Author: ajohnstone

German Mayors – We can take more refugees

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The European Union has decreased its Mediterranean rescue efforts, while Greece and Italy are struggling to deal with displaced people who have already arrived. German cities are demanding permission to take action.

With EU efforts toward political solutions to rescue and distribute refugees effectively at a standstill, representatives from Potsdam, Düsseldorf and elsewhere told a joint press conference that it is their humanitarian duty to upend the current status quo on migration policy.



“We would be prepared to take in more people if we were allowed,” Mike Schubert, mayor of Potsdam and a member of the initiative Cities of Safe Harbours, told reporters. “We are currently experiencing a policy of wait and see, but that’s the opposite of acting.” He went on to remark, “What’s the alternative to saving people at sea? To allow people to drown? The number of those who stand at the ready to intercept this catastrophe is growing every day.”
With EU efforts toward political solutions to rescue and distribute refugees effectively at a standstill, representatives from Potsdam, Düsseldorf and elsewhere told a joint press conference that it is their humanitarian duty to upend the current status quo on migration policy.
The Cities of Safe Harbours initiative seeks to break that standstill by petitioning for special permissions to immediately accept refugees rescued on the Mediterranean and stranded in Greece, Italy and elsewhere. Cities of Safe Harbours has asked the government to trigger Section 23, Paragraph 1 of Germany’s Residence Act, which allows for the immediate distribution of specialty humanitarian residence permits without legislative acrobatics.



Global warming and the poor

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Extreme heat kills hundreds of people in the US every year – more than any other hazardous weather event, including hurricanes, tornadoes and flooding, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Each year, more than 600 Americans die and 65,000 or so seek emergency medical care for excessive heat exposure. As heatwaves become increasingly frequent and severe, scientists expect to see an increase in deaths and illnesses, particularly among vulnerable groups such as children, the elderly, economically disadvantaged communities, and those with pre-existing conditions like heart disease, asthma and diabetes. Heatwaves have been occurring more frequently since the mid-20th century, and are expected to become more common, more severe and longer-lasting due to the climate crisis.



However, exposure to extreme heat is unequal: temperatures in different neighborhoods within the same city can vary by 20F. It is mostly lower-income households and communities of color who live in these urban “heat islands” which have historically had fewer green spaces and tree canopy, and more concrete and pavements and thus are less equipped to cope with the mounting effects of global heating.

Current temperature disparities echo the legacy of past racially motivated town planning. Urban neighborhoods denied municipal services and support for home ownership during the mid-20th century are now the hottest areas in 94% of the 108 cities analysed by researchers at Portland State University and the Science Museum of Virginia.



“This systematic pattern suggests a woefully negligent planning system that hyper-privileges richer and whiter communities,” said Vivek Shandas, professor of urban studies and planning at Portland State University who authors the paper. “As climate change brings hotter, more frequent and longer heatwaves, the same historically underserved neighborhoods – often where lower-income households and communities of color still live – will face the greatest impact,” Shandas added.



Beginning in the 1930s, some, mostly African American neighborhoods – designated with red lines – were categorized as too risky for investment, and denied home loans and insurance. As a result, the housing stock fell into disrepair, and residents were unable to create wealth through homeownership or move into “better” suburban neighborhoods, which intensified segregation and wealth inequalities. Redlining was banned in the 1968 Fair Housing Act, but those neighborhoods are still predominantly home to lower-income communities and communities of color who are disproportionately exposed to a variety of environmental hazards such as lead, poor water and air quality, over development and limited shade. Redlined neighborhoods also had the lowest public and private investment. Researchers used satellite images to analyse the relationship between summertime surface temperatures and “redlining” in 108 cities across the country.
Nationally, the study found formerly “redlined” neighborhoods are 5F warmer, on average, than non-redlined neighborhoods. However, the difference is much starker in some cities. For instance in Portland, Oregon, and Denver, Colorado, researchers found a 12 to 13F difference between formerly redlined and non-redlined neighborhoods, compared with 1-2 F in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania and Flint, Michigan.

“The patterns of the lowest temperatures in specific neighborhoods do not occur because of circumstance or coincidence. They are a result of decades of intentional investment in parks, green spaces, trees, transportation and housing policies that provided ‘cooling services’, which also coincide with being wealthier and whiter across the country … neighborhoods are not made equal,” said Shandas. “We are now seeing how those policies are literally killing those most vulnerable to acute heat.”



