Far-Left ‘Agents Of Change’ Armed With Crowbars Sabotage F-35 Parts Factory In UK
UK-based anti-Israel organization Palestine Action sent several of its far-left radical members to attack the Teledyne CML Composites factory in Bromborough, UK, which it claims supplies critical parts for F-35 stealth fighters.
Palestine Action’s X account posted a viral video on Tuesday showing its ‘Actionists’ – or ‘agents of change’ – conducting a rooftop entry into the factory, breaking through the ceiling panels, and comprising what the group claims is a ‘clean room’ for F-35 jet part production.
“According to a senior Teledyne manager, contamination of their clean rooms could stop production for up to 12 months. Actionists just got through to the clean room for Israel’s F-35 fighter jet parts,” Palestine Action said.
According to a senior Teledyne manager, contamination of their clean rooms could stop production for up to 12 months.
Actionists just got through to the clean room for Israel’s F-35 fighter jet parts. pic.twitter.com/wnd4a7U4BG
BBC News also confirmed the incident involving Palestine Action at the Teledyne factory in the UK:
Three people were arrested when a factory in Wirral was targeted by pro-Palestine activists for the second time in three months.
The Palestine Action campaign group claimed responsibility for the protest at Teledyne CML Composites in Bromborough, which it claims supplies parts for Israeli warplanes.
Merseyside Police said it was called to the site on Tebay Road at 06:05 BST after reports of three people climbing on the roof and causing damage.
The force said two people had gained access to the factory via the roof and were detained inside.
According to InfluenceWatch, Palestine Action also has a US-based branch with the goal of “dismantling the ability for the Israeli state to carry out its foreign policy objectives by obstructing the facilities that produce arms for Israel.”
The Washington Free Beacon reported in 2023 that James “Fergie” Chambers, heir to the Cox Enterprises family fortune, had been funding the US-based branch of the radical far-left group.
On X, Xi Van Fleet, a survivor of the communist rule of ex-Chinese leader Mao Zedong, noted Fergie is a “devoted Communist.”
Fergie Chambers is the heir to the Cox Media empire. He is also a devoted Communist and a fan of Mao (see tattoo on his thigh). He is spending his fortune from capitalism on a proletariat Revolution to overthrow capitalism.
Palestine Action is supported by the Action Network, an open platform that empowers progressive causes, such as Communism.
Not surprising.
Action Network provides support for another Marxist group, Black Lives Matter. The group takes positions many Americans would find very controversial, like its view of the nuclear family, stating: “We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages.'”
Many of the far-left progressives are cut from Marxist cloth and serve as agents of change to usher in Marxism, followed by Communism. To get there, they believe the West must collapse. Think about it: woke, illegal alien invasion, endless foreign wars, rampant inflation, fentanyl crisis, skyrocketing federal debt, out-of-control violent crime, and the list goes on and on … maybe the disaster is no longer on the horizon; it’s already arrived.
Migrants Enrich UK With Massive 51% Surge In HIV Cases To 15-Year High
Though “Diversity is Our Strength” is a cornerstone mantra of woke leftist ideology, it’s been steadily crumbling as people across the West observe the many real-world downsides of uncontrolled migration. Health officials in the United Kingdom have just hit that cornerstone with another sledgehammer, reporting that HIV cases in the UK soared by 51% last year to a 15-year high.
According to a new report from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), the UK counted just over 6,000 new cases in 2023. Notably, for the first time, more than half of them (53%) were attributed to people who were originally diagnosed outside the UK. Of that set, 75% of the carriers are African. The migrants are also spreading the disease amongst each other after arriving — 253 diagnoses were attributed to people who’d been in England less than two years.
“The rise in HIV testing together with a higher and sustained positivity in black African heterosexuals may be suggestive of ongoing transmission. However, this number could also be affected by changing patterns of migration with a recent rise in people diagnosed with HIV abroad arriving in England.” – UKHSA
The sudden surge in HIV cases may have doomed health agencies’ goal to achieve zero HIV transmission in the UK by 2030.
However, rather than reasonably calling for the government to pump the brakes on immigration, public health types are instead reflexively spouting Marxist blather — such as National Aids Trust chief executive Robbie Currie, who told the Telegraph that “the latest published HIV data in England shows clearly that a continuing lack of equity and equality is standing in the way of people being able to live well with HIV.”
Similarly, Terrence Higgins Trust chief Richard Angell said “Today’s new figures show people from ethnic minorities face an increasing burden of HIV, with rising diagnoses and worse health outcomes than the population as a whole.”
In addition to compounding the peril of the disease, the surge in the UK’s HIV-positive population also represents a public financial burden in a country with a socialized medicine scheme that’s already under stress. The lifetime cost of managing an HIV patient in the UK has been varyingly estimated to be between £73,000 and £404,000.
The United Nations and its member governments, with strong support from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), adopted a landmark agreement last week to bestow the U.N. with more power and influence in global affairs.
The controversial agreement, known as the Pact for the Future, outlines 56 actions for governments and international institutions to take over the coming years.
Among the key provisions is “transforming global governance” and further empowering international institutions across a range of issues, including “sustainable development and financing for development,” as well as “science, technology and innovation, and digital cooperation.”
The pact includes a Global Digital Compact to restrict “misinformation” and “disinformation” and a Declaration on Future Generations that encompasses the 2030 Agenda climate goals that include the phase-out of fossil fuels.
It is also part of transforming the U.N. into what the organization is touting in promotional materials as “U.N. 2.0.”
U.N. leaders and top officials from the CCP celebrated the pact as a historic effort to create a better future for humanity and increase global cooperation on international problems.
“We can’t create a future fit for our grandchildren with systems built for our grandparents,” U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said.
Despite opposition from various quarters, the 193-member body adopted the pact by consensus on Sept. 22 at the Summit of the Future during the U.N. General Assembly after about nine months of negotiations.
In the days before the pact was adopted, a coalition of U.S. lawmakers and grassroots leaders held a press conference on Capitol Hill criticizing the agreement as an effort to undermine national sovereignty and freedom.
“We can’t give up any more of our sovereignty, any more of our geopolitical integrity, or any more of our economic integrity to foreign actors who have no concerns for the United States of America other than to take our power and money away,” said Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), former leader of the House Freedom Caucus.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Mike McCaul (R-Texas) told The Epoch Times that the pact ignores the “malign influence of the CCP” within the global organization.
McCaul said that although the pact isn’t legally binding, “this 66-page pact is limitless in scope.”
“It calls for dramatically increased public spending and vague action on countless left-wing priorities,” he said.
“The pact also completely ignores the most urgent issues facing the U.N. today, like reforming UNRWA and combating malign CCP influence. It does nothing to advance U.S. interests.”
The CCP, which plays an increasingly powerful role within the U.N., boasted about its significant role in developing the pact.
