US News
>The school’s founder, psychologist Matthew Israel, patented a remote-controlled device called the Graduated Electronic Decelerator (GED). The FDA banned the use of the device, but JRC successfully overturned the ban in court. After Congress empowered the FDA to ban such shocks as behavioral therapy, the agency is working towards a new ban. > >**FDA ban proposal** > >The FDA wrote in its ban proposal, “These devices present a number of psychological risks including, depression, anxiety, worsening of underlying symptoms, development of post-traumatic stress disorder and physical risks such as pain, burns and tissue damage.” > >JRC students with intellectual disabilities are particularly vulnerable, the FDA notes, because it may be difficult for them to communicate about pain or other harms they experience from the shocks. > >School staff members administer electric shocks through electrodes attached to a student’s arm, leg or torso to cause a change in their behavior. According to their website (judgerc.org), “A highly trained and experienced staff member skillfully opens a plastic box and presses a button causing two seconds of safe electrical current.” Students wear up to five of the electrodes, even while sleeping, > >JRC is the only program in the U.S. that uses electric shocks to control behavior. The center compares the shock to a bee sting, but survivors of JRC have testified that it causes severe, lingering muscle cramps. According to its website, JRC is “licensed to serve ages five through adult.” It has used the device on minors, but states that it now delays shocks until age 18. Each student’s shock program is approved by psychologists and by the Bristol County Probate Court. > >In 2010, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Manfred Nowak, referred to the use of electrical shock devices for this kind of therapy as torture and sent an urgent appeal to the U.S. government to investigate. > >Israel claimed that there are no negative side effects from skin shock. Professor Nancy Weiss, co-author of a book on the Rotenberg Center, responded that people who have experienced the shock at JRC describe it as the worst pain they have ever felt, and years later still have debilitating PTSD. “Electric shocks are not a professionally accepted approach to behavior management. […] You’re not allowed to use electric shock on prisoners, or prisoners of war or convicted terrorists.” > >The JRC responds that using electric shock is “a treatment of last resort” for residents who harm themselves, but their court-approved programs allowed harmless behaviors to be shocked, including hand-flapping, standing up without permission, taking their eyes off of their work, nagging, disobeying orders or making noises. (Emphasis original.)
https://archive.ph/Pinz0
>Lea Kayali, a Palestinian Youth Movement organizer said: “I come to you all in a state of mourning, but not in a state of despair. Because to be Indigenous is to embody the word ‘sumud,’ a word in Arabic that means steadfastness. To be sumud is to insist with our bodies and our spirits that we will resist colonialism with every moment of our lives. […] It is the strength of this movement of five centuries of anticolonial struggle that is a promise of liberation. […] From Turtle Island to Palestine, we demand Land Back and nothing less!” > >To close the rally, demonstrators joined hands to participate in a traditional round dance to commemorate Indigenous Peoples Day and give expression to the ongoing resistance and resilience of Indigenous peoples around the world. > >Jean-Luc Pierrite said, in his closing remarks on the strike line: “We are here for all our [Indigenous] relations. We are here for our workers. We are here! Make them pay! Land back!”
>One of the organizers, Jonas, speaking to the demonstrators and the media, explained that the administration had refused one of the meetings they had promised last spring. In another broken promise, it refused to release information about new investments. The administration held only one of the three meetings they promised. And it maintained university punishments of some of the students, including Jonas. > >The students demanded that the administration hold to the agreement it made with them last spring. This included providing details about all new investments so students could screen them. > >Now the students demand FIT set up a screen for further investments so they invest no new money in military corporations supplying arms to Israel; all charges against students dropped, no suspensions or arrests; a referendum on divestment from companies engaged with […] apartheid; and divestment from companies that used forced prison labor at “slave” wages. Students demand that FIT President Joyce Brown make a statement condemning the genocide […] in Gaza. > >Showing the development of students’ politics, chants were not only to “stop the genocide!” but “long live the Intifada!” and “liberation for Palestine!” > >If FIT students give a fair measure of the mood on campuses in general, student solidarity with Palestine is refusing to diminish and attitudes are sharpening while the U.S.-funded genocidal war expands in West Asia.
