In this Our Changing Climate environmental video essay, I look at the environmental and social cost of the military and militarism. I narrow in on the United States military-industrial complex because it is by far the biggest military machine in the world. I look at how the military and the military-industrial complex is a massive polluter in terms of both emissions and chemical waste. In addition, the video looks at whether or not these environmental and monetary burdens caused by the military-industrial complex are justified. Have the multitude of wars the United States has wage been just, or are they manifestations of imperialism. Ultimately, the video connects environmental destruction with military imperialism and concludes that demilitarization is the only truly effective answer to the carbon footprint of the military.
But since then, the backlash has been brutal. Hundreds have died or gone missing. One man has tightened his grip on power through the most brutal arm of the state, known as the Rapid Support Forces. What’s most surprising is that Hemedti seemingly built up his power with the help of money from the European Union. A warning: this report contains images that viewers may find disturbing.
This notorious Sudanese militia is receiving “security training” paid for by the European Union
For years, the EU and the Dutch government refused financial or material support to Sudan’s most feared paramilitary group. But money from an EU fund against irregular migration is now used for training for this particular group.
Klaas van Dijken, Nouska du Saar and Aziz Alnour, 31 October 2020, 1:00 am
… The men are members of Sudan’s most feared and most powerful paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). …
The EU has always said that the RSF will not receive direct or indirect support because of its involvement in war crimes in Darfur. The Dutch Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation Sigrid Kaag also spoke out against this last year. But internal and public documents show that the EU is indeed co-financing this training project, and that EU countries gave their consent in July. …
The money for it comes from the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa, which has been set up to combat irregular migration.
Internal documents show that 5 million euros has been budgeted for the program, which also includes training of the RSF. The militias are awaiting training in … recognizing and identifying refugees … and using firearms, says an insider. ..
“Training the RSF is shortsighted and morally wrong”
Kenneth Roth, director of Human Rights Watch, is also critical: “Training the RSF is shortsighted and morally wrong,” he says. “When not linked to trials of the leaders of the RSF, this kind of training is a nice facade and irrelevant.”
We are just a few hours away from the release of #Euroleaks! To find out more, watch Yanis Varoufakis, DiEM25 co-founder and ΜeRA25 MP, explain why we’re releasing the files and why now.
Why Azerbaijan Is Getting Poorer Despite An Oil Revolution
All the President’s Oil (2001): After the fall of the Soviet Union, millions poured into Azerbaijan’s oil industry. But only a select few reaped the rewards. Presented by Marcel Theroux.
The oil-rich Azerbaijan ought to be a textbook example of the benefits of globalisation. Multinationals from across the globe have poured in cash to exploit its oil wealth, and now a tidal wave of money is hitting Azerbaijan. But who are the winners? The oil companies of course – but the comfortable contemporary wisdom says that riches will also trickle down to the whole Azeri population, creating a contented, prosperous nation at the centre of a troublesome region that includes Iran and Russia. But it isn’t happening. Forget the cosy platitudes of globalisation. Think corruption, nepotism, despotism, warlords…
MEPs rejected a resolution that would have blocked the European Union from providing upwards of €25 million (£21m) for cross-border fossil fuel infrastructure.
“The EU has made a number of big announcements over the past few months, declaring a climate emergency and proposing a green deal, but today’s vote shows that many MEPs and EU institutions are not yet ready to walk the talk,” Mr Dubois said.
“In November, the European Investment Bank pledged to end fossil fuel finance by 2022, but today’s decision activates a loophole that will allow the world’s largest international public lender to pump billions of euros into new climate-wrecking fossil gas projects.”
One such fossil gas project that the EU has pumped millions of euros into is the Southern Gas Corridor, a 2,200-mile enterprise costing around £34 billion, bringing gas from Azerbaijan to Italy.
Snap parliamentary elections held in the small south Caucasian country on Sunday produced another majority for the party of President Ilham Aliyev, whose family has ruled since 1993.
Around 30 people who gathered outside the Electoral Commission yesterday to protest at the dubious election results were beaten by police.
Ulviyya Guliyeva, an independent journalist at the scene, told the Star what she saw.
“For the first two hours, [the police] did nothing. And then they saw that a lot of people were joining the protest, so they began to kick and punch everyone. They beat and detained everyone.”
Ms Guliyeva was bundled into the back of a police van along with protesters and other journalists.
“When we were in the police bus, they said that we were opposition journalists.
“To them, criticising the police or the state is on equal terms with being a member of the opposition.”
