Germany wants to recall and clean up 12 million diesel cars
Today, 17:18
The German car industry has to recall 12 million diesel cars to make them cleaner. The German government wants to do something about the polluted air in the cities. According to Reuters news agency, the callback action must start this summer.
All diesel engines with European emission standards Euro 4, Euro 5 and the most recent, Euro 6, should return to the garage. With a software update, emissions of harmful nitrogen oxides could be reduced to a quarter.
The entire recall would cost the car industry between 1.5 and 2.5 billion euros. According to a government spokesperson, the automotive industry will benefit from the recall, because more and more cities want to ban the cars if they do not get cleaner.
Ms Murdoch slammed the Prime Minister for working closely with arms manufacturer BAE to ramp up sales in the name of jobs.
She said: “We are telling people in Yemen and elsewhere that their lives are a price worth paying for our jobs.
“It’s a national disgrace that our standard of living relies on destruction elsewhere.”
TSSA will call on the Labour Party, the TUC and relevant unions to develop an alternative strategy for the use of skills and resources of the arms industry based on the 1976 Lucas shop stewards’ plan for converting swords to ploughshares.
The deal was in the works for a while — it’s actually part of a larger $21 billion agreement made back in November 2016, in the waning weeks of the Obama administration. This portion of the pact, a $12 billion deal for 36 F-15 planes, was signed by Defense Secretary James Mattis on Wednesday so contracting actions could begin.
The 10-day ultimatum delivered last week by Saudi Arabia and its allies—Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain—to Qatar has dramatically escalated their confrontation with the tiny Persian Gulf state, raising the prospect of military conflict: here.
Some journalists acted shocked. The BBC’s Nick Robinson asked shadow local government secretary Andrew Gwynne if he thought Lewis’s statement was responsible at a time like this.
Other journalists have suggested none of the “great Labour figures” would ever talk like this.
I do think that we have a responsibility to look to political answers to the terrible deaths in the Kensington fire.
This is a chance to turn back the underfunding of social housing; the bullying of tenants; the wearing away of health and safety legislation; the removal of legal aid and all the other cuts and deregulation that contributed to the painful and fearful deaths of scores of children, women and men in our capital city.
We owe a duty to the dead and to the living. All the “this must not happen again” rhetoric is meaningless unless we reverse the political decisions that led to this disaster in the first place.
So we should talk directly, and politically. I’m not sure I would personally choose Lewis’s words, though.
But if we look back, some of the Labour Party’s biggest figures have not held back the difficult questions in the face of disasters.
On April 15 1912, the Ocean Liner Titanic sank after an iceberg ripped into its hull. We now know that this terrible disaster was made much more lethal by the shortage of lifeboats.
We also know that “steerage,” or third-class passengers were more often left to die than first-class passengers.
This 2014 video is called Social class inequality as exhibited by the Titanic.
But that’s not how the newspapers reported it. The Daily Mail spoke of the “perfect heroism of passengers”
.
According to the Mail: “The men on board had stood aside and had willingly accepted death that women and children might live.”
But we know the true picture of the sacrifice of third-class passengers, thanks to Labour voices.
Ben Tillett, the leader of the then new dockers’ union and one of the giants of the labour movement wrote a letter to the government on the Titanic deaths, based on a union circular, including the following paragraph: “We also offer our strongest protest against the wanton and callous disregard of human life and the vicious class antagonism shown in the practical forbidding of the saving of the lives of the third-class passengers. The refusal to permit other than the first-class passengers to be saved by the boats is, in our opinion, a disgrace to our common civilisation.”
Tillett knew the third-class passengers had been sacrificed. And he didn’t mince his words — this was “vicious class antagonism,” a “disgrace.”
The Daily Mail, like the Nick Robinsons of their time, expressed outrage. It ran an article expressing shock at Tillett’s use of “class antagonism” and claimed he was wrong to say that third-class passengers suffered worse.
Tillett wasn’t cowed. He wrote to the Daily Mail and pointed out the simple facts that “only one-third of the third-class passengers were saved as against two-thirds of the first class. These figures are obvious enough and bear out the statement in our circular.”
