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SHELL V-POWER: THE PETROL PUMP MIRACLE JUICE THAT WANTS YOUR ENGINE — AND YOUR WALLET — TO FEEL SPECIAL

Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com - Wed, 05/20/2026 - 09:22

 

Shell’s premium V-Power fuel is back in the spotlight, promising cleaner engines, better protection, and “more” of almost everything. But for drivers with long memories, the phrase “Shell wonder fuel” comes with a faint smell of burnt valves, marketing hype, and very expensive déjà vu. DISCLAIMER

This article is opinion and satirical commentary based on cited public sources. It is not financial advice, consumer advice, engineering advice, or a recommendation to buy, avoid, invest in, or rely on any Shell product or security. Drivers should follow their vehicle manufacturer’s fuel recommendations and seek qualified mechanical advice where appropriate. Site wide disclaimer also applies.

PART ONE: FACT-BASED TABLOID DEEP DIVE THE RETURN OF THE WONDER FUEL WAGON

There are few things Big Oil enjoys more than selling fossil fuel as if it were a wellness product.

Shell V-Power is not merely petrol, we are invited to understand. It is a premium experience. A scientific elixir. A motorised spa treatment. Something your engine apparently deserves after a long week of commuting, congestion, and quietly funding quarterly distributions.

A recent ad-hoc-news article describes Shell V-Power as Shell’s premium gasoline brand, marketed to help clean and protect modern engines, and aimed at explaining what US drivers should expect from it. The article says V-Power is Shell’s “flagship premium gasoline brand” and notes that it is positioned around detergents, friction modifiers, premium octane, and engine-cleanliness claims.

Shell’s own US marketing is even more enthusiastic. The company says Shell V-Power® NiTRO+ Premium Gasoline “removes up to 100% of performance robbing deposits,” promises “more power” and “more performance,” and says the product contains six times the cleaning agents required by federal standards.

Naturally, the word “more” does a lot of heavy lifting here.

More performance.

More protection.

More cleaning.

More premium.

More money at the pump.

Less obvious certainty that every ordinary driver will actually notice a miraculous transformation between home, work, school run, supermarket, and the pothole collection formerly known as the public road.

WHAT SHELL SAYS V-POWER DOES

Shell says the new formulation of V-Power NiTRO+ has “a new molecule” designed to remove up to 100% of carbon deposits from fuel injectors in gasoline direct injection engines. It says the fuel provides protection against deposits, corrosion, wear, and friction, and that V-Power contains the highest concentration of its proprietary additive package.

Shell also says V-Power NiTRO+ is Top Tier certified and has been tested in laboratory procedures, bench engines, and vehicles, with “more than half a million equivalent miles of testing.”

So let us be fair: Shell is not simply printing “magic petrol” on a pump and hoping nobody asks what an injector is.

There is a technical basis for detergent additives. Deposits can affect engine performance. Premium fuel can matter where a manufacturer requires or recommends higher octane. Modern direct-injection engines can be sensitive to deposit build-up.

But the real-world question is not whether fuel additives exist.

The real-world question is whether Shell’s premium potion is worth the premium price for the average driver — especially if their car only requires regular fuel.

And that is where the glossy ad copy begins to sound less like engineering and more like a scented candle for the combustion chamber.

THE ORDINARY DRIVER’S QUESTION: DO I NEED THIS STUFF?

For some drivers, the answer may be yes.

If your car requires premium fuel, use premium fuel. The owner’s manual is not decorative literature. It is there because the engine was designed around certain requirements.

If your car is turbocharged, high-compression, performance-tuned, or explicitly recommends premium gasoline, Shell V-Power may fit the use case Shell is targeting.

But if your car only requires regular fuel, the argument becomes murkier.

The ad-hoc-news article notes that premium fuel use depends heavily on vehicle manufacturer guidance, and that fuel economy changes are often small and vehicle-dependent.

AAA research found that premium gasoline was typically 23% more expensive than regular gasoline in the period studied, and examined whether using premium in cars requiring regular fuel represented a good return on investment.

