February, 07 2024, 08:17am EDT
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EPA Strengthens Soot Standard, Saving Thousands of Lives and Billions of Dollars
Today, the EPA released updated National Ambient Air Quality Standards for particulate matter (PM2.5), taking a positive and long-awaited step toward addressing a dangerous and deadly air pollutant responsible for over 100,000 deaths in the United States every year.
EPA’s final air quality standards for PM2.5, also known as soot, lower the annual standards from 12 mcg/m3 to 9 mcg/m3, and will prevent up to 4,500 premature deaths and 290,000 lost workdays per year while bringing as much as $46 billion in net health benefits in 2032, when the standards are in full effect.
The final standards do not strengthen the 24-hour standard, which is critical for protecting against dangerous short-term spikes in air pollution and provides the basis for the air quality index that millions use to determine the quality of the air they breathe on any given day.
EPA will now determine areas of the country that do not meet the new standard, and will release determinations within two years. States that do not meet the new standards will then have 18 months to develop and submit plans to comply.
Evidence shows exposure to soot pollution increases the risk of asthma, heart attacks, stroke, cancer, and premature death. 63 million people in the United States experience unhealthy spikes in daily soot pollution, and communities of color are disproportionately exposed to higher-than-average levels of this dangerous pollutant.
In response, Sierra Club Executive Director Ben Jealous released the following statement:
“We’re glad to see the Biden Administration answered the call to reduce harmful soot pollution. The decision to strengthen the annual particulate matter standards is more than just policy; it's about securing clean and safe air for our families and communities. It's about keeping kids in school, and protecting ourselves and our neighbors from the very real risks of asthma, heart attacks, and premature death.
“It’s shameful that, in the face of such clear and compelling evidence of the public health and economic benefits of stronger soot standards, big polluters and their allies in Washington do everything in their power to undermine these commonsense air pollution standards. Their resistance is a stark reminder that the fight for clean air and a healthier future is far from over, and we will continue working to ensure the benefits of these stronger air pollution standards reach the communities that need them most.”
The Sierra Club is the most enduring and influential grassroots environmental organization in the United States. We amplify the power of our 3.8 million members and supporters to defend everyone's right to a healthy world.
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Progressive International Applauds Kenyans for Rising Up to Defeat IMF Austerity Bill
"They refuse to become another laboratory for neoliberalism—impoverished, beaten, or killed for the benefit of foreign corporations and their lackeys in the Kenyan government."
Jun 27, 2024
Progressive International on Thursday applauded the people of Kenya for taking to the streets en masse to defeat an International Monetary Fund-backed legislative package that would have hiked taxes on ordinary citizens as part of an effort to repay the government's powerful creditors.
"Pushed through at the behest of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the U.S. State Department, the bill would impose severe austerity measures and crippling taxes on Kenya's working people, who are already strained by Kenya's legacy of colonial underdevelopment," Progressive International said in a statement.
"The Progressive International stands firmly with the people of Kenya," the organization added. "They refuse to become another laboratory for neoliberalism—impoverished, beaten, or killed for the benefit of foreign corporations and their lackeys in the Kenyan government."
The Kenyan government's proposal, welcomed by the IMF as necessary for "debt sustainability," triggered massive youth-led protests in the nation's capital last week as thousands of citizens already immiserated by sky-high living costs flooded the streets to express outrage at the U.N. financial institution and their government for fueling the crisis.
The government crackdown was swift and deadly, with police using tear gas and live ammunition to beat back demonstrators calling for the withdrawal of the proposed bill and the resignation of President William Ruto, who took office in 2022.
Protesters achieved one of their objectives Wednesday when Ruto announced he would not sign the tax legislation, just days after he
ordered the country's military to help suppress the demonstrations.
"Listening keenly to the people of Kenya who have said loudly that they want nothing to do with this finance bill, I concede, and therefore, I will not sign the 2024 finance bill, and it shall subsequently be withdrawn," Ruto said in an address to the nation, which spends more than a quarter of its revenue on debt interest payments.
"The protesters we have been speaking to are still very angry, still very frustrated, they hold the president responsible for the deaths of those young Kenyans across the country."
As The Associated Pressreported, the withdrawn measure would have "raised taxes and fees on a range of daily items and services, from egg imports to bank transfers."
Kenya's public debt currently stands at $80 billion, around $3.5 billion of which is owed to the IMF—an explicit target of protesters' ire.
"Kenya is not IMF's lab rat," declared one demonstrator's sign.
The IMF said in a brief statement Wednesday that it was "deeply concerned" about the "tragic events" in Kenya and claimed its "main goal in supporting Kenya is to help it overcome the difficult economic challenges it faces and improve its economic prospects and the wellbeing of its people."
