How the Food Industry Uses Big Tobacco’s Playbook

Gigi Kellett

Photograph Source: John Vachon – Public Domain

In the 1960s and 1970s, Big Tobacco and public health advocates were locked in a battle. The anti-smoking supporters were gaining ground as cities were innovating ways to reduce smoking and protect public health during this time. As former tobacco industry lobbyist Victor L. Crawford observed, you’d “put out a fire [in] one place, another one would pop up somewhere else.”

But in the mid-1980s, this momentum stopped. Big Tobacco had discovered a way to reverse local gains. According to a 2020 study in the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH), the industry’s counteroffensive has led to more disturbing and enduring ramifications for public health—and our democracy—than previously understood.

The State Preemption Strategy

The strategy used by Big Tobacco is called state or “ceiling” preemption: promoting weaker state public health laws to override stronger local laws. Between 1986 and 1991, the tobacco industry rammed through seven state preemption laws.

The industry gained steam over the next five years, imposing 17 additional preemption policies on states. Laws restricting youth access to tobacco products would be reversed or never see the light of day. Laws establishing smoke-free environments were overridden. Tobacco tax increases were stalled. Restrictions on tobacco retail licensing were relaxed.

Perhaps the most concerning finding of the study published in the AJPH is that it takes an average of 11 years to repeal these laws—if they’re repealed at all. As of 2019, no preemption laws on youth access or tobacco marketing—and fewer than half of state preemption laws on smoke-free places—have been repealed.

The tobacco industry has a long-documented history of targeting people in low-income communities and communities of color with the very tactics—like children-targeted marketing—preemption laws sought to protect. Consider the costs to public health and progress—especially in Black communities and other communities of color—when scarce resources are bound up in undoing bad policies versus securing new public health protections.

Research indicates that smoking-related deaths accounted for around 15 percent of the decrease in the life expectancy gap between African-American men and white men at age 50 in 2019. Disproportionate childhood exposure to second-hand smoke and target marketing of products such as menthol are among the heightened risk factors for the Black community.

Preemption Harms Consumers—and Workers

As of 2018, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, and the larger food and beverage industry have already seen the enactment of at least a dozen laws preempting local public health policies like soda taxes, product labeling, and restrictions on junk food marketing to kids.

This has allowed the industry to continue its racist marketing campaigns, targeting Black youth and other youth of color. Understanding these tactics is key to undoing and preventing further proliferation of the industry’s preemption push.

The four tobacco industry tactics outlined below are being modeled across industries, such as the food and beverage sector, disproportionately affecting communities of color and exacerbating diet-related disease crises.

Image: Internet Archive Book Images/Wikimedia Commons

Lobbying

First, to give Big Tobacco’s political agenda credibility, tobacco giants like R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company have invested heavily in trade associations and front groups to do their bidding, from so-called “smokers’ rights groups” to restaurant, hotel, and gaming associations.

Unsurprisingly, a similar cast—like state affiliates of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Restaurant Association (NRA)—is again the muscle behind state preemption pushes to block new soda taxes, as well as critical policies to assure food workers’ health and well-being, such as new paid sick leave requirements and minimum wage increases.

Examples include the Texas Supreme Court quashing city efforts to guarantee municipal paid sick leave in 2020 and the Minnesota Supreme Court ruling against the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce’s contention that Minneapolis’s paid sick leave requirements were preempted by state law during the same year.

The Power Coalition for Equity and Justice, a group of social justice organizations in Louisiana, has been mobilizing to undo what a spokesperson of the coalition—in a 2020 article in Scalawag—called, “yet another tool of white supremacy” and an example of the “plantation [mentality’s]” manifestation in state politics: state preemption of local minimum wage increases.

Campaign Contributions

Second, Big Tobacco lavished money on federal elections. In 1998 alone, the tobacco lobbies contributed more than $70 million. Predominantly, Republican candidates have received more than $50 million from the tobacco industry since 1990. In this same period, the NRA and its most prominent corporate members—like McDonald’s, Darden, and Yum! Brands—spent more than $60 million in disclosed federal contributions.

An analysis by my organization, Corporate Accountability, in partnership with Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, Food Chain Workers Alliance, Berkeley Media Studies Group, and Real Food Media, found a disturbing correspondence between NRA campaign contributions and the propensity of those receiving them—like Senator Mitch McConnell and Representative Kevin McCarthy, both Republicans—to oppose progressive policies such as improvements to food labeling, stronger worker protections, and minimum wage increases.

Local Preemption

Third, the industry obscured preemption through legislative channels. As if making an end-run around local democracy wasn’t bad enough, Big Tobacco slipped preemption into a wide array of bills—from property taxes to pesticides.

In 2006, the industry spent more than $100 million to fight tobacco control measures and funded an Ohio measure (“Smoke Less Ohio”) that would have rolled back local smoke-free laws and prevented their adoption in the future. Ohioans voted against the ballot measure.

