Tuesday, December 17, 2024

Scientists artificially inseminate leopard sharks to boost diversity

By AFP
December 16, 2024


A leopard shark is released back into the aquarium after being artificially inseminated with wild leopard shark sperm at Sydney Aquarium - Copyright AFP Saeed KHAN

A black-and-cream leopard shark enters a hypnotic-like state of relaxation as scientists at Sydney Aquarium carefully roll her onto her back in a small pool.

The shark, named Zimba, is one of the first captive leopard sharks in the world to be artificially inseminated with the sperm of wild sharks in an attempt to build populations around the world.

If the process is successful, Zimba’s shark pups will be sent to the Raja Ampat region in Indonesia, where the local population is on the brink of extinction due to unsustainable fishing practices and habitat destruction.

Artificial insemination allows sharks that would never normally interact to breed and increase genetic diversity, said SEA LIFE Australia and New Zealand regional coordinator Laura Simmons.

Simmons hopes that eventually the leopard shark population will be “genetically viable and capable of maintaining a self-sustaining population in the wild”.

That could take years, she told AFP, but “this is one step closer to where we need to be”.

The procedure is one part of a larger worldwide leopard shark breeding programme, known as StAR, that involves more than 60 conservation groups, aquariums and government agencies.

Globally, about 37 percent of oceanic shark and ray species, including the leopard shark, are now listed as either endangered or critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, a global database for threatened species.



– ‘Species belongs outside’ –



Australia’s leopard shark populations remain plentiful and of least concern, and scientists hope they can help bolster the numbers in other regions.

Back at the Sydney Aquarium pool, Ocean Park Hong Kong’s chief veterinarian Paolo Martelli inserts a metal tube filled with the sperm of wild leopard sharks into Zimba’s underside.

The shark is still in a natural state called tonic immobility — a relaxed condition that allows scientists to work without getting injured.

The whole process takes a matter of minutes and everyone claps and cheers once it is over. Zimba is flipped back onto her stomach and swims around the pool as if nothing happened.

Martelli is using a technique he developed and has successfully used on other species, but this is the first time it has been used on leopard sharks.

“It’s not straightforward,” he said.

Martelli and his team collected the sperm of wild leopard sharks off the coast of Queensland — which has a large shark population — and brought the precious cargo to Sydney.

Only three of four samples taken survived the journey.

“This species belongs in outside habitats, not in a museum,” Martelli said.

But as the shark’s habitat declines, scientists must give a “helping hand” in protecting and conserving this valuable species, he added.

“It is safe to say that sharks have suffered a lot in the last century.”

Gerry Adams to stand civil trial in 2026 over IRA bombs


By AFP
December 16, 2024

Former Irish republican leader Gerry Adams will defend himself at the civil trial 
- Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP Andrew Harnik

Politician Gerry Adams, whose Sinn Fein party was once the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, will stand trial in 2026 in a civil case brought by IRA bomb victims, England’s High Court ruled Monday.

The case will go to trial between February and June 2026 and the former republican leader will defend himself, it was confirmed at a case management hearing at London’s Royal Courts of Justice.

“Finally after five decades, for the first time Adams will appear in person in an English Court to be cross-examined by the victims of his alleged leadership of the IRA’s terror campaign,” said Matt Jury, a member of the law firm representing the victims.

The case claims that Adams “oversaw the indiscriminate bombing of civilians” during Northern Ireland’s Troubles, the decades-long sectarian conflict over British rule.

Mary Louise McDonald replaced Adams as Sinn Fein president in 2018, becoming the leftist party’s first leader not connected to the Troubles.

The three claimants are John Clark, a victim of the 1973 Old Bailey bombing; Jonathan Ganesh, a victim of the 1996 London Docklands bombing; and Barry Laycock, a victim of the 1996 Arndale shopping centre bombing in Manchester.

They are suing Adams for nominal damages of £1 ($1.26) in a trial that is expected to last seven days.

During the three decades of unrest in Northern Ireland more than 3,500 people were killed until a landmark peace deal in 1998.

IRA bombings over that time targeted sites in Northern Ireland and the UK mainland, including high-profile locations such as the Houses of Parliament, 10 Downing Street, Oxford Street, Harrod’s, Hyde Park and Regent’s Park.