“Kenya is not IMF’s lab rat”
“I was in my healing era” pic.twitter.com/xLt2GG51hf
— Larry Madowo (@LarryMadowo) June 20, 2024
As Bloomberg's David Herbling wrote over the weekend, Ruto "has spent his first two years in office ramming through a slew of unpopular taxes—on everything from gasoline to wheelchair tires, bread to sanitary pads—thrilling international investors and the IMF, which has long urged Kenya to double its revenue collections to address its heavy debt burden."
Ruto's withdrawal of the tax-hike bill appeared unlikely to fully quell mass discontent over the president's IMF-aligned economic policies as protests continued on Thursday.
"The protests today are not as big as they were two days ago but they are still no less intense where they are happening," Al Jazeera's Zein Basravi reported from Nairobi. "If President Ruto, protesters say, had signed off on killing the tax bill 72 hours ago, a week ago, these protests might not be happening. But the decision he made, the concession, has come too little too late, and it has not gone far enough, and it has come at the cost of too many young lives."
"The protesters we have been speaking to are still very angry, still very frustrated, they hold the president responsible for the deaths of those young Kenyans across the country, 23 killed," Basravi added. "And they hold Parliament responsible for not standing stronger, standing firmer, against the president as they feel he was overreaching his position."
U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) said in a statement Wednesday that it is "crucial to recognize that the International Monetary Fund's austerity conditions have contributed to the economic hardships facing Kenyan citizens."
"These measures often disproportionately affect the most vulnerable populations and can exacerbate social unrest," continued Omar, who chairs the U.S.-Africa Policy Working Group. "It is imperative that protesters remain peaceful as they continue to demand change. I stand in solidarity with the people in the wake of both state violence and IMF-imposed austerity measures."
"The Kenyan government must immediately disclose the location and condition of all those who have been taken into custody or disappeared, cease the use of excessive force, respect the right to peacefully protest, and continue to engage in meaningful dialogue to address the legitimate concerns of its citizens," Omar said.
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Mass Disenfranchisement for Felony Convictions Makes US an 'Outlier Nation'
"The right to vote, and the legitimacy of the democratic system in the United States, should not depend on its criminal legal system, which is built upon and perpetuates discrimination," said an advocate with Human Rights Watch.
Jun 27, 2024
The common U.S. practice of stripping the franchise from people with criminal convictions leaves the country "out of step with the rest of the world," according to a report published Thursday by the Sentencing Project, Human Rights Watch, and the ACLU.
Despite recent progress in some states, the groups estimated that more than 4.4 million U.S. residents were disenfranchised because of a felony conviction as of 2022, and "thousands more eligible voters were unable to cast their ballot because they were in prison."
"The states with the most restrictive disenfranchisement laws are those with the highest percentages of Black and Latinx people," the new report notes. "Eleven U.S. states permanently disenfranchise at least some people with felony convictions for the rest of their lives. Fourteen U.S. states disenfranchise people both for the duration of their prison sentence and, upon their return to the community, during the time they are under parole or felony probation supervision. An additional state, Louisiana, restores voting rights to people on felony probation and parole once they have been out of prison for five years or more."
"Twenty-three states restore voting rights to people when they return to the community from prison," the report adds, "although at least four states that otherwise restore voting rights after a felony conviction permanently disenfranchise residents for certain election practices."
The 55-page analysis places U.S. disenfranchisement laws alongside the practices of 136 other countries with populations over 1.5 million people and concludes that the U.S.—with its "punitive criminal legal system" and high incarceration rates—is an "outlier nation."
"Wide access to voting is a cornerstone of rights-respecting, democratic government."
More than half of the countries examined in the report "never or rarely deny a person's right to vote because of a conviction." When placed among the remaining countries "where laws deny the right in broader sets of circumstances," the report states, "the U.S. is toward the restrictive end of the spectrum and disenfranchises, largely through U.S. state law, a wider swath of people on the whole."
"In five countries—the Republic of the Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Madagascar, Morocco, and Togo—people whose convictions fall in certain categories are disenfranchised permanently," the report observes. "These five countries are in the same category with the 11 U.S. states that permanently disenfranchise at least some people convicted of felonies."
Alison Leal Parker, deputy U.S. director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement that "wide access to voting is a cornerstone of rights-respecting, democratic government, which is why the right to vote is protected in international human rights law and why the U.S. should reform its outlier status on voting rights."
"The right to vote, and the legitimacy of the democratic system in the United States, should not depend on its criminal legal system, which is built upon and perpetuates discrimination," said Parker.
While a number of states have moved in recent years to loosen voting restrictions for people with felony convictions and restore the franchise at the time of a person's release from incarceration, just four U.S. jurisdictions—Vermont, Maine, Puerto Rico, and Washington, D.C.—allow people to vote while they are imprisoned.
Late last year, Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) introduced legislation that would guarantee voting rights to incarcerated citizens and end felony disenfranchisement in federal elections. The bill has just five cosponsors in the Senate and 25 in the House, even though polling data has shown a majority of Americans support guaranteeing voting rights to all, including incarcerated people.
