Tag Archives: communist

The term ‘eco-terrorist’ is back and it’s killing climate activists

by RitaTweddle0 Posted on January 2, 2019

Subscribe to The Beacon

When devastating wildfires were sweeping the West last fall, Ryan Zinke, who recently announced his resignation as Interior secretary, lay the blame for the blazes on a ragtag group of environmentalists. “We have been held hostage by these environmental terrorist groups that have not allowed public access, that refuse to allow the harvest of timber,” Zinke said in an interview with Breitbart News.

Environmental activism has long put protesters at odds with government officials. But instead of dismissing climate-conscious demonstrators as hippies or “tree huggers,” government officials have begun using more dangerous labels — including “terrorist.”

It’s happening all over the world, from the U.S. to the Philippines to Brazil (which just yesterday inaugurated particularly anti-environmental/indigenous President Jair Bolsonaro). It even happened at the recent United Nations climate talks in Poland. More than two dozen climate activists headed to the summit in Katowice were deported or refused entry on the pretext of being national threats.

“I had absolutely no time to react,” said Zanna Vanrenterghem, a staff member at Climate Action Network Europe who was pulled off a train from Vienna to Katowice by border patrol agents. “The fact that this happened to 15 other people for similar reasons is very frightening. This is just a very small symptom of a larger disease.”

When it comes to justifying (and promoting) extreme actions, language matters. As Grist’s Kate Yoder wrote, earlier this year, labeling activists as “eco-terrorists” isn’t new. Charges of eco-terrorism peaked in the 1990s, but dissipated for the most part by 2012.

Now the term is starting to pick up steam again. And the consequences of treating environmentalists like terrorists can go to much further lengths than denying them entry to a climate conference.

Standing Rock was a turning point in the American war of words against climate activists.

In 2016, law enforcement agents used tear gas and water cannons (despite freezing temperatures) on Dakota Access pipeline protesters at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. Since those protests, dozens of bills and executive orders have been introduced to suppress similar environmental demonstrations.

Activists say this is part of an aggressive campaign by fossil fuel companies and their government allies to increase criminal penalties for minor violations — such as trespassing on a pipeline easement — as a way of suppressing climate action. Eighty-four members of Congress sent a bipartisan letter to the Department of Justice last fall, asking officials to prosecute pipeline activists as “terrorists.” And bills introduced in Washington and North Carolina would have defined peaceful demonstrations as “economic terrorism.”

And as we know in the U.S., branding a group of people as “terrorists” is kind of a big deal.

The label of “terrorism” has always been contested and politicized. Advocates for human rights say that the term has been used to suppress criticism of the government or corporate interests. “Making antiterror laws, that’s the most rational, the most logical tool [governments] use against indigenous people and all those that are critical of government,” said Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, the United Nations special rapporteur on the rights indigenous peoples, during a panel discussion this spring at the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

Daniel Sheehan of the Lakota Law Project, which provided legal defense to Standing Rock protesters, likened modern cries of domestic terrorism to anti-communist rhetoric in U.S. history. “Instead of communist, they now call you a terrorist, anybody who’s opposing the capitalist system,” says Sheehan. “What you get is this thing called industrial terrorism, these statutes that say if you do anything which is a direct action to attempt to impede a corporation from being able to pursue its business and to make its profit, that is terrorism.”

As a result of protests at Standing Rock, Energy Transfer Partners — the developer behind the Dakota Access Pipeline — filed a civil suit for $900 million against Greenpeace and other environmental groups alleging acts of eco-terrorism. Greenpeace has called the suit a “textbook strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP).”

“The fact that corporations are trying to frame environmental advocates in that way, it’s just a very clear example of how they’re trying to stigmatize it without addressing the concerns of the movement which are very legitimate,” says Rodrigo Estrada, senior communications specialist at Greenpeace. “In the end, this is about the protection of communities and the environment.”

While the backlash against Standing Rock protesters was iconic, it was far from the most serious consequence of anti-activist fear-mongering.