Speaking at U.N. headquarters, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi described the pact as an effort to “galvanize” the U.N.’s “collective efforts for world peace and development and to map out the future of humanity.”
Wang talked about advancing “global governance.”
On the other side, the Argentine government officially distanced itself from the pact and the U.N. in general.
“Argentina wants the freedom to develop itself, without being subjected to the undue weight of decisions that are alien to our goals,” said Argentine Foreign Minister Diana Mondino, noting that Argentinian authorities are pursuing a policy of freedom.
President Javier Milei, in his address to the U.N. General Assembly, called the organization a “multi-tentacled Leviathan that seeks to decide what each nation state should do and how the citizens of the world should live.”
Milei also criticized the global organization’s central role in prescribing what he called “crimes against humanity” in responding to the China-originated coronavirus.
He called the U.N. 2030 Agenda, which features prominently in the pact, a “supranational program of a socialist nature.”
The new pact makes repeated commitments to expedite the implementation of the U.N. 2030 Agenda, also known as the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
“We will urgently accelerate progress towards achieving the Goals, including through concrete political steps and mobilizing significant additional financing from all sources for sustainable development,” the pact reads.
The Sustainable Development Goals, which U.N. leaders described as the “master plan for humanity” when they were adopted in 2015, encompass everything from education and agriculture to health care and the environment.
After they were adopted, CCP-owned propaganda outlets around the world boasted that Beijing played a “crucial role” in creating the 2030 Agenda.
The U.S.–China Economic and Security Review Commission has been sounding the alarm for years.
“Since the U.S.–China Commission began tracking officials from the People’s Republic of China serving in leadership positions in international organizations, Beijing’s influence has only grown over key U.N. agencies responsible for funding and policymaking on a wide range of important issues,” the Commission told The Epoch Times.
“Contrary to the International Civil Servant Standards of Conduct, they [Chinese officials] use those positions [in the U.N.] to pursue China’s foreign policy goals,” the Commission said.
When asked about the concerns of U.S. policymakers and other critics, Guterres’s spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, defended the pact.
“The Pact for the Future is not about world government,” he said at a press conference. “It is about making an organization of independent, sovereign member states work better.
“It’s not as if anyone is granting the secretary-general authority over governments—clearly not.”
Still, according to Dujarric, it is important to increase global cooperation because “not one country can deal with the rising seas, not one country can deal with global pandemics, not one country can deal with international terrorism.”
“This is about bringing sovereign, independent countries, and working together,” he said, urging people to read original documents to become well informed and “make up their own minds.”
The strengthening of the U.N. and, in particular, efforts to have the U.N. secretary-general lead the response to emergencies, received special attention from opponents.
As The Epoch Times reported in April 2023, empowering the U.N. as the central force in dealing with international emergencies and “complex global shocks” was a key goal heading into the Summit of the Future.
In his original policy brief on the issue, Guterres argued that all nations, businesses, governments, and other stakeholders must recognize the “primary role” of intergovernmental organs such as the U.N. and its agencies in “decision-making,” the document states.
Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations Kevin Moley, who oversaw U.S. relations with the U.N. during the previous administration, warned of the dangers.
“Allowing the U.N. to deal with this is the equivalent of putting the CCP in charge of global emergencies,” Moley told The Epoch Times.
He warned that the CCP takeover of international organizations represents a potentially mortal threat to the West.
Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law, told The Epoch Times that Americans must resist what he described as a “power grab” of historic proportions.
“The U.N. secretary-general has arrogated to himself dictatorial powers … upon his mere proclamation of an ‘emergency,’ as defined by himself,” he said.
Boyle, who wrote the implementing U.S. legislation for the Biological Weapons Convention and serves on the board of Amnesty International, said that because of the involvement of heads of state and government in the process, the new U.N. pact could constitute a “treaty” with “legal obligations” under both domestic and international law.
“This totalitarian arrangement constitutes a grave and immediate threat to the sovereignty and independence of all United Nations member states,” he said.
Free Speech, Free Press
One of the major components of the U.N. deal, adopted as an annex to the pact, focuses on U.N. governance of artificial intelligence (AI). Wang said that the CCP “supports the U.N. in serving as the main channel in AI governance.”
Another major concern for critics is the targeting of free speech in the Global Digital Compact, approved as an annex to the Pact for the Future.
Stating that it is protecting “information integrity,” the U.N. deal calls for drastically scaling up efforts to combat “hate speech,” “discrimination,” “misinformation,” “disinformation,” and more.
Global censorship about the COVID-19 pandemic, with YouTube removing content that went against the World Health Organization’s pronouncements, has been cited by opponents of the plan as an example of the threat.
The U.N. has also become more aggressive on this front. In 2022, at a World Economic Forum sustainability event, U.N. Undersecretary-General for Communications Melissa Fleming announced a partnership with Google.
“We started this partnership when we were shocked to see that when we Googled ‘climate change,’ we were getting incredibly distorted information right at the top,“ she said. ”We’re becoming much more proactive. We own the science, and we think that the world should know it, and the platforms themselves also do.”
Fleming has also highlighted working with CCP-linked TikTok and recruiting “influencers” to promote U.N. messaging.
Asked about the U.N. partnership with Google, Fleming declined to comment.
The compact calls for “Internet governance” to be “global and multi-stakeholder in nature.”
“We will strengthen international cooperation to address the challenge of misinformation and disinformation and hate speech online and mitigate the risks of information manipulation in a manner consistent with international law,” the Global Digital Compact reads.
The repeated emphasis on the alleged “risks” of misinformation is one of the most concerning elements of the agreement, said Reggie Littlejohn, president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers and co-chair of the Sovereignty Coalition.
“We need only look back to the pandemic to see that these terms will be defined as anything that is counter-narrative to the U.N., the WHO, and their collaborators,” she told The Epoch Times, referring to the World Health Organization.
“Controlling the narrative by suppressing dissenting voices is an unconstitutional violation of freedom of speech. It is, moreover, a hallmark of totalitarianism, which begins with and relies upon censorship.
“Further, censorship deprives both individuals and nations of their sovereignty.”
Littlejohn has been working with U.S. lawmakers to protect U.S. independence from international organizations.
“Sovereign persons and nations make decisions concerning how they will govern themselves,” she said. “They are deprived of this decision-making process if they are denied access to the true facts upon which their decisions will be made.”
Littlejohn also said the pact should be understood as a treaty under the traditional definition. As such, treaties are required to be ratified by the U.S. Senate—something she said would be unlikely to happen.
“As a neurosurgeon, I was taught that the brain creates consciousness,” said Dr. Eben Alexander, who wrote in detail about his experiences with consciousness while in a deep coma.
Many doctors and biomedical students may have been taught the same about consciousness. However, scientists are still debating whether that theory holds true.
Imagine a child observing an elephant for the first time. Light reflects off the animal and enters the child’s eyes. Retinal photoreceptors in the back of the eyes convert this light into electrical signals, which travel through the optic nerve to the brain’s cortex. This forms vision or visual consciousness.
