news

https://archive.ph/jhpe8

A carbon offset deal could see Liberia concede 10 percent of its territory to a private Emirati company, extinguishing customary land rights and giving the United Arab Emirates (UAE) pollution rights equivalent to the forest’s carbon sequestration.

The deal would give the company blanket control over one million hectares of forest. The company would then “harvest” carbon credits, supposedly from restoring and protecting the land, which they would then sell onto major polluters to offset their emissions.

If signed, the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) would violate a number of Liberian laws, including the 2019 land rights law, a legislation that asserts communities’ right to “customary land”.

It would also concede near total control of one of the most densely forested territories in Africa to the Dubai-based firm Blue Carbon for a period of 30 years.

Additionally, the deal would prevent Liberia from using the land to meet its own international climate targets.

BBC delivering macabe news with a Soot Smuged Doily Dress

I'm sorry. That dress is hideous.

Fr i hope the lost souls haunt the fuck out of for fucking over their nation.

Archived link:

https://archive.is/20230914181025/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/09/14/british-soldiers-ukraine-dead-missing-rivals-foreign-legion/

Don't these tankies know that Bidenomics is working for them? Shaking my damned head, we need President Obama to break this strike, this is childish.

Civil conflict you say? oh golly gee, how did that happen? What could have possibly made this country so unstable?

https://nypost.com/2023/09/13/sean-penn-on-will-smiths-oscars-slap-why-did-i-go-to-f-ing-jail-for-what-you-just-did/?utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=nypost&utm_medium=social

Rightwing thinktanks in Britain advocate more drilling in the North Sea for oil and gas. They back the nuclear industry, knowing that the chances of getting a new power station up and running in less than 15 years are unlikely, so preserving the market for fossil fuels longer. And they claim that wind and solar, which can be built quickly, are expensive when all the evidence is that they are the cheapest form of energy.

What a load of bullshit, they just want to exploit the gullibility of their donors until they entire planet is burnt to ashes.

https://www.npr.org/2023/09/14/1199477637/kim-davis-same-sex-marriage-license-ordered-to-pay-damages

Lmao get fucked hog

Thousands of members of the United Automobile Workers union went on strike Friday at three plants in three Midwestern states in what was the first strike simultaneously affecting all three Detroit automakers.

The union and the companies — General Motors, Ford Motor and Stellantis, the parent of Chrysler — remained deadlocked in negotiations over a new collective bargaining agreement when the current contract expired at 11:59 p.m. on Thursday.

As the deadline neared, workers started to fan out at the targeted plants — in Michigan, Missouri and Ohio — to protest.

At the outset, the strike will idle one plant owned by each automaker, and could force the automakers to halt production at other locations, shaking local economies in factory towns across the Midwest.

“We are using a new strategy,” the union’s president, Shawn Fain, said in a video streamed via Facebook on Thursday night. “We are calling on select locals to stand up and go out on strike.”

In the 88 years since it was founded, the union has called strikes aimed at a single automaker, and a handful have halted production for several weeks. G.M. plants were idle for 40 days in 2019 before the company and the union agreed on a new contract.

The plants designated for walkouts on Friday represent only a small portion of all the unionized factories of G.M., Ford and Stellantis and of those companies’ 150,000 U.A.W. members.

This limited strike, however, could hamper the automakers because the sites produce some of their most profitable trucks, such as the Ford Bronco sport utility vehicle and the Chevrolet Colorado pickup. And Mr. Fain has made it clear that the walkout could grow wider if contract accords remain elusive.

“This is certainly a different approach, and Fain is talking tough and has got tough proposals,” said Dennis Devaney, a former member of the National Labor Relations Board who is a labor lawyer in Detroit.

The affected plants include a G.M. plant in Wentzville, Mo., that makes the GMC Canyon as well as the Colorado, and a Stellantis complex in Toledo, Ohio, that makes the Jeep Gladiator and Wrangler. At Ford’s Michigan Assembly plant in Wayne, which makes the Bronco alongside the Ranger pickup, only workers from the assembly area and paint shop will walk out, Mr. Fain said.

The G.M. plant employs 3,600 hourly workers, according to the union, and the Stellantis plant 5,800. The union said about 3,300 workers at Ford’s Michigan Assembly Plant would be affected.

The union has demanded a 40 percent wage increase over the next four years, pointing out that the compensation packages for the chief executives of the three companies have increased about that much, on average, over the last four years.

Mr. Fain, who took office as union president this year, has also called for cost-of-living adjustments that nudge wages higher in response to inflation, shorter workweeks, improvements to retiree pensions and health care, and job security measures like the ability to strike at plants that are designated for closing. In addition, he wants changes to a wage scale that starts new hires at about $17 an hour and requires eight years for them to climb up to the top U.A.W. wage of $32 hour.

So far, the manufacturers have met Mr. Fain about halfway on wages but have opposed almost all of the other demands.

On Thursday, G.M. said its latest offer included a 20 percent wage increase over the life of the new contract, including a 10 percent raise in the first year, and cost-of-living adjustments, but only for more senior workers. G.M. also said it would allow new hires to reach the top wage after four years on the job.

“We put forward a compelling and unprecedented offer,” G.M.’s chief executive, Mary T. Barra, said in a video posted to a company website Thursday night. “It addresses what you’ve told us matters most: wage growth, job security and long-term stability.”

She also suggested that meeting most or all of the union’s demands could hurt the company’s prospects as it invested tens of billions of dollars in its transition to electric vehicles.