Adams went from being the IRA’s political voice, reviled by the British government and Northern Ireland’s unionists, to playing peacemaker to bring violence to an end.

More recently he has become an anti-austerity figurehead in Ireland and cultivated a more kindly image on social media, often posting about dogs, and has even published a recipe book.

A US farm breeds pigs for human kidney transplants


By AFP
December 17, 2024

Young genetically altered pigs walk past a ball in their pens at the Revivicor research farm in Blacksburg, Virginia on November 20, 2024 - Copyright AFP Andrew Caballero-Reynolds
Ulysse BELLIER

On a farm in the southern US state of Virginia, David Ayares and his research teams are breeding genetically modified pigs to transplant their organs into human patients.

Revivicor, the biotech company Ayares leads, is at the forefront of xenotransplantation research — the implantation of animal organs into humans — which aims to solve a chronic organ shortage that has thousands of Americans dying each year.

It was on this farm that Revivicor bred a pig whose kidney was recently transplanted into patient Towana Looney, according to an announcement made Tuesday by a New York hospital.

“It’s just an exciting time,” Ayares told AFP during a recent tour of the research farm.

The pigs are genetically modified to make their organs less likely to be rejected by patients’ immune systems.

“These pigs are not typical farm pigs,” said Ayares, as he cradled several pink piglets in his arms. “Millions of dollars have gone into the production of these genetics, and so they’re very high-value animals.”

The kidneys may one day sell for $1 million.

For more than 20 years, Revivicor in Blacksburg, Virginia has been conducting research to turn pig-to-human transplantation from science fiction to life-saving medical care.

In the United States alone, more than 100,000 people are on the transplant list and thousands die every year waiting, most often for a kidney, according to health authorities.



– ‘Little room for recognition’ –



Since 2021, several US surgeons have successfully transplanted genetically modified pig kidneys and hearts into humans, most of them supplied by Revivicor. Another key provider is the biotech firm eGenesis.

The first trials were carried out on brain-dead people, before the procedure was attempted on a handful of seriously ill patients.

While those patients died within weeks of the operation, the animal organs they received were not immediately rejected by their immune systems, which scientists hailed as a promising sign.

In a dark laboratory several kilometers away from the research farm, Todd Vaught, head of cell biology at Revivicor, has his eyes glued to a microscope.

With a pipette, he pierces a pig egg to remove its DNA and replace it with cells that have “all the instructions needed to make a genetically modified pig.”

A few hours later, the edited eggs are implanted into sows. Four months later new litters are born.

While xenotransplantation research is happening in various parts of the world, the United States is a clear leader in the field.

French sociologist Catherine Rene criticized what she characterizes as mistreatment of the pigs as merely vessels for organs destined for humans.

“Ultimately, there is very little room for recognition of the donor animal, of the gift that is made,” Rene told AFP.

Ayares disagreed.

“Hundreds of millions of pigs are used every year as food,” Ayares said. “I would argue that this is a much higher calling for that pig organ to be used for transplantation.”



– Million dollar price tag –



The first line of pigs developed by Revivicor carried only one genome edit meant to deactivate the animal’s production of a substance that causes people to reject the transplanted organ.

The second has 10 modified genes, six of which come from human DNA in order to improve biological compatibility.

It is with this second line of pigs that United Therapeutics (UT), Revivicor’s parent company, is thinking big.

In March, the publicly traded company opened another medical facility near Blacksburg where, in a brand-new operating room, pigs’ kidneys will be removed and prepared for transfer to the receiving patient.

The rest of the pig will be discarded.

Spokesman Dewey Steadman said the facility has “rigorous controls” in place to prevent any infection of the 200 animals being kept there.

The company’s goal is to begin several years of clinical studies on patients in 2025 and, if the Food and Drug Administration gives the green light, to begin full-scale production of genetically modified pigs in 2029.

UT is already planning to invest billions of dollars into building more and bigger facilities.

The company is considering selling kidneys for around $1 million each, which is close to the cost of 10 years of dialysis for patients in the United States, according to Steadman.

Making pig kidneys available to a large number of patients will not be an easy task in the United States, which lacks universal health care.

