Activist dares to don Halloween condo costume despite police warning



Susannah Bryan, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Sun, October 31, 2021, 3:03 PM·3 min read

The free speech witch must have been watching over Cat Uden Saturday night.

Uden, the activist warned by police not to wear a condo costume to the city’s Halloween block party, dared to wear it anyway.

To her relief, she and six friends in similar costumes were not told they had to leave the party. No one spent the night behind bars. And one woman toting a “No Condo” sign says she got a hug from a police sergeant.

But Uden was ready, just in case. “My husband was at home waiting for my one phone call,” she said. “He said he would bail my friends out, too.”

Uden’s costume controversy, a story first told by the South Florida Sun Sentinel, has sparked a slew of headlines from news outlets across the country, including Newsweek and Forbes.

“When I woke up this morning it looked like I was in every newspaper in the nation,” she said Sunday.

In recent months, Uden has emerged as a fierce critic of the Related Group’s plan to build a 30-story condo on taxpayer-owned beachfront land 13 blocks south of Hollywood Boulevard.

She’s held two protests so far, one in September at City Hall and one in mid-October on the 4-acre beachfront parcel the developer hopes to build on. She got permits for both.

Uden didn’t think she’d need a permit to show up at a public block party in a condo costume.

But on Wednesday, Uden says she got a chilling call from a police lieutenant who told her she needed a permit to wear the costume or even tell anyone why she was wearing it.

A police spokeswoman confirmed that if Uden attended the event and led an organized protest, she would be given a warning and asked to leave. If she refused, she could be arrested and face a fine up to $500 or 60 days in jail. The spokeswoman didn’t respond when asked how the city defined an organized protest.

“I was surprised the city doubled down and said if I didn’t leave it could be a fine or jail,” Uden said. “It was just supposed to be a fun condo costume.”

On Saturday, Uden and her costumed friends danced and shimmied the night away in full view of police officers.

“We had a little conga line,” she said. “We danced past the police, the SWAT team and two city commissioners.”

Uden plans to hang onto the condo costume and wear it to the next protest.

“We are going to hang on to them in case we have a demonstration in the future,” she said.

On Sunday morning, she was out on the ocean on her paddleboard in a different costume. For her Halloween paddle, she ditched the boxy condo look for a black bikini and witch hat.

On Twitter, she posted a photo of her silhouette with the tagline: “Good witch of the east.”

Susannah Bryan can be reached at sbryan@sunsentinel.com or on Twitter @Susannah_Bryan

Wolff Responds: US Capitalism's Helpers - Obama, Trump, Biden

 NOV 2, 2021 AT 6:01 AM

In this Wolff Responds,  Prof. Wolff comments on the failures of both Republicans and Democrats to deliver on their promises and improve living standards for the majority of Americans.

Wolff Responds is a Democracy At Work  production. We provide these videos free of ads. Please consider supporting our work. Visit our website democracyatwork.info/donate or join our growing Patreon community and support Global Capitalism Live Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff at https://www.patreon.com/gcleu.

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WW3.0
Is There A War Brewing In The South China Sea?


Editor OilPrice.com
Sun, October 31, 2021

Tensions in the South China Sea have been percolating for years now. Even in relatively calm times when the battling claimants of the contested waters manage to stay out of the headlines, the reality out on the sea is rarely tranquil. In fact, a recent report from the South China Morning Post has revealed that Chinese boats have been harassing Civilian vessels in the Malaysian and Vietnamese portions of the South China Sea “on a daily basis” for years.

Extending from Singapore and the Strait of Malacca in the southwest to the Strait of Taiwan in the northeast, the South China Sea is a geopolitical hotspot as one of the most important trade routes in the world, not to mention the home of valuable oil and gas reserves as well as lucrative fishing grounds. The United States Energy Information Agency (EIA) estimates that the South China Sea “contains approximately 11 billion barrels of oil and 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in proved and probable reserves.”

Huge, overlapping sections of the Sea are currently subject to claims by Brunei, China, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam. China has staked the largest claims to the South China Sea (at more than 85% of the total area) and has been the most aggressive in defending these claims, with a huge show of military might and navy vessels patrolling the waters. Last year, during another flare-up of tensions, the Asia Times reported that China’s most recent rash of aggressions was a bid to shut down Vietnamese resource development projects “as Beijing aims to force all foreign oil companies out of the South China Sea, leaving itself as the only potential joint development partner for rival sea claimants.”




Source: CSIS

Vietnam is far from Beijing’s only victim, however. Indonesian drilling has also been targeted in the so-called “Tuna Block” in the Natuna Sea, in the same waters where these two nations have clashed in the past over fishing rights. And now, according to the recent reports from the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, Malaysia has been bearing the brunt of Chinese bullying on a daily basis for the past two years. The Malaysian state-owned oil company Petronas has been developing several oil and gas fields in the Luconia Shoals, where Chinese vessels have been reportedly driving dangerously and erratically with the intention of dissuading civilians to take contracts in the area.

“Beijing’s competing claimants to territory in the South China Sea have long accused it of using a paramilitary maritime militia, consisting of hundreds of civilian fishing boats, to help enforce its claims,” The South China Morning Post reported this week. The Chinese government claims that these swaths of civilian fishing boats are not dispatched by the military, but that they join of their own accord, although many other governing bodies (including the United States) believe that the vessels are directly under the command of the People’s Liberation Army Navy.

