Marx, Machinery and Motive Power: the Thermodynamics of Class Struggle

Tom Keefer

38 Pages

1 File ▾

Marxism,

Ecological Economics,

Capitalism,

Energy and Environment,

Historical Materialism

 ...more ▾

The environmental problems associated with the use of fossil fuels have been the subject of numerous studies, international conferences and well-meaning declarations, but there nonetheless seems to be little substantive analysis of what the root causes are of our ‘addiction to fossil fuels’ and why dominant interests are so unwilling to undertake the transition to a new energy regime. The failure to adequately grapple with this question stems from the fact that two of the most important schools of thought that hold important components of the analytical framework necessary for this undertaking -- ecological economics and Marxism -- miss crucial insights that the other brings to the debate. What is manifestly absent from most ecological economist thought is a critique of capitalism as a historically specific economic system which is not only based on ever-increasing expansion but is also compelled to substitute machinery and raw material for human labor in its quest for higher margins of profit, increased productivity and to undercut working-class self-organization and power. Moreover, in failing to recognize commodified, alienated and exploited labor as lying at the root of the capitalist system, the ecological movement has not, for the most part, been able to see the project of ecological diversity and sustainability as representing a class project based upon the overthrow of capitalism and its replacement by an alternative economic and political order.

https://www.academia.edu/23063447/Marx_Machinery_and_Motive_Power_the_Thermodynamics_of_Class_Struggle

THE END OF PIECE WORK
California 1st to require hourly wages in garment industry

Mon., September 27, 2021, 

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday approved what he termed a “nation-leading” law requiring the garment industry to pay workers by the hour instead of for each piece of clothing they produce.

Piece-rate compensation can be used to pay workers below the minimum wage, supporters said.

The bill makes California the first state to eliminate piece work compensation, though there is an exception for worksites covered by collective bargaining agreements, and the first to create liability for companies that subcontract with the garment makers.

“For too long, bad-actor manufacturers have exploited garment workers toiling in unsanitary conditions for as little as $5 an hour," said Democratic Sen. María Elena Durazo. She said her bill will "level the playing field for ethical manufacturers that are doing the right thing.”

Employees can still get incentive-based bonuses above their legal wage.

Marissa Nuncio, director of the Garment Worker Center that supported the bill said that the more than 45,000 garment workers in California are often immigrant women. Under the bill, she said, California “will no longer be the sweatshop capital of America.”

The California Chamber of Commerce objected that the measure “places enormous burdens on employers in the clothing industry,” including those that don't directly oversee the workers but will now be liable for their mistreatment. It predicted the law will put some employers out of business or cause them to move out of California.

The advocacy group Legal Aid at Work, which supported the bill, said the broad liability under the law is necessary to “prevent bad-actor brands from obviating oversight and enforcement by layering contracts.”

The measure was among 18 job-related bills signed by Newsom, a Democrat.

He also signed a second measure by Durazo requiring that all employees with disabilities be paid at least minimum wage.

California becomes the 13th state to end a practice that allowed businesses with special licenses to pay people with disabilities subminimum wages, according to the State Council on Developmental Disabilities.

It estimated that 12,000 Californians with disabilities who work in so-called sheltered workshops can be paid as little as 15 cents an hour under a federal policy that dates to 1938.

The Alliance Supporting People with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, which opposed the bill, argued that while the sheltered workshops have fallen out of favor, they only employ those who have agreed to work there or whose families have agreed that those are the best option.

Unless the state can develop other options, it said the law "effectively eliminates the prospect for employment for many and, therefore, limits the choices the person may have in front of them.”

The law phases out the subminimum wages over three years and by January 1, 2025, makes it illegal to pay an employee with physical or mental disabilities less than the legal minimum wage.

Don Thompson, The Associated Press

Gas blowout near Los Angeles leads to up to $1.8B settlement

Mon., September 27, 2021, 


LOS ANGELES (AP) — Thousands of families sickened and forced from their Los Angeles homes after the nation’s largest-known natural gas leak have reached a settlement of up to $1.8 billion with a utility, attorneys said Monday.

