The antidote is American, the virus is Canadian ... sorry, I mean Chinese

 

DARPA Awards Moderna up to $56 Million to Enable Small-Scale, Rapid Mobile Manufacturing of Nucleic Acid Vaccines and Therapeutics

October 8, 2020 at 6:50 AM EDT

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Award part of DARPA’s Nucleic Acids On-Demand World-Wide (NOW) initiative to develop a medical countermeasure manufacturing platform

Conference call to be held on Thursday, October 8 at 8:00 a.m. ET

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 8, 2020-- Moderna, Inc., (Nasdaq: MRNA) a biotechnology company pioneering messenger RNA (mRNA) therapeutics and vaccines to create a new generation of transformative medicines for patients, today announced an agreement for a commitment of up to $56 million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to fund development of a mobile manufacturing protype leveraging Moderna’s existing manufacturing technology that is capable of rapidly producing vaccines and therapeutics. The agreement builds on a previous assistance grant with DARPA established in 2013.

The award is part of DARPA’s Nucleic Acids On Demand World-Wide (NOW) initiative to develop a mobile, end-to-end automated manufacturing platform to provide in-field, just-in-time manufacturing of Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) quality nucleic acid (including mRNA) vaccines and therapeutics intended to deliver near-instantaneous protections and treatments to both military personnel and local populations. The design envisions a manufacturing unit capable of producing hundreds of doses of medicines in a matter of days in a 6 foot x 6 foot x 6 foot (1.8m x 1.8m x 1.8m) container in remote locations around the world.

“We are pleased to continue our collaboration with DARPA with a new award and we look forward to building on our experience rapidly designing and manufacturing vaccines as demonstrated with mRNA-1273, our COVID-19 vaccine currently in a Phase 3 study, and mRNA-4157, our personalized cancer vaccine currently in a Phase 2 study,” said Stéphane Bancel, Chief Executive Officer of Moderna. “This new award will allow us to explore the reach of our technology to potentially enable fast, in-field, automated manufacturing of vaccines and therapeutics for both military personnel and civilians around the world in a container that can be deployed rapidly to make customized vaccines or therapeutics. The ability to make medicines in a mobile unit could have an important impact on the ability to respond to future viral challenges. Moderna is committed to being part of the solution in preventing future pandemics.”

DARPA’s financial support of the NOW program is part the Agency’s commitment to creating innovative biotechnological approaches to rapidly detect, characterize and mitigate threats from newly emerging or engineered pathogens.

Conference Call and Webcast Information

Moderna will host a live conference call and webcast at 8:00 a.m. ET on Thursday, October 8, 2020. To access the live conference call, please dial 866-922-5184 (domestic) or 409-937-8950 (international) and refer to conference ID 5596196. A webcast of the call will also be available under “Events and Presentations” in the Investors section of the Moderna website at investors.modernatx.com. The archived webcast will be available on Moderna’s website approximately two hours after the conference call.

About Moderna

Moderna is advancing messenger RNA (mRNA) science to create a new class of transformative medicines for patients. mRNA medicines are designed to direct the body’s cells to produce intracellular, membrane or secreted proteins that can have a therapeutic or preventive benefit and have the potential to address a broad spectrum of diseases. Moderna’s platform builds on continuous advances in basic and applied mRNA science, delivery technology and manufacturing, providing the Company the capability to pursue in parallel a robust pipeline of new development candidates. Moderna is developing therapeutics and vaccines for infectious diseases, immuno-oncology, rare diseases, cardiovascular diseases, and autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, independently and with strategic collaborators.

Headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., Moderna currently has strategic alliances for development programs with AstraZeneca PLC and Merck & Co., Inc., as well as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), an agency of the U.S. Department of Defense; the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), a division of the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI). Moderna has been named a top biopharmaceutical employer by Science for the past five years. To learn more, visit www.modernatx.com.

Forward Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, as amended, including statements regarding the Company’s collaboration with DARPA to develop a miniaturized manufacturing protype capable of rapidly producing vaccines and therapeutics. In some cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as “will,” “may,” “should,” “could”, “expects,” “intends,” “plans,” “aims,” “anticipates,” “believes,” “estimates,” “predicts,” “potential,” “continue,” or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology, although not all forward-looking statements contain these words. The forward-looking statements in this press release are neither promises nor guarantees, and you should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements because they involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors, many of which are beyond Moderna’s control and which could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. These risks, uncertainties, and other factors include, among others, the fact that there has never been a commercial product utilizing mRNA technology approved for use, and those other risks and uncertainties described under the heading “Risk Factors” in Moderna’s most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and in subsequent filings made by Moderna with the SEC, which are available on the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov. Except as required by law, Moderna disclaims any intention or responsibility for updating or revising any forward-looking statements contained in this press release in the event of new information, future developments or otherwise. These forward-looking statements are based on Moderna’s current expectations and speak only as of the date hereof.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201008005279/en/

Moderna

Media:
Colleen Hussey
Director, Corporate Communications
617-335-1374
Colleen.Hussey@modernatx.com

Investors:
Lavina Talukdar
Head of Investor Relations
617-209-5834
Lavina.Talukdar@modernatx.com

Source: Moderna, Inc.

 

I conflitti ambientali e il bluff dell’economia circolare

ORIGINAL LANGUAGES, 16 Aug 2021

Elena Camino | Centro Studi Sereno Regis – TRANSCEND Media Service

Mappa dei conflitti ambientali

Un atlante geografico ‘speciale’

9 Agosto 2021 – 3.492 pallini sulla carta, indicatori di altrettanti conflitti ambientali segnalati e descritti dall’Environmental Justice Atlas (EJ Atlas),  uno straordinario archivio, tuttora ‘in progress’, che dagli anni ’70 del Novecento segnala al pubblico storie di comunità che in tutto il mondo sono impegnate nella difesa dei loro territori – terra, acqua, foreste, aree di pesca, fonti di  vita e di sussistenza – contro attività estrattive e contro azioni che provocano gravi impatti ambientali e sociali: miniere, dighe, coltivazioni intensive, inceneritori, estrazioni di combustibili fossili, aeroporti, ecc.

L’EJ Atlas si propone di rendere visibili le ragioni di queste comunità e di descrivere le lotte intraprese per ottenere giustizia ambientale. Intende anche servire come spazio virtuale per mettere in contatto comunità che sono impegnate in situazioni simili, per fornire a ricercatori e attivisti informazioni utili per la ricerca e l’azione, per aumentare la consapevolezza dei consumatori che – involontariamente o per leggerezza – contribuiscono ad alimentare gli atteggiamenti predatori delle grandi corporation.

Le mappe collaborative dell’EJ Atlas costituiscono una sfida alla cartografia dominante, che spesso propone l’ambiente come uno spazio punteggiato da risorse strategiche, dando per scontato che la loro gestione e sfruttamento costituisca l’interesse principale delle politiche locali. L’Atlante sposta invece l’attenzione dagli aspetti puramente economici alla dimensione del controllo e della gestione dei ‘beni ambientali’. Dà voce alle vittime della violenza esercitata dagli esecutori di un modello di sviluppo iniquo; ai morti, ai criminalizzati, ai feriti, agli impauriti, agli sfollati che nella narrativa dominante non hanno voce, o che addirittura non sono considerati come soggetti.

