SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
malaysia
Turkey, Malaysia Back South Africa's ICJ Genocide Case Against Israel
"Israel's murder of more than 22,000 Palestinian civilians, the majority of whom were women and children, in Gaza for nearly three months should not go unpunished in any way," said a Turkish spokesperson.
Jan 03, 2024
South Africa is no longer alone in bringing its claim of genocide by the Israeli government to the International Court of Justice, following announcements from the Turkish Foreign Ministry and the Malaysian Ministry of Foreign Affairs that they support the case.
Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesperson Oncu Keceli said Wednesday that those responsible for the killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza since October 7 "must be held accountable before international law."
"Israel's murder of more than 22,000 Palestinian civilians, the majority of whom were women and children, in Gaza for nearly three months should not go unpunished in any way," Keceli said. "We hope that the process will be completed as soon as possible."
The ICJ is scheduled to hear the case on January 11-12. Israeli representatives are expected to appear at the hearing.
International rights groups issued a call on Wednesday for other countries to file Declarations of Intervention at the court, whose authority Israel recognizes, to bolster South Africa's case.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry said it expects "that within the framework of this application, the ICJ will decide on provisional measures involving those to stop Israel's attacks on Gaza."
The Malaysia Ministry of Foreign Affairs said late Tuesday that it "welcomes the application by South Africa instituting proceedings against Israel... concerning the violations by Israel of its obligations under the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in relation to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip."
A spokesperson for the South African Foreign Ministry told The Jerusalem Post that it expects other countries to soon follow Turkey and Malaysia's lead and back its case.
In its 84-page complaint, South Africa detailed the genocidal intent that's been displayed in numerous public statements by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Isaac Herzog, and other top officials, as well as Israel's bombardment of civilian targets and forced displacement of civilians.
Keep ReadingShow Less
‘The World Is Failing Forests’: Report Finds Leaders Way Off Track From Halting Deforestation by 2030
"We are investing in activities that are harmful for forests at far higher rates than we are investing in activities that are beneficial for forests," the assessment coordinator said.
Oct 24, 2023
Despite promising to halt global deforestation by 2030, world leaders have not done enough to protect forests, a new report has found.
The 2023 Forest Declaration Assessment, released late Monday, calculated that human activities destroyed 6.6 million hectares of forest in 2022, which means the world is 21% off track from meeting the 2030 deadline. In addition, 4.1 million hectares of especially vital primary tropical forests were cleared, 33% off where they need to be to stay on schedule.
"The world is failing forests with devastating consequences on a global scale," WWF Global Forests Lead Fran Price said in a statement. "It is impossible to reverse nature loss, address the climate crisis, and develop sustainable economies without forests."
The Forest Declaration Assessment has been published by a group of civil society organizations every year since 2015. Beginning last year, it started tracking the progress of governments towards the 2021 Glasgow Leaders' Declaration on Forests and Land Use, under which more than 100 nations attending the COP26 U.N. climate conference promised to "halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030."
"That 2030 goal is not just nice to have; it's essential for maintaining a livable climate for humanity," Erin Matson, senior consultant at Climate Focus and coordinator for the Forest Declaration Assessment, said during a press briefing ahead of the report's release.
Last year's report showed that deforestation had actually decreased by 6% compared to the baseline, which "was not enough, but it was progress," Matson said. "And it gave us hope that we could see continued progress in 2022."
"We really need to remember that every hectare of forest we lose pushes us further away from being able to keep global temperature rise to within 1.5°C, avoid irreversible tipping points, and restore nature."
Why wasn't that hope realized? The answer, Matson said, came down to money.
"We are investing in activities that are harmful for forests at far higher rates than we are investing in activities that are beneficial for forests," Matson explained.
Agriculture, including cattle ranching and the production of commodities like soy and palm oil, remains the leading cause of tropical deforestation. Yet Global Canopy found that, in 2022, 150 private financial institutions continued to channel $6.1 trillion to companies whose activities were likely to contribute to deforestation through commodity production, and two-thirds of the institutions did not have any policies in place to avoid investing in forest clearing. When it comes to public finance, between 2013 and 2018 governments invested $378 to $635 per year in "gray" finance—funding activities that could hurt forests—and only $26.5 billion total in "green" finance programs to protect them. That means that green finance flows were just $2.2 billion a year, or less than 1% of gray finance flows. Existing green finance also falls far short of the $460 billion a year that is needed to meet forest goals.
"We're financing deforestation through the products we buy and the activities that governments and businesses support through subsidies and investments," Mary Gagen, chief advisor on forests at WWF-UK, said during the briefing. "We really need to remember that every hectare of forest we lose pushes us further away from being able to keep global temperature rise to within 1.5°C, avoid irreversible tipping points, and restore nature."
There was some good news in the report. More than 50 countries are making enough progress to halt deforestation internally by the end of the decade, including Indonesia and Malaysia. Their success offers a potential road map for others.
"Much of their success is attributable to strong laws and enforcement, collaboration with the private sector and civil society, and strong support for and recognition for the rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities, as well as just sheer political will," Matson said.
The report also does not include data that reflects Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's success at reducing Amazon deforestation in 2023 by enforcing environmental laws and respecting Indigenous rights after former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro worked to erode them.
The report offered several recommendations for governments, private institutions, and civil society, including protecting and securing Indigenous land rights, boosting finance, and channeling subsidies away from industries and activities that harm forests and towards those that help. Overall, the report authors argued that the definition of "business as usual" had to change.
"Global economic models must be re-structured to value forests for the benefits that they provide over the long term, rather than for the superficial and short-term gain that comes with clearing them," the report authors wrote.
Alongside the assessment report, WWF released its Forest Pathways report, "the first ever comprehensive global blueprint on how to stop failing our forests," as Gagen put it.
The report outlines four pathways to protecting forests:
- Accelerating the recognition of Indigenous land rights;
- Mobilizing finance;
- Reforming global trade so that supply chains don't rely on commodities tied to deforestation; and
- Shifting the economy to value nature.
The conservation group also debuted a graphic of "forest stripes." Based on the famous "climate stripes" visualizing the warming of average temperatures, it shows in green to red the 79% decline of forest-dependent species from 1970 to 2018.
"We're at a critical juncture," Price said during the briefing. "We don't need new forest goals. We need uncompromising ambition, speed, and accountability by both governments and businesses to fulfill their existing goals."
Yet governments and corporations may not act on their own, especially as Matson does not expect forests to be a priority at the upcoming COP28 climate talks in United Arab Emirates this November and December.
"It's so much more important that citizens and the media and civil society keep our attention and pressure on world leaders to meet their shared responsibility on forests," Matson said. "Every country has to get on track or else we have little hope of meeting the 2030 goal."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Tropical Forest Loss Generated 2.7 Gigatonnes of Carbon Pollution in 2022
That's one figure from a new report finding tropical deforestation increased in 2022 despite global pledges.
Jun 27, 2023
Despite world leaders' pledge to halt and reverse global deforestation by 2030, the tropics lost 10% more primary forest in 2022 than in 2021.
That's the latest update from the World Resources Institute's (WRI) Global Forest Watch, released Tuesday, which found that tropical forests had lost 4.1 million hectares, generating as much carbon dioxide as India emits from fossil fuels in a year at 2.7 gigatonnes.
"One thing is clear: What happens in the forest, doesn't stay in the forest," Frances Seymour, a distinguished senior fellow in WRI's forests program, said, as Mongabay reported.
Seymour said that the data, gathered by the University of Maryland, was "particularly disheartening" because of its timing.
At the COP26 U.N. climate conference in Glasgow in 2021, 145 nations signed the "Glasgow Leaders' Declaration on Forests and Land Use" that included a promise to work "collectively to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030 while delivering sustainable development and promoting an inclusive rural transformation."
"We had hoped by now to see signals in the data that we were turning the corner on forest loss," Seymour said, as Mongabay reported. "We don't see that signal yet, and in fact, we're heading in the wrong direction."
"Globally, we are far off track and trending in the wrong direction."
The analysis focuses on tropical forests because more than 96% of human-caused deforestation takes place there and because primary tropical rainforests are especially important for protecting biodiversity and regulating both the global climate and local temperature and weather patterns—temperatures near newly deforested areas can increase by twice the amount forced upward by the climate crisis alone.
