street.

The short-term result was an explosion of riches at the top, referred to as “The Roaring 20s,” and violent actions against attempts to form labor unions. The longer-term result was the infamous Black Tuesday of October 29, 1929 which kicked off the Republican Great Depression.

President Roosevelt correctly identified America’s morbidly rich, who’d seized control of the GOP after the end of the Taft presidency in 1913, as the cause of the financial disaster and proclaimed that they and their captive Republicans had declared class war against average working class Americans.

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“For out of this modern civilization,” Roosevelt told America, “economic royalists carved new dynasties. New kingdoms were built upon concentration of control over material things. … It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over Government itself.”

He used the language of class warfare; as with all wars, the first step is to identify the enemy. For FDR it was the morbidly rich of his era who weren’t content to just run their businesses and make money but also lusted for the political power they’d been given during the 1920s by Republican presidents Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover.
“These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America,” Roosevelt proclaimed. “What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power.”
He paused for a moment, then thundered, “Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power!”

The crowd at Madison Square Garden roared when he said that. They knew that Republican politicians had worked hand-in-glove with wealthy industrialists to suppress unions, evade taxes, and accumulate fortunes beyond anything ever seen in America. That the GOP had been running an often-violent class war against them for at least the past decade.

And they were over it. Over the greed, over the theft, and over the self-righteous proclamations that the Constitution protected their avarice. Average working people knew these “economic royalists” weren’t patriots; they were looters, vandals, and political arsonists. FDR gave voice to their anger, disillusionment, and disgust.

“In vain,” Roosevelt said, “they seek to hide behind the Flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the Flag and the Constitution stand for. Now, as always, they stand for democracy, not tyranny; for freedom, not subjection; and against a dictatorship by mob rule and the over-privileged alike.”

Republicans had declared class warfare; FDR, like he would later do with the Japanese and Germans, led the charge to fight back and defeat them.

And defeat them he did (even in the face of an assassination attempt); by the end of his presidency, American oligarchs had gone back to doing business and getting rich, largely avoiding politics and keeping their noses clean.

Until, that is, President Nixon put Lewis Powell on the Supreme Court and Powell began the process — from the bench — of turning America back into a full-blown oligarchy like Hoover had done in the 1920s.


The Powell Memo and the Court’s Bellotti decision (written by Powell) set the stage and outline the battle plan for the Reagan Revolution, an all-out declaration of class war against average Americans and the Democrats who’d historically defended them.

In the 1980s, Reagan cut the top income tax rate from 74 percent down to 27 percent (while repeatedly raising taxes on working-class people’s wages, tips, and Social Security), kicking off an explosion of billionaires. He and other Republican presidents and members of the Supreme Court followed up by:

— Ending enforcement of our anti-trust laws and gutting our environmental regulations.

— Killing off our media guardrails like the Fairness Doctrine and Equal Time Rule, along with ending ownership limits on newspapers, radio stations, and TV stations and networks.
— Fighting every effort to reduce or end student debt.
— Opposing every program proposed to broaden access to healthcare coverage.

— Attacking our right to vote.
— Privatizing Medicare with the Medicare Advantage scam (Social Security is next).
— Assailing environmental regulations that protect us and our children from cancer and other diseases.

— Going to the mat to defend hundreds of billions in annual subsidies for the fossil fuel industry and its oligarchs.
— Deregulating social media (Section 230), now taken over by rightwing billionaires.
— Packing our courts with reliable toadies for giant corporations and the wealthy.
— Stripping over $50 trillion from the working class since 1981, handing that money to the morbidly rich to stash in their offshore money bins.

— Rejecting every effort to raise the national minimum wage.
— Most recently, Trump congratulated Musk on his union-busting success.



Through this entire period, Democrats have refrained from employing FDR’s class war rhetoric to fight back. Instead, they’ve worked hard to make life better for working class people when in power and tried to limit the damage from Republican proposals and policies when they’re out of power.

This is why Vice President Harris’ claims that Democrats are here for the average person while Republicans want more tax cuts and deregulation failed to catch fire during this past election; there was no rhetoric of warfare. Instead, astonishingly, Harris campaigned with Liz Cheney and kept saying that she’d give Republicans “a seat at the table.”


As billionaire Warren Buffett famously confessed:
“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

It’s far past time to take the gloves off and start punching.