How do these electrical signals miraculously transform into a vivid mental image? How do they turn into the child’s thoughts, followed by an emotional reaction—“Wow, the elephant is so big!”
The question of how the brain generates subjective perceptions, including images, feelings, and experiences, was coined by Australian cognitive scientist David Chalmers in 1995 as the “hard problem.”
As it turns out, having a brain may not be a prerequisite for consciousness.
‘Brainless’ but Not Mindless
The Lancet recorded a case of a French man diagnosed with postnatal hydrocephalus—excess cerebrospinal fluid on or around the brain—at the age of 6 months.
Despite his condition, he grew up healthy, became a married father of two children, and worked as a civil servant.
When he was 44 years old, he went to the doctor due to a mild weakness in his left leg. The doctors scanned his head thoroughly and discovered that his brain tissue was almost entirely gone. Most of the space in his skull was filled with fluid, with only a thin sheet of brain tissue.
“The brain was virtually absent,” wrote the lead author of the case study, Dr. Lionel Feuillet, of the Department of Neurology, Hôpital de la Timone in Marseille, France.
The man had been living a normal life and had no problem seeing, feeling, or perceiving things.
The normal brain cortex is responsible for sense and movement, and the hippocampus is responsible for memory. Hydrocephalus patients lose or have significantly less volume of these brain regions, yet they can still perform related functions.
Even without substantial brains, these people can have above-average cognitive function.
Professor John Lorber (1915–1996), a neurologist from the University of Sheffield, analyzed more than 600 cases of children with hydrocephalus. Of those, he found that half of around 60 children with the most severe type of hydrocephalus and cerebral atrophy had an IQ higher than 100 and lived normal lives.
Among them, one university student had excellent grades, a first-class honors degree in mathematics, an IQ of 126, and was socially normal. This math genius’s brain was only 1 millimeter thick, while an average person’s is usually 4.5 centimeters thick—44 times larger.
Lorber’s findings were published in the journal Science in 1980 with the headline “Is Your Brain Really Necessary?”
The Invisible Brain
“The important thing about Lorber is that he’s done a long series of systematic scanning rather than just dealing with anecdotes.” Patrick Wall (1925–2001), professor of anatomy at University College London, was quoted as saying in an article by Roger Lewin published in Science in 1981 discussing Lorber’s article.
The cases of people without brains challenge the conventional teachings that brain structure is the basis for generating consciousness. Is our brain—weighing about three pounds, with roughly two billion neurons connected by around 500 trillion synapses—the real source of consciousness?
Some scientists have proposed that deep and invisible structures in the brain explain normal cognitive function—even with severe hydrocephalus. These structures may not be easily visible on conventional brain scans or to the naked eye. However, the fact that they are not readily apparent doesn’t mean they don’t exist or aren’t important for brain function.
“For hundreds of years neurologists have assumed that all that is dear to them is performed by the cortex, but it may well be that the deep structures in the brain carry out many of the functions assumed to be the sole province of the cortex,” Wall commented in the 1981 article.
These unknown deep structures “are undoubtedly important for many functions,” said neurologist Norman Geschwind (1926–1984) from Beth Israel Hospital, affiliated with Harvard University, in the 1981 article.
Furthermore, the deep structures “are almost certainly more important than is currently thought,” said David Bowsher, a professor of neurophysiology at the University of Liverpool in the UK, in the same article.
The source of consciousness may exist in realms we’ve yet to explore. When medical theories can’t solve a mystery, physics might step in with a plot twist—in particular—quantum physics.
Beyond Neurons
“To understand consciousness, we can’t just look at the neurons,” Dr. Stuart Hameroff, director of the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona, told The Epoch Times.
Even single-celled organisms like paramecium demonstrate purposeful behaviors such as swimming, avoiding obstacles, mating, and, significantly—learning—without having a single synapse or being part of a neural network.
According to Hameroff, these intelligent, possibly conscious behaviors are mediated by microtubules inside the paramecium. The same microtubules are found in brain neurons and all animal and plant cells.
Microtubules, as the name suggests, are tiny tubes inside cells. They play essential roles in cell division, movement, and intracellular transport and appear to be the information carriers in neurons.
The proteins that make up microtubules (tubulin) are “the most prevalent or abundant protein in the whole brain,” Hameroff told The Epoch Times. He hypothesizes that microtubules are key players in human consciousness.
“Because [when] you look inside neurons, you see all these microtubules, and they’re in a periodic lattice, which is perfect for information processing and vibrations,” Hameroff stated.
Due to their properties, microtubules function like antennas. Hameroff says they serve as “quantum devices” to transduce consciousness from a quantum dimension.
Quantum Devices
British physicist, mathematician, and Nobel Laureate Sir Roger Penrose and Hameroff hypothesized a theory that quantum processes generate consciousness.
Quantum refers to tiny units of energy or matter at a microscopic level. Its unique features can help us understand many things that current science cannot explain.
In simple terms, microtubules act as a bridge between the quantum world and our consciousness. They take quantum signals, amplify them, organize them, and somehow, through processes we don’t fully understand, turn them into the feelings, perceptions, and thoughts that make up our conscious awareness.
Microtubules can explain bewildering facts about the brain. Hameroff posits that the brains of individuals born with hydrocephalus can adapt as their microtubules control neuroplasticity and reorganize their brain tissue.
“So over time, the microtubules in that brain adapt and rearrange themselves to sustain consciousness and cognition,” he said.
Therefore, according to Hameroff, our brains serve like information processors, receiving signals from the universe and forming them into consciousness.
The brain processes information across multiple scales, each vibrating at different frequencies. Brain waves oscillate slowly at 0.5–100 hertz (Hz). Individual neurons fire faster at 500–1000 Hz. Inside neurons, microtubules vibrate much quicker, in the megahertz range. At the tiniest quantum scale, frequencies reach incredibly high levels, theoretically up to 10^43 Hz.
Other scientists are also using alternative quantum theories to explain mental activities. A study published in Physical Review E shows that vibrations in lipid molecules within the myelin sheath can create pairs of quantum-entangled photons. It suggests that this quantum entanglement may help synchronize brain activity, providing insights into consciousness.
A Quantum Orchestra
“Rather than a computer of simple neurons, the brain is a quantum orchestra,” Hameroff described, “Because you have resonances and harmony and solutions over different frequencies, much like you do in music. And [so] I think consciousness is more like music than it is a computation.”
Science is always evolving. The study of consciousness is still an area of active research and debate in neuroscience and philosophy.
However, each new discovery opens up new possibilities. As we continue to explore these mysteries, let’s remain curious and open-minded.
Next, we will discuss reports published by physicians in highly-ranked journals, offering more insights into the nature and origin of consciousness.
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.
“Turning and turning in the widening gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer. All things fall apart. The center cannot hold.”
