Disaster Capitalism in the Wake of COVID -19
February 2021
Authors:

Malini Balamayuran

University of Peradeniya


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References (47)

Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted and impacted people's lives profoundly all around the world. The United Nations has urged all governments to embrace a cooperative and human rights-based approach, when adapting measures to cure and curb the worldwide pandemic. A plethora of subsisting commentary presents the view that moments of crisis generally elongate a state of exception for capitalist corporations and businesses to grow and evolve widely. Particularly, the in-depth analysis of 'disaster capitalism' by Naomi Klein presents the view that any crisis situation is manipulated by the largest corporations and businesses to put in place a series of desired free-market policies that may otherwise have taken decades to take effect. This article primarily examines the ways in which the responses to the COVID-19 of the neo-liberal governments favor the capitalist corporations' agenda that were deferred or deprioritized in pre-pandemic times. Based on the primary and secondary sources, it has been found that neo-liberal governments have attempted to manipulate this current global health crisis to serve the way that automatically boosts higher profits for corporations and businesses. Therefore, this study concludes that the current global health pandemic has extended the agents of capitalism another perfect chance albeit at an immense human and environmental cost.

THE EFFECTS OF NATURAL DISASTER CAPITALISM ON INDUSTRY PROFIT 1 

How Could Home Improvement Corporations That Benefit From Natural Disasters Contribute More Sustainable Aid to Coastal Communities Most at Risk From Climate Change? 

Word Count: 4000

 Allende Miglietta 

THE EFFECTS OF NATURAL DISASTER CAPITALISM ON INDUSTRY PROFIT 2
May 2019

Project: How Could Home Improvement Corporations That Benefit From Natural Disasters Contribute More Sustainable Aid to Coastal Communities Most at Risk From Climate Change?

Authors:
Allende Miglietta

Kenwood Academy


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Abstract
With a newer theory of disaster capitalism on the rise, this research examines how home improvement corporations along the United States coast are taking advantage of major natural disasters with increased revenue from sales while raising prices on their goods in people's' greatest time of need. Communities along the coast would be less likely to accept the corporate intrusions under normal circumstances. Instead, this paper argues for home improvement corporations to contribute towards more sustainable aid to coastal communities most at risk from climate change. As greenhouse gases continue to be emitted into the atmosphere, more powerful natural disasters will continue to strike-especially with an increase in global warming. This raises the question: How could home improvement corporations that benefit from natural disasters contribute more sustainable aid to coastal communities most at risk from climate change? There is a gap in analyzing how to push home improvement corporations to contribute more sustainable aid, along with analyzing which communities might not survive rising ocean flooding. Within the topic of natural disaster capitalism, the most common methodology varies depending on the factors of the environment, the economy, and aid. The best approaches would be (1) for beneficiary corporations to minimize their carbon footprint; (2) for beneficiary corporations to come together and agree on ways to provide more sustainable aid to coastal communities most at risk after natural disasters; and (3) for local governments to pass legislation requiring benefiting corporations from disaster capitalism, or those contribute most to global warming, to increase sustainable aid. The aim of this research is to bring equitable and sustainable aid to coastal communities along the United States coast while examining how corporations must play a greater role in slowing or resolving global warming and climate change.

STATEHOOD OR INDEPENDENCE

First Hit by Privatization, Puerto Rico in 'Total Blackout' as Fiona Makes Landfall

First Hurricane Maria devastated the island in 2017. Then the power grid was privatized in 2020. Now this.

LUMA—a joint venture by Canada-based ATCO and Houston-based Quanta Services. 

NOAA satellite imagery as Hurricane Fiona, a Category 1 storm with sustained windspeeds of 85 mph, made landfall in Puerto Rico on Sunday, September 18, 2022. (Image: Satellite/NOAA)

JON QUEALLY

September 18, 2022

A "total blackout" was reported on the island of Puerto Rico on Sunday as heavy rainfall and powerful winds pounded the island before Hurricane Fiona made landfall just before 4:00 pm local time.

Weather forecasters said the rainfall is likely to produce devastating landslides and severe flooding, with up to 25 inches (64 cm) expected in some areas. A Category 1 storm, with sustained winds of 85 mph, Fiona is nowhere near as powerful as Hurricane Maria which slammed the island in 2017, nearly five years to the day, as a Category 4 monster.

It wasn't lost on many that the nation's sole power utility company, LUMA—granted control of the territory's electricity system in a 2020 privatization deal in the wake of Maria's devastation—is the institution now in charge as the entire island has lost power in the face of Fiona.



In July, major protests were organized by Puerto Ricans opposed to LUMA—a joint venture by Canada-based ATCO and Houston-based Quanta Services. 