Democrats have become so rusty, so wary of class warfare, that they haven’t even identified a term or metaphor to describe the rightwing billionaires for whom the GOP fronts.


From Democratic President Grover Cleveland in the 1880s saying the rich had working people under their “Iron heel” to the early 20th century when they were called Robber Barons, Democrats have had names for Republicans and the billionaires who own them.

FDR called them economic royalists. Teddy Roosevelt called them fat cats, malefactors of great wealth, parasites, and plutocrats. I’ve been calling them the morbidly rich, but there’s almost certainly a more evocative phrase out there that could be applied to greedy billionaires by this generation of progressives.

After all, elite conservatives and billionaires haven’t hesitated to use “othering” language in their war against Democrats.

Reagan and Republicans since have called us pointy-headed intellectuals, ivory tower elites, eggheads, limousine liberals, champagne socialists, latte liberals, the wine and cheese crowd, coastal elites, tax and spend liberals, bleeding hearts, do-gooders, tree huggers, environmental wackos, libtards, communists, and even feminazis.

And how do Democrats describe Republicans? “Our friends on the other side of the aisle.”

Screw that. It’s time to declare war.

And war requires a clear delineation between our side and their side, between the good guys and the enemy. Nobody is going to rush to the ramparts against somebody we’re “happy to work with on a bipartisan basis”: as Newt Gingrich taught Republicans in the 1990s and they’ve held to with a religious fervor, there can be no quarter against the other side if you want to take and hold power.

Class war sounds ugly, but it’s exactly what Republicans and their billionaire backers have been waging against working class Americans for 43 years now. It’s damn well time to fight back by declaring a class war of our own.

In an authoritarian regime it’s important to control the news — and here we go

Thom Hartmann
November 17, 2024 

ALTERNET

Kash Patel (Photo via AFP)


— Is changing the Democratic Party the way to remake our Democracy?

Donald Trump only got about a million more votes than he did in 2020, but Kamala Harris appears to have received somewhere between 6 and 10 million fewer votes than Joe Biden did that year. For the over two decades that I’ve been writing and on the radio and TV, I’ve argued that when Bill Clinton embraced Reagan’s neoliberalism in 1992 (and Obama maintained that position) the Democratic Party had taken a fatal turn to the right. I’ve written two books that cover it, in part, as well: The Hidden History of Neoliberalism: How Reaganism Gutted America
and The Hidden History of the American Dream. It appears that millions of voters essentially said, “I’m not going to vote for that nutcase Trump, but Harris isn’t speaking to the explosion in my cost-of-living expenses so to hell with her, too.” Joe Biden campaigned with Bernie Sanders and won; Kamala Harris campaigned with Liz Cheney and repeatedly said she wanted to give Republicans “a seat at the table,” which may well have been a fatal error. She thought she could pick up moderate Republicans, but there’s apparently not such a thing anymore since Fox “News” and the massive rightwing media ecosystem has come to dominate the American news and opinion landscape.

Bernie Sanders, Robert Reich, Sherrod Brown, and many other longtime Democrats have been pointing to this pre-1992 truth: if the Democratic Party is to win, it has to go back to its FDR/LBJ roots and become the party of the bottom 90 percent, instead of embracing those with a college education, movie and rock stars, and progressive billionaires like Mark Cuban. God bless them all, but Dems really need to reinvent themselves as the blue-collar party and repudiate much of the Clinton/Obama agenda of low taxes, free trade, and private/public partnerships (like Obamacare).

Amazingly, even The New York Times’ conservative columnist David Brooks agrees, writing: “The Democratic Party has one job: to combat inequality. Here was a great chasm of inequality right before their noses and somehow many Democrats didn’t see it. Many on the left focused on racial inequality, gender inequality and L.G.B.T.Q. inequality. [This is actually an untrue GOP talking point.] … As the left veered toward identitarian performance art, Donald Trump jumped into the class war with both feet. His Queens-born resentment of the Manhattan elites dovetailed magically with the class animosity being felt by rural people across the country. His message was simple: These people have betrayed you, and they are morons to boot.” Amen. Finally, check out this troubling article from data scientist Stephen Spoonamore raising questions about manipulation of vote totals in the swing states in a way that doesn’t appear in the non-swing states. I’m agnostic on this for the moment, but it’s worth reading; he’ll be on my program Monday.


