'Only Path Forward:' Exit Polls Show Young Women Voted For Democrats Amid Abortion Debate

By Marvie Basilan Chorawan
11/14/22

KEY POINTS

72% of women under 30 voted for Democrats in House races

In several states, a majority of young women also voted for Democrats for senate seats

The overturning of Roe v. Wade has sparked debates on abortion rights

Ahuge percentage of young women voted for Democrats in the midterm elections amid debates over abortion rights in the country. Exit polls showed women under 30 played a key role in crumbling the Republicans' hopes for a "red wave."

Women aged between 18 and 29 went 72% for House Democrats and only 26% supported Republicans, exit polls jointly conducted by CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC showed. A whopping 57% of women aged 30-44 supported Democrats, while only 41% voted for Republicans in the House.

For Senate seats, the majority of women under 30 voted for Democrats. 76% of young women in Arizona voted for Mark Kelly, while 20% voted for Blake Masters. Even Florida, which turned red in the midterms, saw 57% of women under 30 voting for Val Demings.

In Georgia, 63% of young women voted for the Democratic Party's Raphael Warnock, while 34% voted for the GOP's Herschel Walker. In Nevada, 64% of women aged 18-29 voted for Catherine Cortez Masto, while 31% voted for Adam Laxalt.

A similar turnout was seen in New Hampshire, where 74% of women in the 18-29 age group voted for Democrat Maggie Hassan, while 23% voted for Donald Bolduc. The same was the case in Pennsylvania, where 70% of women under 30 voted for John Fetterman, while 28% voted for Mehmet Oz.
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"I think most young women feel that the best thing for their rights and for the future of the country is to vote for Democrat," 24-year-old Elizabeth Rickert, from Ohio, told The Hill.

Rickert further explained she thinks younger women believe "voting Democrat is the only path forward" as the GOP "becomes more extreme and moves away from the core American principals of democracy and rights for all."

Some observers believe a predicted "red wave" in the midterm elections was ultimately thwarted by "people motivated by the erosion of abortion rights," Politico reported.

"Had the Supreme Court not overturned Roe v Wade back in June, the Democrats wouldn't have had that to energize voters," Jon Taylor, a political science professor at the University of Texas, said, adding the issue "actually helped the Democrats stave off that Red Wave."

The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion at the national level, triggering a wave of protests. Republicans have been pushing to either completely ban or limit the procedure.

The decision is believed to have played a key factor in the midterms, with concerned young women turning up in large numbers. "Abortion is a winning issue and will continue to be in elections to come," said Mini Timmaraju, president of the nonprofitNaral Pro-Choice America.


Despite the high turnout of young female voters for Democrats, some experts note the extent to which the votes of women under 30 have actually affected the results is unclear and will not be determined until after election results are officially counted.

David Shor, founder of Democratic data analysis firm Blue Rose Research, pointed out that numbers from early voting do not necessarily support the notion that young voters had a very crucial effect on the victory of Democratic candidates, the New York Times reported.

President Joe Biden last week said the turnout of young voters "sent a clear and unmistakable message," that they want to "protect the right to choose."

Abortion rights debates have been on the rise since a landmark ruling was overturned by the Supreme Court.


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Reflections on the ‘Stupid and Wicked’

by Brendan O'Soro Posted onNovember 10, 2022

During an interview with the BBC in 1959, Bertrand Russell was asked about his efforts campaigning for the abolition of nuclear weapons. Some things, I think, are self-evident, and the desirability of avoiding a nuclear holocaust is one of them. Advocating for the elimination of genocidal weaponry should require very little further justification, but Russell was courteous and responded by saying, "I can’t bear the thought of many hundreds of millions of people dying in agony, only and solely because the rulers of the world are stupid and wicked."

The actions of the "stupid and wicked" are on display in Eastern Europe, and they have provided fresh inspiration for talk of nuclear war. The commander of US Strategic Command recently said, "this Ukraine crisis that we’re in right now, this is just the warmup," and "the big one is coming." During a fundraising event, Joe Biden alluded to Russia’s willingness to use nuclear weaponry, saying Putin is "not bluffing" when he insinuates he would do so. The Russians and the Americans are both conducting war games in Europe, simultaneously rehearsing the use of nuclear weapons. Both feel it necessary to have a trial performance for actions that would likely extinguish human life if they ever enacted these performances.

