What happens when Bibi’s lust to remain in power overrides the importance of the lives of Israeli hostages? When six hostages who were alive until recently are found dead by IDF troops? When Israel’s “security excesses” kill people delivering aid to desperate people in Gaza? Whose role is it to tell Bibi to step down? Israeli opposition leaders, American benefactors?  It should be a coordinated effort between US and Israeli officials not affiliated with Likud (“Israeli MAGA”). Likud is as brainwashed over Bibi as MAGA is over Trump.

Last week, the IDF attacked at World Food Program truck, arguing falsely that the convoy had been hijacked by terrorists. The Washington Post reported, “The convoy had been delivering medical supplies and fuel to an Emirati-run hospital in Rafah . . , and its route was coordinated with the Israel Defense Forces.”

In April, seven World Central Kitchen workers were killed by the IDF including one American Jacob Flickinger, because the IDF wrongly claimed that militants were part of that convoy. The Biden administration response to these incidents has been inadequate and ineffective; expressing “deep alarm,” and demanding that Israel, “immediately rectify the issues within their system that allowed this to happen.” Non-MAGA Americans recognize the urgent need for more effective American, DIRECT involvement, to better assure Vice-President Kamala Harris’ electoral chances in November. Her unequivocal statement at the DNC supporting “self-determination for the Palestinian people,” needs to be backed up with direct action by Biden, or he’s hurting her. Biden needs to forcefully demand Bibi’s resignation without qualification. He was a mensch to withdraw from the Presidential race, but must become more forceful for the remainder of his term toward Israel. Otherwise, he’s helping Donald Trump.

Why has Bibi resisted setting up an inquiry commission into the state security failures of October 7? Because all the evidence points to him, according to Haaretz columnist Yossi Verter. Bibi was furnished with the same intelligence that Opposition Leader Yair Lapid was, which was issued by Ronan Bar, Director of the Shin Bet security service. Meanwhile, Likud’s party line is that, “the time for this discussion will be after the war,” which they are doing everything to prolong in service to protecting Bibi from prison for his bribery and corruption crimes.

 Perhaps the most alarming recent development has been Israel’s effort to escalate the coordinated violence against multiple West Bank towns. The worst fears about Ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Belezel Smotrich are quickly being realized, with the IDF AND settlers making war on Palestinians. They are the Israeli equivalent of Israeli “Proud Boys,” appointed to sensitive Cabinet positions by Bibi, as a reward for their support in helping him form a government.  Trump’s disastrous presidency empowered Bibi and Likud, which would not have occurred under “normal” US leadership. With Israel facing war fronts in Gaza and its northern border, it is also ramping up military activities in the West Bank, further empowering the 700,000 far-right Israeli settlers, who are there in violation of International Law.

 Haaretz writer Eren Yashiv argues that the Israeli opposition should resign the Knesset in masse, to paralyze the Likud government; rather than wait for it to implode on its own from the weight of Bibi’s dysfunctional coalition. It was precarious from the beginning, composed of far-right and deeply religious parties with conflicting agendas. The entire opposition could bring down the government by resigning. Why wait for the coalition to implode? This passage summarizes the failure of the Israeli opposition: “Fortunately for him (Bibi), he has faced no real political opposition over the past 20 months. Instead, he has faced a temporizing, subdued, often cowardly opposition that always has a ready excuse for why it shouldn’t do something.”

 What will it take to force Bibi from office, and de-legitimize him? An underlying theme here is the parallel paths of the US and Israel under Trump and Bibi, as both nations move closer to breaking point thresholds of Democracy.  Alon Pinkas illustrates the failure of the Israeli opposition to stand up to Bibi, the way Democrats cowered and caved to Ronald Reagan when he was first elected; and struggled to remake themselves into something palatable to Republicans until the past few years. Some still do.

Bibi has a rich history of undermining US leadership under Democrats, going back to President Barack Obama in 2015; and also colluding with Donald Trump, whose ignorance about Israeli-Palestinian history has been wantonly destructive, and given Bibi carte blanche to be even more destructive. Whereas, Presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were the kinds of friends who don’t let their friends commit political-economic suicide. American voters objecting to Biden’s soft-peddling, ineffective negotiations with Bibi need to remember that Trump will let Bibi totally raze what remains of Gaza, and “let him do whatever the hell he wants” – continue to abuse the human and property rights of Palestinians in the West Bank, just as he did in his first (and hopefully ONLY term).

Bibi has proven to be the Unites States’ most dishonorable and treacherous ally-negotiating partner in our history. As Haaretz columnist Amir Tibon noted, two weeks ago, “Netanyahu pulled on Blinken the same trick he has been pulling on American diplomats for his entire career: Doublespeak. One message in English, the opposite in Hebrew.” He’s played Democratic presidents for stooges for too long. It’s time for Joe Biden to follow Sen. Chuck Schumer’s lead and say to Bibi, “It’s time for you to go.”  Bibi prosecutes a genocidal war to remain in office and out of prison, insisting that an ongoing military onslaught will bring Hamas to its knees and the hostages home. But Yossi Verter cogently noted, “Military pressure will not rescue the hostages, it is killing them.” 