>Boeing is up to its neck in problems, facing three things: a powerful strike, a mounting pile of production and financial troubles and anger over Boeing’s rôle as a producer of weapons used against Palestine and the Arab World. There is a growing outcry against the company for its anti-labor attacks and its genocidal role in the war on the people of Palestine. People are protesting Boeing worldwide. > >District 751 Local I President Bruce McFarland said: “What do the Boeing Machinists want? It’s simple. We want what was taken from us 10 years ago when we were pressured into a contract that took away our pension, forced us into a stagnating wage package and raised our medical bills.” (Seattle Times, Oct. 11) > >The previous contract, when the union made concessions, has meant that entry level workers are barely making $21 an hour. McFarland described an avalanche of Boeing and state government maneuvers and threats which essentially forced a regressive contract down the workers’ throats. This included a wholesale moving of much of Boeing airplane production from Seattle to a non-union plant in South Carolina. > >This was a stinging defeat for the Machinists, but now they are back on their feet to fight again — like so many other workers. > >With negotiations at an impasse, Boeing has announced job cuts affecting 10% of its workforce. These cuts are company-wide and involve supervisory as well as hourly workers.
>Following the reading of these demands and the statement that preceded them, the community heard from three more speakers. The first speaker represented SUNY Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions and she connected her experience as a student activist in the 1980s pushing for divestment from South African apartheid to the current struggle to push for divestment from Israel. > >The second speaker represented the No CAS Cuts movement (budget cuts to the College of Arts and Sciences) and connected the crackdown on the humanities — including the firing of staff and cancellation of classes — to the current crisis of end-stage capitalism. > >The final speaker represented the Buffalo branch of Workers World Party and spoke about his time as a member of YAWF (Youth Against War and Fascism) fighting against Vietnam war recruitment activities on campus. He closed his speech by pointing out a connection between the U.S. military and how college campuses are complicit in [neo]imperialism.
>The school district says that it has a $100 million deficit. Parents reply that there has been little communication about how the district plans to do this. Seattle certainly has enough billionaires and corporate wealth that it’s absurd that there’s not enough money for schools. > >All Together for Seattle Schools, a community opposition organization, has pointed out that the state has $1.2 billion in excess tax revenues that could also solve Seattle Public Schools’ budget crisis. All Together has held two big protest rallies of parents, students and teachers outside John Stanford school district headquarters. > >Faced with the opposition, the district has now reduced its threat to close five schools instead of 20, but parents argue this could be the first of many closures and cuts that are still planned. > >One of the schools facing the threat is the Licton Springs K-8 school (kindergarten to 8th grade), which houses the program set up for Indigenous students, who have spoken out at school board meetings in opposition.
SACRAMENTO, the United States, Oct. 18 (Xinhua) -- A series of high-risk food recalls swept across the United States this year, raising concerns about food safety and putting consumers on high alert. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has issued 13 high-risk food recalls this year due to hazardous contamination, which has led to multiple fatalities and hospitalizations across the nation. One of the most significant recalls involved BrucePac, a producer of pre-cooked meat and poultry products. According to the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service, BrucePac recalled approximately 5.3 million kilograms of ready-to-eat food items on Oct. 9 due to potential listeria contamination.
>Following the Al-Aqsa Flood that erupted in Gaza a year ago on October 7, 2023, Saleh wore a small Lebanese flag patch on the arm of his Jets’ sweatshirt shirt. This was part of the NFL’s Heritage Program in 2023 where players and coaches are encouraged to recognize their cultural backgrounds with patches and decals. He had worn the Lebanese flag patch on other occasions. > >But that all changed once […] airstrikes began pounding the densely populated areas of Beirut on Sept. 27, after which there was a major defensive military response from the liberation organization, Hezbollah — a justifiable action in their ongoing struggle. > >Joe Benigno, a former sports radio host at WFAN radio station, remarked in an interview on The Jake Asman Show on Oct. 8, that he believed that Saleh was fired due to the current situation in West Asia, particularly in Lebanon. Benigno told Asman, “There is no sugarcoating of what’s going on in the Middle East.” > >Those who have denounced Saleh over social media have equated the Lebanese flag with the […] anti-U.S. Hezbollah flag — which Saleh should also have the right to wear. > >The Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR) has demanded an explanation from Jets owner Woody Johnson — who had been accused of making racist and sexist remarks while he was a member of the Trump administration in 2020 — on the firing of Saleh. Notably, Johnson is staunchly pro-Zionist. > >The CAIR statement reads: “We commend Coach Robert Saleh for making history as the first American Muslim head coach in NFL history. Although no one should jump to conclusions about why the Jets fired Coach Saleh, the report that Jets security physically escorted Saleh out of the building does raise concerns about the possible motive for such unusual hostility—especially given that Saleh wore a Lebanese flag pin at a game just days ago and that owner Woody Johnson is a former Trump administration official who has been accused of making racially charged remarks. We encourage the Jets to thoroughly explain its unusually hostile reported treatment of Coach Saleh.” > >As of this writing, the Jets ownership has not responded to CAIR’s concerns.
