Melting glaciers may create new Pacific salmon habitat, study finds


Salmon can colonize streams created by glacier melt but face many other challenges from climate change, researchers say. Photo courtesy of Freshwaters Illustrated

Dec. 7 (UPI) -- Melting glaciers may produce thousands of miles of new Pacific salmon habitat, a study published Tuesday by Nature Communications found.

As glaciers in the mountains of western North America melt, or retreat, they could produce around 4,000 miles of new Pacific salmon habitat by the year 2100, the data showed.

After modeling glacier retreat under different climate change scenarios, the glaciers could reveal potential new Pacific salmon habitat nearly equal to the length of the Mississippi River under moderate temperature increases, the researchers said.

"We predict that most of the emerging salmon habitat will occur in Alaska and the transboundary region, at the British Columbia-Alaska border, where large coastal glaciers still exist," co-author Kara Pitman said in a press release.

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"Once conditions stabilize in the newly-formed streams, salmon can colonize these areas quite quickly," said Pitman, a spatial analyst at Simon Fraser University in Canada.

The Gulf of Alaska is predicted to see the most gains in salmon habitat, with a 27% increase by 2100, she said.

Most salmon return to the streams they were born in, but some will migrate into new streams to spawn.

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Salmon colonization can occur relatively quickly after glacial melt creates favorable spawning conditions, the researchers said.

For example, Stonefly Creek in Alaska was colonized within 10 years by pink salmon that grew rapidly to more than 5,000 spawners, according to earlier studies.

Using computer modeling, Pitman and her colleagues "peeled back the ice" from 46,000 glaciers between southern British Columbia and south-central Alaska.

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The analysis was designed to assess how much potential salmon habitat would be created when underlying bedrock is exposed and new streams flow over the landscape, the researchers said.

Low-gradient streams, or those with a less than 10% incline, connected to the ocean with retreating glaciers at their headwaters are most desirable to salmon, they said.

Based on the analysis, 315 of the glaciers studied met this criteria.

While the newly created habitat is a positive for salmon in some locations, climate change still poses grave challenges for some salmon populations, according to the researchers.

"On one hand, this amount of new salmon habitat will provide local opportunities for some salmon populations," Pitman said.

"On the other hand, climate change and other human impacts continue to threaten salmon survival, via warming rivers, changes in stream flows and poor ocean conditions," she said.

Carbon capture and storage: where should the world store CO₂? It’s a moral dilemma


Boundary Dam power station in Saskatchewan, Canada, claims to be the world’s first coal plant with incorporated carbon capture and storage. SEE LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for CCS  

Orjan Ellingvag/Alamy Stock Photo

Kian Mintz-Woo 

December 6, 2021

The recent Glasgow climate pact committed 197 countries to “phas[ing] down unabated coal”. Unabated coal refers to when power stations or factories burn coal without capturing and storing the carbon dioxide (CO₂) generated.

Because the world has made such little progress in eliminating coal, oil and fossil gas, climate modellers foresee some use of carbon capture and storage as necessary to reach zero emissions in enough time to avert catastrophic warming. The technology to capture carbon is in development, but one burning question remains: where on Earth should we store all that carbon?

Different methods of carbon capture will take place at different sites. Some involve absorbing emissions immediately after burning fossil fuels in chimneys and smokestacks where the CO₂ is highly concentrated. Other methods capture carbon directly from the air, either by using chemical reactions that bind the carbon using lots of energy or by growing carbon-hungry plants which can be burned for energy and the resulting emissions subsequently captured.

In new research, myself and environmental engineer Joe Lane at Princeton University in the US argued that, regardless of the method, leaving decisions about where to store carbon to commercial entities would mean avoiding an important moral dilemma.

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Read more: We can't let markets decide the future of removing carbon from the atmosphere

Funding for carbon capture and storage is insufficient. At the current rate of deployment, 700 million tonnes of CO₂ storage capacity will be added by 2050 – 10% of what is required.

Countries would have to massively ramp up investment to be compliant with the Paris aqgreement’s target of limiting global warming to 1.5°C. Some of this money would be public funding, and people would reasonably expect it to fund projects which are morally sound.

On the one hand, it might be deemed important to develop storage sites with the best prospects for storing lots of greenhouse gas for the longest duration. This argument maintains that the most important consideration for deploying carbon capture and storage is making the largest possible contribution to arresting climate change.

To give carbon storage sites the greatest chance of success, it makes sense to develop them in places where the geology has been thoroughly explored and where there is lots of relevant expertise. This would imply pumping carbon into underground storage sites in northern Europe, the Middle East and the US, where companies have spent centuries looking for and extracting fossil fuels. Storing carbon is roughly the reverse of extracting it from the ground, and there is an opportunity for workers in the oil and gas industry to lend their skills and expertise to this endeavour.

Some US companies have been extracting oil for well over a century. 

Alizada Studios/Shutterstock

On the other hand, it might be important to develop storage sites in economies where the current and future demand for carbon capture and storage is greatest. These competing aims pull in different directions. The regions with the best prospects are not often those with the greatest expected need.