A widely reported summary of that AAA study said US drivers wasted more than $2.1 billion in a year by using premium-grade gasoline in vehicles designed to run on regular, with no tangible benefit in the tested categories.

So the practical rule remains brutally simple:

If your vehicle requires premium, buy premium.

If your vehicle recommends premium, it may help under some conditions.

If your vehicle only requires regular, premium fuel may mainly improve the mood of the company selling it.

SHELL’S LITTLE PROBLEM: HISTORY HAS A LONG MEMORY AND A BURNT SMELL

This is where the Royal Dutch Shell Group archive piece from 2015 becomes especially useful.

John Donovan’s article, “Shell V-Power NiTRO+ ignites memories of past Shell wonder fuel debacles,” recalled Shell’s 1986 launch of Formula Shell — another heavily promoted fuel dressed up in scientific glamour. The article quoted Shell’s own paid historian, Keetie Sluyterman, describing how Formula Shell was launched in Europe with “heavy advertising” and “scientific connotations.”

Then came the small snag.

According to the cited historical account, the launch initially boosted sales, but later it emerged that in a small number of cars the new gasoline caused inlet valves to burn. The account says damage occurred in Denmark, Norway, Malaysia, and the UK; Shell withdrew Formula Shell from several markets, including the UK, before reformulating and relaunching the product.

That is quite a plot twist.

Act One: “From today not all petrol is the same.”

Act Two: Correct. Some of it may burn your valves.

To be precise, the historic Formula Shell episode should not be treated as proof that modern V-Power is unsafe. That would be an unfair leap. Modern fuels, regulations, engines, testing regimes, and additive chemistry are different.

But it absolutely does justify scepticism toward Shell’s recurring talent for dressing fuel products in a white laboratory coat and sending them out under a shower of marketing confetti.

The lesson is not “V-Power equals Formula Shell.”

The lesson is: when Shell says it has a wonder fuel, check the small print before joining the hymn service.

THE MARKETING FORMULA: SCIENCE, SPEED, SPARKLE, SPEND

The fuel business has always loved mystique.

Octane numbers become personality traits.

Additives become secret sauces.

Laboratory terms become pump-side seduction.

The driver is nudged to imagine that using regular fuel is practically an act of cruelty toward the engine.

Shell’s current V-Power US page leans hard into this theatre, with repeated “more” language: more power, more performance, more protection. It also states that actual effects and benefits may vary by vehicle type, driving conditions, and driving style.

There, hidden beneath the bonnet of the sales pitch, sits the disclaimer goblin.

“May vary” is doing the sensible work that “more” forgot to do.

This does not mean Shell’s claims are automatically false. It means consumers should understand what is being claimed, under what conditions, and whether those conditions resemble their own driving life.

A carefully tested engine-cleanliness benefit is one thing.

A driver expecting their family hatchback to emerge from the Shell forecourt with the soul of a Le Mans prototype is quite another.

PREMIUM FUEL: USEFUL PRODUCT OR STATUS SYMBOL WITH A NOZZLE?

Premium fuel is not inherently a scam.

Higher octane fuel resists knocking. Some engines require it. Some engines can adjust timing and performance when higher octane is available. Some drivers may value detergent packages and additive claims.

But premium fuel is also a brilliant retail product because it sells aspiration at the precise moment the consumer is already holding a payment card.

The pump effectively whispers:

“You could buy the ordinary fuel. Or you could be the sort of person who cares.”

That is premiumisation in its purest form.

Shell is not just selling petrol. It is selling the idea that you are a more responsible, performance-minded, engine-loving motorist because you picked the expensive handle.

And for Shell, that is an attractive business.

Fuel retail is fiercely competitive. Differentiated premium products help defend margins, build brand loyalty, and keep customers inside the Shell ecosystem — especially when linked to apps, rewards schemes, and brand claims about superior protection.

In short: V-Power is not merely fuel technology. It is also a margin strategy with a racing helmet.