>Some JVP activists chained themselves to the outside doors of the Exchange before police arrested more than 200 of the participants, including elders and descendants of Holocaust survivors. One of the main chants at the sit-in was “Gaza bombed, Wall Street booms. Fund health care, housing, FEMA, not genocide!” Related: [*Support the students backing Palestine!*](https://www.workers.org/?p=81401)
>It is well-known that the U.S. war machine is the biggest single polluter in the world. While [the People’s Republic of] China increasingly focuses on developing electric vehicles and other green technologies to reduce global warming, [neo]imperialists are intent on expanding wars and ecocide. > >In just over a week, two major hurricanes whose size, power and enormous rainfall is linked to climate warming — Hurricanes Helene and Milton — wreaked havoc on several states in the South. Rather than dedicate time, money and science to find ways to curb deadly and destructive storms stemming from climate change, Congress voted for billions of dollars more for weapons to Israel, while simultaneously cutting funds for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. > >Fracking has been blamed for leaking millions of tons of methane — a greenhouse gas considered more potent than carbon dioxide. According to a new major research study, exported gas emits far more greenhouse gas emissions than coal. The research by Cornell University environmental scientist Robert Howarth found that LNG is 33% worse than coal in terms of planet-heating emissions over a 20-year period. (Guardian, Oct. 4) > >The actual burning of natural gas only accounts for a third of total emissions. The process of drilling, moving, cooling and shipping gas from country to country uses twice as much energy. The review, published in the Energy Science and Engineering journal concludes that “ending the use of LNG should be a global priority.” > >Workers should demand that instead of passing laws to protect fossil gas fracking, legislatures across the U.S. should pass laws to protect the planet by outlawing fracking.
>The U.S. government suffered a humiliating defeat when the Uhuru 3 won an acquittal on the main charge against them, absurdly alleging that they were “Russian agents.” Now the federal prosecutors plan to use the framed-up “conspiracy” conviction to put the leader of the African Revolution behind bars. But the movement of the people can stop them! Now is the time to mobilize, write letters to the judge ahead of the sentencing hearing and make plans to be in Tampa, Florida to pack the court on November 25! > >Take Action: > >1. Write for Justice: Letters to the Judge in Support of the Uhuru 3. Our goal is to gather at least 500 letters for each of the Uhuru 3 by the October 15 deadline. Your letters are critical in helping the court understand the positive impact of their decades-long fight for justice and self-determination. These letters to each person should be sent to their specific attorneys and will be used to argue for a lenient sentence at their sentencing hearing. Go to HandsOffUhuru.org/Letters >2. Pack the Courthouse! Attend the Uhuru 3 sentencing in Tampa, Florida on Monday, November 25. Go to HandsOffUhuru.org for more info. >3. Donate to the Hands Off Uhuru Legal Defense Fund. Fund the ongoing fightback as we prepare to launch our appeal to overturn the bogus conspiracy conviction. Go to HandsOffUhuru.org/Donate.