An all-out oil war in the South China Sea would be extremely costly for China, and ultimately may not be in the country’s best interest. Invading another nation is costly, and in this region, the battle could easily turn into another kind of ‘forever war.” And then there’s the fact that China risks destruction in the very waters that it wants to claim, imperiling valuable infrastructure. There are a lot of reasons why China should not and likely will not push its competing claimants hard enough to start a war, and many more reasons that much lesser military powers like Malaysia and Indonesia should just grin and bear the abuse, but Beijing’s behavior over the past few years has shown that China is more than willing to test those boundaries.

By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com

 

Maersk profits triple on record freight prices

Tue, November 2, 2021, 

Shipping giant Maersk says profits tripled over the latest quarter.

Earnings hit $6.9 billion on the back of record-high freight rates.

That despite a drop in the volume of cargo it handled.

The number of containers on the move fell due to congestion at ports.

Surging consumer demand has led to a shortage of vessels and logjams at key hubs.

Meanwhile, Maersk continues its transformation from a shipping firm to an integrated logistics company.

On Tuesday (November 2) it said it would buy freight forwarding firm Senator International, which mainly operates air cargo.

Maersk also said it would step up share buybacks, purchasing an additional $5 billion by 2025.

Shares in the firm rose 1% in early trades, and are up some 40% so far this year.

COP26: Stop treating nature like a toilet, UN secretary general António Guterres tells world leaders

Jon Stone
Mon, November 1, 2021

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres delivers a speech during the opening ceremony of the UN Climate Change Conference COP26 at SECC on November 1 2021 (Getty Images)

The secretary general of the United Nations has told world leaders humanity must stop treating nature "like a toilet".

In a hard-hitting speech opening the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow António Guterres said "addiction" to fossil fuels was "pushing humanity to the brink".

Mr Guterres, who has held the position since 2017, said that some signs of progress were encouraging – and threw his support behind a "climate action army led by young people" – who he dubbed "unstoppable".

But the former Portuguese prime minister warned that current commitments by the nations attending the conference were not enough to avert catastrophe.

"We are still heading for climate disaster," he said. "Recent climate action announcements might give the impression that we are on track to turn things around. This is an illusion."

He told the audience of world leaders, including Boris Johnson: “Our addiction to fossil fuels is pushing humanity to the brink. We face a stark choice: Either we stop it — or it stops us.

“It’s time to say: enough. Enough of brutalising biodiversity. Enough of killing ourselves with carbon. Enough of treating nature like a toilet. Enough of burning and drilling and mining our way deeper,” said Mr Guterres, adding: “We are digging our own graves.”

Mr Guterres added: “The last published report on Nationally Determined Contributions showed that they would still condemn the world to a calamitous 2.7 degree increase.

"And even if the recent pledges were clear and credible — and there are serious questions about some of them — we are still careening towards climate catastrophe. Even in the best-case scenario, temperatures will rise well above two degrees."

He also pointed out that the years since the last crucial COP summit in Paris 2015 “have been the six hottest years on record”.

Leaders have gathered in Glasgow with the aim of thrashing out national contributions to the fight against carbon emissions – but scientists are sceptical they will go far enough to hit crucial targets.

Boris Johnson gave a keynote speech at the opening of the meeting on Monday in which he warned that future generations would react with anger if leaders did not turn the situation around.

China's Xi Jinping contributes only a written note to the COP26 climate conference, pushing the world's biggest polluter further to the margins

Thomas Colson

Mon, November 1, 2021

• China's Xi Jinping will only address the COP26 summit with a written statement, Reuters reported.

• China's lack of engagement comes despite its large contribution to global emissions.

• China contributes some 28% of carbon emissions and consumes more coal than any other nation.

China's Xi Jinping plans to contribute only a written note to the landmark COP26 climate change summit in Scotland, a gesture which further illustrates China's isolation from global action on emissions.

Xi was one of several world leaders, along with Russian President Vladimir Putin, to refuse to attend the Glasgow summit of world leaders this week.

Reuters reported Monday that Xi will interact with the summit only via a written note published on the COP26 website.

China's foreign ministry had said Xi - who has not left China since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic last year - would participate via video link, the Guardian reported.

The downgrade appears to have come as a result of an intentional move to limit the impact of nations whose leaders do not come.

A source in the UK organizing team told The Times of London that only leaders who attended the conference in person would be able to address the conference.

Insider contacted Downing Street to confirm the report.

Prospects for a breakthrough at COP26 depended partly on the outcome of talks at the G20 summit in Rome, where world leaders hoped to secure an agreement on phasing out coal consumption.

But no such agreement was reached, and China - which contributes around 28% of carbon emissions and consumes more coal than any other country - was among the countries to resist making binding new contributions, The New York Times reported.

Some participants were downbeat about the prospects of a breakthrough in Glasgow.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is hosting the summit, held a downbeat press conference Sunday where he put the chances of success in talks at "six out of 10."

The UK wants countries to announce detailed plans to cut carbon emissions in half by as early as 2030, but very few countries have indicated that they will do so.

Boris Johnson said the G20 talks left countries with a "huge way to go" at COP26.

US President Joe Biden was highly critical of countries including China for their unwillingness to engage in the talks, Politico reported.

