It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Sunday, June 05, 2022
Russia's Rusal files suit against Rio Tinto over alumina refinery -documents
FILE PHOTO: The logo of Russian aluminium producer Rusal is seen on a board at the SPIEF 2017 in St. Petersburg
Sun, June 5, 2022, By Praveen Menon
SYDNEY (Reuters) -Russian aluminium producer Rusal has filed a lawsuit against global miner Rio Tinto, seeking to win back access to its 20% share of the alumina produced at a jointly owned refiner in Queensland.
The lawsuit challenges Australia's response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which included wide-ranging sanctions against Russian firms and oligarchs who had links with President Vladimir Putin.
Rio stepped in to take sole control of Queensland Alumina Ltd (QAL) in April, sidelining Rusal and cutting its access to the refinery's output of alumina, a compound from which aluminium is derived. Rio owns 80% of the refinery, while Rusal owns the remaining 20%.
Rusal's Australian unit Alumina and Bauxite Company (ABC) said in a Australian Federal Court filing that the circumstances required for Rio to step-in to take control did not exist and amounted to a breach of obligations, according to the court documents reviewed by Reuters.
Rio's move at QAL came shortly after the world's biggest iron ore miner severed all ties with Russian businesses over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. Russia calls its actions in Ukraine "a special operation".
Australia banned the export of alumina and aluminium ores, including bauxite, to Russia in March.
In the filings reviewed by Reuters, Rusal's subsidiary asks the federal court to restore its rights at QAL, and declare there would be no sanctions breach if its business continues there.
Rio declined to comment. Rusal, the world's second largest aluminium producer, could not be immediately reached for comment outside usual business hours.
Rusal was not directly targeted by Australian sanctions, but Rio's actions were triggered by sanctions on oligarchs Oleg Deripaska and Viktor Vekselberg, who own stakes worth 25.6% and 8% respectively in Rusal.
In 2018 Rusal was covered by U.S. sanctions against Russian businessmen and companies.
(Reporting by Praveen Menon and Renju Jose; Editing by Diane Craft and Kenneth Maxwell)
CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
'Fake' Aluminum Stocks Put Perils of China's Commodities Funding in Spotlight
Bloomberg News Sun, June 5, 2022
(Bloomberg) -- The opaque world of funding commodities trading in China is again under the spotlight.
This time, metals markets are fixated on an incident in the southern province of Guangdong, in which several traders claim they were duped into providing credit against fictitious quantities of aluminum. More than 500 million yuan ($75 million) may have been loaned, backed by stockpiles of the metal stored in a warehouse in the city of Foshan that turned out to be worth significantly less than that.
The amounts being talked about are relatively small, certainly in the context of the aluminum market in China. The world’s biggest producer churned out over $100 billion of the lightweight metal last year, for everything from window frames to car parts. But what’s spooked traders is the similarity to a much bigger scandal eight years ago in the northern port city of Qingdao that caused a crisis of confidence in China’s metals markets.
What might cause the mismatch in stockpiles?
Commodities trading, whether that’s wheat, copper or oil, is typically a high-volume, low margin business. To optimize cash flow, traders often pledge their assets for loans. In the metals industry, that collateral takes the form of warehouse warrants, which record details like the quantity, quality, ownership and location of the goods.
Fabricating multiple warrants for a single stockpile of metals would allow the owner to access loans from more than one lender, a practice sometimes referred to as “over-pledging.” A mismatch between receipts and the actual quantity of metal could happen under such procedure.
Why would a trader take that risk?
Traders running on already razor-thin margins have been operating under even tougher financing conditions in recent months. Banks have become more cautious on lending because of bigger price swings caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as well as jitters over some high profile losses in the nickel market.
That’s encouraged some to seek alternative financing, including the practice where smaller, privately owned firms pledge their goods to larger, state-run traders to obtain cash. Commodities prices are also generally higher due to the war in Ukraine, which means that inventories may be worth more as a currency for making other investments.
The risk now is that larger traders aren’t going to lend to their smaller peers if they don’t have confidence that their loans are secured by valid warehouse warrants.
How was the potential foul uncovered?
That market volatility may have jangled creditors’ nerves. The sharp drop in aluminum prices after the latest virus outbreak locked down the entire city of Shanghai led some to try and take hold of the pledged metal, fearful that borrowers wouldn’t be able to repay their loans. That was when the mismatch between too many warrants and not enough aluminum became apparent, according to people familiar with the matter, who declined to be identified discussing a private matter.
What happened during the Qingdao scandal?
The Foshan incident is relatively small beer and so far involves just traders. At Qingdao, it was banks, including international institutions, that ended up with the biggest exposure to a merchant and its affiliates who pledged the same metals stockpile multiple times to obtain loans of more than 20 billion yuan.
But that in itself is probably instructive. Banks have learned the lessons of Qingdao and other commodities financing scandals, making them more cautious lenders and driving traders to seek other arrangements, including borrowing from larger peers. China’s regulator also urged banks to strengthen oversight, and the use of metals as collateral for financing has diminished since then.
