Evacuating in disasters like Hurricane Milton isn’t Simple: There are Reasons People Stay in Harm’s Way

Evacuating in disasters like Hurricane Milton isn’t simple – there are reasons people stay in harm’s way, and it’s not just stubbornness

Evacuation is more difficult for people with health and mobility issues. Ted Richardson/For The Washington Post via Getty Images

Carson MacPherson-Krutsky, University of Colorado Boulder

As Hurricane Milton roared ashore near Sarasota, Florida, tens of thousands of people were in evacuation shelters. Hundreds of thousands more had fled coastal regions ahead of the storm, crowding highways headed north and south as their counties issued evacuation orders.

But not everyone left, despite dire warnings about a hurricane that had been one of the strongest on record two days earlier.

As Milton’s rain and storm surge flooded neighborhoods late on Oct. 9, 2024, 911 calls poured in. In Tampa’s Hillsborough County, more than 500 people had to be rescued, including residents of an assisted living community and families trapped in a flooding home after a tree crashed though the roof at the height of the storm.

In Plant City, 20 miles inland from Tampa, at least 35 people had been rescued by dawn, City Manager Bill McDaniel said. While the storm wasn’t as extreme as feared, McDaniel said his city had flooded in places and to levels he had never seen. Traffic signals were out. Power lines and trees were down. The sewage plant had been inundated, affecting the public water supply.

Evacuating might seem like the obvious move when a major hurricane is bearing down on your region, but that choice is not always as easy as it may seem.

Evacuating from a hurricane requires money, planning, the ability to leave and, importantly, a belief that evacuating is better than staying put.

I recently examined years of research on what motivates people to leave or seek shelter during hurricanes as part of a project with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Natural Hazards Center. I found three main reasons that people didn’t leave.

Evacuating can be expensive

Evacuating requires transportation, money, a place to stay, the ability to take off work days ahead of a storm and other resources that many people do not have.

With 1 in 9 Americans facing poverty today, many have limited evacuation options. During Hurricane Katrina in 2005, for example, many residents did not own vehicles and couldn’t reach evacuation buses. That left them stranded in the face of a deadly hurricane. Nearly 1,400 people died in the storm, many of them in flooded homes.

When millions of people are under evacuation orders, logistical issues also arise.

Two days ahead of landfall, Milton was a Category 5 hurricane. About 5 million people were under evacuation orders, and highways were crowded.

Gas shortages and traffic jams can leave people stranded on highways and unable to find shelter before the storm hits. This happened during Hurricane Floyd in 1999 as 2 million Floridians tried to evacuate.

People who experienced past evacuations or saw news video of congested highways ahead of Hurricane Milton might not leave for fear of getting stuck.

Health, pets and being physically able to leave

The logistics of evacuating are even more challenging for people who are disabled or in nursing homes. Additionally, people who are incarcerated may have no choice in the matter – and the justice system may have few options for moving them.

Evacuating nursing homes, people with disabilities or prison populations is complex. Many shelters are not set up to accommodate their needs. In one example during Hurricane Floyd, a disabled person arrived at a shelter, but the hallways were too narrow for their wheelchair, so they were restricted to a cot for the duration of their stay. Moving people whose health is fragile, and doing so under stressful conditions, can also worsen health problems, leaving nursing home staff to make difficult decisions.

At least 700 people stayed in chairs or on air mattresses at River Ridge Middle/High School in New Port Richey, Fla., during Hurricane Milton. AP Photo/Mike Carlson

But failing to evacuate can also be deadly. During Hurricane Irma in 2017, seven nursing home residents died in the rising heat after their facility lost power near Fort Lauderdale, Florida. In some cases, public water systems are shut down or become contaminated. And flooding can create several health hazards, including the risk of infectious diseases.

In a study of 291 long-term care facilities in Florida, 81% sheltered residents in place during the 2004 hurricane season because they had limited transportation options and faced issues finding places for residents to go.

Some shelters allow small pets, but many don’t. This high school-turned-shelter in New Port Richey, Fla., had 283 registered pets. AP Photo/Mike Carlson

People with pets face another difficult choice – some choose to stay at home for fear of leaving their pet behind. Studies have found that pet owners are significantly less likely to evacuate than others because of difficulties transporting pets and finding shelters that will take them. In destructive storms, it can be days to weeks before people can return home.

Risk perception can also get in the way

People’s perceptions of risk can also prevent them from leaving.

A series of studies show that women and minorities take hurricane risks more seriously than other groups and are more likely to evacuate or go to shelters. One study found that women are almost twice as likely than men to evacuate when given a mandatory evacuation order.

If people have experienced a hurricane before that didn’t do significant damage, they may perceive the risks of a coming storm to be lower and not leave.

Video from across Florida after Hurricane Milton shows flooding around homes, trees down and other damage. At least 12 people died in the storm, and more than 3 million homes lost power.

In my review of research, I found that many people who didn’t evacuate had reservations about going to shelters and preferred to stay home or with family or friends. Shelter conditions were sometimes poor, overcrowded or lacked privacy.

People had fears about safety and whether shelter environments could meet their needs. For example, religious minorities were not sure whether shelters would be clean, safe, have private places for religious practice, and food options consistent with faith practices. Diabetics and people with young children also had concerns about finding appropriate food in shelters.

