The beaches in northeastern Brazil have been smeared for weeks with washing-up oil of unknown origin. Local media now point to Shell. Shell denies involvement.
The oil washes up on the pristine white beaches that are usually mainly devoted to tourism, surfing, fishing and special flora and fauna, such as turtles and dolphins. The oil has since been found in 187 places in 8 of the 26 Brazilian states.
Cleaning work
The first oil spills on beaches date from the beginning of September. Many of the beaches are now the sites of small-scale cleaning operations. Eg, state oil company Petrobras – despite denying involvement – has made 100 employees available to help with clean-up work.
In the oil residues two Shell barrels were found that contained lubricants for shipping, a reason for Brazilian media to scrutinize Shell. Shell’s Brazilian subsidiary had to answer questions from the IBAMA (Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources). …
However, President Bolsonaro has recently reduced the budget of regulators and so have the fines for violations. Bolsonaro, who regularly gets into conflicts with NGOs as a result of these measures, initially blamed neighbouring country Venezuela, the largest oil producer in the region. …
Daniël Gomez of Friends of the Earth recently visited the Brazilian northeast coast: “I was in Bahia state two weeks ago, where fishermen from the region exchanged experiences about this disaster. They were worried because nothing was done to clean the beaches, to trace the source. Neither is anything about this disaster published in the national media. The oil has since spread further, but there is no real plan to stop this.”
and there are 300 wounded, mostly in Santiago. The government of President Sebastián Piñera claims to have arrested over 2,100 people.
Many of those arrested claim they were denied access to lawyers and faced sexual harassment from soldiers and police. One group of female students told Prensa Opal they were forced to remove their clothes as soldiers doused them with water and screamed, “we hate communists”.
The crackdown was ordered from the highest levels of the Chilean state. In a Sunday night address to the nation, Piñera echoed former dictator Augusto Pinochet, declaring: “We are at war with a powerful enemy which is prepared to use violence without limit.”
The protest movement expanded yesterday and drew in broader sections of the working class, who responded with horror to the crackdown as videos of soldiers shooting students in the dark circulated across social media. Hundreds of thousands of people gathered in Santiago’s Plaza Italia yesterday afternoon chanting “soldiers, get out”.
Business was largely halted in Santiago and in many cities across the country even though the government announced Sunday it was rescinding the increase in metro prices that initially triggered demonstrations. A state of emergency remains in effect and the government expanded its nighttime curfew yesterday, with some areas moving its start time to as early as 6 p.m.
Dockworkers marched en masse through several cities, stopping the bulk of national exports and closing 20 ports as part of a national strike. Donning yellow vests worn for work, the sea of thousands of dockworkers resembled France’s “yellow vests” as they marched through the cities of Concepción, Antofagasta and San Antonio.
Copper miners—the most historically militant section of the Chilean working class, who produce the country’s primary export—also announced a national strike beginning Wednesday. This news drove the price of copper up substantially. Chile provides roughly one-third of the world’s copper supply.
Video showing copper miners on lunch break yesterday banging plates and silverware and chanting “general strike!” indicates the explosive mood in the working class.
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Even so, workers at the massive Escondida mine, owned by BHP Ltd., struck for 10 hours last night in what the trade unions scrambled to label a “warning stoppage” in advance of Wednesday’s planned walkout—an acknowledgment that workers do not want to wait to strike.
A union official was also filmed telling a skeptical mass meeting of dockworkers yesterday that there is “no need to make a scandal and throw rocks”, imploring workers to follow the union’s lead regarding the strike and claiming this was the only way to make the “revolution” they want.
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The Communist Party published a proclamation yesterday stating that the “false expectations irresponsibly created by Piñera and the right are the cause of accumulated anger and of the social explosion.”
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The movement in Chile is developing as a struggle against the rotten Chilean “democracy” that maintained fascist control of the military. In recent days, demonstrators have chanted: “this isn’t about 30 pesos, it’s about 30 years,” referencing the three decades since Pinochet left office in March 1990.
This clashes with a rosier tone taken less than a week ago when the Financial Times published an article praising Piñera as the “billionaire leader preaching virtues of the market” whose country is “a beacon of stability and sound management in a continent not famous for either.”
FT quoted Piñera: “Look at Latin America. Argentina and Paraguay are in recession, Mexico and Brazil in stagnation, Peru and Ecuador in deep political crisis and in this context Chile looks like an oasis because we have stable democracy, the economy is growing, we are creating jobs, we are improving salaries and we are keeping macroeconomic balance.”
