/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

another brazilian win

Chrysler-Parent Stellantis Laying Off About 400 Salaried Employees in U.S.
Meetings were held throughout Friday morning where affected white-collar workers were informed they were being let go, according to people familiar with the matter. Stellantis confirmed in a statement Friday it plans to reduce its engineering, technology and software organizations by about 2% in the U.S.
https://www.wsj.com/economy/jobs/chrysler-parent-stellantis-laying-off-about-400-employees-in-us-8d8c2991
https://archive.is/NgVpw

Biden's border nuclear option is still on the table
The orders being considered would ban people from entering the U.S. if they illegally crossed the border and make it harder for people to pass the first interview in the asylum-seeking process, as has been reported.
https://www.axios.com/2024/03/24/biden-border-executive-action-immigration-2024-election

Revealed: a California city is training AI to spot homeless encampments
Some of the capabilities the pilot project is pursuing – such as identifying potholes and cars parked in bus lanes – are already in place in other cities. But San Jose’s foray into automated surveillance of homelessness is the first of its kind in the country, according to city officials and national housing advocates. Local outreach workers, who were previously not aware of the experiment, worry the technology will be used to punish and push out San Jose’s unhoused residents.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/mar/25/san-jose-homelessness-ai-detection

Thousands of undocumented Latinos lose health coverage amid Medi-Cal eligibility review
The redetermination process, as it is known, has disproportionately affected Latinos, who make up a majority of Medi-Cal beneficiaries. According to the California Department of Health Care Services, more than 653,000 of the more than 1.3 million residents who have been disenrolled over eight months identify as Latino. Some, including Abundis, had only recently gained coverage as the state expanded Medi-Cal to residents without legal residency.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/health/article/medicaid-latino-immigrants-california-19365919.php
https://archive.is/nA5lz

Dairy cattle in Texas and Kansas have tested positive for bird flu
It comes a week after officials in Minnesota announced that goats on a farm where there had been an outbreak of bird flu among poultry were diagnosed with the virus. It’s believed to be the first time bird flu — also known as highly pathogenic avian influenza — was found in U.S. livestock.
https://apnews.com/article/bird-flu-dairy-cattle-usda-kansas-texas-c3040bb31a9a8293717d47362f006902

Federal Court Rules Major Wyoming Oil and Gas Lease Sale Illegal for Ignoring Climate Impacts
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management will have to reevaluate the wildlife and public health impacts of a major 2022 oil and gas lease sale in Wyoming after a federal judge ruled Friday that the agency had overlooked "what is widely regarded as the most pressing environmental threat facing the world today" when it moved forward with leasing 120,000 of federal land.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/wyoming-oil-gas-leases

ELN: Let the People Speak, Command and Be a Constituent Power
In response to President Gustavo Petro’s announcement to convene a National Constituent Assembly, the National Directorate of the National Liberation Army (ELN) expresses to the country: Popular power is the essence of our new nation project. The people, with their history, experience, creativity and wisdom, have been on the path of changes that allow them to overcome the exclusion, misery, dispossession and repression imposed by the Colombian oligarchy for almost two hundred years; the armed uprising of the ELN is part of these struggles. The ELN through the process of dialog and participation of society in the construction of Peace, we have committed ourselves to the changes announced by the government of the Historical Pact, with the demands and just demands of the Colombian people in strikes and social outbreaks. We understand the announcement of a National Constituent Assembly as an effort aimed at democratizing and building good living for all.
https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2024/03/24/eln-let-the-people-speak-command-and-be-a-constituent-power/

Under the thunder of cannonade. Fuel environmental disaster in East Ukraine
For the first time, Ukraine went through the winter entirely on its own gas, says the CEO at the state gas company Oleksiy Chernyshov. “We did this and plan to maintain the trend of Ukraine’s energy independence in the future,” he states on his Facebook. But without specifying that the reason for this was a full-scale Russian invasion, as a result of which gas consumption sharply decreased due to the occupation of many territories and the reduction of energy-intensive production in the rest. At the same time, Ukraine retained control over almost all gas fields, the largest of which are located in the Kharkiv and Poltava regions. Despite the complete satisfaction of the need with domestically produced gas, exploration and launch of new wells in the Poltava region are proceeding at an accelerated pace. The residents regularly complain about strange explosions, the cause of which the authorities do not explain, as well as about tremors. Rinat Akhmetov – the owner of the DTEK holding (the largest Ukrainian producer of thermal electricity and the largest private gas producer in the country), earlier admitted to Forbes his plans to invest expanding his gas business expanding, instead of using of these funds to restore the energy system damaged by Russian attacks. The classic scheme of nationalization of losses and privatization of profits: repairs of critical infrastructure can be done with the money of Western states, and let the Ukrainian population pay off loan debts. Of course, there is no talk of any reduction in tariffs for the households. This is far from the most expensive villas on the French Riviera worth 200 million euros he owns.
https://libcom.org/article/under-thunder-cannonade-fuel-environmental-disaster-east-ukraine

The European Union Is Embracing Militarization
Ever since Russian troops landed on Ukrainian soil in 2022, there has been ceaseless talk of the renaissance of NATO. Less attention has been paid to the reinvention of the European Union (EU) as a wannabe Great Power that increasingly views the world’s future through the lenses of geopolitics and war. Long-standing neutralities have turned into historical artifacts, defense spending has returned to levels not seen since the Cold War (€270 billion in 2023 by EU member states alone), and the EU has provided billions in funding and weapons directly to a country (Ukraine) for the first time. The EU recently unveiled its first defense industry strategy to ramp up and better coordinate its military-industrial complex. Signaling their downgraded response to the tick of a “climate time bomb,” member states have also slashed a common fund called the European Sovereignty Fund — a response to Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act — from €10 billion to €1.5 billion, explicitly turning its focus from climate- to defense-related projects. European cooperation on defense has long faltered due to competing visions of common defense, from the maximalist view of a full defense union complete with a European army (a federalist preference of France’s) to minimalist cooperation on military capabilities (favored by smaller neutrals and Eastern European countries). But the lack of a unified voice cannot disguise the fact that the EU has recently put all its eggs in the basket of war, desperate to impress Washington as the superpower adjusts to a changing world order.
https://jacobin.com/2024/03/european-union-militarization-austerity-defense