How to improve evacuations for the future

There are ways leaders can reduce the barriers to evacuation and shelter use. For example:

• Building more shelters able to withstand hurricane force winds can create safe havens for people without transportation or who are unable to leave their jobs in time to evacuate.

• Arranging more shelters and transportation able to accommodate people with disabilities and those with special needs, such as nursing home residents, can help protect vulnerable populations.

• Opening shelters to accommodate pets with their owners can also increase the likelihood that pet owners will evacuate.

• Public education can be improved so people know their options. Clearer risk communication on how these storms are different than past ones and what people are likely to experience can also help people make informed decisions.

• Being prepared saves lives. Many areas would benefit from better advance planning that takes into account the needs of large, diverse populations and can ensure populations have ways to evacuate to safety.

This article has been updated with additional details about Hurricane Milton’s damage.

Carson MacPherson-Krutsky, Research Associate, Natural Hazards Center, University of Colorado Boulder

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Fix the climate or appease the fossil fuel industry – we can’t do both

If we accept that the title is spot on, and I believe it is. It's important whenever we discuss the climate crisis which will destroy human life on this planet, to stress that the capitalist system cannot fix it and we have to transform the system of production from one that produces for profit to one that produces for need.  There's no other way out. FFWP Admin

Fix the climate or appease the fossil fuel industry – we can’t do both

Jack Marley, The Conversation

Britain ended more than 140 years of coal power when it closed its last generator in September.

Coal emits more heat-trapping gas to the atmosphere than any other fossil fuel, so its demise as a source of electricity is an unalloyed good for the climate. Yet, with another announcement a week later, the UK government has helped extend the reign of fossil fuels well into the 21st century.

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Less than six months from polling day, the UK Labour party (then the official opposition) scrapped a campaign commitment to provide an annual stimulus of £28 billion (US$36.6 billion) for green industries.

Six billion pounds shy of this figure will now be raised over 25 years, Keir Starmer’s Labour government has revealed, but for a specific purpose: carbon capture and storage.

“The technology works by capturing CO₂ as it is being emitted by a power plant or another polluter, then storing it underground,” says Mark Maslin, a professor of natural sciences at UCL.

The Guardian reports that oil companies BP and Equinor will invest in a cluster of carbon capture and storage installations in Teesside, north-east England. Eni, an Italian oil company, is expected to develop sites in north-west England and north Wales. In each case, emissions will probably be pumped via gas pipes beneath the seabed.

Starmer anointed “a new era” for green jobs when announcing this funding, but experts claim he is actually offering symbolic and strategic support to climate-wrecking energy sources that have dominated for centuries.

A new error

“This announcement represents a massive bet on a still unproven technology, and will lock the UK into fossil fuel dependence for decades to come,” Maslin says.

“The Climate Change Act mandates the UK should achieve net zero emissions by 2050, yet this will be impossible if carbon capture leads to the UK building new gas power stations instead of wind and solar farms.”

Our ability to capture all this carbon is not guaranteed. DimaBerlin/Shutterstock

Maslin was one of several scientists who wrote to energy secretary Ed Miliband criticising the plans. As he sees it, the government would not fund these projects if it did not see a future for fossil fuels beyond the middle of this century, by which time scientists have said our interference in the climate must end.

The message is clear: expensive imports of natural gas (essentially methane, a potent greenhouse gas) are here to stay. Even successful deployment of carbon scrubbers at the point of burning this gas would not erase its climate impact, Maslin says, as it leaks at all stages of its production and use.

But Maslin also doubts carbon capture and storage can siphon off the emissions of gas-fired power plants without adding to climate change. This is why climate scientists often describe carbon capture and storage as an unproven technology for decarbonising electricity and heavy industry: most of its applications have been in natural gas processing facilities where CO₂ is extracted for commercial uses.

“The track record of adding carbon capture to power plants is much worse, with the vast majority of projects abandoned,” Maslin explains.

More damning still, almost 80% of all the CO₂ captured by existing installations has been reinjected into oil fields – to pump more oil.

Could carbon capture and storage tech turn natural gas into zero-carbon hydrogen, as some hope? Again, Maslin is dubious. Water is a cleaner source for hydrogen and using this fuel to heat homes or decarbonise factories is a second-rate solution compared with renewable electricity, he says.

The fruits of appeasement

Maslin and his co-signatories say that carbon capture and storage should be limited to reducing emissions from existing fossil power plants or steel furnaces while these emission sources are rapidly phased out.

Marc Hudson at the University of Sussex is a historian of climate politics and policy in Australia, the US, UK and internationally. He has encountered policy proposals for carbon capture dating back to the 1970s and in his view, their overwhelming effect has been to prolong the use of fossil fuels by justifying investment in their expansion.

“It’s the equivalent of smoking more and more cigarettes each day and gambling that a cure for cancer will exist by the time you need it,” he says.

When trying to explain why rational climate policies like the mass insulation of draughty homes tends to lose out to investment in carbon capture and storage, Nils Markusson, a lecturer in environmental politics at Lancaster University, found something similar:

“Home insulation does nothing to shield the profits of fossil fuel companies or landlords in the large and growing private rental sector,” he says.

In other words, appeasing the fossil fuel industry is a proviso of policies drafted to address climate change. This limitation has also infiltrated scientific assessments of the climate.

A new report shows that “overshoot” scenarios – that is, projections of future climate change which accept the global target of 1.5°C will be at least temporarily breached – are rife in mainstream climate science.