Developing storage sites in economies where expected demand for carbon capture is highest overwhelmingly favours developing regions of Asia. In India and China, for instance, coal power stations and cement plants are expensive to decommission and will need lots of carbon capture and storage capacity to decarbonise. If developing regions are expected to decarbonise without sufficient support to roll out carbon capture and storage, it could mean they have to throttle development to reduce emissions.

There are no easy answers in this debate. Increasing carbon capture and storage capacity as quickly as possible could benefit future generations by reducing the severity of climate change. So, you could argue that developing the most promising sites in Europe is the best way forward. But directing investment for storage facilities from wealthy countries to developing regions could help address the debt the former owes the latter for causing the brunt of the climate crisis.

World leaders should recognise this moral dilemma and consider the choices with urgency. The need to remove and safely store carbon becomes more severe by the day. Given the time and costs involved in developing storage sites, and the real possibility that the storage sites may not be sufficient for the carbon countries emit, this is a question which cannot be delayed.

Author

Kian Mintz-Woo
Lecturer in Philosophy, Environmental Research Institute, University College Cork
Disclosure statement
Kian Mintz-Woo is a guest researcher at the Equity and Justice group at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
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University College Cork provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK.

Greenpeace Activists to Canadian RBC Bank: 'Stop Funding Climate Chaos and Injustice'

"We are not going to let bank CEOs ignore the deadly consequences of their actions."


Greenpeace Canada campaigners disrupt business as usual in Toronto's financial district on December 7, 2021. (Photo: Ian Willms/Greenpeace)


KENNY STANCIL

COMMONWEALTH

December 7, 2021

Climate justice advocates suspended fellow activists from 15-foot-tall tripods in Toronto's financial district on Tuesday, blocking entrances to the Royal Bank of Canada's corporate headquarters as part of a campaign to pressure the nation's five biggest banks to "stop funding climate chaos and injustice."

"Bankers' business-as-usual... is destabilizing the climate, destroying biodiversity, and violating Indigenous rights."

According to Greenpeace Canada's latest report on fossil fuel financing, Canada's five largest banks are among the world's top 25 funders of coal, oil, and gas. Collectively, Canadian banks have provided more than $820 billion to fossil fuel corporations since the 2015 signing of the Paris agreement, which seeks to curb greenhouse gas pollution in order to avert catastrophic global warming. That sum is over 13 times more than the $60 billion the federal government has invested in climate action during the same period.

"I'm a middle-aged dad with a mild fear of heights who has been politely asking Canadian banks to stop funding fossil fuels for decades," Keith Stewart, a senior energy strategist at Greenpeace Canada and one of the climbers, said in a statement. "I'm dangling from a tripod today because the banks' response has been to continue providing over a hundred billion dollars a year to fossil fuel companies."

"That money pipeline is fueling the climate crisis," said Stewart. "After what has happened in B.C. this year we are not going to let bank CEOs ignore the deadly consequences of their actions."

Stewart was referring to last summer's record-shattering heatwave in British Columbia—which killed hundreds and sparked multiple wildfires, including one that incinerated the entire town of Lytton—and last month's devastating floods in the same province.

During his address at last month's COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau alluded to the destruction of Lytton, a disaster of the sort that scientists say will become increasingly common in the absence of ambitious policy changes. Such warnings haven't stopped Canada from forging ahead with its plan to expand the production of fossil fuels—the key driver of the climate crisis—over the course of this decade.

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Kenny Stancil

According to Greenpeace Canada, demonstrators at Tuesday's action urged bank CEOs to "come down from their towers and accept charred wood fragments from Lytton homes, with the hope that the fragments would remain on the bankers' desks to remind them of the life-and-death consequences of all of their investment decisions."

Juan Ortiz, a spokesperson at Greenpeace Canada who joined others in handing out flyers at the protest site, said that "we are in the heart of Canada's banking district today to interrupt bankers' business-as-usual because it is destabilizing the climate, destroying biodiversity, and violating Indigenous rights."

Activists also encouraged passersby to watch video testimonials from Lytton, Shackan, and Kamloops residents whose lives have been turned upside down by extreme weather.

"We call on CEOs like RBC's Dave McKay to meet face-to-face with communities devastated by climate change and fossil fuel projects, listen to their lived experience, and take corrective actions," said Ortiz.

As Greenpeace Canada noted:


Ortiz, Stewart, and the other activists pointed to RBC's financing of the Coastal GasLink pipeline as an example of a project whose funding should be stopped immediately due to the violation of Indigenous rights and failure to obtain free, prior and informed consent from the Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs.

According to research commissioned by Greenpeace Canada, RBC Capital Markets is currently providing CAD 390.7 million in loans directly to the Coastal GasLink project and an additional CAD 400.6 million to the project's parent company TC Energy. TC Energy rents office space in the Royal Bank tower whose entrances were blocked today. Collectively, Canada's big five banks are providing $1.95 billion in project financing to the Coastal GasLink pipeline.

More broadly, Greenpeace is imploring Canadian banks to immediately halt all financing of new fossil fuel projects, develop a plan to slash financed emissions in half by 2030, and ensure that any funded projects obtain the free, prior, and informed consent of Indigenous communities.