Twelve years later, in 2018, Big Soda spent millions on a California ballot initiative that made it harder to impose soda taxes and increase any taxes. In exchange for dropping the ballot initiative, lawmakers and then-Governor Jerry Brown agreed to prohibit new taxes on grocery items—including sugar-sweetened beverages—until January 1, 2031, as part of a larger tax overhaul.

According to California state Senator Scott Wiener, a Democrat, the industry basically aimed “a nuclear weapon at [the] government in California and [said], ‘If you don’t do what we want, we’re going to pull the trigger, and you’re not going to be able to fund basic government services.’”

Legal Threats

Fourth, Big Tobacco issued legal threats. Despite being ineffective at overturning laws, the industry has pursued dozens of cases as a deterrent to the passage of new laws. In Michigan, Big Tobacco sponsored a Michigan Restaurant Association and Michigan Chamber of Commerce lawsuit attempting to strike down a local smoke-free policy in 1998.

The lawsuit tied up the town of Marquette in legal proceedings for about five years despite only succeeding in repealing a small part of the law.

But after years of being on the receiving end of the industry’s tactics, the public health community has regrouped. They generated media coverage that exposed Big Tobacco’s chicanery in advancing state preemption policies and—instead of putting out fires once preemption had been introduced or adopted—advocates implemented proactive lobbying approaches.

One of the earliest examples is from 1996 when the Indiana Campaign for Tobacco-Free Communities helped compel then-Governor Evan Bayh to veto a law preempting “virtually non-existent” local tobacco control laws.

Meanwhile, in 1994, a national preemption task force was formed by leading health organizations. It attracted prominent political figures like Hillary Clinton and former Representative Henry Waxman, a Democrat, and mobilized grassroots movements and more coherent counterstrategies. By 2000, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advocated eliminating ceiling preemption laws.

The public health movement also helped expand legal networks. From coast to coast, states helped fund legal resource centers that worked with health departments in drafting tobacco control laws that could weather industry challenges.

But history is repeating itself. For example, e-cigarette maker Juul has worked tirelessly to ensure state increases in the minimum age to purchase tobacco products are paired with preemptions on local governments taking any further actions to regulate vaping (like flavor bans).

Business groups have filed lawsuits against Los Angeles County, Palmdale, California, and Edina, Minnesota, seeking to nix local prohibitions on flavored e-cigs, claiming these laws are preempted by federal law. The COVID-19 pandemic, which has compromised the respiratory health of its victims, does not seem to have caused this destructive industry one bit of pause.

It is critical for those taking on the food industry to get ahead of attempts at preemption.

We can scarcely afford more industry-driven policies denigrating public health and deepening already profound health inequities. There will be no shortage of bills and ballot initiatives intent on supplanting popular democracy with narrow corporate prerogatives. But we have the solutions because we’ve faced this problem before.

Macron address signals right-wing shift by new French government

Alex Lantier

On Tuesday night, Macron gave a rambling, two-and-half hour televised press conference on his installation last week of a new government led by Prime Minister Gabriel Attal. Despite attempts to give a liberal veneer to his policies, his remarks confirmed that by installing Attal he aims to escalate policies of world war abroad and class war at home that have a fascistic character.

Macron began by acknowledging that his government is being deeply shaken by a crisis of the entire capitalist world order and explosive class struggles. “Yesterday’s world is being erased,” he said, and France is “threatened by global crises” and “internal divisions.” He would show “where we are coming from and where we are going” so “France can remain France, the France of common good sense, of the Resistance and of the Enlightenment.”

Macron’s remarks gave no account of the relationship between his now nearly seven years in office and the global capitalist crisis. But in reality, the policies carried out by his government together with all the other NATO imperialist powers is driving the global capitalist crisis. Despite his empty invocations of the 18th-century Enlightenment and resistance to Nazi rule over Europe, he outlined a national-chauvinist policy of militarizing French society utterly incompatible with fundamental democratic and social rights.

Macron defended his alliance with the Israeli regime amid its genocidal war on Gaza and called to escalate NATO’s war on Russia in Ukraine. At home, beyond raising prices for electricity and medicine, he endorsed the “struggle against immigration” and far-right Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin’s immigration law. Above all, he called to accelerate plans to reimpose national military service on French youth, require nationalist “civic education” in high schools, and limit youths’ access to Internet-connected devices.

The policies Macron outlined underscore the central point made by the Parti de l’égalité socialiste (PES) during last year’s mass struggles against his regime. There is nothing to be negotiated with Macron. The only way forward for workers and youth is to mount a political struggle, independent of the labor and political bureaucracies that negotiate with Macron to bring down his police-state regime and take power into their own hands.

Macron claimed the “greatest danger is the Russian war in Ukraine, we cannot let Russia win. This would ultimately be to accept that the rules of the international order cannot be respected.” He called to deliver artillery pieces, dozens of missiles and hundreds of bombs to Ukrainian forces to escalate the war.