This is despite evidence of the permanent damage such a breach would cause – and our doubtful ability to reverse warming once it has exceeded these dangerous levels using speculative carbon removal technology.

There is not enough land or energy to rapidly restore the carbon we have emitted. Oksana Bali/Shutterstock

What has led us here? Comprehending the climate crisis and its solutions on terms favourable to the fossil fuel industry say Wim Carton and Andreas Malm, political ecologists at Lund University.

“Avoiding climate breakdown demands that we bury the fantasy of overshoot-and-return and with it another illusion as well: that the Paris targets can be met without uprooting the status-quo.

"One limit after the other will be broken unless we manage to strand the necessary fossil assets and curtail opportunities for continuing to profit from oil and gas and coal.”

Jack Marley, Environment + Energy Editor, The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Journalists Need to Speak Out Like Liam Cosgrove

Reprinted from Anti-Imperial Nexus

We badly need good journalists to hold them to account

Oct 09, 2024

If every journalist acted like Liam Cosgrove, there would be no genocide in Gaza and we wouldn’t be talking about Lebanon or Iran. It’s precisely because most journalists aren’t doing their jobs that our leaders feel they can get away with violating international law.

Liam Cosgrove is the Grayzone journalist who said to Matthew Miller what every decent person has been waiting for a journalist to say. While corporate journalists have acted like genocide support is a respectable position so they don’t lose access, Cosgrove had the courage to do his damn job. It was like a breath of fresh air wafted into the sewer of US politics.

Cosgrove delivered this epic question to Miller and was somehow allowed to finish without being dragged out by security:

“Israel is still poised to strike Iran, and in July, Blinken said Iran is one to two weeks away from developing a nuclear weapon, so I guess they might have one by now. Meanwhile, in Ukraine they’ve struck deep within Russian territory several times, as deep as 300 miles from the border… and we know Russia has the largest nuclear arsenal on the planet, as many as 6,000 warheads, and so one of the risks of arming militaries that are striking in the territories of nuclear powers is that one of those [nukes] gets deployed, and things could escalate quickly from there.

“It’s rarely discussed, but it’s important to address, the nuclear risk is real and it could very abruptly mean the end of what humans have worked for thousands of years to collectively achieve. Us today are very lucky to live with the fruits of that achievement and I feel like we’re treating the risk kind of brazenly.

“We often hear in response to these concerns, ‘Well Putin, Khameni, they’re war criminals, they’re terrorists,’ as if they’re too inherently evil or immoral for us to negotiate with, but meanwhile, this administration has financed genocide in Gaza for the last year, and every day you’re up there denying accountability for it, so what gives you the right to lecture other countries on their morals?”

Isn’t it a relief to hear a journalist make the point that our actions are significantly increasing the risk of nuclear war? There is nothing more important to discuss, and yet if any journalist mentions the risk at all, it’s only to tell us how crazy the other side is. There is never a serious attempt to hold our leaders accountable for their role. Just imagine the difference it would make if every journalist asked the right questions. But they don’t and that’s why Miller felt comfortable dismissing Cosgrove by saying:

“If you have a policy question for me, I’m happy to take it. If you want to give a speech, there are plenty of spaces in Washington where you can give a speech.”

Miller might not have been in the mood to be challenged, but Cosgrove was not in the mood to be dismissed and said:

“People are sick of the bullshit in here. I mean it is a genocide, you are abetting it, and you are risking nuclear war…”

It’s interesting that Cosgrove suggested the other journalists are sick of the bullshit. That’s good to hear, but in that case, we need them to find the courage to speak up. Well-intentioned cowards are no more useful than corporate sell-outs.

Note how journalists from publications like the Grayzone are treated like extremists, and yet they’re the ones saying what desperately needs to be said. Now stop and ask yourself who is really on our side. The Grayzone are targets because they do good work, and if you doubt that, watch their documentary: Atrocity Inc: How Israel Sells The Destruction Of Gaza and never tell me it’s “too complicated” again.

Anti-imperial Nexus is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

If you want a sign of what is to come and what the likes of Miller would love to do to Grayzone journalists, look no further than another Grayzone journalist, Jeremy Loffredo, who was arrested in Israel yesterday. So far we have few details, other than his phone was confiscated and he was allegedly beaten. A number of other journalists were arrested with him, but they have since been released. I understand Loffredo is the only one still locked up.

A journalist called Andrey X posted on Twitter:

Today I was beaten, kidnapped, blindfolded and taken to a military base by the Israeli Occupation Forces, together with 4 other journalists. Two of us were held for 11 hours without charges, my phone was confiscated (stolen), and one of us is still in custody. Full story soon.

Who the hell blindfolds and beats someone they’ve just arrested for doing journalism? Why the hell is Israel always allowed to get away with this crap? Loffredo might be an American citizen, but unfortunately, it seems he is the wrong kind of American citizen. The Biden administration likely cares as much about him as they did about Aysenur Ezgi Eygi. You can guarantee that if Loffredo gets tortured and imprisoned for doing journalism, his government will abandon him like they abandon people in hurricane zones.

If corporate journalists weren’t all imperialists or cowards, they would show solidarity with arrested journalists and hold the warmongers to account. Thankfully, there are a handful of journalists outside of the Grayzone who are still fighting the good fight and they should be appreciated.