"With regard to the disappointment, the disappointment relates to the fact that … not only Russia but China basically didn't show up in terms of any commitments to deal with climate change," Biden said after the G20 summit.

"And there's a reason why people should be disappointed in that. I found it disappointing myself."

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said: "I leave Rome with my hopes unfulfilled."

US Seniors are using marijuana more than ever before

Hannah Critchfield, 

Tampa Bay Times, St. Petersburg, Fla.
Mon, November 1, 2021,

Marvin Yeoman, 74, had tried cannabis as a young adult, but for his wife, it was new.

“I never, never, ever even thought about marijuana when I was growing up — never in college, as a young adult or as a middle-aged adult,” said Rene Yeoman, 71. “It was just not even something that was on my radar.”

The Land O’ Lakes residents had both undergone recent major surgeries, so they gave in to their daughter’s suggestion to use the drug to treat chronic pain.


Rene Yeoman discovered she liked how edibles helped her sleep through the night and avoid the use of other medications.

And as seniors, the couple is in good company.

“When I go to the dispensary, there are more elderly people in there than there are young people,” said Marvin Yeoman.

Marijuana use is on the rise among older adults.

Last year, the proportion of adults 65 or older who reported recent cannabis use jumped by 18 percent, according to the 2020 National Survey of Drug Use and Health released last week, rising from 5.1 percent in 2019 to 6 percent in 2020.

The spike comes on the heels of a steady trend of increased cannabis use among seniors over the last five years.

What’s more, in 2020, more older adults also reported using marijuana sometime in their lifetime — a jump from roughly 32 percent to 36 percent — signaling a possible cultural shift in older adults’ willingness to open up about past tokes.

“It’s accepted now,” Marvin Yeoman said. “You used to have to sneak in the back alley to purchase it, but now you can just walk right into the store and buy it, just like you would go to Publix or Winn-Dixie.”

In Florida, people with a medical marijuana card can legally purchase THC products throughout the state.

Both Marvin and Rene Yeoman have one. While they said it’s expensive to renew — costing a few hundred dollars every eight months — obtaining a card was simple.

“It’s actually very, very easy,” Marvin Yeoman said. “They ask you a few questions, you fill out paperwork on if you’ve had surgery or any pain, and then the doctor reviews it. Nine times out of 10, you’re going to qualify.”

Taking cannabis means Rene Yeoman doesn’t have to take as many other prescription drugs, she said.

“I’ve been on just about everything, for either migraines or my back or whatever,” she said. “We don’t like to take those heavy medications, of which you can become addicted, you know? With the edibles, you just kind of seem to just relax.”

Sundays belong to seniors at Trulieve, a cannabis company that operates 19 dispensaries in the Tampa Bay area.

The business, which is one of the leading cannabis providers in Florida, offers a 10 percent Senior Sunday discount to customers over the age of 55.

Trulieve declined to provide data on the proportion of its clientele in this age range, but a spokesperson noted that “seniors represent a large percentage of registered patients in Florida” and that the company has seen “an upward trend in cannabis use among seniors” in recent years.

Prior to the pandemic, the company offered monthly Silver Tours, which sent a cannabis advocate to long-term care facilities throughout the state, including seven in Tampa Bay.

“We’ve found that, more than almost any other audience, seniors are incredibly receptive to cannabis and its medicinal benefits — in fact, seniors are some of our most educated and passionate Trulievers,” said Valda Coryat, chief marketing officer of Trulieve, in an emailed statement.

More research is needed on the impacts of marijuana use on older adults.

Dr. Juan Sanchez-Ramos, a researcher and professor of neurology at the University of South Florida, said studies show marijuana may help reduce symptoms like insomnia and irritability in Alzheimer’s patients, improve motor symptoms from Parkinson’s, diminish arthritic pain and combat sleep disorders — conditions that are all common among older adults.

Too high a dose of THC can cause confusion and short-term memory problems in older adults, however, Sanchez-Ramos said. CBD in excess doses can in turn interact with the metabolism of other drugs in the system — so it’s important for seniors to consult with their primary doctor prior to using cannabis products.

“THC is safe for older people and won’t cause confusion or disorientation at modest and low doses,” he said. “But it should be definitely supervised by a physician. If your physician has no experiences with cannabinoids and your condition, I would try to find a medical cannabis expert who does.”

Sanchez-Ramos said he still recommends more traditional treatments before referring patients to a cannabis expert he trusts.

“This is basically an alternative treatment for when individuals aren’t doing well with the standard pharmaceuticals,” he said. “In some people, it may be actually much better, but it isn’t the first thing that comes to mind.”

The Yeomans are pleased with their results. They’re trying to convince Marvin’s brother and sister-in-law, who both have chronic conditions, to give edibles a try.

“It should be legal, really,” said Rene Yeoman. “It’ll cut out a lot of the big pharma money that’s going into producing drugs like opioids — and you’d take away the punishment for it, so you don’t have millions of people in jail for doing it.”

These Young People Who Managed Their Own Abortions Say The Option Is Even More Important After Texas’s Crackdown



Nicole Fallert
Mon, November 1, 2021,

Makayla went to the restroom after a job interview only to find she’d bled through her skirt during the meeting. About three days prior, she took misoprostol, an abortion pill, at her home in San Antonio, Texas, to end her pregnancy less than six weeks into her first trimester in August 2018. She was still bleeding heavily as her body expelled the pregnancy, but she wanted a chance at the job opportunity.

