Saturday 23rd of November 2024
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brilliantly planning to negotiate cynicism with plastic duckies....

In a significant reversal, the Biden administration announced during two closed-door meetings this week that U.S. negotiators will support limits on plastic production as part of the United Nations’ global plastics treaty.

The news was first reported by Reuters and confirmed to Grist on Thursday by the State Department. It represents a major shift for the United States, which had previously rejected production limits in favor of an approach focused on boosting the recycling rate and cleaning up plastic litter.

While industry groups condemned the decision as “misguided,” environmental organizations said it could sway momentum in favor of production limits at a consequential point during the negotiations. There is only one meeting left before the treaty is supposed to be finalized in 2025.

“This couldn’t have come at a better time,” said Christina Dixon, ocean campaign leader for the nonprofit Environmental Investigation Agency. “The U.S. position has been one of the great unknowns and they have the power to be a constructive and collaborative player, so it’s a relief to see them setting out of their stall at this critical moment.”

Negotiations over a treaty have been ongoing since March 2022, when the U.N. reached a landmark agreement to “end plastic pollution.” Over the course of the four negotiating sessions that have occurred since then, however, progress has been slow — in large part due to disagreements over the treaty’s scope.

A so-called “high-ambition” coalition of countries, supported by many scientists and environmental groups, say the treaty must prevent more plastic from being made in the first place. Some 460 million metric tons are manufactured globally each year — mostly out of fossil fuels — and only 9 percent of it is recycled. Because the manufacturing, use, and disposal of plastics contribute to climate change, experts at the nonprofit Pacific Environment have found that the treaty must cut plastic production by 75 percent by 2040 in order to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).

The high-ambition coalition also supports specific bans or restrictions on the most problematic types of plastic — typically meaning those that are least likely to be recycled — as well as hazardous chemicals commonly used in plastic products. This coalition includes Canada, Norway, Peru, Rwanda, and the U.K., along with more than 60 other countries.

Oil-producing states like Saudi Arabia, Russia, and China — backed by industry groups — oppose these measures. They want the treaty to leave production untouched and focus on managing plastic waste. The U.S. counted itself among those countries until this week.

Now, in addition to supporting restrictions on plastic production, the U.S. says it will also support creating a list of problematic plastics and hazardous chemicals, according to Reuters.

Because the U.S. carries so much weight in the treaty negotiations — and because North America produces one-fifth of the world’s plastics — Dixon said the White House’s new position could be “a welcome signal to fence-sitting countries,” encouraging them to join the high-ambition coalition. 

“I hope it will only further isolate the small group of countries who are unwilling to commit to the necessary binding regulations we need to see on the supply of plastics.”

Industry groups reacted less favorably to the news. 

Chris Jahn, president and CEO of American Chemistry Council, a plastics and petrochemical trade group, said in a statement that the U.S. had “cave[d] to the wishes of extreme NGO groups.” He described the White House’s new position as a betrayal of U.S. manufacturers that would slash jobs, harm the environment, and cause the cost of goods to rise globally.

“If the Biden-Harris administration wants to meet its sustainable development and climate goals, the world will need to rely on plastic more, not less,” he said, citing the material’s utility in renewable energy infrastructure, making buildings more energy efficient, and reducing food waste. 

Nearly 40 percent of global plastic production goes toward single-use items like packaging and food service products.

Matt Seaholm, president and CEO of the Plastics Industry Association, shared similar sentiments to Jahn. In a statement, he said the White House had “turned its back on Americans whose livelihoods depend on our industry.”

He added that the U.S.’s reversal would undermine its influence in the treaty negotiations, “as other countries know this extreme position will not receive support in the U.S. Senate.” The Senate has to approve treaties before the U.S. can ratify them.

Despite the industry’s outrage, polling suggests that ambitious policies to address the plastics crisis are broadly popular among the public. According to one recent poll from the nonprofit National Resources Defense Council, nearly 90 percent of Americans support measures to reduce plastic production. Eighty-three percent specifically support plastic production limits as part of an international treaty, and even greater numbers support treaty provisions to eliminate “unnecessary and avoidable plastic products” and toxic chemicals.