The update found that the world lost an area of these essential forests the size of Switzerland at a rate of 11 soccer fields per minute. That's over 1 million hectares more than it should have to meet the global goal of halting deforestation by 2030, the WRI's Rod Taylor said, as BBC News reported.
"Globally, we are far off track and trending in the wrong direction," Taylor said.
This could have serious consequences for both forest communities and efforts to limit global heating to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels. Already, the world would be around 0.5°C warmer without forests, Mongabay pointed out.
"Since the turn of the century, we have seen a haemorrhaging of some of the world's most important forest ecosystems despite years of efforts to turn that trend around," Global Forest Watch director Mikaela Weisse said at a press briefing reported by AFP. "We are rapidly losing one of our most effective tools for combating climate change, protecting biodiversity, and supporting the health and livelihoods of millions of people."
In some instances, it is possible that policy shifts have not had the time to take root and sprout in the data. Brazil, for example, led the world for deforestation at 43% of the world total. It saw 15% more forest loss in 2022 than 2021 and the highest level of non-fire-caused tree loss since 2005.
However, the 2022 data reflects the last year of the administration of right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro, whose policies encouraged deforestation by decreasing protections for the environment and Indigenous rights, the report authors noted.
Bolsonaro lost the 2022 election to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who succeeded in significantly curbing deforestation during his previous term. Lula, who was sworn in in early 2023, has now promised to end deforestation by 2030.
"This will not be an easy task, with some officials cautioning that there may not be visible progress until 2024 at the earliest as enforcement agencies are re-equipped and re-staffed and illegal activities investigated," the report authors observed.
"As a consumer of the products that we export, the international community needs to not be buying products that come from deforested lands."
Catarina Jakovac, a biologist at Brazil's Federal University of Santa Catarina, told DW that Lula—and Brazil—needed support to protect the Amazon.
"As a consumer of the products that we export, the international community needs to not be buying products that come from deforested lands," she said.
Seymour also added that, while it may take policies around the world some time to kick in, finance from wealthier countries for anti-deforestation measures is not where it needs to be.
"Collectively we don't seem to be addressing the problem as the planetary emergency that it truly represents," Seymour said, according to Mongabay.
Other countries that saw noticeable deforestation in 2022 were DRC and Bolivia, which lost the second and third most after Brazil respectively. In DRC, forest loss is complicated and often driven by poverty as people clear forest for charcoal and subsistence farming.
"Investments to lift people out of poverty and reduce reliance on a resource-based economy are urgently needed," the report authors wrote.
In Bolivia, meanwhile, government policy that favors commodity agriculture—especially soy—encourages tree cutting. The government offers land titles to farmers who clear their own plot.
"The standing forest isn't seen as fulfilling any social or economic function," Marlene Quintanilla, a research director at nonprofit the Fundación Amigos de la Naturaleza, told The New York Times.
Ghana broke records with its deforestation rates, with forest loss increasing in the country by 71%, the highest increase of any nation. The losses were mostly in protected areas and linked to cocoa farming, gold mining, and fires.
One positive data point came from southeast Asia, where government and corporate policy seems to be successfully curbing deforestation. In Indonesia, which led the way for reducing forest loss, the government has promised that its land use will generate a net carbon sink by 2030 and banned new logging in palm oil plantations in 2019, according to the report and BBC News. In Malaysia, rates of forest loss have also stayed low in recent years, with a majority of the palm oil industry signing on to No Deforestation, No Peat, and No Exploitation (NDPE) commitments.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Rampant Tropical Forest Loss Belies COP26 Deforestation Pledge: Report
"Such losses are a disaster for the climate. They're a disaster for biodiversity. They're a disaster for Indigenous peoples and local communities."
Apr 28, 2022
The destruction of tens of thousands of square miles of Earth's tropical forests in 2021 underscores the challenge of fulfilling a pledge made by nations at last year's United Nations Climate Conference to halt deforestation by the end of the decade, a report published Thursday asserted.
"We have to dramatically reduce emissions from all sources."
According to the World Resources Institute's (WRI) Global Forest Review, the planet's tropical regions lost 11.1 million hectares, or 42,857 square miles, of primary old-growth forest in 2021, a total area roughly the size of the country of Bulgaria or the U.S. state of Virginia.
WRI senior fellow Frances Seymour told The Guardian that "such losses are a disaster for the climate. They're a disaster for biodiversity. They're a disaster for Indigenous peoples and local communities."
The WRI figure includes 3.75 million hectares of tropical primary rainforest loss--described by the report as "areas of critical importance for carbon storage and biodiversity"--or the equivalent of 10 soccer fields per minute. Last year's tropical primary forest loss resulted in the release of 2.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide, the equivalent of India's total annual fossil fuel emissions.
With more than 1.5 million hectares destroyed, Brazil lost the most tropical primary forest by far last year, followed by Congo (499,059 hectares), Bolivia (291,379 hectares), and Indonesia (202,905 hectares). In terms of percentage of tropical primary forest lost, Cambodia led the world with 1.5%, followed by Laos (1%) and Bolivia (0.7%).
The report also notes record losses of boreal forests, mainly in Russia, which suffered the worst wildfire season in recorded history.
In addition to fueling the climate emergency by releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, deforestation degrades land, increases flooding, alters weather patterns, and harms biodiversity through habitat destruction.
According to the World Wildlife Fund, clearing trees for cattle grazing is by far the leading driver of deforestation, with scientists attributing 80% of Brazilian Amazon rainforest loss to the beef industry.
The report says the world has made little progress toward fulfilling a pledge by more than 140 countries attending COP26--last year's U.N. summit in Glasgow, Scotland--to "halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030," a goal that "will require a consistent decline in forest loss every year for the rest of the decade--a decline that is not yet happening in the tropics as a whole."
However, the publication does highlight some success stories. Primary forest loss has declined significantly in Indonesia and Malaysia, while countries including Gabon and Guyana have lost 1% or less of their primary forests over the past two decades.
The WRI report follows research published last month warning that the ability of the Amazon rainforest to recover from droughts and wildfires has been declining over the past two decades, driving the crucial ecosystem toward what authors called a "critical transformation" from forest to grassland, a shift that would have "profound" consequences.
"That would release enough carbon into the atmosphere to blow the Paris agreement goals right out of the water," said Seymour.
"We have to dramatically reduce emissions from all sources," she added. "No one should even think anymore about planting trees instead of reducing emissions from fossil fuels. It's got to be both and it's got to be now before it's too late."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Blame US Trade Policy for Sky-High Drug Prices
Skyrocketing drug prices were a major issue in the 2016 US presidential campaign, and the Trump administration has since announced measures to bring them down. Why, then, is the administration also pushing for intellectual-property rules that give pharmaceutical giants even more price-gouging power?
Jul 10, 2019
Sharp price increases for essential and life-saving medicines have generated a political backlash against the pharmaceutical industry in the United States. In February, the US Senate Committee on Finance scolded industry representatives for pursuing policies that are "morally repugnant." Since then, 44 US state governments have filed a lawsuit against Israel-based Teva Pharmaceuticals and 19 other companies, alleging conspiracy to stifle competition for generic drugs and illegal profiteering from over 100 different medicines.
For its part, US President Donald Trump's administration has also announced that it will pursue measures to reduce the prices of drugs, especially those needed to treat America's opioid epidemic. Yet the administration is also trying to export intellectual-property rules that are known to be associated with massive price increases abroad, making basic medicines unaffordable to millions of poor people in developing countries.
The US government has brought sustained pressure to bear to block IP rules that would allow manufacturers in other countries to produce and export less expensive generic drugs. The US Trade Representative's (USTR) annual "Special 301" watchlist, which identifies countries with "serious intellectual property deficiencies," regularly includes India, mainly because the US objects to some features of its patent laws. In fact, Trump even cited India's IP regime as a justification for his recent decision to suspend Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) tariff exemptions on certain Indian exports.
But India's IP laws have allowed the country to become a leading global source of affordable drugs. Under its Patents Act of 1970, drug makers can patent only their processes, not the chemical composition of drugs. In practice, this has meant that Indian companies can "reverse engineer" the chemical compounds of major brand-name drugs through alternative processes, and then sell those drugs for less, both in India and abroad.