Other similar frauds outside China include French and Australian banks getting hit by loan losses in 2017 that totaled over $300 million, after they discovered fake documents for nickel stored in Asian warehouses owned by Access World, a subsidiary of Glencore Plc. And in 2020, Singaporean oil trader Hin Leong (Pte) Ltd. forged documents to win trade financing for products it had already sold.
What are the potential outcomes?
The local police in Guangdong are investigating and will determine whether fraud occurred but because the warrants in question weren’t registered with the Shanghai Futures Exchange, China’s biggest commodities bourse won’t be on the hook for examining the regulatory angles to the case. Instead, the creditors will probably go after the warehouses first for the inventories, while waiting for investigations to decide if the borrowers are accountable for the losses.
The incident has led to a domino effect whereby more warehouses in China have suspended operations to check on-site metal inventories, according to people with knowledge of the information.
Although the Chinese government and its state banks are preparing to expand lending to counter the ill-effects of the virus on the economy, their largess is unlikely to extend to commodities trading. As such, smaller outfits may find it harder to get financing in the wake of another scandal.
The incident is having a baleful effect on prices, as well. Aluminum has dropped in the days since news of the possible fraud started circulating, and traders will continue to be wary of buying metal while such uncertainty around ownership persists. There’s also the risk that confidence will be sapped in other important markets for materials that rely on warehouse warrants, like copper, nickel or zinc.
Nupur Sharma: Prophet Muhammad controversy strains India-Arab ties
Vikas Pandey - BBC News, Delhi Sun, June 5, 2022, India shares a cordial relationship with Saudi Arabia
India has been forced to placate its partners in the Islamic world after growing anger over controversial comments made by two members of the country's ruling party about the Prophet Muhammad.
Nupur Sharma, who was an official spokesperson of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), made the remark on a television debate, while Naveen Jindal, who was media head of the party's Delhi unit, had posted a tweet on the issue. The comments - especially Ms Sharma's - angered the country's minority Muslim community, leading to sporadic protests in some states.
The two leaders have issued public apologies and the party has suspended Ms Sharma and expelled Mr Jindal.
"The BJP strongly denounces insults of any religious personalities of any religion. The BJP is also against any ideology which insults or demeans any sect or religion. The BJP does not promote such people or philosophy," it said in a statement.
But experts say this may not be enough after what looked like the country's internal matter took an international turn - Kuwait, Qatar and Iran called Indian ambassadors to register their protest on Sunday. Saudi Arabia also condemned the remarks on Monday.
Qatar said it expected a public apology from India.
"Allowing such Islamophobic remarks to continue without punishment, constitutes a grave danger to the protection of human rights and may lead to further prejudice and marginalisation, which will create a cycle of violence and hate," Qatar's ministry of foreign affairs said.
Saudi Arabia also used some strong words in its statement. "The Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed its condemnation and denunciation of the statements made by the spokeswoman of the Indian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), insulting the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, and reaffirms its permanent rejection of prejudice against the symbols of the Islamic religion, alongside all religious figures and symbols," it said.
Nupur Sharma made the controversial comments on a TV debate
India's ambassador to Qatar, Deepak Mittal, said the remarks from some "fringe elements" did not represent the views of the Indian government. Senior BJP leaders and other ambassadors have also condemned the controversial statement.
But analysts say that the top leadership of the party and the government may have to make public statements on the issue. Not doing so, they say, runs the risk of damaging India's ties with these countries.
Too much at stake
India's trade with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which includes Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman and the UAE, stood at $87 billion in 2020-21. Millions of Indians live and work in these countries and send millions of dollars in remittances back home. The region is also the top source for India's energy imports.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been a regular visitor to the region since coming to power in 2014. The country has already signed a free trade agreement with the UAE and is in talks with the GCC for a wider deal.
Mr Modi famously attended the ground-breaking ceremony of the first Hindu temple in Abu Dhabi in 2018 - it was termed as an example of the growing ties between India and the region.
While Delhi's relations with Tehran have been lukewarm over the past few years, the controversy could overshadow Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian's upcoming visit to India.
Former Indian diplomat Anil Trigunayat, who has served in the Arab world, said that India was in a difficult situation and only sincere efforts at the leadership level could prevent a negative fallout.
"Exemplary action under the law must be taken so that such fringe elements do not repeat it and create societal chaos and cause damage to the country's reputation," he said.
Other analysts say the diplomatic cost from the fallout could greatly hurt India's interests in the region.
"Indian officials often react defensively when foreign capitals, including close friends of New Delhi, criticise Indian domestic matters. But in this case, expect Indian diplomats to work quickly to defuse tensions with apologies and other forms of damage control," said Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia Program at the Wilson Center think-tank.
Millions of Indians live and work in the Gulf countries
Arab nations are also looking to take concrete action to soother anger among their own people. Hashtags criticising India have been trending in these countries and the incident has been the top story in their media outlets.
