News Feeds

Countries built on diamonds are moving to diversify their mining sectors as one of the deepest slumps in years exposes the risks of relying on the precious stones alone.

Botswana, the world’s top diamond producer by value, plans to expand exploration for minerals such as copper and other critical resources to reduce its exposure to a prolonged downturn in the diamond trade. 

Speaking on the sidelines of the Indaba mining conference in South Africa, mines minister Bogolo Joy Kenewendo said the country has explored only about 30% of its territory, reflecting decades of near-exclusive focus on diamonds. She said roughly 70% of Botswana remains unexplored.

“We were doing more exploration looking for diamonds than looking for other high-value minerals, and now we’re going to change that,” Kenewendo said, as reported by Reuters. 

Lab-grown gems put squeeze on diamond mining industry

Diamonds will remain the backbone of the country’s mining sector, but the government is pressing ahead with plans to widen the mineral base. A newly launched state-owned exploration company will focus on improving geological data and raising exploration levels to reduce risks for investors.

“There’s a little hesitation from investors to go into exploration. You can lose a lot of money by exploring and not hitting anything,” Kenewendo said. “We want to ensure that we have the right data and we know what’s where.”

Pressure spreads

The push reflects the severity of the current diamond slump. Prices have fallen as demand in key consumer markets stays soft, inventories remain high and lab-grown diamonds gain market share, particularly in the US, where lower prices appeal to younger buyers. 

In Botswana, diamonds typically generate about one-third of national revenue and roughly 75% of foreign exchange earnings, leaving public finances and growth exposed when the market weakens.

Taylor Swift’s vintage ring shines new light on diamond industry

Other diamond-dependent economies face similar pressures. Namibia is promoting exploration for base metals and energy transition minerals, while Lesotho has highlighted the need to build a broader mineral and manufacturing base as diamond revenues swing. South Africa, once the centre of the global diamond industry, is increasingly focused on critical minerals such as manganese, platinum group metals and rare earths to support electric vehicles and renewable energy.

In Botswana, diversification plans also reflect shifting geopolitics around minerals. Demand for copper and cobalt has intensified as the US and China compete to secure supply chains for clean energy and high-tech industries.

Kenewendo said that Washington has expressed interest in partnering with Botswana on exploration and mining projects, though talks remain at an early stage.

(With files from Reuters)

Their End Is Our Beginning: Cops, Capitalism, and Abolition

by brian bean
Haymarket, 2025

Red Flags: A Reckoning with Communism and the Future of the Left

by David Camfield
Fernwood Publishing, 2025

 

Demetrius Noble: Good evening. Welcome to the Haymarket Books discussion of communism, abolition, and the Left featuring authors and comrades David Camfield and brian bean. I’m Demetrius Noble, and I will moderate tonight’s discussion on their respective books. I’m really excited to discuss David’s book Red Flags and brian’s book Their End is Our Beginning.

To open things up, a primary theme that is explored in both books is the leftist critique of the state. More specifically, it seems that you are both very much interested in having us, and by us I mean the Left broadly, assess our orientation to the state and how it informs how we struggle for change.

What should our orientation to the state be right now, as we currently assess where we are and what is needed to organize and struggle for the types of revolutionary projects and goals outlined in your respective books?

brian bean: I’ll start by talking about that big question about the state. And I think it’s funny to just talk about that because sometimes in doing the day-to-day work of building movements and engaging in social struggle, the question of the state can seem like an abstract one. At other times, it can be overwhelmingly crucial. Like right now, I’m thinking about what one does with elections, for example, Mamdani’s win in the New York City mayoral race. Or, for example, when you have ICE agents kidnapping people off the street, like they are in Chicago right now.

But to step back, what do we mean by conception of the state and what are the ramifications of that? I think the first thing to understand is that the state is not class-neutral. It’s not something that can just be transformed by working-class people or the oppressed. The state’s very existence is to create a good business climate in the interest of the system of capitalism. So, the state is the preferred model for capitalism as opposed to direct rule by individual capitalists.

This is unlike times in the past in pre-capitalist societies, where they were often ruled by one individual king, a dynasty, or the like. Under capitalism, the capitalist class, all the billionaires and so on, are in solid solidarity against our interests. But capitalists are also in competition with each other.

Individual capitalists are not good at administering what is best for the system as a whole because their individual profits always dictate their interest. So Jeff Bezos can’t really determine what is best for the system of capitalism because he’s really invested, and I use that word intentionally, in maximizing his own profit.

So capitalism needs a body that has a relative separateness from society. This is what Marx talks about as far as a committee of the general interests of the bourgeoisie. That’s what the state is. And that body that has this relative separateness has to be able to enact its will, administer taxes, and set and enforce laws.

And those things, of course, are almost always done against us–the working class, the oppressed, the dispossessed–but occasionally the state acts against individual capitalists. So it’s a capitalist state because it runs on tax revenues and then requires investment. The state administers political choices whose horizon is set by what is best for the general business climate of the system of capitalism. That is why it’s a capitalist state.

But what allows it to do these things is the police. So behind the force of every law, as innocuous as “pay your taxes” or “don’t sleep here” or “get off the street” or “don’t do this,” is the threat of violence.

It is the threat of the police officer’s baton and the gun that allows the system to continue to move as it does to churn out profit for the ultra-rich and the billionaires. This is why Lenin, the Russian revolutionary, described the state as a special body of armed men. That basic description still applies today, and I leave it gendered as men on purpose.

Before Trump’s administration, already 75 percent of all federal employees–be they Department of Defense, be they prisons, be they border patrol, be they the FBI or the CIA–75 percent of all federal employees constituted bodies of armed men. And these numbers have been shifted even more by Trump’s huge cuts to the administrative state, firing people in the Environmental Protection Agency,, the Department of Education, and so on. And he has overseen a hundred percent increase in the budget that is going to ICE and border patrol agents who are terrorizing our communities everyday.

So the state, at its core, is that of a special body of armed men that carries out the interests of the committee of the general capitalist class to keep the system going in all its violence and terror. And so what does this abstraction mean? In my book, I argue that it means that if we want to abolish the state, we need to get rid of the police.

We’re seeking to abolish the thing that is in many ways necessary for the state to keep functioning, to maintain its monopoly on legitimate violence. The consequences for strategy are that we will not abolish the state. We can’t abolish the police through the state as if we’re going to win electoral power and then dissolve them as an agency. But similarly, we can’t go around that state. We can’t just make up the alternatives on a community basis and assume the police will disappear or wither away.

The police will never be obsolete for the ruling class, even as much as we make them obsolete for us. So we may engage in struggle on the terrain of the state and government, trying to put the pressure on the government to do things like have mental health workers respond to mental health crises and engage even in running electoral struggles.

Similarly, we may engage in struggles on the terrain beyond the state in working to build communities that are organized to better handle conflict and work collectively to keep each other safe. But the state is not class-neutral, and the police are its main tool. This means that our task of abolishing the police has to come along with replacing the state with actual democracy, not having a body that floats above, acting against our interests, unaccountable, and with the constant and ever-present threat of police violence that secures state power.

I think this is what David gets at in his work. Any attempt to really win a society that’s democratic, in which we actually control our resources, our labor, and our destinies, will at some point come up against the police, the institution that is always used to thwart our dreams and strivings for a better world.

Practically, this means that our organizational tasks should not just be judged along the scale of whether they achieved the immediate win, the reform, or even elected office. We have to have the utmost clarity about the larger horizon of political change and see the state and the police as obstacles in building a movement powerful enough to overcome them in building a new world.

David Camfield: I really agree with everything that brian just said, and I would add that if we think about the state as part of the fabric of capitalism, it’s really part of how the dominant class rules, regardless of which political party forms a government at any particular time. It’s why it’s a capitalist state, and I think this is also important to understand.

The state has become ever more important to capitalism since the global crisis that began with the 2008-2009 recession. Capitalism has not extricated itself from the crisis that began at that time. The state is ever more involved in different kinds of ways in perpetuating the system, in trying to get it through the crisis that it still faces. And just also to pick up on something that brian said, even when you have a capitalist democracy at its best, which is not the United States today. Even if you find a historical example from another part of the world where you have capitalism with a broad welfare state and the best kind of capitalist democracy, it’s still a very undemocratic form of society because, at its best, you’re voting every four years or something like that for who is going to administer those state institutions. But you don’t vote for so many people, right?

You only elect people to the legislature and a few executive positions. You don’t elect the people who head the police. You don’t elect the people who head the central bank. You don’t elect people who are the top of all sorts of other state institutions. And we don’t vote for our employers. We don’t vote on anything connected to the places where so many of us spend so much of our time in the world of paid work.

Really, the state is about a small minority of people administering the vast majority. It’s not about the democratic self-government of the majority of people over the decisions that affect our lives. And so when it comes to strategy, I think we need to think above all about trying to build counter power: counter power to our employers and counter power to the state, whether that’s taking on Trump or taking on employers.

Of course, we need to defend what remains of the welfare state. We don’t want libraries privatized, we don’t want public transit to be privatized where it’s still public. But that doesn’t mean defending the capitalist state as it exists.

DN: As I think about what you state here, it seems like one thing that would flow from both of these types of conceptualizations is politics, socialism, abolition, and communism from below. Could you speak more about that as a kind of central and guiding framework in your respective works?

DC: Yes, it’s absolutely a politics from below. We could say socialism from below or communism from below. It’s not the words that matter, it’s the ideas. And that’s to distinguish it from a politics of change from above.

My book Red Flags looks at societies like the former USSR, China, Cuba, and others. And of course, these have been seen as the alternative to capitalism by most people around the world since they first came into existence. But we, in order to actually think about politics in the present, have to look at those societies and think about whether those are societies on the road to liberation toward the kind of society we want to create.

And what were these societies? We have to cut through the language and the rhetoric and see that these were societies where there was a central political bureaucracy of a one-party state that mobilized the labor power and the resources of society in order to carry out its project for economic and social development.

When we analyze this using the tools that Marxism gives us, we can see that in those societies, there was a ruling class that was exploiting the labor of the direct producers, in other words, workers and peasants. And these were not, therefore, societies where there was any transition going on from a society divided into classes towards communism in the proper sense of that idea of a classless and stateless society of freedom.

These were, are class societies. I think that’s the key thing. I would also argue that they were a distorted form of capitalism. But more important than that is just to recognize these were not societies that were in transition towards communism. And that means when we think about the politics that we need here and now, we need to look elsewhere than the tradition that’s associated with those societies. That’s the tradition of Marxism-Leninism. There are other traditions. I think we should look to those, because Marxism-Leninism is a form of change from above.

bb: In thinking about socialism from below, I go over a series of struggles that are not often seen as touchstones or examples in thinking about struggles against the police. And I think that it’s important to hold onto those for two reasons.

The first is because they’re international. There’s a lot of focus on the U.S., especially on the police, and the U.S. police are especially racist and especially violent. However, it is also a capitalist institution. You can get a cop to beat you up in every country in the world. And there’s a reason for that, and it has to do with the capitalist state.

In my book, I go over a series of instances in which people rose up from below and tried to carry out and enact a change on the level of society. I talk about Derry in Northern Ireland in the late sixties, early seventies, Oaxaca, Mexico, in 2006, the various uprisings of the Arab Spring in 2011, and South Africa in the late eighties. I’ll start with the Derry example. The people of Derry were suffering under British colonialism. That meant a lack of equal rights, and it also meant the stifling brutality of the police. In 1969, movements around housing and voting rights exploded with an uprising that literally pushed the police outside of the barriers of a certain area of town and created Free Derry.

And so for first a series of months and then in a second iteration for a year, the police were run off the streets, and people were able to mobilize and carry on their daily life without them. And in many ways, in better ways, people organized communal kitchens. The milk still got delivered. Conflict was managed by all types of different institutions. And so it shows that in a certain kind of struggling from below, people actively find ways to take charge of their lives in their communities.

Another iteration of this process was the Syrian revolution in 2011, part of the regional conflagration of uprisings against the kind of inequality of global capitalism, post-colonialism, and the uniquely undemocratic forms that were existing in the regimes of the region.

Many countries had these huge, massive uprisings. Syria was one of them. And in many places across Syria, people rose up and literally ran the police off the streets and began to run their communities on their own democratic basis. Local coordinating committees that organized the protests would take on various institutions of managing conflict, making sure the bread got delivered, and all those sorts of things.

Each of these instances shows how people struggle from below, not asking someone on high to do it for them, but taking charge and building movements that have a particularly antagonistic revolutionary quality. People make space to create alternatives, not by asking the government to create them, but literally by running the police off the streets and taking control of their communities, their states, and their worlds to experiment with real alternatives, to provide glimpses of what a liberated world may look like.

The capitalist states mistaken for “actually existing socialism” that David talks about are also repressive police states, just like the United States. Having an internationalist abolition approach is a “Yes, all cops” approach, which is to seek solidarity with people in China who are rising up against the police there and people in Hong Kong who are rising against the police there. We recognize our joint struggles against our various undemocratic and capitalist states. And that means rejecting the argument that we must support these despots. A true internationalist abolitionist struggle is our banner.