THE ENVIRONMENTAL ABSURDITY: CLEANER ENGINE, DIRTIER PLANET?

Here is the uncomfortable part.

Shell V-Power is marketed around cleanliness — cleaner injectors, fewer deposits, better protection.

But it remains a fossil-fuel product sold by one of the world’s largest oil and gas companies.

So we are invited to applaud a fuel for cleaning the inside of an engine while the broader business model remains tied to extracting, refining, transporting, and selling hydrocarbons.

It is the classic Shell paradox:

Look how clean this combustion chamber is. Please ignore the climate chamber.

To be clear, cleaner engine operation can matter. Fuel quality can affect emissions, efficiency, and engine performance.

But premium petrol should not be mistaken for climate virtue. It is still petrol. It is still burned. It still produces tailpipe CO₂. It still belongs to the carbon economy Shell is working very hard to keep profitable for as long as possible.

The product may be cleaner in a mechanical sense.

That does not make it clean in a planetary sense.

THE OLD SHELL TRICK: TURNING CONTROVERSY INTO CONFIDENCE

Shell’s genius has always been its ability to speak in two registers at once.

To consumers, it says: trust the science, protect your engine, choose better fuel.

To investors, it says: trust the cash flow, protect the dividend, choose disciplined capital.

To critics, it says: we are part of the transition.

To regulators, it says: everything is tested, certified, and very carefully footnoted.

The result is a corporate voice so smooth it could probably reduce friction in an engine itself.

But the V-Power story shows the same pattern visible across Shell’s wider public image: a highly engineered message wrapped around a product that deserves scrutiny.

A premium fuel may be legitimate.

A marketing miracle should be treated with caution.

And a company with Shell’s history should not be offended when people remember previous episodes in which technical confidence and advertising swagger aged badly.

THE FORMULA SHELL GHOST AT THE PUMP

The 1980s Formula Shell controversy remains relevant not because history repeats exactly, but because corporate habits often rhyme.

Then: a fuel launched with scientific glamour.

Now: a fuel sold with technical superiority language.

Then: a brand message suggesting not all petrol is the same.

Now: a brand message suggesting your engine deserves “more.”

Then: Shell discovered that fuel chemistry, engines, and real-world use can create unpleasant surprises.

Now: consumers are expected to trust that the laboratory, the legal department, and the marketing department are all aligned in perfect harmony.

Perhaps they are.

But the ghost of Formula Shell still hovers near the pump, whispering:

“Have we checked this properly, or are we just applauding the brochure?”

BOTTOM LINE FOR DRIVERS

The sensible position is neither panic nor blind loyalty.

Shell V-Power NiTRO+ may offer real benefits for some vehicles, particularly those designed for premium fuel or sensitive to deposits. Shell’s claims about detergent concentration, Top Tier certification, and testing should be taken seriously as product information.

But drivers should also take Shell’s marketing language seriously as marketing.

For many everyday vehicles that only require regular gasoline, premium fuel may not deliver enough real-world benefit to justify the extra cost. AAA’s research has long warned against assuming premium fuel automatically benefits cars designed for regular.

The best advice remains boring, which is why no advertising agency likes it:

Read the owner’s manual.

Follow the manufacturer’s fuel requirement.

Do not confuse premium branding with universal necessity.

And remember that “up to” is one of the most elastic phrases in modern commerce.

CONCLUSION: SAME SHELL, DIFFERENT NOZZLE

Shell V-Power may be a technically sophisticated premium fuel.

It may help some engines.

It may be a sensible choice for some drivers.

But it is also another chapter in Shell’s long-running romance with the “wonder fuel” narrative — a place where chemistry meets commerce, disclaimers meet desire, and the humble petrol pump is transformed into a miniature cathedral of corporate persuasion.

The old Formula Shell episode is not a conviction against modern V-Power.

But it is a warning against corporate amnesia.

Shell has been here before: big claims, big branding, big confidence.

Drivers should remember what Shell marketing prefers to forget:

Not every miracle at the pump is a miracle for the motorist.