Citing increased outages, unreliable service, and higher bills, opponents demanded the 15-year contract with the company be canceled.

As Reuters reported in July, "Power rates have gone up five times since LUMA began operating Puerto Rico's transmission and distribution system on June 1, 2020. The last rate hike, which took effect at the start of July, pushed rates up by 17.1%."

Earlier this month, protests again were again on display in San Juan and elsewhere condemning LUMA.

In a statement on its website Sunday, LUMA said "full power restoration could take several days" and asked for "support and patience" from its customers.

Carmen Yulín Cruz, who was the progressive mayor of San Juan when Maria hit the island in 2017, offered a sobering comment in response to news of the blackout:

"Puerto Rico is 100% without electrical power," she tweeted. "The cycle of death begins."

The National Hurricane Center warned Sunday that Fiona's rains "will produce life-threatening and catastrophic flash flooding and urban flooding across Puerto Rico and the eastern Dominican Republic, along with mudslides and landslides in areas of higher terrain."

The NHC said Fiona was likely to continue intensifying in power after it moves on from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, moving North.

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

https://selforganizedseminar.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/naomi-klein-the-shock-doctrine.pdf

THE SHOCK DOCTRINE - AUTONOMOUS LEARNING 

Shocking Times: The Rise of the Disaster Capitalism Complex. 14. Shock Therapy in the U.S.A.: The Homeland Security Bubble 283.

https://www.versobooks.com/books/2254-disaster-capitalism

Book: Disaster Capitalism: Making a Killing Out of Catastrophe - Verso 

Disaster has become big business. Best-selling journalist Antony Loewenstein travels across Afghanistan, Pakistan, Haiti, Papua New Guinea, ...

https://harpers.org/archive/2007/10/disaster-capitalism

Disaster Capitalism, by Naomi Klein - Harper's Magazine 

Disaster Capitalism. Adjust. Share. The new economy of catastrophe. by Naomi Klein,. This article is only available as a PDF to subscribers. Download PDF ...

PAKISTAN

Gated disasters

Such housing schemes are a scandalous form of class warfare.

Aasim Sajjad Akhtar 

Published August 19, 2022 

AS palace intrigue around the person of Shahbaz Gill takes centre stage, the combination of gruelling economic hardship and monsoon rains continue to suck the life out of millions of working people across the country.

Yet another increase in petrol prices has garnered some attention — at least in part because of the fissures it has exposed within the ruling PML-N — but less well advertised are stealthy government ordinances that pave the way for the fire sale of public assets. Meanwhile, having backed down in the face of pressure from the trader-merchant community, the regime is pondering ‘relief’ for even bigger fish, most notably the real estate and construction sectors.

Perhaps our economic managers should pause and take note of the images which illuminate enormous monsoon-induced flooding in and around Bahria Town on the Karachi-Hyderabad highway. Other elite gated housing communities have been quickly inundated by rains in the recent past too; some in Karachi are perpetually subject to flooding because they are built recklessly on reclaimed land off the coast.

Such episodes are evidence enough that these schemes should actually be called gated disasters — after all, even the highest class brackets are not immune to the fallouts of what continues to uncritically be called ‘development’. But it is the outside of these gated communities that one uncovers the full scale of the calamity — a man-made disaster that is reproduced time and again due to the refusal of our planners, rulers and profiteers to pay attention to the increasingly urgent warnings that nature is offering us.


Such housing schemes are a scandalous form of class warfare.

Indigenous peoples in areas like Malir have been crying hoarse for years about dispossession from their historical abodes as property developers run riot in cahoots with uniformed and civilian personnel of the state. But instead of paying them heed, new ‘development’ projects like the Malir Expressway in Karachi are designed and executed with little concern about natural drainage flows and other ecological effects.

Read: Highway to hell: The real cost of the Malir Expressway

Meanwhile, in Quetta, in recent days cut off from the rest of the country due to incessant flooding on major thoroughfares, a new and sprawling Defence Housing Authority (DHA) is advancing through the usual thuggish means at the rate of knots. On the one hand, there is no concern for how this ‘development’ could potentially exacerbate flash flooding like that which has been witnessed over the past few weeks. On the other hand, the scheme can be expected to put even more pressure on the city’s scarce drinking water sources.

Adjacent to Quetta, on the other side of the Koh-i-Suleiman range, hill torrents that have historically supported agriculture in the Seraiki belt are now taking the form of devastating flash floods. Here too the immediate cause may be deluges of water caused by monsoon rains, but the deeper cause is unregulated ‘development’ in the form of roads, property developments and deforestation.