Some of these hashtags have called for a boycott of Indian products. There have also been reports of some stores in Qatar and Kuwait removing Indian products from their shelves.
Mr Kugelman said the relationship was important to both the GCC and India and both sides would be looking at mitigating the risks.
"As concerned as Delhi should be about this angry response from such a strategically critical region, India is also shielded from further damage by its own clout. Because of their economic interests, Gulf states need India to keep importing their energy, they need Indians to continue living and working there, and overall, they need to keep doing business with India," he said.
He added that there might be limits to how far these countries would go in responding to these anti-Muslim comments.
It was coming
Critics say that religious polarisation has increased in India since the BJP came to power in 2014. And the past few weeks have been particularly tense after some Hindu groups went to a local court in Varanasi to seek permission to pray at a centuries-old mosque, claiming that it was built on the ruins of a demolished temple.
TV channels have held provocative debates and social media has seen rampant hate over the issue. Many people associated with right-organisations often make controversial statements on TV shows, but critics say Ms Sharma wasn't a "fringe element" as the BJP has claimed. She was an official spokesperson of the BJP, tasked with representing the party's views.
Analysts add that the international fallout over the controversy should be a wake-up call for India.
"Delhi is learning that when it comes to the country's increasingly toxic politics, what happens in India often doesn't stay in India. As India's global clout grows and its diplomatic and economic partnerships abroad become stronger, there's more at stake when its domestic politics cause unhappiness abroad," Mr Kugelman said.
Tech investor and Arizona Republican Senate hopeful Blake Masters Blames
Gun Violence on ‘Black People, Frankly’
Roger Sollenberger Sun, June 5, 2022, Gage Skidmore/The Star News Network/Wikimedia Commons
Tech investor and Arizona Republican Senate hopeful Blake Masters acknowledges that the United States has a gun violence problem. But he also has a theory about why there’s a problem—it’s “Black people, frankly.”
Masters boiled the issue down in an April 11 interview on the Jeff Oravits Show podcast, telling the host that “we do have a gun violence problem in this country, and it’s gang violence.”
“It’s people in Chicago, St. Louis shooting each other. Very often, you know, Black people, frankly,” Masters clarified. “And the Democrats don’t want to do anything about that.”
It’s unclear why Masters—who has pushed the baseless “great replacement” conspiracy theory narrative—felt compelled to single out Black people. Moments earlier in the interview, during a discussion about Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearings, Masters told Oravits that “most Americans just, you know, just want to stop obsessing about race all the time,” adding that “the left’s biggest tool in their toolkit is just to divide people on the basis of race, and that’s really messed up.”
Republicans frequently cite urban gang violence, most often in Chicago, in attempts to tap out of the gun control debate. While their redirections are often as misleading as they are cliche, those officials aren’t always as forthright as Masters about the racial undertones.
But Masters, whom the white nationalist website VDARE fêted last year as an “immigration patriot,” was quite clear about his vision of two Americas.
After pinning gun violence on gangs and Black people—and saying, falsely, that Democratic administrations “don’t want to do anything” about gang shootings—the Stanford-educated libertarian went on to complain to Oravits that gun control efforts target “law-abiding people like you and me.”
“When they ban ‘ghost guns’ and pistol braces, that’s all about disarming law-abiding people, like you and me, that’s what it’s about,” Masters said, referencing government efforts to crack down on the surge in privately made, untraceable firearms. “They care that we can’t have guns to defend ourselves.”
Masters—a Bitcoin evangelist who routinely hawks automated surveillance technology developed by his benefactor, billionaire tech mogul Peter Thiel—claimed that “it’s pretty rare” for homemade firearms to show up in criminal activity. But his information might be outdated.
Ghost guns aren’t just built and owned by technocrats, to be appreciated as physical instantiations of political theory. They’re also on the rise among criminals, including in gang activity, according to officials with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, as well as fresh police data VICE published this week, which documents a 90 percent increase in seizures last year.
The day of the Oravits interview, President Joe Biden announced a rule change to address the ghost gun problem. In response, Masters tweeted a photo of his own “ghost” gun kit, claiming that he would be a “felon” under the new rule if he made “another one just like it today.”
That’s not accurate. The Biden administration has not banned those weapons, which don’t have serial numbers and can be 3D-printed at home. The new rule doesn’t make it illegal to build your own gun; it applies to people who sell gun kits. Those sellers are now required to become licensed firearms dealers, run background checks on buyers, and include serial numbers on their kits.
The rule also targets violence in urban areas—a sore point for Masters—where ghost guns are multiplying.
Last year, police seized more than 225 of the weapons in New York City, along with 300 seizures in Baltimore and 455 in Chicago, CBS News reported. And government data shows that law enforcement agencies reported recovering 20,000 suspected ghost guns in criminal investigations last year alone—nearly as many seized over the previous four years combined.
A Masters campaign spokesperson did not reply to a request for comment.
Back in the interview, Masters—who has likened federal campaign disclosure laws to Kristallnacht—veered into conspiratorial territory.