—

Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

Al Jazeera English Video: Major Israel protests and general strike over fate of captives in Gaza | Al Jazeera Newsfeed

( Inequality.org ) – Looking for something positive to celebrate on New Year’s Eve? Consider lifting a glass to the hardworking people behind these inspiring victories of 2023.

1. The ‘Year of the Strike’

More than half a million American workers walked off the job this year. In October, companies lost more workdays to strikes than in any month during the past 40 years. 

Big 3 auto workers, Hollywood writers and actors, Las Vegas and Los Angeles hotel staff, and Kaiser Permanente health care employees were among those who used strikes to score big bargaining table wins. For UPS drivers, the mere threat of a Teamsters strike was enough to secure historic wage hikes and safety protections.

After  renewing contracts with Ford, GM, Stellantis, and UPS, the UAW and the Teamsters doubled down on efforts to organize the unorganized. The Teamsters picketed outside 25 Amazon warehouses, demanding a fair contract for unionized drivers at a California-based delivery service for the notoriously anti-union retailer. The UAW set their sights on non-unionized car companies, causing so much indigestion among Nissan, Toyota, Honda, and Hyundai executives that they immediately hiked wages for their U.S. employees.  

2. Black worker organizing in the south 

To move the needle on the country’s dismally low 6 percent unionization rate, the labor movement will need to make inroads in tough territory, particularly in historically anti-union southern states that have been magnets for investment. 

Two union victories in 2023 are the latest proof that this goal is not impossible. The United Steelworkers won an election at a Blue Bird bus factory in Georgia with nearly 1,500 predominantly Black workers. In three Alabama cities, AT&T Mobility workers at In Home Expert hubs joined the Communications Workers of America.

Blue Bird bus factory employee, Fort Valley, Georgia. Credit: United Steelworkers.

3. A crack in the anti-union tech sector

The past year also saw union progress in another historically union-averse territory: the tech sector. Earlier this month, Microsoft forged an agreement with the AFL-CIO to remain neutral in organizing drives among their U.S.-based workers. This will make it easier for about 100,000 Microsoft employees to unionize, with potential ripple effects across the industry. 

4. New trifecta states

In Michigan and Minnesota, pro-worker state legislators hit the ground running after Democrats won state trifectas in 2022. 

Minnesota passed a blizzard of pro-labor reforms, including paid sick leave for most workers, minimum pay and benefits for nursing home staff, and wage theft protections for construction workers. Teachers will be able to negotiate over class sizes and nurses will have a greater say in staffing levels. The new laws also ban non-compete agreements and “captive audience” meetings designed to undercut union support.

This year Michigan became the first state in six decades to roll back anti-union “right-to-work” laws. They also restored a “prevailing wage” law requiring construction contractors to pay union wages and benefits on state-funded projects.

5. Cities lead the way on low-wage worker protections

The federal minimum wage for tipped workers has been stuck at $2.13 since 1991. In that vacuum, states and cities are taking action. This year, restaurant servers and other advocates in the nation’s capital successfully beat back last-ditch industry attempts to undercut a victorious 2022 ballot initiative to phase out the local subminimum tipped wage. After a multi-year, hard-fought campaign, DC’s tipped workers got their first raise this past summer, putting them on track to earn the full local minimum wage by 2027. The Chicago City Council also passed a five-year tipped wage phaseout plan, set to begin in 2024. 

Demonstration in support of plan to phase out subminimum wage for tipped workers in Washington, D.C. Credit: One Fair Wage.

App-based delivery drivers in New York City had to fight back in 2023 against Uber, DoorDash, and other corporations’ efforts to block introduction of the nation’s first minimum wage for their occupation. Gig companies finally lost their legal challenges to the pay rule in late November. Delivery driver pay rose to $17.96 an hour on December 4 and will increase to $19.96 when the legislation takes full effect in 2025. 

6. College campuses as labor hotbeds

Organizing among graduate and medical students continued to explode in 2023, with the highest number of union elections among these groups than in any year since the 1990s. In the first four months of 2023 alone, over 14,000 graduate students on five campuses voted to join the United Electrical union — all by margins of over 80 percent. Campuses across the country coordinated organizing efforts through a series of teach-ins and other events under the banner of Labor Spring, an initiative that will continue in 2024.  

Stanford University graduate workers who unionized in 2023. Credit: UE union.

7. Stock buyback blowback

Many of the labor battles of 2023 skewered corporate executives for underpaying workers while blowing money on stock buybacks, a financial maneuver that artificially inflates CEO stock-based pay. Two precedent-setting federal policies to rein in buybacks also took effect in 2023. For the first time, corporations faced a one percent excise tax on buybacks. The Biden administration also began giving companies a leg up in the competition for new semiconductor subsidies if they agree to forgo all stock buybacks for five years. This important precedent should be expanded to all companies receiving any form of public funds.  