INVESTIGATIONS are under way into today’s suicide attempt by a woman who was hounded after displaying a feminist slogan at an International Women’s Day demonstration in Azerbaijan: here.
There is a natural solution to the climate breakdown: protecting forests. Climate activist Greta Thunberg and writer and climate activist George Monbiot explain.
Josep Borrell, the European Union‘s foreign chief, has apologized for a statement about young climate activists. The Spaniard said on Thursday that they are suffering from ‘Greta syndrome’, referring to 17-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg.
He was criticized by Borrell’s remark. The European Greens called the statement unacceptable. …
The result of the meeting was the Malta Declaration, part of which states that “priority will be given to … training, equipment and support to the Libyan national coastguard and other relevant agencies.”
According to analysis by migrant researcher Matteo Villa at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies, “around 40,000 people have been intercepted at sea and brought back to Libya” since the 2017 agreements with Libya.
The civil refugee-rescue fleet — a small collection of NGOs that have been the main actors carrying out search-and-rescue missions in the central Mediterranean since April 2019 — condemned the EU’s support for the Libyan Coastguard.
Sophie Beau, international vice-president of SOS Mediterranee — which, along with Doctors Without Borders (MSF), operates the rescue ship Ocean Viking — said that the declaration “laid the foundation for a massive breach of international law, financed by European taxpayers’ money.
“While the European Union pulled back from saving lives at sea over the past years,” Ms Beau said, “they simultaneously financed, trained and equipped the Libyan Coastguard to intercept people fleeing the country.
“They are returning them to a cycle of violence and abuse in war-torn Libya.
“Rescued people on board endlessly report to us shocking experiences of torture, rape, slavery and even executions, and most of the survivors are hurt or traumatised.”
Axel Steier, co-founder of the German refugee rescue charity Mission Lifeline, told the Morning Star that Europe’s interests are clear: keep refugees away.
“Europe’s incantations of ‘We fight the smugglers’ are of no use,” Mr Steier said.
“As long as there are no legal entry routes, people will continue to flee across the sea.”
Article 33 of the 1951 Refugee Convention, of which all EU member states are signatories, states: “No contracting state shall expel or return (‘refouler’) a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where [their] life or freedom would be threatened on account of [their] race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.”
Alarm Phone, an activist network providing support to people attempting to reach Europe by crossing the Mediterranean and Aegean seas, was equally damning.
“We do not doubt that Italy and Europe will continue to be the major collaborator with the cruel practices of the so-called Libyan Coastguard, thereby financing human-rights violations, making sea crossings even more dangerous, and forcibly pushing people back to a war zone and torture,” an Alarm Phone spokesperson told the Star.
“Italy and Europe are therefore fully responsible for the violence, deaths at sea and human-rights violations. By delegating to Libya they hide and deny their responsibility.
“But people on the move do not have a choice. In January alone, despite bad weather conditions, thousands of people made the deadly journey across the sea to flee war and violence.
“They do not have a voice in the conferences and deals between the EU and Libya, but many still bravely succeed in reaching Europe.
“We listen to them calling us in their hardest moments, struggling at sea in unseaworthy boats. We will continue to organise ourselves as part of the civil fleet for freedom of movement.”
Oxfam has accused the EU of using its aid money to Africa, particularly its emergency trust fund for stability and addressing root causes of irregular migration and displaced persons in Africa, as a policy tool to lower migration to Europe.
“Since July 2017,” a report released last week states, “nearly €90 million [£75.6m] has been released through the EUTF for Africa to train, equip and support the capacity of the Libyan coastguard to intercept migrants at sea and land borders …”
Jeremy Corbyn urged Europe’s Socialists Friday to challenge the political establishment and team up with like-minded leftists to check the rise of “fake” right-wing populists.
He added that Europe must come together to fight against the rise of right-wing and neoliberal policies. Failing to do so “will smooth the path to power of the fake populists“, Corbyn said in a speech to the annual congress of the Party of European Socialists in Lisbon.
Addressing over 400 delegates in a video played at the Party of the European Left’s Congress on Sunday, the film-maker claimed that the left suffers from a muddled position when it approaches the question of the EU.
Mr Loach said that last week’s general election result, where Labour lost 59 seats in mostly Brexit-voting areas, was an example of this, and claimed that “the desire to leave” Brussels was a “big problem” for the left.
Mr Loach then urged socialists in Europe to “clarify” their analysis on Europe, and said that the international left must organise if it decides to not campaign against EU membership.
He said: “If we decide that we should remain and transform the [EU] then we have to have a plan that is clear, that we can all unite behind and which the left in every country can proclaim.