If someone wished to apportion blame for the crisis in Ukraine, it would be distributed among many entities; the ranks of the "stupid and wicked" are rather swollen. The Russian state started a war of aggression, violating the UN Charter and committing "the supreme international crime," as the Nuremberg Tribunal described it. Within the context of this quintessential war crime, they’ve committed others. They conducted fraudulent referendums in four Ukrainian oblasts and used the results as a pretext to extend Russian sovereignty into those regions. And Russian officials have made repeated insinuations about the use of nuclear weapons.

The American role in creating the conditions that led to the current crisis shouldn’t be ignored, and the American refusal to pursue a diplomatic settlement cannot remain unchallenged. In an interview published a month into the invasion, Chas Freeman, a former US diplomat, encapsulated the Biden administration’s policy by saying the US was willing to fight Russia "to the last Ukrainian." Advancing perceived American geopolitical interests are prioritized over the well-being of Ukrainians, which should be unsurprising to those without a naïve view of how states function.

The Biden administration has acted in opposition to a diplomatic settlement to the conflict since before the invasion in February. During an interview with a foreign policy website called War on the Rocks, Derek Chollet, a counselor to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, confirmed the American’s unwillingness to discuss the extension of NATO into Ukraine in the lead-up to the invasion. He called the potential inclusion of Ukraine in NATO a "non-issue," which is a rather flippant way to treat Russia’s security concerns.

There was a clear lack of convergence between the administration’s publicly stated position and that which they adhered to privately: during an interview with Fareed Zakaria on March 20th, the Ukrainian President spoke about his desire for clarity about Ukraine’s future in NATO. He said, "I requested them personally to say directly that we are going to accept you into NATO in a year or two or five, just say it directly and clearly, or just say no." The Biden administration told him that "you’re not going to be a NATO member, but publicly, the doors will remain open."

Negotiations between Russian and Ukrainian officials occurred in Istanbul starting in late March, and a tentative agreement was reached in early April. The UK Prime Boris Johnson found this objectionable, so he went to Kyiv and told the Ukrainians that the Russians "should be pressured, not negotiated with," and "even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on guarantees with Putin, they are not." The Turkish Foreign Minister later said, "there are countries within NATO who want the war to continue," and "they want Russia to become weaker." Lloyd Austin, America’s Secretary of Defense, further confirmed this by saying, "We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine." The spokesperson for the State Department said that "this is a war that is in many ways bigger than Russia, it’s bigger than Ukraine."

The Washington Post published a story saying that "Privately, US officials say neither Russia nor Ukraine is capable of winning the war outright, but they have ruled out the idea of pushing or even nudging Ukraine to the negotiating table." This intolerably misrepresents the American position. The "stupid and wicked" have prevented negotiations from achieving an end to the war; characterizing this as an unwillingness to "nudge" Ukraine towards a diplomatic settlement is an absurd departure from the facts.

The "stupid and wicked" are causing the suffering of millions of Ukrainians because they perceive their imperial interests to be of greater importance than the well-being of human beings, and they’re risking an even greater tragedy considering the nuclear arsenals of the Nations involved. The obscenity of this shouldn’t be missed.

Brendan O’Soro is an independent writer from western Massachusetts. He writes on Substack.

ANTIWAR.COM

Congressional Amendment Opens Floodgates for War Profiteers and a Major Ground War on Russia

by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies Posted onNovember 14, 2022

If the powerful leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senators Jack Reed (D) and Jim Inhofe (R), have their way, Congress will soon invoke wartime emergency powers to build up even greater stockpiles of Pentagon weapons. The amendment is supposedly designed to facilitate replenishing the weapons the United States has sent to Ukraine, but a look at the wish list contemplated in this amendment reveals a different story.

Reed and Inhofe’s idea is to tuck their wartime amendment into the FY2023 National Defense Appropriation Act (NDAA) that will be passed during the lameduck session before the end of the year. The amendment sailed through the Armed Services Committee in mid-October and, if it becomes law, the Department of Defense will be allowed to lock in multi-year contracts and award non-competitive contracts to arms manufacturers for Ukraine-related weapons.

If the Reed/Inhofe amendment is really aimed at replenishing the Pentagon’s supplies, then why do the quantities in its wish list vastly surpass those sent to Ukraine?