8. Collective bargaining requirements on federally funded construction projects

With megabillions in new public investment flowing into infrastructure projects, it’s critical that the administration ensure these taxpayer dollars support good jobs. This week, Biden officials took an important step forward by finalizing regulations requiring the use of “project labor agreements” between employers and workers for large federal construction projects. The terms of these pre-hire collective bargaining agreements must cover all parties — contractors, subcontractors, and unions. This important rule should be expanded beyond construction to contractors that provide goods and other services.

9. Trashing “junk” fees

Working class Americans fork out tens of billions of dollars every year on deceptive, hidden charges that raise the cost of banking and internet services, concerts and movies, rental cars and apartments, and more. In October, President Joe Biden announced a plan to put these “junk fees” where they belong — in the trash.

Under the plan, the Federal Trade Commission aims to force companies to disclose the total price of goods and services up front and slap violators with big fines. This will mean no hidden fees — and more money in working families’ pockets.

10. NLRB rulings on Amazon and Starbucks

Anyone wondering whether our labor laws need fixing need look no further than the fact that Starbucks and Amazon have been able to get away with refusing to negotiate with workers who voted to unionize for well more than a year. (Two years for the path-breaking Buffalo, New York Starbucks workers). On the positive side, Biden appointees at the National Labor Relations Board seem to be making the most of their current authority and capacity. 

In August, the labor board issued a ruling that will make union-busting harder in cases where a majority of workers have signed union cards but the employer still demands an election. Under the ruling, bosses who engage in unfair labor practices in these situations will now be forced to recognize and bargain with the union without an election.

Shep Searl of Starbucks Workers United, Chicago. Credit: Starbucks Workers United.

In the meantime, the NLRB is continuing to try to hold Starbucks and Amazon accountable for rampant labor rights violations. The board has 240 open or settled charges against Amazon in 26 states and they’ve issued more than 100 complaints against Starbucks, covering hundreds of accusations of threats or retaliation against union supporters and failure to bargain in good faith. Most recently, the NLRB ordered the reopening of 23 Starbucks cafes, alleging the company had closed them to suppress union activity, in violation of federal law. 

Reflecting on 2023, Starbucks barista and union organizer Shep Searl marveled at how diverse workers, “from Teamsters to actors,” demonstrated that there are many ways to win through collective action. 

“Every day, we’ve been absorbing that information and utilizing it in our mobilization and escalation plan,” Searl told Inequality.org. “We aren’t going anywhere and so much of that is inspired by the other campaigns. If we stand together, there’s no mountain we cannot climb.”

Inequality.org

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U.S. Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) speaking at Ceasefire Now rally in Washington D.C. 12/14/23

( Michigan Advance ) – U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Detroit) on Thursday joined with United Auto Workers (UAW) President Shawn Fain in Washington, D.C., in calling for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in the war in Gaza.

Joined in front of the Capitol building by fellow progressives, U.S. Representatives Cori Bush (D-Mo.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Tlaib spoke of her family’s connection to the labor movement and its commitment to social justice.

“I’m a proud daughter of a UAW worker, and I know my Yaba (father), if he was here, he would be so proud,” she said. “The UAW taught him he deserved human dignity, even though he only had a fourth-grade education, even though he was Palestinian, even though he was Muslim. On that assembly line, he was equal to every single human being on that line. Who did that for him? The United Auto Workers did that for him.”

Tlaib, along with Bush, introduced a Ceasefire Now Resolution on Oct. 16.

“Why aren’t over 18,000 Palestinians killed enough for my colleagues to say the words, ‘Ceasefire now’? Why aren’t over 7,000 children killed enough for my colleagues to call for a lasting ceasefire for an end to this war? The American people are demanding to be heard saying, ‘We choose life over death.’”

Tlaib said that while President Joe Biden has called himself the most pro-union president in American history, he is “ignoring the voices of working people across the country who are demanding human dignity, not only for their own families, but for families in Gaza and around the world.”

Biden helped negotiate a temporary ceasefire last month, but it broke down amid negotiations to free more female Israeli hostages. Fighting between Israel and Hamas has since begun again.

Fain, fresh off the ratification of historic contracts with General Motors, Ford and Stellantis, called Tlaib and Bush “a couple of the most badass representatives in Congress,” and said the UAW stood with them in a call for a ceasefire. 

“This is a product of our belief in humanity that innocent civilians must be protected,” said Fain. “We cannot bomb our way to peace. The only path forward to build peace and social justice is through a ceasefire.”

Fain said the UAW takes pride in its history of standing up for justice both at home and around the globe while also speaking up for both civil rights and human rights.

“The world has seen enough slaughter and devastation,” he said. “Peace is the only path forward. While we call for a ceasefire, we also condemn antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Arab racism, all of which are growing in our nation at this moment and must be stopped.”

“As union members, we know we must fight for all workers and suffering people around the world. We must fight for humanity. That means we must restore people’s basic rights and allow water, food, fuel, humanitarian aid to enter Gaza. We must also call for the release of all hostages.”

The Associated Press reports that the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says more than 18,700 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military response to the Oct. 7 surprise terrorist attack.

The Hamas militants killed as many as 1,400 people, mostly civilians. They also took about 240 people hostage, approximately 100 of whom were released during a week-long truce that ended on Dec. 1. However, Israel said earlier this week they believe at least 19 hostages have died while in captivity. Eight Americans are also among those still being held in Gaza.