In February 2018, the President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines sought to label Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, the United Nations special rapporteur, as a terrorist. Tauli-Corpuz’ job is to look into abuses against indigenous peoples and present her findings and recommendations to the United Nations Human Rights Council. She’s been a vocal advocate for global action on climate change. And even before her tenure began in 2014, she has been a staunch defender of her tribe’s land, the Kankana-ey Igorot people of the Cordillera Region in the Philippines. Tauli-Corpuz has also called attention to the killings of indigenous Lumad people, who have long defended their land from logging and mining interests.

President Duterte filed a petition to designate more than 600 people, including Tauli-Corpuz, as terrorists for their alleged connections to the Communist Party of the Philippines and its New People’s Army. Duterte has also waged a bloody “war on drugs” (which some critics say has also been an excuse to eliminate his political opposition) that has led to thousands of alleged drug-dealers being killed by police and vigilantes.

In an interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, Tauli-Corpuz called the allegation of terrorism against her “entirely baseless and malicious.”

Always free, always fresh.

 
Ask your climate scientist if Grist is right for you. See our privacy policy

“The government sees this as an opportunity to pursue people they don’t like. I am worried for my safety and the safety of others on the list, including several rights activists,” she said.

The charge against Tauli-Corpuz was dismissed last August after an international outcry. But many other activists remained on the president’s petition to designate individual leaders and the Communist Party of the Philippines as terrorists.

“The inclusion of human rights defenders, amongst them indigenous peoples, on the Government list amounts to intimidation and harassment of people who are peacefully defending their rights,” wrote Michel Forst, the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders.

And governments don’t always stop at mere intimidation and harassment. 2017 proved to be the deadliest year on record for environmental activists, with the most killings perpetrated in Brazil and the Philippines. Nearly 200 activists were killed — an average of nearly four per week. The Guardian, which has attempted to track the growing number of protester deaths, reported that at least 83 environmental activists were killed in 2018.

Just last month, two members of Brazil’s landless activist group Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra were killed following comments from (then-candidate, now President) Jair Bolsonaro in which he called them “terrorists.” His comments have also been linked to assaults against members of Brazil’s indigenous groups, many of which are fighting to keep protected status for their lands. (In one of his first acts as President, Bolsonaro issued an executive order giving the anti-environmentalist Agriculture Ministry power to decide on indigenous lands.)

The activists’ murders in Brazil are the latest in a long line of alleged crimes against people who oppose Bolsonaro’s plans to ramp up deforestation in the Amazon. Brazilian activists fear Bolsonaro could inspire even more violence against environmentalists and indigenous peoples.

“Bolsonaro’s racist, fascist, genocidal government will not be enough to silence us,” said Dinamã Tuxá, coordinator of Brazil’s Association of Indigenous Peoples, in an interview with Amazon Watch. Still, he hinted at the fact that President Bolsonaro’s word choices could be continue to result in loss of life for indigenous activists down the road.

“This violence has become institutionalized and has saturated state institutions,” he said.

Back in the U.S., protesters are worried law enforcement is planning to employ violent tactics to stop anti-pipeline demonstrations in 2019.

In September, the American Civil Liberties Union obtained emails in which U.S. government officials characterized pipeline opponents as “extremists” and violent criminals that could commit potential acts of “terrorism.” The documents suggested that police were organizing counter-terrorism tactics to clamp down on possible Keystone protests. (If construction on the embattled Keystone XL pipeline advances in the coming months, it will likely draw protests from indigenous and environmental activists.)

“Evidence that the federal government plans to treat Keystone XL protests with counterterrorism tactics, coupled with the recent memory of excessive uses of force and surveillance at the Standing Rock protests, raises immense concerns about the safety of indigenous and environmental protestors who seek to exercise their First Amendment rights,” wrote Jacob Hutt, a fellow at the ACLU, in a blog post for the organization.

Although it may seem counterintuitive, Estrada of Greenpeace says the alarmist language may be a sign of progress. “The more effective people are becoming in mobilizing, the more backlash they’re going to face … If you corner a wild animal, they’re going to come really hard back at you.”