The new report calls on the United States to "end felony disenfranchisement and extend voting rights to all otherwise voting-eligible persons without regard to their criminal legal system contact or convictions." It also recommends that the country eliminate all requirements that citizens pay court-related fines before being allowed to vote again—a practice the report calls a "modern-day poll tax."
"In the United States, this policy is rooted in historical practices intended to reduce electoral participation of citizens of color who would otherwise be eligible to vote," the human rights groups wrote.
Jonathan Topaz, a staff attorney with the ACLU's Voting Rights Project, said Thursday that "even as we've seen more U.S. states make progress in expanding rights restoration, there remain substantial challenges to voter access."
"Convoluted rights restoration laws have resulted in voter confusion about eligibility among returning citizens," said Topaz "Additionally, in many states, returning citizens become eligible to vote only upon payment of various legal financial obligations such as fees, costs, fines, and/or restitution, which essentially institutes a pay-to-vote system. These obstacles must be abolished to ensure full civic participation."
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The Gaza Project Exposes Israel's 'Chilling Pattern' of Killing Journalists
"This is one of the most flagrant attacks on press freedom that I can remember," said one campaigner. "The impact on press freedom in Gaza, in the region, and the rest of the world is something we cannot accept."
Jun 26, 2024
With more than 100 media professionals—nearly all of them Palestinian—killed in Gaza since October, a group of 50 reporters from 13 international organizations this week shared the results of a new investigative journalism initiative aimed at exposing the deadly toll Israel's onslaught has taken on those reporting it to the world.
The Gaza Project—led by the Paris-based nonprofit Forbidden Stories—"analyzed nearly 100 cases of journalists and media workers killed in Gaza, as well as other cases in which members of the press have been allegedly targeted, threatened, or injured since October 7," when Hamas-led attacks on Israel left more than 1,100 people dead and over 240 others kidnapped.
"Faced with what is being reported as the record number of journalists killed, Forbidden Stories, whose mission is to pursue the work of journalists who are killed because of their work, set out to investigate the targeting of journalists," the group said
"For four months, Forbidden Stories and its partners investigated the circumstances of their killings, as well as those who have been targeted, threatened, and injured in the West Bank and Gaza," it added. "These investigations point to a chilling pattern and suggest some journalists may have been targeted even though they were identifiable as press."
Gaza Project member Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has condemned what it called an "apparent pattern of targeting journalists and their families," noting cases in which media workers were killed while wearing press insignia and after being threatened by Israeli officials.
"This is one of the most flagrant attacks on press freedom that I can remember," CPJ program director Carlos Martínez de la Serna said of the ongoing war. "The impact on press freedom in Gaza, in the region, and the rest of the world is something we cannot accept."
Basel Khair Al-Din, a Palestinian journalist in Gaza who believes he was targeted by a drone strike while wearing a press vest, said, "Whereas this press vest was supposed to identify and protect us, according to international laws, international conventions, and the Geneva Conventions, it is now a threat to us."
"It's this vest that almost got us killed, as has happened to so many of our fellow journalists and media workers," he added.
Groups like Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International have called for official investigations into Israeli killing of journalists including an October 13 attack that killed 37-year-old Lebanese Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and wounded half a dozen other journalists who were covering cross-border clashes between Israeli troops and Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon.
Dylan Collins, an American deputy editor at Al Jazeera English, was wounded while administering first aid to Christina Assi, an Italian Agence-France Presse journalist whose legs were blown off in the attack.
Reutersdetermined that an Israeli tank crew "fired two shells in quick succession" at the journalists, who HRW said were "clearly identifiable as members of the media, and had been stationary for at least 75 minutes." HRW "found no evidence of a military target near the journalists' location."
Amnesty International, meanwhile, asserted that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) strike was "likely a direct attack on civilians that must be investigated as a war crime."
Asa Kasher, the lead author of the IDF's Code of Ethics, toldForbidden Stories that "no member of the press should have been killed under normal circumstances of hostilities in Gaza."
"It shouldn't happen, even a single one," he added. "It's illegal. It's unethical. The person who does it should be brought to court."
Israel's alleged deliberate targeting of journalists is part of the evidence presented in a South Africa-led genocide case against Israel being reviewed by the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
Separately, the chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC), also located in the Dutch city, is seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity including extermination and forced starvation in the case of the Israelis and extermination, rape, and torture in the case of Hamas.
The international press freedom group Reporters Without Borders last month filed a third ICC complaint alleging "war crimes against journalists in Gaza."
According to Palestinian and international officials, at least 37,718 Palestinians—mostly women and children—have been killed during Israel's 264-day assault on Gaza, which has also left more than 86,300 people wounded and 11,000 others missing and feared dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of homes and other bombed-out buildings.
Around 90% of Gaza's 2.3 million people have also been forcibly displaced, and the Israeli siege on Gaza has caused widespread—and deadly—starvation and what the head of the United Nations food agency called a "full-blown famine" in northern parts of the strip.
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