TRT World: “Pro-Israel AIPAC slammed for being ‘complicit in Gaza genocide’
While the NYT article accurately highlights AIPAC’s involvement in financing electoral campaigns against left-leaning Democrats perceived as not adequately supportive of Israel, it overlooks AIPAC’s broader antidemocratic effects. For example, AIPAC raises funds for many right-wing politicians, including individuals commonly described as insurrectionists. In the 2022 midterm elections, AIPAC endorsed 109 Republican candidates who voted in favor of overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election.
3. Typically, around 75 percent of American Jews vote for liberal or progressive candidates. This trend is exemplified by instances such as Barack Obama winning 78 percent of the Jewish vote in 2008 and Joe Biden receiving 77 percent in 2020.
Given the substantial achievements and freedoms that American Jews have enjoyed under the principles and opportunities afforded by liberalism, it’s unsurprising that the majority of them align with liberal values and consistently vote for Democratic candidates. Moreover, a consistent majority of American Jews express support for US pressure on both Israel and the Palestinians if it would help secure a peace deal.
Accordingly, the right-wing policies championed by Likud embody what American liberals reject: occupation, apartheid, and ethnic tribalism. However, while AIPAC’s alignment with these policies places it well outside the mainstream of American Jewish opinion, its electoral practices make it very challenging for politicians to support reasonable pressure on Israel to conform to international law.
In a 2022 Democratic primary, AIPAC allocated significant financial resources towards opposing (and ultimately defeating) the candidacy of progressive Jewish Congressman Andy Levin. Despite Levin’s robust advocacy for Israel, he aligned himself with the liberal lobby organization J Street, which espouses a pro-Israel, pro-peace stance. (Additionally, Levin supported progressive domestic policies such as the expansion of Medicare coverage.)
4. While Jewish donors as a whole tend to favor liberal Democratic candidates and causes, a significant portion of extremely affluent Jewish donors, such as billionaires Robert Kraft, Paul Singer and Bernie Marcus, typically endorse the AIPAC/Likud agenda. These megadonors wield considerable influence due to their substantial contributions, enabling them to lobby for specific foreign and domestic policies.
Consequently, AIPAC not only promotes Likud-aligned foreign policies but also generally supports Republican domestic policies. The latter tendency is to be expected, as the individuals who oversee and finance AIPAC tend to be affluent, and therefore favor policies that benefit their personal and business affairs.
5. A reflection of AIPAC’s priorities is evident in its failure to initially endorse one steadfast supporter of Israel in 2022: former Republican Representative Liz Cheney. As former President Trump vehemently criticized Cheney for her condemnation of his disgraceful words and actions concerning the 2020 election, AIPAC, consistent with other Republican entities, opted to align with Trump rather than stand alongside Cheney, a vocal proponent of democratic principles. However, after public criticism from Cheney and others, AIPAC reversed its embarrassing position.
In conclusion, AIPAC has played an important part in shifting Israel to the far right. By consistently promoting Likud’s policies, it has undermined moderate Israeli politicians. Imagine how different Israel might look if AIPAC — easily the biggest, wealthiest and most influential player in the Israel lobby — had advocated for limitations on illegal settlement expansion, thereby fostering a climate more conducive to peace and stability. Instead, Likudniks could rightly tell Israeli voters: We can maintain a harsh occupation, expand Jewish-only settlements, all while continuing to benefit from substantial American military, economic and diplomatic support.
Via Detailed Political Quizzes
Comments can be sent to Israel-Palestine-Quiz@live.com
]]>( Commondreams.org ) – Patients on Medicare Advantage spoke out against the privatized plans this week as part of a coordinated campaign to shed light on the program’s care denials, treatment delays, and overbilling—and to pressure U.S. President Joe Biden to rein in the insurance giants raking in huge profits from such abuses.
“These corporations do nothing to increase positive outcomes in medical care. So don’t fall for their bullshit,” Jenn Coffey, a retired EMT from New Hampshire, said during a livestream hosted by People’s Action on Wednesday night.
The stream featured testimony from several patients who have experienced the kinds of delays and denials for which Medicare Advantage is notorious.
Rick Timmins of Puget Sound Advocates for Retirement Action said it took five months and “multiple calls and emails” for his insurance company to approve his referral to a dermatologist for a suspicious lump on his earlobe that turned out to be malignant melanoma. The delay stemmed from a byzantine process known as prior authorization, whereby doctors are required to prove a treatment is necessary before an insurer will cover it.
By the time his referral to a specialist was approved, Timmins said, the previously tiny lump “had tripled in size” and was “quite painful.”
Coffey, for her part, ended up on a UnitedHealth Medicare Advantage plan after she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2013. She later developed two rare diseases—including complex regional pain syndrome—and required expensive treatments that her Medicare Advantage plan refused to cover.
“If Medicare Advantage has it their way, they’re going to deny me care and delay me care until I’m dead,” Coffey, a healthcare advocate, said in a video published Thursday by the advocacy group Be A Hero as part of a social media day of action against the for-profit plans.
Image by Steve Buissinne from Pixabay
“They only make money when they don’t have to spend it on you,” said Coffey.
Once enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan, patients often find it difficult to get out.
“They like to tell you: ‘Medicare Advantage numbers are so high, can’t you tell people love it?'” said Coffey, alluding to the fact that more than half of all eligible Medicare beneficiaries are now enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan. “No, we don’t. We’re stuck. It’s the Hotel California: You can check in, but you can’t get the hell out.”