— In an authoritarian regime it’s important to cow and control the news, and here we go. Kash Patel, widely rumored to be Trump’s main pick for FBI director, has a message for reporters and opinion writers who insist on continuing to call Trump a fascist or otherwise slander/defame him and his followers: “We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government but in the media. Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections – we’re going to come after you... Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out. But yeah, we’re putting you all on notice.”

According to The Columbia Journalism Review, Trump has already sued The New York Times (naming reporters Peter Baker, Michael S. Schmidt, Susanne Craig, and Russ Buettner) and Penguin Random House (one of my publishers) and CBS’s 60 Minutes show for $10 billion each.

As I predicted, he appears to be following the Putin/Orbán strategy of bankrupting media outlets and reporters (rather than using cops and billy-clubs), presumably both to cow others into submission and to make the media properties available to be purchased by his allies (sort of like what just happened with The Onion buying Infowars out of bankruptcy).


Steve Bannon added his thoughts, essentially threatening or warning the journalists at MSNBC: “Weissman, you were on TV with MSNBC and all the producers, MSNBC. Preserve your documents. Ari Melber and all you hosts. Preserve your documents. All of it. You better be worried. You better lawyer up. Some of you young producers, you better call mom and dad tonight. Mom and dad, ‘You know a good lawyer?’ Lawyer up. Lawyer up.”

This is a dangerous time for anybody writing about politics. Orbán and Putin even go after random citizens who criticize them on social media; will Trump go that far? And will progressives shut up in the face of this kind of intimidation? Stay tuned…

— Speaking of authoritarianism, Texas Republicans want to outlaw websites that discuss how to get an abortion. Jessica Valenti tells the story at Abortion, Every Dayon Substack about the Republican lawmakers in Texas (and around the country) who are trying to pass legislation that would imprison people who put up websites that can be viewed in Texas (including hers) with information on abortion. They argue that abortion information is not free speech protected by the Constitution. I’d add that if the Comstock Act is enforced by the new Attorney General (as JD Vance has demanded) next year, all sorts of information about abortion will become criminalized, in addition to the devices and drugs that can be used for both abortion and birth control.


— Sarah Hurst’s Russia Report on Tulsi Gabbard will make your toes curl. I’ll let you click on it and read it yourself; it’s all about her repeated embraces of Russia and Putin. Which makes some people wonder out loud why Trump would push such objectionable candidates; surely the Senate will protect us from such people, right?

But if Trump really wants to pull a Hitler and seize absolute control of the nation within a matter of a few months, his first move would be to either negotiate or force a recess of the Senate and simply “recess appoint” all of his cabinet nominees. No hearings, no tough questions, no FBI or other background checks, no Democratic politicians’ input. He has this authority under Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution: if there’s a disagreement between John Thune and Mike Johnson about when to adjourn, “...and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he [the president] may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper.”

They could agree to disagree; that way they could both evade responsibility. On the other hand, if Thune simply gives in to Trump’s recent demand for recess appointments (as he told reporters yesterday he was considering), Thune can simply adjourn the Senate, something that hasn’t happened in decades; Trump can then simply do his own recess appointments (it could be done in a single hour) under the Constitution’s provision: “The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.” or he could just appoint them as “acting“ officials.


He did that during the last year of his presidency, and went way beyond the legal time limit for several; he flagrantly broke the law last time with over 15 cabinet members and Republicans were unwilling to call him on it, although he never started that way. This will be our first clue that the nation is no longer a constitutional republic with anything resembling checks and balances, but has become an oligarchic dictatorship like Hungary.

— Blueprint of destruction: Is Trump following Orbán’s and Putin’s road to power? M. Gessen, an expert on authoritarianism, writes in The New York Times: “When Orban was re-elected, he carried out what Magyar calls an ‘autocratic breakthrough,’ changing laws and practices so that he could not be dislodged again. It helped that he had a supermajority in parliament. Trump, similarly, spent four years attacking the Biden administration, and the vote that brought it to the White House, as fraudulent, and positioning himself as the only true voice of the people. He is also returning with a power trifecta — the presidency and both houses of Congress. He too can quickly reshape American government in his image. … Kamala Harris’s campaign, of course, tried to warn Americans about this and a lot more, labeling Trump a fascist. … It’s not just what the autocrats do to stage their breakthrough, it’s how they do it: passing legislation (or signing executive orders) fast, without any discussion, sometimes late at night, in batches, all the while denigrating and delegitimizing any opposition.”