https://archive.ph/qUmPm
www.projectcensored.org
>In a pair of 2010 cases, *Citizens United v. FEC* and *SpeechNow.org v. FEC*, the Supreme Court held that legal restrictions on independent political expenditures by corporations, unions, and nonprofits violate the First Amendment and that organizations may raise and spend unlimited amounts of money on elections as long as they do not coordinate their spending with candidates, parties, and campaigns. > >Much of the independent money spent on elections is funneled into two sorts of organizations—super PACs, independent political action committees that can spend unlimited amounts on political messaging and campaign ads but must disclose their donors, and tax-exempt 501(*c*)4 “social welfare” organizations, which cannot spend the majority of their budgets on political activity but do not have to disclose their donors. > >Moreover, 501(*c*)4 organizations can, in turn, donate funds to super PACS, thereby rendering anonymous or “dark” expenditures by corporations and other deep-pocket donors intended to sway voters. Since 2010, the watchdog organization Open Secrets has tracked [more than $2.8 billion in “dark money”](https://progressive.org/magazine/dark-money-uncovered-macek-20240620)—political expenditures from undisclosed sources—that has flooded into our elections. > >The same legal loopholes that allow all wealthy corporations and individuals to spend millions in “dark money” to shape the political process also permit U.S. corporations that are subsidiaries of foreign companies, or that have significant foreign ownership, to pour untraceable money into U.S. elections. According to one estimate, [40 percent of U.S. corporate equity](https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/who-owns-us-stock-foreigners-and-rich-americans#:~:text=Owns%20US%20Stock%3F-,Foreigners%20and%20Rich%20Americans.,over%20the%20last%20few%20decades.) is owned by foreign investors. > >A recent Open Secrets study of [political expenditures by foreign-influenced corporations](https://www.opensecrets.org/news/reports/foreign-influenced-corporate-money)—corporations with more than 5 percent aggregate foreign ownership or individual foreign ownership of more than one percent—in state elections in Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, New York, and Washington found that such companies were responsible for $163 million in contributions from 2018 to 2022. Meanwhile, [foreign-connected company PACs](https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs/foreign-connected-pacs/2022) spent nearly $20 million on federal elections in 2022 alone. > >And just like domestic dark money funders, foreign-connected corporations often funnel their political spending through various “shell” and “front” organizations that make their spending exceedingly difficult to trace. For example, oil and gas giants BP and Shell are both wholly owned subsidiaries of foreign corporations. They are also both members of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is a major [font of dark money spending](https://thehill.com/?p=4702908), shelling out millions each year on “electioneering communication” in support of candidates it favors. > >The Chamber [refuses to disclose](https://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/whitehouse-and-warren-call-for-investigation-into-us-chamber-of-commerce-for-lobbying-disclosure-failures-amid-build-back-better-lobbying-blitz/#:~:text=The%20Chamber%20has%20long%20refused,undermining%20public%20trust%20in%20government.) its members or how much they each contribute to the funding of the organization’s vast lobbying and political influence operations. As a result, there is no way of knowing how much of the dark money the group disperses originates with foreign-connected companies. > >The issue of dark money spending by foreign-influenced companies, like dark money spending in general, has been [largely ignored](https://progressive.org/magazine/dark-money-uncovered-macek-20240620) by the corporate media. Two years ago, the Federal Election Commission [fined](https://www.politico.com/news/2022/04/08/foreign-national-trump-donation-fine-00024240) Canadian billionaire steel magnate Barry Zekelman’s businesses nearly a million dollars for making $1.75 million in illegal campaign contributions to American First Action, a pro-Trump political action committee, in 2018. > >The fine was so unusual—and so large—that it received coverage in the [*New York Times*](https://archive.is/BWYLC) and [*Newsweek*](https://www.newsweek.com/billionaire-fined-huge-penalty-funneling-175m-pro-trump-pac-1696606). But, sadly, the FEC’s actions received [more coverage](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/windsor-barry-zekelman-trump-fine-1.6416491) in Zekelman’s home country of [Canada](https://windsorstar.com/news/local-news/zekelman-fined-us975000-for-illegal-donations-to-trump-aligned-group) than it did in the country whose election laws he violated.
>Several hundred Stellantis workers and supporters rallied on Oct. 9 at the UAW Local 869 union hall to build support for a “yes” vote to authorize a strike and defend union jobs. Speakers included Local 869 President Romaine McKinney III, UAW Region 1 Director LaShawn English and President Fain. Local 869 represents workers at Stellantis’s Warren Stamping Plant. > >Rally attendees applauded the fight-back message of all the speakers and signed cards pledging to vote in favor of striking Stellantis. UAW members sang along to “Solidarity Forever” as pro-labor musical artist Billy Bragg, in Metro Detroit for a concert, closed the rally.
>When Hurricane Helene hit the big bend area of Florida’s Gulf Coast, it had absorbed a tremendous amount of energy from the super warm waters of the Gulf Coast becoming unusually wide and powerful. As it moved quickly inland it didn’t encounter dry soil conditions that generally rob hurricanes of their strength. Warm rains preceded it by a few days, so Helene was met by warm, wet soil until it hit the mountains of western North Carolina. > >There it dumped all of the moisture it had collected from the Gulf. Months worth of rain came down in three days resulting in devastating floods and mudslides. > >To avoid the deaths that these floods caused, the county authorities of Buncombe County, the county which includes Asheville, would have had to arrange for evacuations based on flood zones. They were indeed aware that a “flood event called Helene” was headed their way. > >But the flood zone maps for Buncombe were last updated in 2010 (with updates scheduled for 2026), and no evacuation routes had been established in an area where most roads are narrow and twisty. > >An areawide notification system was also missing. Even the limited, last moment notices given were only in English, despite 6% of the county’s population being Spanish-speaking. > >The authorities decided that people staying put was the safest way to respond to the storm. > >It wasn’t!
