Chicago Teachers Berate Union Chiefs Over Return-to-Work Deal Before Narrow Vote

BY DANIEL VILLARREAL ON 1/12/22 

Members of the Chicago Teachers Union berated their union's chiefs for accepting a return-to-work deal that left out many of the safety measures and reassurances that educators wanted amid rising COVID-19 case numbers.

The deal was accepted by only 55.5 percent of the union's 600 members. The agreement will end five days of canceled classes amid union negotiations.

On Wednesday evening, union chiefs presented the deal to union members during a virtual meeting. Chiefs called the deal "more than nothing, but less than what we wanted," according to the Chicago Sun-Times. During the meeting, teachers yelled at union officials for negotiating an agreement that fell short of their desired safety demands.

CTU President Jesse Sharkey blamed Chicago Lori Lightfoot for rejecting key union requests such as the ability to randomly test students for COVID-19 and move to virtual learning as the city experiences an unprecedented spike in new COVID-19 cases.

"This vote is a clear show of dissatisfaction with the boss," Sharkey said in a statement. "Put bluntly, we have a boss who does not know how to negotiate, does not know how to hear real concerns and is not willing to respect our rank and file enough to listen to us when we tell her we need more protection."

The agreement guaranteed more masks, test screenings and time-off related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The agreement established metrics for shutting down individual schools, based on the number of students and staff members absent due to COVID-19. It also said that the district would purchase KN95 masks for students and teachers and provide daily COVID-19 screening questions for anyone entering schools.

Additionally, the agreement added incentives for hiring more substitute teachers in case of worker shortages. Teachers will be allowed to take unpaid leave related to COVID-19, to help care for their own illness or their increased risk of exposure, WGN-TV reported.

It also expands COVID-19 testing for teachers and students, but it didn't implement the union's desired program for randomly testing all students unless parents opted out.

Chicago teachers have agreed to go back into the classroom after union negotiations, with more masks, test screenings and time-off related to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this photo, thousands of Chicago teachers' union members march through the streets near City Hall during the 11th day of an ongoing teachers strike on October 31, 2019 in Chicago, Illinois.SCOTT HEINS/GETTY

UNDER THE COVER OF NIGHT

US acknowledges shipping Idaho radioactive waste to Nevada

KEN RITTER, 

Associated Press
Jan. 12, 2022

Nuclear waste is stored in underground containers at the Idaho National Laboratory near Idaho Falls, Idaho, on May 11, 2015. The federal government is acknowledging it has shipped mixed radioactive waste from a nuclear-era cleanup site in Idaho to Nevada for disposal. In a statement Tuesday, Jan. 11, 2022, that followed a protest letter from U.S. Rep. Dina Titus, the U.S. Department of Energy said 13,625 cubic meters of material had been sent from a former dump at the Idaho National Laboratory to the Nevada National Security Site.

Keith Ridler/AP


LAS VEGAS (AP) — The federal government acknowledged it has been shipping mixed radioactive waste from a nuclear cleanup site in Idaho to Nevada and New Mexico for disposal.

In a statement Tuesday that followed a protest letter from U.S. Rep. Dina Titus of Nevada, the U.S. Department of Energy said 13,625 cubic meters of material has been sent safely from a former dump at the Idaho National Laboratory to the Nevada National Security Site.

The material was characterized as “low level waste/mixed low level waste,” the department said. The amount would fill more than five Olympic-sized swimming pools.

Shipments began in 2009 and are ongoing, the department said, while noting that most of the Idaho waste was being sent to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.

Nevada and the federal government have clashed several times in the past over shipments of radioactive materials to the vast former government nuclear test site in the state.

In a Monday letter to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, Titus said “the fact that dangerous materials could be sharing the roads with my constituents and visitors raise a number of questions for me about this shipment of nuclear materials.”

Titus, a Democrat from Las Vegas, is a retired University of Nevada, Las Vegas professor and an expert on atomic testing and American politics. She has fought for years to prevent the federal government from building a permanent storage facility for the nation’s most radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain, some 90 miles (145 kilometers) north of Las Vegas.

In her letter, Titus called for the Energy Department to disclose the amount of waste to be shipped to Nevada and its classification.

“Nevada is not America’s dumping ground,” she said.