Macron justified the Gaza genocide, insisting that principal blame lay with “terrorist attacks” carried out by the Palestinians. While he cynically declared himself to be “shaken by the lives lost in Gaza” as the Israeli regime bombs defenseless refugee camps, hospitals, and schools, he claimed this is the fault of Gaza’s Hamas government. Echoing the Israeli regime’s propaganda, he claimed that Hamas has an “odious strategy placing weapons in schools and hospitals” that justifies taking these buildings as targets.

He praised the US government, which has played the leading role in driving the Ukraine war and arming the Israeli regime against Gaza, calling it “a great ally which shares our values.” He pledged to work with whoever wins the 2024 US presidential elections, including Trump—though he added the proviso that Europe must be able to serve as a “pole of stability” amid a “structural US-China rivalry” that is destabilizing the world.

Macron’s defense of war and genocide represents a significant shift to the right even to the policies he advocated after he was first elected in 2017.

In 2019, as NATO and Russia both intervened militarily in Syria, Macron told the Economist that NATO was “brain dead” and heading towards all-out war with Russia. He criticized Washington’s war policies, calling to “reconsider our policy towards Russia,” adding: “When the United States is very harsh with Russia, it is a form of governmental, political and historical hysteria.”

Macron warned in 2019 that French and NATO imperialist interests could not be best served by a policy of direct global conquest: “Sometimes we committed mistakes by trying to impose our values and change regimes. It was what we saw in Iraq and Libya. … It is an element of the Western approach, I would say in generic terms, that has been an error since the beginning of the century, perhaps a fateful one, due to the convergence of two tendencies: the right of foreign intervention and neo-conservatism.”

Since the trillion-euro bailouts of the banks and the ruling classes at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the class struggles that followed, however, Macron has shifted his line. He set a course of war and social reaction bringing him into direct confrontation with the working class, against which he has settled on a fascistic policy of inciting anti-immigrant chauvinism.

Last year, Macron’s unpopular policy of slashing pensions to transfer hundreds of billions of euros to military spending provoked the largest strikes in France since the 1936 and 1968 general strikes. While these strikes were shut down by the union bureaucracy and brutally assaulted by Macron’s riot police, they utterly discredited the Macron regime. It is widely recognized among French workers and youth that Macron governs against the people.

This was followed by mass rioting across France last summer, after a telephone video emerged showing the cold-blooded police execution of the young Nahel, and then mass protests starting last autumn against the Israeli regime’s genocide in Gaza.

Macron’s response was to put forward the fascistic immigration law of Darmanin, a sympathizer of the Nazi-collaborationist Action française, which denies funding to medical care for foreigners and citizenship to children of immigrants born on French soil. Macron government officials have acknowledged that the law, which is currently going before the Constitutional Council, is unconstitutional. This law is, as neo-fascist National Rally (NR) leader Marine Le Pen enthusiastically declared, an “ideological victory” for the far right.

Tuesday night, Macron above all outlined his plans to incite nationalism and step up police-state repression at home. He boasted of the “implacable response of the state, the police forces, and the justice system” and “a record number of arrests and guilty verdicts” during last year’s protests. He pledged to “double the police presence in France’s streets.”

The cause of the rioting, Macron claimed, was that youth spend “many hours in front of [computer or telephone] screens… It produces a generation of conspiracy theorists.” He called on scientists to develop a rationale limiting youth access to the Internet, with rules that “before a certain age you cannot use a screen, between these ages the use of screens must be limited to so many hours.”

“France will be stronger in this world of shocks if we are united by a common sentiment,” he said, calling to speed up the reintroduction of mandatory universal military service, school uniforms and the singing of the French national anthem in the schools. He claimed that in France, “Everyone feels lost” and that under these conditions, the “old precepts have their value.”

The French people, Macron declared, have to be taught that the nation has “an extra bit of soul, a mystical common program, something spiritual that is beyond us.”

With his mystical and xenophobic appeals, Macron is obliterating the distinction between his party and the neo-fascists, for whom he is opening a path to power. The fascistic delirium which he presented to the French public as a justification for supporting genocide, austerity and war is the clearest indication that the capitalist class as a whole is brain dead. It has reached an impasse and lost any historic legitimacy for its rule.

Israel continues Gaza onslaught and strikes on southern Lebanon

Jordan Shilton

A Palestinian looks at the destruction after Israel bombs a residential building in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, Sunday, Jan. 14, 2024. [AP Photo/Adel Hana]

Israel’s savage bombardment of Gaza continued Thursday as a series of strikes on residential buildings in the southernmost city of Rafah and elsewhere throughout the enclave killed dozens of civilians. Gaza’s Health Ministry reported 170 deaths and well over 300 injuries in 24 hours between Wednesday and Thursday.

The single bloodiest strike was on a three-floor residential building in Rafah, killing 16 people. One of the families living at the site had relocated three times since Israel’s genocidal onslaught began on October 7, according to Al-Jazeera. In addition to the air strikes, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) reported that ground troops are operating further south in the Gaza Strip than ever since the genocide began.

The humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate, with reports Thursday that hepatitis C is spreading among children in Rafah. The city’s population, which was 300,000 prior to Israel’s onslaught, has exploded four-fold to 1.2 million. Tens of thousands of people are crammed into tents and under makeshift plastic sheeting amid heavy rain and the winter cold.

At a press briefing Thursday, UN special rapporteur for the Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese accused Israel of “a number of things that are highly illegal, highly unlawful.” She commented, “What has happened is over 100 days of relentless bombing—the first two weeks using 6,000 bombs per week, bombs of 2,000 pounds, in highly crowded areas.”

Most Palestinians are now dying not only from the bombs, but “because there is not sufficient infrastructure to cure them from the wounds.” She added, “The number of kids who get amputated every day is shocking, one or two limbs. During the first two months of this (war) 1,000 kids were amputated without anaesthesia. It is a monstrosity.”

According to Sean Casey, a health emergency officer for the World Health Organisation, Gaza’s health care network is “collapsing.” After a five-week investigation throughout the enclave, he noted at a Wednesday press conference that only 15 of Gaza’s pre-war 36 hospitals are functioning to some extent. Many of these facilities, however, have become extended refugee camps with a handful of medical staff struggling to treat injuries with few supplies.

Describing the scene at Al-Ahli Hospital in northern Gaza, which was bombed by Israel in October, killing hundreds, he said, “I saw patients who were lying on church pews, basically waiting to die, in a hospital that had no fuel, no power, no water, very little in the way of medical supplies and only a handful of staff remaining to take care of them.”

Similar accounts came from Doctors Without Borders (MSF) staff working at the Al-Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, where conditions have rapidly deteriorated in the recent period. “There are populations sheltering in the hospital because they don’t feel safe anywhere else. And when that population no longer feels safe in the hospital, it’s an indicator for us that the situation for the hospital is becoming untenable,” said MSF’s Amber Alayyan.

“You’ve got patients who are being operated on the floor,” she continued. “You’ve got patients who are sleeping on the floor. You have staff who are sleeping on the floor because they prefer to sleep in the hospital than to take the risk of going back and forth to their homes, which may or may not still exist.”

On Wednesday, the IDF blew up the main campus of Israa University south of Gaza City, the last remaining university in the enclave. A report released by Hamas Thursday stated that Israel has destroyed 390 educational institutions since October 7. It described this barbarism as an example of “the genocide and ethnic cleansing” of Gaza.

The unconditional backing given by US imperialism to the fascistic Netanyahu government ensures that Israel can carry out these war crimes and many others with impunity. The 2,000-pound bombs denounced by Albanese in her remarks have been supplied without interruption by Washington since the outset of Israel’s onslaught. American imperialism has also systematically prepared for a wider regional war aimed at Iran, which it is now realising through the bombardment of Houthi targets in Yemen in alliance with Britain.

Late Thursday, the Biden administration reported a fifth round of strikes on the Iranian-backed movement, which has launched missiles against commercial shipping in the Red Sea in support of the Palestinians. The real reason for Washington and London’s war is to consolidate American imperialist hegemony over the energy-rich Middle East against its rivals.

The European imperialist powers, led by Germany, are preparing their own naval operation to the region to join the conflict. The war in the Middle East is one front in a rapidly developing redivision of the world between the imperialist powers, who are determined to seize markets, raw materials, and geopolitical influence from their competitors, above all China and Russia.

Emboldened by the support from the imperialist powers, Netanyahu’s fascistic government is ever more openly declaring its genocidal intentions. At a press conference Thursday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made one of his most explicit statements to date in favour of Israel’s permanent responsibility for security over Gaza and the West Bank, and opposition to a Palestinian state.

Netanyahu said that a “vital condition” for any post-war arrangement was Israel maintaining “security control” over all territory west of the Jordan River, which includes Gaza, Israel, and the West Bank. Netanyahu stated, “Whoever is talking about the ‘day after Netanyahu’ is essentially talking about the establishment of a Palestinian state with the Palestinian Authority.”

In remarks earlier in the day at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Israel’s President Isaac Herzog underscored how Israel’s genocide in Gaza is part of an imperialist-backed regional war against Tehran. Herzog railed against an  “empire of evil” emanating from Iran that needs to be confronted by a “strong coalition” of states. The Gaza population is “entrenched in a network of terror,” continued Herzog, which is funded by Iran. This rhetoric chimed with Netanyahu’s statements at his press conference vowing to pursue the war until a “decisive victory.”

The IDF has stepped up its strikes against Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon, including the use of white phosphorus shells in a strike Thursday, according to Lebanese authorities. In the West Bank, daily raids have claimed over 350 lives since October 7. In a raid in Tulkarem Thursday, Israeli forces killed eight people.

Fascist National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir declared in a speech to border police in the West Bank that they should shoot “terrorists” even if they don’t pose a threat, i.e., kill Palestinians en masse. In an attempt to save face, he later released a revised statement claiming that he was referring to “armed terrorists.”