On Tuesday, the United Nations passed a resolution calling for a humanitarian ceasefire amid warnings about a deepening humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The U.S. and Israel were among only 10 nations that voted against the measure, saying it would only benefit Hamas. 

Biden, however, has warned Israel it is losing international support because of its “indiscriminate” bombing of civilians.

That was a message Fain echoed.

“It’s what the global community is currently standing together for at the United Nations,” he said. “It’s what the majority of nations called for. And right here in America, it’s what the majority of American citizens want.”

Other union officials also spoke at the Thursday rally, including those from the American Postal Workers Union and United Electrical Workers, who said the labor movement was solidly behind the call for a permanent ceasefire.

Tlaib ended her remarks thanking the coalition of union members and others who supported their effort, including an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor and peace activist she met in front of the White House. 

“We paused a moment, and she was holding a sign saying, ‘Not in our name.’ I’m so grateful for each and every one of your voices in this movement to save lives. And I’m proud to stand alongside you all. So today we raise our collective voice to say, ‘Enough is enough. Ceasefire now.’”

 

Jon King

Jon King is the Senior Reporter for the Michigan Advance and has been a journalist for more than 35 years. He is the Past President of the Michigan Associated Press Media Editors Association and has been recognized for excellence numerous times, most recently in 2022 with the Best Investigative Story by the Michigan Association of Broadcasters. He is also an adjunct faculty member at Cleary University. Jon and his family live in Howell.

 

Published under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. 

Via Michigan Advance

But with corporations insistent on squeezing more profits no matter the cost, strikes are inevitable — and necessary.

Sonali Kolhatkar

Sonali Kolhatkar is the host of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a television and radio show on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. This commentary was produced by the Economy for All project at the Independent Media Institute and adapted for syndication by OtherWords.org.

Otherwords.org

The Inflation Reduction Act’s investments in green energy and combating the effects of climate change has already created an estimated 170,000 jobs since the act was signed into law by President Biden on August 16, 2022. Outside institutions estimate that in toto it will create 1.5 million jobs.

The act has already leveraged $110 billion in investments by the private sector in green energy.

The Treasury Department recently published new rules that clarify that the attractive tax credits for green energy investments in the Act depend on a company’s workers being paid the prevailing wage. The site says,

“The Inflation Reduction Act’s prevailing wage and registered apprenticeship requirements apply to many of the clean energy deployment tax incentives under the law, including for the clean energy investment and production tax credits that help finance utility-scale wind, solar, and battery storage projects as well as for the credits for carbon capture, utilization, and storage and clean hydrogen projects. If the prevailing wage and registered apprenticeship requirements are satisfied, a taxpayer can claim an enhanced credit or deduction equal to up to five times the value of the regular credit or deduction. While prevailing wage and apprenticeship requirements have existed for more than 100 years and have long applied to projects supported by federal contracts, the Inflation Reduction Act applied these requirements to clean energy tax incentives for the first time.”

The White House clarifies that “Many of the IRA’s clean energy deployment tax incentives are increased by five times if taxpayers pay workers prevailing wages and use Registered Apprentices.”

The Department of Labor defines the prevailing wage this way: “The prevailing wage rate is defined as the average wage paid to similarly employed workers in a specific occupation in the area of intended employment.”

Registered apprentice programs are industry-driven career paths that allow for on-the-job and supplemental training and education, and which produce credentials that are recognized industry-wide.

So a company that hires green energy workers for much less than they are usually paid to do that work in that town will be cheating itself out of a nice fat tax break. Likewise those that have no registered apprentice program will be at a disadvantage regarding government grants.

The White House also points out that the Department of Energy has begun accepting applications for $2 billion in grants to help auto manufacturers transition from internal combustion engine cars to electric cars.

The program seeks to protect workers’ jobs by prioritizing grants to facilities that are in danger of shutting down. Likewise, those applicants that have a track record of retaining workers and pay high wages will have an advantage, as well as those that are staying put in their long-established community as opposed to relocating elsewhere. In other words, Biden really is engaged in industrial policy, using the carrot of substantial government funding to shape the work environment to be favorable to workers.

The Department of Energy is also offering $10 billion in loans for the conversion process, which, again, will go first of all to companies with “strong workforce practices and labor standards.”

The Department of Energy is also making available $3.5 billion in grants for the construction of battery factories in the US, and will favor those companies planning to create high-quality jobs.

Finally, note that many workers suffer from the inhalation of the particulate matter created by burning fossil fuels in factories, causing lung cancer, hypertension and heart attacks. Biden’s legislation is estimated to reduce CO2 emissions by a billion tons by 2030, making the air much healthier and avoiding the worst impacts of climate change.

Happy Labor Day, everyone.

A new report reveals how stock buybacks have inflated CEO paychecks and widened pay gaps at the 100 largest low-wage corporations.

By Sarah Anderson

( Inequality.org ) – In response to strikes and union organizing drives, corporate leaders routinely insist that they simply lack the wherewithal to raise employee pay. And yet top executives seem to have little trouble finding resources for enriching themselves and wealthy shareholders.