For example, Ryan Grim of Drop Site News challenged Matthew Miller on Netanyahu’s insane threat to destroy Lebanon, unless the Lebanese population somehow destroy Hezbollah.

The IDF is unable to defeat Hezbollah in a ground war so Netanyahu demanded a civilian population do this for him. He knows this is impossible so it was not a serious ultimatum, it was a declaration of intent. He was simply broadcasting his excuses for the next genocide.

Ryan Grim said to Miller:

“You said earlier that Israel has a right to attack Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation. I wanted to ask if you had seen the Israeli prime minister’s video that he put out in English to the people of Lebanon last night.

“He said: ‘You have an opportunity to save Lebanon before it falls into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza. I say to you, the people of Lebanon, free your country from Hezbollah so that this war can end.’ That seems like a blanket threat against a civilian population. Is that terrorism?”

The answer is of course it’s terrorism or certainly the threat of terrorism. Terrorism is the use of violence against civilians to achieve political goals and that is exactly what Netanyahu is threatening, but Israel is allowed to do terrorism. Israel’s terrorism even has a special name: the Dahiya Doctrine.

I was expecting Miller to come out with the “Israel has a right to defend itself” crap, but his answer was slightly better than expected, suggesting he might be feeling the pressure, even though few are holding him to account.

“First of all, let me say we cannot and must not see the situation in Lebanon turn into anything like the situation in Gaza. That would, of course, not be acceptable.

“In response to your other question, no country in the region should dictate who the Lebanese leaders are, not Israel, not the United States, not any of the other countries in the region…

“And I’m making it clear that there should be no kind of military action in Lebanon that looks anything like Gaza…”

My question is why not? Before you think I’ve lost my mind, let me explain….

If it’s not necessary to carpet bomb Lebanon to take out Hezbollah, why was it necessary to carpet bomb Gaza to (fail to) take out Hamas? Surely, this is an admission that Israel’s actions over the past year have been disproportionate and the US has supported them anyway.

Remember Miller’s words because if Israel destroys Lebanon, he will revert to saying “Israel has a right to defend itself” and forget he ever objected. It’s not long ago that Biden was saying Rafah would be a red line and we know what happened there.

Surprisingly, Miller was asked another good question and this time by a Reuters journalist… I know, it’s a triple whammy of good journalism today, so maybe journalists are finally finding their courage. Maybe it’s dawning on them that World War III would affect them too. I would love nothing better for them to prove me wrong.

Miller was asked by Simon Miller if Israel is blocking aid and said:

“We haven’t made that assessment at this time, but it’s urgent that they correct the situation and allow humanitarian aid to get in.”

Why would it be urgent Israel allows aid in, unless it’s not allowing aid in? This was an inadvertent confession and it highlights the importance of journalists asking the right questions. A bad journalist will let Miller off the hook. A good journalist will give him enough rope to hang himself.

Miller was asked good questions by three journalists and by the end of it, his perma-smirk was gone. Now imagine the difference it would make if the talking heads on TV started calling out the bullshit. Imagine if voters refused to lend their votes to politicians unless they changed their positions. In my headline, I might have put the blame on cowardly journalists, but this is on everyone who is unconditionally voting for genocide. For the love of god, use your leverage.

Miller’s admission confirms the US is not allowed to arm Israel in accordance with its own laws, never mind international law. Good luck waiting for the courts to hold the US government accountable though. The only way this stops is if the public refuse to vote for it, but red and blue voters are showing they have no red lines and treating those who do like the enemy.

It’s so far beyond farcical at this point. All we’re asking is our leaders obey the law, but they would rather put us on a terrorist watch list for caring about human rights. They would rather do to us what Israel is doing to Jeremy Loffredo. And the way MI5 is warning about an incoming attack, there is a better than average chance of a false flag to drag us into war. If that happens, you can guarantee anyone who objects will be given the Loffredo treatment. Personally, I can’t wait for my government-issued beating.

We live in a time when it’s bad to be a good person. It’s wrong to care. Maybe World War III would be for the best after all. Maybe we don’t deserve better than nuclear annihilation.

Al Jazeera Investigating war crimes in Gaza. Most Evidence Shot By Israeli Soldiers.

This feature length investigation by Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit exposes Israeli war crimes in the Gaza Strip through the medium of photos and videos posted online by Israeli soldiers themselves during the year long conflict.

The I-Unit has built up a database of thousands of videos, photos and social media posts. Where possible it has identified the posters and those who appear. The material reveals a range of illegal activities, from wanton destruction and looting to the demolition of entire neighbourhoods and murder.

The film also tells the story of the war through the eyes of Palestinian journalists, human rights workers and ordinary residents of the Gaza Strip. And it exposes the complicity of Western governments – in particular the use of RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus as a base for British surveillance flights over Gaza.

“The west cannot hide, they cannot claim ignorance. Nobody can say they didn’t know,” says Palestinian writer, Susan Abulhawa.This is “the first livestream genocide in history … If people are ignorant they are wilfully ignorant,” she says.

Seymour Hersh: GAZA AFTER A YEAR OF WAR

GAZA AFTER A YEAR OF WAR

A new documentary chronicles destruction and abuse

Seymour Hersh

Oct 08, 2024

∙ Paid

A Palestinian child is seen following the Israeli airstrike on Ibn Rushd School in Al-Zawaida, sheltering displaced people, in Deir al-Balah, Gaza, on October 6. At least 24 Palestinians, including children, were killed, and 93 others injured early Sunday morning in two separate Israeli airstrikes. / Photo by Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images.