Let’s do the comparison:

• The current star of U.S. military aid to Ukraine is Lockheed Martin’s HIMARS rocket system, the same weapon US Marines used to help reduce much of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, to rubble in 2017. The US has only sent 38 HIMARS systems to Ukraine, but Senators Reed and Inhofe plan to "reorder" 700 of them, with 100,000 rockets, which could cost up to $4 billion.

• Another artillery weapon provided to Ukraine is the M777 155 mm howitzer. To "replace" the 142 M777s sent to Ukraine, the senators plan to order 1,000 of them, at an estimated cost of $3.7 billion, from BAE Systems.

• HIMARS launchers can also fire Lockheed Martin’s long-range (up to 190 miles) MGM-140 ATACMS missiles, which the US has not sent to Ukraine. In fact the US has only ever fired 560 of them, mostly at Iraq in 2003. The even longer-range "Precision Strike Missile," formerly prohibited under the INF Treaty renounced by Trump, will start replacing the ATACMS in 2023, yet the Reed-Inhofe Amendment would buy 6,000 ATACMS, 10 times more than the US has ever used, at an estimated cost of $600 million.

• Reed and Inhofe plan to buy 20,000 Stinger anti-aircraft missiles from Raytheon. But Congress already spent $340 million for 2,800 Stingers to replace the 1,400 sent to Ukraine. Reed and Inhofe’s amendment will "re-replenish" the Pentagon’s stocks 14 times over, which could cost $2.4 billion.

• The United States has supplied Ukraine with only two Harpoon anti-ship missile systems – already a provocative escalation – but the amendment includes 1,000 Boeing Harpoon missiles (at about $1.4 billion) and 800 newer Kongsberg Naval Strike Missiles (about $1.8 billion), the Pentagon’s replacement for the Harpoon.

• The Patriot air defense system is another weapon the US has not sent to Ukraine, because each system can cost a billion dollars and the basic training course for technicians to maintain and repair it takes more than a year to complete. And yet the Inhofe-Reed wish list includes 10,000 Patriot missiles, plus launchers, which could add up to $30 billion.

ATACMS, Harpoons and Stingers are all weapons the Pentagon was already phasing out, so why spend billions of dollars to buy thousands of them now? What is this really all about? Is this amendment a particularly egregious example of war profiteering by the military-industrial-Congressional complex? Or is the United States really preparing to fight a major ground war against Russia?

Our best judgment is that both are true.

Looking at the weapons list, military analyst and retired Marine Colonel Mark Cancian noted: "This isn’t replacing what we’ve given [Ukraine]. It’s building stockpiles for a major ground war [with Russia] in the future. This is not the list you would use for China. For China we’d have a very different list."

President Biden says he will not send US troops to fight Russia because that would be World War III. But the longer the war goes on and the more it escalates, the more it becomes clear that US forces are directly involved in many aspects of the war: helping to plan Ukrainian operations; providing satellite-based intelligence; waging cyber warfare; and operating covertly inside Ukraine as special operations forces and CIA paramilitaries. Now Russia has accused British special operations forces of direct roles in a maritime drone attack on Sevastopol and the destruction of the Nord Stream gas pipelines.

As US involvement in the war has escalated despite Biden’s broken promises, the Pentagon must have drawn up contingency plans for a full-scale war between the United States and Russia. If those plans are ever executed, and if they do not immediately trigger a world-ending nuclear war, they will require vast quantities of specific weapons, and that is the purpose of the Reed-Inhofe stockpiles.

At the same time, the amendment seems to respond to complaints by the weapons manufacturers that the Pentagon was "moving too slowly" in spending the vast sums appropriated for Ukraine. While over $20 billion has been allocated for weapons, contracts to actually buy weapons for Ukraine and replace the ones sent there so far totaled only $2.7 billion by early November.

So the expected arms sales bonanza had not yet materialized, and the weapons makers were getting impatient. With the rest of the world increasingly calling for diplomatic negotiations, if Congress didn’t get moving, the war might be over before the arms makers’ much-anticipated jackpot ever arrived.

Mark Cancian explained to DefenseNews, "We’ve been hearing from industry, when we talk to them about this issue, that they want to see a demand signal."