“The more we can voice that these things are happening,” Estrada says, “the more strength that we can provide to those people that are on the frontlines of these very dangerous situations.”

More: 

The term ‘eco-terrorist’ is back and it’s killing climate activists

Posted in Accent, alo, Anchor, Everyone, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, Pines, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The term ‘eco-terrorist’ is back and it’s killing climate activists

When Bruce Springsteen Helped Destroy the Berlin Wall

by meibartley Posted on October 16, 2016

Mother Jones

The fall of the Berlin Wall has been attributed to lots of things, from Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms and Ronald Reagan’s famous plea to the ineptitude of the Politiburo and the collective courage of the East German protesters. But there’s little doubt that David Bowie and Bruce Springsteen did their own small part.

When Bowie died this past January, the German Foreign Office noted as much in a memorial tweet: “Good-bye, David Bowie. You are now among #Heroes. Thank you for helping to bring down the #wall.” For Springsteen’s role, you can read the 2013 book Rocking the Wall: Bruce Springsteen—The Berlin Concert That Changed the World. But Springsteen’s recent memoir, Born to Run, offers his full account of that epic concert for the first time.

Many Americans are surprised to learn that our rock stars were even allowed to play in East Germany while the wall, constructed in 1961, remained in place. But Communist Party leaders, noting the tremendous buildup of anger and tension among their young people during the Gorbachev “glasnost” era, decided to provide a safety valve of sorts by allowing major rock concerts starting in 1987. Tens of thousands of East German kids were already flocking to the wall to listen as Bowie and others played just on the other side—and there had been clashes between the music-starved youth and East German police.

Bowie’s June 1987 performance was remarkable on several levels. The stage was set up in West Berlin, very close to the wall, with the old Reichstag building as a backdrop. Unlike most Western performers, he had a fitting song for the occasion: “Heroes,” written a few years earlier and purportedly inspired by Bowie’s time living in Berlin. The line about standing by the wall while “the guns shot above our heads” may refer to dramatic attempts by East Germans to escape the East—which happens to be the subject of my new book, The Tunnels: Escapes Under the Berlin Wall and the Historic Films the JFK White House Tried to Kill. (You can watch Bowie’s performance that day on YouTube.) And here, from a 2003 interview, is how he described it:

It was one of the most emotional performances I’ve ever done. I was in tears…And there were thousands on the other side that had come close to the wall. So it was like a double concert where the wall was the division. And we would hear them cheering and singing along from the other side. God, even now I get choked up. When we did “Heroes” it really felt anthemic, almost like a prayer. However well we do it these days, it’s almost like walking through it compared to that night, because it meant so much more. That’s the town where it was written, and that’s the particular situation that it was written about.

By then, Bob Dylan had been invited by a youth arm of the Communist Party to play in Treptower Park in the East on September 17, 1987, along with touring mates Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and Roger McGuinn. Protests were building against the regime and the wall, and East German officials hoped to defuse tensions with a few signs of openness.

Naturally, the Stasi (East Germany’s notorious secret police) were on top of it. Their six-page preview was filed at their headquarters under “Robert Zimmerman, No. HA XX 17578.” It mainly covered logistics and security—no secret bugging of Dylan, apparently—and the dispersal of 81,000 tickets, with at least one-third going to party officials and their pals. The Stasi didn’t seem too worried that Dylan, then in a down period in his career, would prove to be a rabble-rouser, as he was merely “an old master of rock” with no particular “resonance” with the youth of the day. The crowd, they predicted, would be mostly middle-aged and older. Dylan would act in a “disciplined” way and not cause undo “emotions.”

In the end, the gig played out pretty much as the Stasi had anticipated. By most accounts, Dylan—whose lyrical work just earned him the 2016 Nobel Prize for literature—gave a rather lackluster performance (his norm for the time), consisting of a couple of Christian tunes mixed in with hits like “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Rainy Day Women” and “Like a Rolling Stone.” He reportedly did not speak a single word from the stage.