A report from the Committee to Protect Journalists included Israel on its list of Worst Jailers of Journalists in the world for the first time, due to its detention of Palestinian journalists without trial during the Gaza onslaught. The 17 journalists in Israeli jails in December was on a par with Iran, the report noted. The number of detentions has since risen to 19. In Gaza itself, over 100 journalists and media workers have been killed in Israeli air strikes. In the latest example, Wael Fannouneh, manager of the Al-Quds Today television network, died in an Israeli air strike in Gaza City Thursday.

Right-wing Supreme Court majority conspires with billionaires to undermine federal regulations

John Burton

At Wednesday morning’s oral argument, the right-wing supermajority of the US Supreme Court signaled that it will be dismantling 40 years of case law requiring federal judges to defer to the actions of regulatory agencies that were established by Congress and staffed by the executive branch.

The decision will call into question, to cite just a few examples, nationwide regulations affecting the environment, labor relations, natural resources, consumer products, the economy and financial markets, construction and infrastructure safety, immigration, civil rights, communications, food and drugs, health care and education.

The decision, expected this June, will subject over 400 federal agencies and subagencies to a barrage of lawsuits based on the Supreme Court’s repealing the current bedrock requirement that federal courts must uphold regulations that are “based on a permissible construction” of the enabling congressional statute.

Individual judges, many of whom are reactionaries staffing remote courts to whom cases can be deliberately steered by well-financed litigants, will have virtually unrestrained power to second-guess technical experts and quash rules that threaten the profits of major corporations and their owners.

The result will, by design, kneecap the entire regulatory structure in the United States, with hundreds of federal judges rendering conflicting interpretations of federal laws, and the arch-reactionary Supreme Court as the final arbiter.

Members of the Supreme Court sit for a group portrait following the addition of Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, at the Supreme Court building in Washington, Octobert 7, 2022. [AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite]

A little background: Emerging from the Great Depression and world war as the planet’s dominant economic force, the US government found it increasingly necessary to control the production and exchange of commodities through an expanding network of federal agencies, which in turn promulgate rules and regulations. The major corporations, of course, bristled at any restriction on their ability to churn profits. Patchwork standards for court review evolved until the Supreme Court settled the question in 1984’s Chevron v. National Resources Defense Council.

Chevron holds, unanimously, that where the Act of Congress itself does not resolve a specific issue, “the question for the court is whether the agency’s answer is based on a permissible construction of the statute,” a rule that defers to the judgment of the regulatory agency in most cases. Chevron has been cited more than any other Supreme Court decision over the last 40 years, about 18,500 times, including 70 in the Supreme Court, generally to preclude challenges to regulations.

Chevron was decided during a period when most challenges were filed by public interest groups opposing the Reagan administration’s rollback of regulatory protections. Chevron was praised by the late reactionary Justice Antonin Scalia because it “accurately reflects the reality of government.”

Case in point: The regulation challenged in Chevron was one that loosened air pollution standards. Ironically, that regulation was promulgated by Anne Gorsuch, Reagan’s EPA administrator at the time. She is the mother of Justice Neil Gorsuch, who denounced Chevron Wednesday.

Times have changed, and now most challenges are filed by major corporations to remove roadblocks from their accumulation of profits. Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce, the case argued Wednesday, is not one of those cases, however. It is the concoction of “Americans for Prosperity,” a political action committee linked to Koch Industries, a major petrochemical firm that is the second largest privately held company in the United States.

Americans for Prosperity’s stooge “public interest” law firm, Cause of Action, recruited an atypical, somewhat sympathetic test case involving small New Jersey and Rhode Island fishing businesses to challenge Chevron in the Supreme Court. 

The National Marine Fishery Services required each herring boat to carry an observer, who tallied catches to prevent overfishing. In 2020 the agency enacted a regulation requiring that the operators pay for the observer, about $700 a day.

Cause of Action has had two cash infusions indirectly from Koch Industries, including more than $4 million in 2019 and $1.1 million in 2020. In its most recent tax filing, covering the time when the fishing case was being litigated, the group reported having no employees. The case is being prosecuted by lawyers who work for Americans for Prosperity and are linked to Koch Industries.

Clarence Thomas reinforced Chevron in a 2005 ruling known as Brand X. After being flown by private jet to secretly attend a 2018 Koch Industries “summit” in Palm Springs, however, Thomas flipped 180 degrees. He explicitly renounced his earlier ruling in a brief 2020 dissent to a denial of review, stating, “Although I authored Brand X, it is never too late to surrender former views to a better considered position.” Perhaps Thomas should have written “a better paying position,” that would have been more accurate.

In any event, the well-connected Koch lawyers navigated the herring fishermen to the Supreme Court docket, where Thomas and the other right-wing justices selected their case as the best vessel to get rid of Chevron, instead of one of the hundreds of petitions with far higher stakes filed by major corporations.