When the Reed-Inhofe Amendment sailed through committee in mid-October, it was clearly the "demand signal" the merchants of death were looking for. The stock prices of Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics took off like antiaircraft missiles, exploding to all-time highs by the end of the month.

Julia Gledhill, an analyst at the Project on Government Oversight, decried the wartime emergency provisions in the amendment, saying it "further deteriorates already weak guardrails in place to prevent corporate price gouging of the military."

Opening the doors to multi-year, noncompetitive, multi-billion dollar military contracts shows how the American people are trapped in a vicious spiral of war and military spending. Each new war becomes a pretext for further increases in military spending, much of it unrelated to the current war that provides cover for the increase. Military budget analyst Carl Conetta demonstrated (see Executive Summary) in 2010, after years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, that "those operations account(ed) for only 52% of the surge" in US military spending during that period.

Andrew Lautz of the National Taxpayers’ Union now calculates that the base Pentagon budget will exceed $1 trillion per year by 2027, five years earlier than projected by the Congressional Budget Office. But if we factor in at least $230 billion per year in military-related costs in the budgets of other departments, like Energy (for nuclear weapons), Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security, Justice (FBI cybersecurity), and State, national insecurity spending has already hit the trillion dollar per year mark, gobbling up two-thirds of annual discretionary spending.

America’s exorbitant investment in each new generation of weapons makes it nearly impossible for politicians of either party to recognize, let alone admit to the public, that American weapons and wars have been the cause of many of the world’s problems, not the solution, and that they cannot solve the latest foreign policy crisis either.

Senators Reed and Inhofe will defend their amendment as a prudent step to deter and prepare for a Russian escalation of the war, but the spiral of escalation we are locked into is not one-sided. It is the result of escalatory actions by both sides, and the huge arms buildup authorized by this amendment is a dangerously provocative escalation by the US side that will increase the danger of the World War that President Biden has promised to avoid

After the catastrophic wars and ballooning US military budgets of the past 25 years, we should be wise by now to the escalatory nature of the vicious spiral in which we are caught. And after flirting with Armageddon for 45 years in the last Cold War, we should also be wise to the existential danger of engaging in this kind of brinkmanship with nuclear-armed Russia. So, if we are wise, we will oppose the Reed/Inhofe Amendment.

Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies are the authors of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, available from OR Books in November 2022.

Medea Benjamin is the cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and the author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher with CODEPINK and the author of Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.

ANTIWAR.COM

Chaos on the tracks as Australian freight train derails during stormy weather

Benjamin Preiss and Caroline Schelle

 Nov 14 2022

A freight train has derailed in Australia after storms lashed Victoria early Monday morning (local time).

Victoria’s State Emergency Service confirmed the train derailed between Inverleigh and Gheringhap, about 30 kilometres west of Geelong at about 5.30am on Monday morning (local time).

Dozens of containers spilled onto the tracks but no one was injured, according to the SES.

Between eight and 10 carriages came off the tracks in the incident but no dangerous goods were on board, the authority said.


NINE
Tens of carriages have been involved in the derailment.

Ambulance Victoria was not required at the crash scene and rail authorities were on the way to the scene to investigate the cause of the derailment.

Golden Plains Shire mayor Gavin Gamble, who lives in Teesdale near the site of the derailment, said many roads were closed in the area because of heavy overnight rain.

He was seeking an update on the train incident, but was unable to leave his home because his driveway was flooded.

“It’s currently like a river with a waterfall going over our drive,” Gamble said.

Gamble said he had seen reports that 60 millimetres of rain fell in the area overnight.

“It was very localised and heavy,” he said.

SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
The train derailed 30 kilometres west of Geelong.

A spokesperson for the Australian Rail Track Corporation confirmed it was investigating the crash.

“There were no injuries to the train crew and there were no dangerous good containers impacted by the incident,” the spokesperson said.

“The service derailed with containers displaced on both sides of the track and some within an adjoining paddock.

“The incident has resulted in the closure of the Melbourne-Adelaide rail corridor. Affected customers have been notified.

“Artc response crews are on site, and emergency services are also in attendance.

“The Office of the National Rail Safety Regulator has been notified and the Australian Transport Safety Bureau has taken control of the site. Artc has immediately commenced working with customers on a recovery plan.”

NINE
The wild weather is said to have caused the derailment.