The settlement with Southern California Gas Co. and its parent company, Sempra Energy, will compensate 35,000 plaintiffs from the 2015 blowout that took nearly four months to control.

The Aliso Canyon blowout led to the largest-known release of methane in U.S. history and was blamed for sickening thousands of residents who moved out of homes near the San Fernando Valley to escape a sulfurous stench and maladies including headaches, nausea and nose bleeds.

The plaintiffs alleged personal injury for their illnesses and property damage to their homes. SoCalGas spent more than $1 billion on the the blowout — with most going to temporarily relocate 8,000 families. The utility has faced more than 385 lawsuits on behalf of 48,000 people.

“Our goal has always been obtaining justice for the men, women and children who were failed by SoCalGas throughout every turn of this catastrophe," attorney Brian Panish said in a statement.

Plaintiffs alleged they suffered personal injury and property damage after a natural gas storage well failed and uncontrollably released nearly 100,000 tons of methane and other substances into the atmosphere over 118 days.

SoCalGas said it would record an after-tax charge of approximately $1.1 billion this month and expects total settlement payments of up to $1.85 billion. The agreement is subject to about 97% of plaintiffs accepting it and could be reduced if fewer agree.

“These agreements are an important milestone that will help the community and our company work toward putting this difficult chapter behind us,” said Scott Drury, CEO of SoCalGas.

Matt Pakucko, founder of Save Porter Ranch, issued a statement repeating his call for the permanent shutdown of the facility, where natural gas is stored beneath a mountain in vacant, old oil wells.

“You can’t put a price tag on human suffering," he said. "SoCalGas’ devastating blowout will never be behind us until the Aliso Canyon storage facility is shut down and the danger it poses to the community is permanently eliminated. We are nowhere near a resolution.”

State regulators found the gas company failed to investigate previous well failures at the storage site and didn’t adequately assess its aging wells for disaster potential before the Oct. 23, 2015, blowout.

SoCalGas previously reached a $120 million court settlement with the state attorney general and agreed to a $4 million settlement with Los Angeles County prosecutors after being convicted in Los Angeles Superior Court of failing to quickly report the leak to state authorities.

Brian Melley, The Associated Press

CANADA

Cineflix workers could share more than $1 million in class-action settlement: unions

Mon., September 27, 2021, 



TORONTO — Two Canadian media and entertainment unions say a Toronto-based production company behind some popular reality shows has agreed to pay Factual TV company Cineflix workers at least $1 million to settle a class-action lawsuit.

CWA Canada and IATSE say the settlement agreement was submitted to an Ontario court Monday for approval following three years of negotiations.

The lawsuit was filed by law firm Cavalluzzo in 2018 on behalf of hundreds of current and former workers at Cineflix, which produces such TV shows as "Property Brothers" and "Mayday." It came after a five-year “Fairness in Factual” campaign by CWA Canada to bring fair working conditions to the industry. IATSE joined the campaign in 2019, with the formation of the Factual Television Joint Council.

The proposed settlement would be for all employment standards entitlements (overtime pay, vacation pay, holiday pay) for nearly everyone who worked for Cineflix as employees or independent contractors since October 2016.

The unions say Cineflix also has until March to decide whether to sign a collective agreement that has already been negotiated or pay an additional lump sum.

Cavalluzzo has also filed a class-action lawsuit against Insight Productions seeking damages for alleged employment standards violations. That is still before the courts. Insight Productions is best known for producing Canadian versions of shows such as "The Amazing Race," "Big Brother" and CBC’s "Battle of the Blades."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 27, 2021.

The Canadian Press

Greyhound settles lawsuit over immigration sweeps on buses

Mon., September 27, 2021


SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — Greyhound Lines Inc. will pay $2.2 million to settle a lawsuit over the bus line’s practice of allowing U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents to board its buses in Washington state to conduct warrantless immigration sweeps, the state attorney general said Monday.

The bus company failed to warn customers of the sweeps, misrepresented its role in allowing the sweeps to occur and subjected its passengers to discrimination based on skin color or national origin, Attorney General Bob Ferguson said.