Democrats “don’t like the Second Amendment,” he said, because “it frankly blocks a lot of their plans for us”—an unhinged, fact-free statement that liberal officials have cooked up a plot to physically force conservatives to comply with some unarticulated maleficent regime, but have been bayed by fears that a constitutionally endowed populace will shoot them if they try.
Masters also tossed out misleading red meat gripes about crime in West Coast cities Los Angeles and San Francisco, where Masters lived much of his adult life before relocating to Arizona ahead of his Senate bid.
Those cities, he told Oravits, have “legalized crime,” claiming that “you can’t get arrested if you smash someone’s window and take a purse or an iPhone.”
It’s not immediately clear what Masters was referring to, but the riff appears to be a nod at Prop 47, which California voters passed at the state (not city) level nearly eight years ago. The Prop 47 coalition included Democrats along with libertarians like Masters, who wanted to roll back felony punishment for lesser offenses, including property crimes like shoplifting.
Prop 47 didn’t “legalize crime,” but reclassified certain felonies as misdemeanors. But after the recent rise in property crimes such as “smash and grab” robberies, most Californians support tougher sentencing laws, including overhauling parts of Prop 47.
“They talk about crime but I find it crocodile tears,” Masters said, an apparent reference to Democratic outrage over an unending drumroll of domestic massacres. “Because if they were actually tough on crime they would get serious about gang violence.” (Masters himself did not put forward a solution to gang violence in the interview.)
Masters, 35, is a fairly new name in GOP politics, but he has benefited from powerful friends—including his mentor, Thiel, who threw $10 million into a super PAC backing his primary bid.
Thiel’s support went a long way to landing a recent endorsement from former President Donald Trump, who officially blessed Masters on Thursday. It wasn’t a surprise—Trump has a score to settle with Masters’ top opponent, Arizona attorney general Mark Brnovich, who resisted Trump’s pressure to invalidate his state’s 2020 election results.
Masters is fiercely anti-tech while being fiercely pro-tech, backs a national abortion ban, claims Democrats want to “import a million people every year to replace Americans who were born here,” has said that the media and big tech “conspired to manipulate the 2020 election”—which he claims “Trump won”—and calls the gender pay gap a “left-wing narrative.”
(The “new right” crowd also counts another Trump-endorsed Thiel protege: Ohio Senate candidate JD Vance.)
Masters won Trump’s endorsement on Thursday, nine days after an 18-year-old used a legally purchased semiautomatic rifle to slaughter 19 elementary school students and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas.
“Blake will fight for our totally under-siege Second Amendment, and WIN!” Trump wrote in his announcement. An hour later, Biden called on the country to support an array of gun control measures in a primetime national address.
'CHAINSAW'* JACK WAS HIS ORIGINAL MONICKER
'Neutron Jack' fired thousands of GE workers and helped the rise of 'Trumpism'. A new book explains why he was wrong
Jack Welch ran General Electric from 1981 to 2001 and helped reshape the US business landscape.
In "The Man Who Broke Capitalism", NY Times reporter David Gelles evaluates Welch's legacy.
Gelles says Welch was responsible for aggressive layoffs and populism that helped elect Trump.
Few people born since the 1980s have heard of Jack Welch. But they do know Trump, the Boeing 737 Max disasters and a US economic landscape that has led to populism and rising inequality.
"When people look around and say 'why is the system like this? why are things unfair?' there's actually a guy who made it happen. There was a guy who set a precedent for the economy today, and that guy was Jack Welch," says David Gelles, a reporter for The New York Times and author of a new book called "The Man Who Broke Capitalism".
Welch took over as CEO of General Electric in 1981 when it had 400,000 workers and was a reliable, innovative household name making lightbulbs but also more sophisticated equipment such as jet engines and power systems.
Coined "Neutron Jack" after the neutron bomb, which purportedly kills people while leaving buildings intact, Welch was a mascot for an age of deregulation and cheap thrills, which quickly unravelled in the recession of the late 200s.
Under his two-decade tenure GE expanded to be worth hundreds of billions of dollars and was the most valuable company in the world at one point. But, Gelles argues, he did so while rupturing the fabric of America, leaving not just GE but the US worse than when he found it.
A 'Vitality Curve' of fired workers
Welch was obsessed with growth and spent about $130 billion on nearly 1,000 acquisitions during his time running GE, although many of them failed. Under Welch the company's financial services division, GE Capital, became enormous but it later needed a $139 billion bailout from the US government following the 2008 financial crisis, as well as a $3 billion rescue investment by Warren Buffett, Gelles says.
Welch also pioneered the "stack ranking system," in which the bottom-performing 10% of employees were laid off each year, a practice he called the "Vitality Curve." Companies such as Goldman Sachs still use that approach to keep staff "motivated".
Welch slashed GE's workforce by 112,000 people between 1980 and 1985 as well as outsourcing and offshoring jobs to cheaper markets such as Mexico.