Concerns over a growing global rebellion of the working class were expressed in a comment yesterday by Brian Winters, Vice President for Policy at the Americas Society/Council of the Americas: “Everyone following Latin America is watching this and saying, ‘Oh my god, Chile, too?’”
When a commercial airplane crashed off the coast of Indonesia in October 2018, global aviation authorities were shocked.
The aircraft was a 737 MAX, one of the newest models of US manufacturer Boeing.
And then when a second MAX dropped out of the sky in Ethiopia in March 2019, investigators said they believed that software on the airplane played a role in both crashes.
With 346 people dead and the MAX now grounded, aviation authorities around the globe have asked what went wrong, how the US certified the aircraft in 2017 and how oversight failed. Families and investigators are still searching for answers.
A former Boeing engineer who worked on the plane, and asked to remain anonymous, recalls that the design and testing of the 737 MAX took place amid immense commercial pressure.
“Cost pressure and time. Time pressure was the biggest impact, biggest driver … [There was] immense pressure on getting the airplane to market as soon as possible”, he told Fault Lines.
“On the 737 MAX there was constant pressure to not change anything. From a cost perspective, change costs money. The business side drives the culture.”
Captain Dennis Tajer from the Allied Pilots Association believes “the system failed”.
“The system is Boeing, the FAA, other oversight areas from within those groups,” he says. “What’s the measure on that judgment? These crashes. It’s that simple: the system failed. It failed our passengers, it failed the globe.”
Fault Lines traces what led to the two plane crashes and asks if US aviation regulators have allowed the industry too much control over safety.
A leaked conversation between two Boeing employees provides further evidence that even though the aerospace giant was well aware of potentially catastrophic problems of the Boeing 737 Max 8 jet, it still decided to introduce the aircraft for commercial flights. Within two years of executives making the decision to put it into service, the deadly aircraft crashed twice—first in October 2018 and then in March of this year—killing 346 men, women and children.
So why aren’t any of Boeing’s executives facing criminal charges?
The exchange between Boeing pilot Mark Forkner and his colleague Patrick Gustavsson, first published by Reuters, again reveals that the company subordinates passenger safety to the drive for profit. With only six months to go before the release of the aircraft, Forkner noted “fundamental issues” with the Max 8 that other Boeing officials “claim they’re aware of”. He specifically mentioned that “MCAS” was “running rampant in the [simulator]” and that “the plane [was] trimming like crazy.”
These comments by two Boeing employees dovetail with black box recordings and other data collected on the two crashes, Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, which show that a previously unknown system, the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), forced the planes into an unrecoverable nosedive. The system was ostensibly installed so that pilots of previous Boeing 737s would require next to no training on the new aircraft, a major selling point the company used to push its plane onto customers over European rival Airbus’s A320neo aircraft.
The real reason MCAS was developed, however, was to correct for a tendency of the Max 8 to stall. In order to shorten development time for the aircraft, Boeing essentially welded on new engines to a half-century old airframe, which meant the jet constantly had a slight pitch up. Instead of designing a new body for the engines, company executives determined it would be much quicker and cheaper to apply a software fix to faulty hardware.
Moreover, Boeing did everything it could to hide this development from regulators. Forkner, who at the time was a technical pilot for the company, told Gustavsson “I basically lied to the regulators (unknowingly)” because neither he nor his coworker had been informed of how much control MCAS could assume over an aircraft. Despite this incident, which was likely one among many, Boeing not only hid the dangers of the system from aviation safety officials, it kept the software out of Max 8 flight manuals. Even after the Lion Air crash, many pilots in the US and internationally were unaware of MCAS and the potential dangers it posed.
There is no innocent explanation for these omissions. They indicate reckless and criminally negligent behavior on the part of Boeing executives to rush into service a flying deathtrap in order to gain market share over its corporate rivals.
That none of them have been prosecuted, much less arrested, speaks to the incestuous relationship between airline companies and the US government. Ali Bahrami, one of the heads of the aerospace industry’s lobbying group, was one of the leading members of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) during the initial development of the Max 8. FAA Acting Administrator during both crashes was Dan Elwell, a former American Airlines executive. Stephen Dickson, the new head of the agency, was a Senior Vice President at Delta.
It also indicts Boeing’s Wall Street investors, which see lives lost only as the cost of doing business. This includes The Vanguard Group, T. Rowe Price Associates, the Newport Trust Co., SSGA Funds Management and Blackrock Fund Advisors, among others. They collectively control 27.9 percent of Boeing’s stock, valued at $59.4 billion, which is more than twice what it was when Boeing first introduced the Max 8.