Un crescendo di conflitti ambientali

Via via che aumenta la pressione verso l’ambiente da parte delle industrie che estraggono risorse e scaricano rifiuti, e vengono invase aree più periferiche del pianeta, dove ancora sopravvivono economie di sussistenza, si moltiplicano i conflitti. È ormai evidente che non si tratta semplicemente di conflitti per specifiche risorse o per inquinamenti / danneggiamenti locali: essi esprimono – come si usa dire adesso – l’intersezionalità di problematiche agricole, squilibri di genere, relazioni città/campagna, salute pubblica, discriminazione razziale… Sono conflitti causati da una iniqua distribuzione degli spazi e degli usi dei beni ecologici.

L’economia classica e ancor più la moderna economia neoliberista, che tendono a ridurre la complessità dei conflitti a dinamiche di mercato, esternalità, compensazioni monetarie, si trovano sempre più di fronte ad attori sociali che mettono in campo sistemi di valori diversi. Contestano la narrativa dominante che da secoli accompagna l’affermarsi delle strutture istituzionali e delle relazioni di potere del sistema militar-industriale capitalistico.

La dimensione del sacro, i diritti della natura e dei popoli indigeni, i valori estetici ed ecologici, il ruolo della conoscenza esperienziale… i cosiddetti conflitti ‘ambientali’ chiamano ormai in causa tutte le dimensioni del contesto ambientale e delle relazioni socio-culturali. Mettono allo scoperto l’inconciliabilità di visioni del mondo e di senso della vita tra una minoranza predatrice – che sta causando irrimediabili danni alla trama della vita che ci sostiene – e una maggioranza impoverita, che subisce una doppia violenza, sia diretta e locale, sia globale, provocata dai cambiamenti climatici innescati nell’intero pianeta.

I confini estremi della Terra

Dagli anni ’70 del secolo scorso ad oggi l’invasione degli spazi più remoti del mondo si è ormai compiuta. La presenza umana, e la presenza di ‘manufatti’ e di prodotti dell’attività umana, sono rintracciabili in ogni angolo del pianeta. Non c’è più luogo ‘incontaminato’ sul pianeta. E’ stata proprio la ricerca di ‘risorse’ con le quali alimentare i processi di trasformazione che sostengono le moderne società, e la ricerca di ‘pattumiere’ dove smaltire la crescente quantità di scarti e di rifiuti dell’economia lineare ad aver alterato profondamente e irreversibilmente la nostra casa comune: la biosfera, il substrato abiotico sul quale essa si è sviluppata nel corso di miliardi di anni, e persino aree sempre più estese dello spazio intorno alla Terra, il cyber-spazio colonizzato grazie al crescente sviluppo della tecnosfera.

L’invasione prepotente ai luoghi più remoti del mondo ha messo in pericolo, decretandone spesso la morte, tante comunità umane, ambienti naturali, grandi foreste, popolazioni animali, nicchie e habitat, luoghi viventi di biodiversità. Tutti irrimediabilmente distrutti.   Le frontiere fino alle quali si sono spinte le ruspe, le trivellazioni, le dighe e le rotaie, le irrorazioni chimiche e le discariche di rifiuti tossici coincidono ormai con i margini di Gaia, la nostra terra vivente. E in tutto il mondo i conflitti ‘ambientali’ sono diventati questioni di vita o di morte per tutti coloro che – loro malgrado – sono stati coinvolti inesorabilmente dall’avanzata di predatori intenti alla trasformazione del naturale in artificiale: dalle miniere ai prodotti ai rifiuti, utilizzando le riserve energetiche accumulate sottoterra nei tempi geologici, e disperdendo gli scarti nell’atmosfera e negli oceani.

Frontiere abbattute

Il sistema economico tuttora dominante ha a lungo ‘esternalizzato’ i suoi impatti negativi, scaricandone gli effetti sulle periferie ambientali e sociali, sulle popolazioni marginalizzate e sui luoghi lontani dalla vista e dagli interessi delle minoranze privilegiate. Ma arrivare ai confini estremi significa che questi impatti non si possono più nascondere. Le violenze contro le comunità e gli avvelenamenti degli ambienti emergono all’evidenza e finiscono per coinvolgere tutti. L’intera biosfera reagisce alle trasformazioni globali che le sono state imposte. La globalizzazione del sistema economico ha portato con sé la cancellazione di confini naturali che delimitavano ambienti diversi, e consentivano alla biodiversità di fiorire, alle fasce climatiche di differenziarsi, ai diversi habitat di conservare le loro peculiarità, alle comunità umane di costruire culture e linguaggi.

A innescare la drammatica situazione sanitaria provocata dal COVID-19 è stata probabilmente la ‘forzatura’ di uno dei confini che regolavano le relazioni tra umani e altri viventi. La continua erosione degli spazi di vita degli abitanti non umani ha costretto animali selvatici (e con loro varie coorti di parassiti, batteri e virus) ad avvicinarsi all’uomo, causando un crescendo di ‘salti di specie[1]’ con conseguenze imprevedibili e potenzialmente devastanti, di cui l’attuale pandemia è solo un esempio.

Il nostro pianeta sta dunque cambiando. Innescate dall’azione umana, si stanno manifestando trasformazioni globali, con esiti che solo in minima misura possiamo cercare di prevedere. Ma ci manca l’immaginazione per intuire come evolverà l’avventura della Terra.  Le scelte compiute da una piccola parte dell’umanità negli ultimi due secoli hanno messo in moto un processo che coinvolge tutti gli abitanti del pianeta (gli Earthlings, come li chiama lo studioso Bruno Latour con una parola difficilmente traducibile, forse ‘figli della Terra’?). Impossibile tornare indietro. Ma forse è possibile intraprendere a livello globale delle azioni in grado di rallentare il processo? Almeno di ridurre il nostro impatto?  Le strade sicuramente da intraprendere non mancano:

• L’abolizione immediata degli apparati militari e delle guerre;
• Una drastica trasformazione degli stili di vita della minoranza ricca e consumatrice; sicuramente un rapido passaggio da un modello di società basato sui consumi a un modello basato sulla frugalità e la sufficienza;
• Scelte politiche basate su equità e giustizia…

Molti sono i suggerimenti, ma non vengono ascoltati.

La soluzione tecnologica e la circolarità dell’economia

Purtroppo la fiducia umana nelle soluzioni ‘intelligenti’ offerte dalla tecnologia non conosce limiti. Dalle mega-dighe che hanno devastato i bacini fluviali dei maggiori fiumi del mondo agli allevamenti intensivi di animali che stanno favorendo inaspettati salti di specie; dall’utilizzo sempre più spregiudicato dell’energia nucleare (le cui scorie sono ineliminabili) fino all’ invasione elettro-magnetica dello spazio circumterrestre. La visione del mondo del potere dominante non conosce ripensamenti. Le inaspettate disponibilità finanziarie messe in campo per affrontare la crisi globale socio-sanitaria-economica in cui siamo sprofondati hanno stimolato nuove fantasie. Le potenzialità dell’intelligenza artificiale e della robotica si intrecciano con la crescente inconsapevolezza e avidità di chi le ha progettate.

Tra le proposte meno fantasiose, quindi in grado di trovare qualche adesione nell’ingenuità del pubblico, vi è quella di trasformare l’economia da processo lineare a processo circolare. “In effetti abbiamo compiuto qualche errore, sottovalutato qualche aspetto” – sono disposti ad ammettere gli economisti – “ma possiamo rapidamente e facilmente rimediare. Trasformiamo il flusso lineare (che parte dall’estrazione di risorse a produzione di rifiuti) in un ciclo chiuso, in cui la materia si riutilizza continuamente, eliminando quindi contemporaneamente l’estrazione e l’inquinamento”.