If the point is not already clear, let me be more blunt: the scenes we are witnessing are only going to be replicated in more and more parts of the country as the imperatives of profiteers, and the engineers/planners that facilitate them, take precedence over the needs of both working masses and the natural environment at large.

Read: The new landlords

Indeed, even if one ignores the long-term effects of gated housing schemes on already dilapidated ecosystems, they are a scandalous form of class warfare in a country where large numbers of working people, especially in metropolitan areas, live in squatter settlements and slums. What we should be planning are schemes that guarantee the housing, educational, health and recreational needs of this huge mass of the population, especially in the face of a virtually never-ending flow of rural migrants tow­ards urban centres.

But this requires political will, the absence of which is conspicuous across all factions of Pakistan’s ruling bloc, military and civil, the PTI and PDM/PPP.

To return to Bahria Town, all major players are implicated in the racket. Remember the reported £140 million (of the £190m settlement with Malik Riaz) that the British government repatriated to the public exchequer here? It is now widely said that while this money came back to Pakistan, it was deposited in such a way as to facilitate Malik Riaz’s partial clearance of a fine levied by the Supreme Court on account of the blatantly illegal land-grabbing practices through which Bahria Town came into existence.

The money trail and the brutalising dispossession of indigenous villagers shows our entire ruling class to be guilty.

So here we are, stuck in a dramatic race to the bottom. On the one hand, to borrow the eminent thinker Mike Davis’ term, is the intensifying immiseration of working masses, particularly those from ethnic peripheries, in a Planet of Slums. On the other hand is a ruling class merry-go-round to keep us all numb to the real crises.

The writer teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.

Published in Dawn, August 19th, 2022

https://selforganizedseminar.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/naomi-klein-the-shock-doctrine.pdf

THE SHOCK DOCTRINE - AUTONOMOUS LEARNING 

Shocking Times: The Rise of the Disaster Capitalism Complex. 14. Shock Therapy in the U.S.A.: The Homeland Security Bubble 283.

https://www.angelfire.com/il/photojerk/klein.pdf

DISASTER CAPITALISM By Naomi Klein THE RIVER IS A ROAD By ... 

DISASTER. CAPITALISM. The new economy of catastrophe. By Naomi Klein ... came time to update the Army manual on the rules for dealing with contractors,.

http://www.anthropolitics.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Schuller-and-Maldonado-Disaster-capitalism.pdf

Disaster capitalism | Anthropolitics 

The term “disaster capitalism,” launched in 2005 by activist jour- nalist Naomi Klein, still has res- onance within social movement circles.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1951/murder.htm

Murder of the Dead by Amadeo Bordiga 1951 

Murder of the Dead ... The basis of marxist economic analysis is the distinction between dead and living labour. We do not define capitalism as the ...

Coronavirus Is the Perfect Disaster for ‘Disaster Capitalism’

Naomi Klein explains how governments and the global elite will exploit a pandemic.

By Marie Solis Mar 13 2020 VICE US

The coronavirus is officially a global pandemic that has so far infected 10 times more people than SARS did. Schools, university systems, museums, and theaters across the U.S. are shutting down, and soon, entire cities may be too. Experts warn that some people who suspect they may be sick with the virus, also known as COVID-19, are going about their daily routines, either because their jobs do not provide paid time off because of systemic failures in our privatized health care system.

Most of us aren’t exactly sure what to do or who to listen to. President Donald Trump has contradicted recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and these mixed messages have narrowed our window of time to mitigate harm from the highly contagious virus.

These are the perfect conditions for governments and the global elite to implement political agendas that would otherwise be met with great opposition if we weren’t all so disoriented. This chain of events isn’t unique to the crisis sparked by the coronavirus; it’s the blueprint politicians and governments have been following for decades known as the “shock doctrine,” a term coined by activist and author Naomi Klein in a 2007 book of the same name.

History is a chronicle of “shocks”—the shocks of wars, natural disasters, and economic crises—and their aftermath. This aftermath is characterized by “disaster capitalism,” calculated, free-market “solutions” to crises that exploit and exacerbate existing inequalities.

Klein says we’re already seeing disaster capitalism play out on the national stage: In response to the coronavirus, Trump has proposed a $700 billion stimulus package that would include cuts to payroll taxes (which would devastate Social Security) and provide assistance to industries that will lose business as a result of the pandemic.

“They’re not doing this because they think it’s the most effective way to alleviate suffering during a pandemic—they have these ideas lying around that they now see an opportunity to implement,” Klein said.