At first, this competition from generic-drug makers forced pharmaceutical multinationals to drop their own sky-high prices, including for drugs to treat cancer, tuberculosis, and HIV. For example, between 2000 and 2016, the yearly price per person of first-line antiretroviral drugs to treat HIV fell from more than $10,000 to $100. It is these price declines that allowed us to expand HIV treatments globally and control the HIV/AIDS epidemic, especially in poor countries.
But since the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) entered into force in 1995, all World Trade Organization member states have had to recognize one another's pharmaceutical patents. For Indian drug makers, manufacturing generic versions of patented drugs would require a license, and such licenses are rarely if ever granted.
Nonetheless, following amendments to the Indian Patents Act, India still had some safeguards to prevent the kind of excesses that major pharmaceutical companies routinely get away with in the US and Europe. For example, India abides by a stricter definition of what constitutes an invention, which prevents "evergreening": the process of extending the life of a patent by taking out secondary patents for marginal improvements to the original drug. According to Section 3(d) of the Indian Patents Act, "the mere discovery of a new form... property or... use for a known substance or of the mere use of a known process" is not eligible for a patent unless it "results in a new product or employs at least one new reactant." In practice, this means drug makers cannot extend the life of a patent indefinitely simply by, say, changing a drug from a tablet to a syrup.
Section 3(d) explains why the Indian Supreme Court ruled against Novartis in 2013, denying the Swiss multinational a patent for an anti-cancer drug that it marketed as "Glivec," but that was basically the crystalline form of a drug that had previously been patented as a powder. The court held that this change in form did not show "enhanced therapeutic efficacy."
Since then, India's law has come under attack from multinational corporations and the US government, and Section 3(d) has effectively been diluted. According to a recent study, between 2009 and 2016, the Indian Patent Office granted as many as 1,654 secondary patents (72% of all drug patents) "in likely contravention of anti-evergreening provisions under section 3 of the Indian Patents Act." Not surprisingly, drug prices in India have been rising rapidly.
Yet this has not stopped the USTR from maintaining pressure on India, Malaysia, and other governments that observe stricter definitions of inventions, and use compulsory licensing and price controls to prevent profiteering and other monopoly abuses by drug companies. The USTR has long worked with multinational pharmaceutical companies to keep drug prices high in other countries, thereby threatening the health and lives of poor patients in India and across the developing world. And now, the problem of exorbitant drug prices is coming home to roost.
It is ironic (but not surprising) that an administration claiming to fight for lower drug prices for Americans is actively pushing for rule changes that would grant even more price-gouging power to pharmaceutical multinationals. If US federal agencies and state governments really want to do something about sky-high drug prices, they should be taking a page from the Indian Patents Act, rather than trying to shred it.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Citing $69 Trillion Price Tag by 2100, Moody's Warns Central Banks of Far-Reaching Economic Damage of Climate Crisis
"There is no denying it: The longer we wait to take bold action to curb emissions, the higher the costs will be for all of us."
Jul 03, 2019
Noting previous warnings that the human-caused climate crisis could cause trillions of dollars in damage to the global economy by the end of the century, a new report from Moody's Analytics explores the economic implications of the international community's failure to curb planet-warming emissions.
Moody's Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi told The Washington Post--which first reported on the new analysis--that this is "the first stab at trying to quantify what the macroeconomic consequences might be" of the global climate crisis, and it comes in response to European commercial banks and central banks. The climate emergency is "not a cliff event. It's not a shock to the economy. It's more like a corrosive," Zandi added. But it is "getting weightier with each passing year."
The financial research and consulting firm's analysis (pdf) highlights a few key projections from a report published last October by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): if the average global temperature soars to 1.5degC above pre-industrial levels--the lower limit of the Paris climate agreement--the cost to the global economy is estimated to be $54 trillion in 2100, and under a warming scenario of 2degC, the cost could reach $69 trillion.
Moody's--whose clients include multinational corporations, governments, central banks, financial regulators and institutions, retailers, mutual funds, utilities, real estate firms, insurance companies, and investors--notes researchers have found that "warming beyond the 2degC threshold could hit tipping points for even larger and irreversible warming feedback loops, such as permanent summer ice melt in the Arctic Ocean."
One of the key takeaways, the report emphasizes, is that economically, "the more draconian effects of climate change are not felt until 2030 and beyond. And they do not become especially pronounced until the second part of the century."
"That's why it is so hard to get people focused on this issue and get a comprehensive policy response," Zandi told the Post. "Business is focused on the next year, or five years out."
"Most of the models go out 30 years," he said, "but, really, the damage to the economy is in the next half-century, and we haven't developed the tools to look out that far."
Responding to the Post report, which emphasized Moody's warning of the anticipated damage to the global economy, some advocates of ambitious global action to slash human-generated greenhouse gas emissions pointed to recent findings from climate experts that the world's temperature could rise 3degC or higher by 2100, implying that the economic costs could exceed the IPCC's upper estimate.
Linking to the Post report, Defend Our Future--a project of the Environmental Defense Fund that aims to empower young people interested in advancing climate and clean energy solutions--tweeted: "There is no denying it: The longer we wait to take bold action to curb emissions, the higher the costs will be for all of us."
Moody's analysts examined the climate emergency's expected economic damage across six impact channels--sea-level rise, human health effects, heat effect of labor productivity, agricultural productivity, tourism, and energy demand--and created forecasts through 2048.
"This analysis reveals that some countries are significantly exposed to rising temperatures while others, particularly in Northern Hemisphere climates, are well insulated," the report says. Those at the greatest risk, analysts found, are "countries in hot climates, particularly those that are emerging economies such as Malaysia, Algeria, the Philippines, and Thailand, and oil producers such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Oman."
On the agricultural front, rising temperatures are expected to impact both the health of farmworkers and crop yields, which particularly threatens less-developed nations that are economically dependent on farming. Echoing a U.N. report published this week, Moody's notes that "heat stress, determined by high temperature and humidity, lowers working speed, necessitates more frequent breaks, and increases the probability of injury."
The report says that in terms of human health, the number of heat-related deaths worldwide is expected to increase as the global temperature does, and a hotter world "can lengthen the season and increase the geographic range of disease-carrying insects such as mosquitoes, ticks, and fleas, allowing them to move into higher altitudes and new regions."
Recognizing some limitations of its analysis, Moody's acknowledges that "there are a number of factors that were not considered in this work. The foremost of these is the increasing frequency and severity of natural disasters." The report points to a U.S. government calculation that in the United States alone, disasters caused more than $300 billion in damage in 2017.
As the environmental legal organization Earthjustice concluded in response to the report, "We literally cannot afford inaction on this crisis."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Why Do You Lie So Much?--and Eight Other Questions NBC's Chuck Todd Should Have Asked Trump
It is almost impossible to overstate the damage such boot-licking performances do to civic discourse, public trust, cultural norms, respect for journalism, and even constitutional government
Jun 27, 2019
With his interview of Donald Trump, Chuck Todd threw the country under the bus. He gave the president a prime-time platform to peddle his sociopathic lies, with little pushback. He gave legitimacy to those lies and the liar who tells them.
It is almost impossible to overstate the damage Todd's boot-licking performance has does to civic discourse, public trust, cultural norms, respect for journalism, and even constitutional government. For, now, where is the bottom? What is the institution in our society that people can trust to ferret out truth from lies, sociopathy from civility?
The corporate Democrats--the Nancy Pelosi wing of the Democratic party--have shown they will not hold Trump to account. Now, the mainstream media is showing that it won't, either. Why?
Here are 10 question that any real journalist, indeed, any real man, would have asked Trump, given the venue Todd was offered.
Why do you lie so much?
After the ritualistic indignation and denial, Todd should say, "Mr. President, I didn't ask "whether" you lied. Your lying is as well-documented a fact as there is. I asked you "why" you lie. The reason I ask is that pathological lying is considered a mental disease: the inability to deal with reality. And besides, if your stuff is so good, why do you have lie about it all the time?" Maybe the interview would have ended right there, but it would at least have ended with Todd on his feet, rather than on his knees, servicing Trump.
How many women HAVE you assaulted?
After the ritualistic indignation and denial, Todd should say, "Mr. President, I didn't ask you "whether" you assaulted women. It was you who bragged that you do so, on the Access Hollywood tape--that you like to "grab 'em by the pussy." Remember? And there are more than 20 credible accusations of you assaulting women. Can they all be lying? Once again, how many women would you estimate you have assaulted?"