This was not the case with Springsteen, who arrived in East Berlin 10 months later to play his biggest concert ever. More than 200,000 showed up, twice what Dylan had attracted. Springsteen opened, pointedly, with “Badlands,” but the indisputable highlight was his cover of “Chimes of Freedom,” a Dylan tune that Dylan himself had overlooked. The show, which in typical Springsteen style lasted nearly four hours, was beamed to millions of East Germans via state television. Many middle-aged Germans I interviewed for my book fondly recalled attending the performance or watching it on TV. “It was a nail in the coffin for East Germany,” one fan told the Guardian years later.

In Born to Run, Springsteen recounts a previous visit to East Berlin with bandmate Steve Van Zandt. “You could feel the boot,” he recalls. The wall, in Springsteen’s view, seemed almost “pornographic.” The experience helped shock the then-apolitical Van Zandt into decades of activism. “The power of the wall that split the world in two, its blunt, ugly, mesmerizing realness, couldn’t be underestimated,” Springsteen writes. “It was an offense to humanity.”

When Springsteen returned to East Berlin for his epic 1988 show, as I note in my own book, he unhappily discovered that the state was billing it as a “concert for the Sandinistas,” the pro-Communist Nicaraguans. So he delivered an impassioned speech. His German was grade-school level, but he got the point across: “I’m not here for any government. I’ve come to play rock and roll for you in the hope that one day all the barriers will be torn down.” East German officials backstage had somehow learned about Bruce’s original statement, which included the explosive word “walls,” and Springsteen’s manager, Jon Landau, had convinced him at the last minute to change it to “barriers.” But after finishing his statement, Springsteen quickly launched into “Chimes of Freedom,” which includes the key reference: “while the walls were tightening.”

The next day, he and the band “partied” at the East Berlin consulate, Springsteen writes, before heading back to the West to play a show for a mere 17,000 people—which “felt a lot less dramatic than what we’d just experienced.” Referring to the “stakes” of rock and roll, he writes, “The higher they’re pushed, the deeper and more thrilling the moment becomes. In East Germany in 1988, the center of the table was loaded down with a winner-take-all bounty that would explode into the liberating destruction of the Berlin Wall by the people.”

German historian Gerd Dietrich would later tell Rocking the Wall author Erik Kirschbaum, “Springsteen’s concert and speech certainly contributed in a large sense to the events leading up to the fall of the wall. It made people more eager for more and more change,” he said. “Springsteen aroused a greater interest in the West. It showed people how locked up they really were.”

As Springsteen himself would later put it, “Once in a while you play a place, you play a show that ends up staying inside of you, living with you for the rest of your life. East Berlin in 1988 was certainly one of them.”

Greg Mitchell is the author of The Tunnels: Escapes Under the Berlin Wall and the Historic Films the JFK White House Tried to Kill.

Continue reading:  

When Bruce Springsteen Helped Destroy the Berlin Wall

Posted in alo, ATTRA, Casio, FF, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on When Bruce Springsteen Helped Destroy the Berlin Wall

A Handful of Activists Led Hundreds of Media and Police Around Downtown Cleveland Today

by Natalia08K Posted on July 22, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

A group of no more than 15 activists led hundreds of police and journalists on a winding, impromptu march through the streets of Downtown Cleveland Thursday afternoon as they chanted anti-capitalist slogans.

The peaceful march was punctuated by moments of yelling between a self-proclaimed Communist and his anarchist cohort and a group of pro-capitalist counter-protesters who followed them the entire time while using a megaphone to extol the benefits of free markets. No arrests were made, and there were no reported injuries, according to the Cleveland Police Department. So far 23 people have been arrested as a result of protest-related activity during the Republican National Convention, according to the city of Cleveland.

“We wanted to have some discourse in Public Square, but then pretty much cops just started following us everywhere, it was unbelievable,” said Pat Mahoney, a member of the local chapter of the Industrial Workers of the World, a leftist workers’ rights organization, and one of the marchers leading the way.