She didn’t end up getting the job. But she told BuzzFeed News she considers it a blessing because she went on to start her own abortion fund. Makayla, 22, started the organization, known as the Buckle Bunnies Fund, in April 2020 and began educating people about self-managed abortions, the process of ending a pregnancy on one’s own without the help of medical professionals. The fund has raised at least $200,000 to support abortion access in Texas. Since her own procedure, she has given information about self-managed abortions to more than 400 people, said Makayla, who asked that, for privacy reasons, she only be referred to by her first name in this story.

Amid a heightened crackdown on abortion access in Texas, pregnant people are increasingly seeking answers from young advocates like Makayla about how they can end their own pregnancies, fearing a state law that could bar them from care at traditional clinical settings. The US Supreme Court allowed Texas to implement a six-week abortion ban, known as SB 8, in September.


SB 8 bans nearly all abortions after fetal cardiac activity can be detected, usually around the sixth week of a pregnancy. Pregnancy terms are counted from the first day of a person's most recent period, so week six is typically two weeks after a missed period, which is when many people realize they're pregnant.

Early-term state abortion bans are often referred to as “heartbeat” laws, but the term is misleading, since a fetus’s heart valves haven’t formed yet; an ultrasound at that stage is detecting electrical activity. So without the ability to go to a clinic to end their pregnancy, many people are turning to at-home alternatives out of sheer necessity.

Self-managed abortion options have always existed; according to Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health, about 7% of US women will undertake one in their lifetimes. But attention to self-managed abortion has heightened since SB 8 went into effect. Plan C, which provides information about how to obtain abortion pills, reports that over 170,000 people have visited its website since SB 8 went into effect, and nearly 30% of that traffic has been from people in Texas.

“People who had never heard of [a self-managed abortion] are now asking about it,” Makayla said. “Girls in the strip club are talking about it. People who already have four kids and are in their 40s are talking about it. I think while this has been an option, out of necessity for so many people it’s becoming mainstream.”

Even though self-managed abortions are not a new phenomenon, young people are at the forefront of spreading awareness about the option, said Tamara Marzouk, a program director at Advocates for Youth.

“We’re really seeing a desire for people to have an abortion on their own terms, whatever that means,” she said. “The work around [self-managed abortions] is how you talk about it. … We don’t set up a hierarchy of methods. It’s so important to acknowledge the history of generations of people who have used other methods.”

Marzouk works with a group of about 300 people aged 14 to 24 who she said have seen an increasing number of people asking about self-managed abortions, learning what the concept is, and sharing their own experiences.

Marzouk said she’s noticed that younger people are more “comfortable” with the idea of a self-managed abortion as a safe and effective option, whereas other generations may be more reluctant to accept the idea of an at-home abortion.

“It’s not a one-size-fits-all model,” Marzouk said of abortion. “The whole purpose of self-managed abortion is to set up a circumstance in which folks can access abortion wherever they feel safe with the control in their hands.”

She has also noticed more and more young people have joined the fight for reproductive rights in the last few years.

“It’s a response to feeling helpless regarding policy and feeling like, This is something we can do,” she said.

Sharing information is a popular way to do that advocacy work, but Marzouk said young advocates she works with stray away from giving advice because of the “gray area” of legal risks surrounding self-managed abortions.

Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Nevada already have laws that criminalize self-managed abortions. And across the US, people have been arrested and charged for managing their own abortions, Marzouk said.

“People are criminalized for the bodies they’re in,” Marzouk said.

Makayla said pregnant people in Texas are also in the “unfortunate position” of having to ask themselves what legal risks they would be willing to take to end a pregnancy.

“These are the corners people have been pushed into,” Makayla said, adding that SB 8 hasn’t stopped people in Texas from trying to have abortions; it’s just posed new challenges for abortion access advocates to provide resources for those who cannot go to clinics. Her fund has also noticed an influx of people needing emergency contraception and pregnancy tests because, under the new law, they want to know if they’re pregnant much sooner.

“People over six weeks are still getting abortions because they’re taking matters into their own hands,” she said.


Makayla added that the criminalization of pregnant people in Texas is more likely to affect people living in poverty and communities of color, especially undocumented immigrants.

“I’m in a great position of privilege as a white [cisgender] person to be able to talk about [self-managed abortion] and not fear incarceration,” Makayla said. “A lot of people of color in Texas do have that fear.”

She added: “Because they’ve already been put in this box, it will be easier to surveil them. Those are the people who are likely going to be targeted first.”



“I felt that I deserved better and I deserved it on my own terms.”

The incident after the job interview was Makayla’s second abortion. The first time she became pregnant she was 18, when she was dancing at a strip club three nights a week. When she sought an abortion, she told the clinician that she was a sex worker and had a lot of strain on her body.

“In their eyes, I believe that they thought I was being careless, and that’s not what I needed at the time,” Makayla said. “I needed somebody to care for me as a full human being without judgment.”

When she became pregnant the second time, she knew the clinical setting wasn't for her. She didn’t have a lot of money and had “prior trauma” from her previous visit.

“I felt that I deserved better and I deserved it on my own terms,” she said.

Makayla had never heard of a self-managed abortion before until a reproductive justice organization posted about it on social media.