L’intersezionalità tra economia, ecologia e giustizia

Torniamo all’argomento iniziale di questo articolo: l’Atlante dei conflitti ambientali. Lo studioso che negli anni ’70 del 900 ha dato avvio alla ricerca e alla documentazione che hanno permesso la costruzione di questo Atlante è un economista: Joan Martinez Alier. Laureato in Economia a Barcellona nel 1961, ha trascorso alcuni anni all’estero per poi rientrare in Spagna nel 1975, presso il Dipartimento di Economia e Storia Economica dell’Università Autònoma de Barcelona. Ha insegnato anche in prestigiose università internazionali (Oxford, Stanford, Yale). Il suo contributo – sia teorico sia applicativo – integra approcci ecologici con quelli orientati allo sviluppo e alla giustizia. Ha ricevuto premi importanti per la qualità dei suoi contributi alla fondazione dell’economia ecologica, per la sua analisi pionieristica delle relazioni tra economie e ambiente, per il suo approccio interdisciplinare e comparativo e il suo ruolo attivo nella promozione della giustizia ambientale.

È stato lui a dare avvio alla raccolta di documentazione per la costruzione dell’Atlante della giustizia ambientale. Ha anche messo in evidenza le responsabilità etiche del modello di sviluppo liberista; un modello caratterizzato da manifestazioni di violenza diretta e indiretta verso le comunità umane e l’ambiente. Anche se da tempo ha lasciato il suo ruolo professionale, Joan Martinez Alier è tuttora impegnato nel divulgare i risultati dei suoi studi e nel difendere i diritti delle popolazioni impegnate in conflitti ambientali. Ne è testimonianza un suo recente articolo di riflessione critica sull’idea di ‘economia circolare’. La sua riflessione tiene insieme ciò che l’economia liberista continua a tenere separati: la competenza scientifica, il rispetto dei diritti e il senso di giustizia.

Il ‘gap’ della circolarità

Il concetto di economia circolare implica che le risorse per le attività produttive siano sempre più attinte all’interno dei passaggi intermedi di trasformazione; e che grazie al riuso e al riciclo dei materiali si riducano gli impatti ambientali. L’input di energia arriverà dal sole dicono gli economisti – e gli scarti diventeranno risorse da immettere, grazie alle tecnologie più moderne, in un ciclo virtuoso.

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Tuttavia è stato da tempo dimostrato che l’economia industriale non è circolare, ma entropica. Vale a dire che non può funzionare se non estraendo nuove risorse e producendo nuovi rifiuti.   Il semplice schema circolare proposto dagli economisti che omettono le frecce che indicano entrate e uscite è sbagliato.  La ‘giostra’ tra produttori e consumatori ha bisogno di energia (input) per girare. Non solo: non tutti materiali possono essere riciclati, quindi esistono sempre anche scarti (output) non eliminabili. I dati sperimentali lo confermano. Una recente pubblicazione segnala che l’economia dei 27 Paesi dell’UE ricicla intorno al 12% dei materiali (dati del 2019). La concentrazione di CO₂ (uno dei ‘rifiuti’ rilasciati in atmosfera), che era di 320 ppm nel 1960, ha raggiunto il valore di 415 ppm nel 2020, e sta avviandosi a raggiungere i 450 ppm nel 2050.

Come mai non si riesce a ‘chiudere il cerchio’? Martinez Alier (riprendendo numerosi studi degli ultimi decenni) osserva che il basso livello di circolarità ha molte cause, di cui due principali:

• la prima è che il 44% del materiale trasformato (i combustibili fossili) viene usato per fornire energia, che viene dissipata quindi non si può riciclare;
• quanto alla seconda, gli stock socio-economici (cioè l’ambiente costruito, edificato) continuano a crescere. In un primo tempo richiedono energia e materia e per la costruzione. Successivamente continuano ad aver bisogno di energia e materia per la manutenzione e l’operatività.

Le ‘grandi opere’ sono un chiaro esempio di scelte non cicliche, insostenibili dell’economia.  Ma anche in un’economia industriale che non cresce gli ambienti costruiti richiedono senza sosta energia e materia per funzionare e non deteriorarsi. Il mondo artificiale consuma!!  Questo modello di sviluppo, che privilegia l’artificiale a scapito del naturale, continuerà ad aver bisogno di nuovi rifornimenti di energia e di materiali.

Dai dati a disposizione risulta che nel 2017 la percentuale globale di materia riciclata è stata dell’8,7%. Se meno del 10% della materia (incluse le risorse energetiche) è stato riciclato, da dove arriva il restante 90%?  Questa domanda permette di riconnettere l’economia alla società, all’ambiente, alla giustizia, e di riconoscere l’intersezionalità dei conflitti ambientali. Nel 2017 sono state estratte 92Gt di ‘nuove’ risorse provenienti dalle ‘commodity frontiers’, le frontiere lungo le quali continuano ad essere estratte le materie prime; continua anche a produrre scarti e rifiuti, che sono riversati in singoli luoghi e nelle grandi ‘pattumiere’ globali, l’atmosfera e gli oceani.

Non c’è dubbio quindi – sostiene Martinez Alier – che senza un radicale ripensamento dell’economia e del modello di sviluppo si manifesteranno nuovi conflitti ambientali, aggiungendosi alle migliaia già documentati dall’EJ Atlas. Ed è quanto sta succedendo. Le frontiere dell’estrazione e le frontiere degli scarti vedono intensificarsi i saccheggi, gli atti di espropriazione, le devastazioni dei luoghi di vita, che aumentano di dimensioni e profondità con la complicità di tecnologie sempre più potenti e invasive.

Basta alla teoria della Terra piatta!

Secondo Martinez Alier un’economia perfettamente circolare è impossibile da realizzare in un sistema industriale e dovremmo smettere di fingere che questo sia un risultato raggiungibile. Bisogna smettere cioè di promuovere l’illusione che l’iperconsumo e ipermaterialismo possano continuare per sempre come purché i consumatori gettino i loro rifiuti nel cestino giusto. Infatti, suggerendo che il riciclaggio può essere efficace al 100% e neutrale per il clima, questo discorso sta scoraggiando opzioni più realistiche e concrete. Cioè rifiutare e ridurre.

Secondo Giampietro e Funtowicz l’idea della circolarità dell’economia è una “leggenda popolare” che nega la scomoda verità dell’impossibilità di disaccoppiare il funzionamento dell’attuale sistema industriale dai flussi di energia e materia in entrata e in uscita dal sistema Terra. Questi Autori tracciano un parallelo tra il mito dell’economia circolare e la credenza medioevale della Terra piatta: secondo loro sono entrambe forme di “ignoranza socialmente costruita” per mantenere lo status quo e l’autorità delle élites egemoniche. Sono credenze che rendono difficile prendere atto e accettare la necessità di passare a una società post-crescita e post-capitalista.

Combinando le conoscenze dell’economia ecologica, dell’ecologia industriale e dell’ecologia politica, Martinez Alier (e molti studiosi che si sono occupati di questo tema) conclude  che il “gap di circolarità”, ovvero la necessità per l’economia industriale di ottenere materiali ed energia “freschi” in ogni momento, è la causa principale del grande e crescente numero dei conflitti di distribuzione ecologica: quei conflitti che drammaticamente continuano ad aumentare, e di cui l’EJ Atlas testimonia le tragiche conseguenze umane, sociali  e ambientali, ponendo la società opulenta, le istituzioni, le grandi corporation… e tutti noi di fronte a responsabilità sempre più pesanti.