Inverleigh resident and editor of the Leigh News Peter Trevaskis said a farm near the derailment site received 92mm of rain overnight.

He said houses in the town were inundated when the floods began on October 14 and much of the area was still saturated.

Another Inverleigh resident, Robyn, told ABC Radio Melbourne there was torrential rain overnight.

“There’s at least 20 containers just everywhere and Inverleigh itself is pretty much awash with just water over the roads everywhere,” she said on Monday (local time).

Closures remain in place along the nearby Hamilton Highway between Inverleigh and Burnside Road at Stonehaven due to flooding, according to VicTraffic.

Australian train derails from flooded tracks in horrific scene

By Adelaide Lang, News.com.au
November 13, 2022 

An Australian train derailed after a month of wild weather and widespread flooding.

A Victorian train has been derailed after a month of wild weather and widespread flooding damaged the rail tracks.

Shocking photos from the scene at Inverleigh, near Geelong, reveal the extent of the damage as more than 20 shipping containers lay sprawled across the nearby paddocks.

Eight wagons derailed from the flood-damaged tracks at 5.30 am on Monday, smashing dozens of shipping containers as they fell.

At least 20 shipping containers were piled on top of each other in the chaotic crash scene about 56 miles from Melbourne.

The freight train stopped just short of a level crossing, which authorities say has already been reopened

.

Photos show 20 shipping containers lay sprawled across the nearby paddocks.

The train tracks had suffered damage during the wild weather and heavy rainfall over the weekend when as much as 3 inches fell over 24 hours in some areas.

Pictures from the scene of the derailment appear to show the rail tracks buckling as water seeps underneath the vital lines.

Authorities have confirmed no injuries have been reported yet, but they will be left with a large clean-up. Emergency services said there were no dangerous goods on-board the train.

Inverleigh saw over an inch of rainfall on top of previous flooding.

No injuries have been reported yet

Authorities are still investigating the cause of the crash.

JAMES ROSS/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

Investigators are on site trying to determine the cause of the devastating incident.

The Inverleigh area, just 19 miles from Geelong, copped over an inch of rainfall on top of previous flooding.

The train derailment comes as households across Victoria are reporting blackouts after the wild weather.

Flash flooding has closed lanes on the crucial ring road, so motorists are being urged to take care.

Unfortunately for flood-weary communities, further rainfall is forecast for Monday before chilly temperatures and more settled weather moves in.

The SES said it had received more than 400 requests for assistance in the last 24 hours as floodwaters rise again in already-saturated regions.

China’s Li emphasized ‘irresponsibility’ of nuclear threats at ASEAN: US official


Chinese Premier Li Keqiang November 4, 2022. (Reuters)

Reuters, Nusa Dua, Indonesia
Published: 14 November ,2022:

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang emphasized the “irresponsibility” of nuclear threats during a summit in Cambodia, suggesting Beijing is uncomfortable with strategic partner Russia’s nuclear rhetoric, a senior US official said on Monday.

Li participated in the East Asia Summit on Sunday along with US President Joe Biden. The Chinese premier “spoke rather extensively about China’s policy towards Ukraine,” said a senior US administration official, who briefed reporters ahead of a summit between Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday.

Li “put clear emphasis on sovereignty, on the irresponsibility of nuclear threats, the need to ensure that nuclear weapons are not used in the way that some have suggested,” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The West has accused Russia of making irresponsible statements on the possible use of nuclear weapons since its February invasion of Ukraine. Moscow has in turn accused the West of “provocative” nuclear rhetoric.

The US official said there was “undeniably some discomfort in Beijing about what we’ve seen in terms of reckless rhetoric and activity on the part of Russia,” despite a formal partnership with Moscow.

“I think it is also undeniable that China is probably both surprised and even a little bit embarrassed by the conduct of Russian military operations,” the official said.

Biden at the summit on Sunday in Cambodia said the United States would “compete vigorously” with China while keeping lines of communication open to prevent conflict.

Biden and Xi will meet in person on Monday for the first time since Biden assumed office early last year.

Premier Li is expected to be replaced next year, and the US official said Washington believes Xi will bring “some new faces” to the meeting with Biden on Monday.