Sometimes it is just premium petrol with a premium script.

And sometimes the cleanest thing in the whole transaction is the way the extra money disappears from your wallet.

PART TWO: SPOOF SHELL PR/SPIN SECTION Shell Miracle Fuel Statement, Possibly Written by a Chemist, a Marketer, and a Dividend Forecast

Shell is proud to offer drivers a premium fuel experience carefully engineered to deliver more of the things motorists like, including more performance language, more protection terminology, more molecules, and more reasons to download an app.

Our Shell V-Power® NiTRO+ Premium Gasoline is designed for today’s modern engines and tomorrow’s exciting consumer expectations, particularly the expectation that a petrol pump should sound like a Formula One laboratory with a loyalty programme.

We recognise that some drivers may wonder whether they need premium fuel. We encourage them to consult their owner’s manual, while also admiring the emotional maturity of any engine that knows it deserves more.

Shell rejects the suggestion that “wonder fuel” is an overused phrase. We prefer “advanced proprietary performance-enhancing mobility molecule platform,” which regrettably did not fit on the pump handle.

As for historical references to Formula Shell, we believe the past is important, but only in carefully curated corporate heritage videos featuring clean overalls, sunsets, and no burnt valves.

Forward-looking statement: actual miracles may vary by vehicle type, driving conditions, engine age, legal jurisdiction, marketing interpretation, and the willingness of the customer to pay extra.

PART THREE: SPOOF BOT-REACTION / COMMENT SECTION

@PumpSidePhilosopher: “Shell says my engine deserves more. My bank account says my engine can learn humility.”

@ValveBurner1986: “Formula Shell called. It says maybe don’t let the brochure drive the car.”

@PremiumNozzleEnjoyer: “I bought V-Power and my hatchback still refuses to become a Ferrari. Considering litigation against my imagination.”

@DepositGoblin: “Up to 100% is my favourite corporate phrase. I am up to 100% likely to be impressed.”

@ClimateChamber: “Great news: the engine is cleaner. The atmosphere has declined to comment.”

@OctaneOracle: “Use premium if your car needs premium. Revolutionary stuff. Expect a 90-page Shell white paper shortly.”

@MarketingMolecule: “I am proprietary, advanced, and available wherever margins need assistance.”

SUGGESTED IMAGE CONCEPT

A satirical editorial illustration set at a glowing Shell petrol station at night.

In the foreground, a giant golden Shell V-Power pump is labelled “MIRACLE MOLECULE PREMIUM” and is sucking money from a driver’s wallet while spraying glittering fuel into a normal family car.

Behind the car, a ghostly 1980s-style petrol pump labelled “FORMULA SHELL 1986” rises from the fumes, surrounded by small burnt engine valves and warning signs.

On one side, a smiling Shell marketing executive holds a clipboard reading “MORE POWER! MORE PERFORMANCE! MORE DISCLAIMERS!”

On the other side, a mechanic holds up an owner’s manual saying “READ THIS FIRST.”

In the background, the Shell logo glows over a smoky horizon, while a small caption reads:

“Not all petrol is the same. Neither are the consequences.”

Style: sharp tabloid cartoon, high contrast, dramatic lighting, satirical, non-photorealistic, no real people depicted.

SHELL V-POWER: THE PETROL PUMP MIRACLE JUICE THAT WANTS YOUR ENGINE — AND YOUR WALLET — TO FEEL SPECIAL was first posted on May 20, 2026 at 5:22 pm.
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California’s surface water and sediment are often contaminated with PFAS pesticides

Environmental Working Group - Wed, 05/20/2026 - 09:21
California’s surface water and sediment are often contaminated with PFAS pesticides rcoleman May 20, 2026

Pesticides that are part of the family of toxic “forever chemicals” known as PFAS contaminate surface water and sediment in agricultural areas across California, an EWG analysis finds.

PFAS pesticides were found in up to 50% of California surface water samples, and in about 45% to 55% of sediment samples. These chemicals – fungicides, herbicides and insecticides – do not just end up on produce that feeds the nation. These findings suggest pesticides could also be exposing millions of Californians to PFAS through water and soil. 