Can you win an election without help from the Russians?
After the ritualistic indignation and denial, Todd should say, "Mr. President, it was you who publicly asked for Russia's help during the 2016 election. It was your campaign that gave the Russians your polling data so they could help you. And Putin said in front of you, at Helsinki, that he wanted you to win. Even the conservative Wall Street Journal had a story with a headline, "Putin has won," meaning he got his guy elected--you. ALL of the signs point to your accepting help, and intending to do so again for 2020. So, once again, "Can you win an election without help from the Russians?
You ran as a successful businessman, yet, your tax data show that in the 1980s--the boom years of the Reagan economy--you were one of the biggest, if not THE biggest, losers in the entire economy. If you're so good, why did you lose so much money?
After the ritualistic indignation, denials, and diversions, Todd should ask, "Mr. President, I didn't ask you "whether" you lost more money than virtually anybody in the history of tax reporting. That is simply an empirical fact. It's not up for discussion. My question is, 'Given that fact, shouldn't the American people rightly revisit your claim to be a successful businessman, and, therefore, your justification for being president?'"
If you're really as rich as you say, why don't you release your current tax returns and put all this "Biggest Loser" business to rest? Wouldn't that be to your advantage?
After the ritualistic claim that he can't do so because he's "being audited," Todd should say, "Mr. President, you and I both know that there is no law anywhere that says you cannot release your tax returns because you are being audited. Given the huge stakes, I should think you would want to settle the matter. And your tax returns would do that. So, why won't you release them? Could it be that they might reveal you're just as big a loser today as you were in the 1980s?
So many of the flashpoints of your administration are problems of your own making. I'm thinking North Korea, shutting down the border with Mexico, rounding up a million immigrants, Venezuela, Iran. Is that your game? Creating publicity stunts so you can then pretend to be tough by pretending to solve them?"
After the ritualistic indignation and denials, Todd should say, "Well, take Iran, for example. When you came into office, Iran was honoring its agreement that it would not pursue a nuclear weapon. You withdrew from that treaty, made a big scene of it, and now Iran is back to processing uranium. Isn't that a problem of your own making, that you are grandstanding on, but actually making things much worse?"
You've now lost a third ruling in the Emoluments case--whether you are using the Presidency for private gain. If you're not doing so, what are you hiding by fighting the lawsuit?
After the ritualistic indignation and denials, Todd should state, "Mr. President, a bank controlled by the Chinese government is paying you $2 million a year for office space. The governments of Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Slovakia, Qatar, Malaysia, and others are paying you money through your properties, presumably to buy influence. Isn't that wrong? Doesn't it raise the question of whether you're pursuing your own interests, versus those of the country? And don't the American people have a right to know about it?
The Mueller Report spends hundreds of pages documenting how you obstructed justice. If you didn't, then why are you ordering your people not to testify? What are you hiding?
After the ritualistic indignation and denials, Todd should say, "Mr. President, Mueller said 'If we could have exonerated him, we would have. But we couldn't.' In other words, you're specifically not exonerated. Again, if you're innocent, why don't you let your people testify and reveal the truth? What are you hiding by saying they can't testify?
Where's the Wall you promised voters? And where's the payment for it from Mexico?
After the ritualistic indignation, diversion, and denials, Todd should say, "Mr. President, your own Homeland Security Department says that you've built only 39 miles of wall, and about half of that is replacement. So, 20 miles of new wall in 2+ years. Ten miles per year. At that rate it will take 200 years to build your wall. Since this was your number one campaign issue, shouldn't you apologize to the American people--and especially your base--for having failed to deliver?
The point is that we can either suck up to Trump, as Chuck Todd does, which means buying his entire sick, twisted, self-dealing world view. Or, we can defend the truth, defend democracy, and defend the country. But we can't do both. We desperately need better sentinels.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Could 'Deepfakes' Help Swing the 2020 Election?
Deepfake technology undermines any hope of once again conducting national conversations on the basis of observable reality
Jun 20, 2019
Imagine, on the day before the 2020 presidential election, that someone posts a video of the Democratic candidate talking before a group of donors. The candidate admits to being ashamed to be an American, confesses that the United States is a malevolent force in the world, and promises to open borders, subordinate the country to the UN, and adopt a socialist economic system.
The video goes viral. It doesn't matter that it sounds a bit suspicious, a candidate saying such things just before the election. A very careful observer might note some discrepancies with the shadows in the background of the video or that the candidate makes some oddly uncharacteristic facial expressions.
For the average credulous viewer, however, the video reinforces some latent prejudices about Democratic Party candidates, that they never thought America was all that great to begin with and are not ultimately interested in making the country great again. And hey, didn't Mitt Romney make a similar mistake by dissing the 47 percent just before the 2012 elections?
The video spreads across social media even as the platforms try to take it down. The mainstream media publish careful proofs that the video is fabricated. It doesn't matter. Enough people in enough swing states believe the video and either switch their votes or stay home. It's not even clear where the video came from, whether it's a domestic dirty trick or a foreign agent following the Russian game plan from 2016.
Forget about October surprises. In this age of rapid dissemination of information, the most effective surprises happen in November, just before Election Day. In 2020, the election will take place on November 3. The video drops on November 2. The damage is done before damage control can even begin.
This particular surprise comes courtesy of artificial intelligence (AI). Sophisticated computer programs are now able to create "deepfake" videos that are becoming increasingly difficult to identify. In fact, as The Washington Post reports, the AI systems designed to root out such deepfake videos can't keep up with the evil geniuses that are employing other AI programs to produce them.
It's an arms race. And the bad guys are winning.
It's Already Happened Here (and There)
You've probably heard by now about the fake video of Nancy Pelosi appearing to slur her words during a speech.
On one particularly popular website, Politics Watchdog, the video received 2 million views and 45,000 shares. This video didn't require an AI program. The creator just altered the speed of Pelosi's speech and raised the pitch of her voice to disguise the manipulation. It wasn't much different from all those drunk Trump videos (also fake) that Jimmy Kimmel has broadcast on late night TV.
Or maybe you've seen the video of gun control activist Emma Gonzalez tearing up the Constitution (in reality, she was tearing up a target). Or Jordan Peele's PSA of Barack Obama saying all sorts of odd things, concluding with "stay woke, bitches." The video was meant to warn people to be skeptical of what they see on the Internet.
Elsewhere around the world, deepfakes are beginning to cause havoc.
In Gabon, the military launched an ultimately unsuccessful coup after the release of an apparently fake video of leader Ali Bongo suggested that the president was not in fact as healthy as his advisors claimed. In Malaysia, a video purported to show the economic affairs minister having sex has generated a considerable debate over whether the video was faked or not. "If it's a deepfake, it's a very good one," a digital forensics expert has said.
So far, there's been more concern than actual product. The technology is available, but it hasn't been widely weaponized. At least when it comes to the United States, that might just be a matter of timing. Next year's presidential primaries might prove to be a testing ground. Or a troll might be keeping such a weapon in reserve for an even more opportune moment, like November 2.
The Deeper Problem
Fakes have been around for ages, from the poems of Ossian to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
In the age of photography, the Soviet Union notoriously airbrushed out politically purged individuals from snapshots (and that, of course, was before PhotoShop). In the video age, selective editing has fooled some of the people all of the time -- as in the case of Live Action's abortion clinic videos or the misleading way that Fox News edits its clips to emphasize its ideological points. "Reality" shows on TV dramatically alter the raw footage -- not to mention staging the action to begin with.
You might think that this history would make people increasingly skeptical of what they see and hear. But Americans believe in all sorts of crazy things. One in three doesn't think that climate change is happening (and about half of Republicans deny that climate change is real). About four in ten Americans are strict creationists. One in four believes that the truth of the Sandy Hook shooting has been suppressed. Nearly one in three believes that the Mueller report exonerated Donald Trump.
The ability of pollsters to find some significant percentage of Americans who believe in one crazy proposition or another prompted the following Onion headline: "Poll: One in Five Americans Believe Obama Is a Cactus."