Next month, the Biden administration is expected to finalize 2025 payment rates for Medicare Advantage, which is funded by the federal government. Medicare Advantage plans frequently overbill the government by making patients appear sicker than they are.
An analysis released last year by Physicians for a National Health Program estimated that Medicare Advantage plans are overcharging U.S. taxpayers by as much as $140 billion per year—an amount that could be used to completely eliminate Medicare Part B premiums or fully fund Medicare’s prescription drug program.
Patients and advocacy groups are calling on Biden to “not fork over more money for insurance companies like UnitedHealthcare,” as Coffey put it during Wednesday’s livestream.
A petition sponsored by Social Security Works urges Biden to “reclaim Medicare” from Medicare Advantage providers, which “have delayed and denied care to millions of Americans in order to turn a massive profit.”
“Medicare Advantage isn’t really Medicare, and it isn’t an advantage to the seniors and people with disabilities who rely on the program,” reads the petition, which has over 22,800 signatures as of this writing. “In the 25 years that it has existed, it’s clear that Medicare Advantage is riddled with the same problems as the rest of private insurance: Opaque bureaucracy and extraordinary fees. Seniors who enroll in these for-profit plans are being price-gouged by massive corporations.”
The Biden administration has proposed a 3.7% payment increase for Medicare Advantage in 2025—a change that insurers have portrayed as a cut. But Social Security Works noted in response to the industry’s complaints that “MA companies are not hurting for profits.”
“In 2022 alone, seven healthcare companies that comprise 70% of the MA market brought in over $1 trillion in total revenue and over $69 billion in profits, and spent $26.2 billion on stock buybacks,” the group observed. “These same companies claim that if the government doesn’t increase their already bloated payment rates, they will have no choice but to slash benefits for patients. This is false, and should be seen for what it is—MA plans holding patients hostage to extort the government for profits.”
In an op-ed for STAT last month, former insurance industry insider Wendell Potter—who is now an outspoken critic of private insurers—and John A. Burns School of Medicine professor professor Philip Verhoef wrote that “private plans have no business administering Medicare benefits.”
“Traditional Medicare is already more efficient than its private counterpart, in large part because the approval process is much simpler and there aren’t the same incentives to upcode,” the pair wrote. “Traditional Medicare spends far less of its funds on administrative overhead, and overall it spends less money per patient than Medicare Advantage while providing far superior access to doctors, hospitals, and treatments.”
“Medicare Advantage isn’t working for any group: the government, patients, taxpayers, and now even investors,” they added. “It’s time to turn to what we already know works. We need to support and strengthen traditional Medicare.”
Chansley has written two books and produced a dozen or so videos about his political ideas; in October, 2023 he filed paperwork to run for Congress in Arizona’s Eighth District. Though he didn’t follow through and mount an actual campaign, had he run and won he likely wouldn’t have been the most extreme member of the House. And Donald Trump, whom Chanley and his fellow Q travelers believed was God’s anointed, is very much a contender for the highest office in the land.
Chansley’s red-pill moment came, he says, when he discovered the writings of the arch conspiracy theorist Milton William Cooper, who was inspired in his turn by The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the notorious forgery that purported to expose an ancient Jewish plot to destroy the Christian nations. As Chansley’s thinking evolved, he went on to embrace eco-fascism, anti-vax activism, Christian nationalism, New Age religiosity, and Libertarianism—a stew that is sometimes called “conspirituality.” I’ve written hundreds of thousands of words about the deep roots of paranoid conspiracy theory in American history, but if you want to know what they come down to, his prayer sums it up succinctly. It’s about how “they” are taking what is rightfully “ours.”
Who “they” are has changed over the centuries, but what’s “ours” has always been the privileges that white Christian men believed was their birthright, but for too many, seemed to be slipping away. In colonial times, “they” were agents of the Pope. In the 1790s and the 1820s they were atheistic members of the Illuminati and the Masons. By the mid-19th century, the enemy was the Irish and other Catholic immigrants who were competing for jobs. The fight over slavery spawned a host of rival conspiracy theories. During the post-Civil War era, which saw the failure of Reconstruction and the rise of vast economic inequalities, the focus shifted to English and Jewish bankers and the demonetization of silver. A few decades later, Jewish anarchists and reds and integrationists were also in the crosshairs. QAnon, the first conspiracy theory to be born on social media, takes bits and pieces from its predecessors, mixes and matches them with medieval blood libels and Gnostic apocalypticism, and gamifies it all by inviting believers to participate in its world-building. Donald Trump, in their telling, is secretly battling the elite cabal of pedophile cannibals who control the Deep State.
Whether they make you laugh or cry, those theories wouldn’t be as viral and sticky as they are if their believers weren’t experiencing real stresses—and if the horrible things they accuse their enemies of doing, everything from cannibalism to pedophilia and mass murder, weren’t behaviors that really do exist. Of course, Jews as a category don’t ritually torture and murder Christian babies, but human babies of all varieties—including Jewish ones—have been horrifically abused. More than 13,000 children have been killed by a largely Jewish army in Gaza in just the last several months.