In 2021 and 2022, S&P 500 corporations spent record sums on stock buybacks, a maneuver that pumps up stock prices by reducing the supply on the open market. Since stock-based pay makes up the bulk of executive compensation, CEOs reap huge — and completely undeserved — windfalls.

CEOs could watch cat videos all day and still reap huge windfalls through stock buybacks.

The Low-Wage 100

A new Institute for Policy Studies report, Executive Excess 2023, reveals how these financial shenanigans have widened disparities at the 100 S&P 500 corporations with the lowest median worker pay, a group we’ve dubbed the “Low-Wage 100.”

Between January 1, 2020 and May of this year, these companies reported a combined $341 billion in stock buyback spending.

Lowe’s led the buybacks list, plowing nearly $35 billion into share repurchases over the past three and a half years. In 2022 alone, Lowe’s spent more than $14 billion on buybacks — enough to give every one of its 301,000 U.S. employees a $46,923 bonus.

I’m guessing rank-and-file Lowe’s employees, half of whom make less than $30,000 per year, could find more productive uses for that money.

During their stock buyback spree, Low-Wage 100 CEOs’ personal stock holdings increased more than three times as fast as their firms’ median worker pay. At the 65 buyback companies where the same person held the top job between 2019 and 2022, the Low-Wage 100 CEOs’ personal stock holdings soared 33 percent to an average of $184.7 million. Median pay at these firms rose only 10 percent to an average of $31,972.

Image by Jonathan from Pixabay

FedEx founder and CEO Frederick Smith has the largest stockpile in the Low-Wage 100. With $3.6 billion in stock buybacks since January 2020, Smith’s personal stock holdings have grown 65 percent to more than $5 billion. By contrast, median pay for workers at the notoriously anti-union company fell by 20 percent to $39,177 during this period.

Taxpayer support for huge CEO-worker pay gaps

What makes all this even more upsetting? Taxpayers are actually supporting, through federal contracts, the buyback-fueled disparities at FedEx and 50 other Low-Wage 100 firms.

FedEx pocketed $6.2 billion in fiscal years 2020-2023 for mail services for the Veterans Administration and other agencies. The largest federal contractor in the Low-Wage 100 is another company known for union-busting — Amazon. Over the past few years, Amazon has pocketed more than $10 billion in web services deals from Uncle Sam while spending nearly $6 billion repurchasing their shares.

Fortunately, support is growing for solutions to our CEO pay problem.

Solutions to executive excess

Before 1982, stock buybacks were viewed as market manipulation and largely banned. President Joe Biden hasn’t yet called for reinstating that ban, but he did rail against buybacks in his State of the Union address this year and called for quadrupling a new 1 percent excise tax on share repurchases.

The Biden administration is also starting to use federal money going to corporations as a lever for change. In an important first step, the administration is giving preferential treatment in the awarding of new semiconductor manufacturing subsidies to companies that agree to give up buybacks. Now they should extend that policy to all corporations receiving taxpayer money.

Buybacks are not the only trick CEOs can use to inflate their own paychecks. Over my decades of research, I’ve documented how corporate leaders have used myriad shady means to hit personal jackpots, from cooking the books and moving executive bonus goalposts to creating housing bubbles and other reckless financial schemes.

To tackle this systemic problem, policymakers need to go bolder. Executive Excess 2023 offers an extensive menu of CEO pay reforms. One of the most innovative: tax penalties for companies with huge CEO-worker pay gaps. Two major cities — San Francisco and Portland, Oregon — are already generating significant revenue through such taxes. Seattle is now considering a similar approach.

The idea that the person in the corner office is hundreds of times more valuable than other employees is a myth — even if that person is not just watching cat videos. All employees contribute to the profits of a corporation, and our economy would be far healthier if the fruits of our labor were more equitably shared.

Sarah Anderson directs the Global Economy Project and co-edits Inequality.org at the Institute for Policy Studies. She is the author of the report Executive Excess 2023.

Via Inequality.org

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In Paris, I saw American tourists striding around in their shorts and sandals, cameras slung around their necks, staking out positions in cathedrals and museums. I listened to my mother’s commentary on what she considered their boorishness and insensitivity. In my 11-year-old mind, I tended to agree. I’d already heard the expression “the ugly American” — although I then knew nothing about the prophetic 1958 novel with that title about U.S. diplomatic bumbling in southeast Asia in the midst of the Cold War — and it seemed to me that those interlopers in France fit the term perfectly.

When I got home, I confided to a friend (whose parents, I learned years later, worked for the CIA) that sometimes, while in Europe, I’d felt ashamed to be an American. “You should never feel that way,” she replied. “This is the best country in the world!”

Indeed, the United States was, then, the leader of what was known as “the free world.” Never mind that, throughout the Cold War, we would actively support dictatorships (in Argentina, Chile, Indonesia, Nicaragua, and El Salvador, among other places) and actually overthrow democratizing governments (in Chile, Guatemala, and Iran, for example). In that era of the G.I. Bill, strong unions, employer-provided healthcare, and general postwar economic dominance, to most of us who were white and within reach of the middle class, the United States probably did look like the best country in the world.

