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John Scales Avery announces the publication of a book, which reviews the development of engineering, from ancient times to the present. The book may be freely downloaded and circulated. This book is part of a series on cultural history.
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What Is CAA, NPR, NRC? What Is Its Impact On Indian Citizens?
by Syed Azharuddin
FAQ on CAA, NPR, NRC
Lives In Engineering
by John Scales
Avery
John Scales Avery announces the publication of a book, which reviews the development of engineering, from ancient times to the present. The book may be freely downloaded and circulated. This book is part of a series on cultural history.
Review: “One World Digital Dictatorship” by Soren Korsgaard – Digital Nightmare
by Dr Gideon Polya
Danish writer Soren Korsgaard (editor of Crime & Power) has written a very long and detailed account entitled “One World Digital Dictatorship” that describes the accelerating movement by both Western-style democracies and one-party states (notably China) towards world-wide Digital Dictatorship (Digital Imprisonment) involving mass data collection on everyone, mass surveillance, facial recognition-based tracking, crypotocurrency-based cashless societies, and
social credit-based disempowerment.
New government in Lebanon still failing to diffuse protests as many raise slogan: Revolution, Revolution
by Countercurrents Collective
More than three months of political blockade have passed since protests in Lebanon erupted. A new government has sworn-in. Still violent protests continue with call for an end to corruption, economic woes and sectarian politics. Protesters have called for a “Week of Rage”. Protesters on Tuesday chanted “Revolution, Revolution:.
PG&E: Monopoly Power and Disasters by the Rich 1%
Co-Written by Peter Phillips & Tim Ogburn
The Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) has diverted over $100 million from safety and maintenance programs to executive compensation at the same time it has
caused an average of more than one fire a day for the past six years killing over 100 people.
Co-Written by Peter Phillips & Tim Ogburn
The Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) has diverted over $100 million from safety and maintenance programs to executive compensation at the same time it has caused an average of more than one fire a day for the past six years killing over 100 people.
PG&E is the largest privately held public utility in the United States. A new research report shows that 91% of PG&E stocks are held by huge international investment management firms, including BlackRock and Vanguard Group. PG&E is an ideal investment for global capital management firms with monopoly control over five million households paying $16 billion for gas and electric in California. The California Public Utility Commission (PUC) has allowed an annual return up to 11%.
Between 2006 and the end of 2017, PG&E made $13.5 billion in net profits. Over those years, they paid nearly $10 billion in dividends to shareholders, but found little money to maintain safety on their electricity lines. Drought turned PG&E’s service area into a tinderbox at the same time money was diverted from maintenance to investor profits.
A 2013 Liberty Consulting report showed that 60% of PG&E’s power lines were at risk of failure due to obsolete equipment and 75% of the lines lacked in-line grounding. Between 2008 and 2015, the CPUC found PG&E late on thousands of repair violations. A 2012 report further revealed that PG&E illegally diverted $100 million from safety to executive compensation and bonuses over a 15-year period.
PG&E has caused over 1,500 fires in the past six years. PG&E electrical equipment has sparked more than a fire a day on average since 2014—more than 400 in 2018—including wildfires that killed more than 100 people.
In October 2017, multiple PG&E linked fires (Tubbs, Nuns, Adobe fires and more) in Northern California scorched more than 245,000 acres, destroyed or damaged more than 8,900 homes, displaced 100,000 people and killed at least 44.
In November, 2018, the PG&E caused Camp fire burned 153,336 acres, killing 86 people, and destroying 18,804 homes, business, and structures. The towns of Paradise and Concow were mostly obliterated. Overall damage was estimated at $16.5 billion.
PG&E has caused some $50 billion in damages from massive fires started by their failed power lines. They filed bankruptcy in January 2019 to try to shelter their assets. PG&E’s 529 million shares went from a high of $70 per share in in 2017 to a low of $3.55 in 2019. Shares are currently trading at $10.55 with zero returns. At this point PG&E actually owes more in damages then the net worth of the company.
All but two members of the board of director resigned in early 2019, and the CEO was replaced. A new board of directors was elected by an annual stockholders meeting in June of 2019. PG&E now has a board of directors whose primary interest in 2020 is returning PG&E stock values to $50-70 range and returning to annual dividend payments in the 8-11% rate.