VICE spoke to Klein about how the “shock” of coronavirus is giving way to the chain of events she outlined more than a decade ago in The Shock Doctrine.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Let’s start with the basics. What is disaster capitalism? What is its relationship to the “shock doctrine”?

The way I define disaster capitalism is really straightforward: It describes the way private industries spring up to directly profit from large-scale crises. Disaster profiteering and war profiteering isn’t a new concept, but it really deepened under the Bush administration after 9/11, when the administration declared this sort of never-ending security crisis, and simultaneously privatized it and outsourced it—this included the domestic, privatized security state, as well as the [privatized] invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The “shock doctrine” is the political strategy of using large-scale crises to push through policies that systematically deepen inequality, enrich elites, and undercut everyone else. In moments of crisis, people tend to focus on the daily emergencies of surviving that crisis, whatever it is, and tend to put too much trust in those in power. We take our eyes off the ball a little bit in moments of crisis.

Where does that political strategy come from? How do you trace its history in American politics?

The shock-doctrine strategy was as a response to the original New Deal under FDR. [Economist] Milton Friedman believes everything went wrong in America under the New Deal: As a response to the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, a much more activist government emerged in the country, which made it its mission to directly solve the economic crisis of the day by creating government employment and offering direct relief.

If you’re a hard-core free-market economist, you understand that when markets fail it lends itself to progressive change much more organically than it does the kind of deregulatory policies that favor large corporations. So the shock doctrine was developed as a way to prevent crises from giving way to organic moments where progressive policies emerge. Political and economic elites understand that moments of crisis is their chance to push through their wish list of unpopular policies that further polarize wealth in this country and around the world.

Right now we have multiple crises happening: a pandemic, a lack of infrastructure to manage it, and the crashing stock market. Can you outline how each of these components fit into the schema you outline in The Shock Doctrine ?

The shock really is the virus itself. And it has been managed in a way that is maximizing confusion and minimizing protection. I don’t think that’s a conspiracy, that’s just the way the U.S. government and Trump have utterly mismanaged this crisis. Trump has so far treated this not as a public health crisis but as a crisis of perception, and a potential problem for his reelection.

The shock doctrine was developed as a way to prevent crises from giving way to organic moments where progressive policies emerge.

It’s the worst-case scenario, especially combined with the fact that the U.S. doesn’t have a national health care program and its protections for workers are abysmal. This combination of forces has delivered a maximum shock. It’s going to be exploited to bail out industries that are at the heart of most extreme crises that we face, like the climate crisis: the airline industry, the gas and oil industry, the cruise industry—they want to prop all of this up.



How have we seen this play out before?

In The Shock Doctrine I talk about how this happened after Hurricane Katrina. Washington think tanks like the Heritage Foundation met and came up with a wish list of “pro-free market” solutions to Katrina. We can be sure that exactly the same kinds of meetings will happen now— in fact, the person who chaired the Katrina group was Mike Pence. In 2008, you saw this play out in the original [bank] bail out, where countries wrote these blank checks to banks, which eventually added up to many trillions of dollars. But the real cost of that came in the form of economic austerity [later cuts to social services]. So it’s not just about what’s going on right now, but how they’re going to pay for it down the road when the bill for all of this comes due.

Is there anything people can do to mitigate the harm of disaster capitalism we’re already seeing in the response to the coronavirus? Are we in a better or worse position than we were during Hurricane Katrina or the last global recession?

When we’re tested by crisis we either regress and fall apart, or we grow up, and find reserves of strengths and compassion we didn’t know we were capable of. This will be one of those tests. The reason I have some hope that we might choose to evolve is that—unlike in 2008—we have such an actual political alternative that is proposing a different kind of response to the crisis that gets at the root causes behind our vulnerability, and a larger political movement that supports it.

This is what all of the work around the Green New Deal has been about: preparing for a moment like this. We just can’t lose our courage; we have to fight harder than ever before for universal health care, universal child care, paid sick leave—it’s all intimately connected.

If our governments and the global elite are going to exploit this crisis for their own ends, what can people do to take care of each other?

”'I’ll take care of me and my own, we can get the best insurance there is, and if you don't have good insurance it's probably your fault, that's not my problem”: This is what this sort of winners-take-all economy does to our brains. What a moment of crisis like this unveils is our porousness to one another. We’re seeing in real time that we are so much more interconnected to one another than our quite brutal economic system would have us believe.

We might think we’ll be safe if we have good health care, but if the person making our food, or delivering our food, or packing our boxes doesn’t have health care and can’t afford to get tested—let alone stay home from work because they don’t have paid sick leave—we won’t be safe. If we don’t take care of each other, none of us is cared for. We are enmeshed.