As well as telling the Mail not to “travesty the facts,” Tillett pointed out the centrepiece of his original circular was a set of “practical measures” to save lives, like “the provision of adequate life-saving appliances in boats, rafts and belts.” Tillett was angry, but also promoting positive solutions at the same time.
Tillett was not alone. On April 15 1912 a new daily newspaper was launched, the Daily Herald. Backed by Tillett and other trade union and Labour Party figures, this was the first pro-Labour daily paper. It was edited by George Lansbury, another of the giants of the Labour Party.
The Herald’s first articles on the Titanic began to look at the class differences among the deaths. On April 18 the paper reported: “Mr Bruce Ismay, chairman of the White Star Line, has been saved … Why is it that so few of the steerage passengers have been saved?”
The White Star Line was the company that ran the ship. By April 26, Lansbury and the Herald had the full story of the scandal of the third-class deaths on the Titanic. Its headline was tough, but true: “Women and children last!”
His article said: “They have paid 30 per cent to their shareholders and they have sacrificed 51 per cent of the steerage children. They have gone to sea criminally underequipped with means of life-saving; they have neglected boat drill; they have filled their boat with cooks and valets, with pleasure gardens and luxurious lounges; they have done all this to get big profits and please the first-class passengers.”
Lansbury went on: “And when the catastrophe came, they hastened to get their first-class passengers and their chairman safely away. Fifty-three children remained to die. They were steerage passengers! One hundred and thirty-four women and children were slain. They were steerage passengers.”
Lansbury had no problem saying they were “slain” or “sacrificed.” He also personalised the scandal, on the chairman of the White Star Line, asking: “Where were those 53 steerage children, Mr Ismay, when you saved yourself?”
A hundred years on and we all accept that the shipping line put “glamour” above lifeboats, and that they let third-class children die to save first-class men.
But we only know this because of the firm stand of Labour figures in the past.
[Labour party-led] Manchester Council has ordered the removal of dangerous and illegal cladding from residential buildings. As we can see here the work has started with the removal of cladding from the Village 135 building in Wythenshawe.
SIMILAR plastic used for insulating Grenfell Tower was banned from Britain’s deep coalmines around 40 years ago because it was found to emit poisonous cyanide gas when alight, former miners told the Star yesterday.
Underground roadways in coalmines were sprayed with polyurethane to form a seal that prevented seepage of methane gas into the mines.
When it was discovered that the material could emit cyanide gas, its use was banned by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Mines and it was subsequently removed.
But the same material, or similar, is still being used in the building of blocks of flats.
Peter Davies was a miner at Brodsworth colliery, in South Yorkshire, in the 1970s.
He told the Star: “The roadway to the Barnsley seam was sprayed with this polyurethane.
“The mines research centre in Derbyshire, which is now closed down, found that if it caught fire it emitted cyanide gas so it was banned from the coalmining industry.”
Mick Appleyard, a former miner from Sharlston colliery, in West Yorkshire, said: “The first time I knew about this stuff was when there was a mining disaster in South Africa.
“More than 40 black South African miners were killed in a fire underground, but they were killed by cyanide poisoning. If the stuff didn’t catch fire it stayed dormant. But if it caught fire the cyanide was released.”
The use of the flammable insulation sandwiched between aluminium panels and an air gap has been blamed for the rapid rate in which the flames engulfed Grenfell Tower — spreading across 24 floors in just 15 minutes.
Hundreds of people have died, been declared “missing,” or been displaced after the devastating blaze broke out last week Wednesday.
The insulation was made of polyisocyanurate which is chemically almost identical to polyurethane.
King’s College Hospital in south-west London confirmed that three survivors have been treated with the hydrogen cyanide antidote Cyanokit.
It is suspected that the 79 Grenfell residents confirmed dead so far were killed by toxic gas.
Cladding manufacturer Celotex has confirmed that the insulation would release toxic gases if on fire.
The combustible cladding has been found on at least three tower blocks across Britain, it was also revealed yesterday, with samples expected to be checked from many more buildings.