– W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming
As of May 2024, the United States has committed over $175 (borrowed) billion to escalating the proxy war against Russia, and, as in the case of the Iraq and Afghan wars, with little regard for accountability pertaining to tracking military hardware, equipment, funding, or fraud prevention.
One of the most grotesque moments in this bloody global Punch and Judy show preliminary to nuclear war, was the recent arrival of Vladimir Zelenskyy, former president of Ukraine, making a campaign stop at an ammunition factory in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where some of the three million 155mm artillery shells the US has given Ukraine are produced.
Alongside Zelenskyy, in an incitement-op photo promising further escalation of war, the Democratic Governor of Pennsylvania autographed one of the high-velocity artillery shells which will be aimed at Russia. Pennsylvania, which is home to the City of Brotherly Love, was unwitting re-Christened by its top official, with a cursive flair, as the state of brotherly hate.
The fervor of warmongering, fueled by machismo and high bravado illustrates the failure of leadership and a fatal ignorance of the diplomatic process. We should be exercising the science of human relations, not propelling a hubristic and ego-driven brinkmanship which accelerates the dialectic of war.
For decades I have led opposition to war and advocated for the transformation of America’s prevailing policy of “Peace through Strength” to a forward-looking policy of “Strength through Peace.”
I challenged the Bush II Administration’s foreign policies, and introduced Articles of Impeachment against President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney over Iraq and the lies which led us into war. Illegal and unnecessary, the Iraq war (debt-funded and authorized by both Democrats and Republicans) has cost our nation over $3 trillion, and the loss of 5,000 of our brave men and women who serve and injuries to countless more troops.
The war caused the deaths of over one million Iraqis. Let that sink in. One million Iraqis perished in a war based on lies. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. The war further damaged America’s global reputation and set us upon a path where, since 9/11, America has borrowed $8 trillion to keep the war machine in tune as our own nation’s pressing domestic needs for housing, health care, education, child care, and retirement security have been set aside.
When I heard Vice President Harris brag about former Vice President Dick Cheney endorsing her candidacy, that put the exclamation point on the fact that the leaders of the Democratic party are for war. I am not.
Why else would Vice President Harris become the front person for such virulent bravado, invoking lethality abroad?
A paradox of this campaign is that the much-villainized former President Trump, (representing a party that has also taken us into unnecessary wars) is the one who speaks to the need to negotiate and to talk directly with potential foes in order to avoid war, or to end it.
I ran for President twice, in 2004 and 2008, to bring a halt to endless wars, to stop the hemorrhaging of our nation’s wealth and to redirect our attention to our needs at home. During the Obama Administration, I fought against his expansion of war, against attacks on Libya, and Syria. That Administration’s surveillance and state-sponsored black-ops reached new heights, drawing America further into the depths of a murky military abyss.
All believers in the Judeo-Christian ethic are taught the equivalency of thought, word and deed. . A sin is a sin is a sin. Words create worlds and actions, and, well, they also create reactions.
Whether a missile arrives in Russia is separate from the fact that the news of the Pennsylvania governor signing a warhead reached the Kremlin instantaneously. Congratulations Governor, you just made your state a target.
It is a faulty military strategy which is based upon baiting one’s targets to have an excuse to attack preemptively. This type of thinking isn’t about taking care of and protecting our allies. I would call it lunacy but it happens far more frequently than once every full moon! We need level-headed leadership, not political actors mindlessly playing in the flash of WWIII, pandering for votes or for cash from the military industrial complex.
The U.S. government’s endless quest to instigate, fulminate or otherwise set our nation on a path of either participating in or of funding endless war has become an inconscient force which is now sweeping up nations in its maw and, if left unchecked, with soon draw in American troops and inevitably a world war will come home in ways that no one in the continental United States has ever experienced, far exceeding the horrors of 9/11.
W.B. Yeats’ poem, written over one hundred years ago, also pertains to the present moment, the breakdown of international law, the slaughter of innocents, open genocide, mocking humanity for its primal human instincts and instead preferring a descent into the maelstrom of kill or be killed, of “do unto others before they do unto you.” Our nation’s leaders have lost their capacity for diplomacy. And we have lost many chances for peace.
Ronan Farrow, in his brilliant book “War on Peace, the End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence,” traced the catastrophe of substituting militarism for statecraft.
So we arrive at a point where we fully fund war in the Middle East, and, astonishingly stand helpless, vainly begging the recipients of our billions of dollars, our weapons, “intelligence,” and of our strategic advice – not to expand the war we are paying for, not to visit death upon innocents.
We call for cease fire, to come to terms, to end the conflict, while the bodies pile up, and tensions escalate with all nations. Our collective voice is muted. We confess futility to effect events which we have set in motion, as a Sorcerer’s Apprentice, and when tidal forces break loose, no thought is given to an end game which could lead not only to the destruction of our closest allies but to the undoing of our own nation.
Like pre-programmed robots from a 1950s B-movie, blind to our own extinction drive, immune to the signs of failing empire, and with notions of exceptionalism justifying colonization, Democratic bosses proudly escalate war against Russia, the country with 5,580 nuclear warheads, about 1/3 of which are “launch ready.”
Two years ago, the US, with the back door machinations of Britain’s Boris Johnson, rejected a peace agreement which would have kept Ukraine neutral, restored the peace and spared the lives of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians.
Instead, we now trot out muddle-headed EU politicians and our NATO sock puppets to support advancing the war deeper and deeper into Russia, sending missiles with more and more destructive power, hyping the fantasy of capsizing the government of a country which remembers losing nearly 30,000,000 people in World War II, during which Russia was on our side.
To create an enemy is to provoke fear everywhere. To misjudge an “enemy” is to court disaster and destruction. As we give freedom and fortune to the egocentric war mongers, the military industrial complex and those naive enough to think that war equals peace for Ukraine – – life and liberty are ebbing at home.
We help our “friends” aggress, and cynically celebrate their victimhood, actively preventing diplomatic resolution, putting our avowed friends at great risk of destruction.
Do you remember how back in October 2022, thirty Members of the U.S. Congress’ Democratic Progressive Caucus signed a letter calling for President Biden to consider diplomacy, and then in a matter of hours were pressured to retract the letter? The Members were reprimanded by the Administration and the Democratic leadership for their advocacy of peace.
In that withdrawn, forbidden letter, the Progressive Members stated,
“The risk of nuclear weapons being used has been estimated to be higher now than at any time since the height of the Cold War. Given the catastrophic possibilities of nuclear escalation and miscalculation, which only increase the longer this war continues, we agree with your goal of avoiding direct military conflict as an overriding national-security priority. Given the destruction created by this war for Ukraine and the world, as well as the risk of catastrophic escalation, we also believe it is in the interests of Ukraine, the United States, and the world to avoid a prolonged conflict. For this reason, we urge you to pair the military and economic support the United States has provided to Ukraine with a proactive diplomatic push, redoubling efforts to seek a realistic framework for a ceasefire.”