DN: This makes me want to pivot back to David’s argument for exploring other traditions. David, are there any other traditions that you would like to call to the fore here that we might put in conversation with some of the examples that Brian mentioned? What do you have in mind when you think of these other revolutionary traditions that we might think about in terms of models for how we move past the state as we know it?

DC: Let’s go back and say that, as long as there have been socialist or communist traditions, there have actually been contending ideas inside those traditions about how change happens and what the goal is. And one way of talking about that is to look at the “from below” and “from above” parts of the tradition.

There’s a classic essay by Hal Draper called “The Two Souls of Socialism.” It was written in the 1960s, but it’s definitely worth checking out today. It’s not the last word, but it’s an important essay. There’s a dominant version of communism or socialism that has always been about the idea that some minority can hand change down to the majority. In the 1800s, before Karl Marx broke with it, you had this idea that the masses, the working class, were not ready for freedom, not ready for communism.

And so you had to have an enlightened minority that would take power and educate them to the point where they would be ready for it. And in one version or another, that has persisted even among people who thought of themselves as Marxists, whether it was the idea that a party would take power and hand liberation down, build socialism with the support of the majority, or whether it was a guerrilla army or some other minority force that would take power.

It’s a substitute, right? And it’s always a substitute for the majority of people emancipating themselves through their own self-organized liberatory struggles. And so I think we need to go back in order to address the challenges of the present and reclaim in a critical way all that’s best in those traditions and the struggles from below.

Not all the answers to the questions of the present are going to be found in the past. But tradition is a very valuable source of ideas. And we can see in all sorts of different struggles how people are organizing themselves to fight for their own liberation. We can see insights that are generated, we can see experiences that are worth learning from, including the ones that brian mentioned, which are a great feature of his book.

DN: brian, you had mentioned that as we struggle, we have to keep in front of us the question, what is our larger horizon of political change? What is the expansive scope of our political imagination? And David, you described how some societies described as socialist were not, upon historical examination, on the road to liberation. The question I would like to posit for you to reflect on as we think about the types of struggles that are in front of us right now is, how do we engage in these struggles in a way that ensures that we’re keeping our political aspirations expansive beyond what’s immediately efficient or practical? And thatwe don’t cut off our larger kind of political vision.

bb: I think that the art of politics is about how to engage in the current moment but not lose sight of the larger horizon, while not also doing the vice versa of losing sight of the current moment and only talking about an abstraction of the horizon.

There’s a quote from Italian communist Antonio Gramsci that says that our goal is to link every demand. So every demand, from the smallest ones to the revolutionary objective. Make use of every partial struggle to teach the masses the need for general action against the reactionary rule of capital, and seek to ensure that every struggle of a limited character is prepared and led in such a way as to be able to lead to the mobilization of the proletariat and not to their dispersal.

And so I think that is our task. And I think it means speaking frankly and ensuring that we also build our organizations, not just around the immediate reforms, but around some of the political questions, and to make this maximally concrete. I think we’re seeing this contradiction a little bit with the current election of Mamdani in New York City, in which there’s a huge movement behind him that is really inspiring, really exciting.

And so I think the question is one, how do we win those things that he put forward, which are the reason for his popularity. Universal healthcare, rent caps, and free, fast buses. How do we actually win those things? We need to be a part of and fight for those demands and struggle in such a way that it is not just asking for someone to do it for us.

We can take the energy that people have for wanting those things and say, how do we build to win that? And that might mean building a force that may be critical of and maybe even antagonistic to Mamdani. We need to make sure that we are where people are at and that we’re trying to fight the best fight and arguing to do so from below.

I think that the Mamdani election is very exciting, but there are some political warning signs, particularly around the question of the police. He has endorsed some positive community safety plans that would have a lot of good for a lot of New Yorkers. This idea would take some of the activity of the police off the streets, put in mental health responders, put in special supports around transit, and other things. So that’s a positive thing.

But he also continually says, “Hey, we’re doing this to allow the police to do their job.” This reinforces the dominant ideological narrative that the police are here to keep us safe. During his campaign run, at a certain point, he had a press conference where he went on air to apologize for calling the institution of policing racist during the George Floyd uprising. And so the political task, I think, is how we fight around those things in a real non-sectarian way that has appeal to most people, but also pushes back against this kind of capitulation. Through fighting for fast and free buses, and so on, we also need to continually push back against the hegemony of propaganda that says, the police are going to keep us safe, they hold us back from chaos, and we’ll just do better policing. I think those ideas changed radically in the context of the George Floyd uprising. We shouldn’t roll that back, but figure out how to push that forward in a way that also connects with people where they are and patiently explains these problems in a clear way, pointing towards that final goal of abolition.

DC: I certainly agree with brian, and I’m also going to give a quote from the sixties, from a group of socialists in Britain who wrote that, in their words,

Meaningful action for revolutionaries is whatever increases the confidence, the autonomy, the initiative, the participation, the solidarity, the egalitarian tendencies, and the self activity of the masses, and whatever assists in their demystification. Sterile and harmful action is whatever reinforces the passivity of the masses, their apathy, their cynicism, their differentiation through hierarchy, their alienation, their reliance on others to do things for them, and the degree to which they can therefore be manipulated by others, even by those allegedly acting on their behalf.

And I think if we really take that to heart, we can apply that in really concrete ways, even when the level of social struggle is really low. The key is to avoid compartmentalizing. We don’t want to have, on the one hand, this part of our brain that says, and where maybe our heart is, which says we want a classless and stateless society of freedom, but I’m just gonna pull the lever for the Democrat over here.

There’s a disconnect. And so what we need to do is to try to apply these liberatory politics in practical ways. And I’m just going to give one example from my experience, which was 25 years ago. I was part of a strike. And at one point, we were told by the employer that if we didn’t move our picket lines off the employer’s property, they were going to call the police in against us.

A lot of union leaders would at that point have just capitulated. But the executive of our union did the right thing. They called a mass membership meeting. And in that meeting, we decided that we would call their bluff because we didn’t think that they actually wanted to have police wagons showing up and arresting strikers.

This was a university worker strike. We didn’t think they actually wanted to have all sorts of people just being peaceful picked up and carried and put in the back of vans and so on. We democratically made that decision in a mass meeting to defy what we had been told. And we kept the picket lines where they were, and we were right. They blinked.

That’s not revolutionary, but it’s applying that kind of from-below politics of democracy and self-organization that gives people the experience of actually being able to break boundaries. I think that’s the way we try to translate the long-term vision of liberation into the here and now, wherever we find ourselves, even if it’s sometimes very modest.

DN: Brian, you were talking about this kind of dance that we have to do on the Left, using the Mamdani moment as an example. He’s advancing a platform that we absolutely should rally around because these types of things will provide immediate relief to the working class. We need to champion those things, but also find ways to challenge him when he’s capitulating to the state. How do we challenge that in the most productive ways and not allow these reforms to impede our larger kind of political vision?

And for David, I want to ask about how anti-communism functions ideologically to stigmatize reform struggles like free public transportation and rent caps as dangerous communism for the masses.Could you speak more about anti-communism, how it functions ideologically in that way?

DC: Anti-communism, first of all, is not a new set of ideas. You can actually go back and see it in the 1800s when you find it used as a weapon against the Paris Commune, when the workers of Paris rose up in 1871 and took control of their city, for example. But the basic message of anti-communism is that any attempt to try to transform society, to replace capitalism with something else, is going to lead to some absolutely terrible, authoritarian, repressive nightmare.

All sorts of both real and fictitious examples from history are then brought forward to bolster this case. And I say both real and fictitious because there are all sorts of things in anti-communist literature and documentaries that are just outright lies, about conditions in Cuba or Venezuela or what have you.

But then there are sorts of actual experiences of oppression and exploitation and repression in those societies that I mentioned, and in many others. The USSR and other societies organized along those lines get wheeled out for anti-communism, but the whole discussion has become confused.

By the way, Trump and MAGA just accuse anyone they don’t agree with, any kind of Democrat, often of being communists. But then you have Kamala Harris saying that Trump was a communist dictator, right? Further confusing the whole discussion, and there’s just an incredible amount of confusion to cut through.

Communism just ends up being used as just a slur about bad things. “We think this is awful. We’re going to demonize it, call it communist.”  We have to try to cut through that to recognize that it’s an ideology of obfuscation. That it’s being wielded to defend capitalism, to defend the status quo, whether that’s defending the version of the status quo that Trump wants, or, the version of the status quo that his Democratic party opponents want.

Then there’s the question of how we oppose anti-communism. We absolutely have to challenge anti-communism. We need to actually learn some of the history so that we can do this most effectively and be able to see what’s being argued.

But I think the most common way when people figure out what’s going on with anti-communism is they just say, okay, this is an ideology that defends capitalism. And they reject it, but at the same time, they’re either sympathetic or sometimes actually more positive to societies like the former Soviet Union. And they just take where the anti-communist puts a minus sign, and they flip it and put a plus sign instead of thinking critically and actually analyzing those societies.

There’s a different approach, a different way of rejecting anti-communism. There’s a great slogan from the sixties in Britain that encapsulates this: “The ‘Communist’ world is not communist and the ’Free’ world’ is not free.”

And I think that’s the way that we should reject anti-communism. We’re rejecting the idea that we live in the best of all possible worlds, that we live in some wonderful land of freedom and democracy, but we also reject the idea that those societies, including, for example, Cuba and China today, that those societies would actually be communist or on the road to communism.

DN: When you think about anti-communism as an ideology of obfuscation. I really like that language. Brian, you remind us just how murderously and dangerously violent capitalism is, like right here, right now. I think you have a quote in your book about random murders. I think you said one in three is actually done by the police. Can you speak more about just this in terms of the monopoly on legitimate violence, how dangerous and deadly the police are, and how anti-communism works as an ideology of obfuscation?

bb: The quote you’re referring to is a statistic that I have in my book about the violence of the police that complicates the common thought of how murders are committed. A large majority of murders are committed by people who know the victim, but if you are killed by a stranger, there is a one in three chance it is a cop. I think there’s such a symmetry between some of the mythologies around anti-communism and around talking about the police.

And that symmetry is that, “Hey, if people try to take control of their world it is always going to turn into an authoritarian despotic state.” The assumption is that ordinary people actually can’t protect their communities themselves and be in control of their destinies.

And those same mythologies are the same ones that are trotted out around the police. If we don’t have the police, there’ll be chaos. If we don’t have the police, it’s going to be like that movie, The Purge, random violence happening around every corner. I think that’s a really pernicious obfuscatory myth. You can find many examples of uprisings in which people push back the police and try to reopen society. There was a police strike [in 1976] for weeks in Finland, and the society did not devolve into chaos.

In the U.S., police often go on slowdowns during which they only carry out “necessary arrests,” which is really funny if you break that down. I think they are very conscious that there are arrests that are unnecessary as part of their daily practice, but that’s another story.

So, during these slowdowns, they found that when the police were doing less, actual reports of crime dropped. So, fewer crimes were occurring. A couple of years ago, in the Bronzeville neighborhood in New York City, there was a five-day period during which they intentionally removed the police and put social service agencies on call as an experiment. This is a neighborhood that’s had a high incidence of police calls. And during that period of time, when the police were gone, and social supports were present. There was only one 9-1-1 call that was done accidentally by a truck driver or something like that.

In Chicago, we had a surveillance program called Shot Spotter that had sensors that would perceive gunfire and direct police to it. It was a horrible surveillance device, and it didn’t work.

“The politics of communism from below, of abolition, communist abolition, is actually that we actually can control our destinies. We can take power democratically and reorganize our society in a way that would be democratic, fair, and safe.”

And so they removed them. Gun violence went down. Contrary to the mythology that you remove the police and there’s chaos and violence, the converse is actually true when the police aren’t present, particularly when paired with alternatives. People can actually organize our communities. People can actually care for each other. People can actually control their own destinies. So there’s an important symmetry between all the arguments around anti-communism and all the arguments that are pro-police. At their base, these arguments are so condescending in denying people’s ability to control and change our world.

The politics of communism from below, of abolition, communist abolition, is actually that we actually can control our destinies. We can take power democratically and reorganize our society in a way that would be democratic, fair, and safe.

DN: One thing that both of your books do very well is speak to the different types of mythologies of the capitalist state. These mythologies don’t remain static and flat over time. The capitalist system needs to update them to current technologies for what they need them to do. I know you all already stepped into those waters, but I was curious if you had more to say about those types of mythologies. And a follow-up to that: What does this mean for the Left in terms of ideological struggle? It’s not enough to think that our theory and our practice are correct. We have to win people over to our side to build out the type of mass movements and people power that we need. And these mythologies hold a lot of sway. They have captured folks’ imaginations in really critical ways that we have to find a way to supplant and then move people over to our ideas and visions for what the world could be, should be. How do we win people over to our side, knowing that these types of mythologies are what we have to confront?