Nota

[1] Spillover è il termine con cui si indica il salto di specie; è anche il titolo di un libro straordinario, scritto da David Quammen nel 2012 e tradotto in italiano nel 2014 da Adelphi. Il libro anticipa molte delle circostanze e delle problematiche emerse poi dal 2019 ad oggi.

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Elena Camino è membro della rete TRANSCEND per la Pace, Sviluppo e Ambiente e Gruppo ASSEFA Torino.

 

Go to Original – serenoregis.org

 

“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”

MEMORABLE QUOTES, 16 Aug 2021

Abraham Lincoln – TRANSCEND Media Service

Abraham Lincoln was an American lawyer and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the nation through the American Civil War, the country’s greatest moral, cultural, constitutional, and political crisis.

Tags: Quotes

 

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 16 Aug 2021.

Anticopyright: Editorials and articles originated on TMS may be freely reprinted, disseminated, translated and used as background material, provided an acknowledgement and link to the source, TMS: “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”, is included. T

If You Build It, They Will Come: Apple Has Opened the Backdoor to Increased Surveillance and Censorship around the World TECHNOLOGY, 16 Aug 2021

ZAC AND THE PROBLEM IS SOLVED

 

 

 

If You Build It, They Will Come: Apple Has Opened the Backdoor to Increased Surveillance and Censorship around the World

TECHNOLOGY, 16 Aug 2021

Kurt Opsahl | Electronic Frontier Foundation - TRANSCEND Media Service

11 Aug 2021 – Apple’s new program for scanning images sent on iMessage steps back from the company’s prior support for the privacy and security of encrypted messages. The program, initially limited to the United States, narrows the understanding of end-to-end encryption to allow for client-side scanning. While Apple aims at the scourge of child exploitation and abuse, the company has created an infrastructure that is all too easy to redirect to greater surveillance and censorship. The program will undermine Apple’s defense that it can’t comply with the broader demands.

For years, countries around the world have asked for access to and control over encrypted messages, asking technology companies to “nerd harder” when faced with the pushback that access to messages in the clear was incompatible with strong encryption. The Apple child safety message scanning program is currently being rolled out only in the United States.

The United States has not been shy about seeking access to encrypted communications, pressuring the companies to make it easier to obtain data with warrants and to voluntarily turn over data. However, the U.S. faces serious constitutional issues if it wanted to pass a law that required warrantless screening and reporting of content. Even if conducted by a private party, a search ordered by the government is subject to the Fourth Amendment’s protections. Any “warrant” issued for suspicionless mass surveillance would be an unconstitutional general warrant. As the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has explained, “Search warrants . . . are fundamentally offensive to the underlying principles of the Fourth Amendment when they are so bountiful and expansive in their language that they constitute a virtual, all-encompassing dragnet[.]” With this new program, Apple has failed to hold a strong policy line against U.S. laws undermining encryption, but there remains a constitutional backstop to some of the worst excesses. But U.S constitutional protection may not necessarily be replicated in every country.

Apple is a global company, with phones and computers in use all over the world, and many governments pressure that comes along with that. Apple has promised it will refuse government “demands to build and deploy government-mandated changes that degrade the privacy of users.” It is good that Apple says it will not, but this is not nearly as strong a protection as saying it cannot, which could not honestly be said about any system of this type. Moreover, if it implements this change, Apple will need to not just fight for privacy, but win in legislatures and courts around the world. To keep its promise, Apple will have to resist the pressure to expand the iMessage scanning program to new countries, to scan for new types of content and to report outside parent-child relationships.

It is no surprise that authoritarian countries demand companies provide access and control to encrypted messages, often the last best hope for dissidents to organize and communicate. For example, Citizen Lab’s research shows that—right now—China’s unencrypted WeChat service already surveils images and files shared by users, and uses them to train censorship algorithms. “When a message is sent from one WeChat user to another, it passes through a server managed by Tencent (WeChat’s parent company) that detects if the message includes blacklisted keywords before a message is sent to the recipient.” As the Stanford Internet Observatory’s Riana Pfefferkorn explains, this type of technology is a roadmap showing “how a client-side scanning system originally built only for CSAM [Child Sexual Abuse Material] could and would be suborned for censorship and political persecution.” As Apple has found, China, with the world’s biggest market, can be hard to refuse. Other countries are not shy about applying extreme pressure on companies, including arresting local employees of the tech companies.

But many times potent pressure to access encrypted data also comes from democratic countries that strive to uphold the rule of law, at least at first. If companies fail to hold the line in such countries, the changes made to undermine encryption can easily be replicated by countries with weaker democratic institutions and poor human rights records—often using similar legal language, but with different ideas about public order and state security, as well as what constitutes impermissible content, from obscenity to indecency to political speech. This is very dangerous. These countries, with poor human rights records, will nevertheless contend that they are no different. They are sovereign nations, and will see their public-order needs as equally urgent. They will contend that if Apple is providing access to any nation-state under that state’s local laws, Apple must also provide access to other countries, at least, under the same terms.

‘Five Eyes’ Countries Will Seek to Scan Messages 

For example, the Five Eyes—an alliance of the intelligence services of Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States—warned in 2018 that they will “pursue technological, enforcement, legislative or other measures to achieve lawful access solutions” if the companies didn’t voluntarily provide access to encrypted messages. More recently, the Five Eyes have pivoted from terrorism to the prevention of CSAM as the justification, but the demand for unencrypted access remains the same, and the Five Eyes are unlikely to be satisfied without changes to assist terrorism and criminal investigations too.

The United Kingdom’s Investigatory Powers Act, following through on the Five Eyes’ threat, allows their Secretary of State to issue “technical capacity notices,” which oblige telecommunications operators to make the technical ability of “providing assistance in giving effect to an interception warrant, equipment interference warrant, or a warrant or authorisation for obtaining communications data.” As the UK Parliament considered the IPA, we warned that a “company could be compelled to distribute an update in order to facilitate the execution of an equipment interference warrant, and ordered to refrain from notifying their customers.”

Under the IPA, the Secretary of State must consider “the technical feasibility of complying with the notice.” But the infrastructure needed to roll out Apple’s proposed changes makes it harder to say that additional surveillance is not technically feasible. With Apple’s new program, we worry that the UK might try to compel an update that would expand the current functionality of the iMessage scanning program, with different algorithmic targets and wider reporting. As the iMessage “communication safety” feature is entirely Apple’s own invention, Apple can all too easily change its own criteria for what will be flagged for reporting. Apple may receive an order to adopt its hash matching program for iPhoto into the message pre-screening. Likewise, the criteria for which accounts will apply this scanning, and where positive hits get reported, are wholly within Apple’s control.

Australia followed suit with its Assistance and Access Act, which likewise allows for requirements to provide technical assistance and capabilities, with the disturbing potential to undermine encryption. While the Act contains some safeguards, a coalition of civil society organizations, tech companies, and trade associations, including EFF and—wait for it—Apple, explained that they were insufficient.

Indeed, in Apple’s own submission to the Australian government, Apple warned “the government may seek to compel providers to install or test software or equipment, facilitate access to customer equipment, turn over source code, remove forms of electronic protection, modify characteristics of a service, or substitute a service, among other things.” If only Apple would remember that these very techniques could also be used in an attempt to mandate or change the scope of Apple’s scanning program.