It started mid-afternoon near the Public Square fountain, the site of many intense debates between various groups this week. On Thursday, a group from the virulently anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church tried to argue with a small gathering of anarchists and Communists, but police quickly moved to separate the two side. The anarchists and Communists later tried to move to various points throughout the square to talk with other people but were repeatedly followed and surrounded by dozens of police.

AJ Vicens

The small group of leftists then set off on a winding route through downtown for more than an hour, with hundreds of police officers and media in tow. At several points, the protesters got into yelling matches with a group of counter-protesters, including Gunnar Thorderson of Salt Lake City, Utah. Thorderson said that all of the counter-protesters worked for Turning Point USA, a Chicago-based nonprofit group advocating for free markets, capitalism, and limited government.

“We saw the opportunity arise when they started their march to just follow them and counter-protest,” said Thorderson, 23, after the march concluded. “It worked well to create that discourse that the media loves to see.”

He said the “discourse” was mostly peaceful, although he added that at various points their signs were ripped out of their hands and that someone punched him in the chest.

“Those guys are out here just like me, and they have their ideas, and they want their voices to be heard,” he said.

Cleveland Police Deputy Chief Wayne Drummond wouldn’t reveal how many officers were involved, but he did say that it was enough to protect the rights of the marchers along with everyone else on the streets.

“Some folks have the tendency to say it’s overkill,” he said when discussing the heavy police presence. “We have a responsibility and a duty to protect everyone. Part of that is making sure we have sufficient amount of personnel to do that.”

One of the marchers disagreed.

“This is absurd,” said Edward Arnold, a student at nearby Case Western University who was marching with the leftists. “The more we moved, we were like magnets that attracted more reporters, and more cops, so it just got to point it was so massive we just couldn’t stay, so we went out into the streets.”

View this article – 

A Handful of Activists Led Hundreds of Media and Police Around Downtown Cleveland Today

Posted in alo, ATTRA, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on A Handful of Activists Led Hundreds of Media and Police Around Downtown Cleveland Today

Trump Just Gave His Sharpest Anti-Clinton Speech Yet

by DKHUwe71121 Posted on June 22, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Donald Trump escalated his attacks on Hillary Clinton during a lengthy speech in New York on Wednesday, calling the presumptive Democratic nominee a “world-class liar” and potentially “the most corrupt person ever to seek the presidency.”

Trump claimed Clinton had “perfected the politics of personal profit and even theft,” accusing her of taking money from banks, special interests, and “financial backers in Communist China” in return for influence. He slammed her for ignoring “radical Islam” and allowing American diplomats to be killed in Benghazi in 2012. “She lacks the temperament, the judgment, and the competence to lead,” he said.

A large chunk of Trump’s case against Clinton rested on items pulled from Clinton Cash, a book by conservative academic and Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Peter Schweizer. The book alleges that Clinton used her position as secretary of state to funnel money to herself and the Clinton Foundation in return for friendly treatment for foreign governments including Russia, China, and Persian Gulf countries that Trump said “horribly abuse women and LGBT citizens.” Trump also claimed that Clinton’s use of private email server was an attempt to hide such corruption from public view.

Trump also blamed Clinton for toppling friendly governments in the Middle East and allowing the rise of ISIS by (unsuccessfully) supporting military action against the Syrian government. “In just four years, Secretary Clinton managed to almost single-handedly destabilize the entire Middle East,” Trump charged. “ISIS threatens us today because of the decisions Hillary Clinton has made.”

The presumptive GOP nominee made a direct plea to Bernie Sanders supporters, casting Clinton as a corrupt insider being challenged by another pro-working class, anti-Washington populist. The speech was filled with Sanders-like references to a “rigged system” and attacks on Clinton’s speeches to Wall Street firms and her support for major trade deals including NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, both of which Trump said harm American workers and enrich large banks and corporations. “The insiders wrote the rules of the game to keep themselves in power and in the money,” Trump said. “That’s why we’re asking Bernie Sanders’ voters to join our movement, so together we can fix the system for all Americans.”