More than 9,400 of the group's supporters have demanded in writing that the nation's most powerful bank CEOs—Daryl White of BMO, Victor Dodig of CIBC, Dave McKay of RBC, Brian Porter of Scotiabank, and Bharat Masrani of TD—stop funding fossil fuels.

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Filibuster Reform for Debt Ceiling Fight 

But Not Voting Rights or Reproductive Freedom?

"If our senators are willing to suspend the filibuster to protect our economy, they should be willing to suspend it to protect our democracy and our freedom to vote."


Advocates of killing the filibuster protest at the Manhattan office of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on July 26, 2021. (Photo: Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images)


JESSICA CORBETT

COMMONDREAM

December 7, 2021

Progressives on Tuesday responded to reports that U.S. Senate leadership reached a deal to allow Democrats to raise the nation's debt ceiling by suggesting similar maneuvers on other key priorities for the party, from voting rights and reproductive freedom to gun violence prevention and immigration reform.

"Faced with the frightening prospect of the United States defaulting on our debt, the proposed solution is a convoluted legislative maneuver that highlights the Senate's growing dysfunction," said Sean Eldridge, president and founder of the progressive advocacy group Stand Up America.

"This deal makes clear the need to reform the filibuster to make the Senate work for the American people," he added. "If our senators are willing to suspend the filibuster to protect our economy, they should be willing to suspend it to protect our democracy and our freedom to vote."

In a tweet Tuesday, Stand Up America highlighted two specific pieces of legislation that Republicans in the evenly split Senate have prevented from reaching President Joe Biden's desk: the Freedom to Vote Act—a compromise that followed the twice-blocked, bolder For the People Act—and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

"Allowing the 33 voter suppression laws passed by state Republicans this year to go into effect isn't an option," the group said. "Senate Democrats must end the filibuster to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. Our democracy depends on it."

Earlier in the day, responding to reporting by Punchbowl News, Stephen Spaulding of the group Common Cause noted that the deal "will increase pressure for doing something similar" on other top legislative issues.

Along with passing the voting rights bill named for the late John Lewis, the Democrat-controlled U.S. House of Representatives recently approved the Women's Health Protection Act, which has gained greater attention as the right-wing majority Supreme Court has heard arguments for a case that could reverse abortion rights affirmed by Roe v. Wade in 1973.

GOP state legislators' growing attacks on both voting rights and reproductive freedom this year have fueled demands for U.S. Senate Democrats to reform or fully kill the filibuster so they can swiftly advance legislation on both issues. However, a couple of key Democrats—namely Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.)—remain opposed to such a move.

Rather than Democrats taking broader action related to the filibuster or garnering Republican support to raise the debt ceiling before the rapidly approaching December 15 deadline, Senate leaders have settled on "a complicated legislative maneuver to help them stave off another high-stakes battle and prevent the U.S. government from experiencing a catastrophic default," according to The Washington Post.

The newspaper noted that each party's top Senate member—Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)—"expressed a measure of confidence that they had the votes to proceed with their plans, while Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) put the House on track to adopt the measure Tuesday evening."

Politico reported that "at a party leadership meeting on Tuesday, McConnell pitched his lieutenants on a convoluted strategy that would require at least 10 Republicans to approve legislation that would later allow Senate Democrats to raise the debt ceiling by a simple majority vote. Though Republicans would still be facilitating an easier debt ceiling increase for Democrats by carving out an exception to the Senate's supermajority requirement, it's increasingly likely enough Republicans view it as the least-bad scenario."

Explaining that filibuster rules would be suspended for about a month to increase the debt ceiling, Politico added:

But it would require Democrats to raise the debt ceiling to a specific number rather than suspend it for a length of time, such as through the election.

Republicans can tout that as a key concession, while Democrats successfully rebuffed Republicans' efforts to force them to use the more cumbersome budget reconciliation process to raise the debt ceiling. The debt increase would likely range from $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion to ensure Congress won't have to address the debt again before November midterms, according to several people familiar with the matter.

While Politico noted that this is "a stunning turnaround for McConnell," another Republican leader made clear the maneuvering is a political calculation.

"I'm going to support Democrats raising the debt ceiling without Republican votes," Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told the outlet on Tuesday. "To have Democrats raise the debt ceiling and be held accountable for racking up the debt is my goal. And this helps us accomplish it."

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The United States Lets Violence Against Women Thrive

From racist and xenophobic attacks against Muslim women, to the likelihood of the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, it’s clear that women’s lives carry little value.


Demonstrator join the second annual Women's March in New York City on January 20, 2018. (Photo: Ira L. Black/Corbis via Getty Images)

SARAH LAHM

December 7, 2021 by The Progressive

As Bob Dylan once noted, "it's easy to see without looking too far that not much is really sacred" in American life, despite the false front of piety that often guides our public conversations.

Just look at what the first week in December has brought us. When it comes to the contrast between what we say we care about as a nation and what our actions reveal, I'll reference the video of Republican Congressmember Lauren Boebert of Colorado targeting Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.