The article is definitely worth a read, chilling as it is. Gessen even gets into the role of Project 2025 in facilitating the transformation of our American form of government into one with a single strongman president at its pinnacle. This does not bode well for America.


— Former Trump administration officials who turned on him are preparing to flee the country. The Washington Post is reporting: “A retired U.S. Army officer who clashed with senior officials in Donald Trump’s first White House looked into acquiring Italian citizenship in the run-up to this month’s election but wasn’t eligible and instead packeda ‘go bag’ with cash and a list of emergency numbers in case he needs to flee. A member of Trump’s first administration who publicly denounced him is applying for foreign citizenship and weighing whether to watch and wait or leave the country before the Jan. 20 inauguration. And a former U.S. official who signed a notorious October 2020 letter suggesting that emails purportedly taken from a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden could be part of a ‘Russian information operation’is seeking a passport from a European country, uncertain about whether the getaway will prove necessary but concluding, ‘You don’t want to have to scramble.’”

Reports (like this one from the Post) suggest that Trump has an “enemies list” of at least 600 people, much like Nixon’s, and he intends to go after everybody on the list on day one. Will he, like Nixon, just harass people with IRS audits? It seems more likely based on his own words that he’ll launch criminal and civil actions to jail or bankrupt his perceived enemies and those who have written or said things that have offended him.

Along those same lines, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene wants “justice” against health officials: “Dr. [Anthony] Fauci lied to the American people, abusing his power and position and role, a very powerful role paid for by the American tax people. He lied, and many, many people died. … People that perpetuated and continue to perpetuate these crimes need to be prosecuted, and that needs to be starting in the next administration, and I’m pretty sure our next attorney general will do that, and I look forward to seeing that happen.”

Washington, DC is very, very much on edge right now; I got a call Friday morning at 5:30 in the morning from the CEO of a major DC-based progressive media outlet who’d just gotten off the phone with a Clinton colleague; both are considering leaving the country. This is getting real very, very fast.


— Are Republicans coming for healthcare for both retired and working people?Millions of people signed up for Affordable Care Act insurance policies over the past three years because of hefty subsidies contained in Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.

Those subsidies expire at the end of this year, and Republicans are signaling that they won’t be renewed, meaning that premiums could go from $200 a month to as much as $2400 a month. Meanwhile, Project 2025 has called for private corporate Medicare Advantage plans to become the default option for people turning 65 and signing up for Medicare. Once a critical threshold is hit (currently more than half of seniors are on the Advantage plans) it’ll be fairly easy for a Republican congress and president to end legacy Medicare; once that happens, Advantage plans, no longer having competition from real Medicare, will almost certainly become more expensive and offer less coverage.

Meanwhile, Raw Story is reporting: “Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), chairman of the House Budget Committee, told reporters earlier this week that the GOP is looking to use the filibuster-evading reconciliation process to pursue cuts to ‘mandatory programs’—a category that includes Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.” Republicans have been talking about this since the ReaganRevolution, but never actually tried (other than Reagan raising the retirement age from 65 to 67). Get ready.

— State-level authoritarians fall in line with Trump. Oklahoma’s Channel 4 (KFOR) TV News reports: “Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters emailed leaders in Oklahoma school districts on Thursday telling them they would be required to play their students and parents a video showing Walters blaming the ‘radical left’ and ‘woke teachers unions’ for ‘attacking’ religious liberty, then inviting students to join him as he prays for President-elect Donald Trump.” Walters also reportedly purchased five hundred Trump Bibles for Oklahoma schools. Welcome to the Brave New World. Compounding a religious grift with a financial one; breathtaking.

 

Nanoplastics can impair the effect of antibiotics

Umea University

 

image: 

Nikola Zlatkov Kolev, postdoc at the Department of Molecular Biology, Umeå University.

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Credit: Mattias Pettersson

Minuscule particles of plastic are not only bad for the environment. A study led from Umeå University, Sweden, has shown that the so-called nanoplastics which enter the body also can impair the effect of antibiotic treatment. The results also indicate that the nanoplastics may lead to the development of antibiotic resistance. Even the indoor air in our homes contains high levels of nanoplastics from, among other things, nylon, which is particularly problematic.

"The results are alarming considering how common nanoplastics are and because effective antibiotics for many can be the difference between life and death," says Lukas Kenner, professor at the Department of Molecular Biology at Umeå University and one of the researchers who led the study.