AI CANADA HACKED

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You may have attempted to reach us over the past few days without success. Amnesty International Canadian Section (English Speaking) recently experienced a sophisticated cyber security breach on our systems. As a result, our emails and usual means of communications were temporarily unavailable.

The breach was first detected on October 5, 2022, when our new security monitoring tools alerted us to suspicious activity on our IT infrastructure.

We immediately engaged international cyber security experts to investigate the breach, take systems offline, reinforce security, and implement measures to limit the impact and mitigate against potential future risks. Relevant authorities were also notified.

We took swift action to protect our systems and set up a local and global taskforce to address the threat, which includes highly skilled cyber forensic investigators and security experts.

Security experts are currently in the process of completing the investigation to determine the full extent of this cyber incident. To date, our investigation has uncovered no evidence that any donor or membership data was taken.

What happens next?

Access to our emails has been restored and we are currently continuing to ensure that the privacy and data of our staff, donors, stakeholders, and all those who engage with AICSES remains secure.

We continue to work with cyber security experts and Canadian authorities and will provide further updates as appropriate.

In the meantime, we advise all individuals who have interacted with Amnesty staff or systems to take additional steps to protect their personal information and reduce or mitigate the risk of potential harm from this breach, including:


monitor all your online accounts for suspicious activity;

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use security tools available from banking and other institutions to monitor your account activity;

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If you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to us at members@amnesty.ca or 1800-AMNESTY(266-3789).

Spain’s far-right Vox seeks Italian inspiration


Giorgia Meloni’s victory shows southern Europe is ripe for right-wing nationalism — but can Vox take advantage?

In Andalusia, Spain's far-right party Vox fell short of expectations and its lead candidate Macarena Olona was forced to leave | Cristina Quicler/AFP via Getty Images

BY GUY HEDGECOE
NOVEMBER 14, 2022 4:00 AM CET

MADRID — Spain’s far-right Vox is casting envious glances across the Mediterranean at Giorgia Meloni and her Brothers of Italy party.

Meloni’s election victory in September was a huge boost for Vox, which shares ideological ground with Brothers of Italy and has a strong relationship with its leader.

Vox chief Santiago Abascal tweeted a montage of pictures of himself with Meloni on the day after Italians went to the polls, and praised her for “showing the way to a Europe that is proud, free and of sovereign nations, capable of cooperating for the security and prosperity of all.”

His party could hardly have hoped for a clearer signal that Southern Europe is ripe for right-wing nationalism.

But Meloni’s rise comes as Vox is grappling with a crisis that has caused many to question its future.

The hectic electoral year about to begin in Spain will either show the party is capable of following the example of Brothers of Italy and entering national government, or confirm it to be a populist aberration in decline.

Vox announced itself as a political force in the 2018 regional election in Andalusia, after running on an ultra-nationalist, anti-immigrant, fiercely unionist platform. The following year, it confirmed its rise by winning 52 seats in the national Congress, behind only the Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and the conservative Popular Party (PP). It subsequently made further advances on a local level, entering a coalition government with the PP in the region of Castile and León earlier this year.

But it was back in Andalusia where the scene of Vox’s first major disappointment took place, when the party fell well short of expectations by gaining only two new seats as the PP swept to a majority in June. That result triggered the departure of Vox’s lead candidate in the region, Macarena Olona, who has since waged a highly publicized war of words with her former party, while hinting that she plans to form a rival force of her own.

“For me, Vox is the past,” she told El País newspaper, accusing the party of spreading fake news and insults about her.

The writer and journalist Enric Juliana noted: “The Olona phenomenon is the first serious crack in a hermetically sealed party.”

The demotion in October of the Vox deputy leader, Javier Ortega Smith, has added to the sense of flux. A TV documentary, meanwhile, showed former Vox politicians alleging that the party had neo-Nazis in its ranks and was run by authoritarian hypocrites. Meanwhile, polls showed Vox to have suffered a dip, as the PP surged under leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who was appointed in April.

No senior Vox politicians were available to comment for this article. However, Rafael Bardají, a co-founder of Vox who holds no post in the party but is close to Abascal, acknowledges the sense of crisis. He attributes this in great part to the Andalusia result and Olona’s attacks. However, Bardají also believes Vox has become too comfortable as it hovers in polls close to 15 percent of the vote share.