For all of the sharp attacks on Clinton, the speech was maybe Trump’s most measured public appearance of the campaign. Trump stuck to his prepared text and included the kind of standard-issue political platitudes—”everywhere I look, I see the possibilities of what our country could be”—that he rarely employs at his rallies and press conferences.

Yet the speech contained numerous falsehoods. Trump claimed again that the United States was the highest-taxed nation in the world; lied about opposing the war in Iraq before it started; claimed the government spends “hundreds of billions” on bringing refugees to America; said hundreds of immigrants have been convicted of terrorist activity; charged that Clinton would “end virtually all immigration enforcement;” and said that Clinton’s email server had been hacked by foreign governments.

The speech seemed to represent the dramatic shift that’s apparently taken place in the Trump campaign this week since Trump fired campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who reportedly encouraged Trump’s penchant for offensive, off-the-cuff remarks and blocked attempts to expand Trump’s staff. Reporters noted an immediate change in the campaign’s tactics on Tuesday, with Trump’s staff sending out fundraising appeals and hitting back at comments by Clinton with “rapid response” email blasts to reporters rather than tweets by Trump himself. Both are considered standard campaign actions, but Trump hadn’t used either before this week.

Original article:

Trump Just Gave His Sharpest Anti-Clinton Speech Yet

Posted in Casio, Citizen, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Trump Just Gave His Sharpest Anti-Clinton Speech Yet

The "Umbrella Revolution" Just Scored a Major Victory in Hong Kong

by HannahLombardo Posted on June 19, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Last fall, the streets of Hong Kong filled with protestors demonstrating for greater autonomy after China proposed an election system that would undermine their right to vote for the city’s highest official. Students and concerned citizens camped outside of government buildings and blocked major thoroughfares for weeks on end wielding umbrellas to protect against police tear gas (leading to the name “Umbrella Revolution”). Eventually the demonstrations lost steam and protestors acquiesced to government demands to evacuate the streets. Many feared that the end of the protests meant a win for China and a blow to democracy in Hong Kong.

However early Thursday, Hong Kong’s legislature voted down the Chinese proposal that instigated the massive demonstrations. Pro-democracy supporters are calling it a major legislative victory. In order to understand why, we have to back up a bit.

Hong Kong becomes part of China…sort of: In 1997, the United Kingdom handed over control of Hong Kong to China. Under an agreement known as “one country, two systems,” however, China promised that Hong Kong would maintain political autonomy and many civil liberties that are not afforded to mainland Chinese (Vox does a good job laying out this confusing transition). One right citizens of Hong Kong did not get was the ability to directly vote for the city’s executive chancellor. Instead, a mostly pro-Beijing 1,200-member election committee has chosen the leader through simple majority every 5 years. In 2007, though, China told Hong Kong it would be allowed to elect its leader by popular vote in 2017.

Fall 2014, protests begin: But then, in August of 2014, the Chinese Communist Party released a proposed election plan outlining their version of a popular vote. In it, a special committee controlled by the Chinese Communist Party would choose up to three candidates for whom Hong Kong’s 5 million eligible voters could cast a ballot. Hong Kong’s current chief executive, Leung Chun-Ying, supported the proposal but thousands of Hong Kong citizens viewed this system as a “sham democracy” that would allow China to continue exercising control over Hong Kong. They took to the streets flooding the area surrounding Hong’s Kong’s government buildings for weeks before finally going home.

Okay, so what just happened: Hong Kong’s Legislative Council voted today on whether or not it would enact the the election system proposed by China. It was struck down with only 8 lawmakers out of 70 voting for the proposal, a big hit to the Chinese Communist Party and victory for the pro-democracy camp.

What‘s next: Pro-democracy activists are praising the legislature’s move, but also point out there is a long way to go before real democracy is achieved. Because China’s election plan was voted down, the current system will stay in place until at least 2022. Some believe a more productive short-term approach to reforming Hong Kong’s election system would be pushing the current election committee to better represent the people of Hong Kong instead of Chinese interests.