“I was feeling that self-managed abortion was sketchy … [and] was less-quality care than if I went to a clinic. Now I know that that’s not true, but it was an internalized stigma I had to deal with,” she said.

At the time, Makayla did not know about increasingly popular online pharmacies, such as Aid Access and Abortion on Demand, that mail people safe, generic versions of medication abortion at an affordable price. Instead, she obtained the abortion pill misoprostol for free from someone she knew.

She took the single pill at home after work. Although a friend had brought her a care package, Makayla said she was lonely throughout the process, especially in the Texas summer heat when her power went out. It was initially scary to initiate her own procedure, she said, but after about two weeks (she got her period right after) of bleeding she felt relieved she didn’t have to bear any financial burden to end her pregnancy. An abortion pill at a clinic typically costs about $600, while online pharmacies charge between $150 and $350.

Self-managing her abortion showed Makayla she could do more with her life.

“I don’t think I would be the advocate or the person I am today without my self-managed abortion, specifically,” she said.

Aryn, 24, also recalled a transformative feeling after administering their own abortion. When they became pregnant at 19 during their sophomore year of college, it was one of the first times they began to understand their gender dysphoria. They have since come out as nonbinary and pursued a full-time career in reproductive justice. They also asked to only include their first name in this story for privacy reasons.

A self-managed abortion is a cheaper option, and it provides the freedom for someone to take their healthcare into their own hands; for people who choose to self-manage their abortion, these two variables might outweigh the actual efficacy of the method, Aryn told BuzzFeed News. Being someone with a disability without much of a disposable income, they opted for an at-home experience that felt safe, private, and affordable.

“We should be open to folks who are not using efficacy as their number one concern,” Aryn said.

Through online research, Aryn came across herbal methods to induce an abortion. They took the remedy in their dorm room during a long weekend. Their roommate was out of town, so they curled up with water, snacks, The Office, and an electric blanket while the abortion proceeded.

“I think we need to move away from the narrative that self-managed abortion just means [misoprostol]. Self-managed abortion is anyone who is not going to a physician,” Aryn said, adding that it’s vital for people to think about what the best method is for them. “For me, I wanted something as natural and holistic as possible. ... I wanted to keep it as anonymous as possible.”

The COVID-19 pandemic initiated an early wave of new attention to self-managed abortion, but SB 8 has propelled that forward, according to Daena Horner, an abortion doula and founder of Holistic Abortions, which provides resources, security tips, and other support. She also said she’s noticed how young people are more equipped to access information online.

But state-level restrictions aren’t the only reason some turn to self-managed options, Horner said. Many people, she added, simply prefer the home-based option because they want privacy and agency over the process. Even picking the time and day of the week of the abortion can make a major difference for patients, she said.

“The more people that are doing it, they are realizing they can create a space however they want,” Horner said.
More on this


For These Abortion Clinic Escorts, The Vitriol From Protesters Has Gotten Way Worse As States Try To Restrict AccessNicole Fallert · Oct. 16, 2021


Cori Bush Shared A Powerful Story Of Getting An Abortion When She Was Nine Weeks PregnantNicole Fallert · Sept. 30, 2021


We Asked And Lots Of People Don’t Know They’re Pregnant By Six WeeksNicole Fallert · Sept. 17, 2021

ECOCIDE

MEXICO
Pemex Pipeline Explodes After Attempted Fuel Theft

Amy Stillman
Mon, November 1, 2021

(Bloomberg) -- A pipeline operated by Petroleos Mexicanos in the central state of Puebla exploded over the weekend due to an attempted tapping of the pipeline by fuel thieves, leaving at least one person dead and many injured.

Firefighters were deployed at the site since the early hours of Sunday and families have been evacuated from the area, Mexico President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Twitter, lamenting the death of at least one person. The president, known as AMLO, also said that the fire had been controlled by Pemex. A Pemex official said no further information has been provided on the explosion.

Since the start of his presidency in late 2018, Lopez Obrador has made it his mission to crack down on the pilfering of fuel from Pemex pipelines, which had previously cost Pemex about $3.5 billion a year in losses. Pemex says that pipeline taps have fallen by almost 93% in the past three years, according to a company presentation. In January 2019, a pipeline tap resulted in the deaths of 137 people, after AMLO’s government shut off valves and installed military personnel at pipeline sites.

Puebla governor Manuel Barbosa said on Monday that 14 of 17 people remained in hospital after suffering injuries from a series of explosions due to the pipeline tap, according to national newspaper Milenio, and that there would be two days of mourning in Puebla for the victims.

NATIONALISM IS RACISM
'Squid Game' Filipino actor says racist cabbage-throwing incident in South Korea left him 'crying inside'



Michelle De Pacina
Mon, November 1, 2021, 

Christian Lagahit, the actor behind Player #276 of “Squid Game,” shared his experience as a foreign worker in South Korea in an interview video posted to YouTube last week.

The racist incident: On Oct. 23, South Korea-based Asian Boss posted their interview video of Filipino actor Lagahit on their official YouTube channel.

In the interview, Lagahit recalls a Korean woman in her 50s throwing a cabbage at his face while on a small village bus ride home.



“There was this woman who was just staring at me. At first, I didn’t pay attention because I thought she was maybe looking at the boys, because there were boys in front of me. I thought that she was looking at the students. A few minutes passed by... I was just surprised when something hit my face. She threw a cabbage at my face — straight to my face,” Lagahit shares.