>The “Little Arabia” neighborhood on **Cleveland**’s West Side was a sea of red, black, green and white flags on Oct. 5, as nearly 1,000 people marched and chanted for Palestine. Speakers pointed out that October 7 not only marks one year of genocide but one year of resistance. > >On Oct. 5 in **Denver** the Palestine Coalition, along with Jewish Voice for Peace , Freedom Road Socialist Party, Denver Peace Action and over 700 supporters, gathered and marched through the Cherry Creek Shopping area. The march marked one year of Palestinian and Lebanese resistance, supported by people in the U.S. who are demanding the U.S. government — without which none of these wars could continue — stop sending money and arms to facilitate […] genocide against the Palestinian people. > >[…] > >Over 1,000 people marched in **Seattle** on Oct. 5 to protest the […] war on Gaza, the West Bank and now Lebanon. The demonstration marched from the waterfront to the Space Needle, showing strength in taking over vital attractions. > >Microsoft workers carried a banner reading “No Azure for apartheid.” Azure, developed by Microsoft, is a cloud computing platform used by the […] Occupation Forces. The workers handed out a leaflet saying, “We, as Microsoft workers, refuse to remain silent while Microsoft is complicit in Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people.” > >Demands raised to Microsoft were: “1. IOF off Azure; 2. Disclose all ties; 3. Call for permanent ceasefire; 4. Protect Palestinian, Arab, Muslim and allied employees.” (@noazureforapartheid) (Emphasis original.)
>Alyssa Thomas, an African American forward with the WNBA’s Connecticut Sun, spoke to the media about the racism that she and her fellow Black players face on social media from the Indiana Fever fans. The Sun had just completed a sweep of the Fever to advance to the semi-finals of the 2024 “W” championship playoffs. (“W” is a popular term for the WNBA.) > >Thomas felt compelled to raise this issue after her teammate, Sun guard DiJonai Carrington, shared a disturbing post on her Instagram account that included a racial slur and a threat of sexual assault from a Fever fan. > >Thomas told the press: “I think that in my 11-year career I never experienced the racial comments like from the Indiana Fever fan base. It’s unacceptable, and honestly there’s no place for it. We’ve been professional throughout the whole entire thing, but I’ve never been called the things that I’ve been called on social media, and there’s no place for it. Basketball is headed in a great direction, but we don’t want fans that are going to degrade us and call us racial things.” (Associated Press, Sept. 26) > >The Sun’s coach, Stephanie White, who is white, stated, “We’ve seen a lot of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia throughout the course of our country. Sport is no exception, and it’s unacceptable to be quite honest.” > >Caitlin Clark, the white Fever guard who was just named the “W” rookie of year, stated in response to the racism: “It’s definitely upsetting.” Clark, speaking on Sept. 27 in a video shared by James Boyd of the “Athletic,” added, “Nobody in our league should be facing any sort of racism, hurtful, disrespectful, hateful comments and threats.” (people.com) > >Clark had stated in an earlier interview during the summer that, “Everybody in our world deserves the same amount of respect. The women in our league deserve the same amount of respect, so people should not be using my name to push those agendas.” (Washington Post, Sept. 26)
>Organized by the Boston Coalition for Palestine — whose 45 member organizations include Palestinian House of New England, Palestinian Youth Movement, Jewish Voice for Peace and Workers World Party — Sunday’s action observed the one-year anniversary of the Al-Aqsa Flood, when Hamas fighters broke out of besieged Gaza and attacked […] settlements on October 7, 2023. > >On that day, rally emcee Lea Kayali of the Palestinian Youth Movement explained the people of Gaza “broke down the prison doors” and exposed the weakness and complacency of the Zionist apartheid regime. > >Over the past year, the Zionist state has escalated its genocide of the Palestinian people, begun by the 1948 Nakba, to unprecedented levels of depravity. IOF terror-bombing, massacres, and mass starvation have likely murdered over 119,000 Palestinian men, women, and children, and have disabled and displaced many hundreds of thousands more. Devi Sridhar, a public health expert at the University of Edinburgh, estimates that the death toll could already be as high as 335,500. (tinyurl.com/bdcsjav2) > >In the West Bank, Zionist authorities and settler death squads have killed over 700 Palestinians since October 7. (tinyurl.com/2rhazdre) > >“For 365 days our people of Gaza, the people of Palestine and the people of our region who have dared to resist colonialism have been paying the ultimate price for resistance,” said Kayali. > >As speakers at the rally noted, the anniversary of October 7 also marks a new phase in the global struggle against Zionist genocide and aggression. Intent on spreading such death and displacement across the region, the Zionist state preceded its invasion of Lebanon with air strikes.