Last week Al Jazeera released Investigating War Crimes in Gaza. The 81-minute documentary is a searing indictment of the treatment of those who always suffer most in war—women and children—during Israel’s retaliation for the horrid murders Hamas inflicted inside Israel a year ago this week.

Israel’s initial ground attack failed to rescue all the Israeli hostages or to destroy the several hundred miles of the Hamas tunnel system. The ongoing air attacks have resulted in the indiscriminate killing of men, women, and children, day and night, in houses, apartments, and office buildings. Home to more than two million Palestinians, Gaza has been torn apart, with immense casualties from the bombings that have eventually left little sign of civilization: no hospitals, universities, markets, restaurants, or civic life. 

The war in Gaza has extended into the West Bank and now to Lebanon. The Israeli leadership, headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with religious fanatics in charge of key ministries, has edged the nation into economic misery, and they continue a campaign of assassinations and bombings. Sirens sounded throughout Israel yesterday morning—a tragic anniversary—as a few easily intercepted missiles were fired from a still operating tunnel by a remnant of Hamas. Hezbollah’s much more formidable arsenal of missiles remains operational, and capable of striking deep into Israel. The Israeli Air Force struck what were described as Hamas targets last weekend in Gaza, and the IDF continues the air and ground war against Hezbollah in Lebanon. There has been fear of an Israeli attack on Iran in retaliation for Iran’s missile attack on Israel following Israel’s assassinations of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah last month in Lebanon and a senior Hamas official last summer in Tehran. Murder is in the air in the Middle East and there is no international leader—certainly no one in the Biden administration—with the standing and the will to keep it from happening.

In all of this, Netanyahu’s administration has been constantly supported by the Biden administration which has reportedly provided Israel $18 billion in military aid since last October 7. Biden remains publicly resolute in his support of Israel, as does Vice President Kamala Harris. His foreign policy aides, headed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, are now quiet. Blinken and his colleagues have spent the past several months telling Americans that a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas would happen, and some or all of the remaining hostages would be recovered. All along Netanyahu had other plans.

The destruction of Gaza, observed daily online and on television by the world, is the background for one the major themes of the documentary: the callous indifference of Israeli soldiers operating amid the devastation. There is little contact throughout with Hamas, which has been battered by Israeli bombing and has not posed a significant above-ground threat. There also is no evidence today of a continuing intense Israeli hunt for the remainder of the more than 250 hostages initially seized by Hamas and others. The usual signs of intense urban warfare in the Middle East—ambushes and door-to-door and house-to-house fighting—do not appear in the Al Jazeera documentary because the anticipated intense ground war with Hamas never came to be.

Instead we have video after video, taken by Israeli soldiers and relayed to family and friends, of bored Israeli soldiers ransacking the apartments and homes of Gazan families who fled in panic, perhaps because of an Israeli warning that their neighborhood was to be targeted. Such warnings did take place, but surely were not seen as a humanitarian gesture by Gazans who fled to the streets despite being terrified to venture outside. 

The documentary showed that some apartments, once vacated, were ransacked by Israeli fighters, with flak jackets off, weapons down, and their cellphones filming away. With their commanding officers watching and participating, the Israeli soldiers filmed themselves pawing through the apartments, destroying appliances, smashing furniture, and making fun of Arab food. There is a hunt for money, and, as young males in wartime will do, a ransacking of the clothing of women and the usual fascination for women’s underwear that often is worn by a prancing IDF soldier as his colleagues record away.

The videos, which were forwarded by social media to friends and families back home, reek of contempt for Palestinians, as if all the men in Gaza and their wives and children were hardcore members of Hamas. The documentary shows us that they turned out to be big hits at the many early pro-war dance parties back home. There is not much dancing today in financially stricken Israel. Other scenes in the video show clusters of Israeli soldiers, in uniform and on duty in Gaza, standing in close quarters on the top of emptied buildings—no bombs were coming their way—and cheering as a cluster of apartment buildings ten or so stories high a few hundred yards away began to tremble, obviously because of unseen bombs set off below ground, and then slowly fold away.

As the journalist who broke the stories of the My Lai massacre in South Vietnam and of the photographs of sexual abuse of prisoners in Iraq’s infamous Abu Ghraib prison by untrained American Army Reserve prison guards, I understand that soldiers in combat do horrid things, including rape and murder, to noncombatants. But the Abu Ghraib photos were circulated only among the members of the unit on duty; they were not meant for outsiders, including the Army chain of command. It was understood that their actions, if made known to higher-ups at headquarters, would lead to prosecution.

That was not the case with the photos taken in Gaza and passed around widely, including among the soldiers’ commanding officers. Such evidence of enduring corruption among the officer class may be impossible to cure in the short term, given the degradation of Israel’s political and military leadership today.

There were other photos that I found far more troubling in the documentary, specifically the scenes of a forced march to the south, monitored by Israeli soldiers, by families who had found sanctuary in a hospital in Gaza City. The march was widely reported at the time, but the documentary added facts that were not known. The marchers—including young children and the elderly, some hobbling on crutches in the daytime heat—were ordered to wave a white flag in one hand and hold their IDs in another as they walked. Those who dropped either of these were not allowed to stop walking to retrieve the dropped goods. It was a form of gratuitous collective punishment seen rarely since World War II. It was shaming to watch.