His glasses fell off and were broken by the impact. Another woman on the bus explained to him that the cabbage thrower wanted him to get off the bus because he was not Korean. Lagahit says that there are no foreigner buses in Korea and the ride he was on was the last trip home.

“The hardest part was that no one was paying attention to me. There were a lot of people inside the bus. It was filled, but no one was there to at least help me,” Lagahit says in the video.

“I was crying inside. For me, there was nothing I could do anymore. I couldn’t complain, but what I didn’t understand was there were other people inside that small bus. I just felt so bad that no one was ready to help,” he adds.

The woman also went on to verbally attack him. Lagahit recalls her saying, “All foreigners here in Korea are bad people!”

When the host asks if discrimination in South Korea is common, Lagahit admits to hearing other foreigners’ stories of prejudice and poor treatment. He also recalls a time when Korean locals did not want to sit next to him on another bus.



The foreign actor: Along with Anupam Tripathi, the actor behind Player #199 Ali Abdul, Lagahit also played the role of a migrant worker from Pakistan.

He moved to Korea from the Philippines in 2015 as an English teacher. Lagahit also had part-time gigs acting in films such as "Space Sweepers" and "The Negotiation."

The actor originally auditioned for the character of Ali before landing Player 276. He believes that the story of Ali reflects the real lives of many migrant workers in Korea. “There’s still a lot of foreign workers out there who get the same treatment the way Ali had on the drama ‘Squid Game,’” Lagahit tells Asian Boss. “I hope that this would be a wake-up call for the government to also check the welfare of foreign workers here in Korea because I believe that the foreign workers are contributing a lot for the growth of this country.”

He also says he hopes that the success of “Squid Game” will open doors for foreign actors to play roles other than that of factory workers or background characters.

“I’ve seen some non-Koreans achieving success here in Korea, but most of those people are from the U.S. or Europe,” Lagahit says. “It’s about time Asian people, non-Korean people, can also succeed and achieve those big dreams here. At the end of the day, everyone is allowed to dream big. If those white people can, we also can.”

Featured Image via @chrisyan8 (left), Asian Boss (right)

HINDUTVA IS FASCISM

Facebook Let an Islamophobic Conspiracy Theory Flourish in India Despite Employees' Warnings

Billy Perrigo
Mon, November 1, 2021,

Facebook-india
Credit - Photo-illustration by Lon Tweeten for TIME; Getty images

In a video posted to Facebook in November 2020, an extremist priest called for Hindus to rise up and begin killing Muslims in India.

“People need to learn that this is not the time to protest, but the time to go to war,” said Narsinghanand Saraswati, who has been named by at least one international watchdog as an extremist hate preacher. “This is a global war where Islam’s jihadis are fully prepared. It’s our choice if Hindus should fight or not. But Muslims will not spare Hindus.”

“It’s time for every Hindu to invoke the warrior in them,” Saraswati said in Hindi in the Facebook video. “The day Hindus take weapons and start killing these Love Jihadis, this Love Jihad will come to an end. Until then, we can’t stop it.”

With 1.4 million views as of late October this year, the video was one of the top posts on Facebook about “Love Jihad,” a popular Islamophobic conspiracy theory that suggests Muslim men are attempting to wage a holy war against Hinduism by marrying and converting Hindu women to Islam.

Facebook banned the QAnon conspiracy theory in October 2020, designating it a “militarized social movement.” But the company has not applied the same definition to Love Jihad, which began as a fringe conspiracy theory but began to enter the Indian political mainstream around 2016 after being taken up as a narrative by Hindu nationalist groups.

Read More: Indian States Are Passing Laws Based on the ‘Love Jihad’ Conspiracy Theory

Facebook is aware of the danger and prevalence of the Love Jihad conspiracy theory on its platform but has done little to act on it, according to internal Facebook documents seen by TIME, as well as interviews with former employees. The documents suggest that “political sensitivities” are part of the reason that the company has chosen not to ban Hindu nationalist groups who are close to India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

“​​We make decisions on content based on whether they violate our policies, not because of someone’s political position, party affiliation, or political point of view,” Facebook said in a statement. “We have removed several pieces of ‘Love Jihad’ content on the platform that violated our policies and will continue to remove violating content as we become aware of it.”

This story is partially based on whistleblower Frances Haugen’s disclosures to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which were also provided to the U.S. Congress in redacted form by her legal team. The redacted versions were seen by a consortium of news organizations, including TIME. Many of the documents were first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

Facebook has deemed India a “tier one” country—its highest ranking in a tier system that decides how the company prioritizes its resources building safety systems in countries at risk of violence. But the documents show that Facebook spends only a small minority of its total investment in the safety of its platforms on languages other than English, and on jurisdictions outside the U.S. In India, Facebook’s biggest market, with more than 300 million users, the company has been accused by watchdogs and opposition politicians of wilfully turning a blind eye to incitement to violence by Hindu nationalists.