"What Welch did was fire people when things were going well," Gelles tells Insider. "And that was a rupture – the behavior of firing people to turn a bigger profit."
It was not economics that drove Welch's labor practices, says Andrew Mawson, co-founding director of Advanced Workplace Associates: "Firing 10% of under-achievers each year seems to me to be a poor way of overcoming an underperforming performance management system."
Others say that beyond harming morale and productivity, focusing solely on labor costs is inefficient. Simon Geale of supply chain consultancy Proxima tells Insider: "Some business leaders like it because the salary line is easy to measure and quick to action, but the reality of job cuts is that they address a proportionately low expenditure when compared to supplier costs in most industries."
'Jack Welch rigged the game' for Trumpism
More damaging, though, was the thinking Welch inspired among other business leaders. Gelles says his approach was embraced by Jim McNerney, who as Boeing CEO was accused of embarking on a range of cost-cutting measures that contributed to the Boeing 737 Max disasters that killed 346 people five months apart.
"It was clear in talking with hundreds of Boeing employees over the last few years that it is just poorer because of the influence of Welch," Gelles says.
Jack Welch at a news conference for the Boeing 777-200X jetliner that used GE engines in New York in February 2000.Getty Images
Inevitably, actions on such a scale would have political ramifications. Gelles says the layoffs and outsourcing Welch initiated helped form "the rust belt" base that put Donald Trump into the White House.
"What Welch did with his series of mass layoffs and factory closures truly destabilized the American working class," Gelles says.
"And it was from this disaffected base that Trump found many of his most ardent supporters. But the reason they felt like it wasn't working for them was because Jack Welch rigged the game."
After Welch died in March 2020 Trump said they had "made wonderful deals together".
"The fact that one or two bad quarters is resulting in mass layoffs is crazy to me. The fundamentals haven't changed much but CEOs feel like they need to be doing something," Gelles says, suggesting it would be a "decades-long battle" to offset the changes Welch helped to trigger.
Gelles adds: "These are choices that companies made, about how they were going to treat workers, what they were going to prioritize, and how they were going to show up in their communities, and it matters. It's going to take a long way to get back."
* CHAINSAW REFERRED TO HIS SLASH AND BURN OF JOBS
From shipwrecks to an underground salt mine, 24 things to know about the Great Lakes
5. Long before Europeans set eyes on the Great Lakes, indigenous tribes had found and learned about its abundant fisheries. Old archaeological finds indicate proof of robust fishing and the building of canoes.
6. Tribes fishing at the time usually used nets made with basswood and nettle. They would hang this net between two side-by-side canoes, trail it and catch whole nets full of fish.
7. Due to their ocean-like characteristics, such as rolling waves, sustained winds, strong currents and great depths, the Great Lakes all could be considered inland seas.
8. The Great Lakes hold 21% of the world's freshwater.
9. Lake Michigan is the largest lake in the world located entirely within one country.
10. Glaciers melting at the end of the last ice age, 10,000 years ago, were responsible for creating the Great Lakes.
11. The shores of Lake Michigan are home to the most extensive freshwater dune system in the world. The lake has 300,000 acres of dunes along its shoreline.
12. Waves of more than 40 feet in height have been recorded on Lake Superior. This is a July 15, 2021 contributed photo of Lake Michigan at Indiana Dunes National Park.
13. Michigan's state stone is named the Petoskey stone. It is composed of fossilized coral and is the only place in the world such stones can be found.
14. Babe Ruth hit his first major league home run in Toronto at Hanlan's Point Stadium. The ball landed in Lake Ontario and was never found.
15. A lake on Saturn's moon Titan is named after Lake Ontario. It is called Ontario Lacus.
16. Not only is Lake Erie the smallest Great Lake when it comes to volume of water, but it also has the most industry surrounding it. Twenty metropolitan areas, each with a population of more than 75,000, are along the lake's shoreline.
19. Singapore, Michigan, is a ghost town on the shores of Lake Michigan that was buried under sand in 1871. Because of extremely severe weather conditions and a lack of resources at the time due to the need to rebuild Chicago after that city's huge fires, the town was lost completely.
20. Lake Michigan was the location of the first recorded big Great Lakes disaster, in which a large lake's steamer with more than 600 people aboard collided with a schooner delivering timber to Chicago. The result was that 450 people died.
21. The Keystone State was one of the largest and most luxurious wooden steamships running during the Civil War. In 1861, it disappeared. In 2013, it was found in 175 feet of water just 30 miles from Harrisville, Michigan.
22. Scientists believe that Lake Erie has 2% of the water in the Great Lakes, yet is home to about half of all the fish.
23. Lake Huron has the most shoreline of any of the Great Lakes. This shoreline is 3,817 miles when you include its 30,000 islands. The Blue Water Bridge stands over the mouth of Lake Huron, where it flows into the St. Clair River in Port Huron.
24. Some people in Cleveland claim to have seen strange things on Lake Erie. There have been quite a few reports indicating they have seen, at times, the Canadian shoreline as if it were just offshore. However, it is more than 50 miles distant. It has been surmised that this is a weather-rated phenomenon, just like the desert mirage.