And is it altogether delusional to imagine, as QAnon believers do, that elites get away with child abuse? The Comet Ping Pong pizza parlor might not have had a sex dungeon, as the proponents of the Pizzagate theory claimed, but Jeffrey Epstein certainly kept a harem of underaged women and had a circle of socially and politically connected friends that included billionaires, geniuses, and royalty. Epstein’s story—everything from the mysterious sources of his wealth to his odd connection to Trump’s attorney general (William Barr’s father was the headmaster of the Dalton School when it hired him as a teacher in 1974), and his mysterious suicide in jail in 2019—could have leaped fully formed from the head of an antisemitic conspiracy theorist, like Athena from the head of Zeus, but it was all true.
Trump’s voters’ feelings of dispossession are not that far off the mark either, as a host of not-so-fun facts about economic inequality make clear. A 2017 study found that the richest three Americans (none of them Jewish) controlled more wealth than the bottom 50 percent of the nation. The total real wealth held by the richest families in the United States tripled between 1989 and 2019, according to a 2022 Congressional Budget Office report, while average earners’ gains were negligible. The ten richest people in the world, nine of them Americans, doubled their wealth during the pandemic.
Our great national myth—that America is a crucible of equality, tolerance, and boundless economic opportunity—has never been our national reality. Though right-wing populism sees the world through a lens that is distorted by irrational hatreds, it nonetheless lands on a painful truth: that unregulated capitalism is brutal and unfair. Right wing conspiracists displace the blame for its crimes onto outsiders; progressives recognize that for all its very real gestures towards equity, justice, and universal opportunity, our constitutional order was erected on a rickety scaffolding of race supremacism, religious bigotry, involuntary servitude, and land theft and compromised by them from the very beginning.
Trump’s white male voters’ intuition that the system is rigged against them is more-or-less correct, even if the privileges their fathers were born to were undeserved, and their prescriptions to rejigger the fix in their favor could not be more pernicious. The fact that so many economic left-behinds look to Trump as their champion may be perplexing, but no one can doubt that they need one.
Whether Trump wins or loses this fall, the challenge for the center, the left, and even fair-minded members of the moderate right, is to create a reality-based narrative that can compete with Trump’s and Chansley’s—and that has reparation rather than retribution at its core.
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( Middle East Monitor ) – The ongoing genocide in Gaza has starkly exposed Western governments’ unequal and wholly selective application of international law whilst also managing to draw much-needed attention to the dysfunctional role that foreign donors and their development agendas play in the region.
Democracy Now! Video: “Aid Workers Say Israel Must End Attack on Gaza, Open Aid Routes”
The recent decision to engage in tokenistic aid drops from the sky, despite the outcry from international humanitarian organisations arguing against their efficacy, is yet further evidence of a deeply problematic Western intervention strategy in Gaza. Many of these aid drops have ended up landing in the sea or, in fact, in parts of Israel, whilst others have failed to deploy their parachutes, killing Palestinian children on impact. This flawed and impotent intervention serves nothing more than a photo-op for the sponsors of this ongoing genocide, further dehumanising Palestinians living in Gaza.
]]>Why? Because real national security can neither be measured nor safeguarded solely by military power (especially the might of a military that hasn’t won a major war since 1945). Economic vitality matters so much more, as does the availability and affordability of health care, education, housing, and other crucial aspects of life unrelated to weaponry and war. Add to that the importance of a Congress responsive to the needs of the working poor, the hungry and the homeless among us. And don’t forget that the moral fabric of our nation should be based not on a military eternally ready to make war but on a determination to uphold international law and defend human rights. It’s high time for America to put aside its conveniently generic “rules-based order” anchored in imperial imperatives and face its real problems. A frank look in the mirror is what’s most needed here.
It should be simple really: national security is best advanced not by endlessly preparing for war, but by fostering peace. Yet, despite their all-too-loud disagreements, Washington’s politicians share a remarkably bipartisan consensus when it comes to genuflecting before and wildly overfunding the military-industrial complex. In truth, ever-rising military spending and yet more wars are a measure of how profoundly unhealthy our country actually is.
“The Scholarly Junior Senator from South Dakota”
Such insights are anything but new and, once upon a time, could even be heard in the halls of Congress. They were, in fact, being aired there within a month of my birth as, on August 2, 1963, Democratic Senator George McGovern of South Dakota — later a hero of mine — rose to address his fellow senators about “New Perspectives on American Security.”
Nine years later, he (and his vision of the military) would, of course, lose badly to Republican Richard Nixon in the 1972 presidential election. No matter that he had been the one who served in combat with distinction in World War II, piloting a B-24 bomber on 35 missions over enemy territory, even as Nixon, then a Navy officer, amassed a tidy sum playing poker. Somehow, McGovern, a decorated hero, became associated with “weakness” because he opposed this country’s disastrous Vietnam War, while Nixon manufactured a self-image as the staunchest Cold Warrior around, never missing a chance to pose as tough on communism (until, as president, he memorably visited Communist China, opening relations with that country).
But back to 1963, when McGovern gave that speech (which you can read in the online Senate Congressional Record, volume 109, pages 13,986-94). At that time, the government was already dedicating more than half of all federal discretionary spending to the Pentagon, roughly the same percentage as today. Yet was it spending all that money wisely? McGovern’s answer was a resounding no. Congress, he argued, could instantly cut 10% of the Pentagon budget without compromising national security one bit. Indeed, security would be enhanced by investing in this country instead of buying yet more overpriced weaponry. The senator and former bomber pilot was especially critical of the massive amounts then being spent on the U.S. nuclear arsenal and the absurd planetary “overkill” it represented vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, America’s main competitor in the nuclear arms race. As he put it then:
“What possible advantage [can be had] in appropriating additional billions of dollars to build more [nuclear] missiles and bombs when we already have excess capacity to destroy the potential enemy? How many times is it necessary to kill a man or kill a nation?”