Later in April 2023, nineteen Conservative Republicans, including now VP candidate Senator J.D. Vance, similarly communicated to the Administration the perils of escalating the war without diplomatic strategy, stating in their letter:
“Our military assistance goes beyond tangible assets to include military training and intelligence support. The extent of our aid makes it increasingly difficult to deny Russian accusations of U.S. complicity in a proxy war. Vladimir Putin’s advisors are already framing the conflict as “a military confrontation between Russia and NATO, and above all the United States and Britain.” Russian tolerance for fighting a proxy war with NATO could run out at any point. The decision to invade Ukraine should be evidence enough of Putin’s willingness to use military force and should give us pause in continuing to push the limits at the risk of catastrophe.”
Ukraine is a pawn, politicized for Democratic presidential electoral gain, blood for ballots. Ukraine should have been free to choose its own destiny, its own government, protect its own agriculture and precious resources, free to live without fear of an invasion and control from Russia or any other country. Instead, denied the promise of true sovereignty, it has been forced to sacrificed the flower of its youth to war.
While the people of the US are being played by politicians who are giddy with the notion of stuffing the November ballot box with bombs rockets, missiles, artillery shells and national debt, our government is also being played by the equally unstable and craven leaders of foreign countries.
And so, the U.S. forks over endless rivers of U.S. taxpayers’ cash for endless wars, without any thought of how this all ends, or how or who ultimately pays. Red or blue, there are no winners in a war devouring our lives, our blood and our national wealth.
There is madness to all of this. Our so-called leaders are whistling merry tunes through the graveyard of history, mocking the dead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, because it happened to THEM, not us. Because something like that could never happen to us. Because we are smarter and stronger and have God on our side.
It is time to wake up, America. It is time to stop this madness which presents as legitimate governance, and to think, to speak and to stand for peace, diplomacy and the continuation of life on our small planet.
“Wolves In MAGA Hats”: Assange Details CIA’s War Against Him In First Remarks Since Gaining Freedom
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange this week traveled to Strasbourg, France for his first ever public remarks since gaining his freedom in June, after his many years-long ordeal in the Ecuadorian Embassy and then Belmarsh Prison in London. His speech was given Tuesday before the legal affairs and human rights committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. The assembly subsequently issued a formal resolution recognizing Assange as a ‘political prisoner’ and highlighted the chilling effect on journalism worldwide that his case caused. The US government spent years pursuing his extradition, and at one point there were even alleged assassination plans hatched by US operatives.
Among the more interesting and illuminating parts of his speech included a detailed retelling of how the CIA waged war against him personally, especially under the Trump administration, given that “Trump appointed two wolves in MAGA hats. Mike Pompeo, a Kansas Congressman and former arms executive as CIA director and William Barr, a former CIA officer as US attorney general.” Assange further talked about how the CIA has infiltrated European governments and institutions via sophisticated software later exposed by WikiLeaks, and how this unleashed further government retribution against him and whistleblowers. His full speech is below.
Julian Assange’s address to the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), with transcript following:
Ladies and gentlemen, the transition from years of confinement in a maximum security prison to being here before the representatives of 46 nations and 700 million people is a profound and a surreal shift. The experience of isolation for years in a small cell is difficult to convey. It strips away one sense of self, leaving only the raw essence of existence.
I’m yet not fully equipped to speak about what I have endured. The relentless struggle to stay alive, both physically and mentally. Nor can I speak yet about the death by hanging, murder and medical neglect of my fellow prisoners.
I apologize in advance if my words falter, or if my presentation lacks the polish you might expect from such a distinguished forum. Isolation has taken its toll. Which I am trying to unwind. And expressing myself in this setting is a challenge. However, the gravity of this occasion and the weight of the issues at hand compel me to set aside my reservations and speak to you directly.
I have traveled a long way, literally and figuratively, to be before you today. Before our discussion or answering any questions you might have. I wish to thank PACE for its 2020 resolution, which stated that my imprisonment set a dangerous precedent for journalists. I noted that the U.N. Special Rapporteur on torture called for my release. I’m also grateful for Pace’s 2021 statement, expressing concern over credible reports that U.S. officials discussed my assassination again, calling for my prompt release, and I commend the Legal Affairs and Human Rights Committee for commissioning a renowned rapporteur.
Sooner I will start to investigate the circumstance surrounding my detention and conviction, and the consequent implications for human rights. However, like so many of the efforts made in my case, whether they were from parliamentarians, presidents, prime ministers, the pope, U.N. officials and diplomats, unions, legal and medical professionals, academics, activists or citizens, none of them should have been necessary.
None of the statements, resolutions, reports, films, articles, events, fundraisers, protests and letters over the last 14 years should have been necessary. But all of them were necessary because without them, I never would have seen the light of day. This unprecedented global effort was needed because the legal protections of the legal protections that did exist, many existed only on paper when not effective in any remotely reasonable time.
On the Plea Deal
I eventually chose freedom over and realizable justice. After being detained for years and facing 175 year sentence with no effective remedy. Justice for me is now precluded, as the U.S. government insisted in writing into its plea agreement that I cannot filed a case at the European Court of Human Rights or even the Freedom of Information Act request over what it did to me as a result of its extradition request.
I want to be totally clear. I am not free today because the system worked. I am free today after years of incarceration because I pled guilty to journalism. I pled guilty to seeking information from a source. I pled guilty to obtaining information from a source. And I pled guilty to informing the public what that information was. I did not plead guilty to anything else.
I hope my testimony today can serve to highlight the weakness, the weaknesses of the existing safeguards and to help those whose cases are less visible but who are equally vulnerable. As I emerge from the dungeon of Belmarsh, the truth now seems less discernible, and I regret how much ground has been lost during that time period. How expressing the truth has been undermined, attacked, weakened and diminished.
I see more impunity, more secrecy, more retaliation for telling the truth and more self-censorship. It is hard not to draw a line from the U.S. government’s prosecution of me. It’s crossing. Crossing the Rubicon by internationally criminalizing journalism to the true climate for freedom of expression that exists now.
When I founded WikiLeaks, it was driven by a simple dream to educate people about how the world works, so that through understanding, we might bring about something better. Having a map of where we are lets us understand where we might go. Knowledge empowers us to hold power to account and to demand justice where there is none. We obtained and published truth about tens of thousands of hidden casualties of war and other unseen horrors about programs of assassination, rendition, torture and mass surveillance.
We revealed not just when and where these things happened, but frequently the policies, the agreements and the structures behind them. When we published Collateral Murder, the infamous gotten camera footage of a U.S. Apache helicopter crew eagerly blowing to pieces Iraqi journalists and their rescuers. The visual reality of modern warfare shocked the world, so we also used interest in this video to direct people to the classified policies for when the U.S. military could deploy lethal force in Iraq.