While Canada has yet to adopt an explicit requirement for plain text access, the Canadian government is actively pursuing filtering obligations for various online platforms, which raise the spectre of a more aggressive set of obligations targeting private messaging applications.

Censorship Regimes Are In Place And Ready to Go

For the Five Eyes, the ask is mostly for surveillance capabilities, but India and Indonesia are already down the slippery slope to content censorship. The Indian government’s new Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code (“2021 Rules”), in effect earlier this year, directly imposes dangerous requirements for platforms to pre-screen content. Rule 4(4) compels content filtering, requiring that providers “endeavor to deploy technology-based measures,” including automated tools or other mechanisms, to “proactively identify information” that has been forbidden under the Rules.

India’s defense of the 2021 rules, written in response to the criticism from three UN Special Rapporteurs, was to highlight the very real dangers to children, and skips over the much broader mandate of the scanning and censorship rules. The 2021 Rules impose proactive and automatic enforcement of its content takedown provisions, requiring the proactive blocking of material previously held to be forbidden under Indian law. These laws broadly include those protecting “the sovereignty and integrity of India; security of the State; friendly relations with foreign States; public order; decency or morality.” This is no hypothetical slippery slope—it’s not hard to see how this language could be dangerous to freedom of expression and political dissent. Indeed, India’s track record on its Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, which has reportedly been used to arrest academics, writers and poets for leading rallies and posting political messages on social media, highlight this danger.

It would be no surprise if India claimed that Apple’s scanning program was a great start towards compliance, with a few more tweaks needed to address the 2021 Rules’ wider mandate. Apple has promised to protest any expansion, and could argue in court, as WhatsApp and others have, that the 2021 Rules should be struck down, or that Apple does not fit the definition of a social media intermediary regulated under these 2021 Rules. But the Indian rules illustrate both the governmental desire and the legal backing for pre-screening encrypted content, and Apple’s changes makes it all the easier to slip into this dystopia.

This is, unfortunately, an ever-growing trend. Indonesia, too, has adopted Ministerial Regulation MR5 to require service providers (including “instant messaging” providers) to “ensure” that their system “does not contain any prohibited [information]; and […] does not facilitate the dissemination of prohibited [information]”. MR5 defines prohibited information as anything that violates any provision of Indonesia’s laws and regulations, or creates “community anxiety” or “disturbance in public order.” MR5 also imposes disproportionate sanctions, including a general blocking of systems for those who fail to ensure there is no prohibited content and information in their systems. Indonesia may also see the iMessage scanning functionality as a tool for compliance with Regulation MR5, and pressure Apple to adopt a broader and more invasive version in their country.

Pressure Will Grow

The pressure to expand Apple’s program to more countries and more types of content will only continue. In fall of 2020, in the European Union, a series of leaked documents from the European Commission foreshadowed an anti-encryption law to the European Parliament, perhaps this year. Fortunately, there is a backstop in the EU. Under the e-commerce directive, EU Member States are not allowed to impose a general obligation to monitor the information that users transmit or store, as stated in the Article 15 of the e-Commerce Directive (2000/31/EC). Indeed, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has stated explicitly that intermediaries may not be obliged to monitor their services in a general manner in order to detect and prevent illegal activity of their users. Such an obligation will be incompatible with fairness and proportionality. Despite this, in a leaked internal document published by Politico, the European Commission committed itself to an action plan for mandatory detection of CSAM by relevant online service providers (expected in December 2021) that pointed to client-side scanning as the solution, which can potentially apply to secure private messaging apps, and seizing upon the notion that it preserves the protection of end-to-end encryption.

For governmental policymakers who have been urging companies to nerd harder, wordsmithing harder is just as good. The end result of access to unencrypted communication is the goal, and if that can be achieved in a way that arguably leaves a more narrowly defined end-to-end encryption in place, all the better for them.

All it would take to widen the narrow backdoor that Apple is building is an expansion of the machine learning parameters to look for additional types of content, the adoption of the iPhoto hash matching to iMessage, or a tweak of the configuration flags to scan, not just children’s, but anyone’s accounts. Apple has a fully built system just waiting for external pressure to make the necessary changes. China and doubtless other countries already have hashes and content classifiers to identify messages impermissible under their laws, even if they are protected by international human rights law. The abuse cases are easy to imagine: governments that outlaw homosexuality might require a classifier to be trained to restrict apparent LGBTQ+ content, or an authoritarian regime might demand a classifier able to spot popular satirical images or protest flyers.

Now that Apple has built it, they will come. With good intentions, Apple has ​​paved the road to mandated security weakness around the world, enabling and reinforcing the arguments that, should the intentions be good enough, scanning through your personal life and private communications is acceptable. We urge Apple to reconsider and return to the mantra Apple so memorably emblazoned on a billboard at 2019’s CES conference in Las Vegas: What happens on your iPhone, stays on your iPhone.

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Kurt Opsahl is the Deputy Executive Director and General Counsel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. In addition to representing clients on civil liberties, free speech and privacy law, he counsels on EFF projects and initiatives.  For his work responding to government subpoenas, Opsahl is proud to have been called a “rabid dog” by the Department of Justice. He co-authored Electronic Media and Privacy Law Handbook in 2007 and was named as one of the “Attorneys of the Year” by California Lawyer magazine for his work on the O’Grady v. Superior Court appeal. Email: kurt@eff.org

Go to Original – eff.org

Tags: Apple, Big Brother, Big tech, Computer Science, Encryption, Privacy rights, Spying, Surveillance

ZAC THE PROBLEM IS SOLVED 

 

Facebook Silences the People Who Know Its Operations Best

TECHNOLOGY, 16 Aug 2021

Yael Eisenstat | The Washington Post - TRANSCEND Media Service

Tech giants use nondisparagement clauses to keep former employees from discussing the companies.

(Dado Ruvic/Reuters)

3 Aug 2021 – Since the Jan. 6 insurrection, and with vaccine misinformation and disinformation still spreading as we try to climb our way out of the pandemic, social media companies have been under more public scrutiny than ever. The public — and the White House — wants answers, and the days when companies like Facebook could fully control the narrative seem to finally be ending.

But one thing the big tech firms still have in their corner is that they’ve made it difficult for employees, current and former, to find the safety and confidence to speak about issues affecting the public that they witnessed or participated in at their jobs.

It has been a thorny few weeks for Facebook’s public relations team. The release of “An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination,” a new book based on interviews with about 400 current and former employees — including me — came just before President Biden directly called out social media companies for not doing enough to combat vaccine misinformation.

Unfortunately, most of the people who know the most about the company’s inner workings have been willing to speak to the press only anonymously, for fear of retaliation or breach of nondisparagement agreements that are widely used in the tech world.

I worked at Facebook for about six months in 2018, hired as global head of elections integrity ops for political ads as the company attempted to dig out from its last big public relations crisis: the scandals around Cambridge Analytica’s improper use of the site’s data and Russia’s use of the platform to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. But Facebook stripped my title and changed my job description on my second day there. I was later sidelined for questioning why we were not fact-checking political ads and for trying to help ensure that we were not allowing voter suppression to occur through these ads. After I asked to move to a different part of the company where I would be empowered to do the job I was hired to do, I was fired.

When Facebook offered me a severance package on my way out the door, I refused it. Taking the money would have required me to sign a nondisparagement agreement written so broadly that I would have been barred, forever, from saying anything negative about the company, its products, any individuals who work there and even the terms of my employment.