A Nevada-based spokesman for the Energy Department, Jesse Sleezer, said in a statement Wednesday that since 1999, the department has transported more than 32,000 waste shipments to the Nevada National Security Site, "with no release of contamination resulting from these shipments.”

The department said the Nevada state Division of Environmental Protection participates with other experts in pre-disposal documentation and review of an “extensive waste profile" of materials shipped to the site.

“All offsite wastes shipped to and disposed at the NNSS are handled safely and securely and must meet all applicable federal and state regulations as well as the rigorous NNSS Waste Acceptance Criteria,” the department said in its statement Tuesday.

Nevada state Division of Environmental Protection Chief David Fogerson referred an inquiry about the shipments to Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak's office. The governor's aide, Meghin Delaney, did not immediately respond to questions.

The Energy Department said last month it was completing the removal of targeted waste buried decades ago in storage drums and boxes in unlined pits at a sprawling site that includes the Idaho National Laboratory, 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of the city of Idaho Falls.

The buried waste included plutonium-contaminated filters, graphite molds, sludges containing solvents and oxidized uranium generated during nuclear weapons production work at the Rocky Flats Plant in Colorado.

The Nevada National Security Site is a vast federal reservation nearly the size of the state of Rhode Island where the government conducted more than 1,000 above- and below-ground nuclear detonations from 1951 to 1992. It serves today as a research and training site and for U.S. studies of nuclear, chemical, biological and other weapons.

The Energy Department agreed last year to pay Nevada $65,000 to settle a dispute about five years of shipments of mischaracterized waste from the Energy Department’s Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to the Nevada site. The state called the shipments “an unfortunate misstep.”

An earlier dispute involved the clandestine shipment of one-half metric ton (1,100 pounds) of weapons-grade plutonium from a Department of Energy facility in South Carolina. Under that settlement, the government agreed to start removing the waste from the Nevada site last year.

THE STATE THAT OUTLAWED ABORTION
Outside Experts Give Texas Roadmap to Decrease Sky-high Rates of Foster Kids Sleeping in Offices, Hotels

BY SARA TIANO
The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services has faced criticism for housing foster youth in hotels or social workers’ offices when unable to find them safe housing. During a hearing Tuesday, a panel of independent child welfare experts made recommendations to the state that included lessening its reliance on congregate care.

More than a decade into a federal lawsuit aimed at repairing Texas’ beleaguered child welfare system, U.S. District Court Judge Janis Jack has laid into state leaders anew, using words like “incompetence” and “negligence” to describe their care of the state’s foster children.

Conditions on the ground discussed at a virtual hearing Tuesday focused on the vast number of foster children that the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) has been unable to find safe homes for, instead housing them for weeks at a time in social workers’ offices, hotels and other unlicensed and ill-equipped settings. The problem, according to experts studying the issue, has been steadily growing for years and hit a crisis point in July, affecting 416 kids that month alone.

“The numbers of children in Texas that are cycling in and out of these unlicensed placements is just really unacceptable,” said Judith Meltzer, president of the national nonprofit Center for the Study of Social Policy. “There are roots of this problem that go back many years, and they reflect the need for fairly significant, systemic reforms.”


A set of recommendations generated by a panel of independent child welfare experts including Meltzer led Tuesday’s hearing. The expert panel is calling for a reduction in reliance on congregate care, increased access to mental health care and greater resources for community-based services to keep kids safe in family homes.

Absent such investments, foster children housed in office buildings, hotels and unlicensed rental units staffed by child protection workers have been subject to dangerous and chaotic conditions that recreate trauma rather than helping children heal, according to court-appointed monitors who conducted on-site visits and interviews.

“They were subjected to sex with hotel staff members,” Judge Jack said, emphasizing the tragic failures cited in the monitor’s report released Monday. “They were tased by security officers hired by DFPS to stay at these unlicensed placement areas. Two 13-year-olds were pepper sprayed, children were slapped. This is what happened.”

Many of the children interviewed were not enrolled in school, and staff often did not know where they were. Medications were inconsistently administered and sometimes not provided at all. After a new law passed in June that barred foster children from sleeping in offices, the child welfare department leased private homes, some of which were directly adjacent to abandoned, blighted buildings with broken windows and covered inside and out with graffiti.

These abandoned homes in Texas are directly adjacent to unlicensed rentals where the Department of Family and Protective Services has been housing kids they can’t find foster placements for. Photo via court document.