Reducing plastic production is “what the American people want,” Anja Brandon, director of U.S. plastics policy for the nonprofit Ocean Conservancy, said in a statement. She cited additional polling from her organization showing that 78 percent of Americans think ocean-bound plastic pollution is a “pressing problem.”

Brandon and other environmental advocates now say they’re eager to see how the U.S.’s new position will translate into advocacy during the final round of plastics treaty negotiations, scheduled to begin in late November in Busan, South Korea. They’re calling for the U.S. to sign onto the “Bridge to Busan,” a declaration put forward by a group of countries last April asking negotiators to “commit to achieve sustainable levels of production of primary plastic polymers,” potentially through “production freezes at specified levels, production reductions against agreed baselines, or other agreed constraints.”  

“I’m cautiously optimistic,” Julie Teel Simmonds, a senior attorney for the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement. “I look forward to seeing U.S. delegates fight for these positions at the next plastics treaty negotiations in South Korea.”

https://scheerpost.com/2024/08/19/the-us-says-it-now-supports-a-more-ambitious-plastics-treaty-industry-groups-are-furious/

 

THIS CYNICAL REVERSAL IS DESIGNED TO CATCH ENVIRONMENTAL VOTES WITHOUT HAVING TO DO ANYTHING, BECAUSE THE "NEGOTIATORS" WILL END UP NEGOTIATING NOTHING, BUT WITH GOOD INTENTIONS THAT WILL FILL POTHOLES IN HELL....

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

a corrupt model.....

For Over 150 Years, Democratic Party Operatives Have Infiltrated, Coopted and Destroyed Independent Political Movements in the U.S.

 

By Jeremy Kuzmarov

 

When will people on the left get smart and build the wherewithal to prevent this from happening yet again?

 

William A. A. Carsey was a covert operative working for the Democratic Party in the late 19th century, who infiltrated labor organizations and other independent political groups with the goal of sabotaging them, coopting their messaging, and siphoning votes to the Democratic Party.

Mark A. Lause, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Cincinnati, has written an illuminating biography of Carsey called, Counterfeiting Labor’s Voice: William A. A. Carsey and the Shaping of American Reform Politics.

The book helps to explain the limitations of the U.S. two-party system and difficulties experienced by independent political organizers in the country.

Lause calls Carsey a “pioneer of modern astro-turfing.”

He says that Carsey foreshadowed modern-day Democratic Party covert operators who have transformed the Green Party into an “allied outrider of the Democratic Party” and set up front groups—like MoveOn.org and Brand New Congress—whose primary purpose has been to channel discontented voters into the Democratic Party.[1]

When Carsey joined the International Workingmen’s Association (IWA) in 1872-73, he tellingly functioned as an agent provocateur urging self-destructive confrontation with the police.[2] Carsey also promoted conservative platforms in other labor organizations of which he was part.[3]

Born to immigrant parents on New York’s Lower East Side in 1841, Carsey played professional baseball before serving in the Union Army in the Civil War. Afterwards, he embellished his war record, claiming to have served in General William T. Sherman’s March to the Sea.[4]

Following the end of the war, Carsey became active in union politics as a bricklayer and builder and became associated with the Democratic Party’s Tammany Hall political machine, which dominated New York City politics through patronage.

From the 1870s through the 1980s, Lause wrote, “few national gatherings of labor organizations to launch labor reform parties took place without [Carsey’s] presence.” Through the Gilded Age, Carsey served as “the most persistent and patient Democratic field operative, laboring assiduously to mislead, misdirect, and destroy efforts to sustain independent political parties.”[5]

The latter goals were achieved through restructuring the parties to make them unworkable, or by “guiding them into fusion with the Democrats or shaping them as predetermined dead-end single-shot protests.”[6]

The Gilded Age of American history was known for sweeping social inequality, exploitative working conditions, vast market fluctuations, conservative politics and elite political corruption.

Ascendant labor organizations sought to establish an independent party that would genuinely represent working class interests, as they did in other Western industrialized nations like Britain and France where viable labor and socialist parties emerged.

In the United States, however, Carsey proved to be a key figure in thwarting these efforts. The Socialist and Populist parties had some success at the turn of the 20th century but were not able to alter the conservative political structure in the U.S.

The Populist Party declined after the Democrats recruited its leader, William Jennings Bryan, and made him their candidate for president in the 1896 election while the Socialist Party faded into obscurity in the face of the repression of the First Red Scare after World War I.

