Climate warming greenhouse gas reaches 400 parts per million for the first time in human history

The Guardian Friday 10 May 2013

 For the first time in human history, the concentration of climate-warming carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has passed the milestone level of 400 parts per million (ppm). The last time so much greenhouse gas was in the air was several million years ago, when the Arctic was ice-free, savannah spread across the Sahara desert and sea level was up to 40 metres higher than today.

These conditions are expected to return in time, with devastating consequences for civilisation, unless emissions of CO2 from the burning of coal, gas and oil are rapidly curtailed. But despite increasingly severe warnings from scientists and a major economic recession, global emissions have continued to soar unchecked….

But the extreme speed at which CO2 in now rising – perhaps 75 times faster than in pre-industrial time – has never been seen in geological records and some effects of climate change are already being seen, with extreme heatwaves and flooding now more likely. Recent wet and cold summer weather in Europe has been linked to changes in the high level jetstream winds, in turn linked to the rapidly melting sea ice in the Arctic, which shrank to its lowest recorded level in September.

“We are creating a prehistoric climate in which human societies will face huge and potentially catastrophic risks,” said Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics. “Only by urgently reducing global emissions will we be able to avoid the full consequences of turning back the climate clock by 3 million years.”

† Criminal InJustice is a weekly series devoted to taking action against inequities in the U.S. criminal justice system. Nancy A. Heitzeg, Professor of Sociology and Race/Ethnicity, is the Editor of CI. Kay Whitlock, co-author of Queer (In)Justice, is contributing editor of CI. Criminal Injustice is published every Wednesday at 6 pm.

CI: Desperately Seeking Assata

by Kay Whitlock

Why Assata Shakur?  Why now, of all times?

Last week, on May 2, 2013, 40 years to the day after a shootout in which Assata Shakur, a well-known Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army activist, was shot twice, and a fellow activist and a New Jersey state trooper were killed, the FBI announced that Shakur, whose original name was Joanne Chesimard, was the first woman to be placed on the agency’s Most Wanted Terrorists list.  (It’s worth taking a look at the makeup of the list; notice anything about it?)

At the same time, the New Jersey state police and the FBI doubled – from $1 million to $2 million – the reward offered for Shakur’s capture.   As it happens, she escaped from prison in 1979 – an embarrassing development which law enforcement still cannot coherently explain today – and made her way to Cuba, where she sought and received political asylum.

Why on earth would law enforcement dredge up a 40-year old case and enshrine it in the annals of Most Wanted Terrorists?  Welcome to the surreal world of Racist Criminalization.

There’s a lot about the way the police targeted her for the trooper killing that never made a shred of sense in terms of the official story – including the fact that medical experts testified that her injuries were so severe that she could not have fired the fatal shot.  (Disclosure: I don’t believe she was guilty, and I remember how the case played out in the day.)  Assata Shakur was simply the Designated Dangerous Black Radical of the moment.

And through COINTELPRO (Counterintelligence Program), the FBI was then utilizing legal and illegal means to disrupt and discredit anti-war organizing and movements for social justice and liberation.

Black leaders and organizations – from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to the leadership of the Black Panther Party – were among those most heavily targeted.  If you were politically active during that time – and I was – then you know that actual guilt for actions charged was not remotely necessary for the hunt to assemble and the racist, criminalizing din to take over.

But this isn’t a column about what happened in that case, although that deserves to be known.  You can read about Shakur here and in her autobiography and latest book.  Listen to her voice.  It’s important to know that before she was finally convicted of several felonies related to the shootout, including killing NJ state trooper Werner Foerster, Shakur was indicted in six other criminal incidents that included murder, attempted murder, armed bank robbery, and kidnapping.  Three of those charges were dismissed, and the remaining three resulted in Shakur’s acquittal.   But law enforcement was out to get her, and, for a while, they did.

And now they’re trying again.

This is a brief glance into the bleak, racist mythos surrounding U.S. law enforcement conceptions of terror.

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† Criminal InJustice is a weekly series devoted to taking action against inequities in the U.S. criminal justice system. Nancy A. Heitzeg, Professor of Sociology and Race/Ethnicity, is the Editor of CI. Kay Whitlock, co-author of Queer (In)Justice, is contributing editor of CI. Criminal Injustice is published every Wednesday at 6 pm.