"If you think your rights and the rights of women are somehow guaranteed, think again."

Omar is a Muslim, making her an easy foil for Boebert and others in Trumpland. The prevailing presumption, promoted by far-right activists and media profiteers, is that Muslims are terrorists by default. This is an old line of attack, as Omar frequently points out, spun from hate, xenophobia, and racism.

In Boebert's video, she can be seen at a recent fundraising event held in Colorado, warming up the crowd with casual jokes about Omar being a backpack-carrying terrorist, as well as a member of the "Jihad Squad." Boebert appears on camera as a Sarah Palin-like version of an unapologetically harsh yet folksy and idealized Republican woman who is capable of toting a gun while wearing stiletto heels.

The camera captures only a slice of Boebert's audience, which appears to be older white men clutching pints of beer and laughing a bit nervously at her careless antics. Only a few days after this video was made public, another one emerged from a previous Boebert fundraising event, where she tells a different version of her alleged, and reportedly false, encounter in an elevator with Omar.

What's even worse, perhaps, is that the latest Boebert video to come to light includes her calling Omar and her fellow Democratic Congressmember Rashida Talib of Michigan, who is also Muslim, "blackhearted, evil women." Boebert is likely less of a source for this hatred than a mirror of it, reflecting the ugly rhetoric that appeals to the Trumpian wing of the Republican party.

Reducing this to a political game, however, isn't the right approach. Certainly, Kevin McCarthy has continuously excused Boebert's behavior, fearful that any blowback from Trump will prevent him from becoming the future Speaker of the House.

Or, as New York's Democratic Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez put it, "Kevin McCarthy is so desperate to be speaker that he is working with his Ku Klux Klan caucus to look aside & allow violent targeting of WOC [women of color] members of Congress."

McCarthy recently brushed off Boebert's actions, along with those of her equally offensive colleagues, Marjorie Taylor-Greene and Paul Gosar, as "things we would not want to deal with." In fact, when asked by reporters about his apparent refusal to condemn Boebert's words, McCarthy played the victim, saying he had been treated poorly by both Omar and Ocasio-Cortez and never received an apology for it.

I wonder how many death threats McCarthy has received throughout his political career. One would be too many, of course, but could he possibly be dealing with anything that compares to the racist, anti-woman, anti-Muslim threats Omar has endured? I doubt it.

Women's lives are cheap in the United States, aren't they? On the one hand, we have people like McCarthy excusing the behavior of Boebert and Gosar, in particular, as if it's all no big deal.

Meanwhile, we have the U.S. Supreme Court on the brink of overturning Roe v. Wade.

This is the moment that a women's studies professor I had in college years ago warned our class about. "If you think your rights and the rights of women are somehow guaranteed, think again," she told her wide-eyed, unbelieving students.

Now we are living through it.

No one I know wants to face an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy. But, then again, no one wants to face domestic violence, or the pain of being forced to raise a child all alone, without equal access to health care, child care, or paid family leave. (Let's not forget the relatively high maternal mortality rate in this country, especially for Black women.)

Even Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett's suggestion this week that abortion shouldn't be necessary, since pregnant people can simply give their babies up for adoption, stands as a form of violence against women. It is unacceptable that women's lives should be so misunderstood and poorly represented today, as if carrying a child to term (even if rape or incest occurred) and then parting with it is some easy task, for either the baby or the parent.

The stakes are incredibly high these days; the Supreme Court's pending decision regarding abortion rights in Mississippi and the entire country epitomize the degree to which women's lives are casually used as chess pieces, for political and religious purposes.

It's easy to see, as Dylan wrote, that not much is really sacred after all.

© 2021 The Progressive

Sarah Lahm is a Minneapolis-based writer and researcher. Her work has appeared in outlets such as The Progressive, where she writes the Midwest Dispatch column and contributes pieces to the Public School Shakedown site.

Amnesty Scorecard Finds Twitter Failing to Protect Women From Online Abuse

"As our world has become increasingly dependent on digital spaces during the Covid-19 pandemic, it's critical that Twitter meet this moment with demonstrated commitment to improving the online experiences of all users, regardless of their identity."


A resident of the Casa Nepal safe house stands in the upstairs common area on May 8, 2018 in Kathmandu, Nepal. The shelter houses approximately 60 women and their children annually. 

(Photo: Lauren DeCicca/Getty Images)


JESSICA CORBETT

COMMONDREAMS

December 8, 2021

Amnesty International on Tuesday urged reforms after a new report from the human rights group found that "for many women and nonbinary persons, Twitter is a platform where violence and abuse against them flourishes, often with little accountability."

The latest Twitter Scorecard follows multiple other Amnesty reports released since 2018 detailing how the tech giant has not upheld "its responsibility to protect women's rights online by failing to adequately investigate and respond to reports of violence and abuse in a transparent manner, leading many women to silence or censor themselves on the platform."

"Twitter is still falling short on its promises to protect users at heightened risk of online abuse."

Like a previous scorecard published in September 2020, the new report uses 10 indicators across four categories—transparency, reporting mechanisms, the abuse report review process, and privacy and security features—to track Twitter's global progress.