Netanyahu and the religious zealots in control today in Israel obviously have their eyes on Gaza and West Bank as real estate that will soon be open to the possibility of future settler domination. Just who will rule the two million or so surviving residents of Gaza is not known, but any such leadership will be approved by Israel. Self-rule is not going to happen for the desperate surviving Palestinians—if they are allowed to stay in Gaza. A precise death toll in the last year of the war is not yet possible; estimates vary today from the official Gaza health ministry count of more than 41,000 to academic projections four times as high. 

Netanyahu has been clear in his view of the Palestinians’ future. Last October 28, he told Israeli troops about to go into battle: “You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible.” It was a reference to a biblical command in which God gave the Israelites permission to entirely destroy an enemy known as the Amalekites. “And we do remember,” Netanyahu said. 

Chapter 15.3 of the first Book of Samuel has God commanding Samuel: “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”

Netanyahu is not alone in his modern day fanaticism. Last April 30, Bezalel Smotrich, the extremist Israeli finance minister and member of the security cabinet, who is a close associate of Itamar Ben-Gvir, the equally fanatical minister of national security, returned to the Bible in publicly calling for the “total annihilation” of Israel’s enemies. He specifically cited three cities in Gaza that should be destroyed. “There are no half measures,” he said before quoting Deuteronomy: “‘You will blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven. There is no place under heaven.’”

Smotrich ominously said that after Hamas is destroyed, Israel must “clear out, with God’s help, with one blow, wicked Hezbollah in the north, and really send a message that what will happen to those who harm the Jewish people is the same as those who tried to harm us in the past—they will be destroyed, destroyed, destroyed. And it will echo for decades to come.”

Netanyahu has begun bombing “wicked” Hezbollah in Lebanon. Can anyone doubt the fate of Gaza and the West Bank? I cannot. This is no longer the civilized Israel I have visited and reported upon for many decades.

Is anyone in the Biden White House paying careful attention to the words of Netanyahu, Smotrich, and Ben-Gvir as America continues to ship more bombs and other arms to a deeply traumatized and terrorized Israel?

Why did the Dockworkers End Their Strike?

Source

 

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

HEO/GED

10-07-24

 

This was a question some workers asked me and it’s a good question indeed.

 

Firstly, they didn’t end the strike and it’s most likely the members never had any say in the decision. The ILA leadership has “suspended” the three-day walkout. The reason, according to the letter the ILA President Harold Daggett sent to the members on October 5^th, is that the sweetener the port bosses offered on wages, a $24 an hour increase over 6 years, is tentative and dependent on what happens at the table when the negotiations resume on January 15^th 2025. To have accepted it now would have meant it came with a no strike clause. So it wasn’t a friendly offer by any means.

 

Extending the contract until January 15^th the ILA president says, will protect the union and its ability to “negotiate and fight for other important matters that go beyond economics.”  Why that is the case only he knows.

 

I think the Associated Press report on October 4^th is a little closer to the truth writing, “The settlement pushes the strike and any potential shortages past the November presidential election, eliminating a potential liability for Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee.”

 

The strike must have shocked the crap out of Biden and the Democrats with the election only a month away and some reports having Trump and Harris neck and neck. Biden came out fighting announcing to the nation that he will not invoke Taft Hartley on the dockers forcing them back to work and even further, “…..I don't believe in Taft-Hartley,". Is that so Joe?  But as I wrote in my previous commentary of the strike:

“I am not convinced that Biden introducing a no strike piece of emergency legislation in December 2022 that blocked rail workers from striking and utilizing the 80-year old Taft Hartley Act are that much different when it comes down to it.”

 

Truth is, the rewards that come with having your guy in the Oval Office are far too great to risk losing the election because of a strike and all that entails, angry union members, angry consumers facing shortages and so on. Billions are spent on US elections for which of the two Wall Street parties govern society for the next four years.

 

We can only imagine the conversations that have taken place behind closed doors between government officials and the ILA leadership, its lawyers and lobbyists.  But we know there has been considerable involvement on the part of the Biden Administration as his Secretary of Labor, Julie Su, has received considerable praise from ILA President Harrold Daggett, “She’s knocking down doors. She’s trying to get us fair negotiations.”, writes Jenny Brown in Labor Notes, without a hint of criticism.

 

It seems, despite his macho image and somewhat profane laden comments which are a bit of a trick to convince his members how blue collar and tough he is, Daggett is putting his faith in one or the other of the two big business parties. I say one or the other as Daggett met with the degenerate Trump in November at Mar-a-Lago in what he referred to as a "wonderful" and "productive" meeting.

 

Biden also put a lot of pressure on the “foreign” employers for price gouging and making excessive profits---a good old dose of economic nationalism as if US corporations don’t have major interests in other countries. There was no doubt some wiggle room there as in 2021, container carrier operating profits according to analysis by Sea-Intelligence, were $110 billion  while,  “….the combined 2010-2020 operating profit across all years was a combined figure of $37.54 billion,”  So in 2021, thanks a great deal to the COVID pandemic during which dockworkers stayed on the job, the industry tripled its operating profit.  

 

Not taking the wage increase now and accepting a no strike clause seems like the right thing to do but suspending a strike in this way is not and it is clearly a concession to Biden and Co.