I worked on political ads at Facebook. They profit by manipulating us.

Such agreements have become far too prevalent in our economy. Instead of being reserved for dispute resolution, they have become the status quo in separation agreements and sometimes even in initial employment arrangements. A handful of technology companies have unprecedented — and unchecked — power over our daily interactions and lives. Their ability to silence employees exacerbates that problem, depriving the public and regulators of a means to analyze actions that affect our public health, our public square and our democracy.

In response to the current criticisms, Facebook spokespeople have attacked those of us who have come forward to discuss them. They all but accused Biden of lying and called former employees who spoke out by name in “An Ugly Truth” disgruntled, saying we espoused “self-selected truths.” Facebook can use self-generated data points and “facts” that are unverifiable by the rest of us because its data, business decisions and practices remain mostly in a black box.

In response to Biden’s statement, the company did not provide any data on how anti-vaccine information is spreading or how many people have seen or engaged with it. Former Facebook vice president Brian Boland, who spent 11 years there, broke his silence on July 18 to call on the company to share more data with the public, saying on CNN: “I haven’t seen a focus or desire to be more transparent. . . . It’s one of the main reasons that I quit.” A New York Times piece the next day reported that Facebook data scientists — speaking anonymously — said they had proposed last year to study the prevalence of coronavirus misinformation on the platform but were rebuffed by senior leaders.

I imagine there are former Facebook employees who could help the public and lawmakers better understand the truth. Most may never have chosen to speak publicly anyway, but the likelihood that some are silenced by nondisparagement agreements is deeply troubling. And of course, while Facebook is effectively buying silence from its employees, it defends its decisions to allow misinformation and disinformation, and even some hate speech, on the grounds that it values free expression above all else.

These nondisparagement agreements, when used preemptively rather than in resolving disputes, do not serve any purpose other than to silence employees who might speak negatively about the company or their time there. They do not protect trade secrets; confidentiality agreements already do that. And in my experience, they are not mutual: Facebook’s nondisparagement agreement did not say the company would not disparage me.

(Contacted by an editor at The Washington Post, Facebook declined to comment.)

Since leaving Facebook in November 2018, I have voiced my opinions about social media’s effects on democracy and how to hold companies accountable, based in part on my experience at Facebook and on disagreements with its public stances, policies and business decisions since I left. I believe the company made intentional decisions that harmed our democracy. As someone who had been publicly vocal about that exact problem before I joined Facebook, and had spent 18 years working on national security and democracy issues, I refused to allow the company to stifle my free speech and ability to continue working fully in the field.

That was not a decision I took lightly. But had I signed the nondisparagement agreement, I would have been permanently barred from criticizing even future actions or statements by anyone at Facebook, and the company could have sought damages or an injunction if I violated it. These agreements are often put in front of soon-to-be-former employees at a vulnerable moment, when a loss of income plus the threat of negative comments to prospective employers can loom over their decision-making. Companies can use their asymmetric power over employees to pressure them to sign, often under short deadlines.

Facebook could easily make privacy the default. It still hasn’t.

California may be moving to change some of Silicon Valley’s reliance on such agreements. In mid-August, the legislature is scheduled to vote on the Silenced No More Act, which includes protection from nondisparagement agreements in the case of workplace discrimination. Ifeoma Ozoma, whose former employer Pinterest tried to silence her after she filed a complaint about wage discrimination and retaliation, helped draft the bill. As she explained in a New York Times opinion piece, these restrictive clauses have an effect on the entire economy, including shareholders: “Unless individuals speak up, shareholders are often kept in the dark about misconduct at the companies in which they have a financial stake.”

Ideally, that legislation would set the groundwork for a conversation about whether nondisparagement agreements should be allowed at all, especially when they aren’t mutual, or at least regulated in a way that considers worker and public protections. Overly broad, indefinite agreements also raise anti-competitive concerns if they damage future employment prospects, an issue that the Biden administration signaled is a priority in a recent executive order on promoting competition.

With few avenues for transparency around their inner workings, these companies continue to assume we will take them at their word. A critical component of that transparency should come from people who have seen behind the curtain: employees. The battle between the White House and Facebook has shined a spotlight ever more brightly on a company trying to silence its employees, the problems of abusive nondisparagement practices and the challenge to hold companies accountable when they exert such power over former workers.

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Yael Eisenstat is a future of democracy fellow at the Berggruen Institute and a former elections integrity head at Facebook, CIA officer and White House adviser.

 

Go to Original – washingtonpost.com

Tags: Facebook, Social media

CAPITALISM FAILED: IT IS DRAWNING ALL OF HUMANITY WITH ITSELF

 

Capitalism Is What’s Burning the Planet, Not Average People

CAPITALISM, 16 Aug 2021

Chris Saltmarsh | Jacobin - TRANSCEND Media Service

Not all humans are equally culpable in the climate chaos outlined in the 9 Aug  IPCC report. Identifying the rich and powerful as the principal culprits is key to stopping further destruction.

Wildfires raged through Turkey’s Mediterranean region in July and August 2021.
(Felton Davis / Flickr)

11 Aug 2021 – Every seven or eight years, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) publishes its latest report reviewing the available science assessing the state of climate change. The most recent, the Sixth Assessment Report, was published this week in the midst of a summer of extreme heat and devastating flooding.

These reports feel like landmark moments in the history of climate change. While politicians, corporations, and activists make little to no progress endlessly arguing, scientists cut through the bullshit with a sober and objective picture of where we’re at and what more there is still to do.

What’s New?

So, what new information does the latest IPCC report give us to aid in the fight against climate change? On a fundamental level, not much. Emissions are still rising, and the planet is still heating. We still need to decarbonize the economy as a matter of urgency.

The Sixth Assessment Report’s headlines tend to focus on the widely vaunted target to limit global average temperature rises to 1.5^oC. This target was the cornerstone of the Paris Agreement and is upheld by climate wonks as the limit past which warming becomes unsafe. In reality, the target is crude: we have already reached 1.1 or 1.2^oC of warming, and our current climate can hardly be described as safe.

Regardless, the international community has cohered around 1.5^oC as a collective ambition, for better or worse. Among the most striking headlines of the IPCC report was that, in all scenarios modeled, we will hit that level by 2040. That point will come much sooner (around a decade from now) if we don’t start bringing emissions down fast.

At 1.5^oC, we will see sea level rises of between two and three meters. Instances of extreme heat will be around four times more likely. Heavy rainfall will be around 10 percent wetter and 1.5 times more likely to occur. The question, then, is how soon.

If there is optimism in the IPCC report, it’s that if we achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 globally, there is a good chance of stabilizing temperatures at 1.5^oC. Of course, the bad news is that this would still be a much more dangerous climate than today’s — and that the optimistic scenario is certainly not the most likely. The model of a higher-emissions scenario would take us to 1.9^oC by 2040 (at which point I will be forty-six years old), 3^oC by 2060 (at which point I am unlikely to have yet retired), and 5.7^oC by 2100 (at which point I could be 104, if the extreme heat doesn’t kill me first).

These numbers underline what my generation is facing in our lifetime if we do not change course, though it’s nothing we didn’t know already. António Guterres, the secretary-general of the United Nations, responded to the report by taking aim at the fossil fuel industry: “This report must sound a death knell for coal and fossil fuels, before they destroy our planet.”