In ordinary times, the president doesn't give an assist to fringe theories. But Donald Trump made a political name for himself with his false claims that Barack Obama was born outside the United States. As president, he has promoted the notion that the mainstream media -- CNN, The New York Times -- publishes "fake news." He has claimed that millions of illegal votes were cast in the 2016 election, that Russia didn't interfere in that election, that the National Park Service doctored photos of the inauguration crowd, that Vince Foster and Chief Justice Antonin Scalia were murdered, that Democrats inflated the number of people killed in Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, and so on.
These aren't conspiracy theories, as Russel Muirhead and Nancy Rosenblum write in The Atlantic. They are simply assertions. Trump doesn't have the capability to develop an actual theory. He is not trying to explain a set of facts or data points. He is just throwing stuff out there. He is brainstorming without the benefit of a brain.
As a result of the relentless attacks on media, common sense, and reason more generally, Americans are losing the capacity to distinguish between the real and the fabricated. Case in point: nearly 63 million Americans voted for a presidential candidate in 2016 who lied repeatedly about himself, his record, and his opponent. In 2016, Americans elected a very artificial intelligence.
Adding AI
Computer scientists worry about the "singularity," the moment when artificial intelligence acquires consciousness. They are concerned that a super-intelligent entity might decide to take over the planet, enslave humans, colonize the known universe, and so on. In other words, they worry that such a creation might behave exactly like its creators.
I'm not sure why computer scientists are so anxious about a hypothetical when they should instead get riled up about the very real applications that humans are using AI for right now.
The Pentagon, for instance, developed its first AI strategy this year, saying that "it will take care to deploy the technology in accordance with the nation's values." Presumably, the Pentagon is talking about its own interpretation of the nation's values, which is far from reassuring.
Last year, the United States (and Russia) blocked a UN effort to ban "killer robots" -- weapons that don't need any human intervention, as drones do at the moment. Banning killer robots would seem to be a no-brainer. But the United States has said that it would be "premature" to regulate them. That's because the Pentagon's research arm and U.S. corporations are busy trying to establish technological hegemony by exploring ways to merge soldier and computer on the battlefield, fight the next generation of cyber-warfare, and ensure full-spectrum dominance.
Then there are the uses of AI to improve surveillance, create "predictive policing technologies," and steal your job.
Considering all these malign impacts, deepfake videos might be the least worrisome trend involving AI. Yet, in the short term, these deceptions further undermine any hope of returning to a pre-Trump moment when national conversations could be conducted on the basis of observable reality. As Jamie Bartlett writes in The Guardian, "the age of deep fakes might even succeed in making today's visceral and divided politics look like a golden age of reasonableness."
To understand this point, let's imagine a slightly different November surprise unveiled on the day before the 2020 elections.
On November 2, 2020, a video is released in which Donald Trump says that, regardless of the results of the election, he will declare himself president for life and throw anyone who disagrees into prison.
This, too, is a deepfake video created by an AI program. But Trump has said and done so many outrageous things that the public responds to this particular video with a collective shrug. #NeverTrumpers are confirmed in their assumptions about the president and vote as they intended. Trump's base dismisses the video (or secretly supports the message) and vote as planned. The few people left in the middle, inundated with four years of Trump's pronouncements, ignore the video. It's just another day in Trump's America.
AI can't be blamed for this scenario. The fault lies not in our bytes but in ourselves.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Plastic Is Just as Destructive to the Climate as Oil and Gas
Manufacturers churn out 448 million tons of plastic a year
May 31, 2019
The phenomenon of climate change invokes images of black smoke billowing out of smokestacks, emissions from exhaust pipes on an endless highway of bumper-to-bumper traffic, or the insect-like cranes of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and drilling operations dotting the landscape. We do not view our plastic shopping bags as part of the climate crisis--but we should. And just as the thirst for fossil fuel energy is an ugly symptom of runaway capitalism, so is plastic production and use. Both arise from the same problematic system, and both contribute to the same existential crisis humanity faces.
Every step in the production of the plastic we casually use and toss away has an impact on the climate, from the emissions released during extractive processes like fracking to the transporting of the raw materials to plants and beyond
Plastic pervades every aspect of our modern lives. From the keys that I tap on my laptop as I write this piece to the lid on my coffee shop latte, the packaging of the individually wrapped cookies on the countertop, and even the lenses on my sunglasses. While we may worry about the pollution that plastic--especially the disposable variety--creates in clogging our landfills, choking our marine life, entering our food chain, and disrupting our endocrine systems, we are likely not considering the role of plastic production and disposal on climate change. There is indeed a direct link between the devastating tornadoes in the Midwest this week and the 128 billion plastic bottles that Coca-Cola churns out every year.
Manufacturers churn out 448 million tons of plastic a year, a large part of which is disposable, intended for packaging products. Perhaps we imagine the containers holding our fresh organic berries or the sturdy bubble-wrapped packages our Amazon orders are delivered in are easily transformed into new packaging once we toss them into our recycling bins. But only about 10 percent of all plastic waste in the U.S. is ever recycled, and now that percentage has likely dropped even more. Malaysia announced this week it will be sending back hundreds of tons of plastic waste to their countries of origin--including the U.S., United Kingdom, and Australia. Malaysia's move comes a year after China decided to stop accepting plastic waste for recycling and is the latest in a disturbing trend of a world filling up with unwanted plastic at the same time that manufacturers are ramping up production.
Carroll Muffett, president and CEO of the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), explained to me in an interview that "plastics are simply fossil fuels in another form. Ninety-nine percent of what goes into plastics are oil, gas and, to a lesser extent, coal feed stocks." As a result, "the processes that produce plastics begin at wellheads and at frack pads across the United States and around the world." According to Muffett, every step in the production of the plastic we casually use and toss away has an impact on the climate, from the emissions released during extractive processes like fracking to the transporting of the raw materials to plants and beyond. Because ever fewer plastics are getting recycled, many communities across the globe are also burning their plastic trash as fuel, adding more emissions into our already saturated atmosphere. And the plastic that is not recycled or incinerated itself emits potent greenhouse gases like methane and ethylene, as a 2018 study has alarmingly shown.
CIEL recently published a report called Plastic & Climate: The Hidden Costs of a Plastic Planet, which found, among other things, that "the production and incineration of plastic will produce more than 850 million metric tons of greenhouse gases--equal to the emissions from 189 500-megawatt coal power plants."
In spite of these alarming statistics, Muffett says that "the infrastructure for making new plastics is growing incredibly rapidly." Instead of ramping down plastic production and use, the fossil fuel industry is accelerating its growth. The International Energy Agency (IEA) found last year that petrochemicals, the raw materials from which everyday plastics are created, "are becoming the largest drivers of global oil demand, in front of cars, planes, and trucks." Calling it a "blind spot" of the global energy system, the IEA found petrochemicals "account for more than a third of the growth in world oil demand to 2030, and nearly half the growth to 2050, adding nearly 7 million barrels of oil a day by then."
Muffett pointed out, "As global recognition of the need to transition away from fossil fuels for energy and transportation increases, the oil and gas companies--who are also not coincidentally the same companies that make plastics such as Exxon, Chevron, Shell, Total--those companies are increasingly relying on petrochemicals and plastics to make their long-term business models add up." In other words, the fossil fuel companies are repackaging the same climate-change-causing product in a different form and selling it to us in the hope that we won't notice how little difference there is between the two.
A perverse aspect of the industry is the vast extent to which taxpayers subsidize fossil fuel corporations. Earlier this year, the International Monetary Fund estimated fossil fuel subsidies globally add up to $5.2 trillion a year, with the U.S. second only to China in scale. As Muffett noted wryly, "We as a society are being forced to subsidize our own destruction."
If we begin to see plastic production and use as part of the fossil fuel industry's deadly means of turning profits, we may be able to tackle head on the drive to ramp up production. The climate crisis is deeply linked to the plastics crisis. There is a massive supply of oil and gas in our economy, and fossil fuel companies want to make the most of their easily available raw materials in spite of the destructive nature of the products.
Alongside our demand to transition to a new, clean, green economy has to be a call to dramatically cut the production and use of plastics. According to Muffett, the single-use disposable plastic packaging of the kind that most of our products come wrapped in are "actually the major driver for the build-out of new plastic infrastructure." And although plastics producers like to assert they are simply responding to consumer demand, Muffett says that research has shown that "plastics, to a far greater extent than virtually any other product, is actually a matter of supply driving demand."