 

A Political Pimp and Traitor to the Cause of Labor

Carsey’s job was particularly important coming at a time of growing labor militancy and Republican Party dominance in the aftermath of the Civil War. The Democrats at the time were associated with slavery and secession.

In 1874, Carsey launched the New York-based Industrial Political Party with Charles A. Dana, an assistant Secretary of War in the Lincoln administration and owner and editor of The New York Sun, which he had transformed into a Democratic Party organ.

The main purpose of the party was to get disaffected voters to the polls who would then vote for Democrats, since the Industrial Political Party only ran candidates for a few local offices and endorsed many Democratic Party candidates.[7]

Lause wrote that Carsey’s activities “reflected a general disposition among Democrats to coopt and defang insurgent impulses.” Carsey achieved this by “creating a labor reform party radically disconnected from working people that existed only on paper, or more accurately, in the papers.”[8]

In the late 1870s, Carsey served as a member of the governing body of the National Greenback Party where he espoused radical rhetoric but urged would-be insurgents to cast their lot with the Democratic Party in elections.[9]

Another organization that Carsey helped form, the Knights of Industry, opposed strikes and government ownership and supported jingoistic rhetoric. It was described by the Central Labor Union of New York as “the trick of a political trickster.”[10]

Periodically, Carsey would run for public office in order to “take the wind out of the sails of any possible genuine independent [candidate],” according to Lause.[11]

When testifying before a congressional committee on the labor question, he called for cutting government spending, moderate regulation that would not injure business, and ending of practices that “grind down the laboring class and employ Chinese and others, against whom American laborers could not compete, because the latter cannot live as the former do.”[12]

According to Lause, these latter comments exemplify Carsey’s effort, adopted more recently by Donald Trump and the GOP, to channel working class grievances into nativism, with Carsey raising alarm about a “swarm of foreigners driving out native laborers.”[13]

Carsey was a close ally of New York Governor David Bennett Hill (1885-1891), a Democrat who promoted moderate labor reforms but believed that “there is no place in honorable American politics for the political guerrillas who do not attach themselves to either of the great political armies.”[14]

New York City in the 1880s had no less than ten “third parties,” all of which claimed to advocate for the cause of the discontented, but were really little more than “deliberate ploys by one or the other of the major parties—or a faction thereof—to weaken the voting strength of their rival.”[15]

Lause wrote that “not only did some of them [independent political parties] hope to siphon votes from the opposition, but they also sought to multiply insurgent options in order to dissipate their impact.”[16]

In reading this, one cannot help but think of the hapless presidential campaigns of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Cornel West, Jill Stein and a bevy of other independent candidates running in the 2024 race.

In 1881, Carsey moved into the leadership of a nonpartisan anti-monopoly league whose purpose was to break up chartered corporate monopolies dominated by Republicans and replace them with new monopolies in which Democrats participated.[17]

Subsequently, he helped to form a new labor party that became preoccupied with “protective tariffs and foreigners rather than wages, working conditions, and the length of the workday.”[18]

The party made a point of criticizing the writings of Henry George, a brilliant left-winger who galvanized people with his vision of a more humane political economy. Carsey blasted George as “a crank, come from no one knows where.”[19]

A student of socialist history later recalled Carsey’s party as prone to ideological hairsplitting to such an extent that one of its main leaders “developed schizophrenia and split with himself.”[20]

With his cover blown, Carsey was denounced by members of the Socialist Labor Party (SLP) as a “fraud with no right to speak in the name of labor.”

The Knights of Labor expelled him from its 1892 convention in Omaha, Nebraska, where Knights of Labor leader Terence V. Powderly blasted him as a “traitor to the cause of labor.”[21]

The American Nonconformist and Kansas Industrial Liberator, a voice of the mid and southwestern-based Farmers Alliance, referred to Carsey as a “vulgar fraud and corrupt ruffian” who fit in well with “the political pimps and cesspool cleaners for the two old parties that oft times join the Alliance and other reform organizations for the purpose of deceiving and misleading the honest people.”[22]

Plenty of Heirs

Sadly, there were many charlatans and pimps like Carsey to take his place after he died.