We’re seeing in real time that we are so much more interconnected to one another than our quite brutal economic system would have us believe.

Different ways of organizing society light up different parts of ourselves. If you’re in a system you know isn’t taking care of people and isn’t distributing resources in an equitable way, then the hoarding part of you is going to be lit up. So be aware of that and think about how, instead of hoarding and thinking about how you can take care of yourself and your family, you can pivot to sharing with your neighbors and checking in on the people who are most vulnerable.

Disaster Capitalism 101 comes to Nova Scotia

Also: wind; cleaners approve contract; Dartmouth Cove; pedestrian killed; Black community members in Halifax encouraged to participate in focus groups

by Tim Bousquet

January 28, 2025

HALIFAX EXAMINER

One of St Barbara's "non-core" assets is its Touquoy open pit gold mine in Moose River, Nova Scotia. Credit: Raymond Plourde / Ecology Action Centre


NEWS
1. Wind

Nova Scotia’s 2030 Clean Power Plan graphic. Credit: Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources and Renewables

“Calling it ‘a great day’ for clean energy, on Monday Nova Scotia’s Energy Minister Trevor Boudreau announced contracts for six new onshore wind farms,” reports Jennifer Henderson:


Together, the provincial government expects this procurement to deliver 625 megawatts of renewable energy by the end of 2028. If successful, this would reduce the province’s dependence on coal and fossil fuels by 19% and cut carbon emissions by at least 8%.

…

At the present time, as indicated by the graphic [above], 42% to 43% of the province’s electricity is generated from renewable sources, including hydro imported from Muskrat Falls. New wind projects – both onshore and eventually offshore – are key to the province being able to meet its renewable energy goals and to shutter coal-fired plants between 2030 and 2040.

When it comes to fuel costs, Nova Scotia Power is paying $63.62 per megawatt hour for the Green Choice wind, compared to about $100 per megawatt hour for coal, natural gas, and oil.

Click or tap here to read “Nova Scotia announces major wind projects to wean off coal.”

Wind is obviously a good strategy for meeting greenhouse gas reduction goals, and with battery projects in the works, increasing reliability of the grid. And even with significant capital costs, wind is the more affordable fuel option. This was the good part of the announcement (the bad part is in the next item).

But if we are to meet the lofty goals outlined yesterday, several things have to not happen.

First, the power from new wind projects can’t be siphoned for the Rube Goldberg machinery of so-called green hydrogen. It does Nova Scotia no good if, thanks to an oligarch-friendly set of tax rebates and subsidies, the economics of renewable power favour the inefficient and wasteful export plan of super-cooled ammonia to Europe over powering domestic homes and businesses.

Second, the Canadian oil and gas industry can’t dictate power policies federally or provincially. We are now witnessing the abandonment of government support for renewable power south of the border. It’s an open question as to whether the renewable industry in the United States is developed enough to carry on without that support.

However, as demonstrated by the provincial announcement yesterday, here in Nova Scotia, government financing is still needed to jump-start the renewable industry. I very much fear a change in federal leadership could undercut that financing.

Third, our consumption of electricity can’t increase at an uncontrollable rate. We’re necessarily adding a lot of electrical demand to the system, by electrifying lots of things that used to be oil powered.

Heat pumps are an example. This is not an argument against heat pumps, which are absolutely more energy efficient than oil furnaces, drastically lower greenhouse gas emissions, and are more affordable to residents. (I’m having a heat pump system installed in my own house right now). But it also is undeniable that they add demand to the electrical grid.

My real worry is not heat pumps, but electric vehicles. If our ‘green’ future is just a one-for-one swap out of internal combustion engines for electric engines on the same (and growing) number of private single-passenger cars, corporate fleets, and commercial vehicles, the added demand to the grid will be enormous, and I don’t see how yesterday’s wind announcement is up to the challenge. It’s entirely possible that all the wind power promised yesterday comes on line, but the electrical demand from electric vehicles grows so great that the percentage targets of wind as part of the grid can’t be met.

The solution for this is to change the “modal split” — that is, the percentage of people who drive single-passenger cars decreases while the percentage of people who take transit (and cycle and walk) increases. But none of the various provincial energy, environmental, or housing plans include any meaningful strategy for changing the modal split. In fact, the same government celebrating the wind power announcement has recently tabled a half-billion dollar highway plan just as it provides no meaningful money to transit systems. (It has promised $65 million for the Bedford ferry, and we’ll see if that ever becomes a reality).