Things do look a bit different today, don’t they? In this century, in many important ways, the United States has become an outlier and, in some cases, even an outlaw. Here are three examples of U.S. behavior that has been literally egregious, three ways in which this country has stood out from the crowd in a sadly malevolent fashion.

Guantánamo, the Forever Prison Camp

In January 2002, the administration of President George W. Bush established an offshore prison camp at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The idea was to house prisoners taken in what had already been labelled “the Global War on Terror” on a little piece of “U.S.” soil beyond the reach of the American legal system and whatever protections that system might afford anyone inside the country. (If you wonder how the United States had access to a chunk of land on an island nation with which it had the frostiest of relations, including decades of economic sanctions, here’s the story: in 1903, long before Cuba’s 1959 revolution, its government had granted the United States “coaling” rights at Guantánamo, meaning that the U.S. Navy could establish a base there to refuel its ships. The agreement remained in force in 2002, as it does today.)

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In the years that followed, Guantánamo became the site of the torture and even murder of individuals the U.S. took prisoner in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other countries ranging from Pakistan to Mauritania. Having written for more than 20 years about such U.S. torture programs that began in October 2001, I find today that I can’t bring myself to chronicle one more time all the horrors that went on at Guantánamo or at CIA “black sites” in countries ranging from Thailand to Poland, or at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, or indeed at the Abu Ghraib prison and Camp NAMA (whose motto was: “No blood, no foul”) in Iraq. If you don’t remember, just go ahead and google those places. I’ll wait.

Thirty men remain at Guantánamo today. Some have never been tried. Some have never even been charged with a crime. Their continued detention and torture, including, as recently as 2014, punitive, brutal forced feeding for hunger strikers, confirmed the status of the United States as a global scofflaw. To this day, keeping Guantánamo open displays this country’s contempt for international law, including the Geneva Conventions and the United Nations Convention against Torture. It also displays contempt for our own legal system, including the Constitution’s “supremacy” clause which makes any ratified international treaty like the Convention against Torture “the supreme law of the land.”

In February 2023, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, became the first representative of the United Nations ever permitted to visit Guantánamo. She was horrified by what she found there, telling the Guardian that the U.S. has

“a responsibility to redress the harms it inflicted on its Muslim torture victims. Existing medical treatment, both at the prison camp in Cuba and for detainees released to other countries, was inadequate to deal with multiple problems such as traumatic brain injuries, permanent disabilities, sleep disorders, flashbacks, and untreated post-traumatic stress disorder.”

“These men,” she added, “are all survivors of torture, a unique crime under international law, and in urgent need of care. Torture breaks a person, it is intended to render them helpless and powerless so that they cease to function psychologically, and in my conversations both with current and former detainees I observed the harms it caused.”

The lawyer for one tortured prisoner, Ammar al-Baluchi, reports that al-Baluchi “suffers from traumatic brain injury from having been subjected to ‘walling’ where his head was smashed repeatedly against the wall.” He has entered a deepening cognitive decline, whose “symptoms include headaches, dizziness, difficulty thinking and performing simple tasks.” He cannot sleep for more than two hours at a time, “having been sleep-deprived as a torture technique.”

The United States, Ní Aoláin insists, must provide rehabilitative care for the men it has broken. I have my doubts, however, about the curative powers of any treatment administered by Americans, even civilian psychologists. After all, two of them personally designed and implemented the CIA’s torture program.

The United States should indeed foot the bill for treating not only the 30 men who remain in Guantánamo, but others who have been released and continue to suffer the long-term effects of torture. And of course, it goes without saying that the Biden administration should finally close that illegal prison camp — although that’s not likely to happen. Apparently it’s easier to end an entire war than decide what to do with 30 prisoners.

Unlawful Weapons

The United States is an outlier in another arena as well: the production and deployment of arms widely recognized as presenting an immediate or future danger to non-combatants. The U.S. has steadfastly resisted joining conventions outlawing such weaponry, including cluster bombs (or more euphemistically, “cluster munitions”) and landmines.

In fact, the United States deployed cluster bombs in its wars in Iraq, and Afghanistan. (In the previous century, it dropped 270 million of them in Laos alone while fighting the Vietnam War.) Ironically — one might even say, hypocritically — the U.S. joined 146 other countries in condemning Syrian and Russian use of the same weapons in the Syrian civil war. Indeed, former White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that if Russia were using them in Ukraine (as, in fact, it is), that would constitute a “war crime.”

Now the U.S. has sent cluster bombs to Ukraine, supposedly to fill a crucial gap in the supply of artillery shells. Mind you, it’s not that the United States doesn’t have enough conventional artillery shells to resupply Ukraine. The problem is that sending them there would leave this country unprepared to fight two simultaneous (and hypothetical) major wars as envisioned in what the Pentagon likes to think of as its readiness doctrine.