How many civilians could be and how many civilians could be killed before gaining higher approval? In fact, 40 years of my potential 175 year sentence was for obtaining and releasing those policies.
The practical political vision I was left with after being immersed in the world’s dirty wars and secret operations, is simple. Let us stop gagging, torturing, and killing each other for a change. Get these fundamentals right and other political, economic and scientific processes that have space to educate. We’ll have space to take care of the rest.
WikiLeaks work was deeply rooted in the principles that this Assembly stands for. Our journalism elevated freedom of information and the public’s right to know. It found its natural operational home in Europe. I lived in Paris and we had formal corporate registrations in France and in Iceland. A journalistic and technical staff was spread throughout Europe. We publish to the world from servers based in France, in Germany and in Norway.
Manning’s Arrests
But 14 years ago, the United States military arrested one of our lead whistleblowers, Private First Class Manning, a U.S. intelligence analyst based in Iraq. The U.S. government concurrently launched an investigation against me and my colleagues. The U.S. government illicitly sent planes of agents to Iceland, paid bribes to an informant to steal our legal and journalistic work product and without formal process, pressured banks and financial services to block our subscriptions and to freeze our accounts.
The U.K. government took part in some of this retribution. It admitted at the European Court of Human Rights that it had unlawfully spied on my U.K. lawyers during this time.
Ultimately, this harassment was legally groundless. President Obama’s Justice Department chose not to indict me. Recognizing that no crime had been committed, the United States had never before prosecuted a publisher for publishing or obtaining government information. To do so would require a radical and ominous reinterpretation of the U.S. Constitution. In January 2017, Obama also commuted the sentence of Manning, who had been convicted of being one of my sources.
CIA’s Retribution
However, in February 2017, the landscape changed dramatically. President Trump had been elected. He appointed two wolves in MAGA hats. Mike Pompeo, a Kansas congressman and former arms industry executive, as C.I.A. director, and William Barr, a former C.I.A. officer, as U.S. attorney general.
By March 2017, WikiLeaks had exposed the C.I.A.’s infiltration of fringe political parties. Its spying on French and German leaders, its spying on the European Central Bank, European economic ministries, and its standing orders to spy on French on the street as a whole. We revealed the C.I.A.’s vast production of malware and viruses, its subversion of supply chains. Its subversion of antivirus software, cars, smart TVs and iPhones.
C.I.A. Director Pompeo launched a campaign of retribution. It is now a matter of public record that under Pompeo’s explicit direction, the C.I.A. drew up plans to kidnap and to assassinate me within the Ecuadorean Embassy in London and authorize going after my European colleagues, subjecting us to theft, hacking attacks and the planting of false information. My wife and my infant son were also targeted.
Julian Assange makes his first statement since his release from prison:
“Trump appointed two wolves in MAGA hats. Mike Pompeo, a Kansas Congressman and former arms executive as CIA director and William Barr, a former CIA officer as US attorney general.”pic.twitter.com/QZQbXw3XDi
A C.I.A. asset was permanently assigned to track my wife. And instructions were given to obtain DNA from my six month old son’s nappy. This is the testimony of more than 30 current and former U.S. intelligence officials speaking to the U.S. press, which has been additionally corroborated by records seized and the prosecution brought against some of the C.I.A. agents involved.
The C.I.A. is targeting of myself, my family and my associates through aggressive, extrajudicial and extraterritorial means. Provides a rare insight into how powerful intelligence organizations engage in transnational repression. Such repressions are not unique. What is unique is that we know so much about this one. Due to numerous whistleblowers and to judicial investigations in Spain.
This assembly is no stranger to extraterritorial abuses by the C.I.A.. Pace’s groundbreaking report on C.I.A. renditions in Europe exposed how the C.I.A. operated secret detention centers and conducted unlawful renditions on European soil, violating human rights and international law. In February this year, the alleged source of some of our C.I.A. revelations, former C.I.A. officer Joshua Schulte, was sentenced to 40 years in prison under conditions of extreme isolation.
His windows are blacked out and a white noise machine plays 24 hours a day over his door so that he cannot even shout through it. These conditions are more severe than those found in Guantanamo Bay.
But transnational repression is also conducted by abusing legal processes. The lack of effective safeguards against this means that Europe is vulnerable to having its mutual legal assistance and expedition treaties hijacked by foreign powers to go after dissenting voices in Europe. In Michael Pompeo’s memoirs, which I read in my prison cell, the former C.I.A. director bragged about how he pressured the U.S. attorney general to bring an extradition case against me in response to our publications about the C.I.A..
Indeed, acceding to Pompeo’s requests, the U.S. attorney general reopened the investigation against me that Obama had closed and re-arrested Manning, this time as a witness, and he was held in a prison for over a year, fined $1,000 a day. In a formal attempt to coerce her into providing secret testimony against me, she ended up attempting to take her own life.
We usually think of attempts to force journalists to testify against their sources. But Manning was now a source being forced to testify against the journalist.
By December 2017, C.I.A. Director Pompeo had got his way and the U.S. government issued a warrant to the U.K. for my extradition. The U.K. government kept the warrant secret from the public for two more years, while it, the U.S. government and the new president of Ecuador moved to shape the political, legal and the diplomatic grounds for my arrest.
When powerful nations feel entitled to target individuals beyond their borders, those individuals do not stand a chance unless there are strong safeguards in place and a state willing to enforce them without this. No individual has a hope of defending themselves against the vast resources that a state aggressor can deploy.
Breaking: The Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly has voted to confirm that Julian Assange was held as a political prisoner. pic.twitter.com/UkHdmD1aI5
If the situation were not already bad enough, in my case, the U.S. government asserted a dangerous, dangerous new global legal position. Only U.S. citizens have free speech rights. Europeans and other nationalities do not have free speech rights, but the U.S. claims its Espionage Act still applies to them, regardless of where they are. So Europeans in Europe must obey the U.S. secrecy law with no defenses at all.
As far as the U.S. government is concerned, an American in Paris can talk about what the U.S. government is up to. Perhaps, but for a Frenchman in Paris, to do so is a crime with no defense. And he may be extradited, just like me.
Criminalizing News-Gathering
Now that one foreign government has formally asserted that Europeans have no free speech rights, a dangerous precedent has been set. Other powerful states will inevitably follow suit. The war in Ukraine has already seen the criminalization of journalists in Russia. But based on the precedent set in my expedition, there is nothing to stop Russia or indeed any other state from targeting European journalists, publishers or even social media users by claiming that their domestic secrecy laws have been violated.
The rights of journalists and publishers within the European space are seriously threatened.
Transnational repression cannot become the norm here. As one of the world’s two great norms, setting institutions, PACE must act.
The criminalization of news-gathering activities is a threat to investigative journalism everywhere. I was formally convicted by a foreign power for asking, for receiving and publishing truthful information about that power. While I was in Europe.