“This study is a textbook case of how structural racism in housing compounds environmental, climate and health risks,” Dr Robert Bullard, distinguished professor of urban planning and environmental policy at Texas Southern University, told the Guardian. “Zip code is still a potent predictor of health and well-being… environmental vulnerability maps closely with racial injustice.”



 https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/jan/13/racist-housing-policies-us-deadly-heatwaves-exposure-study

Money goes to money

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Despite having more than 10 million subscribers paying more than £860m in subscription fees each year in the UK, Netflix UK received a €57,000 (£51,000) rebate from the government in 2018.



  The company’s UK financial filing stated revenues of just €48m, and pre-tax profits of €2.3m, because the hundreds of millions of pounds from British subscribers are channelled via its European headquarters in the Netherlands.



The Taxwatch thinktank has estimated that in 2018 Netflix moved between $327m and $430m (£250m-£330m) in profits from international operations outside the US, including the UK, to low-tax jurisdictions such as the Netherlands.

This research shows that Netflix is ripping off our public services by channelling profits through tax havens even though it appears to have employees, property, and a substantial customer base in the UK,” said John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor. “What’s even worse is that Netflix is claiming tax reliefs in the UK at the same time as it’s channelling profits overseas.”

Netflix, which has a market value of $150bn, claimed £924,000 in tax relief as part of government incentives to make sure Britain remains a competitive location for making productions, according to the report. High-quality TV shows made in the UK that cost more than £1m per episode to make, such as The Crown, and films that pass a “cultural test” are eligible for relief. Netflix, which has more than 200 staff in the UK, spent $500m making more than 50 TV shows and films in the UK last year.



n September, Amazon revealed it received €241m in tax credits in 2018, despite efforts by EU authorities in Brussels to ensure the company pays more tax. Amazon Europe, which is based in Luxembourg and aggregates the billions of pounds of sales the retailer makes from individual countries across the continent, received the credits after reporting a pre-tax loss of €493m in 2018. Sales rose 11.6% to €28bn.



Amazon, which is being pursued by the European commission for more than €250m over “illegal tax advantages” in Luxembourg, paid just €55m in tax on European revenues of €24.9bn in 2017. In 2016, it paid €16.5m on revenues of €21.6bn.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jan/14/netflix-accused-of-funnelling-uk-profits-through-netherlands

More evidence of our warming planet

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The heat in the world’s oceans reached a new record level in 2019, showing “irrefutable and accelerating” heating of the planet.



The world’s oceans are the clearest measure of the climate emergency because they absorb more than 90% of the heat trapped by the greenhouse gases emitted by fossil fuel burning, forest destruction and other human activities.



The new analysis shows the past five years are the top five warmest years recorded in the ocean and the past 10 years are also the top 10 years on record. The amount of heat being added to the oceans is equivalent to every person on the planet running 100 microwave ovens all day and all night.

Hotter oceans lead to more severe storms and disrupt the water cycle, meaning more floods, droughts and wildfires, as well as an inexorable rise in sea level. Higher temperatures are also harming life in the seas, with the number of marine heatwaves increasing sharply.

The vast majority of oceans regions are showing an increase in thermal energy. This energy drives bigger storms and more extreme weather, said Prof John Abraham at the University of St Thomas, in Minnesota, US, and one of the team behind the new analysis.: “When the world and the oceans heat up, it changes the way rain falls and evaporates. There’s a general rule of thumb that drier areas are going to become drier and wetter areas are going to become wetter, and rainfall will happen in bigger downbursts.”
Hotter oceans also expand and melt ice, causing sea levels to rise. The past 10 years also show the highest sea level measured in records dating back to 1900. 
Dan Smale, at the Marine Biological Association in the UK, and not part of the analysis team, said the methods used are state of the art and the data is the best available. “For me, the take-home message is that the heat content of the upper layers of the global ocean, particularly to 300 metre depth, is rapidly increasing, and will continue to increase as the oceans suck up more heat from the atmosphere,” he said.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/13/ocean-temperatures-hit-record-high-as-rate-of-heating-accelerates

Quote of the Day

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“Biofuels are not the magic solution to the climate emergency. The international dash to expand the use of bioenergy and biofuels has had significant impacts: displacing food production, harming biodiversity and seizing indigenous peoples’ land.” –  Mike Childs, Friends of the Earth’s head of policy.



The New Normal

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Global heating has led to an increase in the frequency and severity of fire weather – the conditions in which wildfires are likely to start – around the world, a review of 57 recent scientific papers has shown.
The bushfires ravaging Australia are a clear sign of what is to come around the world if temperatures are allowed to rise to dangerous levels, according to scientists.