‘Remain and transform’ in itself sounds like an attractive slogan. However, the problem is that often, there is vagueness about how to transform. And about transforming to where.
A bit comparable to the Scottish independence referendum. The then Blairite right-wing leader of the Labour party in Scotland, Jim Murphy, decided to campaign against Scottish independence, jointly with the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties, instead of waging a clearly separate campaign. That drove many Labour voters into the arms of the Scottish nationalists. That way, Jim Murphy, with a little help from Tony Blair and other Blairites, managed to destroy Scotland as a bulwark of Labour party voters. Labour in Scotland has still not recovered from that Murphy-Blair blow.
LEN McCLUSKEY has said that it is “wilful blindness” to deny that Labour lost the election because of Brexit. The Unite general secretary stated that it is “pretty obvious” that the reason for Labour losing 59 seats — including in traditionally Labour-voting areas — was because of its Remain-leaning stance on Brexit: here.
The dog whistle message from hardcore Remainers was heard loud and clear – Leavers were ‘thick and racist,’ writes RHEIAN DAVIES (herself a Labour member who had voted Remain).
TRADE union figures in the north-east have mocked Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s pledge that he will “repay the trust” placed in him by working-class voters in the region who switched their support from Labour to the Tories in the general election. Alan Mardghum, general secretary of the Durham Miners’ Association, told the Morning Star today: “When he made statements about the lazy unemployed, single mothers and the feckless working class, that is what he believes. That is the contempt he has for working people: here.
“Our Future Our Choice” is seen as a spontaneous “youth” movement against Brexit. But latest figures from the Electoral Commission show that, as the “second-referendum” campaign fell apart, it gave £20k to a group run by former New Labour hatchet man Alastair Campbell (62 years old) and Tory Peer Patience Wheatcroft (68 years old). Wheatcroft is a former Sunday Telegraph editor, one-time Barclays director and lifelong Tory activist: here.
This 19 June 2019 video from the British parliament says about itself:
Boris Johnson has been labelled ‘racist’ in the House of Commons by the Scottish National party’s Westminster leader, who said the Conservative leadership frontrunner was ‘unfit’ to be prime minister. Ian Blackford asked [then still Conservative Prime Minister] Theresa May if she agreed with Johnson that the Scottish people were a verminous race who should be ‘exterminated’, referring to a poem published in the Spectator when Johnson was the magazine’s editor.
From daily The Morning Star in Britain, 13 December 2019, when there were still only exit polls about the British election:
Brexit backlash hits Labour hard, exit poll suggests
EXIT polls have suggested a Tory landslide, with Leave-voting areas switching away from Labour according to predictions.
A visibly shocked [Labour party] John McDonnell told the BBC that “Brexit has dominated” the election.
Meanwhile, results have confirmed the predictions.
How did Boris Johnson’s Conservatives win more seats, giving them an absolute majority of MPs?
Not by increasing their number of votes. That was 43,6%, only 1,2% more than the 2017 election. And voter turnout was lower than in 2017. Maybe because of voters not turning up out of disgust about politicians talking for or against Brexit, Brexit, Brexit and very little else. Instead of about peace; of Conservative attacks on disabled and other poor people; about stopping racism and homophobia; etc.
The Conservatives won seats because Labour, after their biggest progress, with their new leader Jeremy Corbyn, in votes since 1945 in the 2017 election, lost. They fell back to 32.2%. Still more than their share at the 2015 election: 30,5%, under their then leader Ed Miliband, less leftist than Corbyn.
“We thought other issues could cut through and there would be a wider debate, from this evidence there clearly wasn’t,” the shadow chancellor [John McDonnell] said.
Sadly, true.
Labour’s bad result was
following its decision to campaign for a second referendum on EU membership. …
The Brexit issue is more complex than it seems. Both European Union Brexiteers and European Union Remainers really have two contradictory tendencies. Among Remainers, there are Thatcherite Conservatives, right-wing Labour Blairites and other champions of austerity, anti-refugee xenophobia and neocolonial wars all over the world. On the other hand, there is the ‘Remain and transform’ tendency. It says that, by staying inside the European Union, British socialists can transform the European Union pro-austerity capitalism to socialism (a task maybe only slightly less enormous than transforming NATO from a nuclear-armed warmongering organisation into a pacifist and socialist organisation. But that is another issue).