The fundamental issue is simple journalists should not be prosecuted for doing their jobs. Journalism is not a crime. It is a pillar of a free and informed society.
Mr. Chairman, distinguished delegates. If Europe is to have a future where the freedom to speak and the freedom to publish the truth are not privileges enjoyed by a few, but rights guaranteed to all. Then it must act. So what has happened in my case never happens to anyone else.
I wish to express my deepest gratitude to this assembly, to the conservatives, Social Democrats, liberals, leftists, Greens and independents who have supported me throughout this ordeal and to the countless individuals who have advocated tirelessly, tirelessly for my release. Is heartening to know that in a world often divided by ideology and interests, there remains a shared commitment to the protection of essential human liberties.
Freedom of expression and all that flows from it is at a dark crossroad. I fear that unless institutions like PACE wake up to the gravity of the situation, it will be too late. Let us all commit to doing our part to ensure that the light of freedom never demands that the pursuit of truth will live on, and that the voices of the many are not silenced by the interests of the few.
Collapsing bridges, buckling roads, overheated railways, deteriorating power lines, contaminated water lines, outdated public transportation, overtaxed power grids, aging ports and waterways, unsafe tunnels and highways, and spotty or insufficient telecommunications assets are all becoming frequent hallmarks of the American way of life.
If the nation is woefully unprepared to deal with climate disasters such as floods, hurricanes, wildfires, and droughts, despite the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars that have been pledged to shore up the nation’s infrastructure problems, it is because politicians across the political spectrum have failed us.
The devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene makes this failure by the government to put the needs of the American people first painfully evident. Entire towns are under water. Roadways have collapsed or are otherwise impassable. Potable water is scarce. More than 1.5 million households are still without power.
Clearly, our national priorities need to be re-examined.
While the politicians play partisan games with our tax dollars, the nation’s critical infrastructure—both the physical foundations of the nation and the figurative foundations of our freedoms—continues to be neglected and deprioritized in favor of grandstanding, bloated military budgets on endless wars abroad, foreign aid to shore up the infrastructure and military defenses of international allies, and all manner of graft and pork barrel spending.
When all is said and done, the bread-and-circus distractions and sleight-of-hand political theater being trotted out in order to keep Americans distracted, deluded, amused, and insulated from the government’s steady encroachments on our freedoms adds nothing of real value to the lives of the average American.
It’s time to fix what’s broken in this country.
For starters, we need an overhaul of the nation’s infrastructure.
According to Time magazine, “Throughout the country, millions of Americans don’t have access to or can’t afford broadband internet service. In excess of 2 million people live without running water or basic plumbing. For too long, the American public has had to carry on while these deficiencies have gone unattended. The political will has been weak or inattentive, the rewards too far removed from electoral advantage.”
In other words, the politicians who dance to the tune of the oligarchic elite aren’t motivated to do anything about our failing infrastructure because they get nothing out of it: no votes, no money, no power.
This isn’t about whether the Republicans or Democrats have better policies.
Indeed, both parties’ priorities are disconcertingly alike: both parties support endless war, engage in out-of-control spending, ignore the citizenry’s basic rights, have no respect for the rule of law, are bought and paid for by Big Business, care most about their own power, and have a long record of expanding government and shrinking liberty.
This is about the plight of the American people who continue to be treated like a permanent underclass.
Anyone who believes that this presidential election will bring about any real change in how the American government does business is either incredibly naive, woefully out-of-touch, or oblivious to the fact that as an in-depth Princeton University study shows, we now live in an oligarchy that is “of the rich, by the rich and for the rich.”
Overhauling the nation’s infrastructure will take a significant amount of money, which won’t happen as long as the U.S. government continues to fund the military industry complex and its voracious appetite for endless wars.
James Madison was right: “No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” As Madison explained, “Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes… known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.”
We are seeing this play out before our eyes.
The government is destabilizing the economy, destroying the national infrastructure through neglect and a lack of resources, and turning taxpayer dollars into blood money with its endless wars, drone strikes and mounting death tolls.
The American Empire is approaching a breaking point.
This is exactly the scenario President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against when he cautioned the citizenry not to let the profit-driven war machine endanger our liberties or democratic processes. Eisenhower, who served as Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe during World War II, was alarmed by the rise of the profit-driven war machine that, in order to perpetuate itself, would have to keep waging war.
Yet as Eisenhower recognized, the consequences of allowing the military-industrial complex to wage war, exhaust our resources and dictate our national priorities are beyond grave:
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”
We failed to heed Eisenhower’s warning.
The illicit merger of the armaments industry and the government that Eisenhower warned against has come to represent perhaps the greatest threat to the nation today.
If we are to have any hope of restoring both the structural and freedom foundations of this nation, we’ll need to start by getting our priorities in order, and that means focusing on what really matters: shoring up our battered Bill of Rights and investing in the American homeland.
These Are The Companies Most Exposed To The US Port Strike
Nearly 50,000 members of the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) have walked off the job, putting billions of dollars’ worth of goods at risk of severe delays.
It was estimated that on the first day of the strike (October 1st, 2024), 147 vessels carrying $34.3 billion in goods arrived at 14 idle ports along the East and Gulf coasts of America. The strike comes during peak shipping season, impacting as much as 49% of all U.S. imports.
This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Dorothy Neufeld, shows the companies most exposed to the strike – the ones with the most twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) imported at East and Gulf coast ports over the past year – based on data from ImportGenius and Arbor Data Science shared by Liz Ann Sonders.
Retail Giants and Tech Firms at Highest Risk from Strike
Below, we show the companies most exposed to the dockworker strike, based on twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) imported over the last year:
As the most exposed company overall, Walmart announced that it prepared for the strike by having extra inventory in key product categories to mitigate supply chain disruptions.
For context, Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, imported an average of 4,000 TEUs per month through these ports over the past year. The average value of one container can fall around $50,000.
Other major retailers, including IKEA and Home Depot face significant exposure, while tech firms Samsung and LG ranked in the top five highest importers last year.
The auto industry is also highly vulnerable. Hyundai, General Motors, and major tire manufacturers import thousands of containers through these ports annually. A prolonged strike could drive up production costs due to input shortages, however, recent recovery in automaker inventories provides some buffer against immediate supply chain disruptions.
How the U.S. Port Strike is Unfolding
For the first time in five decades, the ILA went on strike after failed negotiations to raise wages by 61.5% over the next six years amid increased automation and record profits for container line companies.
The strike will halt the flow of goods for many companies until an agreement is reached. It also has the potential to impact U.S. exports.
The stoppage could result in an estimated $3.8 to $4.5 billion in losses a day according to analysts, affecting major ports such as New York/New Jersey, Houston, and Baltimore. In particular, the impact on perishable goods will be immediate, with bananas being highly vulnerable. Today, three-quarters of U.S. banana imports pass through the ports affected by the strike.