Only one of Amnesty's 10 broad recommendations has been implemented: "Improve the appeals process by offering more guidance to users on how the process works and how decisions are made."

Seven of the group's recommendations are considered a "work in progress" while the remaining two—both related to transparency—have not been implemented.

The report recognizes that Twitter has "increased the amount of information available through their Help Center and transparency reports, while also launching new public awareness campaigns, expanding the scope of their hateful conduct policy to include language that dehumanizes people based on religion, age, disability or disease, and improving their reporting mechanisms and privacy and security features."

"These are important steps; that said, the problem remains," the report continues. "Twitter must do more in order for women and nonbinary persons—as well as all users, in all languages—to be able to use the platform without fear of abuse."

Michael Kleinman, director of technology and human rights at Amnesty International USA, said in a statement Tuesday that "despite our repeated calls to improve their platform, Twitter is still falling short on its promises to protect users at heightened risk of online abuse."

"For a company whose mission is to 'give everyone the power to create and share ideas instantly without barriers,'" he continued, "it's become abundantly clear that women and/or marginalized groups disproportionately face threats to their online safety."

In one recent, high-profile example, critics called for Congressman Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) to be censured or even expelled from the U.S. House of Representatives after he tweeted an edited anime video of him killing Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).

"As our world has become increasingly dependent on digital spaces during the Covid-19 pandemic," Kleinman added, "it's critical that Twitter meet this moment with demonstrated commitment to improving the online experiences of all users, regardless of their identity."

As U.N. Women and civil society groups noted last month on the International Day Against Violence Against Women, gender-based violence has increased throughout the pandemic—just as experts had warned it would.

The scorecard's release comes on the heels of a new global campaign launched last week by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) to demand protection from online violence, particularly for women, girls, racial and ethnic minorities, the LGBTQ+ community, and other marginalized groups.

The "Bodyright" campaign highlights that corporate logos and copyrighted intellectual property receive greater protection online than people's bodies and draws attention to issues such as cyberstalking, doxxing, hate speech, and the nonconsensual use of images and video.

"Relentless, borderless, and often anonymous—the online world is the new frontier for gender-based violence," said Dr. Natalia Kanem, UNFPA's executive director, in a statement. "It's time for technology companies and policymakers to take digital violence seriously."

The National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) and a live chat service is available at www.thehotline.org. Those seeking support can also text START to 88788. All services offer 24/7, free, and confidential support.

This post has been updated with details about an incident involving two members of Congress.
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Kshama Sawant v. 'Real Estate Tycoons and Developers' on Final Day of Seattle Recall Vote

"Once again, the wealthy and special interests are making a power grab for Kshama Sawant's seat because she has the guts to stand up for working people," Sen. Bernie Sanders recently said in support of the socialist council member.

Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant speaks during her second-term inauguration and "Tax Amazon 2020 Kickoff" on January 13, 2020. (Photo: Jason Redmond/AFP via Getty Images)


BRETT WILKINS

COMMONDREAMS

December 7, 2021


As Seattle residents face an 8:00 pm Tuesday deadline to cast their ballots in the recall election of District 3 Council member Kshama Sawant, supporters of the Socialist Alternative lawmaker made their final pitch to the Washington city's voters.

"Instead of spending money on the recall, businesses should focus on supporting economic recovery, our public health, addressing racial inequities, and creating a clean-fueled economy."

"Vote 'no' on the right-wing recall," the Kshama Solidarity Campaign said in a statement, calling accusations by proponents of recalling the third-term council member "dishonest."

"The courts haven't found her guilty of anything," the campaign continued. "Kshama, an immigrant woman of color, is being attacked for participating in peaceful Black Lives Matter protests. This recall is part of the racist right-wing backlash attempting to criminalize protest nationally. Big Business and the right wing want to remove Kshama because she's such an effective fighter for working people."

The recall ballot accuses Sawant, the longest-tenured Seattle council member, of "misfeasance, malfeasance, and violation of the oath of office." Specifically, it says she "used city resources to support a ballot initiative," ignored state pandemic rules "by admitting hundreds of people into City Hall" when it was closed to the public, and "led a protest march to Democratic Mayor Jenny Durkan's private residence."

Sawant's supporters, however, argue that it's her record of fighting for working-class people and against billionaires and Big Business that has made her a target of "a cabal of tech corporations, real estate interests, and business lobbyists."



"Once again, the wealthy and special interests are making a power grab for Kshama Sawant's seat because she has the guts to stand up for working people," U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said last week. "We need to unite together to stop this baseless recall."

Marxist economist Richard D. Wolff said earlier this week that "when the capitalists and their political servants see the appeal of socialist ideas and proposals, they try to destroy socialist leaders."

Accusing Sawant foes of "abusing the recall process to remove politicians who pose a mild threat to the bottom lines of real estate tycoons and developers will likely prevail," Rich Smith, associate editor of The Stranger, wrote Monday that "conservative media and right-wing activists are scraping the bottom of their barrels for more shit to throw at Sawant's campaign."