Not surprisingly, fishing observers and herring went virtually unmentioned at Wednesday’s argument. That was not what the case was about. Gorsuch and Thomas, joined by justices Bret Kavanaugh and Samuel Alito, left no doubt where they stood. The positions of Amy Coney Barrett and Chief Justice John Roberts were less clear, but they will no doubt vote with the other four to gut Chevron, if not overrule it entirely.

As expected, the three moderate justices, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, defended Chevron through their questioning. None dared point out, however, that the case in front of them was a stalking horse for billionaires and corporate interests intent on dismantling any obstacle to the further accumulation of wealth, regardless of the social costs.

With the impending demise of Chevron, federal agencies will no longer be able to regulate businesses and commerce effectively, turning the clock back to the wide open practices that culminated in the 1929 stock market crash and ensuing Great Depression.

Explosion at Thailand fireworks factory leaves 23 workers dead

Robert Campion

An explosion at a fireworks factory in central Thailand on Wednesday at 3:30 p.m. killed at least 23 people. While the precise cause of the explosion is not yet clear, the devastating accident highlights the precarious conditions many Thai workers face and the overall subordination of workplace safety to the pursuit of profits.

Thai rescue workers carry the body of a victim from the site of an explosion at a fireworks factory in Suphan Buri province, Thailand, Thursday, Jan. 18, 2024. [AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit]

The facility where the explosion occurred was located amid rice fields in Sala Khao, a rural area of Suphan Buri province roughly 120km north of Bangkok. The plant was a farmhouse which had been converted to produce small fireworks for farmers to use to scare birds away from crops, a common practice in Thailand. Workers at the factory were reportedly making a 600-700 baht daily wage, or less than $US20. There are several other firework production plants in the area.

Images of the facility in the immediate aftermath of the explosion show thick plumes of black smoke billowing from the site. Footage of the aftermath shows a decimated lot with building materials littered over the area and only distorted, steel building frames standing.

According to authorities, there were no survivors following the explosion. For this reason, the exact cause of the explosion will likely take time to discover, according to national police chief Police General Torsak Sukvimol. Continuous explosions prevented nearby residents from approaching the factory or attempting any type of rescue. They reported no one exiting the facility. The owner survived as he was reportedly delivering goods to customers.

Bodies were transferred to a nearby temple by ambulances for identification. The victims include seven women and 16 men. Only 20 have been properly identified thus far. The factory employed about 30 people, meaning the death toll could rise. The blasts were so devastating that remains of the deceased were found throughout the neighboring area, including a worker who was flung at least 50m into a nearby rice field.

The governor of the province, Natthapat Suwanprathip, visited the area for an inspection with government agencies. Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin was also informed of the explosion while abroad for the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Srettha’s office released a statement, saying “The prime minister ordered an inspection of the plant to see if it was operating legally and if the explosion was caused by negligence. The law must be enforced to the fullest extent because there are innocent deaths and injuries.”

Such remarks are entirely empty and are typical of capitalist politicians around the world following devastating workplace accidents and preventable deaths in natural disasters. Nothing will be done to address safety in Thailand’s fireworks industry or on job sites throughout the country generally.

In fact, the factory where Wednesday’s explosion occurred had a track record for unsafe conditions. On November 20, 2022, an explosion at the plant left one person dead and three injured, reportedly caused by an open fire from a charcoal stove that spread to a pile of gunpowder.

This did not prevent the facility from obtaining a new operating license in July last year. Don Samitakestarin, the deputy provincial governor claimed, “This business operation complied with all the regulations from the Interior Ministry, so we had to give it a license.”

The size of the destroyed factory also prevented even limited safety regulations from being applied to it. The approximately 30 workers employed at the factory produced fireworks by hand. Industrial regulations only apply to those businesses employing 50 workers and which use some form of machinery.

The fireworks industry in Thailand more broadly is no less dangerous. Between 2008 and 2023, there were 24 explosions at fireworks factories and warehouses, resulting in large-scale losses of life. On July 29 of last year, for example, a large explosion at a fireworks warehouse in Narathiwat, in southern Thailand, killed 11 and wounded 389. It occurred in a residential area and damaged 649 houses and three schools. According to the governor, it was caused by sparks from construction welding.

Many of the facilities that produce fireworks in Thailand do so while ignoring safety regulations and standards. Often times, proximity to homes and other businesses raises the risk that explosions or fires will have an even more devastating impact on local residents.

Sonthi Kotchawat, an environmental and health expert, explained to the Bangkok Post that even following the explosion at the fireworks warehouse last July, nothing has been done by government agencies to address safety issues. This means that not only did the unsafe status quo continue in the lead-up to Wednesday’s accident, but that more accidents are likely to occur.

This approach to safety is the norm in Thailand. Since the country’s deadliest fire accident killed 188 workers at the Kader Toy Factory in Nakhon Pathom province in 1993, politicians have claimed that steps were taken to address workplace safety.

However, many workers are forced to labor in conditions that stand outside even these limited labor laws, demonstrating that no section of the country’s ruling elite intends to truly address safety in any sector. As of 2021, the most dangerous jobs in the country were in building construction when 4,516 workers were either injured or killed. Another 2,014 workers were injured or killed in Thailand’s auto industry, which is the tenth largest producer of vehicles in the world.