Key among the experts’ recommendations — immediate fixes as well as longer term reforms — is bolstering the state’s array of mental health resources for youth and families, improving coordination between child-serving agencies and increasing support for kinship caregivers, especially those caring for children with complex needs.

Recommendations by the expert panel, which also includes Ann Stanley, a managing director for Casey Family Programs, and Paul Vincent, an independent consultant who formerly led reforms in Alabama’s child welfare system, are not legally binding. But commissioners with the Department of Family and Protective Services and the Health and Human Services Commission indicated their intention to cooperate with the proposals.

After years of a contentious lawsuit and the deteriorating conditions for children, advocates and child welfare professionals told The Imprint they were encouraged by the concrete, evidence-based path forward provided by the expert panel.

“We now have clear next steps that DFPS, the Legislature, and the Governor can take to make sure that kids in foster care can live with a foster family or an aunt and uncle instead of sleeping in an institution or a CPS office or a dangerous, unlicensed foster home,” Kate Murphy, senior policy associate with Texans Care for Children, said in an email.

Expanding mental health services

According to the expert panel’s research over the past six weeks, the vast majority of children who lacked placements are older youth, most deemed to have higher needs due to behavioral or mental health concerns.

In November, nearly a quarter of the 236 children without placements had been released from psychiatric hospitals with no discharge plan in place. Eighteen percent had run away from their previous placement, and 17% were coming out of group homes or residential treatment facilities and their social workers had failed to find a new home for them.

Expanding mental health care options is “essential to solving the problem of children without placement,” the experts reported to the court. That could also address children coming into foster care because their parents can’t handle their mental and behavioral health needs: Since 2017, 4,661 Texas children have been relinquished to foster care because they were unable to access services and supports within their families, the report states.

The expert panel recommends tapping into a Medicaid funding stream to provide mobile crisis intervention services and applying for a Medicaid waiver to fund community-based mental health services to prevent the need for children to be hospitalized or placed in residential care.

They also recommend the state expand an existing program serving families at risk of relinquishing their children to foster care.

In response, on Tuesday, Judge Jack ordered the commissioners of the Department of Family and Protective Services and the Health and Human Services Commission to devise a plan to expand mental health services within 90 days.

Curbing congregate care and out-of-state placements

With news spreading that children are sleeping in hotels and offices, child welfare authorities and foster care providers say part of the problem is heightened scrutiny on residential group facilities, and the resulting closures of such facilities. Prior to the court hearing, the state submitted plans indicating their intent to build back group home capacity, in contrast with nationwide moves against such settings for foster youth.

At Tuesday’s hearing, Judge Jack and the expert panelists soundly countered that plan.

“We think the solution to the problem is not more congregate care,” panelist Meltzer said. “There is an overemphasis on the use of congregate settings, and I have a real concern about that.”

Jack was more biting in her rebuttal: “There isn’t a single expert in the field of child protection that recommends congregate care except in exceptional circumstances. Yet here we are struggling in this situation, with a department that not only believes in congregate care for whatever reasons — for the private, for-profit congregate care people, for the not-for-profit congregate care people and the lobbyists they support — and it’s just a chain.”

Jack also hammered the agency for its failure to comply with the federal Family First Prevention Services Act, which strictly limits group care to instances of clinical necessity, and requires it be provided only on a limited basis, in vetted and licensed “quality residential treatment programs,” or QRTPs.

By failing to meet these new standards, which took effect in October, Texas is forfeiting $43 million in federal funding over the next two years, the visibly angry judge pointed out multiple times.

The experts and the court urged the department to move more quickly toward implementing Family First by bringing local treatment centers up to standards or attracting new providers already licensed to run QRTPs to develop programs in Texas.

In their report, the panel also raised concerns about the state’s increasing reliance on out-of-state placements to house children they struggle to find local foster homes for. They note that the Department of Family and Protective Services spent $2.9 million between January and October of last year placing these children in out-of-state facilities.

“When we talk about redirecting resources to services in the community to support families, that’s one of the ways you can get the funds you need,” Meltzer said, “by limiting these really expensive, not helpful and frequently very dangerous out-of-state placements.”

Jack ordered the department to develop a plan to bring children back from out-of-state placements within 90 days. Within 30 days, the department must determine if they can implement the experts’ recommendation to establish community liaisons tasked with finding a way to move children out of congregate care settings and into families.