How many, indeed? Think about that question as today’s Congress continues to ramp up spending, now estimated at nearly $2 trillion over the next 30 years, on — and yes, this really is the phrase — “modernizing” the country’s nuclear triad of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), as well as its ultra-expensive nuclear-missile-firing submarines and stealth bombers. And keep in mind that the U.S. already has an arsenal quite capable of wiping out life on several Earth-sized planets.
What, according to McGovern, was this country sacrificing in its boundless pursuit of mass death? In arguments that should resonate strongly today, he noted that America’s manufacturing base was losing vigor and vitality compared to those of countries like Germany and Japan, while the economy was weakening, thanks to trade imbalances and the exploding costs of that nuclear arms race. Mind you, back then, this country was still on the gold standard and unburdened by an almost inconceivable national debt, 60 years later, of more than $34 trillion, significant parts of it thanks to this country’s failed “war on terror” in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere across all too much of the planet.
McGovern did recognize that, given how the economy was (and still is) organized, meaningful cuts to military spending could hurt in the short term. So, he suggested that Congress create an Economic Conversion Commission to ensure a smoother transition from guns to butter. His goal was simple: to make the economy “less dependent upon arms spending.” Excess military spending, he noted, was “wasting” this country’s human resources, while “restricting” its political leadership in the world.
In short, that distinguished veteran of World War II, then serving as “the scholarly junior Senator from South Dakota” (in the words of Senator Jennings Randolph of West Virginia), was anything but proud of America’s “arsenal of democracy.” He wasn’t, in fact, a fan of arsenals at all. Rather, he wanted to foster a democracy worthy of the American people, while freeing us as much as possible from the presence of just such an arsenal.
To that end, he explained what he meant by defending democracy:
“When a major percentage of the public resources of our society is devoted to the accumulation of devastating weapons of war, the spirit of democracy suffers. When our laboratories and our universities and our scientists and our youth are caught up in war preparations, the spirit of [freedom] is hampered.
“America must, of course, maintain a fully adequate military defense. But we have a rich heritage and a glorious future that are too precious to risk in an arms race that goes beyond any reasonable criteria of need.
“We need to remind ourselves that we have sources of strength, of prestige, and international leadership based on other than nuclear bombs.”
Imagine if his call had been heeded. This country might today be a far less militaristic place.
Something was, in fact, afoot in the early 1960s in America. In 1962, despite the wishes of the Pentagon, President John F. Kennedy used diplomacy to get us out of the Cuban Missile Crisis with the Soviet Union and then, in June 1963, made a classic commencement address about peace at American University. Similarly, in support of his call for substantial reductions in military spending, McGovern cited the farewell address of President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1961 during which he introduced the now-classic phrase “military-industrial complex,” warning that “we must never let the weight of this combination [of the military with industry, abetted by Congress] endanger our liberties or democratic processes.”
Echoing Ike’s warning in what truly seems like another age, McGovern earned the approbation of his Senate peers. His vision of a better, more just, more humane America seemed, however briefly, to resonate. He wanted to spend money not on more nuclear bombs and missiles but on “more classrooms, laboratories, libraries, and capable teachers.” On better hospitals and expanded nursing-home care. On a cleaner environment, with rivers and streams saved from pollution related to excessive military production. And he hoped as well that, as military bases were closed, they would be converted to vocational schools or healthcare centers.
McGovern’s vision, in other words, was aspirational and inspirational. He saw a future America increasingly at peace with the world, eschewing arms races for investments in our own country and each other. It was a vision of the future that went down fast in the Vietnam War era to come, yet one that’s even more needed today.
Praise from Senate Peers
Here’s another way in which times have changed: McGovern’s vision won high praise from his Senate peers in the Democratic Party. Jennings Randolph of West Virginia agreed that “unsurpassed military power in combination with areas of grave economic weakness is not a manifestation of sound security policy.” Like McGovern, he called for a reinvestment in America, especially in underdeveloped rural areas like those in his home state. Joseph Clark, Jr., of Pennsylvania, also a World War II veteran, “thoroughly” agreed that the Pentagon budget “needs most careful scrutiny on the floor of the Senate, and that in former years it has not received that scrutiny.” Stephen Young of Ohio, who served in both World War I and World War II, looked ahead toward an age of peace, expressing hope that “perhaps the necessity for these stupendous appropriations [for weaponry] will not be as real in the future.”
Possibly the strongest response came from Frank Church of Idaho, who reminded his fellow senators of their duty to the Constitution. That sacred document, he noted, “vests in Congress the power to determine the size of our military budget, and I feel we have tended too much to rubberstamp the recommendations that come to us from the Pentagon, without making the kind of critical analysis that the Senator from South Dakota has attempted… We cannot any longer shirk this responsibility.” Church saluted McGovern as someone who “dared to look a sacred cow [the Pentagon budget] in the teeth.”
A final word came from Wayne Morse of Oregon. Very much a gadfly, Morse shifted the topic to U.S. foreign aid, noting that too much of that aid was military-related, constituting a “shocking waste” to the taxpayer even as it proved detrimental to the development of democracy abroad, most notably in Latin America. “We should be spending the money for bread, rather than for military aid,” he concluded.