Carsey’s heirs include provocateurs who infiltrated the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Black Panther Party in the 1950s and 1960s in order to coopt and destroy them, and Democratic Party operatives who have infiltrated media organizations and set up astro-turf organizations to channel leftist activism into the Party.

Since its takeover by the Clintonite “New Democrats,” the Democratic Party is increasingly beholden to corporate interests intent on gutting core New Deal programs and advancing hawkish and arch-imperialistic foreign policies.

Lause concludes that “the work of Carsey became the professions of Lee Atwater, Michael Deaver, and other” seasoned political operatives known for their skilled public relations campaigns that involve the manipulation of public opinion.

Carsey’s spirit was evident during the 2020 Democratic Party primary when the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) manufactured new political candidates who decided to drop out of the race on the eve of Super Tuesday and urged their followers to support Joe Biden against Bernie Sanders who was more progressive.

According to Lause, “the century after Carsey’s death saw growth of the mechanisms of conscious misrepresentations into the mass production of disinformation, the strategic cultivation of mistrust, an ideology of deliberate dysfunctionality and pervasive civic demoralization.”[23]

Today, the United States promotes itself as a model democracy that must lead the world in a crusade against political authoritarianism. Carsey’s career, however, shows that America is far from a model democracy. Rather, it is an oligarchy that uses hired political hitmen to undermine popular movements and sustain its predatory rule.

https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/comment/reply/51927#comment-form

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

"one of us".....

The Democratic National Convention, as the WSWS predicted, has had a totally unreal character. Since it began Monday, speaker after speaker presented a rosy picture of the United States and of this right-wing, pro-capitalist party, which is totally disconnected from reality.

One low point came with the appearance of United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain on Monday night. Fain gave fulsome praise to the Biden administration and Kamala Harris as defenders of the working class. “Harris,” he proclaimed, “is one of us.”

Who is “us?” Presumably, Fain meant for the TV audience to think he was responding to workers, but there were no workers in attendance in the hall. Instead, the crowd was packed with celebrities, businessmen, upper middle class professionals and trade union functionaries, which form the base of the Democratic Party, as well as Democratic politicians themselves.

These forces are a million miles away from and deeply hostile to the working class. This was expressed in the fact that none of them, least of all Fain, could give an honest picture of the immense social hardship facing workers, as a result of the bipartisan class war policies.

Fain played to the cameras as a spokesman for the working class, but he is not a workers’ leader. He is a bureaucrat and political operative with decades of experience bargaining away massive concessions from workers’ backs. He and the UAW bureaucracy are currently helping impose massive layoffs in the auto industry, made possible through a sellout contract rammed through with lies.

In late 2022, Fain was elected union president on a 9 percent turnout, in a federally-supervised election where hundreds of thousands of autoworkers never received ballots. This was an operation to repair the credibility of the UAW, among the most politically prominent in the US, by elevating a fake “reformer” from within the apparatus.

Fain ran against Will Lehman, a socialist autoworker running on a platform of abolishing the bureaucracy. In a union debate (see below), Fain argued that Lehman’s opposition to the bureaucracy made him unfit for office. Now, he and other officials are being investigated on corruption charges, while a judge ruled in favor of a lawsuit by Lehman over irregularities in the 2022 vote. There is growing support for new elections, overseen by workers.

On Monday night, Fain spoke in Chicago as a spokesman for the corporatist alliance between the bureaucrats, management and the government, especially the Democratic Party. This has existed for decades but has been brought to new heights under Biden, who is seeking to use the apparatus to strangle opposition from below and limit or prevent strikes.

Fain used his speech to promote the new sellout contract, which followed a “standup strike” last year designed to avoid impacting production. “Last fall we achieved life-changing gains in our strike at the Big Three,” he said. “We even won a commitment to reopen a closed plant not too far from here [Belvidere Assembly Plant].” He concluded, “We were able to do that thanks to the support of Kamala Harris and Joe Biden.”

The main “life-changing” impact of the contract is that thousands of people have lost their jobs. The union knew these layoffs were coming but kept quiet to get the deal passed.

Earlier Monday, the UAW announced a “threat” to strike over Stellantis reneging on its proposal to reopen Belvidere—which in fact, the contract allows them to do, only underscoring that the deal is not legitimate. Even in making the announcement, however, the UAW stressed that it was not “their goal” to strike.