Texas Department of Family and Protective Services 

Commissioner Jaime Masters.

 Photo from the DFPS website.

The expert panel also laid out recommendations for avoiding foster care placements outside of family networks, life disruptions that can cause youth to flounder. Members said the state needs to raise the pay for relatives caring for foster youth: Right now they receive $11.55 per day, regardless of the child’s level of need, while non-relative foster families are paid anywhere from $47.37 to $92.43 per day.

The panel reported that relatives should be the first choice to care for foster youth, under an intensive “family finding” program. Utilizing Title IV-E federal funds to provide kinship navigators was noted as a short-term fix that could help strengthen those placements.

At Tuesday’s hearing, Judge Jack issued a stern warning to DFPS Commissioner Jaime Masters, who suggested her resources to implement all of the recommendations may be limited.

“The constitutional rights that have to be protected of these children are not driven by monetary factors. Money is not an issue for these factors,” Jack said. “You must comply with safe placements, period. I’m going to have to start doing contempt — I’m going to do it in the next month if we don’t get some response here.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sara Tiano is a senior reporter for The Imprint.

 

Julian Assange: A Thousand Days In Belmarsh – OpEd

 January 13, 2022

By Binoy Kampmark

Julian Assange has now been in the maximum-security facilities of Belmarsh prison for over 1,000 days.  On the occasion of his 1,000th day of imprisonment, campaigners, supporters and kindred spirits gathered to show their support, indignation and solidarity at this political detention most foul.  

Alison Mason of the Julian Assange Defence Committee reiterated those observations long made about the imprisonment at a gathering outside the Australian High Commission in London on that day.  The WikiLeaks founder was wrongfully confined “for publishing the war crimes of the US military leaked to him by whistleblower Chelsea Manning.”  She, along with supporters, had gathered before the High Commission “because Julian’s country could save him with a simple phone call.”   Mason’s admirably simple reasoning: that Australia had “a bargaining chip with AUKUS and trade deals.”  If only that were true.

The continued detention of Assange in Belmarsh remains a scandal of kaleidoscopic cruelty.  It continues to imperil his frail health, further impaired by a stroke suffered in October last year and the ongoing risks associated with COVID-19.  It maintains a state of indefinite incarceration without bail, deputising the United Kingdom as committed gaolers for US interests. “Julian,” stated his fiancée Stella Moris, “is simply held at the request of the US government while they continue to abuse the US-UK extradition treaty for political ends.”

A report drawn from unannounced visits to Belmarsh by the Chief Inspector of Prisons last July and August did not shine glorious light upon the institution.  “The prison has not paid sufficient attention to the growing levels of self-harm and there was not enough oversight or care taken of prisoners of risk of suicide.  Urgent action needed to be taken in this area to make sure that these prisoners were kept safe.”

The next gruelling stage of Assange’s confinement is being marked by an appeal against the High Court’s unfathomable, and even gullible overturning of the lower court decision against his extradition to the United States.  The US Department of Justice (DoJ) continues to seek the extradition of the WikiLeaks founder to face 18 charges, 17 based on that relic of state paranoia and vengeance, the US Espionage Act of 1917.  A successful prosecution could see him face a 175-year sentence.  

The original decision, shoddy as it was for the cause of journalism, accepted that the extradition would be oppressive within the meaning of the US-UK Extradition Act.  District Court Justice Vanessa Baraitser accepted the defence contention that such oppression arose from Assange’s “mental condition”.  Despite relentless prosecution attacks on the neuropsychiatric evidence adduced by the defence, the judge accepted that Assange was autistic and would be at serious risk of suiciding in the US prison system. The prosecutors also failed in convincing the court that Special Administrative Measures would not be applied that would restrict his access to legal counsel and family, and ensure solitary confinement. They also failed to show that he would not, on being convicted, serve his time in the vicious supermax prison, Colorado’s ADX Florence. 

The Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales Ian Burnett, and Lord Justice Timothy Holroyde, were having none of that.  In their December ruling, the High Court accepted the prosecution appeal that the US could easily make assurances for keeping Assange in better conditions despite not doing so at the original trial.  The Lord Justices also proved crotchety at the fact that Baraitser had not gone out of her way to seek those assurances in the first place.  Besides, Britain could trust the good diplomatic undertakings of the United States.  