But Ayares hopes that with health insurance, “the patient is not bearing a million dollars… price tag.”


Something in the air: Most polluted city in the UK revealed


By Dr. Tim Sandle
December 17, 2024
DIGITAL JOURNAL

Princes Square, Wolverhampton - the most polluted city in the UK. Image by Steven J at the English-language, CC3 .0

A new study has named Wolverhampton the most polluted city in the UK with the highest level of air pollution and absolute absence of cleanliness. Britain’s capital and the largest city, London rounds out the top 5 with significant air quality challenges and high water pollution levels.

The firm Waste Direct constructed the list of the most polluted cities in the UK through a survey-based approach. Key metrics included air pollution with the highest given weight, drinking water pollution and inaccessibility data, and the percentage of dissatisfaction with garbage disposal, as well as the level of dirtiness and tidiness.

Additional metrics such as noise and light pollution, water pollution, and dissatisfaction level of green spaces and parks were also considered contributing to composite score calculation.

The data was taken from Numbeo and World Population Review to create a deep analysis of urban environmental challenges. The detailed data was provided to Digital Journal for review.

The outcomes were, in terms of the top ten worst urban offenders:Wolverhampton
Coventry
Portsmouth
Manchester
London
Bath
Birmingham
Southampton
Sunderland
Luton

As indicated above, Wolverhampton tops the list as the UK’s most polluted city with a composite score of 80. The city reports maximum dirtiness and untidiness levels with an absolute score of 100 and significant air pollution, and high garbage disposal dissatisfaction rates. Wolverhampton’s high noise pollution at 83 and poor green space accessibility ensure its position as the UK’s dirtiest city.

Coventry ranks second among the least clean UK cities, scoring 69. The city shows concerning levels across all metrics, particularly with notable dirtiness ratings at 61. Its high noise pollution level and growing dissatisfaction over garbage disposal services highlight the city’s problems with urban environmental quality.

Portsmouth holds third place with a composite score of 68. The city faces issues with urban cleanliness, scoring high in dirtiness and untidiness. Portsmouth’s garbage disposal dissatisfaction rate of 55 and moderate air quality issues contribute to its high ranking among the most polluted cities.

Manchester secures fourth position with a score of 67. The city has high dirtiness ratings at 61 and troubling air quality metrics at 51. With a population of over 395,000, Manchester’s dense urban environment leads to regular challenges, mainly seen in its poor waste management satisfaction scores.

London ranks fifth with a composite score of 63. Being the largest city with over 7.5 million residents, London’s position is ensured due to its high air pollution level at 63, significant noise and light pollution, and moderate water quality issues.

Bath takes sixth place with a score of 63 and Birmingham, England’s second-largest city, ranks seventh with a score of 62. Southampton holds the eighth position with a score of 61. The city’s cleanliness issues are mostly connected with its water pollution levels at 50 and lack of proper air quality.

Sunderland comes ninth place, scoring 59. The city’s biggest problems are its poor water quality and high cleanliness issues at 75. Luton completes the top 10 polluted cities list with a score of 58. The city’s environmental problems result from its poor urban cleanliness and concerning noise pollution levels. Luton faces challenges with garbage management and water quality while having relatively better air quality compared to other cities in the ranking.

Whaling activist Watson freed after Denmark rejects extradition


By AFP
December 17, 2024


Copyright AFP Leiff Josefsen
Camille BAS-WOHLERT

Anti-whaling activist Paul Watson was on Tuesday released from detention in Greenland, after Denmark decided to refuse a Japanese extradition request over a 2010 clash with whalers.

Watson has been held since July when his ship docked in Nuuk — the capital of the Danish autonomous territory — on a 2012 Japanese warrant, which accuses him of causing damage to a whaling ship and injuring a whaler.

Greenland police said in a statement that following the Ministry of Justice’s decision in the case of extradition for Paul Watson, the 74-year-old was released at 08:46 am local time (1046 GMT).

“He is free. We’ve just been informed by the Ministry of Justice, he’s not going to be extradited,” Watson’s lawyer Julie Stage told AFP.

Watson, who featured in the reality TV series “Whale Wars”, founded Sea Shepherd and the Captain Paul Watson Foundation (CPWF) and is known for radical tactics including confrontations with whaling ships at sea.