But Fain said nothing about the 2,500 planned layoffs at Warren Truck near Detroit or the thousands of supplemental workers whom the union promised would be rolled over to full-time status and instead have been fired.

Fain’s crediting of the Biden White House for the new contract is not totally hot air, however. Biden openly backed the contract, appearing at a “back-to-work rally” alongside Fain, and opposite thousands of anti-genocide protesters. As in every major contract over the past four years, the White House has been centrally involved, with the aim of working with management and the union bureaucrats.

The UAW promises it will do “whatever is necessary at Stellantis or any other corporation to stand up and hold corporate America accountable.” But only hours before, the union bureaucracy sprang a snap contract vote on Dakkota parts workers to shut down their three-week strike, with terms identical to the proposal workers rejected earlier. The obvious purpose is to keep the parts workers isolated from Stellantis workers and others at the Big Three.

Citing empty photo-ops at the picket line, Fain declared Harris “stands shoulder to shoulder with workers when they are on strike.” In fact, the White House’s real attitude to strikes was shown in 2022, when it worked with Congress to ban a national strike by railroad workers.

The centerpiece of Fain’s speech was an attack on the billionaire Trump as a “scab.” When he unveiled this line, he theatrically removed his sweater, recalling Hulk Hogan ripping off his shirt at the Republican National Congress.

“Donald Trump did not bring back the auto industry,” Fain said. “When Donald Trump was president, auto plants closed. Trump did nothing!” Fain cited specifically the closure of GM’s Lordstown, Ohio plant, which he blamed entirely on Trump.

It takes one to know one, as the saying goes. Fain and the UAW bureaucrats are scabs: The plant closures he referred to, especially Lordstown, were all signed off by the UAW bureaucracy. As for his claim that Biden “brought jobs back to Lordstown,” this is a reference to the Ultium battery plantwhere workers make poverty wages and work 12-hour shifts. Jobs are being “brought back,” with the support of the UAW, on the basis of cheap labor.

Calling Donald Trump a “scab” actually trivializes the real danger which Trump represents. Trump is a fascist. His program is to impose “national unity” by smashing the working class and ripping up their democratic rights. He is openly discussing sending US troops to the border and to major cities in a second term and is floating plans to rule as a dictator, declaring that if he is elected, “you will never have to vote again.”

American fascism, however, would only be a first step in preparing for massive new wars, especially against China.

Fain’s description of Trump as a “scab” in keeping with the Democrats’ general downplaying of the danger he represents, referring to his campaign as “weird” instead of fascist, while their own feckless response to the January 6 coup attempt are the main reasons that he remains at large and could win a second term.

Fain and the Democrats cannot draw attention to this because the class essence of their policies are, at bottom, the same as Trump’s. Both support nationalism, attacks on democratic rights and war.

In particular, the UAW is steeped in decades of race-baiting against foreign and immigrant workers as responsible for taking American jobs. At Stellantis, Fain is promoting “America First” nationalism, demanding that “overseas executives” keep promises to “invest in America,” while ignoring layoffs by “American” executives both in the US and around the world.

Yet with consummate cynicism, Fain attacked Trump’s racism as “divide and conquer.” This is true, but Fain and the bureaucracy are doing the same thing.

To be blunt, there is little difference in substance between Fain’s speech and the one which Teamsters head Sean O’Brien gave to the Republican National Convention last month, where he accused stateless “international” elites of disloyalty to the United States. To the extent that O’Brian’s overtures to Trump have met with criticism from other union officials, they have been not for his ultra-nationalism but only his choice of venue.

What Fain’s attacks on Trump boil down to is the claim that Biden, and not Trump, is the real nationalist.

Monday’s speech showed workers the lineup of forces that they are up against. As Will Lehman wrote on Twitter/X:

Watching the Democratic and Republican conventions this summer has illustrated how rotten and bankrupt both capitalist political parties are, whether it’s Sean O’Brien endorsing Trump or Fain endorsing Harris. Harris and Trump represent different factions of the ruling class. The defense of jobs and the rights of working people requires the rank and file to take the initiative ourselves, to link across plants and fight not for what the corporations want but for what we need. Join me in this fight and build rank-and-file committees in your workplace today.

 

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/08/21/auto-a21.html

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.