Boeing’s executives themselves also made a tidy sum. During the meteoric rise of the company’s stock in January and February, Chief Financial Officer Gregory Smith, Executive Vice President John Keating, General Counsel Michael Luttig and Chief Executive Officer Dennis Muilenberg all sold shares worth $9.5 million, $10.1 million, $9.5 million and $6.5 million, respectively. That the second Max 8 crash occurred within a month of these and other similar windfalls raises questions about what else corporate executives knew.
The relationship between Boeing, its executives and its Wall Street investors, however, is only a symptom of the logic produced by the deregulation of the airline industry as a whole, an effort spearheaded by the Democratic administration of Jimmy Carter in 1978. Aided and abetted by Professor Alfred Kahn … Carter pushed through the Airline Deregulation Act, which smashed the existing setup that treated interstate airlines as a regulated public utility, setting routes, schedules and fares.
At the same time, Carter drew up plans to smash the air traffic controllers’ union, PATCO, which were carried out in 1981 by his Republican successor Ronald Reagan—with the support of a Democrat-controlled House of Representatives. This began an assault on airline workers and all sections of the working class … which accelerated the growth of financial speculation and parasitism which has dismantled much of the country’s industry.
The Boeing 737 Max 8 disasters are the outcome of the capitalist ownership of the airline industry and the financial system. They point to the inherent incompatibility between the basic interests of the working class and the private ownership of essential industries, as well as the division of the world’s economy into rival nations. These catastrophes were driven by both the greed of Boeing executives and big investors and the intensifying trade conflict between the United States and Europe.
The only way forward is the opposite, the transformation of the airlines and other major corporations and banks into publicly owned utilities under the democratic control of the working class. This will be a key part of a political fight against the corporate-financial oligarchy and both of its parties, as part of the establishment of a planned economy based on social need, not private profit.
The government in Chile has imposed another curfew in the capital rocked by protests over the economy.
Set off initially by a rise in metro fares, it has since broadened to include protests about the mismanagement of the economy and the huge income disparity gap.
The military is struggling to keep control, and transport systems and the airport have shut down.
Chilean military deployed against protests for the first time since Pinochet
21 October 2019
For the first time since the fascist military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, tanks rolled into downtown Santiago, Chile, this weekend, deployed against protesters demonstrating against a drastic fare hike of the Santiago metro, from the equivalent of USD $1.12 to $1.16. Military personnel in plainclothes and uniform were filmed shooting machine guns and pointing them at crowds of demonstrators.
On Saturday, the right-wing government of billionaire Sebastián Piñera invoked the still-standing 1980 Constitution established by Pinochet to declare a state of emergency across the country and to impose curfews in Santiago, Valparaiso and Concepción, enforced by 9,441 soldiers and thousands of Carabineros, the infamous militarized police. The main border crossing with Argentina was also blocked throughout the weekend.
The seamless imposition of these dictatorial measures by the Chilean ruling class, with the backing of US and European imperialism, exposes the sham of a “transition to democracy” in which the basic political and military set-up under Pinochet remain untouched … .
A demonstrator holds up his hands toward advancing soldiers during a protest as a state of emergency remains in effect in Santiago, Chile, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2019.
The metro rate hike, which was announced in early October, led youth and workers via social media to call for rallies last Monday. Users jumped over turnstiles en masse, meeting brutal police repression. On Friday, these demonstrations sparked mass social anger against growing inequality and triggered protests for broader social demands.
Expressing these sentiments, Alejandra Ibánez, a 38-year-old demonstrator, told AFP: “I don’t like the violence or that some people break things, but all of a sudden these things have to happen so that they stop mocking us and stuffing their fingers in our mouths, raising everything but salaries, and all of this to make the rich in the country richer.”
On Friday, demonstrations grew and shut down all 136 stations of the Santiago metro system. Dozens of stations were lit on fire, as was the headquarters of Enel, a private Italian firm that controls 40 percent of energy distribution in Chile, and the offices of the pro-PinochetEl Mercurio newspaper in Valparaíso.
On Saturday and Sunday, the curfews were defied by thousands of demonstrators and, in Santiago, protesters holding pictures of victims under the Pinochet dictatorship temporarily surrounded the tanks.
At 10 p.m. Saturday, hours after invoking the state of exception and calling demonstrators “true delinquents who do not respect anything”, Piñera said he had “heard with humbleness the voice of my compatriots” and announced the repeal of the most recent fare hike of 30 pesos for the Santiago Metro. (Metro prices in rush hour had already increased 100 pesos, or nearly 15 percent, since February 2018.)