Imagine that! Bread instead of bullets and bombs for the world. Of course, even then, it didn’t happen, but in the 60 years since then, the rhetoric of the Senate has certainly changed. A McGovern-style speech today would undoubtedly be booed down on both sides of the aisle. Consider, for example, consistent presidential and Congressional clamoring now for more military aid to Israel during a genocide in Gaza. So far, U.S. government actions are more consistent with letting starving children in Gaza eat lead instead of bread.
Peace Must Be Our Profession
What was true then remains true today. Real national defense should not be synonymous with massive spending on wars and weaponry. Quite the reverse: whenever possible, wars should be avoided; whenever possible, weapons should be beaten into plowshares, and those plowshares used to improve the health and well-being of people everywhere.
Oh, and that Biblical reference of mine (swords into plowshares) is intentional. It’s meant to highlight the ancient roots of the wisdom of avoiding war, of converting weapons into useful tools to sustain and provide for the rest of us.
Yet America’s leaders on both sides of the aisle have long lost the vision of George McGovern, of John F. Kennedy, of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Today’s president and today’s Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, boast of spending vast sums on weapons, not only to strengthen America’s imperial power but to defeat Russia and deter China, while bragging all the while of the “good” jobs they’re allegedly creating here in America in the process. (This country’s major weapons makers would agree with them, of course!)
McGovern had a telling rejoinder to such thinking. “Building weapons,” he noted in 1963, “is a seriously limited device for building the economy,” while an “excessive reliance on arms,” as well as overly “rigid diplomacy,” serve only to torpedo promising opportunities for peace.
Back then, it seemed to politicians like McGovern, as well as President Kennedy, that clearing a path toward peace was not only possible but imperative, especially considering the previous year’s near-cataclysmic Cuban Missile Crisis. Yet just a few months after McGovern’s inspiring address in the Senate, Kennedy had been assassinated and his calls for peace put on ice as a new president, Lyndon B. Johnson, succumbed to pressure by escalating U.S. military involvement in what mushroomed into the catastrophic Vietnam War.
In today’s climate of perpetual war, the dream of peace continues to wither. Still, despite worsening odds, it’s important that it must not be allowed to die. The high ground must be wrested away from our self-styled “warriors,” who aim to keep the factories of death churning, no matter the cost to humanity and the planet.
My fellow Americans, we need to wake up from the nightmare of forever war. This country’s wars aren’t simply being fought “over there” in faraway and, at least to us, seemingly forgettable places like Syria and Somalia. In some grim fashion, our wars are already very much being fought right here in this deeply over-armed country of ours.
George McGovern, a bomber pilot from World War II, knew the harsh face of war and fought in the Senate for a more peaceful future, one no longer haunted by debilitating arms races and the prospect of a doomsday version of overkill. Joining him in that fight was John F. Kennedy, who, in 1963, suggested that “this generation of Americans has already had enough, more than enough, of war, and hate, and oppression.”
If only.
Today’s generation of “leaders” seems not yet to have had their fill of war, hate, and oppression. That tragic fact — not China, not Russia, not any foreign power — is now the greatest threat to this country’s “national security.” And it’s a threat only aggravated by ever more colossal Pentagon budgets still being rubberstamped by a spinelessly complicit Congress.
Copyright 2024 William J. Astore
Via Tomdispatch.com
]]>The wind farm will generate 130 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 70,000 average-size homes. Long Island is usually spoken of as Nassau and Suffolk counties. Nassau County has roughly 450,000 households, so this one wind farm could power over 15% of them.
Hochul posted on on X,
“With the flip of a switch, utility-scale offshore wind power is officially being generated in the United States. An incredible moment for Long Island, New York, and our entire country.”
In a statement released after a visit to Stony Brook Southampton, the governor said, “When I broke ground on the South Fork project, I made a promise to build a cleaner, greener future for all New Yorkers. I’m keeping to that promise and South Fork Wind is now delivering clean energy to tens of thousands of homes and businesses on Long Island. With more projects in the pipeline, this is just the beginning of New York’s offshore wind future and I look forward to continued partnership with the Biden Administration and local leaders to build a clean and resilient energy grid.”
The average cost for residential electricity to PSEG Long Island customers is 22.24 cents per kilowatt hour. that is 9.93% higher than the 20.23 cents the typically paid by other state residents.
The East End Beacon notes that the the cost of the South Fork electricity is 16 cents per kilowatt hour for the first 90 MGW produced, and 8.6 cents/ kWh for an additional 40 megawatts. (Wind turbines are falling in price). So that is about 13.5 cents per kilowatt hour to begin with for the 130 megawatt capacity. What I’m trying to say is that this electricity generated by offshore wind is much less expensive that what Long Islanders are now paying. Even though a 2% per annum rate hike is built in over 20 years, the residents are getting a great deal here.
Governor Kathy Hochul Video, “Governor Hochul Announces Completion of South Fork Wind”
And the electricity is actually even cheaper since it is avoiding six million tons of deadly, planet-wrecking carbon dioxide each year. That is, if you figure in the cost of billion-dollar climate disasters per year caused by burning fossil fuels, Long Island residents aren’t paying 22 cents a kilowatt hour for their hydrocarbon-generated electricity, they are paying more like a dollar or two.