Gene Ware is the author of 10 books. He serves on the board of the Presque Isle Light Station and is past chairman of the boards of the Tom Ridge Center Foundation and the Presque Isle Partnership. Email him at ware906@gmail.com. This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Shipwrecks, shorelines and other facts about the Great Lakes
Democrats must defeat Republicans who serve at the will of the gun lobby.
Robert Emmett Curran Fri, June 3, 2022
In the wake of the latest slaughter of innocents in Uvalde, Texas, Republicans have rolled out their absurd talking points about the impossibility of passing any legislation which would regulate the access to guns, including the banning of military-style weapons which are, by far, the preference of those bent on maximizing casualties in their murderous rampages.
Central to their rationale for doing nothing is the so-called constitutional foundation for unfettered gun rights. As Senator Kevin Kramer of North Dakota declaimed immediately after the carnage in Uvalde: “It is a fundamental right for law-abiding citizens to protect themselves with firearms.” All these gun rights, of course, Republican apologists find enshrined in the Second Amendment. But by any literal reading of that amendment, with its vital conditioning phrase “A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state,” one is hard pressed to establish any individual rights to possess arms. And, indeed, until the current century, the Supreme Court had not attempted to do so. Then came Heller v. the District of Columbia in which a libertarian-oriented court, following the gun lobby, discovered an individual right which all its predecessors had failed to find. Former Chief Justice Warren Berger declared such an interpretation to be “one of the greatest pieces of fraud” ever perpetrated upon the American people.
Heller opened the floodgates for Republican-controlled legislatures to declare open season on gun restrictions. Now, with a new case challenging New York State’s banning the unconcealed wearing of weapons in public spaces, it seems inevitable that the conservative majority on the Supreme Court will decide that individuals have the inherent right to openly display weapons wherever they so choose.
The Court has taken us to this terrible place before. In March of 1857, Chief Justice Roger Taney, in the notorious Dred Scott v. Sandford decision, spoke for the Court’s majority in ruling that Congress had no power to ban slaveowners from taking their human property into any territory of the United States. Slave owners and their advocates hailed Taney’s ruling as a constitutional guarantee of the unrestricted right to take their bonded labor wherever opportunity or necessity bade them.
Four years later, with civil war imminent, Abraham Lincoln, in his inaugural address, pointed out that, in our form of government, the Supreme Court need not have the last word. “If the policy of the Government is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court,” Lincoln noted, “the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that . . . tribunal.” The president was reminding that Congress, the branch most beholden to the people, had the power to negate Dred Scott by their own legislation.
Once the war began, little by little, Congress began to whittle away at slave holders’ rights. In June of 1862, Congress took the decisive step of nullifying the Dred Scott v. Sanford decision itself by emancipating all slaves in the country’s ten territories.
We are now in our own civil war, divided by propaganda and disinformation. Every mass killing that gains national attention drives a paranoid minority to stockpile ever more guns, especially military-style ones. In a society ruled by politicians and judges to whom power, money, and individualism are the only things that matter, it should surprise no one that the gun culture prevails.
It need not be that way. The only way to break the gridlock that prevents Congress from taking the actions it desperately needs to take is for Democrats to defeat enough Republicans who serve at the pleasure of the gun industry. Given our current corrupt campaign financing awash with dark money, that will not be easy. But the Democrats’ great advantage is that voters overwhelmingly favor major gun reform such as universal background checks, as well as bans on assault weapons and ghost guns. For the upcoming mid-terms, Democrats need to laser focus on the Republicans’ anti-democratic and gun-crazy proclivities that have become such existential threats to our republic. More than ever, failure is not an option.
Robert Emmett Curran, Professor of History Emeritus at Georgetown University, is the author of the forthcoming American Catholics and the Quest for Equality in the Civil War Era.
ABOLISH THE DEATH PENALTY
Myanmar says it will carry out first executions in decades
GRANT PECK Fri, June 3, 2022
BANGKOK (AP) — Myanmar’s military-installed government announced Friday that it will execute a former lawmaker from ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s party and a veteran pro-democracy activist convicted of violating the country’s Counter-Terrorism Law, local media reported Friday.
Two online news outlets, Voice of Myanmar and NP News, said two other men convicted of killing a woman they believed was an informer for the military will also be executed, in addition to former lawmaker Phyo Zeya Thaw and activist Kyaw Min Yu, also known as Ko Jimmy.
Government spokesperson Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun was cited as saying the decision to carry out the hangings was confirmed after legal appeals by the four were rejected.
He was cited as saying the executions will go ahead in accordance with prison procedures. According to the law, executions must be approved by the head of the government. He did not say when the executions would be carried out.
The United Nations, which has advocated against the death penalty, called the Myanmar military’s decision to execute the two pro-democracy activists “a blatant violation” of the right to life, liberty and security guaranteed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Secretary-General Antonio Guterres reiterates his calls for all charges to be dropped against those arrested for exercising their fundamental freedoms and rights and for all political prisoners in Myanmar to be released immediately.