All of which is to say: yes, yesterday’s wind announcement is good news. But we don’t get the promised wind future without also being clear-headed about ‘green hydrogen,’ being politically active so as to ward off a government captured by the oil and gas industry, and instituting a significant re-work of our transportation system.
2. Disaster Capitalism and the mining industry

The open pit at the Touquoy gold mine in Moose River in November 2022. Credit: Raymond Plourde / Ecology Action Centre

Henderson’s report (above) continues:


Environment Minister Tim Halman lauded the announcement of more wind farms, saying it ushers in “a new energy era that is sustainable, green, and will advance reconciliation.” Halman said the province is “unwavering” in its focus to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.


If we are serious about addressing climate change and greening our grid, we need to build faster. To do that we need to get our natural resources out of the ground faster and more efficiently without compromising our environment.

In short, we cannot have wind energy, solar panels, and EVs without having critical minerals. So we are going to use our natural resources to our full advantage to help people of this province.

The environment minister said he recognizes this is “a shift,” but the government’s environmental assessment process will ensure mining is carried out “safely, responsibly, and ethically” and that “no company will get a pass on following our environmental laws.”

The Halifax Examiner asked Halman how opening up the province to the mining of critical minerals like lithium and uranium – as proposed by Premier Tim Houston last week – would have any impact on the construction of new wind farms that are needed by 2030 to comply with legislated renewable energy targets. Halman replied:


There are a lot of moving parts with climate change and energy policy. We now know that if we wish to have more wind farms, onshore and offshore, the responsible use of critical minerals is going to be an absolute necessity as we move forward because it’s going to be an intricate part of our economy. We are talking about a transformation, and a transformation takes time.

This comes just a few days after Premier Tim Houston announced that the Nova Scotia response to Trump’s threatened tariffs is to, yep, cut regulations on mining, and Houston said he was prepared to lift bans on uranium mining and fracking for methane, and left open the possibility of ending the moratorium on offshore drilling near Georges Bank.

In the process, Houston railed against “special interests” (but the mining industry isn’t a special interest, evidently) and the carbon tax.

This is Disaster Capitalism 101.

The term “Disaster Capitalism” was coined by Naomi Klein in her 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. She defines it as a form of extreme capitalism that advocates privatization and deregulation in the wake of war or natural catastrophe.

Donald Trump is Disaster Capitalism personified. He is a chaos agent, creating so much confusion and disorder that the powerful can bulldoze through an exploitive agenda for their own profit.

And here in Nova Scotia, Houston is using the excuse of Trump’s chaotic tariffs to bulldoze through a similar exploitive agenda.

(Send this item as a separate article: right click and copy this link)

3. Cleaners approve contract SEIU LOCAL 2

Cleaners who work with GDI Integrated Facility Services review a new collective agreement. Credit: SEIU Local 2/Justice for Janitors

“Three hundred Halifax cleaners who work for a North American facilities maintenance and commercial cleaning service have ratified a contract with their employer,” reports Suzanne Rent:


As the Examiner reported on Friday, the cleaners, who all work with GDI Integrated Facility Services, reached a tentative agreement at a final conciliation meeting on Thursday. The cleaners had been without a contract since September, and in November they voted for strike action.

The cleaners were looking for better wages, improvements in benefits, retirement security, and language in their contracts that would prevent them from unfair workloads and their work being subcontracted.

The cleaners work at 50 properties across Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM), including the ferry terminals, Halifax Shopping Centre, and the RCMP headquarters in Dartmouth.

According to a press release from SEIU Local 2, the union representing the cleaners, the members overwhelmingly voted in favour of the agreement.

Members were set to strike on Monday, with a rally set for the Halifax waterfront. All job action has been called off. If the cleaners had gone on strike, it would have been the largest strike ever by janitors in HRM.

Click or tap here to read “Halifax cleaners win wage increases, improved benefits in new collective agreement.”

4. Dartmouth Cove

King’s Wharf from Dartmouth Cove. Credit: Suzanne Rent

“The founder of a group that wants to save Dartmouth Cove called a recent letter from the company that wants to infill the cove disingenuous and said the group is concerned about the silence from Mayor Andy Fillmore on the ongoing battle,” reports Suzanne Rent:


Jill Brogan, one of the founders of Save Dartmouth Cove, spoke at a public meeting on Monday night at the Mic Mac Amateur Aquatic Club…

Brogan also addressed the silence from Mayor Andy Fillmore on the issue of Dartmouth Cove. She noted that Fillmore received campaign contributions from Brad and Tom Hickey, who are the co-founders of ARCP. The Examiner wrote about that here.

Brogan said she she hopes Fillmore recuses himself from any discussions around the cove. She said Save Dartmouth Cove also contacted Fillmore several times during his election campaign to ask to meet or make a public statement on the issue.