Still Starving for Justice
by nancy a heitzeg

In the face of unrelenting repression and no sign of relief, refusal becomes the last refuge of prisoners. Prisoner hunger strikes proliferate again, at Guantanamo, Pelican Bay and Wallens Ridge State Prison in Virginia.

Defying the Tomb.

The Green Diamond Eat The Red Diamond Die,
Robert Indiana, 1962

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† Criminal InJustice is a weekly series devoted to taking action against inequities in the U.S. criminal justice system. Nancy A. Heitzeg, Professor of Sociology and Race/Ethnicity, is the Editor of CI. Kay Whitlock, co-author of Queer (In)Justice, is contributing editor of CI. Criminal Injustice is published every Wednesday at 6 pm.

Four Score and One Too Many Years
by International Coalition to Free the Angola 3/Angola 3 News

Today, April 17, 2013, marks 41 years that Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace have been unjustly incarcerated in solitary confinement in Louisiana. This is 41 years of living in concrete and metal cages of 6 x 9 feet; 41 years of being separated from their families and loved ones; 41 years of being wrongly accused of a murder they did not commit.

Over 41 years ago, prison officials at the Louisiana State Penitentiary (aka ‘Angola’), an 18,000-acre former slave plantation, were first confronted by the Angola 3′s challenge to the obscene human rights atrocities that were a daily reality for prisoners there. They responded to these efforts by fabricating a case against Albert and Herman for the tragic murder of prison guard Brent Miller in 1972. Shortly thereafter, when Robert King entered Angola, he was ensnared in the aftermath of that murder and joined Herman and Albert in solitary.

Art by Emory Douglas

Although the flame for justice for the Angola 3 continues to burn bright these many decades later, words cannot express the profound rage and frustration we feel commemorating one more year of Herman and Albert’s confinement. But we will not lose hope or forget how much we have already accomplished and just how close we are to winning both Herman and Albert’s release. Solitary confinement’s daily assault on Herman and Albert’s mind, body and spirit has not been able to deter them. Inspired by their heroic resilience on the frontlines of the struggle, we too, will never give up our fight for their release.

Continuing this fight for Albert, Herman and all prisoners, today we are launching an action to kick-start the call for a State Congressional Hearing to end the use of prolonged solitary confinement in Louisiana. Our friends at The National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT) have enabled this through their campaign calling “upon state legislators and departments of corrections to begin now to take steps to end prolonged solitary confinement” in all 50 states and the federal prison system.

We need only 500 people within a particular state to sign the statement and NRCAT will send these endorsements to that state’s governor, top corrections officials, and every member of that state’s legislature. When we hit 1,000 signatures they will do the same again. PLEASE spread the word to help us achieve our petition goal for Louisiana and in states across the country. Please sign this now.

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Factory Fire Kills More Than 100 People in Bangladesh, New York Times:

MUMBAI — More than 100 people died Saturday and Sunday in a fire at a garment factory outside Dhaka, Bangladesh, in one of the worst industrial tragedies in that country…

Bangladesh’s garment industry, the second largest exporter of clothing after China, has a notoriously poor record of fire safety. Since 2006, more than 500 Bangladeshi workers have died in garment factory fires, according to Clean Clothes Campaign, an anti-sweatshop advocacy group based in Amsterdam. Experts say many of the fires could have been easily avoided if the factories had taken the right precautions. Many factories are in cramped neighborhoods, have too few fire escapes and widely flout safety measures. The industry employs more than three million workers in Bangladesh, mostly women.

Activists say that global clothing brands need to take responsibility for working conditions in Bangladeshi factories that produce the clothes that they sell …

Bangladesh exports about $18 billion worth of garments and is a big supplier to companies like Walmart, H&M and Tommy Hilfiger. Workers in the country’s factories are among the lowest-paid in the world with entry-level workers making a government-mandated minimum wage of about $37 a month.