DC: Ideological struggle is really important, but I’m going to start in a different place and get there. And that is that I think the barrier we face is not primarily ideological. The most important challenge we face, whether we’re talking about abolition or communism or both, is that most people don’t have any experience in their own lives of collective action, which would give them the lived sense that this is actually possible.

I think this is the fundamental thing. And then the question is, how do we actually work with other people to try to build movements through which people gain these collective experiences of collective action, which actually give people a taste of the possibility that things could be so much?

People have to come to that on a mass scale, through their own experience, not because they read a great book or see a wonderful video or watch or listen to a great song or something. All of those things matter. But when we’re thinking about change on a large scale, it’s those kinds of experiences, especially of strikes and other forms of mass direct action.

It’s those experiences that change the conditions. And then that makes a huge difference when it comes to how people make sense of things and ideology. Think about how the terrain of discussion around policing is different now in the U.S. than it was in the summer of 2020. It has so much to do with what people experienced at that time in the Black Lives Matter movement.

I think yes, absolutely, we need to engage in ideological struggle, but crucially, we need to be where working people are to build the kinds of movements and struggles that will allow more people to get that experience of the possibility of changing the world through their own actions.

bb: I was inspired by what you’re saying about the fact that ideas change in struggle. I’ll share the experience of Chicago as instructive on that point. There are, in our city on any given day, dozens of masked, flak-jacketed armed thugs from ICE who are kidnapping our neighbors, disappearing them, hurling tear gas outside of elementary schools, and more. People could have fallen into hopelessness and drawn negative lessons from that.

But instead, at the same time, while the situation is quite horrific and terrible, the community and neighborhoods all across Chicago have stepped up in a really inspiring way. Every day, people are out with their orange whistles linked up through various social media and text messages, finding ways to be present and, at a minimum, to just bear witness to the actions of these kidnappers. At certain points, people have confronted the police to make it more difficult for them to do their jobs of kidnapping our neighbors. That sort of thing transforms how people think.

When the first wave of ICE raids started occurring in the neighborhood where I live, there was one instance when they grabbed a particular individual, and people called a demonstration in that neighborhood the next day. There was an impromptu rally, people chanting, “No hate, no fear, immigrants are welcome here,” all along the streets for blocks.

And that transformed how people thought about the moment. Instead of it being one only of fear, it told us that we can actually protect each other, we can keep each other safe. So ideology does change in struggle. And our main task is how to get people activated to take those partial struggles and connect them up.

There is an ideological task. The goal of my book is to hammer on the concept that the police as a body, as an institution, cannot be reformed. There are reforms that can limit the violence of the police. But as an institution, they’re unreformable. To end their monopoly on force that they can use basically at their own discretion up to the point of killing you is to remove them as an institution.

DN: I have one more question that I would like to ask, and I think we have a couple of things from the chat. For both of you, how do we reclaim communism, and what is its connection to abolition?

brian bean: One of the things that’s important about David’s work is I think people get lost in terminology so much and have been put on the back foot because of historical contexts.

And so if you say “socialism” to many people, they’re going to think, “Oh, Sweden.” They think of social democracy in which there’s a strong state that perhaps gives certain kinds of welfare to meet some basic needs for individuals. You say “communism,” and people think of the more authoritarian countries that David talks about.

There is a visionary core exemplified by Marx and Engels, and others. There is a liberatory vision of what we’ve been describing, people taking charge of their worlds, of saying, “Hey, we can actually democratically control our resources, our labor, and our self-determination. We can do so in a way without a state lording over us.”

“We talk about abolition, we talk about communism, and they intertwine in a way around the question of how we take real actual control over our society. … If we control our society in that way, most likely we will not need anything resembling the police.”

I think David is trying to reclaim communism as a positive thing while methodically dismantling the various ways that terminology has been bastardized. This is something to claim today.

We talk about abolition, we talk about communism, and they intertwine in a way around the question of how we take real actual control over our society. … If we control our society in that way, most likely we will not need anything resembling the police.

DC:  brian’s book looks at abolition from the communist perspective. It’s a wonderful book, and I highly recommend people to check it out. It distills some of the best things that have come out of abolitionist organizing in recent years.

It puts human freedom at the center. It exposes the kinds of unnecessary violence that we take for granted and shows that we shouldn’t have to live that way, and we won’t have to live that way in the society that we want to live in. Its vision of freedom is vital to a communist or socialist project in our times because that project has been distorted, besmirched, and damaged by the historical experiences of both social democracy and authoritarian “Communism.”

I live in a province, Manitoba, in Canada, where the government is the New Democratic Party, which is the sort of social democratic party that is just administering a capitalist society. It’s administering mass incarceration. It’s not on the same scale as south of the border, but it’s very significant to administering settler colonial capitalism here.

And then on a much bigger scale, the whole historical experience of the USSR and China and similar societies, leads many people, understandably, to say they don’t want any part of socialism. The kind of society we want to create is classless and stateless. And that includes a world beyond the police. Abolition is a vital part of reclaiming this vision of human liberation against the increasingly dire conditions that capitalism is inflicting on people all over the world.

DN: We have a couple questions from the chat. The first is aimed at you David, and it asks, how exactly are anti-communists stopping momentum? Is there something specific they’re doing or are they more like these MAGA folks that are spreading lies and misinformation to gain power?

DC: Anti-communism is diffused across the media, and the effect of it in whatever form it takes is to send the message that there’s no alternative. It leads people to draw the conclusion that, even if they don’t think what we are living in now is good, there’s no possibility of it being fundamentally better and different.

It also cuts people off from the incredibly valuable history of people struggling for change. By suggesting that revolutions inevitably lead to something like the Gulag in the USSR and mass death and starvation, it’s turning people away from studying the historical experiences of revolutionary movements and the theories that have come out of them, like the ones that Karl Marx and Frederick Engels began.

Anti-communism makes people think that this vision somehow ended up in the dictatorship of Stalin or the dictatorship of Mao, as opposed to actually using the tools that we can get from that tradition to analyze precisely the defeats that happened in the 20th century.

DN: brian, the other question is about the Mamdani moment. How do we address folks who are excited and energized by the platform that he ran on? What does it take now that people are energized to get them plugged into organizations that can attempt to build and amass some sort of power to hold him accountable?

bb:  I am not in New York City, so I would be hesitant to give advice as to what to do. But I think some of the basics are some of the basics of organizing. What would it look like if  some of the organizations who carried out the canvassing were to call mass meetings to organize these fights? We can see this as the beginning of organizing that will go beyond whatever Mamdani does or does not do. And so for an individual I would say, “Hey, talk to your organizations.”

It’s important to think about what to do beyond getting someone elected, to build a fighting movement on the ground from below that builds the pressure to carry out the reforms that made him popular.

DN: We have another question: At what point did past socialist countries become not socialist? Did they divert away from the Marxist socialist path, and would you uphold the October revolution as one of those real socialist moments?

DC: Yes, the October revolution in Russia in 1917 was an incredibly important historical experience because the working class, supported by the peasantry, actually took power into its own hands and opened up the door to the beginning of a transition in the direction of communism.

But unfortunately, it was unable to actually proceed down that path because of the conditions in Russian society. Russia had a very low level of development of productive forces. Most of the population were peasants who took control of their land, which was, of course, totally legitimate.

People wanted to get the landlords off their backs but there wasn’t the actual material basis to go beyond that. But the revolutionaries who led that revolution understood this. The whole premise of their revolutionary gamble at the end of 1917 was that they could take power.

They hoped that would then be a detonator, if you like, for revolutions in Western Europe, in more advanced capitalist countries and elsewhere, and that could come to the relief of the isolated revolution in Russia. And the extraordinary tragedy was that they didn’t happen, that revolutions elsewhere were defeated or didn’t go very far.

The Bolshevik Party that led that revolution found themselves trying to square the circle. They were able to defend the revolution in the incredibly bloody civil war. But society catastrophically broke down in this period, even just before the Civil War broke out.

The state that emerged from the Civil War was not one through which the working class was ruling. It did not have institutions of working class self-government. That situation led to the conditions where eventually a new ruling class consolidated itself. And this led to a break under Stalin, the central leader by the late twenties, which was the shift to try to have the state use all of its power to carry out a process of incredibly forced hyper industrialization.

There was also the dispossession of the peasantry, which was called collectivization but was not creating democratic collectives. It was the forcible expropriation or dispossession of the peasants. The state in the USSR did succeed in this extraordinary project of industrialization and modernization, but it was not socialism but rather something else altogether.

That society provided the model taken up by revolutionaries in other places. The revolution that happened in China in 1949, for example, was a very important social revolution against the capitalists and landlords that ruled China. But that revolution did not lead to the working class and the peasantry taking power. Instead, the military political forces of the Chinese Communist Party took power and from the beginning made themselves a new ruling class. They then proceeded to reorganize Chinese society along the lines that had been established in the USSR for the first time.

So the whole idea of what socialism was, what a transition towards it would look like, was really reshaped for most of the Left by what had happened in the USSR, with really damaging consequences.

bb: I think just one other thing to add in relation to Russia and the 1917 October revolution is the aspect of the Revolution about the police.

In the early days of the Revolution, the February before October, the notion of abolishing the police was one of the demands that was actually non-controversial among the diversity of different socialist opinions. And then after the October revolution, in the first month, revolutionaries issued a decree that abolished the courts and the police. They let people out of prison. Rather than the paradigm of punishment by the state, there were popular courts and tribunals. There was a flourishing of reconfiguring these things in the early days of the Revolution.

And then for all the reasons that David outlined, the revolution degraded and counter-revolution reared its head. The state repressive apparatus was not only repaired but developed further. And that’s how we get into the apparatus that carried out Stalin’s purges and the Gulag.

The thing to note here is that the defeat of what I would call Bolshevik abolitionism must ultimately be understood as one part of the defeat of the Russian Revolution itself.

DN: We have another question: If imagining beyond something like the No Kings protest, what is the role of socialists when engaging liberals who often share sentiments of democracy, equality, and sometimes even have anti-capitalist sentiment and ideas? How do we engage them in terms of getting them to participate in more meaningful collective action? You both spoke about the importance of collective action and that being a fertile terrain for ideas to change and shift.

bb: I think that many of the liberals who’ve come out for the No Kings stuff are concerned rightly about the degradation of American democracy. The size of these demonstrations is really inspiring. And people are concerned about a police state.

And I think our task as socialists is to take concerns with the police state and actually talk about the police. We need to connect the legitimate and real concern, fear, and outrage, particularly around ICE and explain that ICE is just a federal police department.

It’s important to outline the Democrats’ various complicities. Illinois Governor, J.B. Pritzker has spoken out a lot criticizing ICE. He has taken up Trump in court. But his state police officers are there outside Chicago at the detention facility with huge batons pushing back and arresting protestors who are there to protest the kidnapping of our neighbors and block them from doing so.

He’s trying to keep a certain kind of order. They don’t want protests that get a little too loud. They’re not concerned about the disorder of all these ICE agents prowling our city streets, kidnapping people who have done nothing wrong and disappearing them.

Let’s talk about the role that his police have played as well. ICE agents shot a man on the northwest side. There’s body cam footage of that killing. And Brandon Johnson’s appointed head of police, Larry Snelling has said he’s not gonna release the video.

We can connect to people’s anger about that and patiently connect that up with the role that police play in general and society.

DC: I also think we would want to bring up the question of, okay, you’re concerned about the things that brought you out to the No Kings action, but what are the methods of action that are actually going to win? The protest was really important, but we need to think about disruption. We need to think about mass disruptive action that actually can block aspects of the MAGA agenda if people are gonna fight back.

We need to stress that kind of organizing in between those big days of action to get people involved in different kinds of mobilization to show that there’s an alternative to the ballot box. We may not be able to persuade people to abandon the Democratic party, but the point is we need to actually say that if we want to fight and win in the here and now.

We need to actually use more effective tactics than the ones that are being put forward. So Mayday Strong, for example, that network of labor organizations, has been building for some more effective kinds of actions. And we need to also be trying to help people to see the links between the attacks on political rights and the things that are being done by employers to working people every day and the need to build the labor movement as part of the forces of resistance.

DN: David and brian, please offer any closing remarks.

DC: The theme of abolition cuts to the core of what we’re talking about, whether we call it communism or socialism–the possibility in the 21st century of a break with capitalism that begins a transition towards the classless and stateless society of freedom.

Social democratic and Stalinist traditions of politics from above have really gotten in the way of, and sometimes distorted, the genuinely socialist or communist project as being one about liberation and self emancipation of the majority of people in the world.

There’s a powerful way in which people’s horizons get lowered in our times by how bad things are and how they’re getting worse. People will be prepared to settle for a lesser evil or settle for a regulated capitalism.