This has become a self-evident truth for all concerned with climate change, but simply making the statement is no longer enough. Less than three months before the delayed COP26 conference in Glasgow, can we really say we expect this one to be any different? The previous two major conferences produced nothing at all: COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009, and COP21 in 2015 (the Paris Agreement), which only committed nations to voluntary emissions reductions targets that would guarantee about 2.9^oC of warming if achieved. Glasgow is shaping up to be no less of a failure.

This report is as stark as any other, but it gives us no new reason to believe that established international processes and current governments are prepared to coordinate the global economic shift we urgently need. John Kerry, the United States special presidential envoy for climate, says that Glasgow must be a “turning point in this crisis.” We’ve heard it all before. The only turning point we can bank on now is away from a capitalist political economy, which has produced and entrenched this crisis, and toward a new economy based on equity, justice, and shared prosperity.

Blame Capitalism, Not “Humanity”

The science of the Sixth Assessment Report cannot be disputed, and the potency of its implications give us impetus to question the suitability of our current political and economic system. However, the report doesn’t go so far as to ask those questions itself. In fact, throughout the report, we can see language that functions to uphold the dominance of the ruling class.

The first statement in the “Summary for Policymakers” claims that climate change is “unequivocally caused by human activities.” The phrase “human-induced climate change” appears throughout the report. The certainty of humanity’s responsibility for the climate crisis thus became a prominent headline in media reporting, including in stories published by the BBC and the Guardian.

Unlike the IPPC report’s assessments of likely degrees of warming, anticipated extreme heat, and predicted sea level rises, the suggestion that humanity in general is to blame is not a scientific claim. It is an ideological one. In this instance, it insulates the ruling class from blame.

This is unlikely to be the explicit intention of the scientists at the IPCC. The popular tendency to talk about human-caused climate change is surely a response to well-funded climate denial. However, climate denial is now no longer the main blockage — instead, it’s the delay and inaction of the capitalist class.

It is capitalists who profit from the climate crisis while the poorest suffer. It is the capitalist system putting profit above all else that blocks decarbonization while the world burns. Of course, it is technically correct to say that climate change is human-induced. As far as I know, the capitalist class are all human (unless David Icke knows something we don’t). But this doesn’t mean that all humans have played a role in producing the crisis.

True, some of us benefit materially from the fruits of fossil capitalism. It’s unavoidable that fossil fuel extraction has been the basis of modern civilization and provided improvements to many lives. But most people are also exploited, alienated, and marginalized within this system. We consume the carbon-intensive products of capitalism, but we have no say about the fundamental conditions of production that are driving our climate to breakdown.

A worker on an oil refinery does not share culpability with the capitalist who exploits them to profit from oil production. Indigenous communities violently displaced from their land to make way for a coal mine do not share blame with the governments forcing these projects through. We might as well talk about mammal-induced or earthling-induced climate change. It would be just as true, only at an even further level of abstraction from the real culprits.

It would, of course, be true to say that climate change is not necessarily unique to the capitalist mode of production. To briefly engage in a counter-history, it is surely true that any human civilization to have discovered fossil fuels would have harnessed them and inadvertently set the wheels of climate change in motion. The unique malice of capitalism, though, is in its inability to reverse the trend. We have now known about the causes and effects of climate change for several decades, yet capitalism’s priority of maximizing short-term profits has crowded out the need to transition our energy system.

We are not all equally responsible for climate breakdown. Our individual behaviors, even taken in aggregate, cannot propel rapid and just decarbonization without a planned transformation of the economy. We can either choose to indulge in a misanthropic climate politics that puts humanity in general on the hook while obfuscating the true cause of the crisis — or we can embrace a humanist and socialist vision of climate justice that tells a story of human potential and the possibility of a better world, making the best of the climate we inherent.

The World at 1.5

If 1.5^oC of warming is the best we can aim for, and if, as the Sixth Assessment Report tells us, so many changes to the climate are now inevitable and irreversible, then the current wildfires in Greece, Turkey, and Algeria are just the beginning of a new normal. In this context, we will need to unlock the best features of humanity rather than emphasizing the worst. As well as fighting against every fraction of a degree of warming, we should also accept the permanence of an even more dangerous climate than that which we currently inhabit. This is where the principles of solidarity and justice become so crucial.

Our primary mission is to limit warming by decarbonizing as quickly and equitably as possible. We should also consider how we adapt to this new climate. The Left and the climate movement should demand, and integrate into our own political platform, a program of just adaptation to climate change. We need to see resilient buildings and infrastructure, flood defenses, evacuation plans, well-funded emergency services, state-guaranteed insurance to cover loss and damage, and policies to accept and support refugees. These cannot be the end point of our political ambition or act as an excuse to abandon the fight for decarbonization, but they must factor into any vision of justice in a world of 1.5^oC.

As the IPCC report makes clear, there are multiple scenarios of warming over the coming decades. Implied in some of these is a failure of both governments and climate movements to bring emissions down on the timescale required. Of course, our ambition should be to capture state power and use it to transform the economy and bring about justice. We should also be prepared to operate within scenarios where politicians uphold the status quo and do not decarbonize, or where decarbonization happens to the benefit of the rich while sacrificing the poor and marginalized. In these scenarios of relative defeat, we must be prepared to defend ourselves by building power and solidarity in our communities. We should be prepared with collective resilience for when the state fails us by setting up robust systems of food distribution, emergency shelter, and rescue.

It is understandable that moments like these, when IPCC reports are published amid relentless and devastating extreme weather, induce a collective sense of despair, anxiety, and powerlessness. The entirety of my working life will, in most of the IPCC’s modeled scenarios, happen in the context of a heating planet. We should acknowledge and respect these feelings without letting them slip into hopelessness or misanthropy.

Despite what the media, the ruling class, and even the scientists tell us, “we” are not to blame for the climate crisis. But those who are to blame don’t plan to do anything meaningful about it — so it’s up to us anyway. In that knowledge, we can form a militant and radical mass movement prepared to build a new economy based on equity, justice, and shared prosperity. We know we will have to live with the legacy of fossil capitalism regardless, but we can be sure to consign it to history.

________________________________________________

Chris Saltmarsh is a cofounder of Labour for a Green New Deal.

Go to Original – jacobinmag.com

Tags: Anglo America, Banksters, Big Banks, Capitalism, Casino Capitalism, Catastrophe Capitalism, Climate Change, Corruption, Deforestation, Disaster Capitalism, Elites, Finance, Fiscal Paradises, Forest fires, Global warming, Greed, Grey Eminence, Inequality, Mafia, Money laundering, Organized crime, Post-capitalism, Predatory Capitalism, Profits, Super rich, Wall Street, West, World Order

YOU CAN TRY TO CALL THE SHOTS BUT EXPECT TO BE SHOT THIS TIME

 

US Foreign Policy Adrift: Why Washington No Longer Calling the Shots

ANGLO AMERICA, 16 Aug 2021

Ramzy Baroud | Politics for the People – TRANSCEND Media Service

6 Aug 2021 – Jonah Goldberg and Michael Ledeen have much in common. They are both writers and also cheerleaders for military interventions and, often, for frivolous wars. Writing in the conservative rag, The National Review, months before the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Goldberg paraphrased a statement which he attributed to Ledeen with reference to the interventionist US foreign policy.

“Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business,” Goldberg wrote, quoting Ledeen.