>A week after the storm hit, thousands in the Peach State still have no electricity, cell service, running water or passable roads despite heroic efforts by power, sanitation and road workers. Hundreds of volunteers are distributing food and water, removing trees and clearing debris. > >Another hurricane, Milton, threatens now to make landfall in western Florida and move north in the coming days. > >Although increasing numbers of federal and state workers as well as volunteers from non-governmental groups are providing assistance, many of the flooded region’s small rural towns have no available or undamaged housing, medical facilities, grocery stores or community centers to meet the need. > >The official death toll from the storm in Georgia is 33, including a mother and her one month-old twin boys, killed when a tree fell on their house. > >The warming ocean waters, a key component of climate change, is fueling the increased number and strength of hurricanes that can have such devastating impact on working-class and poor families. Most have no insurance or insufficient insurance to rebuild their homes. Often their places of work are also destroyed or damaged. The current government programs are either inadequate, too bureaucratic to operate efficiently or inaccessible. > >The right-wing leadership of the House of Representatives won’t even return to Washington until after the election to take up funding more relief efforts. > >One can just look at how Cuba handles the same threat of damaging hurricanes to see that with socialist planning and organizations that include everyone, people, their pets and livestock can be safely evacuated in advance of predicted danger. (workers.org/2017/09/33123/) > >**Profit motive endangers communities** > >In still another example of the capitalist profit motive endangering communities, a fire broke out at a BioLab plant Sept. 30 in Conyers, a majority Black city in Rockdale County, east of Atlanta. The plant produces the chemicals used to treat water in pools and spas. > >Bags of these chemicals stored in huge quantities in the plant ruptured when water from the firefighters’ hoses soaked them. This caused huge clouds of chlorine, along with smoke from the fire, to form a hazardous plume. For days the plume billowed as the wind pushed it first east and then west toward Atlanta. > >The 17,000 residents of Conyers who live close to the plant were told to evacuate the area but with no support for doing so. Rockdale County’s remaining 90,000 people were told to “shelter-in-place,” close their windows and turn off their air conditioners. > >The strong smell of chlorine remained for days, producing hundreds of calls to Georgia Poison Control by people worried about coughing, shortness of breath, chest tightness and headaches among other ailments. Many others sought help at local emergency rooms. > >Multiple people are concerned about blackened pieces of a mysterious material that have fallen in their yards and the possibility of soil contamination. > >As worrisome as this current incident at BioLab is, it is not the first environmental crisis at this facility since it opened in 1973. According to reporting in the Oct. 2 Atlanta Constitution, there have been similar “incidents in 2020, 2016 and 2004 when roads were closed, businesses were evacuated and residents were ordered to shelter in place.” > >Metro Atlanta is not the only location plagued by toxic plumes from a BioLab facility. In August 2020 a fire at a Westlake, Louisiana, facility was examined by the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, which found BioLab to be at fault. That report also called on the Environmental Protection Agency to more strictly regulate those types of chemical products, which the EPA has not done. > >On Oct. 3, state representatives for Rockdale County and local community leaders demanded the closure of the facility, as well as financial compensation for damages suffered by residents and communities impacted by the fire. (Emphasis original.) Hey, does anybody else remember that Chernobyl miniseries that aired on HBO and was obscenely popular? I am sure that a similar program about an industrial disaster in the United States would do just as well. Only a paranoid conspiracy theorist would suggest otherwise.