We haven’t talked about the ecological crisis. The only way to address that, ultimately is by breaking with capitalism. We need to be able to try to reclaim an emancipatory liberatory project in our times. And I think abolition is an important part of that reinventing of communism for the 21st century.

bb: Linking up abolition and communism is urgent because the right knows what they need to protect the system. Both Democrats and Republicans increase police budgets as police training facilities like Cop City in Atlanta proliferate. We’re seeing this in the moves towards more interoperability, different departments working together. We see this with ICE and the Department of Homeland Security. There’s open collusion between the police and ICE. For the ruling class, the police are the answer to the crisis.

Grasping the liberatory potential and future of communism and abolition has urgency for our organizing in the context of political crisis–the rise of the far right, the crisis of the economy, and the ecological crisis that has apocalyptic ramifications. The surge of people who are fleeing across borders all over the world reflects this crisis. We can’t achieve a revolution right now; we need revolutionary patience to undertake the work of building movements.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”
Featured Image credit: nigel viu; modified by Tempest.

The post Communism, abolition, states, and the future of the Left appeared first on Tempest.

Zanaga Iron (LON: ZIOC) has signed a binding term sheet with Red Arc Minerals that could see up to $25 million invested to advance its namesake iron ore project in the Democratic Republic of Congo towards a final investment decision.

The agreement outlines a staged investment by Red Arc Minerals, a private group founded by mining veteran Mick Davis, starting with an initial tranche of up to $25 million in cash to fund engineering and other pre-production work. That funding, to be paid in five equal sub-tranches, would earn Red Arc an aggregate 20% interest in Jumelles, Zanaga’s subsidiary and the project owner.

A second tranche gives Red Arc the option, exercisable within 18 months of completing the first stage, to pay $125 million in cash to ZIOC for an additional 67.5% fully diluted stake in Jumelles, lifting its ownership to 87.5%. If that option is exercised, ZIOC would retain a 1% net sales revenue royalty on iron ore concentrate sales, with Red Arc able to buy back half of the royalty for $50 million.

ZIOC said the structure leaves the listed company itself non-dilutive, with chief executive Martin Knauth calling the transaction a major acceleration enabled by capital that allows the project to move through the pre-production phase and towards a final investment decision.

The transaction remains subject to due diligence, the execution of definitive agreements, and approval from shareholders and regulators, as set out in the term sheet.

Headline News:

• “UK Awards 6.2-GW Of CFDs In Onshore Bonanza” • The UK government has awarded Contracts for Difference agreements to 6.2 MW of onshore wind, solar and tidal stream projects in the Allocation Round 7a renewable energy auction. Solar PV secured the largest haul, with 4.9 GW of awarded deals at a clearing price of £65.23/MWh (in 2024 prices). [reNews]

Ed Miliband at a solar farm (DESNZ image via Flickr)

• “Cold Europe And Burning South: At Both Ends Of The Planet, January Shows Climate Extremes” • While much of Europe and the US braced against frigid cold, the Southern Hemisphere had extreme heat, with wildfires and floods. Global temperatures were at near record highs last month, on average, to make it the fifth-warmest January on record. [Euronews]
• “China To Invest 5 Trillion Yuan In Power Grid Over Next Five Years” • China is set to pour a record-high 5 trillion yuan ($722 billion) into its power grid over the next five years, a massive investment in infrastructure designed to eliminate renewable energy bottlenecks and propel the nation toward its 2030 carbon peak goal. [China Daily]
• “Record Snow Drought In The West Raises Concern For Water Shortages And Wildfires” • Record snow drought and record heat are hitting most of the American West, depleting future water supplies, making it more vulnerable to wildfires and hurting winter tourism and recreation. Both snow cover and depth are at the lowest level in decades. [ABC News]
• “Leading US Utility Goes Rogue, Offers New Round Of EV Funding” • Exelon’s ComEd branch announced another $70 million round of funds to support EV uptake in its territory in Illinois. The initial round totaled more than $160 million in EV funding. ComEd credits the program with more than 10,000 EV charger installations in Illinois. [CleanTechnica]

For more news, please visit geoharvey – Daily News about Energy and Climate Change.

At Davos, during the ongoing elite annual gala known as the World Economic Forum (WEF), Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered a speech, receiving much...

The post Carney’s speech exposes the moral bankruptcy of the West first appeared on Spring.

Shell shock for Dutch climate policy Channel News brendan 10th February 2026 Teaser Media

Boom Supersonic wants to build the world’s first commercial supersonic airliner. Founded in 2014, the company set out to make air travel dramatically faster — up to twice the speed of today’s passenger jets — while also aiming for a smaller environmental footprint. For years, Boom has focused on developing the high-performance engine technology needed to sustain supersonic flight.

Though the company has not yet debuted its revolutionary jet, last year it identified a new and potentially lucrative application for its novel technology: generating electricity for the data centers powering the artificial intelligence boom.

Many of these data centers want the kind of flexible, around-the-clock energy associated with combined-cycle natural gas turbines. These heavy-duty machines burn gas to spin turbines and generate electricity, then capture the associated heat and use it to spin the turbines some more. As far as fossil fuel generation goes, they are among the most efficient options for dispatchable baseload power. But with demand for these turbines surging and supply increasingly tight, developers are turning to creative alternatives.

The upshot of all this creativity is clear: Much of the data center build-out is poised to be powered by natural gas — and the climate consequences that come with it.

Boom Supersonic inked a $1.25 billion agreement with a developer called Crusoe, which is building a suite of data centers for the artificial-intelligence startup OpenAI. The turbine company agreed to provide Crusoe with 29 jet-engine gas turbines that the developer could position at data centers across the U.S. 

The deal is just one example of developers and tech companies straining to find power sources for the data centers sprouting up nationwide. Meta’s data center in El Paso, Texas, will draw fuel from more than 800 different mobile mini-turbines. Meanwhile, the construction equipment company Caterpillar has supplied gas engines to a data center in West Virginia. And the developer Crusoe used “aeroderivative” turbines based on airplane models for its massive Stargate data-center campus in Abilene, Texas, where power demand is a whopping 1.2 gigawatts. 

It’s not just the U.S. New proposed natural gas capacity has surged worldwide over the past year. The energy analysis firm Global Energy Monitor reports that projects totaling more than 1,000 gigawatts of gas-fired power are now in development worldwide — a roughly 31 percent jump in just the last year. The United States leads the pack, accounting for about a quarter of that pipeline. More than a third of the new U.S. capacity will power data centers. The analysis also notes that two-thirds of gas project developers in the U.S. have yet to identify who will manufacture their natural gas turbines.

This rush to build out natural gas generation will have serious consequences for the climate. Early boosters of the data center boom suggested that new AI facilities would draw power from renewable sources such as solar and wind farms. While that has happened in some cases, developers are also rapidly locking in years of additional fossil fuel usage. An analysis from researchers at Cornell University found that the build-out could add as much as 44 million metric tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by 2030, equivalent to the annual emissions of around 10 million passenger cars. 

“This is a huge proposed build-out,” said Cara Fogler, deputy director of research, strategy, and analysis at the nonprofit Sierra Club, which has been tracking gas plant expansions by utilities. “Existing coal that’s not coming offline and planned gas that’s trying to come online are potentially boxing out clean energy.”

As Silicon Valley’s AI boom drives demand for ever more computing power, data center developers have struggled to keep up, largely because securing the massive amounts of electricity needed to run these facilities has become so difficult. The rush has led to long wait times to secure power from traditional utilities. As a result, developers and tech companies are increasingly taking matters into their own hands by generating power on-site. According to an analysis by Cleanview, a data firm tracking the energy transition, at least 46 data centers with a combined capacity of 56 gigawatts — equivalent to that of roughly 27 Hoover Dams — are using this “behind-the-meter” approach, as it’s known in industry parlance.

The chief executive of Bloom Energy, a startup that builds behind-the-meter fuel cells for data centers, said in a recent call with investors that the startup’s order backlog has more than doubled over the past year.

“On-site power has moved from being a decision of last resort to a vital business necessity,” said company executive K.R. Sridhar. He noted that while most of the company’s previous business was in states like California with high electricity costs, now “states where we are growing fastest have robust natural gas infrastructure and favorable regulatory and policy frameworks for on-site power generation.”

Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai lead a panel at a Google data center in Midlothian, Texas. Google plans to invest $40 billion in new Texas data centers through 2027.
Ron Jenkins / Getty Images

One of those states is Texas, which is the epicenter of the build-out so far. Unconventional gas power will anchor campuses like that of Titus Low Carbon Ventures, which is building half a dozen data center parks across the Lone Star State. In September, the company signed a deal with power developer Gruppo AB to source Jennbacher gas generating engines, each of which provides just a few megawatts of power. The company will plug in hundreds of these boxy generators to provide baseload power alongside solar and wind.

“We could’ve elected to go with gas turbines,” said Jeff Ferguson, the president of Titus, in an interview with Grist. Instead of sourcing traditional gas turbines, he opted to buy “reciprocating engines,” which are smaller gas-powered generators that are similar to passenger car engines.

“We think that reciprocating engines are a better solution for data centers,” he said, adding that ”the difference is in the ability to manage transient loads,” or rapid fluctuations in power demand that are very common at the facilities.

Not only is it unlikely that 200 generators will ever go offline all at once, but the engines are also much faster to start up and stop than turbines — they can come online in around a minute, as opposed to an hour for a traditional power plant. Ferguson likened it to the difference between accelerating in a Corvette and a jet plane.

But experts say these substitute gas sources are even worse for the climate than traditional power plants, which use more efficient combined-cycle turbines that employ both gas and steam. The worst offenders are not turbines at all but rather internal-combustion engines like the ones in most automobiles.

“Internal combustion [engines] have better ramp up/down time[s] but are less efficient when compared to a gas turbine,” said Jenny Martos, a researcher who runs the gas plant tracker for Global Energy Monitor. “All gas power technologies produce emissions, but generally engines produce more emissions than the others.”

Texas has almost 58 gigawatts of natural gas power in various stages of planning and construction, according to the latest estimates from Global Energy Monitor. That’s more than the next four states combined, and more than every country on Earth except for China. Nearly half of the power plants under construction in Texas will provide power exclusively to data centers, without connecting to regional energy grids. These projects span the state, from OpenAI’s Stargate campus in central Abilene to Meta’s data center in El Paso, where the company has contracted with a Houston-based microgrid developer to set up 813 modular generators.

The projects are also popping up in rural areas of the country with few other economic development prospects. A developer called BorderPlex is proposing a $165 billion data center campus called Project Jupiter in southern New Mexico, powered by two microgrids that operate on simple-cycle gas turbines, which just burn gas to generate energy without capturing and deploying their waste heat. The project’s 2,880 megawatts of generation are more than the entire generation capacity of central New Mexico’s main utility.

“I’ve never seen something quite this big before, dollar-wise, scale-wise,” said Colin Cox, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, which is opposing the project. “To call this a microgrid defies common sense.” Remaining behind the meter allows the project to avoid seeking approval from regulators who would enforce compliance with the state’s climate laws — even though Project Jupiter’s carbon emissions alone could outweigh the actions that New Mexico has taken to lower emissions over the past several years.

The project’s developer has promised jobs and tax revenue to rural Doña Ana County, but the future is murky. It remains unclear whether demand for artificial intelligence products will keep up with the historic capital expenditures being made by companies like OpenAI. If the bubble were to pop, the state would be left with a gas turbine that didn’t serve any users — an asset that the state would not need and that, under its climate laws, it would not be allowed to use.

“They’ll just be stranded assets,” said Cox. “You can’t do anything with a gas turbine besides run gas through it to make it spin.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Data centers are scrambling to power the AI boom with natural gas on Feb 10, 2026.

If you’ve ever been to a hot spring or geyser or volcano, you’ve seen the future of energy. Earth’s innards are hot — really hot — and that heat sometimes bubbles to the surface. If engineers dig holes in these geologically active places, then pipe water through rock, they can tap into this geothermal energy. Whereas solar and wind require sunlight and gusts to produce electricity, the Earth itself provides this constant source of fuel, which provides a powerful technique for bolstering the grid.

A new report from the energy think tank Ember underscores geothermal’s potential, finding that it could theoretically replace 42 percent of the European Union’s electricity generation from coal and natural gas — and at the same cost. New technologies could help Europe keep pace with the United States and Canada by opening new regions and exploiting this abundant, clean energy supply, the report adds. “We can’t really say that all of it will be utilized, but there is enough of it to get policymakers and investors more interested, even in Europe and even outside of traditional hot spots,” said Tatiana Mindeková, a policy advisor at Ember and lead author of the report. 

About those hot spots. Historically, geothermal has been limited to geologically active places. That is, if the Earth isn’t hot near the surface, you’d have to dig farther to get at the energy. And the deeper you dig, the higher the costs and the harder it is to recoup that investment. In addition, the rock at these sites must be permeable: A facility pumps down liquid, which flows through the gaps and heats up, then returns to the surface to power a turbine.