Those like Ledeen, the neoconservative intellectual henchman type, often get away with this kind of provocative rhetoric for various reasons. American intelligentsia, especially those who are close to the center of power in Washington DC, perceive war and military intervention as the foundation and baseline of their foreign policy analysis. The utterances of such statements are usually conveyed within friendly media and intellectual platforms, where equally hawkish, belligerent audiences cheer and laugh at the war-mongering muses. In the case of Ledeen, the receptive audience was the hardline, neoconservative, pro-Israel American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

Predictably, AEI was one of the loudest voices urging for a war and invasion of Iraq prior to that calamitous decision by the George W. Bush Administration, which was enacted in March 2003.

Neoconservatism, unlike what the etymology of the name may suggest, was not necessarily confined to conservative political circles. Think tanks, newspapers and media networks that purport – or are perceived – to express liberal and even progressive thought today, like The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN, have dedicated much time and space to promoting an American invasion of Iraq as the first step of a complete US geostrategic military hegemony in the Middle East.

Like the National Review, these media networks also provided unhindered space to so-called neoconservative intellectuals who molded American foreign policy based on some strange mix between their twisted take on ethics and morality and the need for the US to ensure its global dominance throughout the 21st century. Of course, the neocons’ love affair with Israel has served as the common denominator among all individuals affiliated with this intellectual cult.

The main – and inconsequential – difference between Ledeen, for example, and those like Thomas Friedman of The New York Times, is that the former is brazen and blunt, while the latter is delusional and manipulative. For his part, Friedman also supported the Iraq war, but only to bring ‘democracy’ to the Middle East and to fight ‘terrorism’. The pretense ‘war on terror’, though misleading if not outright fabricated, was the overriding American motto in its invasion of Iraq and, earlier, Afghanistan. This mantra was readily utilized whenever Washington needed to ‘pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall’.

Even those who genuinely supported the war based on concocted intelligence – that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, possessed weapons of mass destruction, or the equally fallacious notion that Saddam and Al-Qaeda cooperated in any way – must, by now, realize that the entire American discourse prior to the war had no basis in reality. Unfortunately, war enthusiasts are not a rational bunch. Therefore, neither they, nor their ‘intellectuals’, should be expected to possess the moral integrity in shouldering the responsibility for the Iraq invasion and its horrific consequences.

If, indeed, the US wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan were meant to fight and uproot terror, how is it possible that, in June 2014, an erstwhile unknown group calling itself the ‘Islamic State’ (IS), managed to flourish, occupy and usurp massive swathes of Iraqi and Syrian territories and resource under the watchful eye of the US military? If the other war objective was bringing stability and democracy to the Middle East, why did many years of US ‘state-building’ efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, leave behind nothing but weak, shattered armies and festering corruption?

Two important events have summoned up these thoughts: US President Joe Biden’s ‘historic’ trip to Cornwall, UK, in June, to attend the 47th G7 summit and, two weeks later, the death of Donald Rumsfeld, who is widely depicted as “the architect of the Iraq war”. The tone struck by Biden throughout his G7 meetings is that ‘America is back’, another American coinage similar to the earlier phrase, the ‘great reset’ – meaning that Washington is ready to reclaim its global role that had been betrayed by the chaotic policies of former President Donald Trump.

The newest phrase – ‘America is back’ – appears to suggest that the decision to restore the US’ uncontested global leadership is, more or less, an exclusively American decision. Moreover, the term is not entirely new. In his first speech to a global audience at the Munich Security Conference on February 19, Biden repeated the phrase several times with obvious emphasis.

“America is back. I speak today as President of the United States, at the very start of my administration and I am sending a clear message to the world: America is back,” Biden said, adding that “the transatlantic alliance is back and we are nt looking backward, we are looking forward together.”

Platitudes and wishful thinking aside, the US cannot possibly return to a previous geopolitical standing, simply because Biden has made an executive decision to ‘reset’ his country’s traditional relationships with Europe – or anywhere else, either.  Biden’s actual mission is to merely whitewash and restore his country’s tarnished reputation, marred not only by Trump, but also by years of fruitless wars, a crisis of democracy at home and abroad and an impending financial crisis resulting from the US’ mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic. Unfortunately for Washington, while it hopes to ‘look forward’ to the future, other countries have already staked claims to parts of the world where the US has been forced to retreat, following two decades of a rudderless strategy that is fueled by the belief that firepower alone is sufficient to keep America aloft forever.

Though Biden was received warmly by his European hosts, Europe is likely to proceed cautiously. The continent’s geostrategic interests do not fall entirely in the American camp, as was once the case. Other new factors and power players have emerged in recent years. China is now the European bloc’s largest trade partner and Biden’s scare tactics warning of Chinese global dominance have not, seemingly, impressed the Europeans as the Americans had hoped. Following Britain’s unceremonious exit from the EU bloc, the latter urgently needs to keep its share of the global economy as large as possible. The limping US economy will hardly make the substantial deficit felt in Europe. Namely, the China-EU relationship is here to stay – and grow.

There is something else that makes the Europeans wary of whatever murky political doctrine Biden is promoting: dangerous American military adventurism.

The US and Europe are the foundation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) which, since its inception in 1949, was almost exclusively used by the US to assert its global dominance, first in the Korean Peninsula in 1950, then everywhere else.

Following the September 11 attacks, Washington used its hegemony over NATO to invoke Article 5 of its Charter, that of collective defense. The consequences were dire, as NATO members, along with the US, were embroiled in their longest wars ever, military conflicts that had no consistent strategy, let alone measurable goals. Now, as the US licks its wounds as it leaves Afghanistan, NATO members, too, are leaving the devastated country without a single achievement worth celebrating. Similar scenarios are transpiring in Iraq and Syria, too.

Rumsfeld’s death on June 29, at the age of 88, should serve as a wake-up call to American allies if they truly wish to avoid the pitfalls and recklessness of the past. While much of the US corporate media commemorated the death of a brutish war criminal with amiable non-committal language, some blamed him almost entirely for the Iraq fiasco. It is as if a single man had bent the will of the West-dominated international community to invade, pillage, torture and destroy entire countries. If so, then Rumsfeld’s death should usher in an exciting new dawn of collective peace, prosperity and security. This is not the case.

Rationalizing his decision to leave Afghanistan in a speech to the nation in April 2021, Biden did not accept, on behalf of his country, responsibility over that horrific war. Instead, he spoke of the need to fight the ‘terror threat’ in ‘many places’, instead of keeping ‘thousands of troops grounded and concentrated in just one country’.

Indeed, a close reading of Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan – a process which began under Trump – suggests that the difference between US foreign policy under Biden is only tactically different from the policies of George W. Bush when he launched his ‘preemptive wars’ under the command of Rumsfeld. Namely, though the geopolitical map may have shifted, the US appetite for war remains insatiable.

Shackled with a legacy of unnecessary, fruitless and immoral wars, yet with no actual ‘forward’ strategy, the US, arguably for the first time since the inception of NATO in the aftermath of World War II, has no decipherable foreign policy doctrine. Even if such a doctrine exists, it can only be materialized through alliances whose relationships are constructed on trust and confidence. Despite the EU’s courteous reception of Biden in Cornwall, trust in Washington is at an all-time low.

Even if it is accepted, without any argument, that America is, indeed, back, considering the vastly changing geopolitical spheres in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, Biden’s assertion should, ultimately, make no difference.

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Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of The Palestine Chronicle. His last book is The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story (Pluto Press, London) and his forthcoming book is These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons (Clarity Press, Atlanta). Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA), Istanbul Zaim University (IZU). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net.

Go to Original – ramzybaroud.net

 

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