The U.N. chief also calls for people’s rights to freedom of opinion and expression to be respected, and stresses that “the Universal Declaration of Human Rights enshrines the principles of equality before the law, the presumption of innocence, the right to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, and all of the guarantees necessary for a person’s defense,” Dujarric said.
The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, which tracks arrests and state-conducted killings, says Myanmar courts have handed down death sentences to 114 political offenders, including two children, since the army seized power from Suu Kyi's elected government in February last year.
Last year’s army takeover triggered nationwide popular protests, which turned into a low-level insurgency after nonviolent demonstrations were met with deadly force by the security forces. The Assistance Association estimates that 1,887 civilians have died at the hands of police and the military in crackdowns against opponents of military rule.
Some resistance groups have engaged in assassinations, drive-by shootings and bombings in urban areas. The mainstream opposition organizations generally disavow such activities, while supporting armed resistance in rural areas, which are more often subject to brutal military attacks.
The last judicial execution to be carried out in Myanmar is generally believed to have been of another political offender, student leader Salai Tin Maung Oo, in 1976 under a previous military government led by dictator Ne Win.
In 2014, the sentences of prisoners on death row were commuted to life imprisonment, but several dozen convicts received death sentences between then and last year’s takeover.
Phyo Zeya Thaw, the former lawmaker, also known as Maung Kyaw, and Kyaw Min Yu were given death sentences under the country’s Counterterrorism Law in January this year by a closed military court. They were found guilty of offenses involving explosives, bombings and financing terrorism.
Phyo Zeya Thaw had been a hip-hop musician before becoming as a member of Generation Wave, a political movement formed in 2007.
He was arrested last November on a charge of possessing weapons and ammunition, according to a report in a state-run newspaper at the time. It said he was arrested on the basis of information from people detained a day earlier for shooting security personnel.
Other statements from the military accused him of being a key figure in a network of dozens of people who allegedly carried out what the military described as “terrorist” attacks in Yangon, the country’s biggest city.
He previously was jailed in 2008 under another military government after being accused of illegal association and possession of foreign currency.
Kyaw Min Yu is one of the leaders of the 88 Generation Students Group, veterans of a failed 1988 popular uprising against military rule.
He has been active politically since then, and spent more than a dozen years behind bars. He was arrested in Yangon last October.
The state-run media said Kyaw Min Yu has been accused of “conducting terrorism acts including mine attacks to undermine the state stability” and of heading a group called “Moon Light Operation” to carry out urban guerrilla attacks.
He had been put on a wanted list for social media postings that allegedly incited unrest.
The other two men sentenced to die, Hla Myo Aung and Aung Thura Zaw, were convicted in April last year of allegedly torturing and killing a woman in Yangon. They targeted her as an alleged military informer and killed her in March 2021, according to an April 2021 statement from the Office of the Commander-in-Chief of Defense Services.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis reaches disgraceful new low in bullying Special Olympics | Opinion
Mike Freeman, USA TODAY
One of the hallmarks of a bully, of a cruel human being, is attacking people who don't always have the political power or resources to defend themselves. We saw a good example of this in 2019, when the Trump administration, in a remarkably cold move, attempted to kill federal funding for the Special Olympics.
If you've never seen the Special Olympics, which gives athletes with certain intellectual disabilities the opportunity to compete in several different events, it is a remarkable thing to watch. These Olympics don't just represent the best of sports. They represent the best of humanity.
The motto of the Special Olympics is: “Let me win, but if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt.”
So, with cruelty, coldness and exuberant indifference being the genome of the Trump Era, it wasn't a surprise when billionaire Betsy DeVos, former U.S. Secretary of Education, proposed cutting the $17.6 million budget of the Special Olympics.
Reported The Washington Post at the time: “Do you know how many kids are going to be affected by that cut?" Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) asked DeVos at a House hearing.
DeVos replied that she didn't. “I’ll answer for you,” he said. “It's 272,000 kids.”
The cruelty was the point then. Fast forward to just a few years later and another bully. The cruelty is also the point now when it comes to the actions of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis
It is true that DeSantis' cruelty and white nationalist-adjacency go beyond attacking the vulnerable. He attacks corporations and Major League Baseball teams. His actions, however, involving the Special Olympics are particularly awful.
The state of Florida threatened to fine the Special Olympics $27.5 million for requiring 5,500 participants at the USA Games in Orlando this weekend to be vaccinated against COVID. That threat caused the organization to drop the mandate, a mandate that potentially saves lives.
“We don’t want to fight,” the Special Olympics said in a statement. “We want to play.”
Like the Trump administration before him, DeSantis displayed a level of cruelty toward Special Olympians that is almost impossible to believe. But it's real.
DeSantis and his cultists will say the Special Olympics weren't following the law. But authoritarians like him don't really care about the law. He's in a culture war, building up his extremist CV to appeal to extremists and brutality fetishists.