“This is what you can expect to happen … at an average of 3C above pre-industrial levels,” said Richard Betts, professor of geography at Exeter University. “We are seeing a sign of what would be normal conditions in a 3C world. It tells us what the future world might look like. This really brings home what climate change means.”
Average temperature rises in Australia were about 1.4C above pre-industrial levels before this season’s fires, showing a more rapid rate of heating than the global average of 1.1C.
Scientists warn that beyond a rise of 2C, the impacts of climate breakdown are likely to become catastrophic and irreversible, yet current global commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions under the Paris agreement are estimated to put the world on track for 3C of heating.
“These are the impacts we are seeing at 1C [of heating] so these impacts will get more [severe] as long as we do not do what it takes to stabilise the world climate,” warned Corinne Le Quéré, professor of climate change science and policy at the University of East Anglia (UEA). “This is not a new normal – this is a transition to more impacts.”
Betts said the extreme bushfires in Australia showed what climate change would mean in reality, which many people found hard to imagine. The influence of human-induced climate change was clear in the Australian fires, he said, though more studies were likely to confirm this in the coming months.



The unintended consequences of climate change

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Rising temperatures caused by global heating are likely to increase deaths from road crashes, violence, suicides and drowning, according to new research, and will affect young people most.



Deaths from injuries have long been known to be seasonal and the new analysis uses data on nearly 6m deaths in the US to calculate the impacts of a 2C rise in temperature, the main target set by the world’s nations. The scientists calculated that this increase would result in about 2,100 more fatal injuries every year in the US alone.
People tend to go outside more and drink more alcohol on hotter days, while higher temperatures are known to increase rates of violence and suicide. The analysis did show a small reduction in the number of deaths related to falls among elderly people, probably because there is less ice in winter.



Previous research on the impact of the climate emergency on health has focused on chronic diseases such as heart failure and infectious diseases including malaria. But deaths from injuries currently make up about 10% of all fatalities around the world and the impact of global heating on this had been little studied until now.

“Our results show how much climate change can affect young people,” said Prof Majid Ezzati of Imperial College London. “We need to respond to this threat with better preparedness in terms of emergency services, social support and health warnings.”



Injury deaths were expected to increase in all nations as temperatures rose, he said, although local factors would influence the extent of the increase – for example, the standard of road safety or level of gun control. The world is currently on track for a 3-4C temperature rise, suggesting the increase in injury deaths could be even higher.



The most affected age group was 15-34. Road crashes accounted for 42% of the extra deaths and suicide 30%. Deaths from violence and from drowning both made up about 14% of the total. Drownings increase in hot weather as more people swim.



“There is a long history of work that shows injuries are fundamentally seasonal,” said Ezzati. “Some of this is obvious – people drown more in summer. We also know that warmth influences both our physiology and our behaviour.”
The reasons deaths from suicide and violent assault increase in hot weather are not fully understood. But the researchers said it was possible that people spending more time outdoors had a higher risk of confrontations.



People also tend to be more agitated in hot weather, and may drink more alcohol, which could lead to more assaults. Previous research indicates that high temperatures are associated with higher levels of mental distress, especially in young people.
Injuries already kill more that 5 million people a year, more than HIV/Aids, tuberculosis and malaria combined, and such deaths are rising. Policies to tackle the climate emergency should include measures to combat deaths from injuries, said Shanthi Ameratunga and Alistair Woodward of the University of Auckland, New Zealand, in an accompanying commentary on the research.



“The need to address this major public health problem is particularly urgent in low- and middle-income countries that experience over 80% of the global injury burden and are generally more vulnerable to the effects of extreme weather,” they said.



“The public health community tend to forget that injury deaths are actually a pretty big factor in overall mortality,” said Ezzati. “The emphasis on young people is an important aspect of the story, as they are educationally and economically active.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/13/climate-crisis-likely-to-increase-violent-deaths-of-young-people-report

Protests in Iran Begin Again

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Protests against the government has resumed in Iran with two days of demonstrations in the streets. Iranian security forces have reportedly fired shots in the air and used tear gas to disperse the crowds



  “Our enemy is right here,” one group of protesters chanted. Others were shouting  anti-government slogans such as, “Down with the dictator.” Some called for “Death to the liars”, in reference to the initial denials that the Ukrainian jet was shot down by Iran’s missile defences.



 Demonstrations against a hike in fuel prices turned political last year, sparking the bloodiest crackdown in the 40-year history of the Islamic Republic. About 1,500 people were killed during less than two weeks of unrest that started in mid-November.