The money will provide restitution to passengers who were detained, arrested or deported after immigration agents boarded buses at the Spokane Intermodal Center. The amount each person receives will depend on the number of claims and the severity of harm suffered because of Greyhound’s conduct, Ferguson said.

“Greyhound has an obligation to its customers — an obligation it cannot set aside so immigration agents can go on fishing expeditions aboard its buses,” Ferguson said in a press release.

Dallas-based Greyhound issued a brief statement, saying it was pleased with the settlement.

“By agreeing to the consent decree, we will more extensively communicate to our customers the policies and procedures we already have in place to serve the citizens of Washington state,” the bus company said.

The settlement was filed in Spokane County Superior Court on Monday, the day a trial was set to begin.

“My office first insisted that Greyhound make these corporate reforms in 2019,” Ferguson said. “If Greyhound had simply accepted our reasonable demand, they would have avoided a lawsuit."

Under the settlement, Greyhound also is required to:

— Create a corporate policy that denies immigration agents permission to board its buses in Washington state without warrants or reasonable suspicion.

— Issue a public statement, in English and Spanish, clarifying that Greyhound does not consent to immigration agents boarding its buses without a warrant or reasonable suspicion.

— Place stickers on or near the front door of its buses stating that it does not consent to immigration agents boarding its buses without a warrant or reasonable suspicion.

The lawsuit was filed last year, alleging that Greyhound allowed the sweeps aboard its buses since at least 2013. The company publicly acknowledged the practice in 2018.

During the sweeps, Hispanic people and other passengers of color were subjected to invasive questioning by armed federal agents and were often required to get off the bus, Ferguson said. Immigration agents sometimes detained or arrested passengers, he said.

For years, Greyhound contended it was legally required to allow Border Patrol agents to board its buses. But a memo last year from then-U.S. Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost confirmed Ferguson’s contention that agents can only perform warrantless immigration sweeps aboard buses with the consent of the company’s owner or employees.

In late April, a Libyan-born comedian received a $35,000 settlement from the federal government after he filed a lawsuit contending Border Patrol agents in Spokane in 2019 wrongfully detained and interrogated him about his immigration status.

Mohanad Elshieky was traveling from a gig in Pullman, Washington, to Portland, Oregon, when he was briefly detained in Spokane. He had been granted asylum and was legally living in the United States.

According to the Northwest Immigration Rights Project, which represented Elshieky, federal agents boarded the bus and walked around before they asked Elshieky and a few others to step off the bus. They interrogated Elshieky for about 20 minutes, calling his papers fake and him illegal but eventually let him go.

Andres Sosa Segura, who sued separately over a similar experience at the Spokane Intermodal Center in 2017, also will be awarded $35,000, the advocacy group said.

“The hours I spent detained for no reason were terrifying, and all I wanted was to be with my family,” Sosa Segura said in an April news release from the group announcing the settlements. “I hope that this case sends a message that CBP agents need to respect the rights of people like me.”

Nicholas K. Geranios, The Associated Press

PennEast Gas Project Halted in Latest U.S. Pipeline Casualty

Simon Casey and Gerson Freitas Jr.
Mon., September 27, 2021


(Bloomberg) -- A $1 billion project to haul natural gas from Pennsylvania to New Jersey has become the latest casualty of opposition to pipelines across the U.S.

PennEast Pipeline Co., a joint venture of five companies including Southern Co. and Enbridge Inc., halted development on the proposed 116-mile (187-kilometer) conduit after failing to receive water-quality certification and other wetland permits for the New Jersey section.

“The PennEast partners, following extensive evaluation and discussion, recently determined further development of the project no longer is supported,” PennEast said in an emailed statement. “Accordingly, PennEast has ceased all further development of the project.”

The decision adds to a series of gas-pipeline projects scrapped amid fierce opposition from environmental groups pushing for a faster transition away from fossil fuels and an increasingly burdensome approval process. It also comes amid growing concerns about energy reliability, with prices for natural gas surging because of tighter supplies.