Throughout the Indo-Pacific, workplace accidents in the fireworks industry are also rampant, with Thai workers and others throughout the region facing many of the same exploitative conditions. Last October in Tamil Nadu, India, two factory explosions killed 14 people and in central China in July, five people were killed in a similar accident.

The global fireworks market is worth at least $US2.7 billion and is expected to reach $US3.8 billion by 2031. About 90 percent of the world’s fireworks are produced in China. While Wednesday’s explosion took place at a factory typically producing fireworks for farmers, it occurred at a time of high demand for such goods, just prior to the Lunar New Year in February, an important holiday in the Asia-Pacific.

Government Of Brunei Darussalam Scholarships 2024/2025

Application Deadline: 15th February 2024 not later than 1600 hrs (Brunei time).

Offered annually? Yes

To be Taken at (university): 

• Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD),
• Kolej Universiti Perguruan Ugama Seri Begawan
• Universiti Islam Sultan Sharif Ali (UNISSA),
• Universiti Teknologi Brunei (UTB) and
• Politeknik Brunei (PB).

Fields of Study: These scholarships are awarded for pursuing undergraduate and postgraduate degree program in various disciplines offered by the UBD, UNISSA and ITB at different levels.

About the Award: Applications are invited for Brunei Darussalam Government Scholarships available for foreign students to study at University of Brunei Darussalam [UBD], Islam Sultan Sharif Ali University [UNISSA], Brunei Institute of Technology [ITB] and Politeknik  Brunei (PB)in Brunei. These scholarships are awarded to the students of ASEAN, OIC, Commonwealth Member Countries and others. Scholarship award is normally tenable for the duration of the programme.

Type: Undergraduate and postgraduate degrees

Eligibility:

• Applications are open to citizens of, but not limited to, ASEAN, Commonwealth and OIC member countries.
• Applicants should be nominated by their Government.
• Applicants must be certified to be medically fit to undertake the scholarship and to study in Brunei Darussalam, by a qualified medical practitioner who is registered with any Government Authority(ies) prior to arrival in Brunei Darussalam. Any and all costs incurred in obtaining this certification are to be borne by the applicant.
• Applicants must be, between the ages of 18-25 for Undergraduate and Diploma programmes and must not exceed the age of 35 for Postgraduate Master’s Degree programmes on the 31st July 2024.
• The award is NOT eligible to Brunei Darussalam Permanent Residents.

Number of Scholarships: Several

Value of Scholarship: The scholars are exempted from paying tuition fees and other appropriate compulsory fees as determined by the university for the duration of the programme.

One return economy class air-ticket for the most economically viable route to Brunei Darussalam will be determined by the Brunei Darussalam Government. No additional assistance will be provided towards other travel expenses.

Allowances payable will include:

• Monthly personal allowance of BND500.00
• Annual Book Allowance BND600.00
• Monthly food allowance of BND150.00
• Upon completion of the program, Baggage allowance to a maximum institution of BND250.00 to ASEAN region and BND500.00 to non ASEAN region.
• An accommodation at respective institution residential college is provided. If the scholar opts not to live in the provided accommodation, no additional allowance will be given in the lieu of board and transport.
• Outpatient medical and/or dental treatment is at any Brunei government hospitals, However an administrative charge is payable for each consultation with the government general practitioner or specialist.
• Should the scholar seek further medical or dental treatments at any private hospital or clinic, all expenses are to be borne by scholars themselves.

Duration of Scholarship: The scholarship award is normally tenable for the minimum period required to obtain the specific degree which is four years for a first degree with honours, one to two years for a master’s degree, three years for a doctoral degree at UBD, UNISSA and ITB, two and a half years for HND at ITB, three years for diploma of health sciences at UBD, all on a full time basis.

Eligible Countries: Students of ASEAN (Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Viet Nam), OIC (Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Benin, Brunei, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Comoros, Ivory Coast, Djibouti, Egypt, Gabon, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Suriname, Syria, Tajikistan, Togo, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan and Yemen), Commonwealth Member Countries ((Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, Botswana, Cameroon, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Falkland Islands, Gambia, Ghana, Gibraltar, Grenada, Guyana, India, Jamaica, Kenya, Kiribati, Lesotho, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritius, Montserrat, Mozambique, Namibia, Nauru, Nigeria, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Rwanda, St Helena, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and The Grenadines, Samoa, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Swaziland, Tanzania, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos Islands, Tuvalu, Uganda, Vanuatu, Virgin Islands (British) and Zambia) and others can apply for the scholarships.

How to Apply: 

• Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD),
• Universiti Islam Sultan Sharif Ali (UNISSA),
• Universiti Teknologi Brunei (UTB),
• Kolej Universiti Perguruan Ugama Seri Begawan (KUPU SB) and
• Politeknik Brunei (PB)​.