According to documents viewed by AFP, Denmark reached its decision while considering the duration of Watson’s detention following his arrest and the time it would take for a possible extradition to be carried out.

The ministry also considered “the fact that the acts for which extradition is sought are more than 14 years ago, and the nature of the acts in general.”

“The decision is based on an overall assessment of the circumstances of the specific case,” the ministry said in a statement.

Contacted by AFP, Japanese foreign ministry officials in charge of the issue were not immediately available for comment.

– Tried to silence –

Watson was arrested on July 21, when his ship was on its way to “intercept” a new Japanese whaling factory vessel in the North Pacific, according to the CPWF.

Tokyo accuses Watson of injuring a Japanese crew member with a stink bomb intended to disrupt the whalers’ activities during a Sea Shepherd clash with the Shonan Maru 2 vessel in 2010.

Watson’s lawyers have said they have video footage proving the crew member was not on deck when the stink bomb was thrown.

“Japan tried to silence a man whose only crime was to denounce the illegality of the industrial massacre disguised as scientific research,” one of his lawyers, Francois Zimeray, told AFP.

Zimeray added that Watson “will now be able to resume his fight for respect for nature.”

Zimeray has previously argued that Watson would not get a fair trial in Japan.

“In Japan, there is a presumption of guilt,” he told AFP, adding: “Prosecutors are proud to announce that they have a 99.6 percent conviction rate.”

In September, Watson’s lawyers contacted the UN special rapporteur on environmental defenders, claiming that he could be “subjected to inhumane treatment” in Japanese prisons.

– ‘Not over’ –

Danish Minister of Justice Peter Hummelgaard, stressed that “this decision does not mean that Denmark shares the concerns that have been raised in certain circles about the Japanese legal system and the protection of human rights in Japan in relation to this specific case.”

“Japan is a democratic state that respects fundamental human rights. There has also been a good and close dialogue with the Japanese authorities,” Hummelgaard said.

In a rare public comment on the case, Japan’s Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya has said that the extradition request was “an issue of law enforcement at sea rather than a whaling issue”.

Jean Tamalet, also a lawyer for Watson, told AFP that “the fight is not over.”

“We will now have to challenge the red notice and the Japanese arrest warrant, to ensure that Captain Paul Watson can once again travel the world in complete peace of mind, and never experience a similar episode again,” Tamalet said.

Watson wants to return to France, where he had been living since July 2023 and where his two young children attend school. He requested French citizenship in October.

Watson’s legal woes have attracted support from the public and activists, including prominent British conservationist Jane Goodall, who has urged French President Emmanuel Macron to grant him political asylum.

Anti-whaling activist Paul Watson freed after Denmark rejects Japan's extradition request

Eloise Goldsmith,
 Common Dreams
December 17, 2024 1

Environmental activist Paul Watson looks on after getting released from prison in Nuuk, Greenland, December 17, 2024. Alataq Moeller/Ritzau Scanpix/via REUTERS

The prominent anti-whaling activist Paul Watson was released Tuesday from prison in Greenland after Danish officials rejected a request by Japan to extradite him.

Watson was arrested in Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark, in July due to a warrant issued by Japan in 2012, which alleged that Watson had interfered with a Japanese whaling vessel and caused injury to a crew member in 2010, according to The New York Times. He could have faced up to 15 years in jail if convicted.



"I am certainly relieved as this means I get to see my two little boys. That's really been my only concern this entire time. I understand the risks of what we do and sometimes you get arrested—although I am proud of the fact that I have never been convicted of a crime," Watson told the Guardian. Watson's two sons are aged three and eight.

To the outlet AFP, he said: "My arrest has focused international attention on Japan's continuing illegal whaling operations and their intent to go back to the Southern Ocean... So, in fact, these five months have been an extension of the campaign."

Watson, a Canadian American who co-founded Greenpeace and founded Sea Shepherd—a group that uses direct action to protect marine wildlife and oceans—was traveling in July with 25 volunteers on a mission to the North Pacific for the Captain Paul Watson Foundation (CPWF), which he started after leaving Sea Shepherd in 2022. When the vessel arrived in Nuuk, Greenland to refuel, Danish police arrested him.