Then, Brexiteers. Boris Johnson won this election by saying little else than Get Brexit done. That seems to have appealed not only to hard-core Brexiteers, but also maybe to some people who are not strongly against European Union membership, but who are tired of politicians endlessly talking about up with Brexit, down with Brexit and very little else.
Johnson cleverly hid during the campaign WHAT kind of Brexit should be ‘done’ by the electorate. He and other right-wingers want a Brexit making Britain a hard-line Thatcherite country, slave to Donald Trump’s USA. When Trump visited Britain recently, Johnson, as a clever but hypocritical election campaign tactic, avoided Trump.
Unfortunately, the Remain and transform tendency was powerless against their ‘Remain and make the European Union even more capitalist and militarist’ ‘allies’. As unfortunately, in this election people who want to leave the European Union to make Britain more socialist, lost out to Boris Johnson’s Brexiteers who want to leave to make Britain more Trumpist capitalist.
Many working-class voters, it seems, especially in northern England, were so repelled by Blairite pro-European Union Labour MPs, millstones around Corbyn’s neck, that they stayed at home. Or, in some cases, even voted Conservative ‘to get Brexit done’. Unfortunately, not realizing that Johnson’s Brexit is not their Brexit.
Many are in the north-east of England, [traditionally Labour] constituencies which voted predominantly for Leave, such as historical mining constituency Blyth Valley.
The Labour party were not the only losers in this election. The most pro-European Union party, the Liberal Democrats, lost. Their leader Jo Swinson lost her seat.
Not all was gloom and doom for Remainers. In Scotland, there was a big victory for the Scottish National Party. An argument for Scotland becoming independent and thus remaining in the European Union.
In Northern Ireland, for the first time ever, pro-union with Britain parties like the DUP, lost their majority of MPs. Parties supporting a united Ireland, remaining in the European Union, won.
Mr McDonnell added that he had doubts “Brexit will be done as a result of this.”
“I think what will happen… people, I think, almost in despair, wanted to get Brexit over and done with because they’ve had enough of what’s been going on.”
Shadow justice secretary Richard Burgeon also suggested that Brexit dictated the vote.
He Tweeted: “If, as it seems, this was a Brexit election then the next one won’t be given Johnson’s Thatcherite agenda.”
But he vowed to continue the fight against the Tories.
Mr McDonnell warned that the result would put “the most right-wing extreme cabinet that we’ve seen in our history” in power who would have the mandate to introduce “reactionary policies.”
Meanwhile, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has announced that he won’t be the leader at the next election. One should hope that his successor won’t be some Blairite. That would make Labour even smaller than the Liberal Democrats. Corbyn’s successor should be at least as left-wing as he.
Two NGO-operated ships, the Alan Kurdi and the Ocean Viking, saved over 100 people from unseaworthy boats during three separate missions in the central Mediterranean last Thursday after the refugees had fled human rights abuses in Libya.
Both ships contacted the Libyan maritime authorities, as international law dictates, but their calls were ignored.
Maltese and Italian authorities have been asked to provide the rescue ships with a port of safety, but none had been offered by the time the Star went to press.
“Four people collapsed on board the ship on Sunday. Two people have collapsed today. A woman tried to kill herself on Saturday by jumping overboard. She was evacuated to Malta.
“Everyone on board is exhausted. It’s cold and it’s windy and people are sleeping on deck covered in blankets. Our team is so stressed that it’s getting hard for them to look after the rescued.”
When the Alan Kurdi’s crew contacted the maritime rescue co-ordination centres in Malta, Rome and even Bremen in Germany, the latter suggested that the ship should contact the Libyan coastguard.
“We are not going to do that,” Mr Pahlke said. “We are not going to break international law by handing refugees over to criminal groups and back to a war zone.”
The Ocean Viking — jointly operated by SOS Mediterranee and Doctors Without Borders (MSF) — was in international waters between Malta and the Italian island of Lampedusa with 60 refugees on board as the Star went to press. Its crew also refused to break international law.
“The European Union’s policies here are grossly incoherent. On the one hand, they clearly acknowledge that the situation in Libya is a problem, which clearly disqualifies the country as being safe. But on the other hand they refuse to abide by international maritime conventions.”
The EU withdrew all of its search and rescue ships in April after pressure from Italy’s then far-right … coalition government. Since then, a small number of NGO ships have been the only vessels in the Mediterranean carrying out the humanitarian work formerly done by the bloc.
Ms Harding told the Star: “MSF calls on EU member states, including the UK, to urgently provide proactive and sufficient search and rescue capacity in the Mediterranean Sea, as well as to end punitive actions against NGOs trying to provide life-saving assistance.