What are cluster munitions? They are artillery shells packed with many individual bomblets, or “submunitions.” When one is fired, from up to 20 miles away, it spreads as many as 90 separate bomblets over a wide area, making it an excellent way to kill a lot of enemy soldiers with a single shot.

What places these weapons off-limits for most nations is that not all the bomblets explode. Some can stay where they fell for years, even decades, until as a New York Times editorial put it, “somebody — often, a child spotting a brightly colored, battery-size doodad on the ground — accidentally sets it off.” They can, in other words, lie in wait long after a war is over, sowing farmland and forest with deadly booby traps. That’s why then-Secretary General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon once spoke of “the world’s collective revulsion at these abhorrent weapons.” That’s why 123 countries have signed the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions. Among the holdouts, however, are Russia, Ukraine, and the United States.

According to National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, the cluster bombs the U.S. has now sent to Ukraine each contains 88 bomblets, with, according to the Pentagon, a failure rate of under 2.5%. (Other sources, however, suggest that it could be 14% or higher.) This means that for every cluster shell fired, at least two submunitions are likely to be duds. We have no idea how many of these weapons the U.S. is supplying, but a Pentagon spokesman in a briefing said there are “hundreds of thousands available.” It doesn’t take much mathematical imagination to realize that they present a real future danger to Ukrainian civilians. Nor is it terribly comforting when Sullivan assures the world that the Ukrainian government is “motivated” to minimize risk to civilians as the munitions are deployed, because “these are their citizens that they’re protecting.”

I for one am not eager to leave such cost-benefit risk calculations in the hands of any government fighting for its survival. That’s precisely why international laws against indiscriminate weapons exist — to prevent governments from having to make such calculations in the heat of battle.

Cluster bombs are only a subset of the weapons that leave behind “explosive remnants of war.” Landmines are another. Like Russia, the United States is not found among the 164 countries that have signed the 1999 Ottawa Convention, which required signatories to stop producing landmines, destroy their existing stockpiles, and clear their own territories of mines.

Ironically, the U.S. routinely donates money to pay for mine clearance around the world, which is certainly a good thing, given the legacy it left, for example, in Vietnam. According to the New York Times in 2018:

“Since the war there ended in 1975, at least 40,000 Vietnamese are believed to have been killed and another 60,000 wounded by American land mines, artillery shells, cluster bombs and other ordnance that failed to detonate back then. They later exploded when handled by scrap-metal scavengers and unsuspecting children.”

Hot Enough for Ya?

As I write this piece, about one-third of this country’s population is living under heat alerts. That’s 110 million people. A heatwave is baking Europe, where 16 Italian cities are under warnings, and Greece has closed the Acropolis to prevent tourists from dying of heat stroke. This summer looks to be worse in Europe than even last year’s record-breaker when heat killed more than 60,000 people. In the U.S., too, heat is by far the greatest weather-related killer. Makes you wonder why Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a bill eliminating required water breaks for outside workers, just as the latest heat wave was due to roll in.

Meanwhile, New York’s Hudson Valley and parts of Vermont, including its capital Montpelier, were inundated this past week by a once-in-a-hundred-year storm, while in South Korea, workers raced to rescue people whose cars were trapped inside the completely submerged Cheongju tunnel after a torrential monsoon rainfall. Korea, along with much of Asia, expects such rains during the summer, but this year’s — like so many other weather statistics — have been literally off the charts. Journalists have finally experienced a sea change (not unlike the extraordinary change in surface water temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean). Gone are the tepid suggestions that climate change “may play a part” in causing extreme weather events. Reporters around the world now simply assume that’s our reality.

When it comes to confronting the climate emergency, though, the United States has once again been bringing up the rear. As far back as 1992, at the United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, President George H.W. Bush resisted setting any caps on carbon-dioxide emissions. As the New York Times reported then, “Showing a personal interest on the subject, he singlehandedly forced negotiators to excise from the global warming treaty any reference to deadlines for capping emissions of pollutants.” And even then, Washington was resisting the efforts of poorer countries to wring some money from us to help defray the costs of their own environmental efforts.

Some things don’t change all that much. Although President Biden reversed Donald Trump’s move to pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate accords, his own climate record has been a combination of two steps forward (the green energy transition funding found in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, for example) and a big step back (greenlighting the ConocoPhillips Willow oil drilling project on federal land in Alaska’s north slope, not to speak of Senator Joe Manchin’s pride and joy, the $6.6 billion Mountain Valley Pipeline for natural gas).

And when it comes to remediating the damage our emissions have done to poorer countries around the world, this country is still a day late and billions of dollars short. In fact, on July 13th, climate envoy John Kerry told a congressional hearing that “under no circumstances” would the United States pay reparations to developing countries suffering the devastating effects of climate change. Although at the U.N.’s COP 27 conference in November 2022, the U.S. did (at least in principle) support the creation of a fund to help poorer countries ameliorate the effects of climate change, as Reuters reported, “the deal did not spell out who would pay into the fund or how money would be disbursed.”