“It’s gone from being a party that is virtually outside the system to forming part of institutional life,” said Bardají, who was a senior adviser to conservative ex-Prime Minister José María Aznar. “For example, Santiago Abascal only speaks in parliament. Spaniards don’t hear or follow what happens in parliament enough for it to be the best place from which to be an opposition party. He needs to get out onto the street more.”

Others see Vox as lacking a meaty issue to get its populist teeth into. Although the party has run an aggressive campaign against illegal migrants, targeting in particular North African minors, immigration was only ranked 16th in a recent study listing Spaniards’ biggest worries, behind the economy, corruption and the behavior of political parties.

Unlike other far-right parties in Europe, Vox’s rise was closely tied to its strident opposition to regional nationalism.

“Our rivals are the two forces which have caused the most damage to Spain in recent years: the left and separatism,” Vox’s parliamentary spokesman, Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, said recently. “And in some cases they are more than rivals, they are enemies.”

But the Catalan independence drive, which peaked in 2017, has faded from the political spotlight.

“Catalonia was the gasoline that fueled Vox’s rise,” said Miguel González, author of “Vox S.A.: El negocio del patriotismo español,” a biography of the party. “But the Catalan situation has calmed down and immigration doesn’t work [as a mobilizing issue].”

Nonetheless, Vox has been buoyed by support from its allies outside Spain. At a party rally in October, Donald Trump sent a video message congratulating Abascal for the “incredible job he does,” while Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe also appeared via video link.

But Vox’s most valued foreign ties are with Meloni, who also sent a video message to the event.

An initial flirtation with Matteo Salvini of the League several years ago was scuppered by the Italian’s support for Catalan nationalism. Instead, Vox courted Meloni, when she was still only polling in low single digits. Abascal has traveled to Rome to meet her and she has taken part in several events in Spain, among them a Vox rally in Marbella during the Andalusia election campaign, at which she delivered a fiery speech.

“With Meloni, since she saw that [Vox] gave her a certain amount of recognition, there has been a personal relationship there, more than a political one,” said Bardají.

Brothers of Italy and Vox are also both in the European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR) in the European Parliament, along with Poland’s Law and Justice party.

The next challenge for the Spanish party is municipal and regional elections to be held in May, followed by a general election by the end of 2023. However, Vox’s ambitions are more modest than those of its Italian and Polish allies, given that realistically it only looks capable of entering government as the junior partner of the conservative PP, assuming the two parties could secure a majority.

Bardají says that Abascal wants to secure a handful of ministerial posts for Vox overseeing policy areas that are close to its ultra-nationalist Catholic values, such as interior, justice and education.

In the meantime, González says that a deterioration of the economy could provide fertile ground for Vox to rebound from its current domestic woes.

“We are in a very uncertain economic situation,” he said. “Until now it has been the PP that has managed to capitalize on that much more than Vox. But a party like Vox feeds off social unrest and crisis.”

OPINION

COP27: Climate Justice: Where do the

Religiously Marginalised Fit in?

By Mariz Tadros

A flooded village in Matiari, in the Sindh province of Pakistan.

 Credit: UNICEF/Asad Zaidi

BRIGHTON, UK, Nov 14 2022 (IPS) - Climate change reductionism – assuming the causes and the redress for those suffering the worst impacts of extreme weather lies with climate change alone – undermines the rights of religiously marginalised persons, but broadening whose rights are being advocated for in climate change can offer redress.

As COP27 negotiations continue, we must be alive to the widespread discrimination behind why some face more devastation than others, and pursue climate justice policies sensitive to the religiously marginalised and to the freedom of religion or belief (Forb).

Climate change and religion

In response to the devastating floods in Pakistan, a top political leader in the Sindh province of Pakistan attributed the destruction caused as a punishment by God, and added that the situation will improve if the people turn away from their sins.

This is just one example of how across the globe now power holders are weaponising religion to cover up unaccountable governance. But power holders’ use of religion to cover up for their failures only worsens the situation for the vulnerable, many of whom happen to be religious minorities.

Sindh province has one of the largest concentrations of people living in extreme poverty in Pakistan, and one of the highest religious minority populations (Hindu and Christian), in the country. This religious minority population also happen to be among the poorest, especially since they belong to the scheduled castes.