The state of emergency, however, will continue indefinitely, and the curfew was also invoked on Sunday night. According to a statement Sunday by the Ministry of Interior, 1,462 people have been arrested and 15 civilians hurt.
Five civilians died when a supermarket in Santiago caught fire amid the demonstrations and repression. At the same time, entire sections of Santiago remained without electricity Sunday, while school classes were suspended today.
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In a not-so-subtle reference to the Pinochet dictatorship, the Association of Retired Navy Officials published a statement Sunday claiming “we have preparation and vast experience organizing and running a country in a convulsive moment” and called for action that would “support the Armed Forces and Police to recover the rule of law in Chile.”
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When the left … Salvador Allende was elected in September 1970, the [United States] Richard Nixon administration plotted his overthrow immediately. Jotted notes by then-CIA Director Richard Helms from orders given by Nixon 10 days after Allende’s election read, “Not concerned risks involved. No involvement of embassy. $10,000,000 available, more if necessary. Full-time job—best men we have… Make the economy scream. 48 hours for plan of action.” (Kissinger: A Biography, Walter Isaacson, 1992, p. 290)
Chile erupts as youth and workers take on the military in fight against austerity: here.
Civil servants demonstrating in the landlocked kingdom Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) were injured after police opened fire. The NAPSAWU, the Swaziland National Association of Teachers and the Swaziland National Association of Government Accounting Personnel members walked out on September 23 to demand a pay increase of 7.85 percent. The government offered three percent, conditional on the strike ending and the economy improving. On September 25, police used rubber bullets against demonstrators in the capital city Mbabane, injuring 15. On October 2, riot police using live ammunition, tear gas and rubber bullets attacked thousands of demonstrators in the commercial hub Manzini, leaving 17 injured. A labour court began Thursday to hear the government’s arguments that the strike be made illegal on the grounds that it is political. The strike is affecting schools, the revenue collection department, the central transport administration, immigration offices and other government departments.
The World Socialist Web Site has fundamental political differences with both Ms. Gabbard and Dr. Stein. But Clinton’s claims, made without the slightest effort at factual substantiation, are an attempt to criminalize the anti-war statements of the two candidates as treasonous.
They underscore how the Democrats have appropriated the McCarthyite tactics historically associated primarily with the Republican right.
As a central part of their anti-Russia campaign, Clinton and the Democrats promoted the media effort to poison public opinion against journalist Julian Assange by slandering him as a “Russian agent”, preparing the way for the Trump administration to indict him on bogus sedition charges and secure his imprisonment in London under conditions that threaten his life.
In a podcast interview published Thursday, Clinton told former Obama adviser David Plouffe, “I think they’ve got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate.” Implicitly but clearly referring to Gabbard, Clinton continued, “She’s the favorite of the Russians.”
“They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her,” Clinton added.
Asked later if the former secretary of state was referring to Gabbard in her comment, Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill told CNN, “If the nesting doll fits…”
Clinton then went on to make her strongest assertion yet that Jill Stein was a “Russian asset”.
“That’s assuming Jill Stein will give it up, which she might not, because she’s also a Russian asset,” Clinton said. “Yes, she’s a Russian asset, I mean, totally. They know they can’t win without a third-party candidate.”
Gabbard’s true statement that the United States—with Clinton as secretary of state under Obama—had allied with forces linked to Al Qaeda in the drive to overthrow the Syrian government was passed over in total silence by the rest of the candidates and the CNN and New York Times moderators. It was then blacked out in the post-debate media coverage of the event.
In an earlier debate, Gabbard said the greatest geopolitical danger facing the United States was the threat of nuclear war—another taboo in the broadcast media, which routinely demands that the United States “stand up” to Russia without mentioning what a military confrontation with the nuclear-armed country would look like.
Toward the end of Thursday’s interview, Clinton implicitly called for censorship. She condemned the growth of internet news outlets, which have broadened the number and range of sources of information available to the population.
“I think it’s a lot harder for Americans to know what they’re supposed to believe,” she said. In the 1970s, with only three major national newspapers, “It was a much more controllable environment.”
Jill Stein advocates the reform of capitalism and is an opponent of Marxism. She has stated that she is opposed to “state socialism.” Tulsi Gabbard, a veteran of the Iraq war and major in the Hawaii National Guard, describes herself as a “hawk” in many aspects of US foreign policy.
:quality(50)/cdn-kiosk-api.telegraaf.nl/ebdb79e2-f4a1-11e9-8691-0217670beecd.jpg "Oil spill consequences on Brazilian beach, EPA photo")