So it came to pass that muddle headed judicial reasoning prevailed on the bench.  There was no mention of the fabricated evidence being relied upon by the prosecution, or the discomforting fact that operatives in the US Central Intelligence Agency had contemplated kidnapping and poisoning Assange.  Nothing, either, about the US-sanctioned surveillance operation conducted by the Spanish security firm, UC Global, during his time in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Work on the appeal began immediately.  Solicitors Birnberg Peirce, in a statement, outlined the importance of the application.  “We believe serious and important issues of law and wider public importance are being raised in this application.  They arise from the court’s judgment and its receipt and reliance on US assurances regarding the prison regimes and treatment of Mr Assange is likely to face if extradited.”

The wider public importance of the case is hard to measure.  Authoritarian governments and sham democracies the world over are gleefully taking notes.  Liberal democratic states with increasingly autocratic approaches to media outlets are also going to see promise in the way the United States is using extradition law to nab a publisher.  Black letter lawyers will err in assuming that this matter is narrow and specific to the wording of a treaty between two countries.  

Having already done untold damage to the cause of publishing national security information that exposes atrocities and violations of law domestic and international, the US is making the claim that the Extradition Act, in all its nastiness, has tentacled global reach.  A phone call from Australia’s insipid Prime Minister Scott Morrison will hardly matter to this.  He, and other members of Washington’s unofficial imperial court, will do as they are told.  

Binoy Kampmark

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com

Julian Assange. Photo Credit: Tasnim News Agency

Canada and U.S. resist efforts to drop vaccine mandate for cross-border truckers

By Karen Graham
PublishedJanuary 10, 2022

Semi trucks drive along Interstate 70 near Booneville, Missouri on Nov. 1, 2011.
KOMUnews/Anna Burkart. CC SA 2.0.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is pushing ahead with a vaccine mandate for international truckers despite increasing pressure from critics who say it will exacerbate driver shortages and drive up the price of goods imported from the United States.

According to CTV News Canada, truckers entering Canada from the United States must show proof of vaccination against COVID-19 beginning on Saturday, January 15.

The Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA) estimates this move could force some 16,000 cross-border truck drivers or 10 percent off the roads. The government estimates 5 percent of drivers will be impacted, according to a government source.

This is a turn-around for the Canadian government, which allowed truckers to freely cross the border for 20 months when it was closed to all but essential travel. “We don’t anticipate significant disruptions or shortages for Canadians,” the CTV News source said.

The Trudeau government has championed a strict inoculation policy for civil servants and federally regulated workers, and this new mandate comes as the fast-spreading Omicron variant of the coronavirus shows no sign of slowing down.

Rainbow Bridge Canadian Border Crossing Image – Jeff Hitchcock from Seattle, WA CC SA 2.0

Conservative leader wants Trudeau to reconsider

Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole wants the government to reconsider its Jan. 15 deadline for cross-border truck drivers to be fully vaccinated against COVID if they want to keep their jobs, reports iPolitics.

In order to enter Canada, truck drivers and other essential-service providers, including emergency workers, must show proof of being fully vaccinated, and also are required to upload their proof of vaccination in the ArriveCAN phone app.

Of course, Transport Canada, the Public Health Agency of Canada, and the Canada Border Services Agency are still deciding how to enforce the rules.

“We will be short tens of thousands of truckers if the government doesn’t very quickly address this issue,” O’Toole said Thursday. “That doesn’t mean I don’t think people shouldn’t be vaccinated,” he qualified. “It means we have to deal with the reality (that prices will) skyrocket for groceries, for everything, (if) tens of thousands of truckers are unemployed.”

The Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA) says it is preparing for the vaccine mandate, and expressed concern over the number of truckers quitting because of the requirement.

“There are substantial reports of higher-than-normal turnover, and others declaring their intention to leave the industry or seek employment in the provincially regulated sector,” CTA president Stephen Laskwoski wrote in a statement.

“The industry is expecting a loss of 12,000 to 16,000 (10 to 15 percent), cross-border commercial drivers if the mandate takes effect this month.”