Nanoplastics are plastic particles that are smaller than a thousandth of a millimetre. Due to their smallness, they can float freely in the air and have the ability to enter the body.

In the study, led not only by researchers in Umeå, but also by scientists based in Germany and Hungary, the authors have focused on how some of the most common nanoplastics interact with tetracycline, which is a common broad-spectrum antibiotic. It turned out that there was significant accumulation of the antibiotics on the surfaces of the nanoplastic particles. You could say that the nanoplastics absorb antibiotics. 

The nanoplastics in question come from common types of plastics such as polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene and nylon. They are commonly found in packaging and textiles. Indoor air contains about five times as much nanoplastics as outdoor air, partly due to particles released from textiles.

One risk that the researchers point out is that the binding to nanoplastics can lead to the antibiotics "hitchhiking" with the nanoplastic in the bloodstream and being transported to other places in the body than they are intended for. This can both reduce the targeted effect of the antibiotics and risk enabling the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. When antibiotics accumulate in unintended areas, sub-lethal doses can spur bacterial mutations, selecting for antibiotic-resistant strains.

The researchers used advanced computer models to analyze how the nanoplastics bind to tetracycline. It turned out that the bond was particularly strong to nylon –  one of the substances that is most abundant in nanoplastics in indoor air.

"Although more research is needed to shed light on the connections and possible measures, we can conclude from our results that nanoplastics are a health risk that should be taken more seriously," says Lukas Kenner.

The study, which is published in the scientific journal Scientific Reports, has been led by Lukas Kenner at Umeå University, Barbara Kirchner at the University of Bonn in Germany and Oldamur Hollóczki at the University of Debrecen, Hungary. The sub-study on the binding of nanoplastics to antibiotics has been led by Nikola Zlatkov Kolev at the Department of Molecular Biology at Umeå University. Lukas Kenner has recently taken up the position of visiting professor at the Department of Molecular Biology at Umeå University and continues his research on nanoplastics and health effects.

---

Journal

Scientific Reports

DOI

10.1038/s41598-024-75785-4 

Method of Research

Computational simulation/modeling

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

The adsorption of drugs on nanoplastics has severe biological impact

 

Amid record year for dengue infections, new study finds climate change responsible for 19% of today’s rising dengue burden

Second study reveals how one Brazilian city escaped a historic outbreak this year by deploying mosquitoes carrying the Wolbachia bacteria that interferes with dengue transmission

American Society of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene

NEW ORLEANS (November 16, 2024) — Climate change is having a massive global impact on dengue transmission, accounting for 19% of the current dengue burden, with a potential to spark an additional 40%-60% spike by 2050 — and by as much as 150%-200% in some areas — according to a new study presented today at the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH).

The findings from researchers at Stanford and Harvard Universities offer the most definitive evidence to date that climate change is a big factor driving a global surge in the mosquito-borne disease. Countries in the Americas alone have recorded almost 12 million cases in 2024 compared to 4.6 million in 2023, and locally acquired infections have been reported in California and Florida. The study also carries warnings of even sharper increases to come.

“We looked at data on dengue incidence and climate variation across 21 countries in Asia and the Americas and found that there is a clear and direct relationship between rising temperatures and rising infections,” said Erin Mordecai, PhD, an infectious disease ecologist at Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment and the study’s senior author. “It’s evidence that climate change already has become a significant threat to human health and, for dengue in particular, our data suggests the impact could get much worse.”

While some dengue infections produce only mild symptoms, others cause excruciating joint pain (earning dengue the nickname “breakbone fever”), and severe cases can lead to bleeding complications and shock. There are no drugs to treat the disease and while there are two licensed dengue vaccines available, some dengue experts have pointed to challenges with both that could limit widespread adoption.

The study finds that amid dengue’s growing threat, moderating global warming by reducing emissions would also moderate climate impacts on dengue infections. The analysis shows that with sharp cuts in emissions, areas now on track to experience a 60% increase would instead see about a 40% rise in dengue infections between now and 2050. However, with global climate models predicting that temperatures will continue to increase even with large reductions in emissions, the researchers found that 17 of the 21 countries studied still would see climate-driven increases in dengue even under the most optimistic scenarios for carbon cuts.