 

The important matters remaining are related to job security, healthcare and automation which is the big one.  Daggett continues in his letter to the membership that by extending the contract negotiations,  “…. we aim to establish strong protections against the introduction of remote-controlled or fully automated machinery that threatens our work jurisdiction.”

 

What Biden got through the government’s interference in the negotiations was the Taft Hartley in the form of a cooling off period. A cooling off period is a common practice here in the San Francisco Bay Area when rapid transit workers, that have the ability to cripple the Bay Area economy, go on strike. The bosses and the union officials that are terrified of their own members’ power, know it is not so easy to get workers back out after the initial mood and action dissipates, so a cooling off period is a regular event and a strike breaking strategy.

 

The ILA will not be able to stem the tide of automation, it will need more than a strike to do that, it would take at very least a national strike and a political party of our own that workers do not have in the US and that too is largely due to the failure of the heads of organized labor. But my guess is that with the sweetener on pay, I think it likely that in January, a grandfather clause or something like it will be offered to the present workforce with some compensation to others and the next generation will be the victims as thousands of jobs will disappear. There is no way the East Coast ports can compete with the west or the trend internationally as ports are automated.

 

Perhaps the ILA will end up with something akin to the 1960 deal with the ILWU back in 1960 that I included in my previous piece on the strike.

 

I thought that quote from an ILWU officer from 1960 and the addition to it by the author of the article in NR online that I linked to is important for us to point to in articles or when we’re talking with workers and worth quoting again here. When the ILWU on the West Coast agreed to containerization back in 1960, Robert Rohatch from Local 10 in San Francisco, said of automation, “Pensions and shorter working hours are the only answer to mechanization.”

 

He was right as a first step but as the author of the piece, Peter Olney while agreeing, took it one step further, “Enhancing the pension means that more senior workers retire and clear the field for younger workers. Reducing the workday, but maintaining the same compensation, helps to deal with job attrition that inevitably follows the substitution of machines for human labor. But there is a larger question of the changing structure and character of the employers that requires the leadership and vision of union officers schooled in a materialist analysis of the industry.” (My added emphasis)

 

There is nothing inherently wrong with automation or labor saving technology; it depends which class owns it. If workers own the means of production then it increases leisure time, when the capitalist class does it increases the exploitation of labor and profits. Workers are either thrown on the dole, left with menial low paid jobs, or, as often is the case, in to the prison industrial system which has grown immensely in the US in order to absorb those workers capitalism has abandoned.

 

The ILA is a very top down organization, and it seems, run like a family business of which Harold Daggett is the CEO. If you look at the cc’s on the letter from Daggett to the membership on October 5^th you’ll see what I guess is the union’s executive board of 13, and two members have the same last name, so there’s three members of the Daggett family including the top officer in this union’s leadership body. This is not a healthy situation.

 

We have a situation where two major industries, both crucial to the US economy and both an important part of the US defense industry that is wreaking havoc throughout the world are engaged in strikes. It was not a good sign that the ILA did not strike ships carrying military hardware or the huge cruise liners as the US military and the cruise industry are two of the main contributors to the climate crisis. It’s an indication to me, of the narrow outlook of the heads of organized labor.

 

I am fairly sure that the present ILA workforce will come out of this relatively unscathed and probably with some protections and improvements in their lives. But I see or hear nothing from the ILA leadership or the IAM at Boeing that indicates they are prepared to confront late stage capitalism and US capitalism in particular. The same old strategy and failed tactics are applied and even the disastrous Team Concept philosophy remains untouched.  No serious trade unionist or opposition caucus that aims to change the concessionary course of the present leadership can be taken seriously if it doesn’t openly condemn and campaign against class collaboration in all its forms.

 

For the younger generation, the prospect is one of declining living standards and attacks on our civil rights. There will at some point be a mass movement arise to confront this savagery of the market but the failure of the leaders of the working class today, both in the US and throughout the world to get that ball rolling insures that the road will be a much tougher one than it need be.

Dock Strike: Another Chance for Organized Labor to Change the Future

source

Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
HEO/GED

10-1-24

At midnight on September 30th some 45,000 dockers, members of the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) struck the East Coast ports run by the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX). This is the first East Coast dockworkers strike in 47 years. So now we have two major strikes involving industrial workers occurring at the same time. As I commented earlier, 44,000 IAM members at Boeing Corporation have been on the picket lines for two weeks.

On September 26^th AFL-CIO President Elizabeth Schuler, sent a letter to the Members of Congress urging them not intervene in the dock strike, “Averting a strike is the responsibility of the employers who refuse to offer I.L.A. members a contract that reflects the dignity and value of their labor,”, she wrote.  She warned the legislators that pushing Biden to invoke Taft Hartley makes resolutions less likely.

This has led to US President Joe Biden claiming he will not impose the Taft Hartley against the dockers as has been done in the past because, "There's collective bargaining, and I don't believe in Taft-Hartley,"  

Well, we’re on board with that Joe. What worker, or trade unionist supports Taft Hartley

Mind you, I am not convinced that Biden introducing a no strike piece of emergency legislation in December 2022 that blocked rail workers from striking and utilizing the 80-year old Taft Hartley Act are that much different when it comes down to it.  In both instances the state intervenes on the side of the bosses and profits. Congress passed the legislation and the rail workers never got to utilize their collective bargaining power then, and Liz Schuler and countless other top officials in organized labor did nothing about it.