The new PG&E management took widespread aggressive action during the fire-season of 2019 shutting down electric power to over 2.5 million people statewide. Nonetheless, a high voltage power line malfunctioned in Sonoma county lead to the Kincade fire that burned 77,758 acres destroying 374 structures, and forced the evacuation 190,000 Sonoma county residents. Estimated damages from this fire are $10.6 billion.
The fourteen new PG&E directors were essentially hand-picked by PG&E’s major stockholder firms like Vanguard Holdings 2019 (47.5 million shares 9.1%) and BlackRock (44.2 million shares 8.5%). A new PG&E Director, Meridee Moore, SF area founder & CEO of $2 billion Watershed Asset Management, is also a board member of BlackRock.
Only three of the new fourteen directors live in PG&E’s service area (four if we count the newly appointed CEO from Tennessee). One board member lives the LA area. The remainder of the board live outside California, including three from Texas, two from the mid-west and the remaining four from New York or east coast states. Pending PG&E Bankruptcy court approval, new directors are slated to receive $400,000 each in annual compensation.
Ten of the new 2020 directors have direct current links with capital investment management firms. The remainder have shown proven loyalty experience on behalf of capital utility investors making the entire PG&E board a solid united group of capital investment protectors, whose primary objective is to return PG&E stock values to pre-2017 highs with a 11% return on investment. They claim that wide-spread blackouts will be needed for up to ten years.
All fourteen PG&E board members are in the upper levels of the 1% richest in the world. As millionaires with elite university educations, the PG&E board holds little empathy for the millions of Californians living paycheck to paycheck burdened with some of the highest utility bills in the country. PG&E shuts off gas and electric to over 250,000 families annually for late payments.
The PG&E 2020 board is in service to transnational investment capital. This creates a perfect storm for the continuing transfer of capital from the 99% to the richest 1% in the world, all with uncertain blackouts, serious environmental damage, widespread fires, with multiple deaths and injuries.
We need to liquidate PG&E for the criminal damages it has afflicted on California. The “PG&E solution” is to manage PG&E democratically on the basis of human need, rather than private profit. It is time to take a stand for a publicly owned California Gas and Electric Company as the way to reverse the transfer of wealth to the global 1% and provide Californians with safe, low-cost and more renewable energy. All power to the people!
For the full report with all PG&E board names see: www.projectcensored.org/pge
Peter Phillips, Political Sociologist at Sonoma State University; author Giants: The Global Power Elite, (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2018); past director of Project Censored; co-author/editor of fourteen Censored yearbooks, 1997 to 2011; co-author of Impeach the President, (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2007); and winner of the Dallas Smythe Award from the Union for Democratic Communications.
Tim Ogburn, 20-year manager for the California EPA; founder and co-chair of the Environmental Industry Coalition of the United States in Washington, D.C.; published in numerous technical and trade journals regarding public/private partnerships; International Environmental Technology consultant in India, Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Egypt, and Israel; Consultant to USAID, US Department of Commerce, U.S. State Department; and has given Congressional Presentations on the environmental technology industry before Congress.
Originally published in Project Censored
Abiy Ahmed: Nobel Peace laureate who faces unrest at home
by Nizar K Visram
When the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, was in Oslo for the award ceremony, eyebrows were raised when he declined to attend any event where he would be asked questions in public. Organizers expected him to meet the international press in keeping with the Nobel tradition, but his spokeswoman cited “pressing domestic issues” and his “humble disposition.”
When the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, was in Oslo for the award ceremony, eyebrows were raised when he declined to attend any event where he would be asked questions in public. Organizers expected him to meet the international press in keeping with the Nobel tradition, but his spokeswoman cited “pressing domestic issues” and his “humble disposition.”
The secretary of the Nobel committee, Olav Njolstad, called the decision “highly problematic”, noting that a “free press and freedom of expression are essential conditions for a lasting peace in a democracy”. He said the committee would “very much have wanted Abiy to engage with the press during his stay in Oslo”.
Abiy is not the only Nobel laureate that failed to “engage with the press”. The former US president Barrack Obama also declined to meet the press when he accepted the peace prize in 2009. Perhaps they were both avoiding one pertinent question: Was the decision to award them the prize not taken prematurely and hastily?