In the past, DeSantis has appealed to racists and other Cro-Magnon types. With his actions in the case of the Special Olympics, he's appealing to anti-vaxxers. This group lacks critical thinking skills, but some of them do figure out how to work a voting machine, and DeSantis wants every voter he can get. Even the ones who diD tHEir OwNN rESSeArcH.
Two days after a gunman killed 19 children and two adults at a Texas elementary school, the team said it would donate $50,000 to Everytown for Gun Safety. The group pushes for programs aimed at reducing gun violence.
"This cannot be normal," the Rays' tweet read. "We cannot become numb. We cannot look the other way. We all know, if nothing changes, nothing changes."
DeSantis' bullying ranges from kids to Disney to the LGBTQ community. But what he did to Special Olympians goes beyond bullying. It's possibly extremely dangerous.
Two years ago, a large study out of the UK showed that people with Down Syndrome who get COVID are four times more likely to be hospitalized, and 10 times more likely to die, than the general population. Studies since then have buttressed that research. Down Syndrome, or trisomy 21, is a genetic disorder caused by abnormal cell division that produces an extra chromosome.
The CDC last year updated its guidelines to include people with Down Syndrome at increased risk for severe COVID disease. By requiring that Special Olympians get vaccinated, you lower the risk of them catching COVID. This is highly elementary stuff.
But not in DeSantis' world. In DeSantis' world, you use whatever you can to make a political point. Even if it's disgusting. Even if it's horrible. Even if it's potentially deadly.
Power to the People: A path forward out of the climate crisis
Neil Ever Osborne
Power to the People: A path forward out of the climate crisis
A post-carbon future is possible through self-determination.
That’s the central message emanating from the documentary series entitled Power to the People that follows activist Melina Laboucan-Massimo across Canada as she visits Indigenous communities revolutionizing the clean energy transition in response to the climate crisis.
That rationale for optimism is because these solutions already exist, according to Laboucan-Massimo, who hosts the 13-part episodic series that depicts how Indigenous communities are using renewable energy initiatives involving wind, solar, tidal, biomass, and geothermal to generate their own independent power.
From her traditional homelands in Little Buffalo, AB, Laboucan-Massimo knows too well the consequences of fossil fuel extraction, as Episode 1 examines through a first-hand account of an oil spill.
“The community wasn’t even told of the immensity of this spill until five days after … so I set out to find a helicopter to at least fly over so we could take pictures from the air. We wrote up a press release and every major media outlet in Canada came because it was one of the biggest oil spills in Canada’s history.”
Power to the People oil spill
28,000 barrels of crude oil — 4.5 million litres – stained the land and rivers close to Laboucan-Massimo’s community near Little Buffalo, AB. (Image provided by Power to the People)
But, Laboucan-Massimo and the series don’t linger on the past for long. There’s too many success stories to focus on instead. Net-zero housing, run-of-river hydroelectric projects, and green transportation initiatives are uncovered in Power to the People, among other solution stories that set the course towards energy autonomy — all being shaped by Indigenous values, cultures, and communities.
“We need to be the leaders in our own projects” Laboucan-Massimo says in Episode 2. What she means is that at the crux of the climate crisis is the need to paint a picture of the path forward.
Power to the People does just that.
Power to the People
New Episodes Weekly from June 17-July 22
Read a summary of the upcoming episodes below and check back weekly to see updated links for new chapters of the Power to the People documentary series.
June 17Episode 1: Little Buffalo Growing up in the Lubicon Lake Band in Little Buffalo, AB, Melina Laboucan-Massimo has experienced the detrimental effects of oil sands extraction. Today, it has made her one of Canada’s leading climate change campaigners and the host of Power to the People.
June 24Episode 2: Gull Bay For some remote Indigenous communities north of Thunder Bay, connecting to the Ontario hydro grid will never be a reality. Gull Bay First Nation found the means to create their own ‘micro grid’ using solar energy to offset their use of diesel power.
July 1Episode 3: Atlin There are roughly 300 off grid Indigenous communities across Canada, who continue to rely on diesel-generated power. The Taku River Tlingit Nation in northern BC is one of the few First Nations who have successfully replaced diesel power through their implementation of clean, renewable energy.
July 8Episode 4: Six Nations Home to the largest First Nations population in Canada, Six Nations of the Grand River established a corporation to manage economic opportunities on behalf of their people. That effort now sees Six Nations invested in some of the largest wind and solar power plants in the nation.
July 15Episode 5: Haida Gwaii Surrounded by the Pacific Ocean and off the BC hydro grid, the Haida Nation relies on diesel generators to power their communities. Now, a homegrown group is looking to the wind, sun, and sea to offset their reliance on fossil fuels.
July 22Episode 6: Tofino Geothermal energy is generated by heat stored below the earth’s surface. The Tla-o-qui-aht Nation is harnessing this renewable energy through a geoexchange system to cost effectively heat and cool their homes and buildings.
To learn more about the Power to the People documentary visit powertothepeople.tv