To learn more about this topic from a global perspective, check out this graphic on the busiest ports in the world.
US Port Workers Agree To End Strike After Accepting 62% Wage Increase
If you just bought 10 years worth of toilet paper, you may want to check if you still have the receipt.
Late on Thursday, 45,000 striking dockworkers at US East and Gulf coast ports agreed to return to work after port operators sweetened their contract offer, ending a three-day strike that threatened to disrupt the American economy.
The International Longshoremen’s Association and port operators, in a joint statement, said they had reached a tentative agreement on wages and union members would return to work. They said the agreement would extend the prior contract, which expired at the start of this week, through Jan. 15, 2025 while the two sides negotiate on other issues, including automation on the docks.
The breakthrough came after port employers offered a 62% increase in wages over six years, the WSJ reported citing people familiar with the matter. The new offer, up from an earlier proposed raise of 50%, came after the White House privately and publicly pressed the large shipping lines and cargo terminal operators who employ the longshore workers to make a new offer to the union.
The agreement ends a strike that had closed container ports from Maine to Texas and threatened to disrupt everything from the supply of bananas in supermarkets to the flow of cars through America’s factories, and cost the US economy billions each day in lost commerce.
The latest offer would raise the base hourly rate for ILA port workers to $63 from $39 over six years. One of the people said the offer is being made on the condition that dockworkers go back to work and agree to efficiency gains.
The offer is less than the union demand for an increase of 77% over the term of the contract but a far larger increase than most major labor contracts, including a contract reached last year covering the separate union representing West Coast longshore workers. Many U.S. dockworkers currently earn more than a $100,000 a year, with baseline hourly wages boosted by work rules and overtime requirements.
The strike came about five weeks from a presidential election where both main candidates are wooing working-class union voters. Both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump have voiced support for the workers, stressing that the carriers are mostly foreign-owned.
Top White House aides have been in frequent contact with the employers, reiterating that Biden doesn’t plan to use his federal power to break the strike. “This is the first strike in 50 years—these people know how to get to yes,” Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said Thursday, speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One. “They just need to get to yes.”
The walkout had shut down some of the country’s main gateways for imports of food, vehicles, heavy machinery, construction materials, chemicals, furniture, clothes and toys. Many manufacturers and big retailers, with their busy fall shopping season just starting to kick in, said they could withstand a short strike because they brought in products earlier than usual this year and diverted other cargoes to West Coast ports. But executives said a walkout lasting a week or longer would push up shipping costs and might trigger product shortages.
The International Longshoremen’s Association said it had agreed to extend the contract until Jan. 15 and work will resume.
Container ports from Houston to Miami and up to Boston have been closed since the labor contract between the ILA and the US Maritime Alliance, which represents terminal operators and shipping lines, expired on Tuesday.
Dozens of ships carrying containers and autos have anchored off the coast of major trade hubs including New York, South Carolina and Virgina over the past few days.
It remains to be seen if other US labor union will also go on strike hoping to repeat the staggering wage gains that were just handed to the Longshoremen. If so, watch as the color drains out of Powell’s face as wage inflation hits double digits in the coming months.
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey has signed an emergency preamble to the state’s sweeping gun control bill, fast-tracking its implementation and halting an ongoing effort by gun rights activists to delay its effects.
The law, H.4885, was originally scheduled to take effect on Oct. 23, or 90 days after Healey signed the bill in July, but her decision to proceed with signing the emergency preamble means it goes into effect immediately.
Under Massachusetts law, governors have the authority to issue an emergency preamble to expedite legislation when “the immediate preservation of the public peace, health, safety, or convenience” is deemed necessary.
The law’s expedited enactment was praised by gun control groups but sharply criticized by gun rights advocates, who had hoped to gather enough signatures to delay its implementation until a potential 2026 referendum.
H.4885 expands Massachusetts’ already strict gun regulations, in part as a response to the 2022 Supreme Court ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which affirmed an individual’s right to carry firearms in public for self-defense.
The expedited law includes provisions banning untraceable “ghost guns,” expanding restrictions on “assault-style” firearms and large-capacity magazines, and tightening the state’s “red flag” rules. It also mandates that firearm license applicants pass a standardized safety exam and complete live-fire training, while also providing mental health information to local licensing authorities.
“This gun safety law bans ghost guns, strengthens the Extreme Risk Protection Order statute to keep guns out of the hands of people who are a danger to themselves or others, and invests in violence prevention programs. It is important that these measures go into effect without delay,” Healey said in an Oct. 2 statement to media outlets.
The governor’s decision to fast-track the law has drawn swift condemnation from gun rights organizations. Tody Leary, owner of Cape Cod Gun Works and a leader of the grassroots Civil Rights Coalition, sharply criticized the move, accusing Healey of bypassing the democratic process.
“With a single stroke of the pen, Healey risks putting as many as 400 stores out of business and turning tens of thousands of law-abiding citizens into felons, simply for owning guns they have lawfully possessed for years,” Leary said in a statement. “She’s acting more like a dictator than a governor.”
Leary said that the Civil Rights Coalition was on track to collect the 49,716 signatures required to suspend the law and place it on the 2026 ballot, adding that Healey’s emergency order circumvented that effort.
Jim Wallace, executive director of the Gun Owners Action League (GOAL), expressed similar frustrations, with the group issuing a statement denouncing the law as a “historic attack on our civil rights.” Wallace noted that Healey’s past actions had already strained relations with the state’s Second Amendment advocates.
“At every turn, the Legislature and now the governor have avoided honest public input, especially from the [Second Amendment] community,“ Wallace said in a statement. ”We are the only stakeholders involved and there is a consistent effort to silence our voices and mislead the general public.”
GOAL, along with the National Rifle Association, pledged to take swift legal action.
“With the swipe of a pen, Governor Healey has shamelessly circumvented Massachusetts’ political process and expedited the effective date of her radical gun control law in the Commonwealth,” Randy Kozuch, executive director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, said in a statement.
“This extreme law will not go unchecked, and the NRA will be launching a challenge to restore the rights guaranteed to Bay Staters by the U.S. Constitution.”
By contrast, Healey’s decision was praised by the Massachusetts chapters of Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action, part of the Everytown for Gun Safety network.
“Gov. Healey is once again putting our safety first by taking meaningful steps to protect our communities from gun violence,” Olivia Benevento, a leader of Northeastern University’s Students Demand Action chapter, said in a statement.
“We’re thankful to the lawmakers and the governor for supporting this bill and helping us take a stand against the gun lobby’s dangerous agenda.”
The law’s passage marks the culmination of nearly a year of efforts by gun control advocates to respond to Bruen and tighten the state’s already strict regulations. In addition to banning ghost guns and “assault”-style firearms, the law prohibits firearms at schools, polling places, and government buildings and increases penalties for shootings near residential areas.