The Dirty Air Death Toll

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More than 160,000 people could die over the next decade from strokes and heart attacks caused by air pollution,  the British Heart Foundation (BHF) has warned. 
That is the equivalent of more than 40 heart and circulatory disease deaths related to air pollution every day.
There are an estimated 11,000 deaths per year at the moment, but that this will rise as the population continues to age. 
Current EU limits – which the UK comfortably meets – for fine particulate matter (PM2.5) pollution are 25μg/m3 as an annual average. The WHO limits are tougher, at 10μg/m3 as an annual average. The BHF said PM2.5 can have a “seriously detrimental effect to heart health”, increasing the risk of heart attack and stroke and making existing health problems worse.  BHF wants the UK to adopt World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines on air pollution and meet them by 2030. In July 2019, the Department for Environment and Rural Affairs published a study showing that meeting WHO guidelines on air pollution was “technically feasible” in most areas of the UK by 2030.



Jacob West, executive director of healthcare innovation at the BHF, said: “Every day, millions of us across the country are inhaling toxic particles which enter our blood and get stuck in our organs, raising our risk of heart attacks and stroke. Make no mistake, our toxic air is a public health emergency, and we haven’t done enough to tackle this threat to our society. We need to ensure that stricter, health-based air quality guidelines are adopted into law to protect the health of the nation as a matter of urgency. Clean air legislation in the 1950s and 1960s, and more recently the smoking ban in public places, show that government action can improve the air we breathe.” 

NHS medical director Professor Stephen Powis said: “The climate emergency is also a health emergency, with thousands of avoidable deaths and hospital admissions every year linked to air pollution, which is why the NHS is playing its part by taking action to reduce carbon emissions, including cutting traffic by reducing the need for millions of hospital appointments through better services. With air pollution contributing to around 40,000 deaths a year and four in 10 children at school in high-pollution communities, it’s clear that tackling air pollution needs to be everyone’s urgent business.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/13/air-pollution-kill-160000-next-decade-report
















The Genocide of Calfornia’s Indigenous Peoples

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Scholars estimate very conservatively that at the time the Spaniards first arrived in California in 1769 to begin colonizing the land, there were at least 310,000 Indigenous people living here, and they were organized into as many as 500 or more different individual political units, individual groupings.



 California’s Indigenous population plunged perhaps from 150,000 people to just 30,000 survivors between 1846 and 1870 and certainly, diseases, dislocation and starvation caused many of these deaths, but what I found was this was not the near-annihilation of a people simply based upon the unavoidable result of two civilizations coming into contact. It was, in fact, genocide, sanctioned and facilitated by California officials.



California’s first legislature convened in 1850, one of the very first things that it did was to ban all Native Americans from voting, and then they banned Indigenous people with one-half of Native blood or more from giving evidence for or against whites in most civil and criminal cases, and they denied Indigenous people the right to serve as jurors. Then they banned Native Americans from serving as attorneys and justices, so when you think about what that means, in combination, these laws largely shut Indigenous people out of participation in (and protection by) the state legal system, so this amounted to a virtual grant of impunity to would-be Native-killers. That’s kind of the first stage, and that’s similar to some other genocides — that targeted victim groups are denied protection or participation in the legal system and are stripped of any political rights as well.



Then in that same year, 1850, the government legalized unfree Indigenous labor; this led to a truly genocidal slave system. It had multiple genocidal impacts. First of all, when slave raiders would arrive at a village, they would typically kill anyone who resisted, anyone who tried to run away, and many of the older men and women, and then people would be marched away to be sold, and anybody who tried to escape or resisted during that process also was usually killed. Once people got to the place where they were going to be sold, they were scattered, so it would be very difficult for the community to reproduce itself either biologically or socially, and finally, when people reached the places where they would work as unfree laborers they were often treated as disposable and worked to death.
Between 1850 and 1870, Los Angeles’s Indigenous population fell from 3,693 to just 219 survivors. Slavery played a huge part in this genocide, but there was also a state-sponsored killing machine, and it was built by state legislators, so what they did was to authorize no fewer than two dozen separate state militia expeditions against California Native people between 1850 and 1861 which killed at least 1,340. They paid for this by passing three different bills in the 1850s that raised over one-and-a-half million dollars — a huge amount of money at this time in history, both for past and future militia operations. It was important because this policy transcended the number of people that it killed directly, by demonstrating that the state government would not punish killers but instead actually reward them.



These militia expeditions and the policies that supported them helped inspire huge numbers of vigilantes to go out on their own killing sprees, and they took the lives of an absolute minimum 6,460 Indigenous people in California between 1846 and 1873. The U.S. Army and its auxiliaries also killed at least 1,680 Native Americans in California during these years, and that institution was of course directly funded by Congress, but Congress also reimbursed the state of California for most of the money that it spent on hunting Indigenous people through its militias.
FULL ARTICLE AT:

https://truthout.org/articles/californias-indigenous-history-is-a-story-of-genocide-and-resistance/

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