CIEL's report on plastics calls for an end to the production and use of single-use, disposable plastic and the curtailing of new oil, gas and petrochemical infrastructure. As oil and gas companies build out new processing plants to transition from producing fuel to producing plastic, that infrastructure needs to be stopped in its tracks. As many in the climate justice movements have done, rather than just calling for a transition to renewable energy sources, the way forward is a rallying cry to leave all fossil fuels in the ground.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Emerging Transnational Unionism Contains the Seeds of a New Global Movement
Globalization, rather than being the death knell of labor, has helped to revitalize it
May 19, 2019
The following is an excerpt from the essay "Workers of the World Unite (At Last)," originally published on the Great Transition Initiative website. See more of GTI's work here.
Once seen as the vanguard of a new social order, the contemporary labor movement has been written off by many progressive activists and scholars as a relic of the past. They should not be so hasty. Rather than spelling the beginning of the end for organized labor, globalization has brought new opportunities for reinvention, and a sea change in both trade unions and the wider labor movement. Most notably, globalization has forced unions to think and act outside the state to build transnational solidarity across countries and sectors. Emerging transnational unionism, if it perseveres, contains the seeds of a new global movement, a new international that extends beyond labor to embrace all forces working toward a Great Transition.
Mention the labor movement today, and activists might ask, "What movement?" Indeed, the vibrant labor movement of yesteryear, when workers in industrializing countries organized their factories, has ebbed with the onslaught of neoliberal globalization. This retreat can make Marx's call of "Workers of the world, unite!" seem quaint, and the international labor congress that launched the First International in 1864 a quixotic dream. The internationalist optimism of the fin-de-siecle Second International and the early twentieth-century Third International--the belief that victory was in reach for the worker--contrasts with the pessimism of labor today and the hollow shell that is the contemporary Socialist International. The "labor" parties that once promised to empower the average worker now are often the agents of austerity and the allies of global capital.
Many activists fighting for global transformation now think that the labor movement has little to contribute to progressive politics. But this belief is misguided.
By the mid-twentieth century, while international idealism had largely evaporated, labor did strengthen at the national level. The three decades following World War II were known as a "golden era" for the upper strata of labor in the US and Europe, when workers secured more rights and social protections. Social democratic parties and even conservative parties built robust welfare states, and across the North Atlantic, labor held a cherished and comfortable spot along with business and the state in setting economic policy.
Through labor's struggle to establish itself, build solidarity, and protect its members, various types of trade unionism have emerged. In labor's origins, "economic unionism" prevailed. This model, with which today's activists would be most familiar, has been oriented towards securing a better price for the commodity Marxist economists call "labor-power." Market-oriented and eschewing politics, it has posed limited challenge to the status quo. Alternatively, through "political unionism," trade unions have turned to the state for satisfaction of demands. Finally, "social unionism" has sought solidarity across geographic divisions and between the workplace, per se, and the wider community.
All three approaches lost traction in the 1980s and 1990s. The forward march of labor appeared to halt in the face of the disruptions caused by globalization. Austerity, privatization, and deflationary monetary policy wreaked havoc on unions worldwide. Margaret Thatcher's famous TINA dictum--"There is no alternative"--was not just a slogan of the elite, but a pervasive mood in society. As trade union membership declined and the links between unions and progressive political parties frayed, many began to question whether a "labor movement" still existed. Postwar economistic militancy had not yielded concrete political gains, and the collapse of the Soviet Union ushered in capitalist triumphalism with the sense that credible threats of an alternative economic system had been defeated.
As a result, many activists fighting for global transformation now think that the labor movement has little to contribute to progressive politics. But this belief is misguided. Viewed from another perspective, globalization, rather than being the death knell of labor, has helped to revitalize it, challenging unions to pioneer new modes of organizing and to think beyond the state. Trade unions, rather than looking inwards, are starting to join a wider set of social forces resisting the free market ideology of neoliberalism and its policy of austerity for the masses and enrichment for the elites. The future of the labor movement depends on the development of this nascent systemic view.
A Globalizing Working Class
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, vast swaths of the world previously under either state socialist or state capitalist regimes came under the sway of global-scale capital. If we understand capital as a social relation between the owner of capital and the worker, then the worldwide expansion of capital must lead to a global expansion of the working classes. And so it did. The number of workers worldwide more than doubled between 1990 and 2016 from 1.5 billion to 3.2 billion.1
Changes in the composition of the global workforce have accompanied this quantitative increase. The geographic distribution shifted as the so-called developing world drove much of this growth, while the workforce in more developed countries experienced a slight decline. The female labor force has grown in most countries across all income levels.2 The occupational composition of the workforce has also undergone dramatic change with rapid growth in the service sector as agriculture, mining, and manufacturing continue to shed jobs worldwide.3
While robots are replacing humans in some sectors, in others they are enhancing human labor productivity. New technologies, overall, are creating new jobs as they shape the demand for new goods and services.
Despite the rapid transformation of global labor, other predicted phenomena have not occurred. We have not witnessed the "end of work," nor are we all becoming high-tech workers. The impact of automation has been overstated, too. While robots are replacing humans in some sectors, in others they are enhancing human labor productivity. New technologies, overall, are creating new jobs as they shape the demand for new goods and services.4
In similar fashion, massive industrial job creation is at least as much a feature of globalization as increased mobility of capital or finance. In China, for instance, such growth accounts for forty percent of GDP. In developing countries, seventy percent of workers remain in the agricultural sector. For every worker assimilated into the so-called "knowledge economy," many more are being super-exploited in a paddy field or McDonald's. More than 2 billion people across the globe work in the precarious informal sector, unprotected by legislation, without access to a social safety net or an education.5
The new landscape of global labor points to at least two conclusions. First, analysts who insisted on the terminal decline of labor were wrong. In the enthusiasm for the flourishing civil society of the alter-globalization movements, organized labor was often written off as a relic of an industrial past. However, since 2000, transnational labor organizing has been on the rise, spawning new structures and organizing techniques. Second, although a truly global labor market has not yet emerged outside of a few restricted sectors, what we might call a common global working condition has coalesced. Consider, for example, the spread of precarious work, a condition once limited primarily to the so-called developing world. Prevailing conditions on the ground support the development of a transnational labor strategy and a credible change agent to contest the new globalized capitalism.
Harbingers of Transnational Solidarity
Rising developments within labor challenge the conventional progressive wisdom that neoliberal globalization has been an unprecedented disaster for workers, trade unions, and the labor movement. The obstacles to labor organizing, of course, do pose serious challenges. Increased mobility of capital has led to a sharp increase in relocation, outsourcing, and offshoring. Multinational corporations can wield the threat of plant closures against workers' requests for better wages or states' efforts to raise taxes. Executives at multinational corporations can even pit their own plants against each other, going back and forth between them to get local managers and workers to underbid each other in a race to the bottom. At the same time, the increased mobility of labor has led to increased migration, which can be seen as a threat to wages and working conditions if migrant workers are introduced into a settled labor force. Corporations can then stoke divisions among their workers across racial, ethnic, and linguistic lines to undermine the foundation of solidarity necessary to organize.
Labor faces these and myriad other obstacles in our rapidly changing, interconnected world. However, fixating on obstacles creates a facile pessimism. Globalization may have opened as many doors as it closed. At the most basic level, the globalization of communication has countered one of the most formidable barriers to global action. With email, social media, and other online platforms, workers enjoy better tools to organize across countries--imagine trying to organize a transnational strike a century ago. Moreover, globalized communication fosters solidarity as workers are able to see, hear, and share each other's stories.6 Looking ahead, improvements in translation software could help bridge the language divide, thereby opening new paths to transcultural dialogue. Globalized capitalism may have created the basis for a new global working class, not only in material conditions but also in consciousness.
With email, social media, and other online platforms, workers enjoy better tools to organize across countries--imagine trying to organize a transnational strike a century ago.
Transnational unionism can take many forms. It can operate among union executives or on a grassroots level, while organizing can be workplace-oriented or based on collaboration with NGOs on issue campaigns. Successful transnational unionism has the capacity to navigate complexity and operate on multiple levels. In particular, transnationally oriented unions have used globalization to their benefit by organizing transnational labor actions, forming new transnational structures, and fostering solidarity with migrant workers at home.