The project generated hundreds of union jobs, and Hochul is dedicated, according to The East Hampton Star, to standing “up a brand-new domestic supply chain.” She explained, “You know why? Because I don’t ever want to be vulnerable to geopolitical concerns or supply chains or ships that are jammed up in ports. I’m not predicting another Covid event, but my god, we learned some lessons. And we have to make sure we build here in America.”
The governor noted the opposition to the project among some residents worried about their beach and from fishermen. At 35 miles offshore, it is difficult to see how the project could affect beaches (the turbines can’t be seen), and there is no evidence that offshore windfarms interfere with fishing. As Hochul noted, it is global heating that is endangering beaches.
Offshore wind turbines benefit from the stronger and steadier winds that blow over the oceans as compared with onshore windmills.
The US is now playing catch-up in this sector. China has the most offshore wind farms, followed by Britain, Germany, Vietnam and Denmark. But China has 105 wind farms, and Britain has 39. No one is in China’s league here.
The International Trade Administration notes, “Offshore wind currently contributes about 13% to the UK electricity mix. The UK now possess around 12.7 GW of connected offshore wind energy across 44 wind farms totaling over 2,500 turbines. It installed over 2.3 GW of new installations in 2021 alone which made up 70% of total installations in Europe that year.”
So now we have 12 offshore wind turbines and 130 MW. The British did that much, apparently, on one day during their lunch break.
President Biden has set a goal of 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030, which observers are saying will be difficult for the US to reach. It is estimated, however, that offshore wind alone could provide all the electricity the US could ever want.
]]>( Cronkite News ) The current Western megadrought is unlike any other dry period the region has experienced over the past 500 years.
That’s according to a new study in which scientists looked at tree rings to track changing temperatures going back to 1553. Researchers found that human-fueled climate change is driving temperatures higher, which makes soil drier and droughts more frequent, intense and widespread.
King, an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, gathers a core sample from a mountain hemlock tree at Lassen National Volcanic Park in northern California. King is the lead author on a study of tree rings that puts the 21st century Western megadrought into historical context. (Photo by Grant Harley/University Of Idaho)
Karen King, an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and the study’s lead author, said it shows the role of temperature in shaping modern drought.
“We know that extreme heat has consequences,” King said. “We know that drought has consequences. So when they’re compounded together, we can expect that those vulnerabilities are only going to be magnified and the consequences are going to be more wide reaching.”
The study, which was published in the journal “Science Advances,” analyzed cross-sections of trees from a number of Western states, including Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming. The study’s authors concluded that the two-decade period from 2000 to 2020 was the warmest in half a millennium.
The consequences of dry conditions in the 21st century include significant strain on the Southwest’s most important water supply, the Colorado River, which supplies about 40 million people across seven states. It has been shrinking as a result of those higher temperatures, but demand for water has not.
Policymakers around the region have struggled to rein in demand for water, even as more than two decades of dry conditions have shrunk the nation’s two largest reservoirs – Lake Mead and Lake Powell, both on the Colorado River – to record lows.
Some scientists and water managers say the Southwest’s currently dry period extends beyond the normal definition of “drought,” arguing that it should be categorized instead as “aridification,” a permanent resetting of the baseline for how much water enters the region’s streams, rivers and reservoirs each year.
Eric Balken, executive director of Glen Canyon Institute, walks along a sandbar that had long been submerged under Lake Powell. But as the reservoir drops to record lows, as a result of more than 20 years of drought in the region, areas that were underwater for decades have begun to emerge. (Photo by Alex Hager/KUNC)
Experts say warm temperatures are, essentially, the first domino in a chain of changing conditions that impact water supply.
Since 2000, average temperatures in the upper Colorado River basin have been more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than in the previous century. That upper Colorado is the region where the river begins, mostly as snow in high-altitude portions of Colorado and Wyoming.
The new tree-ring study shows how high temperatures have made the region’s soil drier. Dry soil means less water in streams and rivers.
When rain falls or snow melts, it seeps into the dirt before entering streams and rivers. When that dirt is saturated, it can’t absorb additional water, and snowmelt flows directly into nearby waterways. But when the soil is dry, as it is now, it acts like a sponge, soaking up water before it has a chance to reach the places where humans collect it.
The data in this new tree-ring study, as well as findings from other similar research, spell trouble for decision-makers trying to share a shrinking resource across a region with growing populations and a multibillion-dollar agricultural economy.
“While the future of precipitation in the region remains uncertain, projections of increasing temperatures pose substantial risk for intensifying drought conditions and increasing water insecurity for these economically important, population-dense, and historically active megadrought regions,” the study’s authors wrote.
This story is part of ongoing coverage of the Colorado River, produced by KUNC in Colorado and supported by the Walton Family Foundation. KUNC is solely responsible for its editorial coverage.
-This story is part of ongoing coverage of the Colorado River, produced by KUNC and supported by the Walton Family Foundation.
Via Cronkite News
]]>( Human Rights Watch ) – (New York, March 15, 2024) – United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is expected to alert the Security Council in the coming days that Sudan has entered a downward spiral of extreme conflict-induced hunger, Human Rights Watch said today. The council should immediately take action, including by adopting targeted sanctions against individuals responsible for obstructing aid access in Darfur.
“The Security Council will be formally put on notice that the conflict in Sudan risks spurring the world’s largest hunger crisis,” said Akshaya Kumar, crisis advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. “The Council just broke months of silence by adopting a resolution on Sudan last week, and should build on that momentum by imposing consequences on those responsible for preventing aid from getting to people who need it.”