In 2020 alone, Dominion Energy Inc. and Duke Energy Corp. scrapped an $8 billion Atlantic Coast gas project, and Williams Cos. abandoned its Constitution gas pipeline and its Northeast Supply Enhancement plan. Completion of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a 303-mile conduit spanning from northwestern West Virginia to southern Virginia, has been pushed into 2022 due to permitting delays.

Limited pipeline capacity makes it harder to bring gas from shale fields in Appalachia, where producers including EQT Corp. are forced to sell supplies at a discount. Meanwhile, costumers in places such as New England pay stiff premiums for gas because only limited supplies can reach the region.

The inability to build new pipelines will slow down the energy transition and leave costumers with higher energy bills, the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America said in a statement. Consumer Energy Alliance said the pipeline cancellation will force New Jersey consumers to “find another source of affordable energy or otherwise face reliability problems and price-hiking shortages.”

The decision on PennEast comes despite a June Supreme Court ruling that gas pipeline projects with federal approval can seize state-owned land, and support from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The pipeline would have carried as much as 1.1 billion cubic feet of the fuel a day, enough to serve 4.7 million homes, from northeastern Pennsylvania to a Transco pipeline interconnection in New Jersey.

The project has “encountered significant legal and regulatory obstacles and we no longer believe the project can be efficiently completed,” Enbridge said in a separate emailed statement, adding the project was designed to help deliver “much-needed” gas in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

CANADA

Cannabis industry laments lack of progress toward allowing consumption spaces

Mon., September 27, 2021


TORONTO — At Behind the Bend café, diners sitting by a fire pit nibble on charcuterie and enjoy vanilla bean ice cream served in pineapple boats, but the menu isn't the reason many flock to the Lambton Shores, Ont. spot.

Customers visit because the café about an hour's drive from London allows them to consume cannabis as long as they are 19 or older and they bring their own legal pot and its receipt.

No province nor territory allows cannabis consumption lounges or cafés yet, but the Bend's owner bounded ahead with her business because customers were being chided when they used pot in public.

"I've just been trying to support my clients and provide them with a space that is safe, so they're not going to feel like they're going to get in trouble or get hassled," said Laura Bradley, who also owns a neighbouring cannabis store.

Her patio — and similar ventures that have sprang up in recent months — are a sign of a frustrated cannabis industry that has long awaited regulations allowing consumption spaces, but has instead seen little progress and a health crisis extinguish hopes that such laws are nearing.

Ontario looked like it would be the first to allow cannabis consumption spaces, when it solicited feedback from the public before the COVID-19 pandemic.

The deadline for that feedback passed more than a year ago, but a press secretary for attorney general Doug Downey said in an email this month that, "No changes to the cannabis framework are expected at this time nor is there a current time frame for any additional changes."

The outlook is similar in other corners of the country. Most provinces and territories told The Canadian Press public consumption spaces are prohibited and many added they are not even under consideration.

"With the pandemic, we're now in a situation where everyone — restaurants, bars, hospitality in general — is trying to just recover and they haven't turned their attention to consumption lounges at all," said Will Stewart, a senior vice-president at Hill+Knowlton Strategies, who has worked for Tokyo Smoke, Harvest One Cannabis and CannaGlobal.

"It is really going to take political will, and I'm not sure that we have that coming after a pandemic."

But others say there are perks to considering the spaces now. Hospitality businesses and restaurants need a pick-me-up after months of closures and with vaccination widespread, people are anxious for communal experiences again.

"If restaurants are open, then consumption spaces can be a conversation," said Andrea Dobbs, the co-founder of Vancouver pot shop Village Bloomery.

Some provinces and territories appear to agree. The Yukon Liquor Corporation said in an email to The Canadian Press that cannabis consumption lounges are "continuously under review."

The Union of B.C. Municipalities added in late August that the province's cannabis secretariat also plans to engage with stakeholders around consumption spaces in 2022.

However, Stewart suspects moving from discussions to policies will be "difficult" because an Ontario election is looming and companies got their hopes up when feedback was collected before but were ultimately let down.