Welcome to Solastalgia

I learned a new word recently, solastalgia. It actually is a new word, created in 2005 by Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht to describe “the distress that is produced by environmental change impacting on people while they are directly connected to their home environment.” Albrecht’s focus was on Australian rural indigenous communities with centuries of attachment to their particular places, but I think the concept can be extended, at least metaphorically, to the rest of us whose lives are now being affected by the painful presences (and absences) brought on by environmental and climate change: the presence of unprecedented heat, fire, noise, and light; the presence of deadly rain and flooding; and the growing absence of ice at the Earth’s poles or on its mountains. In my own life, among other things, it’s the loss of fireflies and the almost infinite sadness of rarely seeing more than a few faint stars.

Of course, the “best country in the world” wasn’t the only nation involved in creating the horrors I’ve been describing. And the ordinary people who live in this country are not to blame for them. Still, as beneficiaries of this nation’s bounty — its beauty, its aspirations, its profoundly injured but still breathing democracy — we are, as the philosopher Iris Marion Young insisted, responsible for them. It will take organized, collective political action, but there is still time to bring our outlaw country back into what indeed should be a united community of nations confronting the looming horrors on this planet. Or so I hope and believe.

Copyright 2023 Rebecca Gordon

Via Tomdispatch.com

DeSantis, with the school year winding down, has just appeared at a Miami charter school to sign a new slate of bills that aim to undermine quality public services. One of the bills — described preposterously by DeSantis as “paycheck protection” — eliminates dues check offs for teachers and other public employees.

Check-off provisions in Florida have for years given public-sector workers like educators and nurses the option to have their union dues deducted from their paychecks and remitted straight to their union.

Eliminating dues check off weakens public-sector unions. Without automatic payroll deduction, unions have a harder time collecting the dues they need to function effectively. But the legislation DeSantis signed does not extend the “freedom” of check-off elimination into the law enforcement sector. Law enforcement unions, not so coincidentally, have endorsed DeSantis in his gubernatorial campaigns.

The new DeSantis-signed dues legislation also includes, hidden deep in the text, a killer provision that requires public-sector unions outside law enforcement to have an arbitrary super majority of eligible employees — 60 percent, not just a 50-percent-plus — if they want to keep the right to represent and bargain for public-sector workers.

Teachers in Florida feel especially targeted by the legislation DeSantis has so enthusiastically signed into law.

“This will hurt working people and the middle class,” says Karla Hernández-Mats, the president of United Teachers of Dade, the largest teacher union local in the entire Southeast. “This is about going after our freedom, about going after workers and their right to a fair contract.”

Via Pixabay.

The increased 60-percent threshold to qualify for bargaining rights, Hernández-Mats points out, could be particularly devastating, solidifying Florida, a “right-to-work” state, as a “work-with-no-right state.” Nearly two-thirds of all local teacher unions in Florida would fail to meet the new super-majority threshold and face decertification.

In the face of this challenge, public-sector unions across the state are working to find creative ways to collect dues through electronic banking applications. They’re also mobilizing to help all teachers and other public employees understand the importance of becoming dues-paying union members.

“We are in constant communication with teachers, and a lot of our members are stepping up and talking to their colleagues about how important this is,” Hernández-Mats notes. “They’re talking about how the state could make us ‘at-will’ employees and how this bill could turn our public schools into a revolving door where no one is committed to education.”

Florida currently stands 48th in the nation when it comes to teacher pay and, not surprisingly, is facing a massive teacher shortage, opening 2023 with over 5,000 vacancies. Weakening unions, Hernández-Mats believes, will only exacerbate the crisis and speed the larger right-wing agenda to defund public education.

Another bill signed into Florida law this year advances that agenda by expanding the state’s charter school voucher program, a move that will allow parents to opt out of public schools and send their children to private schools on the state dime. This “school choice” bill will cost the state an estimated $4 billion in funding and starve local school districts. In the Tampa Bay area, for example, almost $850 million will be routed out of public schools for the 2023-2024 school year.

Florida hasn’t always been a testing ground for attacks on public educators and their unions. In fact, back in 1968, educators in Florida staged the nation’s first successful statewide teacher strike to protest chronic school funding shortages and bargain-basement teacher pay. But today the Florida Constitution and state law bar teachers from striking and threaten “hefty penalties” if they do.

That reality has the current struggle against the DeSantis attack on public education and public educators going down a different lane. The statewide teacher union, the Florida Education Association, has just filed a lawsuit in federal court to prevent the implementation of the newly signed DeSantis legislation.

Governor DeSantis, says FEA president Andrew Spar, “has made it clear that he is targeting educators because we exercise our constitutional right to speak out against attempts by this governor and others to stymie the freedom to learn and to stifle freedom of thought.”

The governor, adds Spar, “is using this legislation to retaliate against his critics,” a retaliation “very similar to what we’ve seen in the attacks on Disney.”

DeSantis, a still-unannounced candidate for the GOP presidential nomination, has ample resources for continuing his offensive against unions and their support for higher taxes on the rich to fund better public services. DeSantis, as an analysis in one of Florida’s top daily newspapers detailed last year, has “extraordinary” billionaire support.

Rebekah Entralgo is the managing editor of Inequality.org. You can follow her on Twitter at @rebekahentralgo.

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