The Norwegian Nobel Committee said Abiy Ahmed was awarded the prize for his “decisive initiative to resolve the long-running border conflict with neighbouring Eritrea.” It extolled his “efforts to achieve peace and international cooperation.”
Abiy has been lauded for “tearing down the wall” with Eritrea, thus ending two decades of hostility with the neighboring country. Two months after entering the office, he declared that he would fully accept the terms of a peace agreement with Eritrea.
He flew to Eritrea and hugged President Isaias Afwerki, launching a peace process between the two countries that went to war from 1998 to 2000. More than 80,000 people were killed and hundreds of thousands displaced during the military conflict.
The two leaders then signed a peace deal, establishing diplomatic ties, resuming communication and air travel and lifting border restrictions. Border disputes, however, are not fully resolved. Some border crossings were opened with colorful ceremonies, only to be reclosed.
Immediately after his appointment as head of ruling EPRDF party and prime minister in April 2018, Abiy launched the policy of Medemer (togetherness or inclusiveness), under which he lifted the state of emergency and put an end to the torture chambers, while firing bigwigs accused of corruption
Abiy also lifted a ban on political parties, released thousands of political prisoners, including journalists and bloggers, and unblocked more than 260 blogs. He also opened the door to exiled political activists, while enacting amnesty laws, repealing repressive NGO and media acts. Ethiopia jumped 40 places in the 2019 World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders.
Abiy also appointed a gender-balanced cabinet, with 50 percent of women ministers, woman chairperson of the National Election Board, woman head of federal Supreme Court, and the first woman head of state in the country’s modern history. He appointed a peace and reconciliation commission to deal with past abuses.
Amnesty International acknowledged the reforms undertaken by Abiy’s government but called upon the prime minister to revise the country’s anti-terrorism law to avoid rolling back progress made since he took office.
“The use of Ethiopia’s anti-terrorism proclamation to arbitrarily arrest journalists is completely out of step with reforms witnessed in the country,” Seif Magango, Amnesty’s deputy director for East Africa, said. “This law must be revised to align with international standards and must no longer be used to harass journalists.”
Abiy Ahmed inherited a state that controlled the “commanding heights” of the economy under the “development model” championed by former prime minister, Meles Zenawi. He backed away from Zenawi’s model, leaving the doors open to the Wall Street and its financial institutions.
Within no time, Abiy fell into “chronic foreign currency shortage,” and he resorted to loans and grants from the West and rulers of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirate and Qatar. Soon after Abiy became prime minister he signed a deal for $3 billion with the United Arab Emirate, to “strengthen military cooperation”.
In October 2018, the World Bank approved a total of $1.2 billion for what they call structural adjustment. National Bank of Ethiopia’s Governor, Yinager Dessie said: “They have given us some objectives that have to be met every year for another $1 billion, as the government follows through on its commitment to economic reforms.”
Such funding often goes into unproductive expenditures, saddling the country with audios debt, austerity measures and further IMF and World Bank incursion. This way the country becomes beholden to the global conglomerates.
It wasn’t a bolt from the blue, therefore, when Ethiopians learnt that Abiy was planning a multibillion dollar privatisation of major public enterprises such as Ethio Telecom, Ethiopian Electric, Ethiopian Airlines, and Ethiopian Shipping & Logistics Services Enterprise.
Arrangements are reportedly being made to sell off a 49 per cent stake in Ethio Telecom, the largest telecoms company in Africa, with customer base of 65 million subscribers, and over 22,000 employees. Its annual operating income is $103 mill, with net income of $ 46 mill. The Shipping Enterprise has annual revenue of $ 484 mill.
One state-owned corporation earmarked for privatization is Ethiopian Airlines, the national flag carrier that was launched in 1946 when most of the African nations were under the colonial yoke. Today, its success is taken as a symbol of Ethiopia’s strength. It has a profit of $ 110 mill and revenue of $ 1.5 bill.
It is the largest national airline in Africa and amongst the highly successful public enterprises globally. It is arguably Ethiopia’s most profitable and well-managed public undertaking, with some 110 modern aircraft and over 100 world destinations. Not surprisingly, the airline has clinched several regional and international honours.