The CPWF denounced the surprise arrest, which came as Watson planned to intercept a new Japanese factory whaling ship.

Watson was also featured in the Animal Planet television show Whale Wars that ran from 2008 until 2015, in which he led efforts to disrupt Japanese whaling on the high seas.

Japan has a long, complicated history with whaling. Whale meat was seen as an important protein for the country after World War II. Japan joined the International Whaling Commission, an international body that placed a moratorium on commercial whaling in the 1980s, in 1951. In 2019, Japan left the body and began catching whales commercially the same year, according to the International Whaling Commission.


In 2014, the International Court of Justice ruled against Japan in a case involving charges that Japan was using a scientific research program as a front for a commercial whaling venture in the Antarctic.

Japan ‘regrets’ release of anti-whaling activist Watson


By AFP
December 17, 2024

Japan’s government voiced dismay on Wednesday over the release of anti-whaling activist Paul Watson after Danish authorities refused Tokyo’s extradition request.

The Sea Shepherd founder was arrested in Greenland in July on a Japanese warrant for damages caused during the group’s high-seas battles to stop its “scientific” whale hunts in the 2010s.

“It is regrettable that the Denmark government did not accept Japan’s request of passing him over and (the government) has conveyed this to the Danish side,” said top government spokesman Yoshimasa Hayashi.

“The suspect Paul Watson is wanted internationally as an accomplice of the February 2010 incident where activists of anti-whaling organisation Sea Shepherd injured members of Japanese whalers and damaged properties after an arrest warrant was issued,” Hayashi said.

“The Japanese government will continue to deal with it appropriately based on law and evidence,” he told reporters at a regular briefing.

Authorities in Greenland — a Danish autonomous territory — released the 74-year-old Canadian-American activist on Tuesday after Copenhagen turned down Tokyo’s request to bring him to Japan.

Watson, who featured in the reality TV series “Whale Wars”, founded Sea Shepherd and the Captain Paul Watson Foundation (CPWF) and is known for radical tactics in confrontations with whaling ships at sea.

In the 2000s and 2010s activists played a rough high-seas game of cat and mouse with Japanese ships as they sought to slaughter hundreds of whales every year for “scientific purposes”.

Japan eventually halted its hunts in the Antarctic and North Pacific and since 2019 has only caught whales in its territorial waters and exclusive economic zone.

In May, Japan launched a new “mother ship”, the Kangei Maru, to butcher the 200 marine mammals that its fleet plans to catch this year and store their meat.

The CPWF says that its vessel the John Paul DeJoria was on its way to intercept the Kangei Maru when Watson was arrested.

Activists believe that in building the new ship, Japan intends to resume whaling in the Southern Ocean, but the company operating the vessel has denied this.

– ‘Inhumane treatment’ –

Watson’s legal woes have attracted support from the public and activists, including prominent British conservationist Jane Goodall, who has urged French President Emmanuel Macron to grant him political asylum.

In September, Watson’s lawyers contacted the UN special rapporteur on environmental defenders, claiming that he could be “subjected to inhumane treatment” in Japanese prisons.

“My arrest has focused international attention on Japan’s continuing illegal whaling operations and their intent to go back to the Southern Ocean… So, in fact, these five months have been an extension of the campaign,” Watson told AFP on Tuesday after his release.

Jean Tamalet, one of his lawyers, told AFP that “the fight is not over.”

“We will now have to challenge the red notice and the Japanese arrest warrant, to ensure that Captain Paul Watson can once again travel the world in complete peace of mind, and never experience a similar episode again,” Tamalet said.

Japanese government has been tight-lipped throughout Watson’s incarceration.

In a rare public comment on the case, Japan’s Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya said in October that the extradition request was “an issue of law enforcement at sea rather than a whaling issue”.

burs-stu/hmn



The Teamsters and “Operation Wetback”



 December 17, 2024
Facebook

Newly re-elected President Donald Trump pledged in a recent interview that, “On day one, I will launch the largest deportation program of criminals in the history of America.” He wants to deport anywhere from fifteen to twenty million people, mostly from Latin American countries. “Criminals” for Trump is a broad slander against undocumented workers. He plans to use the U.S. military — along with state and local law enforcement agencies — and backed by the legal authority of a host of repressive federal laws, including the Enemies Aliens Act of 1798 to carry out what would be the largest attack on the U.S. working class in this century.