Camden Council [Labour party] leader Georgia Gould has announced that several tower blocks in the north London borough, including on its Chalcots Estate, will have its cladding removed.
She said: “The new results from the laboratory show that the outer cladding panels themselves are made up of aluminium panels with a polyethylene core.”
Councils in England estimate that around 600 high-rise buildings have some form of cladding.
Prime Minister Theresa May announced in the Commons yesterday that urgent tests are being carried out on all 600 blocks to determine whether they have flammable cladding similar to that found on Grenfell.
The Department for Communities and Local Government claimed that the figure referred to high buildings with any form of cladding.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn called on the government to ensure funds were available to make the high-rise structures safe by carrying out fire safety checks and installing sprinklers.
“Resources must be made available immediately,” he said.
This video from Britain says about itself:
22 June 2017
Labour Party MP Chris Williamson in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire has challenged Tory Party Prime Minister Theresa May in parliament to pass legislation to ensure the fitting of sprinklers to all high rise towers in Britain. In response Theresa May refused to commit to such action.
Fire station cut by Johnson to be rebuilt as luxury flats
Friday 23rd June 2017
ONE of the 10 fire stations closed by Boris Johnson between 2008-12 while he was mayor of London is to be converted into luxury flats by a company which counts a Tory donor as one of its directors.
Belsize fire station in north London had served the community for 100 years before it was shut down in 2014 after Mr Johnson cut fire service budgets by £45 million.
Camden Council’s planning committee subsequently granted permission for the conversion into 16 flats despite an objection during a meeting last September by councillor Flick Rea that it was “patently clear that we did actually need this fire station.
Vulcan Property Ltd paid the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority £7.8m for the Grade II listed building, using a loan from Luxembourg firm Lendivest Capital, documents from the Land Registry show.
The firm’s founder and company director William Richard Woodward-Fisher gave £2,000 to the Conservative and Unionist Party in 2005, Electoral Commission records seen by website Political Scrapbook show.
A Fire Brigades Union (FBU) spokesperson said: “In light of the Grenfell Tower disaster, the closures of 10 fire stations, including Belsize Park, are an even more bitter pill to swallow.
In October 2015 the FBU blamed the closure of Belsize fire station for a delayed emergency response which resulted in the death of a pensioner, as engines had to drive from Soho.
This BBC video about London says about itself:
Newsnight: Mary Ann Sieghart on why Kensington and Chelsea is Britain’s Monaco
7 November 2013
The average price of a semi in Kensington and Chelsea is now £5m, up 120% since 2005. Mary Ann Sieghart investigates for Newsnight, and gets to look around one of the most expensive basements in the country. Ruby Wax is on hand to explain what’s going on.
KENSINGTON toffs were branded “sickening” yesterday after they complained that rehousing Grenfell survivors in “affordable” homes on the same site as their luxury housing complex would bring down prices.
Unison conference delegates heard of the “utter contempt” shown by some wealthy residents of a development just over a mile and a half from Grenfell Tower in response to the government’s emergency acquisition of 68 homes.
“They simply do not want poor people to live by them,” said Doncaster branch secretary Jim Broad.
He described the comments made by some residents of the Kensington Row development as a “sickening and disgusting reaction.”
Some residents had complained that moving families who had lost everything in the fire into the block next to theirs was “unfair” on the spurious grounds that the Grenfell survivors would not pay service charges.
One woman, who asked to remain anonymous, had said: “We paid a lot of money to live here and we worked hard for it. Now these people are going to come along and they won’t even be paying the service charge.”
A man who lives in the luxury development, which boasts a swimming pool, gym and cinema that the survivors are likely to be excluded from using, had said: “I’m very sad that people have lost their homes.
“But there are a lot of people here who have bought flats and will now see the values drop.
“It will degrade things. And it opens up a can of worms in the housing market.”
Mr Broad also reminded delegates: “Every Tory [MP] landlord voted [in parliament] against an amendment to a motion that would mean homes would have to be fit for human habitation.”
Tower Hamlets branch secretary John McCloughlin said those who died in the Grenfell fire “were murdered.”
He added: “The Tories equate council tenants with Labour voters. These are working-class people, many of whom are black and from minority backgrounds.