Truck driver Desi Wade is in his element coaching junior drivers, bantering with warehouse administrators and hosting fellow truckers on virtual meetings from his smartphone headset – Copyright AFP Nhac NGUYEN

Calls for the United States to lift its vaccine requirement

At the same time in the United States, close to a dozen Republican senators are calling on President Joe Biden to lift the vaccine mandate for truckers crossing the Canadian border, contending the policy will disrupt trade between the U.S. and Canada, according to The Hill.

The Biden administration announced in November that it would require all essential foreign travelers in the U.S. to be fully vaccinated by Jan. 22, and this rule applies to cross-border truckers.

However, Senate Republicans are asking the president to create a carveout in the administration’s impending policy.

“We write to share our concerns with the coming vaccine mandate for essential workers at the U.S.-Canada border, which will include truck drivers,” the senators wrote in a letter to Biden dated Dec. 10.

“Trucking is the largest mode of surface trade with Canada; every day, there are approximately 14,000 total truck entries along the U.S.-Canada border hauling more than $846 million of goods. Any disruptions to the continuity of U.S.-Canada trade would likely have far-reaching consequences that extend beyond our shared border,” they added.

The senators basically expressed the same concerns their Canadian counterparts expressed, fearing the policy will exacerbate existing problems involving foreign networks and the supply chain, and that it could worsen inflation and cause prices to rise higher than they currently are.

58% of Americans believe US democracy in danger of collapse: poll

By AFP
Published January 12, 2022

Trump supporters clash with police as they storm the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 - Copyright AFP SAID KHATIB

One year after the storming of the US Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump, six out of 10 Americans believe the country’s democracy is in danger of collapse, according to a poll released Wednesday.

Seventy-six percent of those surveyed in the poll by Quinnipiac University said they think political instability in the United States is a bigger danger than foreign threats.

A majority of those polled — 58 percent — said they think the nation’s democracy is in danger of collapse. Thirty-seven percent disagreed.

Fifty-three percent meanwhile said they expect political divisions in the country to worsen over their lifetime.

As for the likelihood of another attack in the United States like the one on Congress, 53 percent of those polled said it was very or somewhat likely.

A special committee of the House of Representatives is investigating the January 6, 2021 storming of the Capitol, with 61 percent of those surveyed saying they back the probe. A total of 83 percent of Democrats favor it and 60 percent of Republicans oppose it.

The poll also had bad news for President Joe Biden with just 33 percent of those surveyed saying they approved of the job he was doing.

Fifty-three percent said they disapproved while 13 percent had no opinion.

Biden had a 38 percent job approval rating in a Quinnipiac poll in November.

The nationwide poll of 1,313 US adults was conducted between January 7 and 10 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.7 percentage points, Quinnipiac said.

U.S. refugee resettlement numbers dipped in December

By Alisa Reznick

Published: Wednesday, January 12, 2022 - 

The United States resettled just over 1,200 refugees in December, down from over 1,600 in November. At the same time, the number of Special Immigrant Visas, or SIVs, is also down.

SIVs are given to Afghan and Iraqi citizens who worked with U.S. troops as translators, interpreters and other essential jobs. They’re supposed to help people in dangerous situations make it to the U.S. 

But only 310 visas were awarded in December. Tucson City Council member Steve Kozachik says many Afghans in Tucson have family members who desperately need those visas.

"Federal government at the congressional level, senatorial level, USCIS, everybody has told me, well these things take time. So they’re counseling patience. My answer to them is that patience is going to cost people their lives," Kozachik says.

The latest SIV numbers are a sharp decline from the more than 3,000 a month being awarded last fall — when tens of thousands of Afghans were evacuated from their country.

Pro-China governor opposes PH-US live-fire drills

By: Frances Mangosing - Reporter / @FMangosingINQ
INQUIRER.net / 05:36 AM January 13, 2022


Cagayan Gov. Manuel Mamba

MANILA, Philippines — The Cagayan Valley region and the province of Cagayan are opposing plans by the Philippines and United States to hold live-fire military exercises as these would put potential Chinese economic investments in the region at risk, according to the avowedly pro-China governor.

“It may cause a diplomatic row,” Cagayan Gov. Manuel Mamba told Inquirer.net on Tuesday. “We don’t want to anger China here in Cagayan. We see that we could get help from them.”

One of the planned live-fire exercises, which is intended to demonstrate combat readiness and firepower, was supposed to be part of this year’s Balikatan—the largest of the bilateral military exercises between the Philippines and the United States—set in April.