When a transnational corporation spreads production nodes across countries, thus distributing the workforce, the geographic expansion also increases the possible leverage points for organizing against the corporation. The workers of Irish budget airline Ryanair understand this well. Since Ryanair's foundation in 1984, CEO Michael O'Leary had been a vocal opponent of union organizing, but workers chose not to listen. In mid-2018, they went on strike--starting in Ireland before spreading across the continent--for pay increases, direct employment, and collective labor agreements that comply with national labor laws. Management, which had used its transnational status to play workers against each other, was confronted by a united cross-national organized labor force.
Labor has also showed strength by partnering with allies at different points along the globally dispersed production chain. A campaign against sweatshops in the apparel industry showed how direct action by students in the US can support organizing by workers in Honduras. Garment workers in global production chains are usually considered weak compared to hypermobile, high-profit companies like Nike.7 But such corporations are vulnerable to boycotts. Transnational union resources focused on a particular industry or country have considerable power to deny market share and thereby bolster demands at the point of production.
Besides enabling specific actions, the new economic landscape has given rise to new organizing structures, as labor unions realize that old methods of operating can no longer suffice. In the 1960s, the International Trade Secretariats (today known as Global Union Federations, or GUFs) began to respond to the expansion of multinational corporations (MNCs) through the formation of World Company Councils. First established by the United Auto Workers and the International Metalworkers' Foundation, the World Company Councils coordinated the activities of the various national trade unions across a multinational corporation's operations. However, they proved unable to create the stability and continuity needed to achieve the transnational collective bargaining power the unions hoped to develop.8
By the 1990s, the international union strategy had shifted from the promotion of voluntary "codes of conduct" with MNCs and the introduction of "social clauses" (including labor rights) into trade agreements, to the more ambitious and comprehensive Global Framework Agreements (GFAs). An expression of transnational labor solidarity, GFAs bind a company's global operations to the labor standards of the headquarters, usually based in Europe. Thus, gains won where labor is stronger can spread to where it is weaker. By 2015, 156 Global Framework Agreements had been signed around the world, focused mainly on core workplace conditions and the right to collective bargaining.9
Developments like GFAs grew from the realization that relying on old national-level collective bargaining had turned into a dead end. Labor needed new strategies, tactics, and organizational modalities. With "business as usual" organizing modes no longer adequate, many trade union leaders began calling for global solidarity. They called into question labor's "special status" alongside the state and employers--the famous tripartite modality of the International Labor Organization. If capital now organized itself predominantly as a transnational player, so, too, the international trade unions would need to "go global."
A significant manifestation of this shift is the emergence of global unions. In 2008, the workers of the United Steelworkers in the US merged with Unite the Union, the largest labor organization in Britain and Ireland. The new union, Workers Uniting, represented almost 3 million workers at its founding in the steel, paper, oil, health care, and transportation industries. Oil conglomerate BP and steel behemoth ArcelorMittal are both transnational; now, their workers are transnational too, refusing to be pitted against each other in negotiations. Maritime workers, who have a built-in internationalism, have taken similar steps. In 2006, in response to the globalization of the shipping industry, the National Union of Marine, Aviation and Shipping Transport Officers in the UK developed a formal partnership with the Dutch maritime workers' union Federatie van Werknemers in de Zeevaart, renaming themselves Nautilus UK and Nautilus NL respectively. Two years later, workers took the partnership a step further, voting to create a single transnational union: Nautilus International. In 2015, the United Auto Workers in the US and IG Metall in Germany joined forces to create the Transatlantic Labor Institute focusing on auto worker representation issues at the US plants of German auto manufacturers.10 In a decade's span, transnationalism has entered the trade union mainstream as leadership catches up with the objective possibilities opened up by globalization.
Notably, the smartest unions are treating migrant workers not as a threat but as an opportunity. By making common cause with migrant workers, trade unions have deepened their democratic role by integrating migrant workers into unions and combating divisive and racist political forces. In Singapore and Hong Kong, state-sponsored unions have recruited migrant workers, to mutual benefit. In Malaysia, Building and Woodworkers International, a GUF, recruits temporary migrant workers to work alongside "regular" members of the union. Through such positive, proactive outreach, unions can counter the divide-and-conquer strategy on which anti-union management thrives.
Despite such bright spots, many contradictions and pitfalls impede the forward march of transnational labor organizing. The mismatch between the unlimited scale and complexity of the challenge and the limited resources available remains a chronic problem. Also, successfully organizing new layers of workers may reduce the capacity of unions to take action due to the difficulties of mobilizing an informal or precarious global labor force. These problems are not insurmountable for a nimble and strategic labor movement, but they must be addressed head on.
Reinventing Trade Unions
The persistence of this upsurge in transnational organizing is not inevitable; maintaining growth and success requires deep rethinking of the role of trade unions. To be blunt, the popular image of "pale, male and stale" has an element of truth. Membership is down: no more than seven percent of the world's labor force belongs to a union, with many of the most unionized sectors of the economy in decline.11 Many trade unions still take a narrow approach to defending the interests of their existing members, rather than organizing the unorganized, not least those in the informal or precarious sector.12 And when international trade unions try to create a countervailing force to transnational capital, they often do so in an outdated manner, such as the bid to institutionalize at a global level the postwar European system of tripartite social partnership among workers, employers, and the state.
However, no iron law governs how trade unions respond to crisis. New visions may emerge, new alliances may form, and new forward-thinking leaders may arise. If we see labor as a social movement, we will perceive its constant regeneration. While still weakened by the ravages of the long neoliberal night, the international labor movement has, since the mid-1990s, been regrouping and recomposing. Struggles have matured from desperate rear-guard actions into concerted, proactive organizing campaigns. The International Trade Union Confederation now organizes 207 million workers in 163 countries. The aforementioned GUFs have approximately 200 million members across such key sectors of the global economy as mining, metalwork, transport, steel, building, food, and public services. Together, these global unions show that labor has not disappeared as some had hoped and others had feared. Yet, structures do not in themselves make a social movement, especially when they remain chronically under-resourced.
At the same time, reorganized national trade unions in many countries are becoming significant social and political actors. One promising example can be found in the remarkable recovery of Uganda's Amalgamated Transport and General Workers Union (ATGWU), which, decimated by privatization and anti-union legislation in the 1980s, had shrunk to a mere 2000 members in 2000. By moving into the organization of informal transport workers, with support from the International Transport Workers Federation, membership has grown to over 60,000, and the union has significantly democratized its internal processes. In Indonesia, a seemingly miraculous recovery from the Suharto period (the late 1960s to the late 1990s), when the country's unions were amongst the weakest in Southeast Asia, has occurred. Since 2000, they have become among the strongest in the region by transforming their repertoire of action: building broad-based coalitions with NGOs, working with informal worker groups, and influencing government policy.13
The status of trade union revitalization is subject to debate in both academic and policy circles.14 Just as types of unions differ, so, too, have their responses to globalization, the closing down of national negotiating space, and the decline in membership. There is no singular path forward. Key directions include recruiting in new areas, with migrant workers an obvious option, building coalitions with other social movements, and intensifying international solidarity actions. Trade unions everywhere (although not all of them) are getting back in touch with their grassroots, improving their communications, and looking outward instead of inward. Trade unions began as part of a popular struggle for democracy, and what the slogans of the French Revolution meant in that day, the principles of the global justice movement could mean today.
Trade unions began as part of a popular struggle for democracy, and what the slogans of the French Revolution meant in that day, the principles of the global justice movement could mean today.
The international trade union movement is both a transnational social movement in the making and a representative organization of workers on the ground. Its democratic structures, focus on the world of work, and membership-based nature distinguish it from NGOs campaigning on issues of gender equity, human rights, or environmental protection. While many advocacy groups are ephemeral, the labor movement will almost certainly be around for a long time, since the collective representation of workers is essential even as its organizational form evolves.
That said, the labor movement has learned a lot from social movements and kindred NGOs, and to an increasing degree has been joining the broad alter-globalization movement. The international trade union movement certainly has the motivation to "go global" (even if it is just to survive), and it has the capacity to do so. It can and will play a central and increasing role in achieving a degree of social regulation over the worldwide expansion of capitalism in the decades to come. Indeed, it must.