Mordecai said the study was inspired by laboratory tests that found mosquitoes that carry dengue progressively churn out more and more virus as temperatures rise within a specific range. She said this temperature-induced bump starts at about 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees Fahrenheit), then intensifies before peaking at about 28 or 29 C (about 82 F).

Her team then looked at 21 dengue endemic countries, including Brazil, Peru, Mexico, Colombia, Vietnam and Cambodia, which regularly collect data on infection rates. They also looked at other factors that can affect dengue infection rates — like rainfall patterns, seasonal changes, virus types, economic shocks and population density — in order to isolate whether there was a distinct temperature effect.  

Mordecai said that dengue-endemic areas that are just now entering that 20 C to 29 C sweet-spot for virus transmission — parts of Peru, Mexico, Bolivia and Brazil — could face the biggest future risks, with infections over the next few decades rising 150% to 200%.

Meanwhile, the study found that areas already on the high end of the temperature range, like southern Vietnam, will experience little additional climate impacts and potentially a minor decrease. Overall, the analysis revealed that there are at least 257 million people now living in places where climate warming could cause dengue incidence to double in the next 25 years.

Mordecai said the study probably underestimates the climate-related dengue threat. That’s because researchers were unable to predict potential climate impacts on dengue-endemic areas that have not consistently tracked infections, which includes large parts of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Also, Mordecai said they were unable to quantify future impacts for areas like the southern regions of the continental United States, where dengue is just starting to emerge as a local threat. “But as more and more of the U.S. moves into that optimal temperature range for dengue, the number of locally acquired infections will likely rise, though it’s too early to say how that will affect the global burden,” she said.

A Possible Solution: A Second Study Credits Common Bacteria with Protecting Brazilian City from Dengue Storm

With climate change acting as an accelerant fueling dengue’s surge, new findings presented at the ASTMH Annual Meeting provide some of the best evidence to date that releasing mosquitoes that carry a common bacteria called Wolbachia may offer a powerful tool to fend off intense outbreaks of the disease.

The study by researchers from the World Mosquito Program found that in 2024, as Brazil battled its largest dengue outbreak on record, there was only a small rise in Niterói, a city of half a million people close to Rio de Janeiro. The study credits the fact that five years ago, a partnership between the World Mosquito Program and Brazil’s Ministry of Health blanketed three-quarters of Niterói with mosquitoes infected with Wolbachia, a naturally occurring bacteria that has been shown to inhibit a mosquito’s ability to transmit dengue and other viruses. Deployments into the remaining areas were completed in May 2023.

“We already saw infections essentially flatline in Niterói after the Wolbachia deployment, and while there was a small increase in 2024, the caseload was still 90% lower than before the deployment — and nothing like what was happening in the rest of Brazil,” said Katie Anders, PhD, director of impact assessment at the World Mosquito Program, which has been leading a global effort to fight dengue with Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes. “The fact that Wolbachia has sustained itself in the mosquito population for years now and remained effective during a record year for dengue outbreaks shows that Wolbachia can provide long-term protection for communities against the increasingly frequent surges in dengue that we’re seeing globally.”

Anders said that since Wolbachia has been rolled out across Niterói, dengue incidence has dropped to an average of 84 cases per 100,000 people per year, compared to an average rate of 913 cases per 100,000 people per year in the 10 years pre-Wolbachia. The 1,736 dengue cases reported in Niterói from January to June 2024 represent a rate of 336 per 100,000 in 2024. That’s compared to a rate of 3,121 nationwide and 1,816 in Rio de Janeiro state during the same period. Overall, in 2024, Brazil has recorded 9.6 million dengue cases — more than twice as many as in 2023 — and 5,300 dengue-related deaths. 

Other trials spearheaded by the World Mosquito Program, including large-scale releases in urban areas of Colombia and Indonesia, have reported significant reductions in dengue. They also have shown that Wolbachia is safe for humans, animals and the surrounding environment. But Anders said the protective effect documented in Niterói stands out for occurring amid such an intense wave of disease. 

“In Brazil, we’re in the process of moving past Wolbachia as an experimental measure to its use as a cornerstone of dengue control,” said Luciano Moreira, PhD, the World Mosquito Program project lead in Brazil. “We’ve partnered with the Brazilian government to build a Wolbachia mosquito production facility that will enable deployment in multiple cities simultaneously — with the goal of protecting many millions of people.”