To apply, please fill in the online Application Form at the following link – BDGS Application Form.
7.     8.	Applicants applying to Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD) must also complete an online application through  https://apply.ubd.edu.bn/orbeon/uis-welcome/   Applicants applying to Universiti Teknologi Brunei (UTB) must also complete an online application through  https://apply.utb.edu.bn/
9.	For further queries please contact us at: queriesBDGS2024@mfa.gov.bn

Visit Scholarship Webpage for Details

Conditions deteriorate for survivors of Noto earthquake in Japan

Ben McGrath

In the nearly three weeks since a devastating 7.6 magnitude earthquake struck central Japan on New Year’s Day, tens of thousands of survivors remain in perilous conditions, many displaced and lacking access to basic necessities such as running water.

Burned-out vehicles and other debris are seen after a fire following a deadly earthquake in Wajima, on the Noto peninsula, northwest of Tokyo on New Year's Day 2024 [AP Photo/Hiro Komae]

As of January 17, at least 232 deaths have been confirmed while nearly two dozen more remain missing, meaning the death toll will likely continue to rise. At least 12,443 residential buildings have been damaged or destroyed in cities in Ishikawa Prefecture along Japan’s west coast, particularly on the Noto Peninsula where the quake struck. Rain and snow have also made it difficult for rescuers searching for victims.

In the immediate aftermath of the quake, around 100,000 people were forced to evacuate their homes. Of this number, approximately 19,000 remain in evacuation centers while others have moved to hotels or are staying with family members. Many evacuation centers continue to lack basic supplies, including clean water and food, leading to a deterioration of sanitary conditions. This has led to the spread of disease, including COVID-19 as the pandemic continues to rage in Japan despite claims to the contrary by the government of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

Some of the hardest hit by the disaster have been the elderly who are reluctant or unable to leave their villages. Many are also reliant on assisted living facilities. These nursing homes, which were already experiencing labor shortages before the quake, are in many cases now incapable of providing adequate care for their residents. The central government plans to dispatch approximately 1,700 care workers to the region by the end of February. However, the labor shortage is nationwide and many facilities around the country cannot send personnel.

Hospitals have also struggled to treat patients, facing the same problems as evacuation centers and assisted living homes. The director of the Wajima Municipal Hospital, Makoto Shinagawa, recently detailed the struggles his facility has experienced, telling the Asahi Shimbun, that many of his staff were unable to reach the hospital while a significant amount of medical equipment had been damaged. He also stated there was little hope of the water supply being restored to the hospital any time soon.

In addition, many hospitals lack COVID-19 testing kits and are therefore unable to identify suspected cases. As of January 15, there have been at least 90 confirmed cases, though many hospitals and evacuation centers cannot quarantine patients testing positive due to a lack of space and the ability to heat separate spaces.

More than 55,000 homes are without running water. Basic services may not return until the end of March. However, an official from Suzu, one of the hardest hit cities, stated that a full recovery will take even longer: “We face the daunting task of redoing the entire area for both water and sewage. It will probably take years to fully restore the system.”

Lacking access to water is nothing new following large-scale earthquakes. After the 1995 Kobe earthquake, 1.3 million homes lost access to water for up to three months. Following the devastating 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, 2.56 million homes lost water, with some waiting up to five months for access to be restored.

Yet installing earthquake-proof pipes has been far from a priority for successive Japanese governments. Despite the fact that such natural disasters are common, only 41.2 percent of water pipes across Japan met seismic-resistant standards as of 2021. In Ishikawa Prefecture, a region that had been experienced increased numbers of earthquakes since 2018, the figure was even less at 36.8 percent.

Given all this information, it is clear that the region was not prepared for a major earthquake. While it is not possible to predict the exact moment an earthquake will strike, there are steps that can be taken to mitigate the impact.

Yet avoidable problems began almost immediately after the earthquake. Many of the evacuees were cut off from help with shelters lacking elementary safety provisions such as radios to contact rescuers. Many makeshift centers also lacked heating as temperatures dropped to freezing levels.

Little has changed since then, with the Kishida government taking only minimal steps to address the crisis. This includes so far allocating just 4.7 billion yen ($US31.7 million) in emergency funds to support evacuees, a pittance compared to the amount supplied to the military. By comparison, Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa was in Kiev on January 7, pledging $US37 million to NATO to spend on the war against Russia in Ukraine. Such involvement in the US-instigated war not only diverts necessary funds away from public need, but directly flouts Japan’s constitution, which forbids Tokyo from taking part in wars overseas.

Tokyo is also rapidly increasing its military budget in alignment with the US drive to war against China, which includes a de facto doubling of military spending by 2027. Last December, Kishida’s cabinet approved a record budget for the 2024 fiscal year of 7.95 trillion yen ($US54 billion). Yet the disaster prevention budget for 2022 was cut to one of its lowest levels since 1986.

Much has also been made in the bourgeois press, both in Japan and abroad, about the country’s supposed commitment to disaster preparation. However, the Japanese political establishment is no more dedicated to safety for the working class, poor, and elderly than the ruling classes in other countries.