What’s worse, exposure may persist for generations, since PFAS never fully break down in the environment. 

To reduce water and soil contamination from PFAS pesticides, California should phase out their use, sale and manufacture for agricultural uses.

Potential health concerns

PFAS pesticides are those whose active ingredients meet the internationally recognized definition of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. These active ingredients have the carbon-fluorine bond characteristic of PFAS chemicals, which makes them highly persistent in the environment and resistant to complete breakdown.

EWG recently revealed over 2.5 million pounds of PFAS pesticides are applied on California farmland annually, and also found frequent detections of these chemicals on produce grown in the state.

Exposure to PFAS pesticides could harm the immune system. Yet EWG’s published research highlighted an important oversight gap: Review of studies of immune system toxicity – a key outcome observed in several studies of PFAS exposure – is routinely waived as part of PFAS pesticide approvals.

Many PFAS pesticides also transform in the environment into a highly persistent, short-chain form called trifluoroacetic acid, or TFA. Early research has linked TFA exposure with reproductive and developmental risks. There are also concerns about TFA’s ability to persist in the environment for an extremely long time.

We don’t know how long it takes for PFAS pesticides to degrade into TFA. It varies according to pesticide types and environmental conditions. 

In the absence of comprehensive monitoring for TFA and PFAS pesticide breakdown products, current exposure estimates don’t fully account for the range of how these chemicals can harm our environment and health.

EWG’s new analysis is a significant step forward in trying to capture the many ways we are exposed to PFAS.

Studying surface water

Our analysis of sampling results found multiple PFAS pesticides were detected in California surface water. 

To quantify the extent of PFAS pesticide contamination of California surface waters near agricultural areas, EWG compared four subsets of data. The number of PFAS pesticide samples for each dataset is denoted by in the list below.

  1. 2025 Surface Water Database, or SURF (n = 4,158): Surface Water Monitoring Studies 304, 301 and 321 with results spanning 2020-2023, from the California DPR, obtained from the 2025 DPR SURF Release:

Counties sampled: Butte, Colusa, Imperial, Merced, Monterey, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Stanislaus, Sutter, Yolo.

Waterbody/watershed sampled: Alamo River, Butte Creek, Clarks Ditch-Colusa Basin Drain, Ingram Creek, Lower Logan Creek, New River, Salinas River, Santa Maria River, South Slough-Deadman Creek, Tembladero Slough, Town of Hilmar-San Joaquin River, Willow Creek.

  1. 2026 Study 310 (n = 298): Summary data from DPR Study 310, published in a January 7, 2026, report, with pesticide monitoring data on near-agricultural areas for Northern California in 2024:

Counties sampled: Butte, Colusa, Merced, Stanislaus, Sutter, Yolo 

Waterbody/watershed sampled: Butte Creek, Clarks Ditch-Colusa Basin Drain, Ingram Creek, Lower Logan Creek, South Slough-Deadman Creek, Town of Hilmar-San Joaquin River, Willow Creek

  1. 2026 Study 321 (n = 548): Summary data from DPR Study 321, published in a January 1, 2026, report, with pesticide monitoring data on near-agricultural areas for the Central Coast and Southern California in 2024:

Counties sampled: Imperial, Monterey, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara 

Waterbody/watershed sampled: Alamo River, New River, Oso Flaco Creek, Salinas River, Santa Maria River, Tembladero Slough

  1. USGS (n = 580): Data from Table S4 of Woodward et al. (2026), with 2024 pesticide sampling data collected from agricultural streams in California, conducted by the USGS:

Counties sampled: Butte, Merced, San Joaquin, Solano, Stanislaus, Sutter, Yolo

Waterbody/watershed sampled: Butte Creek, Colusa Basin Drainage Canal, Del Puerto Creek, French Camp Slough, Ingram Creek, Mustang Creek, Orestimba Creek, Reclamation Drain, Snake River, Sweeney Creek

Because the data underlying Study 310 and Study 321 for samples collected in 2024 were not available within the SURF database as of the publication of this article, EWG’s analysis utilized summary statistics from DPR within the preliminary reports published in early 2026.