“But they don’t vote Tory. They are the people who the Tories ignore.”
National young members forum delegate Kate Conway warned that young people were being priced out of the market by Tory ideology.
Northumberland delegate Cath Davies described Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn as a “tsunami of hope” and praised his plans to build a million truly affordable and council-rent homes.
Qatar’s neighbors issue steep list of demands to end crisis
By JOSH LEDERMAN
WASHINGTON — Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries that have cut ties to Qatar issued a steep list of demands Thursday to end the crisis, insisting that their Persian Gulf neighbor shutter Al-Jazeera, cut back diplomatic ties to Iran and sever all ties with the Muslim Brotherhood.
In a 13-point list — presented to the Qataris by Kuwait, which is helping mediate the crisis — the countries also demand an end to Turkey’s military presence in Qatar. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the list in Arabic from one of the countries involved in the dispute.
Qatari officials in Doha did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the AP. But the list included conditions that the gas-rich nation had already insisted would never be met, including shutting down Al-Jazeera. Qatar’s government has said it won’t negotiate until Arab nations lift their blockade. The demands were also likely to elicit Qatari objections that its neighbors are trying to dictate its sovereign affairs by imposing such far-reaching requirements.
Only a day earlier, [United States] Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had warned the demands must be “reasonable and actionable.” The U.S. issued that litmus test amid frustration at how long it was taking Saudi Arabia and others to formalize a list of demands, complicating U.S. efforts to bring about a resolution to the worst Gulf diplomatic crisis in years.
According to the list, Qatar must refuse to naturalize citizens from the four countries and expel those currently in Qatar, in what the countries describe as an effort to keep Qatar from meddling in their internal affairs.
They are also demanding that Qatar hand over all individuals who are wanted by those four countries for terrorism;
Cutting ties to Iran would prove incredibly difficult. Qatar shares a massive offshore natural gas field with Iran which supplies the small nation that will host the 2022 FIFA World Cup its wealth.
Not only must Qatar shut down the Doha-based satellite broadcaster, the list says, but also all of its affiliates. That presumably would mean Qatar would have to close down Al-Jazeera’s English-language sister network.
Supported by Qatar’s government, Al-Jazeera is one of the most widely watched Arabic channels, but it has long drawn the ire of Mideast governments for airing alternative viewpoints. …
The list also demands that Qatar stop funding a host of other news outlets including Arabi21 and Middle East Eye.
If Qatar agrees to comply, the list asserts that it will be audited once a month for the first year, and then once per quarter in the second year after it takes effect. For the following 10 years, Qatar would be monitored annually for compliance.
Saudi Arabia and its allies have issued an extraordinary ultimatum to Qatar that sets the stage for a dramatic escalation of the confrontation that began with the imposition of a diplomatic and economic blockade in early June. Qatar has been given 10 days to agree to a sweeping list of 13 demands or face unspecified consequences. Acquiescence would transform the tiny, energy-rich Gulf state into a political vassal of Riyadh: here.
Brazil’s president Michel Temer has deployed federal troops to restore order in the country’s capital, Brasilia, after some ministries were evacuated during clashes between police and protesters seeking his ouster.
Temer is struggling to retain power after the release of a recording that appears to capture him approving hush money for a convicted former lawmaker. Brazil’s top court is investigating him for alleged obstruction of justice and involvement in passive corruption.
Tens of thousands of demonstrators marched to Congress on Wednesday to demand Temer step down and protest against economic reforms that he is pushing through.
Apart from the eight ministers, this list includes 24 senators, 39 deputies, three state governors and dozens of other cases now before lower courts. The investigation focused on the widespread corruption consisting of “commissions” paid to politicians who acted as facilitators of big companies in procuring state-financed contracts usually for infrastructure works.
Janot became supreme court president after his predecessor Teori Zavascki — appointed by president Ignacio Lula — was killed in a highly suspicious plane crash off Rio de Janeiro.
Janot’s broad anti-corruption sweep has reached none other than Aecio Neves — Brazil’s right-wing 2014 presidential candidate defeated by Dilma Rousseff.