"Cannabis companies in general are trying to figure out a way to increase their revenue and decrease their costs, so if there's a company exclusively in the consumption space they're probably having a very, very difficult time," Stewart said.

Many shelved consumption space plans or pivoted their companies.

CannaGlobal, for example, which Stewart previously worked for, was building a cannabis consumption business under the ByMinistry name before the pandemic.

It hired Ted Corrado, formercorporate executive chef for Drake Properties,to launch a cooking school, run a secret dining club and craft menus for spaces and events, but Stewart said it has since shifted the company's focus to psychedelics and renamed itself Good Cap Wellness Inc.

"Three years is a really long time to be in a holding pattern, so a lot of people have had to adjust, adapt, move on, move forward in a different path," said Jaclynn Pehota, executive director of the Association of Canadian Cannabis Retailers (ACCRES).

But demand for consumption spaces hasn't let up, despite attention being diverted.

Pehota recently asked ACCRES members to rank the importance of 10 issues facing the industry and found consumption spaces came second to advocating for a B.C. program that would allow small scale cultivators to sell products directly to private retailers.

She's also seen high traffic coming from the consumption space at B.C.'s New Amsterdam Café and watched Dobbs open a coffee shop at her cannabis store.

It sold smoothies and baked goods but no cannabis-infused products before it was quickly shut down.

Meanwhile, Alchemy Canna Co. owner Richard Browne plunked down two picnic tables beside his north Toronto cannabis shop. He plans to add umbrellas, barriers and if demand materializes, more places to sit.

He insists it's legal because the tables are covered by the store's security cameras and far enough from its entrance to obey Health Canada regulations.

Bradley has taken similar steps and requires staff to have Smart Serve training, check on the well-being of customers and co-operate with authorities who visit to inspect the premise.

"I go above and beyond, so we don't raise any eyebrows in any direction," she said.

"None of the governing bodies that have been here has said, 'we are going to write it up that you have permission to operate,' but they've all said, 'you're not giving us a reason to shut you down.'"

Though winter will put a damper on outdoor consumption spaces, Pehota believes such ventures will become common as operators get "super creative" in the absence of legislation.

"But I think it would be nice for that not to be necessary," Pehota said.

"It would be a lot more beneficial to the sector and a lot easier on the public and our regulators, if we just created a structure as opposed to leaving people to their own devices."

This report by The Canadian Press was first publishedSept. 27, 2021.

Tara Deschamps, The Canadian Press

She Bought Her Dream Home. Then a 'Sovereign Citizen' Changed the Locks.

LONG READ

Sarah Maslin Nir
Sun., September 26, 2021, 

Shanetta Little at her home in Newark, N.J., on Sunday, July 11, 2021. Little was startled one day to find that the locks on her new home in Newark had been changed by a man who claimed he was the rightful owner. (Bryan Anselm/The New York Times)More

The official-looking letters started arriving soon after Shanetta Little bought the cute Tudor house on Ivy Street in Newark, New Jersey. Bearing a golden seal, in aureate legalistic language, the documents claimed that an obscure 18th-century treaty gave the sender rights to claim her new house as his own.

She dismissed the letters as a hoax.

And so it was with surprise that Little found herself in her yard on Ivy Street on a June afternoon as a police SWAT team negotiated with a man who had broken in, changed her locks and hung a red-and-green flag in its window. He claimed he was a sovereign citizen of a country that does not exist and for whom the laws of the United States do not apply.

Little was a victim of a ploy known as paper terrorism, a favorite tactic of an extremist group that is one of the fastest growing, according to government experts and watchdog organizations. Known as the Moorish sovereign citizen movement, and loosely based around a theory that Black people are foreign citizens bound only by arcane legal systems, it encourages followers to violate existent laws in the name of empowerment. Experts say it lures marginalized people to its ranks with the false promise that they are above the law.