While the editorial board of The Seattle Times recently accused Sawant of "shrugging at City Hall norms" and "performative chicanery," her supporters point to her key role in making Seattle the first major U.S. city to enact a $15 hourly minimum wage, as well as in helping to lead the successful push for the so-called "Amazon tax" on large corporations and a slew of tenant protections including free legal aid for people facing eviction and the landmark Renters' Bill of Rights.

Goodman Real Estate CEO George Petrie is one of more than 100 financial backers of former President Donald Trump and hundreds of GOP donors to support the recall, as is Columbia Modern Living president Carl Haglund—described by a whistleblower as a "notorious slumlord." In 2016, Sawant successfully led the effort to pass the so-called "Carl Haglund Law" to boost tenant's rights.

Billionaire real estate developer Martin Selig, known locally as the "ICE landlord," and his apparent heir and daughter, Jordan Selig, are also among the recall's supporters. So is Egan Orion, whose unsuccessful 2019 run to unseat incumbent Sawant received nearly half a million dollars from an Amazon-backed PAC run by the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce. Orion provided the recall campaign with data on 2,500 of his donors and their employers.

Washington state Sen. Rebecca Saldaña (D-37) said last week that "instead of spending money on the recall, businesses should focus on supporting economic recovery, our public health, addressing racial inequities, and creating a clean-fueled economy that recognizes the dire climate emergency."

Saldaña added that "if Kshama were a man, she'd be treated differently."

Linguist and leftist dissident Noam Chomsky, who turned 93 years old on Tuesday, was an early opponent of the campaign against Sawant, calling it "a tribute to her achievements and the significance of the goals for which she works successfully—a serious threat to those with illegitimate power."

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Richest 1% Took 38% of New Global Wealth Since 1995. The Bottom Half Got Just 2%

A new report finds that global inequities in wealth and income are "about as great today as they were at the peak of Western imperialism in the early 20th century."

Aviva, a luxury yacht belonging to billionaire Tottenham Hotspur owner Joe Lewis, is pictured moored by Butler's Wharf on July 3, 2018 in London, England. The multi-million pound 322ft-long vessel was built for Lewis in 2007 by German builder Abeking & Rasmussen. 

(Photo:Jack Taylor/Getty Images)


JAKE JOHNSON
COMMONDREAMS
December 7, 2021


In the nearly three decades since 1995, members of the global 1% have captured 38% of all new wealth while the poorest half of humanity has benefited from just 2%, a finding that spotlights the stark and worsening gulf between the very rich and everyone else.

"If there is one lesson to be learnt from the global investigation, it is that inequality is always a political choice."

That's according to the latest iteration of the World Inequality Report, an exhaustive summary of worldwide income and wealth data that shows inequities in wealth and income are "about as great today as they were at the peak of Western imperialism in the early 20th century."

"Indeed, the share of income presently captured by the poorest half of the world's people is about half what it was in 1820, before the great divergence between Western countries and their colonies," the report notes. "In other words, there is still a long way to go to undo the global economic inequalities inherited from the very unequal organization of world production between the mid-19th and mid-20th centuries."

The authors of the new report, released in full on Tuesday, go out of their way to stress that contemporary inequities in wealth and income are not inevitable, but rather the consequence of deliberate decisions by policymakers within individual countries and on the global stage.

“The Covid crisis has exacerbated inequalities between the very wealthy and the rest of the population," said Lucas Chancel, co-director of the World Inequality Lab and lead author of the new report. "Yet, in rich countries, government intervention prevented a massive rise in poverty—this was not the case in poor countries. This shows the importance of social states in the fight against poverty."

"If there is one lesson to be learnt from the global investigation carried out in this report," he added, "it is that inequality is always a political choice."

The new analysis shows that 2020—a year of pandemic-induced economic dislocation that pushed tens of millions of people worldwide into extreme poverty—marked "the largest increase in the share of global billionaires wealth available on record."

"In the U.S., the return of top wealth inequality has been particularly dramatic, with the top 1% share nearing 35% in 2020, approaching its Gilded Age level," states the report, whose contributors include prominent economists Thomas Piketty and Gabriel Zucman. "In Europe, top wealth inequality has also been on the rise since 1980, though significantly less so than in the U.S."

At present, the richest 10% of the world's population grabs more than half of all global income, the researchers found. The billions of people in the poorest half of the global population, meanwhile, get just 8% of the world's income.

"Global wealth inequalities are even more pronounced than income inequalities," the report finds. "The poorest half of the global population barely owns any wealth at all, possessing just 2% of the total. In contrast, the richest 10% of the global population own 76% of all wealth."

In keeping with their argument that skyrocketing incoming and wealth inequality is a choice, the report's authors recommend that world leaders pursue several policy solutions to the global inequity crisis, which has far-reaching economic, political, and ecological implications.

With a "modest progressive wealth tax on global multimillionaires, the report argues, "1.6% of global incomes could be generated and reinvested in education, health, and the ecological transition."

If implemented in the U.S., such a tax would help reverse the decades-long trend of falling income taxes paid by the wealthiest individuals. The report notes that "today, the effective tax rates of the working class, the middle class, and top 1% are very close."