He is being charged with corruption after being recorded requesting £474,500 from JBS. Neves has been suspended as senator by the supreme court. His sister, Andrea Neves and cousin Frederico Pacheco were also arrested as part of the same investigation. Andrea Neves cashed a cheque for £140,000, the origin of which she has been unable to explain.
Neves not only a is senator, he is also the president of the right-wing PSDB (Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira).
Another high-level PSDB member and foreign affairs minister in Temer’s government Jose Serra resigned amid allegations of corruption.
In the conversation Temer requested hush money payments to Eduardo Cunha — former president of Brazil’s congress and architect of the impeachment process that ousted Rousseff — who is currently serving a 15-year jail sentence for having at least five secret accounts in foreign banks, with millions of dollars he could not explain.
The noose is closing around Temer. At the beginning of June the police arrested tourism minister Eduardo Henrique Alves for bribery relating to the construction of a stadium for the 2014 World Cup. On the same weekend, Temer’s aide, Rodrigo Rocha Loures, was also arrested and stripped of his congress seat. When arrested he was carrying a suitcase with £120,000 inside.
In a move that typifies Brazil’s kleptocracy, Temer allies — Brazil’s elite political establishment — are now floating the idea of seeking the impeachment of supreme court president Janot, on the farcical grounds of political persecution.
Recently Temer’s government approval rate has stood at 4 per cent.
In a recent TV interview Batista, the JBS millionaire owner, who recorded Temer’s conversation requesting bribes from JBS, said: “Temer is the chief of Brazil’s most dangerous criminal gang.”
The reason the Temer government has survived this long is because the ruling class in Brazil is divided as to what course to follow once the unavoidable fall of Temer takes place. There are two options: comply with the existing constitution and call for direct presidential elections, or use their current parliamentary majority to have “indirect” elections, namely deciding the next president by a simple majority vote. The latter would be unconstitutional.
The candidate they have in mind is right-wing economist Henrique Mireilles. Their main problem with the general election is that Lula, the people’s choice, currently enjoys an approval rate of over 40 per cent.
There is a second very important reason that divides Brazil’s elites as to what to do in the nearing post-Temer scenario — the mobilised masses are in the streets and the mood is very militant with a simple demand: “Diretas Ja!” (Direct elections now).
They mobilised to defend their elected president Rousseff and they have not stopped after she was removed in a “constitutional” coup d’etat.
They have also defended former president Lula from the blatant political persecution he has been subjected to by Establishment judge Sergio Moro, who after over three years of investigation has no evidence of any kind that would incriminate Lula.
The organised working class staged a very impressive general strike in April 2017, involving 45 million workers from nine national trade union federations, which brought Brazil to a standstill.
At the same time secondary and university students have occupied campuses and schools, confronted police repression and have become a focal rallying point for Brazil’s youth.
Additionally, there is the MST (Landless Movement) led by the experienced social fighter Pedro Stedile.
There is also the MTST (Movement of the Homeless) who bring into action the mass of the poor of urban Brazil in huge rallies demanding: “Fora Temer!” (Temer out).
The indigenous communities have mobilised under “Fora Temer” to demand respect for their ancestral lands and against their illegal appropriation by Brazilian or foreign companies. Recently they marched on Brasilia — Brazil’s capital city — where they met ferocious police repression. Unlike in the past, however, all the indigenous groups in Brazil now have the support of most of the nation.
The organised working class intends to harness all of these social movements and stage another bigger general strike scheduled for June 30.
Two demands will be at its centre: “Temer out!” and “Direct elections now.” They will not stop until democracy is returned.
We must give them all our support and solidarity.
The identity of the CIA’s station chief in Brazil, previously a closely guarded secret of the US government, was plastered across every Brazilian newspaper and reported throughout the country’s mass media earlier this week. Duyane Norman, who had previously been working under the all-too-common cover of a “political officer” in the US Embassy in Brasilia, was listed as the “station chief of the CIA” in a public schedule released by Brazil’s Institutional Security Council (known by its Portuguese acronym as the GSI) for its chief minister, Gen. Sérgio Etchegoyen: here.