There would be few areas of the country, including workplaces, schools, and communities that would not be touched by such a sweeping, militaristic assault. With the prospect of mass deportations by the incoming Trump administration on the horizon, what will the Teamsters — the country’s most Trump — aligned union stand on the issue? The Teamsters like to boast that they represent every kind of worker, they are nearly union federation unto themselves. Will the Teamsters defend undocumented workers in their own ranks and the broader working class from the Trump administration?

Looking back on the union’s history, we should be greatly worried. The Teamsters have a terrible record defending undocumented workers, especially during the 1950’s “Operation Wetback,” which Donald Trump has enthused about publicly.

Anti-Mexican Racism

Screen shot from the Internet Archive

“Wetback” was and is the racist term used to describe Mexican workers who cross the Rio Grande in to U.S. territory. Beginning in February 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower implemented one of the largest scale deportations of workers in U.S. history, many of whom entered the United States legally decades beforehand. Dwight Eisenhower, the WWII hero, is lamented these days as the kind of moderate Republican and public servant that has disappeared from the Republican Party during the Trump era.

Yet his administration’s luridly racist named “Operation Wetback” revealed how deeply ingrained anti-Mexican racism was — and still is — in U.S. culture and politics. Mexican immigrants were portrayed as lazy, docile, criminal-minded, undermining “American wages,” and sinister communist agitators. These racist tropes persist to the day — in one form or another — though “communist” has been replaced with “terrorist.” Chicago Tribune columnist Ron Grossman writing earlier this year reported:

Prominent U.S. senators were troubled by a government program that allowed some Mexican workers to enter the country legally. Sens. Herbert Lehman, D-N.Y., and Hubert Humphrey, D-Minn., the Tribune reported, “charged that the recruitment program makes it easy for Communists and other subversives to enter the United States.” Lehman estimated the daily flow of troublemakers as “perhaps many hundreds.”

Operation Wetback wasn’t woven out of thin, it built upon the more neutral sounding, but equally racist and terrorizing Mexican “repatriation” program under President Herbert Hoover in the early years of the Great Depression. Eisenhower’s Attorney General Herbert Brownell and Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) — the predecessor to today’s Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) both made well publicized visits to California, and other border states to sound the alarm about the alleged, but unfounded threat of “subversion” posed by Mexican immigrants.

Historian Erin Blakemore summarized Operation Wetback this way:

As many as 1.3 million people may have been swept up in the Eisenhower-era campaign with a racist name, which was designed to root out undocumented Mexicans from American society. The short-lived operation used military-style tactics to remove Mexican immigrants — some of them American citizens — from the United States. Though millions of Mexicans had legally entered the country through joint immigration programs in the first half of the 20th century, Operation Wetback was designed to send them back to Mexico.

Adam Goodman wrote in The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Expelling Immigrants:

The campaign depended not only on hundreds of Border Patrol agents organized in special mobile task forces, but also on local and state authorities and law enforcement officers, farmers and ranchers, and the media. It stoked and mobilized public fears that “wetbacks” propagated disease, committed crimes, drained the tax base, and degraded the labor standards and living conditions of domestic workers.

According to Goodman, the shape of the campaign was somewhat different when it shifted to the industrial Midwest, specifically, the Chicago area. He wrote:

Whereas the service [INS] relied on hundreds of Border Patrol officers and the use of light planes to locate large numbers of immigrants and jeeps and buses to apprehend them in the southwestern border region, in Midwestern metropolitan areas a relatively small number of agents conducted investigations and relied on tips from citizens and informants to carry out piecemeal deportation campaigns.

Dave Beck

Dave Beck, Teamster General President.

How did the Teamsters respond to Operation Wetback? Not only did the Teamsters, led by Dave Beck, support Eisenhower’s anti-immigrant crackdown but promoted the worst racism and anti-Communism in the ranks of the union.