Black Friday Wal*Mart Strike:

In 100 cities across 46 states Thursday and Friday, the protesters were likely to be met by honks and fist pumps from cars as they waved signs and chanted outside Walmart stores. At the Walmart in Paramount, Calif., near Los Angeles, about 600 protesters, including an estimated 100 Walmart workers, turned out Friday morning. In Hanover, Md., 400 store employees, union workers, activists and other supporters showed up at a Walmart Supercenter Friday…

OUR Walmart, the worker organization that is coordinating the protests backed by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, contests Walmart’s estimates. Nationwide, there have been more than 1,000 individual actions and strikes so far, which is in line with what OUR Walmart projected, according to Dan Schlademan, director of the union’s Making Change at Walmart campaign.

On a conference call Friday, Schlademan said his organization does not yet have a precise count of the number of workers who walked off, as the strikes are ongoing. There have been “hundreds” of workers and “thousands” of supporters so far, he said.

Remembering the 1911 Triangle Factory Fire:

The fire at the Triangle Waist Company in New York City, which claimed the lives of 146 young immigrant workers, is one of the worst disasters since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

This incident has had great significance to this day because it highlights the inhumane working conditions to which industrial workers can be subjected. To many, its horrors epitomize the extremes of industrialism.

The tragedy still dwells in the collective memory of the nation and of the international labor movement. The victims of the tragedy are still celebrated as martyrs at the hands of industrial greed.

GOVERNOR ROMNEY: Our Navy is smaller now than anytime since 1917. The Navy said they need 313 ships to carry out their mission. We are now down to 285. We are headed to the low 200’s if we go through a Sequestration that is unacceptable to me. I want to make sure we have the ships required by our Navy. Our Air Force is older and smaller than anytime since it was founded in 1947. We have changed for the first time since FDR. Since FDR we have always had the strategy of saying we can fight in two conflicts at once. Now we’re changing to one conflict. Look, this in my view is the highest responsibility of the President of the United States which is to maintain the safety of the American people, and I will not cut our military budget by a trillion dollars, which is the combination of the budget cuts the President has as well as the sequestration cuts. That in my view is making our future less certain and less secure. 



PRESIDENT OBAMA: Bob, I need to comment on this. First of all this sequester is not something I proposed, it is something Congress proposed. It will not happen. The budget we’re talking about is not reducing our military spending, it’s maintaining it, but I think Governor Romney maybe hasn’t spent enough time looking at how our military works. You mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets because the nature of our military has changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers where planes land on them, we have these ships that go under water, nuclear submarines, and so the question is not a game of battleship where we’re counting ships, it’s what are our capabilities. And so when I sit down with the Secretary of the Navy and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, we determine how are we going to be best able to meet all of our defense needs in a way that also keeps faith in our troops that also makes sure that our veterans have the kind of support that they need when they come home, and that is not reflected in the kind of budget that you’re putting forward because it just doesn’t work. We visited the web site quite a bit, and it still doesn’t work.

You can watch the entire final foreign policy presidential debate here.

If you don’t have access to television or you’re held up somewhere this evening, you can watch the final presidential debate tonight on CMP, either on your laptop or on your smartphone (CMP is now smartphone friendly).

This is the third and last debate of three and will focus on foreign policy. Election day is November 6, 2012.

The format calls for six 15-minute time segments, each of which will focus on the following topics:

• America’s role in the world
• Our longest war – Afghanistan and Pakistan
• Red Lines – Israel and Iran
• The Changing Middle East and the New Face of Terrorism – I
• The Changing Middle East and the New Face of Terrorism – II
• The Rise of China and Tomorrow’s World.

The moderator will open each segment with a question. Each candidate will have two minutes to respond. Following the candidates’ responses, the moderator will use the balance of the 15-minute segment to facilitate a discussion on the topic.

From ThinkProgress:

Mitt Romney’s campaign announced a “Military Advisory Council” of retired military officers who support his candidacy for president. “While many of those on the Council are clearly decorated veterans,” boldprogressive.org’s Zaid Jilani observes, “one curious aspect of the list is how many of these military figures left the government only to become highly paid consultants and board members to major weapons makers.” Romney plans on increasing military spending by more than $2 trillion should he become president (without any plan to pay for it) and perhaps Romney’s new supporters plan on cashing in. Jilani lists some members of Romney’s council and their defense industry affiliations here.