“That’s live fire. They’re going to test all armaments. What will happen to our relationship with our neighbors, especially China? We are trying to reconnect ourselves with China,” Mamba said.

The drills were to be staged in Claveria town, located directly south of Taiwan, which China claims to be part of its territory. Beijing has not ruled out taking the island by force.

Balikatan, a Filipino word for “shoulder-to-shoulder,” is an annual military exercise between the two allies to ensure interoperability of their forces and to prepare and rehearse their responses to various security threats.

Rising tensions

This year’s drills would be held against the backdrop of rising tensions in the West Philippine Sea, where China continues its aggressive encroachments. The military has yet to officially disclose the specific events in this year’s drills, but it would include activities in the country’s western frontier.

The United States and China have also steadily increased their military activities close to Taiwan, which has no formal ties to Washington but is its main arms supplier. Washington is concerned about Beijing’s military buildup and provocative moves against Taipei.

Asked why he thinks the US and Philippine forces want to stage military live-fire exercises in Cagayan, Mamba said: “Because you know, Taiwan is a powder keg.”

In a joint resolution on Dec. 7, 2021, the Cagayan provincial antidrug and peace and order councils, and its anti-insurgency task force, opposed live-fire drills in the province.

In a meeting on Dec. 22, 2021, of the regional anti-insurgency task force, the regional peace and order council headed by Mamba passed an almost identical resolution.

The two resolutions acknowledged that military exercises were intended to strengthen the protection of the country’s territory but said that they “may be perceived by some states as provoking posture.”
‘Economic blueprints’

They said the drills “may derail the economic blueprints” that are “anchored on the idea of maintaining peaceful and productive relationship with adjacent international partners.”

Lives and properties of citizens might also be “put in peril” if the drills result in an escalation of conflict between “geopolitical players in Southeast Asia,” according to the resolutions.

No similar resolution was passed by the Cagayan provincial board, the province’s legislative body.

Mamba said he also rejected a plan to hold live-fire exercises by the Philippine and US Marines in October last year.

The governor, however, said he was not against exercises with foreign troops that involve humanitarian assistance and disaster response, and other drills that do not involve firing various types of weapons.

The military’s proposal to hold live-fire exercises in Cagayan comes after President Duterte, who had pivoted his foreign policy toward Beijing away from Washington, aborted a plan in July last year to terminate the Philippines-US Visiting Forces Agreement. The pact governs the presence of American troops in the Philippines, particularly during joint exercises.

The Armed Forces of the Philippines still plans to push through with the military exercises in Cagayan, but without the live-fire component. Talks with Mamba are still being set, according to a senior military official familiar with the issue.
Investors interested

Chinese investors have seen Cagayan’s potential and expressed interest in investing in many areas. Chinese companies are also known to operate offshore gambling in the province.

“We are trying to invite them to come in also,” Mamba said. “They’re really interested in food production, modernization of agriculture, aquaculture, and livestock.”

Chinese investors are also offering to bankroll an international airport and a P10-billion project to rehabilitate the Aparri port, he said.

According to Mamba, Riverfront Construction Inc. represented by a certain Feng Li, proposed in August to develop a $200-million international port terminal in Aparri that would make it a “global gateway in the northern part of the Philippines.”

In 2019, a Chinese company proposed to build a “smart city” on Fuga Island in Cagayan. But the plan fell through after critics raised concerns that it could compromise the country’s security as it would potentially allow Beijing to expand its military presence with access to both sides of the Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea.

Mamba, who is seeking reelection in May, believes that China would be Cagayan’s partner for years to come. He said he was openly pro-China because he did not see any benefit from the US.

“I’m really pro-China. What will I do with America? This is the one that will invest in us. They’re the ones interested in us,” he said.

Read more: https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/?p=1539757#ixzz7HpsIARpK

ECOCIDE

Pipeline spills 300,000 gallons of diesel near New Orleans, killing fish, other animals

A 2020 inspection revealed external corrosion along a 22-foot section of pipe in the same area as the spill.

A cleanup crew works at the site of a diesel spill in this undated image, just outside New Orleans. More than 300,000 gallons of diesel spilled on Dec. 27, 2021

.Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality via AP

Jan. 12, 2022
By The Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS — A severely corroded pipeline ruptured and spilled more than 300,000 gallons of diesel fuel just outside New Orleans after needed repairs on the line were delayed by its operator, according to federal records.