The alert will be sent to the Council as a so called “white note,” drafted by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in accordance with its mandate under Security Council resolution 2417 to ring the alarm about “the risk of conflict-induced famine and wide-spread food insecurity.” OCHA’s alert follows warnings by international aid experts, Sudanese civil society leaders, and Sudanese emergency responders that people across Sudan are dying of hunger. It also comes on the heels of Sudan’s Armed Forces (SAF) brazenly escalating its efforts to restrict the movement of humanitarian aid.
In a 2023 presidential statement, the Security Council reiterated its “strong intention to give its full attention” to information provided by the secretary-general when it is alerted to situations involving conflict induced food insecurity. The council should honor that commitment and convene an open meeting to discuss OCHA’s findings. That could pave the way for decisive action, including sanctions on individuals responsible for obstructing aid delivery, Human Rights Watch said.
Since conflict broke out between Sudan’s Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in April 2023, both warring parties have restricted aid delivery, access, and distribution. Ninety percent of people in Sudan facing emergency levels of hunger are in areas that are “largely inaccessible” to the World Food Programme. “Communities (in Sudan) are on the brink of famine because we are prevented from reaching many of the children, women and families in need,” according to UNICEF executive director, Catherine Russell.
In February, Sudan’s military leader, Lt. Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, said the authorities would no longer allow aid to reach areas under RSF control. Aid organizations have repeatedly said that the SAF is obstructing their delivery of aid to RSF-controlled areas. Aid groups face a maze of bureaucratic impediments, including delays, arbitrary restrictions on movement, harassment, and outright bans on some supplies.
On March 4, Sudan’s foreign affairs minister added to the restrictions, announcing that the government opposed cross-border aid delivery from Chad to areas under RSF control. On March 6, Sudanese authorities informed the UN that they would allow limited cross-border movement exclusively through specific crossings under the control of forces allied to the military. Sudanese authorities have also blocked cross-line aid movement to RSF-controlled territory, which has put Khartoum under a de facto aid blockade since November 2023 at least, aid groups told Human Rights Watch.
The UN welcomed the Sudanese authorities’ announcement identifying aid crossings. The medical charity, Doctors Without Borders, however, raised concerns that this would leave “vast areas in Darfur, Kordofan, Khartoum and Jazeera states still inaccessible.”
Aid operations have also been choked by limited funding. As of the end of February, the UN’s appeal was 5 percent funded. That gap is exacerbated by widespread looting of warehouses, including a December 2023 incident in which Rapid Support Forces fighters looted stocks in a World Food Programme warehouse in Wad Madani that would have been used to feed 1.5 million hungry people and attacked an MSF compound, forcing the organization to evacuate its team. There have been widespread attacks on aid workers, including the International Committee of the Red Cross, including killings, injuries and detentions.
The Security Council’s latest resolution 2724 on Sudan calls “on all parties to ensure the removal of any obstructions to the delivery of aid and to enable full, rapid, safe, and unhindered humanitarian access, including cross-border and cross-line, and to comply with their obligations under international humanitarian law.” The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has said that “the apparently deliberate denial of safe and unimpeded access for humanitarian agencies within Sudan itself constitutes a serious violation of international law, and may amount to a war crime.”
The Security Council’s Sudan Sanctions Committee met in February, announcing that it “wishes to remind the parties that those who commit violations of international humanitarian law and other atrocities may be subject to targeted sanctions measures in accordance with paragraph 3 (c) of resolution 1591 (2005).”
The World Food Programme and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization found in a recent report that food security in Sudan had significantly deteriorated even faster than anticipated, and that there is a risk of “catastrophic conditions” hitting the states of West and Central Darfur “during the lean season in early 2024,” roughly from April to July.
The Famine Early Warning Systems Network, a US government-funded group that monitors food insecurity, said in February that the “worst-affected populations … in Omdurman (in Khartoum state) and El Geneina (in West Darfur state)” were expected to soon see “Catastrophe (IPC Phase 5) outcomes.” Under the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) system, a globally recognized scale used to classify food insecurity and malnutrition, catastrophic conditions are the fifth and worst phase. The program determines that famine is occurring when over 20 percent of an area’s population are facing extreme food gaps, and children’s acute malnutrition and mortality exceed emergency rates.
According to new figures released by the Nutrition Cluster in Sudan, nearly 230,000 children, pregnant women, and new mothers could die in the coming months due to hunger.
In Darfur, civil society and local leaders have repeatedly sounded the alarm about hunger among displaced people living in camps in areas under RSF control. Leaders shared that their communities have resorted to eating ants, tree bark, and animal feed. People currently in West Darfur include survivors of waves of attacks by the RSF and their allied militias, which Human Rights Watch has described as “having all the hallmarks of an organized campaign of atrocities against Massalit civilians.” A local government official reported in early March that 22 children had died of hunger in Murnei, a town in West Darfur that was the site of horrific RSF attacks in June 2023.
In January, Doctors Without Borders raised the alarm on malnutrition in Zamzam camp in North Darfur, warning that “an estimated one child is dying every two hours.” A camp leader from Kalma camp in Nyala (South Darfur) told Human Rights Watch that 500 to 600 children and at least 80 older people have died in the camp since the start of the conflict because of what he believed was the result of lack of food and medical supplies. “People [are] dying every day,” he said. He said that the RSF has also been limiting the amount of food supplies entering the camp since it took control of the city in October.