The report also suggests progressive corporate taxes and government crackdowns on "pervasive tax evasion" by the super-rich could help reduce yawning wealth inequities.

More broadly, the authors argue that in order to "put an end to large imbalances in capital and income flows between the Global North and the Global South, it is necessary to reassess the basic principles of globalization."

"It is not unreasonable to assume that each country in the world should have equal rights to development, in the sense that each human being should have equal access to basic education and healthcare services to start with," the report states. "The question of how to fund such basic services is entirely political, thereby depending on the set of rules and institutions put in place by societies across the world."
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MORE BILLIONAIRES IN SPACE

Japanese duo prepare for first tourist flight to space station since 2009
By Paul Brinkmann


Japanese billionaire and space tourist Yusaku Maezawa trains for his space mission. 

Photo courtesy of Roscosmos

Dec. 6 (UPI) -- Two Japanese businessmen plan to become the first paying tourists to visit the International Space Station since 2009 by rocketing into orbit from Kazakhstan on Wednesday.

Billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, who made his fortune in the fashion industry, booked seats for himself and his production assistant, Yozo Hirano, aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft through Virginia-based spacecraft broker Space Adventures.

Cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin will pilot the Soyuz during its flight to the space station and upon its return 12 days later. NASA plans to broadcast live video of the launch planned for 2:38 a.m. EST Wednesday.

The mission is part of a rapid expansion in space travel, Tom Shelley, president of Space Adventures, said in an interview.

RELATED Musk, Maezawa say moon mission is on track for 2023

"The general level of awareness and understanding of what it means to fly to space has increased particularly in the last two or three years," Shelley said.

Space Adventures booked eight private space flights on Russian rockets from 2001 to 2009, but the retirement of the space shuttle in 2011 led to a shortage of such flights.

The U.S. space program bought a large number of seats on Russian rockets since then, but the success of SpaceX Crew Dragon missions made more seats available, Shelley said.

RELATED NASA's SpaceX Crew-3 astronauts name their capsule Endurance

2 / 5From left to right, Soyuz MS-20 crew members Yozo Hirano, Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin and Yusaku Maezawa try on their spacesuits. 

Photo courtesy of Roscosmos

Maezawa, 46, and Hirano, 36, have opened a new chapter in Space Adventure's business and in private space travel, he said.

"[Maezawa] has been fantastic. Some of the stuff he's sharing on social media about his training, and how to wear a spacesuit, I think that's been pretty unique," Shelley said.

For example, Maezawa posted a video of himself donning a Russian spacesuit, outlining many detailed steps that sometimes seemed quite awkward.

"I'll be careful when I go!" he said during the video, according to a translation. "For my actual launch, I'll be wearing my very own spacesuit, not like this one for training."

He added, "I'll be going to space Dec. 8, and I'll be uploading as many videos from the ISS as I can, so please keep an eye out for them."

Maezawa also booked a flight to orbit the moon in 2023 in a SpaceX Starship rocket, which is being developed. He announced in March that he sought, through a contest, eight people to fly with him, but he hasn't named the winners.

Maezawa's space station mission follows the all-private orbital Inspiration4 spaceflight in September, when four civilians circled the Earth in a SpaceX capsule.

That mission, arranged by billionaire Jared Isaacman, drew attention through coverage in a Netflix miniseries and a fundraising campaign for Memphis-based St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

From left to right, Soyuz MS-20 crew members Yozo Hirano, Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin and Yusaku Maezawa pose for a photo during training. 

Photo courtesy of Roscosmos

Russia also sent two private citizens to the space station in October to film a movie, in a mission that was partly sponsored by its space agency Roscosmos.

Neither Maezawa nor Space Adventures has disclosed how much he is paying for the two seats, but NASA had been paying about $80 million for a seat in recent years.

Despite the cost, such private missions ultimately help to expand the market for spaceflight, which should someday drive down prices, said John Spencer, a space architect and founder of the nonprofit Space Tourism Society.

"Maezawa is serious about pioneering space experiences for people, and also about talking more about the view of Earth from space, how that changes people, and the meaning of humanity moving outward," Spencer said in an interview.

Training with Russia's space program is intense, but necessary, Spencer said, because private space tourists must be able to respond in an emergency.

"If you really freak out during training, during a zero gravity flight or on the spinning chair centrifuge, you're not going to fly," he said.

"So when you have people who step up, like this guy, and they're willing to put their money and lives on the line -- that's important."


The International Space Station is pictured from the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour during a flyaround of the orbiting lab that took place following its undocking from the Harmony module’s space-facing port on November 8. Photo courtesy of NASA

The US Military Can't Be Trusted to Investigate Civilian Casualties

As the Biden administration appears to be ramping up airstrikes in Syria, Congress needs to do a full review of the American role in the country's decade-long civil war.


Search and rescue works continue at debris of collapsed building by civil defense teams after airstrikes hit a chicken farm killing 5 civilians including 3 children in Idlib, Syria on November 11, 2021. 