Anders noted that the production facility in Brazil is a significant step because one the biggest barriers to using Wolbachia on a large scale is that it requires releasing a large number of infected mosquitoes to spread the bacteria into the local mosquito population. She also said that governments and donors must be willing to invest with an understanding that Wolbachia is a preventative measure, not a tool for combating an ongoing outbreak — it requires a couple of years to implement and reach full effectiveness.

However, Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes transmit the bacteria to their offspring, which, according to Anders, means its protective effect could persist in a local population for many years. She said that evidence from the site of a 2011 release of Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes in Northern Australia showed the bacteria was still present in 90% of the local mosquito population more than 10 years after releases finished.

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About the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene

The American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, founded in 1903, is the largest international scientific organization of experts dedicated to reducing the worldwide burden of tropical infectious diseases and improving global health. It accomplishes this through generating and sharing scientific evidence, informing health policies and practices, fostering career development, recognizing excellence, and advocating for investment in tropical medicine/global health research. For more information, visit astmh.org.

PATRICIA BAKER: Voting imperative as democracies become more fragile

The right to vote brings with it the responsibility to protect freedom and never take it for granted

Author of the article: Patricia Baker
Published Nov 18, 2024 • Last updated 1 hour ago • 8 minute read

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As a Canadian and dedicated voter, I have become more and more concerned about the political landscape of this country. When I reached the age of majority many years ago, this milestone gave me the constitutional right to vote, and I have taken this right seriously.

I have submitted my ballot in every federal and provincial election ever since.

The right to vote brings with it the responsibility to protect freedom and never take it for granted. But we must remember that even if we vote, we may not get what we want. We may have to live with what most voters have chosen, even if we don’t agree.

This may be why some do not bother to vote. The adage we hear, “My party isn’t going to get in anyway, so why should I bother to vote?”

When you look at countries in the world that are controlled by dictators, communists or fascists, voting is in a realm of its own. Even if this privilege exists, which is questionable, the authentic will of the people can’t evolve or exist either.

Democracies have become more and more vulnerable to outside interference, so the urgency to stand and protect us from regimes that have intentions to infiltrate our security, and integrity should have the electorate on high alert.

It has come to be a very serious and insidious under current, especially when we are going about our everyday lives, and everything seems to be as we know it.

We quite often take our freedoms and constitutional rights for granted as we get on with our lives, but it should always be a little voice in the back of our heads that we should be wary that we could be on the hit list for foreign political infiltration.

We the electorate also have a responsibility to pay attention to the directions our elected Members of Parliament (MPs) and Members of Provincial Parliament (MPPs) wish to embark upon and what their mandates and platforms for re-election are.

We may want change because we tire of the leaders and parties which have been in power for too long. But we also should be thinking about what we are changing to. In simple terms, prospective leaders may be telling us they will maintain social programs already in place or introduce new ones that are awaiting approval which will help with everyday living costs. They may also endorse funneling more funds into public health care or doing what it takes to address climate change by reducing dependence on fossil fuels.

The introduction of more liberal ideas for the curriculums in public schools while supporting dental or pharmacare for Canadians who are not financial able to access these health benefits are being put before us.

On the other side of the political spectrum, a more conservative approach to managing this country’s spending and programs may be presented as legitimate alternatives to moving this country too far to the left of centre.

Programs may be delayed, curtailed or abandoned altogether to become what is believed to be a more fiscally responsible approach to spending. The reduction of the deficit by spending more cost effectively on social programs, immigration and climate change initiatives for instance, could be presented as in a more cost-effective manner to eventually rail it in

Although the centre and left of centre political parties seem to have been more open than the right about their plans for Canadians if they are elected, voters may have to resort to reading between the lines until such time a more open dialogue is presented.

Having said that, it may be helpful to reflect on the federal parties and their past promises and performances in governments they formed after being elected. Look back at the relationships the federal and provincial governments have had with each other during their respective mandates.

Were you happy with what you got in any of the past respective governments, and did they fulfill those promises that were attainable and responsible? Did they present themselves on the world stage in a stately manner? Were they open to constructive dialogue? Did they present Canada’s value as a democracy and protect it?

Social programs such as dental, pharmacare and reproductive/abortion services are expensive to initiate and operate, but they are considered to promote healthier outcomes for those who do not have access to or cannot afford them.