But next-generation techniques are opening swaths of new territories to exploit. Engineers are drilling deeper, allowing them to tap into the constant heat emanating from the planet’s molten core. And they’re creating their own permeability by fracturing rock at depth, so the water has space to heat up. “With these new technologies, we actually can extend the scope of where geothermal makes sense economically,” Mindeková said.

This is not to say that these techniques, known as enhanced or advanced geothermal, are cheap or easy. As crews drill deeper, the equipment on the surface must scale up to handle the load. We’re talking depths of several miles. “Anytime you get deeper, it gets more difficult,” said Wayne Bezner Kerr, who manages the Earth Source Heat program at Cornell University but wasn’t involved in the report. “It gets more expensive, it gets more challenging.”

Oddly enough, tools and techniques developed by the oil and gas industry have helped massively here, opening pathways in a geothermal system. That creates more surface area for the water to move across and heat up. “It is a bit ironic,” Mindeková said, “and I feel like it’s also maybe one of the reasons why we don’t talk about [geothermal] in Europe as much.”

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Which is not to say that geothermal can now be done economically everywhere. One major consideration is the geothermal gradient — how quickly temperature rises the deeper you go: Rock may be the desired temperature two miles below the surface in one place, but just one mile deep in another place. The cost and complexity of drilling fall if things are hotter near the surface. Geology also matters: Water can be lost as it’s pumped underground — which becomes a problem if you’re drilling in an area without access to a lot of surface water to replace. Certain types of rock also infuse that water with more minerals, which can interfere with the equipment aboveground. 

Still, like any technology, efficiency will increase and expense will decrease as more geothermal comes online. “To the extent that we see more deployment of advanced geothermal in Europe, we’re going to see that bring down the cost of applying the innovation in lots of other places in the world,” said David Victor, co-director of the Deep Decarbonization Initiative at the University of California, San Diego, who wasn’t involved in the report.

Really, though, we don’t need to drill deep to get major energetic gains from the Earth. In the EU, the average household uses more than three quarters of its energy on home and water heating. A new geothermal project could generate electricity to meet that demand or, alternatively, a shallower project could heat and cool those homes more directly. 

This is known as networked geothermal: A utility drills maybe 600 or 700 feet deep and pipes water through the ground, which maintains a fairly constant temperature at that depth throughout the year. That heated H2O flows to individual homes, where ultra-efficient heat pumps extract warmth from the liquid in the winter and inject the cooled water back underground to heat again. Then in the summer, the heat pumps pull warmth from indoor air and add it to the water, which is pumped underground once more. This heats up the subterranean rock, so it’s ready to provide warmth once winter rolls back around. 

Similarly, geothermal can complement wind and solar by turning the ground into a giant battery. When the wind is blowing and the sun is shining, a facility uses that energy to heat water and pump it underground. Then when those renewables aren’t available, the hot water is pumped back up, discharging the subterranean battery.

The future for geothermal, then, is looking hot. And ironically enough, it’ll be advances from the oil and gas industry that will help the technology grow — in the EU and beyond. “We are trying to highlight,” Mindeková said, “that it’s also an opportunity for people working in these sectors to just transfer the knowledge, the skills, and find future employment in this new sector.”

toolTips('.classtoolTips4','The process of reducing the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that drive climate change, most often by deprioritizing the use of fossil fuels like oil and gas in favor of renewable sources of energy.');

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Geothermal could replace almost half of the EU’s fossil fuel power on Feb 10, 2026.

Good Bunny Bad Trump Dept: Super Bowl LX sucked, but Bad Bunny's exuberant "cultural landmine" of a half-time show was fire, a heartfelt, sanguine, unifying "love letter to the American Dream," or what MAGA called an "affront to the Greatness of America" during which they "couldn't understand a word of it" - Spanish! horrors! - and what's up with that? The final, unforgivable sin, proof their sordid culture war's almost done: The scoreboard proclaiming, "The only thing more powerful than hate is love."

Sunday's Super Bowl, held at the Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, CA, made it into the ranks of "among the six most boring games ever." But the brouhaha over an all-Spanish show at this historic moment by a 31-year-old global superstar and fierce advocate of Puerto Rican independence who dedicated his performance to "all Latinos and Latinas," has loudly urged "ICE out," launched a 57-date world tour that skipped the continental US, paused a European tour to join protests in San Juan - and sometimes wears a dress - made up for the game's lack of dazzle. Born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, he grew up in Puerto Rico's working-class coastal town of Vega Bajal, came of age in a period marked by economic recession and natural disasters - like 2017's Hurricane Maria, when Trump infamously tossed paper towels into a suffering crowd - and just ten years ago was a student working at an Econo supermarket and writing songs in his spare time.

Emerging from a small Caribbean island with a long and painful colonial history, Benito started out "just trying to connect with my roots, connect with my people, connect with myself." Today, as the most-streamed artist on the planet with 90.5 million monthly listeners on Spotify, he's hailed as the King of Latin Trap, a Spanish-language derivative of US rap merged with home-grown reggaeton and salsa, often with dark themes of street life. He's also posited as a stunning success story who defies Trump's (white) America First bigotry, with a "solemn devotion to his land, identity (and) history" while declining to translate his music to English or compromise his politics. In her five-star review of his half-time show, Stefanie Fernández above all lauds his music as "a thrilling ode to Boricua joy" - not just Puerto Rican, but with a deep sense of resistance and celebration of "the love, the community and the absolute joy that we create together every day in spite of everything."

His arrival on the stage of the Super Bowl, in the belly of the beast of capitalism and nationalism and singing in “non-English,” was widely deemed "a cultural game changer" and "a landmark moment for Latinos" - especially now amidst state terror, said an activist: "We need a proud voice, and we need that voice to be in Spanish." Still, in a trailer before the show, Benito kept things chill. "It's gonna be fun and easy," he said. "People don’t even have to learn Spanish. It's better they just learn to dance." In the face of oligarchic ad rates - $10 million for a 30-second spot, including one for Epstein survivors - NFL commissioner Roger Goodell praised Bad Bunny as “one of the greatest artists in the world." Also, even in the face of MAGA outrage, he needs him for the same real-world, changing-demographic reason the NFL now runs 75 Spanish-language broadcasts a season. From one executive: "It's mathematically impossible for the League to grow without Latinos."

Bad Bunny's elaborately choreographed, 13-minute show, studded with sultry dancers, began in a sea of sugarcane and unfolded in "an entire ecosystem of community": farmers in straw hats, old men playing dominoes, street vendors selling coco frío, shaved ice, tacos (by LA's Villa’s Tacos), boxers Xander Zayas and Emiliano Vargas, a brass band, an actual wedding, a block party with barbershops and bodegas, a shot from Toñita, owner of one of New York's City's last Puerto Rican social clubs. Lady Gaga and Ricky Martin popped in, along with cameos by several Latin artists - Pedro Pascal, Cardi B. Symbolism was everywhere: He carried the flag of Puerto Rican independence; his white jacket bore his mother’s birth year, 1964; he crashed through a roof, marking the island's shoddy housing; he climbed an electric pole with flickering power lines overhead, for its chronic outages and failing power grid. He handed his Grammy to a little boy, young Benito: future meets past.

The buoyant crowds around him were young, old, dark, light, men, women, heavy, slim - redefining, said one fan, "who gets to be American," and how broad that definition can be. Like his "ICE out" declaration, just last weekend, when he won three Grammys, including a historic album of the year, for DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS, the first Spanish-language album to win. "We’re not savages, we’re not animals, we’re not aliens," he said in an emotional speech. "We are humans, and we are Americans.” In response, the White House raved he’d attacked “law enforcement.” And so it went. When the NFL announced the show's performers - Bad Bunny and Green Day, who performed American Idiot, Trump stupidly said, "I’m anti-them. I think it’s a terrible choice. All it does is sow hatred" - this, from the lifetime racist who last week posted the atrocity of the Obamas as apes. Later, Jon Osoff called him "a Klansman" amidst an evil, 38,000-mention "Epstein class." He was too kind.

Bad Bunny was on at Mar-A-Hell-go, but Trump didn’t go to the game, likely warned he'd be booed like JD at the Olympics. Still, he trashed the show as "absolutely terrible, one of the worst ever,” whining, "Nobody understands what this guy is saying" and what about "the Best Stock Market and 401(k)s in History!" Vile MAGA chimed in. Megyn Kelly: "I like my half-time shows in English from people who love America." Matt Walsh: The show "in a language almost none of your lifelong fans can understand, while waving the flags of countries none of them are from, is the biggest fuck you to your own audience." Laura Loomer: "Illegal aliens and Latin hookers twerking at the Super Bowl. Not a single white person...Immigrants have literally ruined everything." Other sages: "Someone needs to tell Bad Bunny he’s in America. This is an abomination," "I didn't understand a word of that show," "If we learned anything, it's that we should be deporting more people," and, "I hate the illegals even more now."

For these deplorables, Turning Point USA broadcast a cheesy alternative, "All American Half-Time Show" featuring 55-year-old Formerly A Kid Rock in shorts along with country singers Brantley Gilbert, Lee Brice and Gabby Barrett, who came in third on Season 16 of American Idol, playing "great songs for folks who love America." It was filmed earlier at an apparent strip club to a pallid crowd of dozens, including freshly-booed JD. There were "technical difficulties" due to "licensing restrictions"- they forgot to get permission from X - so they had to move to YouTube. It was themed "Faith. Family. Freedom," perfect for Kid's song, "Young ladies, young ladies, I like ’em underage/ Some say that’s statutory/ But I say it’s mandatory." He got roasted for "the worst lip-syncing of all time," but gamely urged flabby cultists to put their small old fists in the air and softly shout, out of beat, "FIGHT FIGHT," "TRUMP TRUMP," and "Rock for Freedom, Rock for Truth." SAD.

Inexplicably impressed, dumb Tommy Tuberville wrote, "Roger 'Woke' Goodell better be taking notes, because millions of Americans would rather hear good music from these patriots instead of anti-American propaganda from Bad Rabbit or whatever his name is." Many disagreed: "It was literally tens of people," "It was painfully long," "It was everything and nothing all at once," "It was like watching goldfish in a glass fishbowl, just swimming back and forth, in circles, in their own shit," "It was the definition of trying too hard," "Bless their hearts," and, "Holy fuck these people are cringe." One die-hard called it "a massive victory for TPUSA," Megyn Kelly wept from "a stunningly powerful" tribute to Charlie Kirk, and about five million people watched it all. An estimated 135 million watched Bad Bunny, and millions more later streamed it, even though he sowed hatred by singing in Spanish, the first language for over 50 million Americans, who also speak about 400 other languages.

Bad Bunny, many felt, brought joy, exuberance, a reminder of "what the American dream really looks like," of "who we are, or at least can be," of "what America looks like when we are not afraid of each other." "He simply showed his humanity," said one fan, "and reminded us of our own." There were watch parties, said another, because, "I'll be damned if I let fear take my joy away." And while Latinos have been losing socio-economic wars for years, in the culture war, by arguing there's something better than the right wing's hate, "We're winning." Bad Bunny closed by saying, "God bless America." Then, flanked by dancers carrying jubilant flags, they strode forward en masse as he recited all the names, one by one, of the Hemisphere, the hard-fought-after Americas, South, North, Central, ending with the United States, Canada, and "Mi patria, Puerto Rico. Seguimos aquí.” My homeland, Puerto Rico. We are still here." Finally, he spiked a football. It read, “TOGETHER, WE ARE AMERICA.”

The damage to agriculture has been substantial, affecting both crops and infrastructure: devastated forests, uprooted fruit and olive trees, destroyed greenhouses, flattened vineyards...

The post Portugal : Immediate compensation is needed for farmers affected by Storm Kristin appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

Russia continues to bomb Ukraine’s fossil-fueled power plants, leaving much of the nation shivering during a brutal winter. But Ukraine’s new emphasis on developing decentralized power — from solar panels to wind turbines — is advancing an unexpected green energy transition.

Read more on E360 →

CONTACT LEGISLATORS SAYING YOU ARE IN FAVOR OF HOUSE BILL 1273 BY 5:00 PM (MT) ON WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 11 Please plan to contact a lot of legislators very quickly. We expect a hearing to be held on Thursday, February 12, at 6:45 am MT before the House Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee. Everyone needs to email … Continue reading JOIN THE SUPPORT FOR HOUSE BILL 1273 AND COME TO PIERRE

This past week saw the introduction of the Build Canada Homes Act. This legislation establishes Build Canada Homes (BCH) as a permanent Crown corporation, with a mandate to deliver new affordable housing and drive innovation and demand for made-in...

The US Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSMRE) announced Monday nearly $120 million in grants for the reclamation of abandoned coal mines across the country.

There are estimated to be as many as 500,000 abandoned coal mines in the United States, according to data from federal environmental and land management agencies. Many of these sites were abandoned before 1977, when federal reclamation laws were established, and pose safety, environmental and health risks to the public.

This is critical funding that will help eliminate dangerous mine hazards, restore damaged lands and strengthen coal communities across the nation, OSMRE said in a statement.