The man who entered her house, Hubert John of Los Angeles, was arrested June 17 and charged with criminal mischief, burglary, criminal trespass and making terroristic threats. Prosecutors in New Jersey are preparing to take the case before a grand jury, according to Katherine Carter, a spokeswoman for the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office. He was released on his own recognizance.

But the strange letters declaring that Little’s home is not her own still come. They arrive on faux-consular letterhead using the name Lenapehoking of the Al Moroccan Empire at New Jersey State Republic. Lenapehoking was the land between New York City and Philadelphia that includes New Jersey and was home to the Indigenous Lenape tribe before it was colonized by European settlers. John and his group refer to themselves as Moors.

“The Moors claim to be about Black liberation and opportunity, and uplifting Black people,” Little said in an interview. “But he is literally oppressing me and taking what’s mine as a Black woman.”

This past summer, the Moorish movement exploded into public view, after Little posted viral TikTok accounts of her ordeal and when the police pulled over members of a militant offshoot of the group on a Massachusetts highway. That subgroup, known as Rise of the Moors, engaged in a standoff with the police for more than nine hours, claiming that because they were sovereign citizens, law enforcement had no authority to stop them. No one was injured; 11 people were arrested and charged with unlawful possession of firearms and ammunition, among other offenses.

Increasingly, across the country, sovereign citizens have clashed with authorities, tied up resources and frazzled lives in their insistence that laws such as the requirements to pay taxes, obey speed limits and even obtain, say, a license for a pet dog do not apply to them.

People who claim to be Moorish sovereign citizens believe they are bound mainly by maritime law, not the law of the places where they live, said Mellie Ligon, a lawyer and author of a study of their impact on the judicial system in the Emory International Law Review.

Initially espoused by white supremacist groups, sovereign citizen ideology first cropped up in America in the 1970s, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. The Moorish permutation appears to have picked up in popularity in the 1990s, inspired in part by Black identity ideology of a similarly named religious group, the Moorish Science Temple of America, which disavows the sovereign citizen movement.

Membership in the Moorish sovereign citizen movement has been driven by the internet into the hundreds of thousands, the law center said. On its website, Rise of the Moors, for example, has cited reparations — part of national conversations about race and equity — as a driving factor for its belief that its members can claim things as their own.

Rise of the Moors, as well as the members arrested in Massachusetts in July, did not respond to requests to comment.

Like many Moorish followers, John adopted an Arabic-influenced name, Jaleel Hu-El. He did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Via an email, a staff member at the Al Moroccan consulate, where John is listed on the website as the consul general to the United States and China, initially scheduled an interview but then canceled.

The events of June 17 are a distinct departure from John’s public persona: Dressed in sharp suits and often wearing a red fez, John is a self-styled fashion mogul. In a podcast interview, he said he spent nine years in banking before buying a one-way ticket to China in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

There, John said, he was scouted by a modeling agent. He became fluent in Chinese and produced several fashion shows focusing on Black designers and models, according to multiple accounts.

How he changed from dapper entrepreneur to a Moorish national confronted by a New Jersey SWAT team is opaque. Around 2018, the social media accounts associated with Black X, his business association, changed tone, with posts about how to obtain Moorish license plates and identity cards, and explainers of abstruse legal tactics.

Why John set his sights on Little’s house is unknown. They don’t know each other, according to Little, who says they have never met before she found him in her home.

In documents that John posted online, he refers to Little’s house, which was built in the 1950s, as his “ancestral estate,” but according to the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office, there does not appear to be a connection.

On June 16, Little came to inspect her dream home. She had closed on it in February and was planning renovations before moving in.

Buying the home felt like a triumph for Little, who grew up mostly in Florida as a foster child, finding security as a teenager only when her high school principal took her in. She graduated from the University of Central Florida but struggled as a young adult, living out of motel rooms for periods of time. Now a senior customer service specialist with Jaguar Land Rover North America, she could afford to buy a house.

She tried to unlock the door but was puzzled: the locks had been replaced. The next day, she returned with a locksmith and was confronted by two men, one of whom was John and who said the house was his. After a heated exchange she called the police.