The Teamsters were at the time led by Dave Beck, who became General President of the Teamsters unions in 1952, after a vicious behind the scenes battle to replace Dan Tobin, longtime leader of the union. While Tobin was a militant anti-Communist, who expelled the Minneapolis Trotskyists from the union, he was also a New Dealer and a supporter of Franklin Roosevelt. In fact, Roosevelt spoke at the 1944 Teamster convention dinner in Washington, D.C. Beck later revealed that he voted for Republican Presidential candidate Thomas Dewey in 1948 and Eisenhower in 1952. The Teamsters were becoming known as the Republican unions during this era.

In what was probably the most notorious issue of the International Teamster magazine ever, the front cover declared “The Wetback Menace: Drastic Imperative to Halt Dangerous Threat to American Security and Labor at Mexican Border.” It repeated all of the Eisenhower administration’s racist tropes against Mexicans, while expressing some concern about the unsafe living conditions, and poverty wages paid to migrant workers, much of which could have been solved by amnesty from the president, not pushing them further into the shadows or out of the country.

The Teamsters escalated the anti-Communist part of Operation Wetback by claiming that “100 Communists A Day Invade U.S. By Wetback Route.” The Teamsters article took a swipe at the mildly reformist government of Jacobo Árbenz in Guatemala. In display of Cold War paranoia, it claimed:

An increase in Communist activity in Central America, particularly in Guatemala, raises the problem of stricter security on the Mexican border for it is easy for the Guatemalan to enter the country disguised as a wetback. Once in the country, he can get on his way to carry out whatever mission the Communist party may have cut out for him.

Beck in his Letter from the General President column mused, I wonder if we could infiltrate behind the Iron Curtain as easily as Communists are getting into this country? He then went to argue:

News stories of recent weeks indicate the magnitude of the Communist threat in Central America. And we are getting, according to the testimony of our own government, hundreds of Communists coming via the wetback route. This poses a serious menace to our security which is two-fold; there is the immediate danger of Communists infiltrating our workforce and into our cities, and the economic situation created by American incompetence and bungling in handling the problem is serving the long-range aims of the Communist masters.

None of this was remotely true. After disastrous testimony before the Senate Rackets committee in 1957, he chose not to run for reelection and was replaced by Jimmy Hoffa. Within a few years​, Beck was charged with financial crimes related to his time as Teamster General President and went to prison for three years.


“The American Worker”

When Teamster General President Sean O’Brien spoke before the Republican National Convention (RNC) this past summer, he was enthusiastically embraced by Donald Trump, Senator (soon-to-be Vice President) J.D. Vance, and well-known fascist sympathizer Tucker Carlson. O’Brien was proud of the speech he gave. He attacked Tech monopolies and union busting but he was silent on the lurid racism and xenophobia of the RNC. Trump’s xenophobic acceptance speech drew a wild response from the delegates. The near hysterical delegates shouted approval and hundreds of delegates waved “Mass Deportation Now!” signs.

Trump’s racism and xenophobia is well-known, and though O’Brien spoke days before the former president, he made no effort to challenge Trump’s bigotry, despite the long history of racism and xenophobia being used to weaken and divide the U.S. working class. In fact, O’Brien appeared to enjoy going along with it all. From boilerplate declarations of “I love America. Teamsters love this country” to the more ominous sounding, “To ensure we make the greatest nation in the world, BIGGER, FASTER, and STRONGER!” O’Brien kept referencing the “American worker.” A traditional way of playing to native born workers against foreign born or undocumented workers.

Back in June when Trump visited Teamster headquarters in Washington, D.C, O’Brien said he disagreed with Trump on immigration, but he said little, if anything, publicly since then. Despite proclaiming that the Teamsters are “not beholden to any party,” O’Brien appears to be very beholden to Trump. O’Brien applauded the appointment of Lori Chavez-DeRemer as Trump’s Secretary of Labor despite her terrible labor record. He even posed for a photo with her and Trump publicly thanking Trump.

If the mass deportations begin — and they are very likely to begin soon after Trump is sworn-in, the Teamsters — from bus to truck to rail workers — are likely to be some of the workers tapped to transport the undocumented to concentration camps before they are expelled from the country. How will the union respond? The history of the Teamsters is not heartening and many of its officials will likely duck the issue, if the union is to overcome its past and not participate in this great crime, it will have to come from the membership.