In the formative stages of the labor movement, unions engaged actively with the broader political issues of the day, in particular, the call for universal suffrage. There is no reason why such larger concerns cannot again move to the center of labor's agenda, and a very good reason--the interpenetration of a host of economic, social, and environmental reasons--why they should form its backbone. In contrast to the later tradition of craft unionism, the early labor organizers did not recognize divisions based on skill or race. This tradition of labor organizing known variously as community unionism, "deep organizing," or "social movement unionism" has been making a comeback.15 Its spread could open a new chapter in labor's ongoing struggle against capitalism.
Towards a New International
Our world order, globalized from above, cries out for a globalized response from below, a new international fit for the purpose of system transformation in the twenty-first century.16 With their global reach and strategy, trade unions have a central role to play, but labor alone cannot be the international of today. To offer a coherent alternative to the status quo of violence, short-termism, and political chaos, unions must link up with the spectrum of other transnational movements fighting for systemic change on issues from climate change to food security, women's rights to indigenous rights, and racial justice to income inequality.
What would a new international look like? The models of internationals past are not useful for addressing the complex, interdependent, rapidly changing contemporary world. Nor does the template of the World Social Forum suffice, as it remains trapped by a vision of convening rather than action, and has failed to embrace the major transnational social movements, especially the labor movement.
The exploitation of labor is as much at the core of capitalist relations of production in the "new" capitalism as in the old.
The labor movement needs to be at the heart of any such effort since the exploitation of labor is as much at the core of capitalist relations of production in the "new" capitalism as in the old. But workers will not be the sole drivers of social transformation. All sorts of divisions--formal and informal workers, male and female, settled and migrants, North and South--must be bridged before labor can realize its full potential in an international fit for twenty-first-century challenges. Many NGOs, philanthropies, and U.N. organizations have an important role: migrant support groups have brought unions and migrant workers together; women's groups have brought a feminist perspective to trade unions; environmental groups have helped form incipient green/red alliances. Ultimately, though, only transnationally organized labor can be a counterweight to transnationally organized capital.
The task seems daunting, but the myriad global interactions within and between social movements are already fertilizing the seeds of a new international. While a coordinating mechanism can emerge later, the priority now is to cultivate the basis for joint work and a politics of unity in diversity that engages old and new social movements and operates across spatial scales. This work finds expression around specific issues demanding a global response, such as fighting for climate action, gender equity, organizing the working poor, and alleviating the plight of migrants and refugees.
A new international also needs a shared a vision. Building on existing manifestos and charters, unions and their allies can foster consensus around a new labor charter comprised of radical reformist measures with transnational resonance.17 Such a charter would be a living document to sustain a virtual dialogue among the sectors of labor, as well as with progressive social movements. Rather than a centralized process, the work can proceed as a web of network interactions--the charter would not gain its legitimacy from the approval of union leadership and intellectual elites, but from union members, shop-floor activists, and allied social movements, all challenging the predations of globalized capitalism.
The charter's programmatic agenda would evolve to address the concerns of all working people, women and men, urban and rural, high-tech and informal, North and South. A starting list might include the call for a six-hour day to reduce work stress while distributing work more equitably; universal labor rights including the right to strike and engage in international solidarity action; and policies to ease the plight of migrants, the precariat, the self-employed, and the unemployed.
This initial set of demands could then be built on, gathering support from ever-wider sectors and movements, as we work toward an integrated transitional program to take us beyond the current failed social order. Out of this organized effort, complemented by parallel campaigns, would arise the new international we need, where, at its heart, stand the united workers of the world.
Endnotes
1. International Labour Organization, World Employment and Social Outlook 2017: Sustainable Enterprises and Jobs: Formal Enterprises and Decent Work (Geneva: ILO, 2017), https://ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---dcomm/---publ/documents/publication/wcms_579893.pdf.
2. Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Sandra Tzvetkova, "Working Women: Key Facts and Trends in Female Labor Force Participation," Our World in Data, October 16, 2017, https://ourworldindata.org/female-labor-force-participation-key-facts.
3. "Which Sector Will Create the Most Jobs?", International Labour Organization, accessed February 1, 2019, https://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/multimedia/maps-and-charts/WCMS_337082/lang--en/index.htm.
4. World Bank, World Development Report 2019: The Changing Nature of Work (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2019), https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/wdr2019.
5. Peter Pham, "How Can China Keep up Its Breakneck Economic Pace?" Forbes, March 5, 2018, https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterpham/2018/03/05/how-can-china-keep-up-its-breakneck-economic-pace; ILO, World Employment Social Outlook: Trends 2018 (Geneva: ILO, 2018), https://ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---dcomm/---publ/documents/publication/wcms_615594.pdf; ILO, Women and Men in the Informal Economy: A Statistical Picture, 3rd ed. (Geneva: ILO, 2018), .
6. Peter Evans, "Is it Labor's Turn to Globalize?: Twenty-First Century Opportunities and Strategic Responses," working paper, Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, Berkeley, CA, 2010, https://irle.berkeley.edu/files/2010/Is-it-Labors-Turn-to-Globalize.pdf.
7. Steven Greenhouse, "Pressured, Nike to Help Workers in Honduras," New York Times, July 26, 2010, https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/27/business/global/27nike.html.
8. Reynald Bourque, "Transnational Trade Unionism and Social Regulation of Globalization," in Social Innovation, the Social Economy and World Economic Development, eds. Dennis Harrison, Gyorgy Szell, and Reynald Bourque (New York: Peter Lang, 2009), 123-138.
9. Michelle Ford and Michael Gillan, "The Global Union Federations in International Industrial Relations: A Critical Review," Journal of Industrial Relations 57, no. 3 (2015): 456-475; Peter Evans, "National Labor Movements and Transnational Connections: Global Labor's Evolving Architecture under Neoliberalism," working paper, Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, Berkeley, CA, 2014, https://irle.berkeley.edu/files/2014/National-Labor-Movements-and-Transnational-Connections.pdf; Mariangela Zito, Michela Cirioni, and Claudio Stanzani, Implementation of International Framework Agreements in Multinational Companies (Rome: SindNova, 2015), .
10. Steven Greenhouse, "Steelworkers Merge with British Union," New York Times, July 3, 2008, https://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/03/us/03union.html; "Nautilus Podcast Sheds Light on Union Organising beyond Borders," press release, Nautilus International, August 29, 2018, https://www.nautilusint.org/en/news-insight/news/nautilus-podcast-sheds-light-on-union-organising-beyond-borders/; "UAW, German Auto Worker Union to Announce Joint Efforts," Automotive News, November 18, 2015, https://www.autonews.com/article/20151118/OEM01/151119812/uaw-german-auto-worker-union-to-announce-joint-efforts.
11. See Marcel van der Linden, "The Crisis of World Labor," Solidarity, 2017, https://solidarity-us.org/atc/176/p4424/.
12. For example, the Congress of South African Trade Unions brought together unions and informal worker organizations with its Vulnerable Workers Task Team in 2012, but the effort yielded little in the way of new organizing. See, Pat Horn, "Main Challenges of Organising Vulnerable Workers," Business Report, March 28, 2014, https://www.iol.co.za/business-report/opinion/main-challenges-of-organising-vulnerable-workers-1667537.
13. See Mirko Herberg, ed., Trade Unions in Transformation: Success Stories from all Over the World (Bonn: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, 2018).
14. See Cristian Ibsen and Maite Tapia, "Trade Union Revitalisation: Where Are We Now? Where to Next?", Journal of Industrial Relations 59, no. 1 (2017): 170-191.
15. Jane McAlevey, No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age (London: Verso, 2018).
16. The First International, founded in 1864, engaged diverse political parties, trade unions, cooperatives, and civic associations in Western Europe; the Second International (1889-1916) was based on explicitly social democratic parties (the Socialist International is a contemporary descendant); the Third International (1919-1943) included the communist parties that arose from the Russian Revolution; and the Fourth International formed in 1938 by the followers of Leon Trotsky after his expulsion from the Soviet Union.
17. The inspiration here is Peter Waterman, "Needed: A Global Labour Charter Movement," Interface: A Journal for and about Social Movements 1, no. 2 (2009): 255-262.
Keep ReadingShow Less
See More
Most Popular
To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good.
News & Opinion
Trending
Common Dreams, Inc. Founded 1997. Registered 501(c3) Non-Profit
Privacy Policy