When the police arrived, both Little and John showed documents claiming the house was theirs, according to a report by Brian O’Hara, Newark's public safety director. Little shared the property deed proving ownership, she said; he showed the fabricated papers bearing the Al Moroccan seal.

The men “claimed to be sovereign citizens of the Al Moroccan Empire and that their status permitted them access to the property,” O’Hara’s report said. The officers verified that Little bought the house in February, and they asked the men to leave. They did.

Thirty minutes later, John returned, brushed past Little on the porch, she said, opened the door with his own key and locked it behind him.

When she called the police a second time, they returned with a SWAT team.

Little is still shaken, enraged each time an ominous letter arrives in the mail. “He feels entitled that something I basically worked my whole life for, something I was deprived of my whole life, especially as a kid not having a safe space to call home,” Little said. “I deserve it, not because of ‘ancestral lands’ or some scam trying to be pulled. I deserve it because I earned it.”

For decades, followers of the Moorish sovereign movement have remained largely off the radar, cropping up mostly in outlandish-seeming news stories on their paper-terrorism tactics.

But across the country, they have clogged court dockets with those arguments, filing spurious lawsuits and burying county clerk offices in flurries of fake deeds, liens and other documents. Police departments nationwide have begun training officers on how to deal with people who drive without licenses or with fake plates and who claim the police have no authority over them.

When Jordan Fainberg, a real estate agent in Bethesda, Maryland, visited a mansion he was selling for its owner in 2013, he was startled to find inside a man named Lamont Butler who said he was the real owner, with paperwork that referenced the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and a peace treaty from the 1700s between the sultan of Morocco and the United States. Butler was arrested and convicted of several crimes. He could not be reached for comment.

“It was the most bizarre thing in the world,” Fainberg said recently. “This was just somebody saying the sky is purple when it’s blue.”

In Montgomery Circuit Court, Butler continued to claim his rights as a Moor. Judge Terrence McGann did not agree: “Under your set of rules, every house is fair game, you own the entire United States, you own the oceans, you own anything you want,” he said, according to reports. “And that’s not how a free, orderly society works.”

© 2021 The New York Times Company

Italy's 'Smart Bay' seeks to tackle Mediterranean climate change

Alex Fraser
Mon., September 27, 2021,

Italy launches the Santa Teresa "Smart Bay" to study climate change in the Mediterranean Sea

By Alex Fraser

LERICI, Italy (Reuters) - On Italy's Ligurian coast, biologists and environmentalists are working to tackle the effects of climate change in the Mediterranean with help from a so-called "Smart Bay".

Marine biologists fear the Mediterranean is becoming hotter and more acidic, which would affect the habitat of many native species and also lead to violent changes in weather systems such as more frequent tornadoes.

The Santa Teresa Smart Bay, in an area on the northwestern coast noted for tourism and diving, is Italy's first underwater "living" laboratory where scientists use aquatic invertebrate animals known as bryozoans and other organisms as live sensors.

Researchers from the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA) and the National Research Council (CNR) chose the small bay as a perfect location to monitor the seawater.

It provides data for the study of extreme weather events that are becoming more frequent in countries such as Italy, Greece, Spain, and France.

"The Mediterranean Sea has basically become a hot spot of what is happening globally in the world's oceans," said ENEA researcher and ocean expert Franco Reseghetti, who has been monitoring temperature changes in the Mediterranean for years.

His research provides models intended to predict extreme weather phenomena on the coasts - such as the "Medicane" or Mediterranean tornado - and on land caused by the effects of sea warming on the lower layers of the atmosphere.

TIME TO ACT

Reseghetti said while data gathering is getting better, researchers still do not know why things appear to be changing or how to stop it.

"We must bear in mind how important the sea is for Italy, but not only for Italy, just think of France, Greece, and Spain, which this year have paid a very high price in terms of alternating fires and very heavy rainfall," he told Reuters TV.

"These extreme events should make us think that perhaps it really is time to stop talking and start acting."

His comments come ahead of the November COP26 climate change talks in Scotland, where countries will attempt to agree targets to tackle global warming.