“Additionally, there must be sustainable, reliable and predictable disembarkation mechanism for survivors in safe places where they will be treated humanely and will be able to seek asylum. Libya is not, and cannot be considered, a place of safety.”
You can follow the Star’s coverage of the civil refugee rescue fleet here.
A FIVE-DAY standoff that left over 100 refugees stranded at sea finally came to an end today when the EU authorities allowed two NGO rescue ships to dock in Italy. The Alan Kurdi, operated by German charity Sea Eye, and the Ocean Viking, crewed jointly by SOS Mediterranee and Doctors Without Borders (MSF), saved the lives of 144 refugees last Thursday in three separate missions. It wasn’t until yesterday afternoon, however, when the Palermo mayor Leoluca Orlando responded to the Alan Kurdi’s plea for shelter on Twitter that the two ships were granted a port of safety: here.
‘It shouldn’t be civil society versus European governments’. SOS Mediterranee’s DAVID STARKE tells the Star how EU member states have abandoned their commitments to international maritime and refugee laws when it comes to rescues carried out by the civil rescue fleet.
German Protestant Church raising funds to join civil refugee rescue fleet in the Mediterranean: here.
A recent study found high levels of pesticides in the drinking water of about 25% of Brazil’s cities. These results have activists worried, with Brazilian agriculture heavily dependent on one chemical component. CGTN’s Paulo Cabral reports from Sao Paulo.
Brazil was already the largest pesticide user in the world, but under President Jair Bolsonaro the country is becoming increasingly toxic. And that is also a danger to public health in Europe.
Forbidden to spray in Europe, but Brazilian farmers are still allowed to use them: a whole list of pesticides. They are used on Brazilian agricultural fields, and that also endangers the health of Europe. The European Union (EU) and the South American trade bloc Mercosur recently concluded a free trade agreement principle. If all member states ratify that principle, it opens the door wide for the European import of Brazilian agricultural products. The question is: do we want that?
The regulations for using pesticides are much more flexible in Brazil than in the EU. Numerous substances banned in Europe are permitted in Brazil. And it certainly doesn’t get any better with the governments of recent years.
Since President Dilma Rousseff was deposed in 2016 and a right-wing government came to power (first under Michel Temer, then under Jair Bolsonaro), more than 1200 new pesticides have been approved. 193 of those pesticides contain ingredients that are banned in the EU. Before 2016, just over a hundred new pesticides entered the Brazilian market every year. In the first six months of this year alone, there were 239. That is more than in the entire EU in the last eight years.
“It is not the only indication that the situation is deteriorating,” says Larissa Mies Bombardi, professor of social geography at the University of São Paolo. “Between 2007 and 2014 there were 3,100 acute pesticide poisoning annually. In 2017 there were 5238, an increase of 45 percent. The number of people who died from it rose from 148 to 194 a year. ”
“We also see the largest increase in pesticide use in areas that are part of the Amazon biotope,” she continues. “It illustrates how Brazilian agriculture invades more and more north into the rainforest.”
A poison atlas
Larissa Mies Bombardi published the Geografia do Uso do Agrotoxicos no Brasil e Connexaoes com o Uniao Europa two years ago. It is an atlas that maps Brazilian pesticide use in agriculture in all sorts of ways and the links with Europe.
According to the Brazilian Institute for Environment and Sustainable Natural Resources (IBAMA), Brazil spent more than $ 10 billion in 2017 on nearly 540,000 tons of pesticides. That is one-fifth of the global demand. More than half (52 percent) was intended for Brazilian soy cultivation. It has increased tenfold in the last fifty years. The majority of the soy is destined for export to China and the EU.
Moreover, in 2017, 20 percent of all Brazilian pesticides were destined for maize and sugar cane. In other words, 72 percent of the 540 million tons of agricultural poison was destined to spray only three Brazilian crops. …
About 30 percent of all pesticides in Brazil are banned in the EU and Switzerland.
150 types of poison are permitted in Brazilian soy cultivation, 35 of which are banned in the EU. Nevertheless, in 2018 Brazil already exported around 3 million tonnes of soy to European farmers. 121 pesticides were permitted in coffee growing, 30 of which were banned in the EU. Yet Brazil exports almost a million tons of coffee beans to Europe.
Brazil is the world’s largest producer of oranges and orange juice. Of the 116 pesticides allowed in the sector, 33 are banned in the EU. Nevertheless, in 2016 Brazil already exported around 1.5 million tonnes of fruit and juice to Europe.
Dear Kitty. Some blog 