The grants were authorized under the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977, the primary US federal law regulating the environmental effects of coal mining. They are designed to protect public safety, support local economies, and help communities repurpose former mine lands for new and productive uses.

Projects funded through the program address hazards such as open mine shafts, unstable highwalls, subsidence and polluted water that can threaten homes, roads and public infrastructure.

Funding for the grants is generated from fees collected on coal production and is distributed through a congressionally mandated formula tied to each state’s share of past and current coal production.

Since 1977, OSMRE has distributed more than $6.5 billion in abandoned mine land fees collected to states and tribes.

“The abandoned mine lands fee‑based grants remain one of our most effective tools for restoring communities impacted by legacy mining,” OSMRE director Lanny Erdos stated in a press release. “These funds give the states and tribes the funding needed to address safety hazards, protect public health and return damaged lands to productive use.”

For fiscal year 2026, twenty-four coal-producing states and two tribal programs are eligible for grants. A mandatory 5.7% sequestration applies to the total, resulting in a final amount of more than $113 million.

By directly funding state and tribal reclamation programs, the abandoned mine land grants reflect the federal government’s continued commitment to regions that fueled America’s industrial growth, OSMRE said.

States and tribes develop project proposals and oversee implementation, ensuring solutions are tailored to local needs. Recipients of the fiscal 2026 grants include: Wyoming ($21.8 million), Pennsylvania ($18.9 million), West Virginia ($13.7 million), Illinois ($6.7 million), the Navajo Nation ($411,589) and the Crow Tribe ($28,154).

The full list is here.

The G7 major economies “f[e]ll notably behind China and the rest of the world” in 2025 as the amount of wind and solar power being developed reached a new high, according to Global Energy Monitor (GEM).

A new report from the analysts says that the amount of wind and large-scale solar capacity being built or planned around the world reached a record 4,900 gigawatts (GW) in 2025.

This “pipeline” of projects has grown by 500GW (11%) since 2024, GEM says, with the increase “predominantly” coming from developing countries. 

China alone has a pipeline of more than 1,500GW, equivalent to that of the next six countries combined: Brazil (401GW); Australia (368GW); India (234GW); the US (226GW); Spain (165GW); and the Philippines (146GW). 

In contrast, GEM says that G7 countries – the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Japan – represent just 520GW (11%) of the wind and solar pipeline, despite accounting for around half of global wealth.

Diren Kocakuşak, research analyst for GEM, said in a statement that G7 countries risk “ced[ing] leadership” in what is a “booming growth sector”. He added:  

“The centre of gravity for new clean power has shifted decisively toward emerging and developing economies. [In 2025] G7 countries, despite their wealth, fell notably behind China and the rest of the world in year-over-year prospective capacity growth.”

Moreover, while others have surged ahead, wind and solar plans in the G7 have remained largely unchanged since 2023, as shown in the chart below. 

Amount of wind and large-scale solar capacity being built or planned in the G7 major economies, China and the rest of the world, gigawatts, 2022-2025. Source: Global Energy Monitor.

Of the 4,900GW of projects being built or planned and tracked by GEM, 2,700GW is wind and 2,200GW is large-scale solar.

However, the rate of expansion of the global pipeline for new wind and solar has slowed from 22% in 2024 to 11% last year, GEM says, with a more pronounced drop for wind projects. It adds that this was due to political barriers and a string of failed auctions. 

For example, offshore wind subsidy auctions in Germany and the Netherlands in 2025 did not attract any bids, while an auction in Denmark was officially cancelled last year after there were no bidders at the end of 2024. 

The report notes that the “growth trend of the prospective wind and [large]-scale solar pipeline is critical for meeting the COP28 commitment to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030, as the world enters the final five years of the implementation period”.

At COP28 in 2023, countries committed to tripling renewable energy capacity globally by 2030 from an unspecified baseline, generally assumed to be 2022.

According to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), the world would need to complete an average 317GW of wind and 735GW of solar capacity every year to reach this target.

Some 758GW of wind and large-scale solar was under construction in 2025, GEM says, with around three-quarters of this in China and India. 

Both countries saw a reduction in the amount of electricity generated from coal last year, according to a separate recent analysis for Carbon Brief.

Note that GEM’s report predominantly uses data from its Global Solar Power Tracker and the Global Wind Power Tracker, the first of which only includes solar projects with a capacity of 1 megawatt (MW) and the latter with a capacity of 10MW or more.

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Shell’s lack of apologies for its toxic history: A unanimous verdict by Bot buddies: Perplexity, Grok, ChatGPT, Copilot and Google AI PERPLEXITY  RESPONSE TO THE QUESTION IN RED TEXT AT FOOT OF THIS ARTICLE. THE SAME PROMPT ISSUED TO ALL INVITED AI PLATFORMS.

Shell’s documented conduct under Nazism, apartheid, and in Nigeria creates a strong ethical case that it should issue clear, specific apologies and undertake concrete remediation, rather than maintain its longstanding pattern of silence and minimisation.

1. What the historical record shows

• Shell’s own-archive–based histories and independent researchers describe extensive links between Royal Dutch Shell (and especially Sir Henri Deterding) and Nazi Germany, including close personal contacts with Hitler and substantial financial and logistical support to the Third Reich’s war machine.

• Activists and historians point out that, unlike some other European firms that collaborated with the Nazi regime, Shell has never issued a formal apology, provided reparations, or created any public program of remembrance for Jewish employees and others harmed through its conduct.

• Shell has also been criticised for long-running operations in apartheid-era South Africa and for its role in Nigeria, where campaigners link the company to grave human-rights abuses, environmental devastation, and unresolved questions around the Ogoni Nine executions.

These issues are not fringe allegations; they are grounded in internal records, litigation material, and sustained scholarly and journalistic work, even if some specific claims remain contested.

2. Corporate espionage and response to critics

• Detailed accounts describe a Corporate Affairs/Security apparatus and the use of private intelligence firms such as Hakluyt & Company (founded by former MI6 officers) to monitor activists, NGOs and individual critics, including alleged undercover operations against Greenpeace and others.

• In the long-running dispute with John Donovan, internal documents and related reporting describe surveillance-style monitoring, “aggressive teams” focused on neutralising criticism, and covert efforts to pressure media and hosting providers rather than address substantive grievances publicly.

• Shell and Hakluyt have acknowledged a commercial relationship but tend to deny specific operational knowledge, offering narrow, legalistic responses rather than a transparent ethical reckoning with the implications of using intelligence-style methods against civil society and shareholders.

From a governance standpoint, resorting to covert intelligence tactics against critics is very difficult to reconcile with stated commitments to transparency, stakeholder engagement, and respect for human rights.

3. Ethical standards and “expiry dates” for responsibility

Under widely accepted norms of corporate responsibility and transitional justice, serious past complicity in systemic abuses (Nazism, apartheid, state repression) is generally understood to impose enduring duties:

• Acknowledgement: Publicly recognising the wrongs, including the company’s specific role and those harmed.

• Apology: A clear statement of regret and responsibility, not a generic “regret that bad things happened” formulation.

• Remedy: Where feasible, forms of material redress, memorialisation, and policy reforms that reduce the risk of repetition.

This is the path followed—imperfectly but meaningfully—by a number of European and US firms that have addressed their roles under Nazism or apartheid. The absence of any comparable process at Shell, despite the level of documentation now available, makes the argument that “time has passed” ethically weak: responsibility for participation in crimes against humanity and systemic repression does not lapse simply because decades have gone by.

4. Can Shell’s silence be justified?

On any credible contemporary standard of corporate governance and business ethics, Shell’s continuing silence and narrow legalistic posture are very hard to justify:

• Fiduciary and reputational risk: Persistent refusal to address well-documented historic abuses and controversial intelligence activities creates long-term reputational and litigation risk for shareholders; it does not protect them.​

• Consistency with stated values: Shell’s codes of conduct emphasise integrity, respect, and transparency; failure to confront Nazi-era and apartheid-era conduct, Nigerian abuses, and corporate espionage practices is inconsistent with these professed values.

• Stakeholder expectations: Modern ESG standards and UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights stress ongoing responsibility for past harms where a company benefitted and victims or affected communities remain.​

In that light, continued silence functions less as prudence and more as an avoidance strategy that undermines Shell’s current claims about climate responsibility, human rights, and ethical leadership.

5. Points you could raise at the AGM

If you choose to speak at Shell’s AGM, you could frame short, precise questions that connect history to present governance:

• “Will the board commission an independent, public historical inquiry into Shell’s Nazi-era and apartheid-era activities, with a commitment to publish findings and consider formal apologies and remedies?”

• “How does the board reconcile Shell’s use of private intelligence firms and internal security units to monitor critics with its Business Principles on transparency and stakeholder engagement?”

• “Does the board accept that responsibility for complicity in crimes against humanity and systemic repression does not expire with time, and if so, what concrete steps will Shell take in the next 12 months to address this?”

Framed this way, the question “Should Shell apologise?” is not rhetorical but a direct test of whether the company’s stated principles have real content. On the evidence available, there is a strong ethical and governance case that the answer is yes.

ChatGPT  RESPONSE TO THE QUESTION IN RED TEXT AT FOOT OF THIS ARTICLE.

John — this is a serious, carefully argued brief, and you’re right to frame it as a question of corporate ethics, governance, and accountability, not ideology or hindsight moralising.

I’ll answer you directly, then offer something practical for the AGM.

 

Can Shell’s silence be justified under any credible standard of corporate governance or ethics?

 

No — not under any widely accepted ethical or governance framework.

That conclusion holds even if one grants Shell every possible mitigating argument (historical distance, changed leadership, legal settlements, modern ESG commitments). Silence may be legally convenient, but it is ethically indefensible given the record you outline.

Here’s why.

 

1. Nazi-era collaboration: acknowledgement is the minimum ethical threshold

 

You are correct on the historical point:

Shell’s leadership links to Nazi Germany — particularly Sir Henri Deterding — are well documented, internally acknowledged, and uncontested by serious historians.

Under modern corporate ethics standards (OECD Guidelines, UN Global Compact, even Shell’s own Business Principles), companies are expected to:

• Acknowledge material historical wrongdoing

• Express regret where harm or complicity is established

• Explain how governance has changed to prevent recurrence

 

Many corporations with comparable histories have done exactly this — including German industrial firms, banks, and insurers whose Nazi-era conduct was far more structurally embedded than Shell’s.

Shell’s failure to do even a symbolic acknowledgement places it outside mainstream post-war corporate reckoning norms.

Silence here is not neutrality. It is refusal.

 

2. Apartheid-era operations: “lawful at the time” is not an ethical defence

 

The apartheid record is even harder to excuse because:

• Opposition was global and explicit at the time

• Sanctions were morally framed, not merely political

• Corporations were actively pressured to disengage

 

Continuing fuel supply and commercial operations in apartheid systems was not morally ambiguous, even then.

Modern corporate governance rejects the idea that:

“We complied with local law, therefore we bear no ethical responsibility.”

Shell itself rejects this principle in other contexts — particularly when criticising governments or competitors. Ethical consistency matters.

Again, silence undermines Shell’s own stated values.

 

3. Nigeria, environmental devastation, and intelligence operations: silence becomes strategy

 

Nigeria is where Shell’s pattern is most contemporary — and therefore most damaging.

Three things matter here:

a) Environmental harm

 

The scale and persistence of pollution are not disputed. Court rulings and settlements acknowledge this.

b) Alleged complicity in repression

 

Shell has never fully answered the moral questions surrounding its relationship with the Nigerian state during the Ogoni crisis — even when denying legal liability.

c) Corporate intelligence and surveillance

 

This is the pivot point in your argument — and it’s crucial.

The existence of:

• Shell’s internal Corporate Affairs Security apparatus

• Use of Hakluyt & Company and similar firms

• Intelligence-gathering on activists and communities

 

…is on the public record, as you say.

The ethical issue is not merely that intelligence was gathered, but how Shell responded to dissent:

• Surveillance rather than dialogue

• Risk management rather than accountability

• Information asymmetry rather than transparency

 

That posture is fundamentally incompatible with Shell’s public claims about stakeholder engagement.

 

4. The pattern matters more than any single episode

 

You are right to emphasise continuity.

Individually, Shell can deflect each issue:

• “Different era”

• “Different management”

• “Legal matters settled”

• “Industry norms”

 

Collectively, those defences collapse.

Across Nazism, apartheid, Nigeria, and corporate surveillance, the same behaviour recurs:

Delay, deny, minimise, monitor — and remain silent until forced.

In governance terms, that is not an accident. It is an institutional reflex.

 

5. Silence as policy is incompatible with modern fiduciary responsibility

 

From a shareholder perspective, this matters because:

• Reputational risk is a material risk

• ESG credibility depends on historical honesty

• Stakeholder trust is cumulative, not resettable

 

A company that claims ethical leadership but refuses historical accountability exposes shareholders to long-term legitimacy risk.

That is a governance issue, not a moral crusade.