Abiy’s policy is divestment of such national treasure, while liberalizing labor law. He is also expected to hand over industrial, tourism, agricultural and mineral sectors. Ethiopia has rich mineral deposits, especially gold whose extraction is contracted to companies from the West and Saudi Arabia.
Besides gold, there are also deposits of platinum, copper, potash, natural gas and tantalum, a corrosion resistant mineral used in electronic components. Other minerals include niobium, cement, salt, gypsum, clay, shale, and soda ash. Not unexpectedly, therefore, foreign firms have their eyes on Ethiopia.
In fact, the US trade delegations are reportedly ready to pounce on the profitable state-owned airline. At the same time, the German development minister complained that his country should not lay back and watch the US and China “take hold of Africa.” German president and industrialists have already visited Addis Ababa to sign a memorandum of understanding between the Volkswagen Group and the Ethiopian Investment Commission.
At the 2019 World Economic Forum in Davos, Abiy declared his commitment to the neoliberal model. He reaffirmed this in an interview with the Financial Times. The international elites and corporate media have hailed Abiy’s rise to power and his reforms as the dawn of a new era of “freedom and prosperity” for Ethiopia.
Foreign investors have pledged to provide $500 million for two industrial parks, on condition that Ethiopian government reserves a third of the projected 100,000 jobs for refugees. This was approved by Abiy in January 2019, thus supplying refugees to work in the foreign owned enterprises. A local neo-liberal newspaper justified this model by saying: “The one prime opportunity Ethiopia can offer investors is low-cost labor. Taking that away will just drive investment elsewhere”
Thus, the country has the Pizza Hut, where a pizza sells for about US$15, in a society where millions barely survive on less than US$1 per day, while ten tycoons own $25 billion.
Reaping super profit on cheap labor is described as “prime opportunity for investors”. The International Trade Unions Confederation (ITUC) denounced such super exploitation of labor in Ethiopia.
One official “justification” for the rush to sell the assets is that the country may use the proceeds to pay off government-guaranteed debts issued by lenders. Thus, selling sugar factories and the country’s telecommunications monopoly would enable the government to recapitalize state-owned enterprises so they can repay borrowings. This was said by the National Bank Governor.
And head of the National Planning and Development Commission, Fitsum Assefa, said: “With liberalization and privatization, definitely some money will be raised and that will definitely be used to repay the banks – such a move will also help the liquidity”
Abiy Ahmed was appointed prime minister after people revolted against his predecessor. Yet, his own term has not been entirely peaceful. The country has been haunted by ethnic and regional conflicts which have claimed hundreds of lives and seen 3.5 million people displaced since 2015. Since Abiy came to power such conflicts have been on the rise.
According to the Human Rights Watch (HRW), 1.4 million people were displaced in the first half of 2018. That is a global record, the rights group observed. According to the UN report, over two million were displaced, while hundreds were killed.
During protests that erupted in October 2019, Abiy’s spokesperson put the death toll at over 78, with 409 people detained. The dead included 50 from the Oromo ethnic group, the country’s largest, while 20 were from the Amhara group, the second largest. Five of the dead were police officers. This was conceivably the most serious crisis during Abiy’s term in office so far
Ethnic-based unrests that erupted end of 2019 took religious form. Thousands of Muslims across Ethiopia protested the burning of four mosques in the Amhara region. The December 20 attacks in Motta town, more than 350 kilometers north of Addis Ababa, also targeted Muslim-owned businesses.
Amhara regional officials said they arrested 15 suspects in connection with the attacks. Police commander Jemal Mekonnen told state media the attacks appeared to be triggered by news of a fire that broke out in an Orthodox church a few days earlier.
Ethnic nationalism now stands in the way of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s reforms. He himself reportedly survived an assassination attempt, while his new book on Medemer was burnt by protesters in eastern Ethiopia. While he was attending Russian-African summit in Sochi, his home was torched
Ethiopian prosecutors have charged five suspects with an attempt to kill Prime Minister Abiy in a grenade attack at a rally in June 2019. The attack killed two people and injured more than 100.
Meanwhile, Abiy is facing mounting criticism from people who accuse him of stifling the press, and issuing the controversial Anti-Terrorism Proclamation, which they say is aimed at repressing dissidents. Amnesty International has cautioned that Ethiopia’s ethnic, linguistic and religious divergences “threaten instability and further human rights abuses”.