In Khartoum, a communications blackout has forced hundreds of communal kitchens run by Sudanese emergency response rooms, a grassroots mutual aid network, to pause operations, leaving many people without food, and reports of people dying alone in their homes of hunger. “The shutdown has a significant impact on food access and distribution,” a member of one of the emergency response rooms in Khartoum told Human Rights Watch in mid-February, “it is happening while we are facing growing food insecurity and risk of famine in the capital.”
This is the first time Sudan has been spotlighted in this kind of an alert from the secretary-general to the Security Council. Guyana, Switzerland, the US, and other Security Council members have pledged to make combating food insecurity a priority for the UN’s most powerful body.
“Council members should show leadership by holding open discussions to develop a plan that averts the risk of mass starvation in Sudan and imposing targeted sanctions on the individuals responsible for obstructing aid,” Kumar said. “The people of Sudan need more than words. They need food.”
]]>Schumer said in his speech, “Palestinian civilians do not deserve to suffer for the acts of Hamas. The US has an obligation to do better to get aid to the people who need it.” Few other US political leaders have dared to express that sentiment so boldly, but it is remarkable to see Schumer saying things on this issue that are so close to the stance of his fellow Senator Bernie Sanders. Schumer comes from a family of Holocaust survivors, and his name in Hebrew means “guardians of the faith.” Schumer prefaced his comments saying, “Oct. 7 was pure & pre-meditated evil. The widespread antisemitic expressions by many Americans have awakened the deepest fears of the Jewish people that our annihilation remains a possibility.”
With that family background and context, Schumer called out Israel as no other high-ranking US politician with such ranking ever has, other than President Barack Obama. President Joe Biden has also expressed growing objections and public differences with Bibi, as have other Members of Congress, many of them Jewish.
Bibi and his Gaza campaign are endangering Biden’s chances of re-election, as many Americans are horrified by images and stories in Gaza, and blame Biden for supporting the Israeli war machine. The traditional American blank check for Israeli military operations has become a huge political liability. Never has American largesse been so badly abused by an ally or client state. Americans have reacted forcefully and viscerally to Israel’s actions, which has given life to a new form of antisemitism.
American Democratic leaders are doing what Israelis are afraid to do, and demand the end to Bibi’s leadership. He’s used the PM position to shield himself from criminal charges, and as with Donald Trump, intends to “fix” the Courts and legislature to absolve himself of all past and future crimes.
Despite widespread condemnation of Bibi in Israel, many Israelis are reluctant to address the obvious need to depose him. When I’ve quizzed some deeply religious Israeli friends about the viability of Bibi’s continued leadership the answer is, “That’s not for me to decide.” Those wedded to the myth of Biblical prophecy sometimes shut themselves off from political realities, and are reluctant to think beyond their comfort zone. Schumer and Biden have challenged that.
The American blank check for Israel is about to have a finite dollar amount and expiration date. Ha’aretz columnist Yossi Vetter noted that with the airlift to Gaza, “The U.S. has effectively broken the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip, which has been in place since June 2007. Another achievement by the fully right-wing government.” Biden has promised that no American soldiers would serve in Gaza, however some “contractors” must be employed to build the pier and makeshift port. What’s notable is the US building new infrastructure in Gaza to provide aid. With that, the US is expressing its disapproval of Israel by tacitly violating its sovereignty. But Israel is cooperating by providing security in the perimeter of the operation.
Bibi has been taunting Democrats and the US since before his speech to Congress, while he did not visit the Obama White House in 2015, and was not invited. But he colluded with House Speaker John Boehner and Republicans to show up the President.
The US move to break the blockade is a challenge to Israel on the order of President Dwight Eisenhower’s leadership during the 1956 Suez crisis. . Ike was facing re-election just weeks away when Israel invaded the Suez with support from the UK and France. An inconvenient coincidence was the Soviet invasion of Hungary three days before. General Ike essentially said in salty terms, “If you don’t pull back from the Suez, I can’t stand up to Khrushchev in Hungary.” That was the point in history when US supplanted the UK and France as Israel’s primary sponsors.
Biden and Schumer are sending strong leadership messages, as no US president has since then. Hopefully, this will address and counter the popularity of “uncommitted” votes in some recent Democratic primaries. That illustrates how the Democrats’ unconditional defense of Israel’s actions in Gaza has hurt them politically. Many Americans across age and ethnic spectrums are horrified by Israel’s war crimes in Gaza, and expressed themselves in the primaries by casting protest votes, confident Biden would prevail.
However, anyone even thinking about a protest vote to express themselves in the November election must remember the alternative: Donald Trump could become president again, and inflict way more domestic and global damage than Biden could possibly do. Trump would let Israel “do whatever the hell they want,” just as he said he would encourage Putin’s new USSR in Ukraine. Also important is that a vote for Biden or Trump is a vote for their teams, ideas, policies and goals; not the men themselves. So they’re both old. Biden is manageable, and tended by lucid advisers. Trump is not.
Biden is still Israel’s patron, but is attempting to restrain it from its worst instincts under Bibi. Trump fueled and empowered Bibi’s worst instincts during his presidency. Schumer gets credit for his candor and cojones for stating the obvious: It’s time for Bibi to go. It may be too late for a two-state solution in Israel-Palestine, but that Schumer seems genuinely to want one at this juncture is significant. It matters that Schumer is a descendant of Holocaust survivors, an observant Jew, a Zionist and highest ranking Jewish-American elected official in history.
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