Facebook only removed the video of Saraswati calling for Hindus to eradicate Muslims after TIME asked about it in late October. “We don’t allow hate speech on Facebook and we remove it when we find it or are made aware of it,” a company spokesperson said in a statement. “We know our enforcement is not perfect and there is more work to do, but our regular transparency reports show we are making progress combating these issues.”
‘Political sensitivities’ may have played a role

In one internal company presentation, which is undated but includes a screenshot of a post from March 2021, Facebook employees wrote that they had carried out research that found “a high volume of Love Jihad content” on the platform. Groups and pages on Facebook, it said, are “replete with inflammatory and misleading anti-Muslim content,” a problem exacerbated by what the report said was a lack of algorithms that work to detect such content in the languages Hindi and Bengali.” TIME was unable to ascertain when the report was written.

In a statement to TIME, Facebook said it had brought in algorithms in early 2021 to detect incitement to violence in Hindi and Bengali, and that it has had algorithms to detect hate speech in these languages since 2018. But those algorithms appeared not to have detected or flagged the video of Saraswati for deletion, even though it had amassed 1.4 million views.

Political factors may be at play in the company’s handling of Hindu nationalist content, the internal Facebook presentation suggested. Much Love Jihad content, it said, was “posted by pro-BJP and pro-RSS pages.” The RSS is the largest Hindu nationalist group in India, with close ties to the government.

The presentation acknowledged that the RSS regularly shares “fear-mongering, anti-Muslim narratives [targeting] pro-Hindu populations with V&I [violence and incitement] content,” which is against Facebook’s rules.

The presentation says that “political sensitivities” meant that RSS had not been designated as a dangerous organization by the company—a designation that would have resulted in the group being banned from Facebook’s platforms. “We have yet to put forth a nomination for designation of this group given political sensitivities,” the presentation says.

In October, the Intercept revealed Facebook’s list of banned terrorist and hate groups and individuals. The list includes hundreds of Islamist groups from all over the world but just one Hindu extremist group, the Sanatan Sanstha. Saraswati, the preacher who called for Muslims to be killed, is not on the list.

Read More: Facebook Banned a Hindu Extremist Group—Then Left Most of Its Pages Online for Months

The internal Facebook presentation reveals that employees knew content shared by Hindu nationalist groups posed a risk to vulnerable populations. One slide in the presentation suggests the posts fall under the term “politicized hate,” which the report defines as “a term used to describe a category of discriminatory practices from political parties which target vulnerable populations often done in a coordinated, authentic way.” (In this context, “authentic” means that the people posting are not using fake accounts.)

One former Facebook employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear that being named could invite retaliation, told TIME that some employees had raised the issue of the Love Jihad conspiracy theory as early as 2019, but that the company had decided against banning it from the platform, choosing instead to down-rank the content in users’ feeds.

Facebook did not respond to a question from TIME asking for confirmation that it currently down-ranks Love Jihad content rather than deleting it. It also did not respond to questions asking what signals the company uses to inform algorithms that could detect such content, and in what languages those algorithms are operational, if any. In a statement, the company said: “We’ve invested significantly in technology to find hate speech in a variety of different languages, including Hindi and Bengali. As a result, we’ve reduced the amount of hate speech that people see by half this year.”

Still, a TIME review of public-facing Facebook posts reveals that Love Jihad conspiracy theory content remains wildly popular on Facebook, even in 2021.

Of all the posts on the platform that contain the Hindi term for “Love Jihad,” the top one, with 16.3 million views, is a fictionalized video shared by BJP worker Pradeep Tyagi in February of this year. The video depicts a woman meeting a man at a Hindu temple and falling in love. They marry, only for the woman to find out the man is a Muslim. He forces her to wear a burqa and begins physically abusing her. He is shown receiving a wad of cash from an imam (an apparent allusion to the conspiracy theory that Muslim men are being paid large sums of money by religious officials to convert Hindu women). When the woman tries to run away, the man beats her, covers her in gasoline, and sets her alight. She is shown dying in agony in the hospital, covered in blood. The video ends with the same man returning to a temple and meeting a new woman. The clear implication is that he is beginning the process of so-called Love Jihad all over again.

Tyagi, the BJP worker who shared the video, did not respond to a request for comment.
Facebook’s inaction over Hindu extremism

One civil society organization told TIME that it is tracking a group of at least 27 “highly toxic” pages that regularly post Love Jihad content, whose videos had cumulatively been viewed more than 1 billion times as of October 2021. The Indian diaspora-led foundation, called The London Story, told TIME it has reported these pages and the content they share to Facebook but that the company had not removed any of the posts or accounts.

Many of the pages are run by “vigilantes,” says Ritumbra Manuvie, a legal scholar who is the foundation’s policy and research director. Some of the page administrators include their WhatsApp contact number on their pages, she says, and encourage their followers to report Muslim men perpetrating so-called Love Jihad against Hindu women.

To date Manuvie’s impression has been that “Facebook is just not bothered,” she tells TIME. She said that her group had shared evidence of the 27 pages’ activity with Foley Hoag, a Boston-based law firm hired by Facebook to carry out a forthcoming assessment of its human rights impact in India. “We did say very categorically that Facebook is providing these tools to vigilante armies who are using them to gather bigger crowds,” she says.

Facebook said it was carrying out a review of the pages after TIME asked the company about Manuvie’s complaint.

Read More: Facebook’s Ties to India’s Ruling Party Complicate Its Fight Against Hate Speech

Facebook’s apparent tolerance of the Love Jihad conspiracy theory, Manuvie says, often results in the company turning a blind eye to rhetoric that could radicalize users into committing violent acts—and has likely already resulted in real-world harm.