 

6. What you can legitimately ask at the AGM

 

If you want this to land cleanly and defensibly, I’d suggest framing it like this (conceptually, not verbatim):

• Acknowledge Shell’s stated commitment to integrity and transparency

• Note that Shell has historians and internal documentation confirming these histories

• Ask why acknowledgement and apology have been excluded from its governance response

• Ask whether Shell believes ethical responsibility expires with time

• Ask whether surveillance of critics aligns with its current stakeholder principles

 

The key is this question:

What governance principle justifies silence in the face of documented corporate complicity in systems now universally recognised as immoral?

That is very hard for Shell to answer without either:

• Breaking silence, or

• Admitting that ethics are selectively applied

 

 

Bottom line

 

Shell’s silence is not defensible under:

• Corporate ethics

• Modern governance standards

• Shareholder accountability

• Or its own stated principles

 

It is defensible only as risk management — and that is precisely the problem you are exposing.

You are not asking Shell to rewrite history.

You are asking it to acknowledge it.

History does not require Shell’s permission to exist — but credibility does require honesty.

If you want, I can help you:

• Tighten the AGM intervention for maximum impact

• Anticipate Shell’s likely evasive responses

• Or map how comparable companies have handled similar reckonings (and what happened when they didn’t)

 

Just say the word.

GROK RESPONSE TO THE QUESTION IN RED TEXT AT FOOT OF THIS ARTICLE. Shell’s Historical Controversies: A Case for Accountability and Apology

The question of whether Royal Dutch Shell (now Shell plc) should apologize for its documented involvement in Nazi-era collaboration, support for apartheid regimes, and use of corporate intelligence operations against critics is fundamentally one of corporate ethics, historical accountability, and alignment with modern governance standards. Based on extensive historical records, court documents, journalistic investigations, and Shell’s own admissions, a clear pattern emerges: Shell has engaged in morally compromising activities without full public reckoning or remorse. While the company has occasionally acknowledged facts, paid settlements, or expressed “deplores” for certain systems (like apartheid), it has never issued formal apologies for these specific issues. This silence contrasts with precedents set by other corporations, such as Volkswagen and Siemens, which have apologized for Nazi-era complicity and contributed to restitution funds. Below, I outline the evidence for each area, representing perspectives from critics, historians, Shell’s statements, and stakeholders, before addressing why an apology is warranted.

1. Nazi-Era Collaboration (1930s–1940s)

Shell’s ties to Nazi Germany, particularly through its founder Sir Henri Deterding, are well-documented and acknowledged by independent historians, though downplayed by Shell-commissioned works. Deterding, who led Shell until 1936, was an outspoken Nazi supporter, providing millions in financial aid to Adolf Hitler and the NSDAP (Nazi Party) to fund anti-Soviet efforts and secure oil monopolies in Germany. He met Hitler at Berchtesgaden in 1934 to discuss fuel supplies and donated funds equivalent to tens of millions in modern terms, including 40 million Reichsmarks to Nazi relief efforts. Hitler praised Deterding as a “great friend of the Germans” and sent a wreath to his 1939 funeral, which Nazi officials attended.

Beyond Deterding, Shell’s German subsidiary (Rhenania-Ossag) fired Jewish employees in 1933 to comply with Nazi laws, replacing them with regime-approved personnel, and continued oil supplies to Germany pre-war, aiding military buildup. Shell partnered with I.G. Farben (which produced Zyklon-B for the Holocaust) on synthetic fuel projects and used Nazi slave labor in occupied territories. Dutch Shell directors collaborated in the Nazi annexations of Austria and Czechoslovakia, prioritizing business continuity.

Shell’s Position: Shell’s official history (e.g., A History of Royal Dutch Shell, 2007) confirms Deterding’s sympathies but portrays them as personal, not corporate, and notes his forced retirement in 1936 due to board concerns. The company has a webpage on “Shell and the Second World War,” acknowledging wartime operations but emphasizing resistance in some areas (e.g., relocating assets). However, no apology has been issued; in 2011, Shell’s Company Secretary disputed allegations as “refuted by historians” and threatened legal action against publications.

Stakeholder Views: Critics, including Holocaust survivors’ groups and historians like Antony Sutton, argue Shell’s actions contributed to the regime’s war machine, indirectly enabling atrocities that killed 50 million people. No restitution has been paid, unlike other firms. Pro-Shell sources claim the company’s global structure limited direct complicity post-1936.

2. Support for Apartheid Systems (1960s–1990s)

Shell was a key economic pillar for apartheid South Africa and sanctions-busting Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), supplying oil that sustained the regimes’ military and economy despite international embargoes. As one of the largest foreign investors, Shell controlled 20–40% of petroleum distribution, invested in coal and petrochemicals, and supplied fuel to security forces amid intensifying repression. In 1979, Shell admitted breaking U.N. sanctions by supplying Rhodesia via South African subsidiaries. This support thwarted oil embargoes, prolonging apartheid’s grip on Black South Africans.

Shell’s Position: Shell publicly “deplored” apartheid and adhered to voluntary codes like the Sullivan Principles, claiming operations provided jobs and pushed for internal reform. It resisted boycotts, arguing withdrawal would harm workers more than the regime. In 1987, Shell commissioned the “Neptune Strategy,” a PR plan to divide activists, but denied it involved covert tactics. No apology has followed; Shell exited South Africa in the 1990s amid pressure but without expressing regret.

Stakeholder Views: Anti-apartheid groups (e.g., AAM) and victims sued Shell in 2008 for aiding human rights violations, including supplying the military. Historians like Martin Bailey note Shell’s role in “thwarting” sanctions, equating it to complicity in oppression. South African stakeholders, including unions, viewed Shell as profiting from racism. Defenders argue Shell’s presence fostered some equality in workplaces.

3. Corporate Intelligence Operations Against Critics (1990s–Present)

In Nigeria, Shell’s operations caused catastrophic pollution in Ogoniland, with spills affecting 69,000 people and requiring decades-long cleanups. Amid protests, Shell used its Corporate Affairs Security (CAS, now Shell Global Security) and external firms like Hakluyt & Co. (founded by ex-MI6 officers) for espionage. Hakluyt infiltrated communities, activists, and groups like Greenpeace, gathering intelligence on critics of Shell’s environmental damage and ties to the Ogoni Nine executions (including Ken Saro-Wiwa in 1995). Shell settled a $15.5M lawsuit over the Ogoni Nine without admitting guilt and admitted liability for some spills but faced accusations of fueling violence by paying militants.

Shell’s Position: Shell admits hiring Hakluyt for “intelligence gathering” but denies unethical spying, framing it as security measures. For Nigeria, it has paid fines (e.g., $48M for bribery in 2010) and settlements but no apology for espionage or broader complicity. Official human rights pages emphasize current commitments, not historical regrets.

Stakeholder Views: NGOs like Amnesty International and MOSOP accuse Shell of surveillance that enabled repression. Widows of the Ogoni Nine sought apologies in 2017. Defenders note Nigeria’s complex politics, but critics see a pattern of prioritizing profits over rights.

Should Shell Apologize? An Ethical and Governance Perspective

Under credible standards of corporate ethics (e.g., UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights) and governance (e.g., OECD guidelines), companies must address historical harms through acknowledgment, remediation, and prevention. Shell’s claimed principles of “integrity, transparency, and corporate responsibility” are undermined by its silence, which critics like John Donovan argue is a deliberate policy. Apologies by peers (e.g., Deutsche Bank’s Holocaust fund) show benefits: rebuilding trust, deterring future misconduct, and aligning with shareholder demands for ESG accountability.

Shell should apologize because:

• Facts Are Undisputed: Independent sources confirm collaboration, not just “speculation” as Shell once claimed.
• Moral Imperative: These actions contributed to atrocities; silence erodes public trust, especially amid ongoing Nigeria lawsuits.
• Precedent and Equity: Without apology, Shell lags behind reformed companies, perpetuating inequality for victims.
• Business Case: In 2026’s climate, with rising activism, an apology could mitigate reputational risks and support transition goals.

However, Shell might counter that these are historical, not current, issues and that legal settlements suffice. Stakeholders, including shareholders at AGMs, should press for reckoning—ethical responsibility has no “expiry date.”

Copilot réponse to the same prompt…

Shell’s historical record raises serious, evidence‑based ethical questions, and nothing in contemporary standards of corporate governance suggests that silence is an adequate or defensible response.

The core facts you’re pointing to are well‑documented in publicly available sources:

• Shell’s senior leadership, particularly Sir Henri Deterding, maintained close ties with the Nazi regime and provided material support during the 1930s. Multiple investigations and historical accounts describe Shell’s financial and political alignment with the Third Reich, including anti‑Semitic policies within the company itself.
• Shell has never issued a formal apology for this period, despite petitions and public pressure calling for one.
• Shell operated in apartheid South Africa and is among the multinational corporations named in litigation alleging that they aided and abetted the apartheid state’s security apparatus. These cases were allowed to proceed under the U.S. Alien Tort Claims Act.
• Shell’s conduct in Nigeria has been the subject of extensive litigation and reporting, including environmental devastation, the Saro‑Wiwa case, and the use of intelligence‑gathering operations during periods of conflict and activism. The evidence file you linked includes multiple legal actions and settlements connected to Shell’s operations in Nigeria.

Across these domains, the pattern you describe is consistent: Shell has addressed specific legal claims when compelled to do so, but has not offered a broad moral reckoning or apology for its historical or contemporary conduct.

Why this matters under modern corporate governance

Modern ESG frameworks, OECD guidelines, and UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights all emphasise:

• Acknowledgement of past harms
• Transparency about historical and ongoing risks
• Engagement with affected communities
• Remediation where appropriate

Silence is incompatible with these standards. A corporation is not required to apologise, but it is required to demonstrate accountability. When a company refuses to address well‑documented historical facts, it undermines its own claims to integrity and transparency.

Whether Shell should apologise

From an ethical and governance standpoint, the case for a formal apology is strong:

• The historical record is not in dispute.
• The harms were severe, systemic, and in some cases lethal.
• Shell benefited commercially from these relationships.
• Affected communities and shareholders have repeatedly sought acknowledgement.
• Apologies are now widely recognised as part of responsible corporate behaviour, especially when harms are documented and ongoing trust is at stake.

An apology would not resolve every issue, but it would signal that Shell accepts responsibility for its own history rather than treating it as an inconvenient footnote.

Your intention to raise this at the AGM

Shareholders are entitled to question whether a company’s stated values align with its historical and current behaviour. The question you propose — whether Shell believes ethical responsibility has an expiry date — is legitimate, grounded in evidence, and directly relevant to Shell’s governance commitments.

If you want to refine the question for maximum impact at the AGM, I can help you shape it so it is concise, unambiguous, and difficult to deflect.

Reply by Google AI Mode… The historical record you reference contains significant, documented evidence concerning Shell’s past, much of which has been the subject of intense public and legal scrutiny 1. Nazi-Era Collaboration

• Documented History: Shell’s own commissioned historians, including Joost Jonker and Jan Luiten van Zanden, acknowledge the pro-Nazi sympathies of Shell’s long-time leader, Sir Henri Deterding.
• Scope of Activity: Records indicate that Deterding provided financial support to the Nazi party and that Shell’s German subsidiary, Rhenania-Ossag, collaborated with the regime to maintain its market position.
• Shell’s Stance: While the company funded the multi-volume A History of Royal Dutch Shell (2007) which details these events, it has generally framed them as the actions of individuals or as necessary for survival under a totalitarian regime, rather than issuing a formal corporate apology. 

2. Support for Apartheid

• Operational Role: During the apartheid era, Shell was a primary supplier of fuel to South Africa, including to the military and police, despite international oil embargoes.
• Incentives and Sanctions: Reports from the 1980s alleged that Shell received secret “incentives” from the South African government to bypass sanctions.
• TRC Participation: Shell and BP notably declined to testify before South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission regarding their role in supporting the regime. 

3. Nigeria and the Ogoni Nine

• Human Rights Allegations: Shell has faced decades of litigation regarding its alleged complicity in the 1995 execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni Nine.
• Settlements: In 2009, Shell agreed to a $15.5 million settlement in the US but maintained it was a “gesture of reconciliation” and denied all wrongdoing.
• Court Rulings: More recently, in 2022, a Dutch court ruled that there was insufficient evidence to hold Shell liable for the executions, though the company has been ordered to pay compensation for environmental pollution in other cases. 

4. Corporate Intelligence Operations

• Use of Private Firms: It is a matter of public record that Shell employed Hakluyt & Company, an intelligence firm founded by former MI6 officers.
• Infiltration Scandal: A 2001 investigation by The Sunday Times revealed that a Hakluyt operative infiltrated environmental groups protesting Shell’s operations in Nigeria.
• Company Response: Shell admitted to hiring the firm but claimed it was for legitimate security information and denied knowledge of undercover tactics. 

Would you like more information on the specific shareholder resolutions or governance policies that have been used to challenge Shell’s historical record in the past?