(Photo: Izzeddin Idilbi/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)


KATE KIZER

December 7, 2021 by Responsible Statecraft

U.S. Central Command reported late on Friday a U.S. drone strike in Idlib, Syria against a senior member of al-Qaida, rather than against a member of the self-described Islamic State —the ostensible legal justification the United States is even in Syria. Even more interestingly, CENTCOM claimed it "immediately self-reported" one civilian casualty that it is investigating.

Congress should make the U.S. military publicly refute credible evidence of hundreds of unclaimed civilian casualties caused by the United States and U.S. supported forces since the start of the Syrian war.

But U.S. policymakers should not defer to the military's investigatory promises given its history of covering up or not sufficiently accounting for civilian casualties. In fact, the Associated Press has since reported that the strike wounded a family of 6, including a 10-year-old child.

With such "over-the-horizon" strikes likely to become a key component of Team Biden's rebranded counterterrorism strategy, the national security committees in Congress have a duty to comprehensively review and interrogate the strategic and human costs of this approach.

This latest strike, rather than a one off, appears to be part of a pattern of drone attacks in Idlib in spite of the administration's claimed moratorium on drone strikes during its counterterrorism review. In late September, military officials revealed it had carried out a drone strike in the province earlier that month against another alleged member of al-Qaida, while claiming no civilian casualties.

It's no coincidence the CENTCOM appears to have proactively taken responsibility for this latest civilian casualty. This incident came at the end of a week of rightful public uproar after the New York Times revealed the U.S. military's apparent cover up of an airstrike killing 80 civilians in eastern Syria in 2019. Rather than allowing more exhaustive investigative journalism to uncover its destructive and deadly actions in Syria, it appears CENTCOM is hoping that announcing an investigation will stave off an intense media frenzy like the one following its botched August 29 drone strike in Kabul during the withdrawal from Afghanistan that killed Zemari Ahmadi, a civilian electrical engineer, and his family.

What's new about Friday's Idlib strike is not that the United States is droning Syria and killing civilians without congressional authorization; it's that the U.S. military is now openly engaging a region of Syria —one that's the last stronghold of armed resistance to the Assad regime—that it had previously avoided outside of one-off strikes, due to the risk of entanglement in the broader Syrian conflict. The quick succession of these strikes appears to be a quiet expansion of the U.S. forever wars, and an apparent reflection of this president's desire to make our endless wars primarily remote-controlled moving forward.

You'd be forgiven if you had forgotten the United States is in Syria at all. There is no affirmative congressional authorization for U.S. military operations in Syria despite the United States bombing the country and occupying portions of it since late 2014. After it became clear that he could not get authorization for the use of military force against IS due to congressional opposition, then-President Obama invoked the then-13-year-old 2001 AUMF (passed to invade Afghanistan in 2001).

As the U.S.-led airstrike campaign transitioned into a broader train, equip, and occupy parts of eastern Syria, the United States continued drone strikes in the country. Without any domestic or international legal justification, the United States has been at war with a variety of adversaries in Syria: IS, Iranian and Hezbollah forces, Russian-hired mercenaries, and the Syrian military, not to mention its mission…for a hot minute…to "secure the oil."

For years, #endendless war advocates like myself have feared the expansion of the U.S.war in Syria to the rest of the country—particularly if war powers champions in Congress did little to challenge multiple administrations' made-up legal concept of al-Qaida's associated forces in the 2001 AUMF and dubiously-broad collective self-defense doctrines. That's what we're seeing happen today, and yet another administration is once again risking sleepwalking into more endless war and the associated human costs.

Congress shouldn't let them get away with it, and instead seize the opportunity to launch its own inquiry into U.S.-caused civilian harm in Syria—something Senator Elizabeth Warren, who is on the Senate Armed Services Committee, has already called for with regard to the 2019 Baghuz strike cover-up exposed by the Times. That inquiry should not just be limited to one strike, however, but instead cover the entire U.S. air campaign in Syria following the rise of IS, and include all of "the uncounted" who have yet to be officially acknowledged, let alone receive justice.

Congress should make the U.S. military publicly refute credible evidence of hundreds of unclaimed civilian casualties caused by the United States and U.S. supported forces since the start of the Syrian war. It should review whether airstrikes there met the requirements of the laws of war, and if flattening residential areas was actually justified by the perceived threat or military objective. It should also seek to understand whether and with what frequency (if any) the United States has offered or given ex gratia or condolence payments to families it has harmed.

Perhaps most importantly, Congress must question whether the U.S. military's strategy of decapitation to undermine the power of non-state armed groups even works. The reality is that the U.S. military campaign in Syria—from arming the very armed groups it is ostensibly at war with, to its massive undercounting and denial of civilian casualties—has been a dismal display of illegality and failure.

© 2021 Responsible Statecraft

Kate Kizer (@KateKizer) is the policy director at Win Without War, which seeks to establish a more progressive U.S. foreign policy and national security strategy. Previously she was the director of policy and advocacy at the Yemen Peace Project, a non-profit that advocates for the rights and interests of Yemeni Americans and for constructive U.S. policies toward Yemen.