The researchers are particularly interested in the PH of the Mediterranean, the levels of acidity and oxygen in the water that are vital for the health of the sea and its marine population.

"We are monitoring PH, which is also related to ocean acidification, and the oxygen level, which is related to hypoxia which is causing a lot of damage around the Mediterranean ecosystem including also the aquaculture," said marine biologist and ENEA researcher Chiara Lombardi.

The 'farm' of bryozoans living in sedentary colonies and marine polychaete worms use the carbonates in the water to grow their shells. Due to a rise of the acidity in the water - linked to pollution and high temperatures - scientists can assess how the growth of the animals has slowed.

The Mediterranean represents 0.7% of the global ocean surface and is a semi-enclosed basin with its only connection to the Atlantic via the Strait of Gibraltar, which gives its waters unique characteristics. There is very little swell and only a small amount of nutrients due to the low flow of rivers that reach it. There has also been a lot of over-fishing and pollution.

Lombardi also hopes to develop the Smart Bay to work with local fishermen and the tourist industry to make their work more eco-friendly.

"The long-term plan is to try to convert this bay, which is again around sustainable tourism, diving and natural capital, (to) a carbon-neutrality bay," she said.

(Additional reporting by Eleanor Biles; Writing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise; Editing by Giles Elgood)

#DECRIMINALIZEALLDRUGS

Toronto seeks federal exemption to decriminalize drug use as opioid overdoses rise

Mon., September 27, 2021

If the city's submission to the federal government is successful, possession of all drugs intended for personal use will be decriminalized. (CBC - image credit)

By the end of the day, Toronto will be one step closer toward requesting the federal government decriminalize drug possession in the city.

Following a similar move by Vancouver, Toronto is preparing to ask Health Canada for an exemption under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act that would decriminalize the possession of all drugs for personal use.

The city has been gathering feedback from Torontonians on that plan for several months, Monday is the last day to fill out a survey on the issue.

After that, the city will finalize and submit its request to Ottawa.

"Currently, Toronto Public Health is working with various health stakeholders to develop the details of that submission, which we anticipate coming forward later in the fall," said Board of Health chair Joe Cressy in an interview last week with Radio-Canada.

The urgency to decriminalize is increasing as the number of suspected overdoses and overdose-related deaths grows, said Cressy.

Overdose numbers highest since data records began

Data from August 2021 shows Toronto Paramedic Services received 689 calls for non-fatal suspected opioid overdoses — a major jump from the previous month, and more than double the numbers recorded in August 2020.

The number of fatal calls also continues to climb, with 30 suspected overdose deaths logged in August, compared to 15 in August 2020 and nine in August 2019.

Dr. Rita Shahin, associate medical officer of health with Toronto Public Health, called it "one of the highest numbers we've seen since we began recording the data."

Grant Linton/ CBC Toronto

Shahin and other health experts describe a worsening crisis playing out over the course of the pandemic and in the years leading up to it, compounded since March 2020 by isolation, reduced capacity at harm-reduction programs, and increasingly toxic drug supplies due to border closures and subsequent supply chain interruptions.

"Last year, in 2020, we saw about an 80 per cent increase in overdose deaths," Shahin said. "And the numbers continue to increase in 2021."

Cressy adds it's "so frustrating" the federal government hasn't acted to decriminalize already, given that such an exemption could be granted by the Minister of Health without requiring that any legislation be passed.

"Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, even Ottawa have called on the federal government to decriminalize drugs," he said.

Rhiannon Thomas, program coordinator for CounterFIT Women's Harm Reduction at the South Riverdale Community Health Centre, also sees decriminalization as an essential response to prevent future overdoses.

"This trajectory we have been on of increasing opioid deaths is going to continue until we really start changing how we deal with the situation," she said.

The Ministry of Health did not respond to specific questions from Radio-Canada regarding Health Minister Patty Hajdu's stance on decriminalization.

"We recognize the different approaches cities and provinces are taking and are supportive of their work," wrote a spokesperson in a statement.

"We know there is more to do and our government will remain engaged with them to move these health-based approaches forward."