Abiy himself admitted that what began as protests against his government has quickly taken ethnic and religious dimension.
(Nizar Visram is Tanzanian writer and commentator. He can be contacted at nizar1941@gmail.com )
On 124th Birth Anniversary Of Subhash Chandra Bose, How Hindutva Gang Back-Stabbed Netaji
by Shamsul Islam
RSS-BJP rulers of India have been trying to show off as great fan of Netaji. But Indians
must know what role ideological parents of today’s RSS/BJP played against Netaji and INA. Hindu Mahasabha and RSS which always had prominent lawyers on their rolls made no attempt to defend the INA accused at Red Fort trials.
Adivasis and Indigenous People in India Condemn the Decision of Adani and Australian Governments on Mining and Displacement
Press Release
We the following Adivasi organisations in India unanimously condemn the decision of the Queensland government to extinguish title of over 1385 hectares in Wangan and Jalingou country in Australia for the proposed Adani coal mine in Queensland’s Galilee Basin. We are shocked to understand that such a decision affecting the indigenous people of Australia was made without even any public announcement.
We the following Adivasi organisations in India unanimously condemn the decision of the Queensland government to extinguish title of over 1385 hectares in Wangan and Jalingou country in Australia for the proposed Adani coal mine in Queensland’s Galilee Basin. We are shocked to understand that such a decision affecting the indigenous people of Australia was made without even any public announcement. We note with great pain that an Indian industrialist is responsible for threatening the lives of indigenous people in Australia, removing them from their own traditional lands, for which they had enjoyed their community rights for generations. With Adani stepping into their territories, these indigenous people will become trespassers to their own lands, restricting their involvement even the basic rituals for their ancestors.
What is extremely repulsive is to note that without the subsidies of 4.4 billion dollars from the Australian governments for Adani’s project, the project would become unviable. The Central and State Governments in India are also following the same model. The model is: `Support the rich with money that belongs to people and wipe out the poor’. This model of development economics needs much more sharper public criticism and scrutiny.
We hereby express our heartfelt solidarity to the struggle carried out by the Wangan & Jalingou Council leader Adrian Burragubba and other representatives of the indigenous people in this region. We call upon all organisations of indigenous all over the world to express their solidarity and support to the indigenous people struggling for their basic rights in Australia. Adivasis and indigenous people all over the world is facing such invasions into their lands, causing displacement, human rights violations and environmental destruction. While coordinating the solidarity concerns of adivasis in India on this issue, the India Greens Party (IGP) has called for international solidarity of all like-minded individuals and organisations to generate pressure on Adani and the Australian governments to withdraw their decision causing great harm to environment and indigenous people. The question `Development for whom and at whose cost’ is becoming more and more grave issue, especially when the governments and corporates behave in an utterly irresponsible manner, without the basic concern for the earth, its inhabitants and its environment, said the representatives of the India Greens Party (IGP). The party has also asked for wider dissemination of these issues among all sections of people who are concerned about the future of healthy planet.
1) All India Adivasi Mahasabha
2) National Adivasi Andolan
3) All India Union of Forest Working People
4) Jharkhand Jungle Bachao Andolan, Jharkhand
5) Rajya Moola Adivasi Vedike Karnataka
6) Eruliga Aranyavasi Kshemabrivridhi Sanga, Kanakapura, Karnataka
7) Soliga Abhivraddi Sangha, Chamarajanagar.
8) Jilla Budakattu Krishikara Sangha, Chickkamangalore.
9) Adivasi Art
10) Anti-Jindal & Anti-POSCO Movement, Odisha
11) Budakattu Krishikara Sangha Kodagu.
12) Budakattu Krishikara Sangha ,Periyapatana, Mysore District,
13) Tamilaga Adivasi Amaippukalin Kootamaippu (TAAK)
14) Jharkhand Jungle Bachav Andolan, Jharkhand
15) Jharkhand Indigenous peoples Forum, Jharkhand.
16) Odisha Paramparik Krushak Sangathan (OPKS), Odisha
17) Anamalai Adivasi Movement, Tamil Nadu