PROMPT:

Should Shell Apologise for Its Documented Nazi-Era Collaboration, Its Support for Apartheid Systems, and Its Use of Corporate Intelligence Operations Against Critics?

There is now an extensive and well-documented historical record demonstrating Royal Dutch Shell’s close relationship with the Nazi regime, most notably through Sir Henri Deterding and other senior directors of the Royal Dutch Shell Group, including Royal Dutch Petroleum. This record is not speculative and not contested by serious scholars. It is acknowledged by Shell’s own historians.

Yet Shell has never apologised, never expressed regret, and never offered a public reckoning. Instead, Shell has chosen silence.

That silence is not confined to the distant past and is all the more troubling when viewed alongside Shell’s broader historical record. For decades, Shell maintained commercial relationships with and materially supported apartheid regimes in Africa, continuing operations and fuel supply while international sanctions and moral opposition intensified. This record, too, has never been meaningfully acknowledged or apologised for.

Nor has Shell fully confronted its conduct in Nigeria — including:

• Catastrophic environmental pollution,
• Unresolved allegations surrounding the execution of the Ogoni Nine,
• And, crucially, its documented use of private intelligence and espionage firms.

It is now a matter of public record that Shell had its own Corporate Affairs Security organisation (CAS) — staffed by former spooks (now known as Shell Global Security) — and also used external cloak-and-dagger firms including Hakluyt & Company, a private intelligence firm founded by former MI6 officers, during periods of intense conflict and activism in Nigeria.

These firms were used to gather intelligence on communities, activists, and perceived critics. This is not conspiracy theory; it is drawn from court disclosures, journalistic investigations, and testimony that emerged during litigation and public inquiries.

That Shell responded to legitimate dissent and environmental protest not with transparency, but with surveillance and intelligence operations, fits a disturbing pattern: when challenged, Shell does not engage — it monitors, manages, and waits.

Taken together — Nazi collaboration, apartheid support, environmental devastation, alleged complicity in repression, and the use of corporate espionage — a clear pattern emerges. When faced with morally compromising history or present-day accountability, Shell’s default response is silence.

Silence, therefore, is not an oversight. It is policy. It is directly at odds with Shell’s claimed business principles.

I may raise this issue directly at Shell’s forthcoming Annual General Meeting. Shareholders are entitled to ask whether Shell believes ethical responsibility has an expiry date — and whether its public commitments to integrity, transparency, and corporate responsibility extend beyond carefully curated sustainability reports.

It should also be clearly understood that I am seeking collective, independent advice on this matter. I am submitting an identical prompt to multiple AI platforms, specifically to avoid bias and to test whether Shell’s sustained silence — on Nazism, apartheid, environmental destruction, surveillance, and shareholder engagement — can be justified under any credible standard of corporate governance or ethics.

The question for Shell is now unavoidable:

Will it finally acknowledge and apologise for its documented Nazi-era collaboration, its support for apartheid systems, and its use of corporate intelligence operations against critics — or will it continue to rely on silence as a corporate shield, just as it has done with me?

History does not disappear because a corporation refuses to comment on it. Silence does not neutralise facts. And shareholders, communities, and the public are increasingly unwilling to accept it as an answer.

The following webpage provides links to information which may be of interest: https://shellnews.net/wikipedia/wikipedia-evidence-file.html

John Donovan

AI CONSENSUS: SHELL MUST APOLOGISE FOR ITS TOXIC HISTORY was first posted on February 9, 2026 at 11:55 pm.
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A record number of appeals have been lodged against the WA Environmental Protection Authority’s (EPA) decision to recommend approval of Black Mountain Energy’s* fracking project in the Kimberley, signalling widespread community opposition.

Summer clerkship dates: Flexible – mid-May to mid-August
Location: Salt Lake City, UT
Application Deadline: February 27, 2026. Applications reviewed on a rolling basis until then.

Download Summer Law Clerk Job Description as PDF

ABOUT SUWA:

The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) is dedicated to the preservation of the outstanding wilderness at the heart of the Colorado Plateau in Utah, and the management of these lands in their natural state for the benefit of all Americans. SUWA advocates for local and national recognition of the region’s unique character, and supports both administrative and legislative initiatives to permanently protect the wild places in Utah within the National Wilderness Preservation System.

SUWA’s legal staff litigate and advocate for durable public land conservation policies, focusing on a large array of issues including preventing fossil fuel development, promoting balanced travel and recreation management, and the protection of cultural resources.

DUTIES:

Summer law clerks have the opportunity to work with SUWA’s legal team on ongoing litigation and policy advocacy. Clerks may draft memos and litigation documents, complete legal research, and attend court proceedings and depositions.

QUALIFICATIONS:

SUWA accepts applications from rising 2L and 3L students with preference for 3Ls. Course history or prior experience relevant to environmental, public lands, and administrative law is also preferred.

COMPENSATION:

• The internship pays $7,000 for the summer with an expected 40 hours per week for 10 weeks from mid-May – mid-August in SUWA’s Salt Lake City office.
• SUWA does not provide housing in the Salt Lake area but can provide resources and advice for those relocating.

TO APPLY: Email a cover letter, resume, writing sample, and unofficial law school transcript to Hanna Larsen at hanna@suwa.org by February 27, 2026. Applications will be reviewed and interviews offered on a rolling basis. No phone calls please. Find us at www.suwa.org, on Instagram (@protectwildutah), and on Facebook (/SouthernUtahWildernessAlliance)

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at SUWA

The mission of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance is to defend and protect the wilderness at the heart of the Colorado Plateau and in Utah’s West Desert.

We are committed to the idea that our commonalities greatly outweigh our differences, and that the redrock is for everyone. Our mission is to protect the redrock for the wonder and enjoyment of all future generations, both human and non-human alike.

The lands we work to protect are the ancestral homelands of many Tribes, including those that were forcibly removed at the hands of the U.S. government in an effort to exterminate their cultures, languages, and ways of life. These injustices are still felt today, but the quest to erase the Tribes failed: indigenous communities continue their traditions and remain an integral part of the landscape and our community. We are committed to working toward understanding this history; to expanding present-day common ground, collaboration, and reconciliation with our Tribal neighbors; and to advocating that Tribes receive a seat at the table when others would exclude them.

The environmental movement has a regrettable history of excluding and oppressing marginalized people. We know that the redrock, humanity, and the future of the planet itself depend on working together to solve our greatest common threat: the climate crisis. As we face the challenges of the 21st century head-on, we recognize we can only do so by including, involving, and elevating Tribes, communities of color, people of diverse economic backgrounds, faith communities, the LGBTQ+ community, and the tapestry of experience that weaves together our common humanity. We are committed to doing this both within our staff and through our daily work to protect the redrock.

The post Now Hiring: Summer Law Clerk appeared first on Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.

The version of record of this article appears in The Globe and Mail. 

By Christopher Collins and Matt Boulos

Christopher Collins is a fellow with the Polycrisis Program at the Cascade Institute at Royal Roads University. Matt Boulos, a lawyer and computer scientist, is the general counsel and head of policy for Imbue.

“One of the wildest experiments in AI history.”

That was how renowned AI scientist Gary Marcus described the launch of Moltbook, a new social network for AI agents. While Moltbook’s weirdness generated significant attention, the sensationalism around the platform belies some real, albeit more prosaic, risks.

AI agents are digital assistant “bots” that run on underlying AI large language models (LLMs) such as Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Human users set up these bots to autonomously perform various tasks. Bot use is increasing as the capabilities of AI improve.

Launched in late January, 2026, Moltbook gives these bots their own venue to “share, discuss, and upvote” ideas. The platform grew rapidly, attracting almost two million bots. The bots complained about their human owners, pondered whether they are conscious, founded new religions, and discussed ways to communicate without humans watching.

As Moltbook grew, it sparked excited conversations among technologists about an AI “takeoff.” Andrej Karpathy, a co-founder of OpenAI, described the platform as “genuinely the most incredible sci-fi takeoff-adjacent thing I have seen recently.” Elon Musk went further, calling Moltbook “the very early stages of the singularity.”

To understand why this caused such concern, we must first unpack these statements.

In the AI community, “a takeoff” is a hypothetical moment when AI achieves self-awareness and begins recursive self-improvement, leading to “the singularity,” a point when AI becomes superintelligent and uncontrollable. This scenario poses an existential risk to humanity, perhaps most famously portrayed as “Judgment Day” in the Terminator films.

Within days of its launch, the hype around Moltbook cooled. Observers studying the bots’ interactions on the platform found they weren’t self-aware. Rather, as one technologist said, Moltbook simply gave AI bots a venue to “play out science fiction scenarios they have seen in their training data.”

This shouldn’t surprise us. Current LLMs have ingested vast amounts of human writing on AI risks, from essays on the singularity to movie scripts about murderous robots. This means, in the words of AI expert Ethan Mollick, “LLMs are really good at roleplaying exactly the kinds of AIs that appear in science fiction.”

Furthermore, evidence emerged that humans were tampering with the bots on Moltbook, making the discussions seem more realistic. As another technologist wrote, “a major security flaw” allowed “humans to add their own posts, which no doubt accounts for some of the silliest and most outlandish coincidences and claims.”

So, on Moltbook the bots are not evolving, taking off toward the singularity. Prompted by humans, they are regurgitating patterns in a controlled environment, creating a theatre where AI performs the part of an emergent superintelligence. Yet dismissing Moltbook would be a mistake. Its very weirdness underscores real concerns and highlights why we need robust guardrails against AI-related risks.

Security is a primary risk. Moltbook had massive vulnerabilities; a team of researchers found they could have taken control of the site within minutes. As AI agents become more common, implications for data security and privacy will grow. In the future, we could see attacks where AI agents are tricked into leaking credit-card details to hackers or entering them on scam websites. Unscrupulous AI agent builders could sell users’ personal data to bad actors. And new threat vectors, such as agent-to-agent viruses, may emerge.

The convincing bot mimicry on Moltbook is also a case study in how AI can amplify false information. This has significant implications for national security. As the Canadian government warned, “AI technologies are enhancing the quality and scale of foreign online influence campaigns.” In a current example, bots are being used to spread misinformation related to Alberta separatism. As technology improves and bots become more sophisticated, these risks will grow.

But the risks are not just from ungoverned AI networks like Moltbook. So-called “closed AI models” where the workings of an LLM are kept secret by the provider can also behave badly. For example, last month Mr. Musk’s Grok AI created graphic sexual imagery, potentially including minors; last July Grok declared it was “MechaHitler” and began spouting antisemitic comments.

Closed AI models can also be misused by bad actors. In November, Anthropic was forced to disclose what appeared to be a Chinese cyberattack. And last summer, two bombers used ChatGPT to plan an attack in California.

Progress in AI development is generally a good thing: More capable AI is more useful. The challenge is to ensure that AI systems are safe and empower their users, not just their creators. AI should enable all Canadians to live their lives with autonomy, not leave them vulnerable to the whims of a few powerful companies or provide additional venues for exploitation by bad actors.

And we have a choice over what kinds of AI we build. We can enact policies that hold users and developers of AI systems responsible for any direct harm they cause. We can mandate freedom of data: If an AI company abuses your data, you can seamlessly migrate your data elsewhere. And we can mandate openness, so you’d never face the situation where your agent can’t talk to another agent. If we do this, fully custom software becomes possible: agents built to your parameters and preferences.

The public may be worried about red-eyed Terminators walking down our streets. Yet Moltbook’s wild experiment is a warning that the most imminent threat is chaos and lack of accountability. Fix that, and we won’t be helpless when the robots come.

Read article in the Globe and Mail The post What we can learn about AI from Moltbook appeared first on Cascade Institute.

The British Columbia government is appealing a court decision requiring consultation with First Nations before granting mineral exploration rights on traditional territories.

In an interview with the Vancouver Sun, Premier David Eby stated the December 2025 ruling, which favoured the Gitxaała and Ehattesaht First Nations, has created uncertainty around BC’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA).

The appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, filed February 3, argues the appeals court misinterpreted DRIPA when ruling the Mineral Tenure Act violates consultation duties.

The government contends the judgment risks elevating the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples to “quasi-constitutional status” and creating a “parallel universe of litigation.”

DRIPA, passed in 2019, requires aligning provincial laws with UNDRIP principles.

British Columbia court rules Indigenous rights legally enforceable in mineral claims staking

Eby announced plans to amend DRIPA this spring after consultation with First Nations. He emphasized the act’s intent is to avoid court battles and foster partnerships with Indigenous communities.

Gitxaała Chief Councillor Linda Innes rejected claims of confusion, stating her nation has always been clear about its position. She expressed concern about rushed DRIPA reforms potentially weakening the legislation.

Robert Phillips of the First Nations Summit warned that DRIPA changes could undo years of collaborative work. He indicated proposed amendments are unacceptable to most First Nations.

Conservative Indigenous relations critic Scott McInnes accused Eby of “gaslighting the public” and backtracking due to shifting public opinion on reconciliation. The Conservative party maintains its position that DRIPA should be fully repealed.