“The silence was deafening, absolutely deafening. I don’t even think he poked his head down in our neighbourhood,” Brogan said. “His actions, or lack thereof, speak volumes.”

“It seems like the wealthy on the [Northwest] Arm have Fillmore’s attention, but we on the Dartmouth side don’t.”

Click or tap here to read “Mayor Andy Fillmore isn’t talking about Dartmouth Cove.”

(Send this item: right click and copy this link)
5. Pedestrian killed

Monday evening, Halifax Police issued this release:


Police Investigate Vehicle & Pedestrian Collision

At 5:47 p.m., Halifax Regional Police responded to a vehicle & pedestrian collision at Robie Street / Veterans Memorial Lane Halifax. The pedestrian sustained life-threating injuries and has been transported to the hospital. Police received reports that the same vehicle was involved in another collision near Beech Steet / Jubilee Road. The driver, an adult male, has been arrested for Dangerous Operation of a Conveyance. Investigators with Patrol, Accident Investigation Section and Forensic Identification Section are conducting the investigation, which is in the early stages.

I’m told that the pedestrian, a young woman, has died.

6. Black community members in Halifax encouraged to participate in focus groups

From the ‘Reporting in Black Communities’ research project’s invitation to participate. Credit: Reporting in Black Communities/Professors Eternity Martis and Nana aba Duncan

This item is written by Yvette d’Entremont:

Researchers studying news coverage of Black communities are looking for people in Halifax to participate in focus groups this Friday and Saturday.

A pre-screen questionnaire for the ‘Reporting in Black Communities’ project explains that it aims to explore how anti-Black racism affects the coverage of Black communities in Canadian news, and how coverage of these communities can become more equitable.

The online invitation to participate notes the research is being led by two Black journalism professors, Toronto Metropolitan University assistant professor Eternity Martis, and Carleton University associate professor Nana aba Duncan.

Martis and Duncan are looking for Black community members who are 18 or older, are news consumers, and who have an understanding of the effects of negative media representation in Canada. Potential participants must speak English or French, and are asked to fill out the pre-screen questionnaire found here.

“Your insights and experiences are invaluable to this study and will allow researchers to better understand journalist’s level of preparedness to report on Black communities,” the researchers wrote.

Halifax is one of four cities where in-person focus groups are taking place. Other participating cities include Montreal, Toronto, and Edmonton.

Each session is estimated to last about two hours. During the focus groups, researchers aim to discuss how Black community members perceive the impacts of negative news reports about predominantly Black neighbourhoods.

Both Halifax sessions will be conducted in English and will take place at New Horizons Baptist Church on Nora Bernard Street in Halifax. Friday’s session runs from 5:30pm to 7:30pm, while Saturday’s focus group is from 1:30pm to 3:30pm.

‘Reporting in Black Communities’ is part of a larger initiative on equity in journalism at the Mary Ann Shadd Cary Centre for Journalism and Belonging, established at Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communication.

7. Sure, why not?

Nothing more swells the heart of a true Newfoundland and Labadourian than seeing an AI-generated image of the provincial flag waving next to a rocket that will go to space and beyond. Why, it’s enough to drop all environmental regulations and review, and open the treasury to the backer of the firm. Credit: Nordspace

“The CEO behind the company proposing to launch rockets from St. Lawrence calls the proposed spaceport a project of national importance,” reports Juanita Mercer for the St. John’s Telegram:

NordSpace founder and CEO Rahul Goel says it will create about 200 local jobs.

He spoke to The Telegram on Wednesday, Jan. 22, about his plans. They include a demonstration launch on the Burin Peninsula later this year.

Hurricane Fiona rips through powerless Puerto Rico

HAVANA (AP) — Hurricane Fiona struck Puerto Rico's southwest coast on Sunday as it unleashed landslides, knocked the power grid out and ripped up asphalt from roads and flung the pieces around.


Hurricane Fiona rips through powerless Puerto Rico

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Hundreds of people were evacuated or rescued across the island as floodwaters rose swiftly. Rushing rivers of brown water enveloped cars, first floors and even an airport runway in the island's southern region.

Forecasters said the storm threatened to dump “historic” levels of rain on Sunday and Monday, with up to 30 inches (76 centimeters) possible in eastern and southern Puerto Rico.

“The damages that we are seeing are catastrophic,” said Gov. Pedro Pierluisi.

The storm washed away a bridge in the central mountain town of Utuado that police say was installed by the National Guard after Hurricane Maria hit in 2017. Large landslides also were reported, with water rushing down big slabs of broken asphalt and into gullies.