Secretary-General António Guterres (right, back to camera) 

along with Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan 

visit the National Flood Response and Coordination Centre

 in Islamabad. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

Like other Pakistanis in Sindh, the religiously marginalised poor have lost everything due to the unprecedented monsoon floods but they experience an added vulnerability: systemic discrimination on account of their religious identity.

This is manifest in their exclusion from large scale poverty alleviation programmes as found in recent research. This underlying vulnerability and discrimination is why it is wrong to attribute the devastation that religiously ‘otherised’ people experience in the face of natural disasters to climate change alone.

Climate change reductionism

A recent report by the UK’s International Development Committee argues that climate change is also a driver of religious discrimination and mass atrocities because of competition to control natural resources and wealth in conditions of scarcity.

The recognition the report gives to the interconnections between environmental, political, economic and social phenomena is very much welcome, but attributing the causes of atrocities or religious cleansing to climate change alone is anathema to the protection of persons’ freedom of religion or belief.

Climate change reductionism in this way assumes the causes – and therefore redress – of all evils lie with climate.

As Rigg and Mason suggest, climate science reductionism omits the role that structural factors such as “market forces, discriminatory policies, state corruption and inefficiency, and historical marginality play in people’s lived experience”.

Climate change may in some circumstances accentuate the impact of religious inequalities but we need to press on for accountability of power holders who deliberately exclude and ‘otherise’ those who are different through their discourses, policies and practices.

Religious and cultural beliefs benefiting the environment

In the name of countering climate change, we should also never pit sustainability against inclusivity in development policies and practices. Highlighted by an Amnesty International warning ahead of COP27, there are risks from climate protection strategies that exclude indigenous people, whose norms and beliefs are held sacred, even if it is not termed “religion”.

Research from the Coalition for Religious Equality and Inclusive Development (CREID) showed how the Uganda Wildlife Authority forbade indigenous people access to particular territories containing religious shrines, out of the belief that they were destroying the flora and fauna.

When the Bamba and Bakonjo people of Uganda were allowed to practice some of the religious and customary knowledge, this actually led to greater protection of the biodiversity and integrity of the habitat.

This shows that when people experience intertwining inequalities, including marginalisation based religion or belief, it’s not only that they become vulnerable to prejudice, but opportunities for building resilience to the effects of climate change are missed.

This does not mean that all expressions of people’s religious practices or beliefs are conducive to preserving the environment, we know this is not the case. However, another example can be found in the Middle East where extreme weather events have wreaked havoc on crops.

Here, the Copts – the largest religious minority in the region – have developed a system of how the land is to be harvested to remove social stigma and make sure that no one – Muslim or Copt- goes without.

While we know a multitude of measures are needed to minimize the impact of climate change on crops, the benefits of adapting the knowledge and heritage practices of those whose religious heritage has been side-lined are for everyone- not just the members of the religious minority.

So, whether it is powerful leaders wrongly weaponizing religion in order to avoid accountability and when climate change-related disasters strike, discrimination against religious minorities driving greater vulnerability to its impacts, or beliefs and knowledges of the land – prejudice against the religiously marginalized actually has a great deal to do with climate change.

Therefore, during this month’s COP27 climate summit (which concludes November 18) , freedom of religion or belief must be considered in policies to redress climate inequalities if we are serious about going beyond climate change reductionism and truly advancing climate justice.

Professor Mariz Tadros is Research Fellow at Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and Director of CREID

IPS UN Bureau

PROFIT IS PRICE GOUGING

Saputo earnings up 48% in Q2, revenues rise 21%

The Canadian Press

Nov 11, 2022

Saputo Inc. saw its net earnings rise by 48 per cent in its fiscal 2023 second quarter ended Sept. 30.

The Montreal-based company reported net earnings of $145 million or 35 cents per diluted share, up from $98 million or 24 cents per diluted share in the same quarter last year. 

Revenues rose to $4.46 billion from $3.69 billion a year earlier, an increase of 21 per cent. 

The company says its increased revenue was due to higher prices Saputo implemented across all its sectors, higher average block cheese and butter prices in the U.S., and higher international cheese and dairy ingredient market prices. 

The company says it was able to successfully offset the cost of rising inflation through price increases.

Adjusted net earnings were $177 million in the second quarter, up from $116 million a year earlier, while the adjusted net earnings margin rose to four per cent from 3.1 per cent.