Continue at source:  

The "Umbrella Revolution" Just Scored a Major Victory in Hong Kong

Posted in alo, Anchor, Citizen, FF, Free Press, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The "Umbrella Revolution" Just Scored a Major Victory in Hong Kong

Here’s Why China Cares More About Climate Change Than Congress Does

by HyeMarshall Posted on November 13, 2014

Mother Jones

On Tuesday, China and the United States announced an unprecedented plan to work together to fight global warming. The deal includes new trade partnerships and significant new greenhouse gas goals for both countries. The US pledged to cut its emissions by up to 28 percent by 2025, while China agreed that its emissions would peak around 2030 and promised to get one-fifth of its power from non-fossil-fuel energy sources by the same year. Environmental groups have roundly welcomed the plan as an important step. But critics of the deal—including congressional Republicans—say China has been let off lightly and that it won’t follow through with its commitments.

The reality, of course, is far more complex. So I asked experts on US-China relations to explain why this deal was so attractive to the leaders of two countries that have historically locked horns over everything from human rights to lingerie imports. Here’s their explanation of why China really does want to want to act on climate change, and why the bargain makes sense for President Barack Obama, as well:

China has to act on air pollution. If it doesn’t, the country risks political instability. Top Republicans have slammed the US-China deal as ineffective and one-sided. “China won’t have to reduce anything,” complained Sen. Jim Inhofe (Okla.) in a statement, adding that China’s promises were “hollow and not believable.”

Climate Desk

But the assumption that China won’t try to live up to its end of the bargain misses the powerful domestic and global incentives for China to take action. The first, and most pressing, is visible in China’s appalling air quality. President Xi Jinping needs to act now, says Jerome A. Cohen, a leading Chinese law expert at New York University. Why? Because “the environment—not only the climate—is the most serious domestic challenge he confronts.” And Xi has the power to follow through on this “ambitious and necessary commitment,” says Cohen, who notes that the Chinese president will likely be in charge for eight more years and has “no overt opposition to his impressive power.”

Over the past few decades, China has witnessed the fastest and deepest wealth creation in history, hauling millions out of poverty in the space a generation. That growth has been heavily reliant on coal, which makes up roughly 70 percent of the country’s total energy consumption. China is the world’s top coal consumer and producer. All that has come with big cost: toxic air. According to one Lancet study, pollution generated mostly by cars and the country’s 3,000 coal-fired power plants killed 1.2 million Chinese people in 2010.

That’s why, Cohen says, this new announcement is such a big win for Chinese people themselves—it’s a clear demonstration that the country’s leaders are confronting China’s largest crisis. “This is very encouraging progress on a crucial issue of human rights: the right to a nonthreatening environment,” he says.

China’s air has become a major political threat to the Communist Party. As we reported in our yearlong investigation into China’s fracking plans, the country has a daily average of 270 “mass incidents”—unofficial gatherings of 100 or more demonstrators—sparked in part by pollution and environmental degradation. The message is clear. As The New Yorker‘s Evan Osnos put it, if the government doesn’t figure out a way to respond, “then it’s a political crisis, not just an environment crisis.” That’s what my colleague Jaeah Lee and I found when we toured China last year: It’s impossible to escape the scourge of coal. To understand why China wants to act now, you need to understand just how desperate the crisis has become:

The Atlantic‘s James Fallows made this point Wednesday, writing that “when children are developing lung cancer, when people in the capital city are on average dying five years too early because of air pollution, when water and agricultural soil and food supplies are increasingly poisoned, a system just won’t last.”

You can watch Fallows explain just how closely tied China’s environmental crisis is to the fortunes of the Communist Party:

President Xi Jinping wants to be a powerful global player. Another motivation for Chinese action has to do with global politics, says Orville Schell, who directs the Center on US-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York.