The argument for acceptance is that many low even middle-income Canadians will be healthier in the long run. Ultimately these programs will save government
coffers money by reducing visits and admissions to hospitals. Poor dental hygiene and limited or no access to prescription drugs for diabetes and heart disease for example, have been correctly identified as very costly expenditures for the public health care system to sustain.

This is preventative medicine, and it has been proven over time that a healthy population is able to be much more productive and relies on health care much less than an ailing population with chronic diseases that they cannot afford to prevent in the first place.

Access and affordability are everything and yes fiscal responsibility is also required for a healthy prosperous economy to be able to grow into a stable asset. Being beleaguered under massive debt is very counterproductive.

On the other hand, if we are being promised balanced budgets, with cuts to climate change initiatives or social programs, will this in the long run balance the budget?

Will resisting calls for our reliance on fossil fuels to be harnessed and eventually over time replaced with clean energy eventually balance the budget and eliminate the deficit?

Can the effects of climate change destroy communities, flood and burn valuable land and resources while debts for restoration are handed down from one generation to the next?

Will social programs help those in need? What will happen if they are not enough?

If abortion rights are maintained at status quo, will this help women be safe and maintain their right to choose what they do with their own body?

Having said all of this, voters cannot be expected to abandon their own needs and struggles either. The economy, housing, health care, cost of living and immigration are the major issues facing Canadians.

The upcoming election could be coming sooner than later, it has not been determined, but all the parties in their unmitigated quest to govern this country are going to encourage the electorate to vote in their favour.

Promises will be made across the board, and voters will then be inundated with all sorts of information which may require serious thought and reflection. On the other hand, some voters and non-voters alike may just choose to tune it all out and change the channel.

Social media is an integral part of our lives, how we communicate, access information on a multitude of various levels and make decisions on the important aspects that affect our lives.

But social media may also provide misleading or inaccurate messaging to voters depending on which area of the political spectrum they support. The electorate has the right to base their affiliations with the parties and leaders who appeal to them on a personal level as well as those who try to address and alleviate their personal struggles.

Unfortunately, some politicians may have inclinations to bring us closer to mandates that are designed to minimize or curtail some of the rights and freedoms which citizens already possess. They may hinder the passage of laws that uphold these rights to strengthen these mandates.

Should these aspirations begin to evolve towards the erosion of the rights and freedoms of the people, this should be of great concern to the electorate. A slow but planned transition towards a government using their power to infringe and eventually eliminate the rights of their citizens can be elusive and go unaddressed until it may be too late to go back.

An example that could affect potentially half the population of Canada, would be access to abortion and reproductive services. Can these services continue to be viable and protected across Canada? Can they survive the pushback from those who believe that abortion should not be a viable choice for women?

We have seen how Roe Versus Wade, in law for over fifty years in the United States, has been challenged and overruled as each state sets its agenda. The question that still begs an answer on this side of the border is whether this could happen here.

Up until 1988, inducing an abortion in Canada was a crime and, in that year, the Supreme Court struck this ruling down calling it unconstitutional and therefore abortion was decriminalized.
It remains a publicly funded and registered medical procedure under the Canada Health Act. Women do have the Charter right to choose what happens to their bodies.

But there could also be increasing pressures on women to reconsider their decision to have an abortion based on information shared with them which they may not understand or is contrary to their wishes.

Women will seek to undergo an abortion for various reasons, many if not all have arisen from some very dark and unconscionable events. It cannot go without saying that if they are asking for the pregnancy to be terminated, it remains to be a very private matter.

There is always the possibility this choice could be influenced by some who feel she should proceed with the pregnancy, producing confusion and guilt for her even contemplating abortion.

The opioid and mental health crisis are very serious health care issues and solutions on how to treat them in a humane, yet effective program has formed a huge divide with politicians, health care providers and the electorate.

Wherever a voter’s support lies on such crisis or the political party they endorse, looking beyond personal affiliations is key to having enough science-based information available to look beyond political electoral promises.

From a left of centre approach, supervised consumption sites are promoted for homelessness and addiction. Right of centre believe Hart Hubs, which provide safety, treatment and recovery and possible mandatory admission without consent, are the way to treat this crisis.

But voters on both sides of these issues may also share support for both. There is so much to think about. But every vote counts and ultimately the electorate will decide. `

Patricia Baker is a Sault Star district correspondent, columnist and retired Sault Area Hospital nurse