Most of the fuel drained into two artificial ponds called “borrow pits” and thousands of fish, birds and other animals were killed, state and local officials said. Most of the fuel was recovered, according to the pipeline owner.

The spill from the 16-inch-diameter line operated by Collins Pipeline Co. was discovered Dec. 27 near a levee in St. Bernard Parish, just east of New Orleans, according to documents from the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.

An inspection of the 42-year-old Meraux Pipeline more than a year earlier, in October 2020, revealed external corrosion along a 22-foot section of pipe in the same area as the spill. But repairs were delayed and the line continued operating after a subsequent inspection indicated the corrosion was not bad enough to require work immediately under federal regulations, according to the pipeline agency.

The spilled fuel also contaminated soil in an environmentally sensitive area near the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, a closed canal, according to state and federal officials. A small amount of diesel remains in the two borrow pits, said Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality spokesman Gregory Langley.

The spill killed 2,300 fish and more than 100 other animals, including 39 snakes, 32 birds, a few eels and a blue crab, according to statistics provided by Robert “Trey” Iles, a spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.

Nearly 130 animals — 72 alligators, 23 birds, 20 snakes and 12 turtles — were captured for rehabilitation, he said.

Diesel is a highly toxic petroleum product that can kill fish and plants that come into direct contact with it, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Fuel from small spills can evaporate or disperse naturally in just a couple of days but larger spills can take months to degrade.

A pipeline safety advocate said it was “maddening” that the corrosion was known about for more than a year prior to the spill yet fuel kept flowing through the 125-mile-long line from Chalmette to a storage terminal in Collins, Mississippi.

“It’s especially maddening to learn that Collins Pipeline’s initial analysis deemed the pipe in such poor condition that it warranted an immediate repair,” said Bill Caram with the Pipeline Safety Trust. The Bellingham, Washington-based organization advocates for more stringent oversight of the nation’s sprawling network of pipelines transporting oil, natural gas and other hazardous fuels.

Collins Pipeline is a subsidiary of Parsippany, New Jersey-based PBF Energy Inc., which owns six petroleum refineries in the U.S. including the Chalmette Refinery in St. Bernard Parish.

Fact-checking organizations say YouTube is a major spreader of misinformation



BY JAMES FARRELL
POLICY

JANUARY 12 2022

A letter signed today by more than 80 global fact-checking groups said Google LLC-owned YouTube is one of the “major conduits of online disinformation and misinformation worldwide.”

The letter, addressed to YouTube Chief Executive Susan Wojcicki, was signed by organizations in 46 countries and included the U.S.-based Washington Post fact-checker as well as FactCheck.org, France’s Science Feedback, Africa Check and the U.K.’s Full Fact.

They all agreed that YouTube’s strategy to fight misinformation is “insufficient.” The letter asked that YouTube increase measures to prevent channels from making money on YouTube if they spread such information, and do more to debunk or add more context to certain dubious narratives that appear on the platform. It also asks that YouTube design its algorithm better to prevent certain types of content from being promoted.

“YouTube is allowing its platform to be weaponized by unscrupulous actors to manipulate and exploit others, and to organize and fundraise themselves,” said the letter. “We urge you to take effective action against disinformation and misinformation, and to elaborate a roadmap of policy and product interventions to improve the information ecosystem — and to do so with the world’s independent, non-partisan fact-checking organizations.”

Although the organizations that signed the letter are spread out in the Americas, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Europe, the signatories wrote that there is a particularly big problem in what it designated as the global south, meaning nations in Latin America, Asia and Africa.

YouTube already works with numerous fact-checking organizations, most of which put their names on the letter. Nonetheless, they still say not enough is being done, especially in the realms of health information and political content, which the signatories said has caused real-world harm. In fairness, YouTube has blocked a lot of misinformation related to COVID-19 and the vaccines, but it seems the platform is still lagging in some countries.

YouTube thinks it’s already doing enough. Spokesperson Elena Hernandez told The Guardian that it not only cracks down on outright lies but also goes after “borderline” misinformation. “Over the years, we’ve invested heavily in policies and products in all countries we operate to connect people to authoritative content, reduce the spread of borderline misinformation, and remove violative videos,” she said, adding that the company has already seen progress globally.
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