Fiona was centered 45 miles (75 kilometers) south-southeast of Punta Cana, Dominican Republic with maximum sustained winds of 85 mph (140 kph) on Sunday night, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center. It was moving to the west-northwest at 10 mph (17 kph).

Fiona struck on the anniversary of Hurricane Hugo, which hit Puerto Rico 33 years ago as a Category 3 storm.

The storm's clouds covered the entire island and tropical storm-force winds extended as far as 140 miles (220 kilometers) from Fiona's center.

U.S. President Joe Biden declared a state of emergency in the U.S. territory as the eye of the storm approached the island's southwest corner.

Luma, the company that operates power transmission and distribution, said bad weather, including winds of 80 mph, had disrupted transmission lines, leading to “a blackout on all the island.”

“Current weather conditions are extremely dangerous and are hindering our capacity to evaluate the complete situation,” it said, adding that it could take several days to fully restore power.

Health centers were running on generators — and some of those had failed. Health Secretary Carlos Mellado said crews rushed to repair generators at the Comprehensive Cancer Center, where several patients had to be evacuated.

Fiona hit just two days before the anniversary of Hurricane Maria, a devastating Category 4 storm that struck on Sept. 20, 2017, destroying the island's power grid and causing nearly 3,000 deaths.

More than 3,000 homes still have only a blue tarp as a roof, and infrastructure remains weak, including the power grid. Outages remain common, and reconstruction started only recently.

“I think all of us Puerto Ricans who lived through Maria have that post-traumatic stress of, ‘What is going to happen, how long is it going to last and what needs might we face?’” said Danny Hernández, who works in the capital of San Juan but planned to weather the storm with his parents and family in the western town of Mayaguez.

He said the atmosphere was gloomy at the supermarket as he and others stocked up before the storm hit.

“After Maria, we all experienced scarcity to some extent,” he said.

The storm was forecast to pummel cities and towns along Puerto Rico’s southern coast that have not yet fully recovered from a string of strong earthquakes starting in late 2019.

More than 1,000 people with some 80 pets had sought shelter across the island by Sunday night, the majority of them in the southern coast.

Ada Vivian Román, a 21-year-old photography student, said the storm knocked down trees and fences in her hometown of Toa Alta.

“I’m actually very anxious because it’s a really slow-moving hurricane and time does not move,” she said. “You look at the clock and it’s still the same hour.”

She said she is also worried about whether the public transportation she relies on to get to her job at a public relations agency will be operating by the time she has to go back to the office.

“But I know that I’m privileged compared with other families who are practically losing their homes because they are under water,” she said.

In the southwest town of El Combate, hotel co-owner Tomás Rivera said he was prepared but worried about the “enormous” amount of rain he expected. He noted that a nearby wildlife refuge was eerily quiet before the storm hit.

“There are thousands of birds here, and they are nowhere to be seen,” he said. “Even the birds have realized what is coming, and they're preparing.”

Rivera said his employees brought bedridden family members to the hotel, where he has stocked up on diesel, gasoline, food, water and ice, given how slowly the government responded after Hurricane Maria.

“What we’ve done is prepared ourselves to depend as little as possible on the central government,” he said.

Puerto Rico’s governor, Pierluisi, activated the National Guard as the Atlantic hurricane season’s sixth named storm approached.

“What worries me most is the rain,” said forecaster Ernesto Morales with the National Weather Service in San Juan.

Fiona was predicted to drop 12 to 16 inches (30 to 41 centimeters) of rain over eastern and southern Puerto Rico, with as much as 30 inches (76 centimeters) in isolated spots. Morales noted that Hurricane Maria in 2017 had unleashed 40 inches (102 centimeters).

Fiona was forecast to swipe the Dominican Republic on Monday and then northern Haiti and the Turks and Caicos Islands with the threat of heavy rain. It could threaten the far southern end of the Bahamas on Tuesday.

A hurricane warning was posted for the Dominican Republic's eastern coast from Cabo Caucedo to Cabo Frances Viejo.

Fiona previously battered the eastern Caribbean, killing one man in the French territory of Guadeloupe when floods washed his home away, officials said. The storm also damaged roads, uprooted trees and destroyed at least one bridge.

St. Kitts and Nevis also reported flooding and downed trees, but announced its international airport would reopen on Sunday afternoon.

In the eastern Pacific, Tropical Storm Madeline was forecast to cause heavy rains and flooding across parts of southwestern Mexico. The storm was centered about 160 miles (260 kilometers) west-southwest of Cabo Corrientes on Sunday night, with maximum sustained winds of 50 mph (85 kph).

Dánica Coto, The Associated Press

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