“Xi Jinping is a very tough, muscular, nationalist leader whose toolbox is taken from earlier Mao periods,” Schell said in a phone interview. According to Schell, Xi’s preference for assertive leadership on the world stage means that China is “going to accept much less hectoring and bullying” from the rest of the world, perceived or otherwise. “They are going to be much more defiant.”

This deal—in which China is appearing on the world stage as an equal partner with the United States—fits into that narrative, explains NYU’s Cohen. The “climate issue is needed to boost sagging and increasingly tense Sino-American relations,” he said. “Xi is pursuing a two-faced policy toward the US: progress on issues of critical importance to him and his party/state, and relentless hostility toward the continuing soft power influence of the US over the Chinese people and China’s neighbors. Xi is facing severe internal challenges. He sees that the US can help him on some and undermine him on others, so, following one of Chairman Mao’s famous maxims, he is ‘walking on two legs.'”

China is actually serious about climate change. It’s not the case that everything is about the machinery of global politics—or even simply about China’s domestic worries over air quality. China’s recent actions suggest that its policymakers are actually attempting to confront global warming. Beijing has committed to gradually shut down coal plants inside the city by 2017. Obama and Xi agreed last year to curb the use of hydrofluorocarbons—powerful greenhouse gases that are used in refrigerants. In September, China announced it was moving forward with plans for a massive, nationwide cap-and-trade program intended to help combat climate change. The program will launch in 2016, but there are already a series of pilot carbon markets across the country.

So what does Obama get out of this deal? Despite Republican criticisms that the deal lets China off the hook, Schell says that Obama gets to own a big foreign policy success—one that actually helps him achieve a major domestic policy goal. Obama’s success with China was born out of failure at home: “He’s had to export his hopes and dreams for some sort of collaborative solution in China,” Schell said. “China, paradoxically, has allowed Obama to say that he has followed through with his earlier commitments to take climate change seriously.”

Cohen warns that opposition to climate action in the US could still undermine the bilateral agreement, but he says he’s hopeful that Obama “can implement the US commitment.”

As for whether the deal could signal a larger breakthrough by the Obama administration in US-China relations, the experts are skeptical. “The two big moments—the breakthrough moments—in US-China relations, were Nixon in ’72 and Carter recognizing China when Deng Xiaoping came to the US in ’79,” says Schell. “This is not the case this time with Obama in China.” Still, Schell says that any agreement with the tough Chinese leadership “does represent some progress.”

After all, he says, Obama “certainly can’t do anything at home.”

More:  

Here’s Why China Cares More About Climate Change Than Congress Does

Posted in Anchor, ATTRA, Bunn, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, solar, The Atlantic, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Here’s Why China Cares More About Climate Change Than Congress Does

How Conservative Brits Tried to Use the Beatles to Win Elections

by mlodyseo7 Posted on February 7, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

February 9 marks the 50th anniversary of The Beatles‘ historic performance on The Ed Sullivan Show on CBS. It was one of the opening salvos of the British Invasion of the mid-1960s, and the broadcast drew 73 million viewers. It is consistently hailed as one of the most influential and biggest (if not the biggest ever) televised moments for rock n’ roll and popular music.

“The Beatles are delightful,” Sullivan said shortly after the performance. “They are the nicest boys I’ve ever met.”

You can watch their 1964 Ed Sullivan performance of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” (along with some other gigs) below, via Rolling Stone:

Many tributes and commemorative packages have been prepared for the anniversary. On Sunday, CBS will air a special all-star salute, featuring Stevie Wonder, Gary Clark, Jr., Katy Perry, and ex-Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, among others. The Ed Sullivan appearance was just one of many indicators of The Beatles’ immense popularity and influence. Concert promoters, cultural observers, and screaming teenage girls weren’t the only ones who understood this—British politicians did, too, and they weren’t shy about trying to exploit Beatlemania for electoral gain.

Continue Reading »

More: 

How Conservative Brits Tried to Use the Beatles to Win Elections

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on How Conservative Brits Tried to Use the Beatles to Win Elections