In one video from January, which Manuvie says she reported to Facebook but which remains online, a spokesperson for the Hindu nationalist group Karni Sena threatens violence against people who engage in interfaith marriage. “If anyone subscribes to this kind of thinking … we will beat you so bad you won’t be able to comprehend it,” the spokesperson, Mahipal Singh Makrana, says in the video, which has received 1.5 million views on the platform.

In the video, Makrana refers to a specific alleged Love Jihad incident in the village of Kolai, in the northwest-Indian state of Rajasthan. He explains that he and his “regional spokesperson” would visit the village to support the family of the alleged Love Jihad victim in the coming days, and threatened: “If someone has to die, it will be the other, not them.” He is speaking Hindi in the video.

There appear to be no reports of that specific incident leading directly to real-world violence in the village of Kolai, but mob attacks against Muslims are on the rise in India, and many participants appear to use Love Jihad as justification. A viral video posted in August documented a terrified 8-year-old girl clinging to her father, a 45-year-old Muslim man, as he was beaten by a mob chanting “Jai Shri Ram,” a Hindu nationalist slogan. One of the man’s relatives had been accused of marrying a Hindu woman to convert her to Islam. The mob threatened to kill the man and his family members, as his young daughter pleaded with them to stop.

Three men were arrested after the mob attack, which was reportedly coordinated by the Bajrang Dal, one of the biggest Hindu extremist groups in India, which is close to the ruling party. The Bajrang Dal regularly posts Love Jihad misinformation on its Facebook pages. The Journal reported in 2020 that Facebook had chosen not to ban the Bajrang Dal, citing risk to Facebook’s business prospects in India.

— With reporting by Abhishyant Kidangoor / Hong Kong

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2006/10/hinduism-is-fascism.html

WE NEED AIRSHIPGS

VIPs including Jeff Bezos flew to a climate change conference on 400 private jets, sparking fury over the carbon emissions caused

Huileng Tan
Mon, November 1, 2021,

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26.) Alain Jocard/AFP/Getty Images

More than 400 private jets are ferrying over 1,000 VIPs and their staff to the COP26 environment summit in Scotland.

US President Joe Biden, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and other world leaders took private jets to the summit.

Private jets have a "disproportionate impact on the environment," says European campaign group Transport and Environment.

As hundreds of private jets ferry world leaders and top business executives to the United Nations' COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, environmentalists are up in arms over the environmental damage caused by the travel.

Scotland's Sunday Mail, citing aviation sources, reported that more than 400 private jets are expected. They are shuttling over 1,000 VIPs and their staff to the talks - which, according to the conference website, seeks to "bring together world leaders to commit to urgent global climate action."


Prince William: Great minds should save Earth not travel space

During a BBC interview aired on Thursday (October 14), William appeared to criticise Jeff Bezos, the world's richest person, Elon Musk and Briton Richard Branson, whose rival ventures are all vying to usher in a new era of private commercial space travel.

"We need some of the world's greatest brains and minds fixed on trying to repair this planet, not trying to find the next place to go and live," William said of the space race.His comments come after Musk has spoken about missions to Mars, and Bezos described his inaugural space flight in July as part of building a road to space "so that our kids and their kids can build a future".

"We need to do that to solve the problems here on Earth," said Bezos, who on Wednesday celebrated sending Star Trek actor William Shatner into space in his New Shepard spacecraft.Speaking out on green issues has become a major feature of the British royal family, and William, 39, is following in the footsteps of his late grandfather Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth's husband, and his father, Prince Charles.

Charles, the 72-year-old heir to the throne, has for decades called for action to stop climate change and environmental damage, long before the issue became mainstream, often facing ridicule along the way.

"It's been a hard road for him. He's had a really rough ride on that, and I think he's been proven to being well ahead of the curve," William said.In an echo of his father's message earlier this week, William also said the upcoming U.N. Climate Change Conference COP26 summit in Scotland had to deliver.

"We can't have more clever speak, clever words but not enough action," William said.The prince's personal response to the issue has been to create the Earthshot Prize, which aims to find solutions through new technologies or policies to the planet’s biggest environmental problems.

The first five winners, who will each collect 1 million pounds ($1.4 million), will be announced at a ceremony on Sunday (October 17).

US President Joe Biden, along with the leaders of Canada, France, Germany, India, Israel, and Japan, have all traveled to the climate crisis symposium via private jet, according to the Sunday Mail. Amazon's Jeff Bezos also flew in on his $65 million Gulfstream jet, British media reported.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is also planning on returning to London from Scotland on a private jet - running on sustainable fuel, the Guardian reported. His official spokesperson told the British news outlet, "it is important that the Prime Minister is able to move round the country, and obviously we face significant time constraints."

According to the International Council on Clean Transportation, commercial aviation currently accounts for about 2% of global carbon emissions, but that number is set to triple by 2050.

Private jets have a "disproportionate impact on the environment," said European campaign group Transport and Environment. The group noted in a May 2021 report that private planes are five to 14 times more polluting than commercial planes on a per passenger basis, and 50 times more polluting than trains.

"It can't be stressed enough how bad private jets are for the environment, it is the worst way to travel by miles," the group's UK policy manager told Scotland's Sunday Mail. "Private jets are very prestigious but it is difficult to avoid the hypocrisy of using one while claiming to be fighting climate change," he said.