Maybe in these instances a letter from the president of the AFL-CIO is standard, especially as Taft Hartley has been used against dock workers in the past. It was used against the West Coast ILWU members in 2002.

According to JPMorgan, the dock strike could cost the economy $5 billion a day, or about 6 percent of gross domestic product and, “More than 68 percent of all U.S. container exports and more than 56 percent of container imports flow through East and Gulf Coast ports…” New York Times 9-30-24

So with the IAM at Boeing and the ILA on the East Coast and Gulf Ports, we have some 80,000 workers on strike in industries crucial to the US economy and profits. It is a small example of organized labor’s power if we use it, collectively, and generalize what is essentially a class struggle. Our communities, the unorganized, the unemployed and all marginalized workers are our allies and must be drawn in.

Organized Labor’s Power

It’s clear that those who claim organized labor is weak, that it doesn’t have the strength it once did and so on, are wrong. Anti-union laws that are designed to render union power incapable of waging a real struggle against capital are an obstacle and labor’s ability to respond is restrained by the trade union hierarchy’s refusal to challenge and violate them. The country and the big business community is run by crooks and most politicians that violate the law all the time yet the trade union officialdom is obsessed with honouring them. 

There are a number of points to make here. One is that in preparation for the likelihood of a strike, many shipping companies have diverted goods to the West Coast ports.

And, as they do in the auto or any other industry, the bosses try to keep inventories stocked so that it can be weeks before the impact of a strike like this can be felt. This is a strategy for wearing down workers on the picket lines. As I commented in a previous article, we cannot be out on strike forever, and US workers are highly indebted. The mortgage companies, the landlords, the health care bosses, all will be breathing down their necks if it goes on too long.

Two of the major issues in the dock strike from what I understand, are wages and automation. Inflation is eating up most of the wage raises the dockers received through their previous contract. Wages are up $11% since it ended in June, but inflation is up 24%. We are all familiar with the massive increase in the cost of living.

One of the reasons Biden is suddenly an opponent of Taft Hartley and promises not to impose it, is we have a presidential election only a month away. This puts the dockers in a strong position to win back some of their lost wages eaten up by inflation but it is not going to be possible to stem the tide of automation at the ports. It will take more than a strike to do that and automation, like most labor saving technology, is not a bad thing; it depends which class owns it and determines its usage.

The West Coast dockworkers, members of the ILWU led by Harry Bridges, were faced with a similar confrontation over automation with the introduction of the shipping container. The ILWU leadership accepted a “felixible” approach as containerization improved productivity and naturally profits for the shipping bosses. And in 1960, Bridges and the ILWU leadership agreed to mechanization and a reduced workforce in return for generous job guarantees and benefits for those displaced.

Peter Olney explains what the deal meant as far as jobs:

“In 1960 at the advent of containers there were about 26,000 dockworkers in California, Oregon and Washington. In 1980, when containerization had been established as the dominant mode of ocean shipping, the employment number was about 11,000. By 2020 that number rose by 47% to about 15,000, but cargo volumes had increased by almost 700%”Harry Bridges Then and Now: Monthly Review Online

It’s likely we will see something similar in the negotiations with the ILA.  What is likely is a deal can be made that will guarantee present workers are not affected by the automation. Some sort of sweetener will most likely be part of any proposal from the bosses that they think might be acceptable to put this issue to bed, something similar to the ILWU back then maybe. I’d welcome comments from my ILWU friends on this.

In the above linked Monthly Review article, Peter Olney quotes another ILWU official Robert Rohatch from Local 10 who said of automation, “Pensions and shorter working hours are the only answer to mechanization.”

This is an important step in dealing with labor saving technology as opposed to sending us to the dole line, or building prisons that are warehouses for those human beings capitalism and the so called free market abandons. Olney contributes to this argument explaining that, “Enhancing the pension means that more senior workers retire and clear the field for younger workers. Reducing the workday, but maintaining the same compensation, helps to deal with job attrition that inevitably follows the substitution of machines for human labor. But there is a larger question of the changing structure and character of the employers that requires the leadership and vision of union officers schooled in a materialist analysis of the industry.” (My added emphasis)

The situation in the US (and certainly the world) is very volatile and as I have said before, we cannot determine when and how the anger that lurks below the surface of US society will break in to the open with a vengeance. Wherever the beginnings of a mass movement against the ravages of the market develops, inside or outside of organized labor, organized labor will play a crucial role in it.

I am not a social scientist by any means but my view is that any gains that are made by the dockers or Boeing workers will be temporary, and likely limited to present workers and jobs for the future sacrificed. After the election the US ruling class will be in a stronger position no matter which party’s candidate sits in the Oval Office and the capitalist offensive against the working class will continue.

So for me the most important lesson we can take from these powerful events is, yes the bosses are powerful, but the organized labor movement is still a mighty powerful force. It is the strategy and tactics of the leadership that isolates individual strikes leaving workers to fight a foe that uses the police, the courts, the media and will resort to violence and the introduce troops to smash labor uprisings if need be; that’s our history.

In addition,  I just noticed reading one of the articles on the strike  that the ILA has apparently agreed not to impede military shipments. If this is true it is a mistake. Most union officials today claim support for international solidarity but we can’t build it by supporting US capitalism’s endless predatory wars. The union has also agreed to keep working the cruise ships. The US military and the cruise industry two of the most important contributors to the climate crisis.

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