>Until Jan. 15, workers will be covered under the old contract, which expired on Sept. 30. Because this is a temporary suspension of the strike, the ILA’s membership won’t vote until a complete new master contract is agreed to by the union and port companies. > >While a 62% hike in wages is unprecedented, it is more than justified considering the international conglomerates make billions of dollars charging customers up to $30,000 for shipping goods in containers. The cost used to be $6,000 per container. Entry level wages start at just $20 an hour for operating multimillion-dollar container-handling equipment. Two-thirds of ILA members are constantly on call, with no guaranteed employment if ships are not available for work. It takes six years to reach the top wage in a job that is dangerous and requires dockworkers to toil long hours in all kinds of weather. > >On the picket line in Philadelphia, over several days of the first ILA strike since 1977, dockworkers told Workers World that automation was the biggest issue. Wage increases wouldn’t be as relevant if automation reduces hours or kicks workers out of their jobs > >On Oct. 4, after celebrating the cessation of having to walk picket lines for long hours, some workers wondered if returning to work until after the holidays and giving the shipping companies a three-month head start prior to the next possible strike was ceding a lot of leverage. That remains to be seen.
>The U.S. government has made no protest against the latest […] terrorist war crimes against Lebanon, after a day when Israeli bombs and rockets killed 500 Lebanese people. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris continue to arm and support Israel. Donald Trump cheers on Benyamin Netanyahu. The Pentagon has sent more troops to the region. > >Then, according to reports repeated in U.S. media, the Israelis used 80 of the U.S.-supplied 2,000-pound bombs, “bunker busters,” to kill Hezbollah Secretary- General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Sept. 28. Both Biden and Harris called this war crime a “measure of justice.” That means U.S. imperialism supplied the weapons and gave the murder political support — even as the U.S. officials claimed to be urging de-escalation and negotiation. > >Even before Israel’s new round of mass terrorism, there had been no indication during the entire period after October 7, 2023, that the U.S. government would withhold its support from Israel. Despite Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinian population of Gaza — a genocide observed by billions of people worldwide — Washington supported the Zionist state. > >During that entire period of the slaughter in Gaza, the U.S. government has continued to fund weapons to keep the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) fully supplied. U.S. diplomats have given Israel full protection in the United Nations. The people of most of the world have observed the U.S. government’s complicity in genocide, ethnic cleansing and mass murders of civilians, including tens of thousands of children. > >This situation is no surprise. Except for the aftermath of the 1956 British/French/Israeli seizure of the Suez Canal and the Sinai Peninsula, the U.S. has supported Israel in every war crisis situation during the 76 years of Israel’s existence with arms, intelligence and diplomacy. > >It is hard to imagine a situation in which the U.S., the Pentagon, the CIA and the U.S. State Department would withdraw support from Israel. This is especially true if there were any possibility that the Israelis might be defeated, because such a defeat would encourage the liberation struggle in the region and threaten key interests of U.S. imperialism. > >Elements in the U.S. military or civilian leadership may oppose involving the U.S. military in an Israeli initiative, because a wider war in West Asia would weaken U.S. intervention elsewhere. They might argue that NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine with Russia is more important or that China presents the biggest danger to U.S. world hegemony. > >But there are certainly elements in the U.S. state apparatus or in the government (for example, the Congress members who gave standing ovations to Netanyahu) who agitate for a war against the Axis of Resistance and especially against Iran. These elements even urge the Israeli offensive as a way of convincing those forces Washington considers its “enemies” that no crime is too great for Israel or the U.S. to commit. Israeli aggression then becomes part of the U.S. offensive against Russia and China. > >All of Washington’s strategists consider Hezbollah, the Syrian government in Damascus, the Ansarullah forces in Yemen, the guerrillas in Iraq, the Islamic Republic of Iran — called the Axis of Resistance — enemies of [neo]imperialist interests.
>The diplomats’ walkout was the only visible protest inside the U.N. The New York Police Department did not allow any protesters closer than four blocks away. Thousands of protesters were kept away from the immediate area near where Netanyahu was speaking while thousands of police — all on paid overtime, funded by New Yorkers’ tax dollars — were deployed that day to control the demonstrators. > >What the diplomats could have done, but did not do, was to surround Netanyahu and demand his arrest as a war criminal, responsible for tens of thousands of deaths of innocent civilians, including infants and children in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon. > >In fact, the U.N. is a toothless organization that is unable or unwilling to follow even its own directives. The U.N.’s accommodation of [neocolonialism] — including giving war criminal Netanyahu a podium to spout his venom — recalls the behavior of England when the government practiced “appeasement” in the 1930s toward Hitler’s Germany.