“We are at a crossroads on our path to transform the company,” she said. “Make no mistake: If we don’t continue to invest, we will lose ground, and it will happen fast. Nobody wins in a strike.”

Ford and Stellantis also made new proposals to the union in the 48 hours before the deadline but did not release details.

The Biden administration said Thursday that President Biden had spoken with Mr. Fain and with leaders of the auto companies about the status of the negotiations. A senior White House official said that Mr. Biden was not pressing the companies or the union on the particulars, but that he was encouraging all parties to stay at the table and to make sure that workers got a fair contract.

The union’s demands for significantly higher pay and new benefits are a sharp departure from the past 20 years, when the automakers were ailing and the U.A.W. was forced to accept major concessions to help the companies survive.

But more recently, G.M., Ford and Stellantis have been reporting near-record earnings. In the first half of this year, Ford made $3.7 billion and G.M. made $5 billion. Stellantis reported profits of 11 billion euros (about $11.9 billion).

Mr. Fain, who came up as an electrician at Chrysler and worked in the union administration before he was elected president, campaigned by promising to take a more aggressive and confrontational approach to this year’s contract negotiations.

In speeches to union members, he has frequently highlighted the pay of the automakers’ chief executives. Last year, Ms. Barra took home $29 million. Jim Farley of Ford made $21 million, while Stellantis’s chief, Carlos Tavares, was given a package worth about $25 million.

An extended strike would crimp the availability of new vehicles and drive up prices. A long stoppage would also ripple through the automakers’ supply chain and could hurt other businesses as workers live off $500 per week in strike pay from the union.

The auto industry is still dealing with the lingering effects of the pandemic. Production halted after the coronavirus hit, sharply reducing the supply of vehicles, and domestic car inventories are about a quarter of the stock at the end of 2019.

Sept 14 (Reuters) - A first-ever simultaneous strike at the Detroit Three carmakers by the United Auto Workers grew all but certain on Thursday with little progress reported in talks hours before a contract deadline expires.

The union - which represents 146,000 U.S. auto workers - is asking for 40% pay raises through September 2027 and major improvements in benefits as part of what it calls "audacious" demands.

The UAW has outlined plans for a series of strikes targeting individual, undisclosed U.S. auto plants if agreements are not reached by 11:59 pm ET Thursday, rather than a full walkout. The union plans to disclose the initial plants during a 10 p.m. ET event.

Feeling very right now.

I am unfortunately not working in a union shop, however, there's a good chance that this could have enough ripple effects that we couldn't even actually sell/ship product to anybody even if we wanted to. Management seems very nervous about this strike going through, and I'm positively giddy.

Caesars Entertainment Inc. paid tens of millions of dollars to hackers who broke into the company's systems in recent weeks and threatened to release the company's data...

These are dropped in civilian areas and look like random clutter and are difficult to spot.

https://twitter.com/EvaKBartlett/status/1553972823399583745?t=fU4mpeOU5tv36LeD11wl9w&s=19

Students wanted to voice their concerns to staff and faculty about the discriminatory nature of study abroad trips to Israel. Instead, they say they were racially profiled and silenced. (SJP UIC)

Students at the University of Illinois Chicago have filed a federal complaint against the school, alleging that staff discriminated against them because of their ethnicity and national origin.

The seven students, six Palestinian Americans and one Jewish American, attempted to join an informational session over the videoconferencing platform Zoom in January about a study abroad summer program in Israel.

During and after the video call, students say they were racially profiled, harassed and silenced by university staff and, later, by campus police.

In the Zoom call, UIC staff denied the students with Arab and Muslim names admission to the session while other students who had Western-sounding names were able to participate.

It was only after several of the Palestinian students decided to change their screen names to non-Arab pseudonyms that the university staff allowed them entry into the session.

The students say that this showed the staff’s intent to bar Arab and Muslim students from participating and asking critical questions.

The Jewish student, who has a name of European origin, was allowed entry immediately, according to the complaint, and witnessed the blatant discrimination against her friends.

Civil rights group Palestine Legal is representing the students in the complaint, which was filed this week with the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.

The students say that the public university has violated its non-discrimination obligations under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Title VI protects individuals from being “excluded from participation in, be[ing] denied the benefits of, or be[ing] subjected to discrimination” on the basis of race, color or national origin.

Before the informational session took place, the university’s study abroad program office posted an advertisement for the event on Instagram, inviting students to participate.

The Israel trip was marketed as a chance “to learn more about how you can immerse yourself in new cultures, music, dance and food while enriching your UIC academic experience.”

The students filing the complaint, who are members of Students for Justice in Palestine, replied to the post “by pointing out Israel’s well-documented pattern of discriminating against Palestinians, including Palestinian Americans, and criticized the university’s decision to host a trip in the apartheid state. UIC subsequently removed its post from view,” the complaint states.

Such study abroad programs are often part of an Israeli propaganda effort “designed to give international students a ‘positive experience’ of Israel, whitewashing its occupation and denial of Palestinian rights,” according to PACBI, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.

Critics have repeatedly pointed out that they also violate equal rights clauses because Israel regularly denies entry to persons on the basis of their Palestinian, Arab, Middle Eastern or Muslim ancestry.

Students wanted to be able to voice their concerns to staff and faculty about the discriminatory nature of these types of trips.

read more: https://electronicintifada.net/content/univ-illinois-conspired-against-palestinians-federal-complaint-alleges/38496