The Hudak Report 11/25/24
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News From the Weekend
Australia: The Australian government has withdrawn a bill that would have fined online platforms up to 5 percent of their global revenue if they failed to stop the spread of misinformation.
The bill, which was backed by the Labor government, would have allowed the Australian Communications and Media Authority to create enforceable rules around misinformation on digital platforms.
COP29: They say it is taboo to talk about money. But this is exactly what developing countries came for: to haggle and push for the climate finance deal of a lifetime, as the climate crisis is, for them, a matter of life and death. Wealthy nations also came for their own deal of a lifetime—to hoist the climate finance burden on the private sector as they take the bare minimum financial responsibility.
A finance COP was always going to be difficult as, although they can pay, they simply will not pay. Mere hours before the expected final text of the “Host Country” Agreement to be signed between the Government of Azerbaijan and the Secretariat of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the COP29 presidency released a draft text proposing that the new collective quantified goal (NCQG) on climate finance would be USD 250 billion.
Developing world wanted USD 1.3 trillion. The offer sparked outrage from the Global South, silent Baku protests, and threats of boycott as “no deal was better than a bad deal.”
(Read more at Inter Press Service)
England: Millions of people will see their household energy bills rise again this winter after the Ofgem regulator announced a new “price cap” this week.
The further 1.2 percent hike means the average household will now see their annual bill rise to a staggering £1,738. Ofgem had already raised its price cap by 10 percent in October.
The new rise will come into effect during the coldest months of winter and at a time when Labour has stripped the Winter Fuel Allowance from millions of pensioners. Spiralling energy bills are already crushing many working class people.
(Read more at Socialist Worker)
Israel: Israel’s yearlong crackdown against Palestinian citizens who speak out against the war in Gaza is prompting many to self-censor out of fear of being jailed and further marginalized in society, while some still find ways to dissent — carefully.
Ahmed Khalefa’s life turned upside down after he was charged with inciting terrorism for chanting in solidarity with Gaza at an anti-war protest in October 2023.
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Khalefa is one of more than 400 Palestinian citizens of Israel who, since the start of the war in Gaza, have been investigated by police for “incitement to terrorism” or “incitement to violence,” according to Adalah, a legal rights group for minorities. More than half of those investigated were also criminally charged or detained, Adalah said.
(Read more at Associated Press)
Israeli Government: Israel’s new defense minister has said security forces would no longer apply administrative detention orders to Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank, and thus only Palestinian suspects can be held indefinitely without trial.
The changes in the controversial policy are the latest example of an emboldened Israeli far-right, and come in the shadow of the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, and the election of President-elect Donald Trump.
Ottawa: The federal government did not meet the targets for its program to plant two billion trees during the program's third planting season.
Numbers provided by Natural Resources Canada show Ottawa did not meet its annual planting and spending targets for the 2023-24 growing season.
Ottawa and its partners were supposed to plant 60 million trees last season but only got 46.6 million saplings in the ground.
Pakistan: Following the government’s efforts to ease tensions in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Kurram District, a seven-day ceasefire was agreed between two warring tribes in the region on Sunday.
The ceasefire comes after the KP government decided to constitute a high-powered commission to settle land disputes between the tribes in the Kurram district as the death toll from recent violence reached 64.
Quebec: The federal government will give Makivvik Corp. $45 million as part of its apology for what it called the “unjustified killing” of sled dogs in Nunavik in the 1950s and 1960s.
Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Gary Anandasangaree was in Kangiqsujuaq on Saturday, where he delivered a formal apology on behalf of the federal government.
“Today, the Government of Canada accepted responsibility for its role in a terrible historic injustice and expressed its deep regret and sincere apology for the harms inflicted by the slaughter of qimmiit in Nunavik,” Anandasangaree was quoted as saying in a government news release issued after the apology ceremony began at the Kangiqsujuaq community centre.
More than 1,000 dogs were fatally shot by employees of the Hudson’s Bay Co., and other authorities in the mid-1950s and late 1960s, according to Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the national organization representing Inuit in Canada.
Spain: For more than a year before the floods, Valencia had been suffering the other extreme of climate change: drought. The two phenomena are connected – the months of hot weather raised the temperature of the sea and the humidity in the air, resulting in sudden and intense downpours. A year’s worth of rain fell in just 24 hours in some parts of Valencia.
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But while Garriga and other Catalans have been suffering water shortages in recent years, there’s one group of people that appears to be immune, and even profits from them: the multinational companies extracting millions of litres of water from the very same land. This isn’t just a Spanish issue – across the world, from Uruguay to Mexico, Canada to the UK, many have begun to question whether private corporations should be allowed to siphon off a vital public resource, then sell it back to citizens as bottled water.
USPS: Notices went out to 130,000 rural carriers this week that they may be invoiced for “overpayment,” supposedly due to mail volume data from the last 52 weeks having been incorrectly credited where territorial route adjustments were made.
In a video presentation, National Rural Letter Carriers Association (NRLCA) President Don Maston explained to workers that the new Rural Route Evaluated Compensation System (RRECS) with the United States Postal Service (USPS), which the union agreed to behind workers’ backs without a vote, holds workers financially responsible for mis-adjusted mail volume data when routes were redistributed during the last evaluation in October.
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The claim that rural carriers have been “overpaid” only serves as salt in their wounds. The massively unpopular RRECS is essentially a system for industrial-scale wage theft. Since it was introduced, two-thirds of letter carriers have seen their pay, which is based on piece-rate estimations of the workload of their routes, cut, in many cases by $10, or even $20,000 per year.
(Read more at World Socialist Web Site)
What I’m Reading
The IMF and the World Bank must be abolished to save the planet
The New York Times Attacks Tulsi Gabbard for the Wrong Reasons
Queer Farmers Are Working to Transform Our Food Systems — and Paying a Price