Information on PFAS pesticide detection frequencies from these data sources is summarized in Table 1, below. Data for the 10 most frequently detected PFAS pesticides between 2020 and 2023 in California SURF data are shown.

Table 1. Multiple PFAS pesticides detected in California surface water. 

PFAS Pesticide Detection Frequency Detection frequency (%) in surface water

PFAS pesticide

Top 10 from SURF

SURF

(n=4,158)
2020-2023

Study 310

(n=298)
2024

Study 321

(n=548)
2024

USGS

(n=580)
2024

Bifenthrin45.830.431.615.0Oxyfluorfen41.0ND26.320.0Lambda-cyhalothrin26.536.8  Sulfoxaflor19.9ND2.1 Fludioxonil12.1ND20.4 Trifloxystrobin6.3ND12.2 Indoxacarb5.9ND13.65.0Trifluralin3.5ND30.0 Fipronil1.2NDND Benefin1.1   

Gray cells indicate no testing for corresponding PFAS pesticide. ND = not detected.

Detection frequencies differed by region and study design. For example, oxyfluorfen detections varied by 21% across the data. But all four studies in Table 1 found evidence of PFAS pesticide contamination of surface water near agricultural areas.

Similar detection frequencies for bifenthrin – about one in three samples – were observed in both study regions, showing widespread bifenthrin contamination of state surface waters.

Data for the PFAS pesticides oxyfluorfen and lambda-cyhalothrin also showed frequent detections in state agricultural waterways both in SURF data (range: 12.1% to 41%) and within the 2024 results in Study 321 (range: 20.4% to 36.8%). 

Some county-level patterns in PFAS pesticide detections were observed from SURF data. Between 2020 and 2023, pesticide monitoring of near-agricultural surface water showed higher overall detection frequencies in San Luis Obispo (mean detection frequency = 23%) and Monterey (22%) counties than the other eight counties covered. 

Bifenthrin was detected in all 15 samples from San Luis Obispo, and in 88% of samples from Stanislaus County. In Butte and Colusa counties, all 10 PFAS pesticides shown in Table 1 were detected in under 10% of samples. 

The number of PFAS pesticides detected in surface water by county varied, with 10 detected in Monterey County, compared to just one in each of Sutter and Merced counties.

Notably, data for Fresno and Kern counties, where PFAS pesticide applications are the highest in the state, were not reported in the agricultural surface water or sediment monitoring studies within SURF. This suggests a concerning gap in the state of California’s testing of PFAS in surface water. 

Assessing sediment

EWG’s analysis found that both PFAS pesticides that were tested for in California sediment were frequently detected.

SURF data were subsetted to the same three datasets on pesticide monitoring in agricultural areas, and summary data were extracted from the 2026 Study 310 and Study 321 reports. The USGS dataset did not report concentrations for sediment and was not included.

Altogether, sediment data were far sparser than surface water data, with a much smaller set of pesticides sampled. 

In the 2020-2023 subset of SURF data and in the 2026 Study 310 data, only seven pesticides were sampled in total, while eight were sampled in the 2026 Study 321 data. 

Across all three datasets, just two of the sampled chemicals – bifenthrin and lambda-cyhalothrin – were PFAS pesticides. 

Table 2. Bifenthrin and lambda-cyhalothrin were frequently detected in California sediment.* 

PFAS Pesticide Detection Frequency in Sediment Detection frequency in sediment (%)PFAS pesticide

SURF

(n=152)

2020-2023

Study 310 

(n=10)

2024

Study 321

(n=26)

2024

Bifenthrin56.620.025.0*Lambda-cyhalothrin47.420.030.0*

Number of PFAS pesticide samples denoted by n.

*Due to a testing error in the 2026 Study 321 results, no sediment data were available from the Imperial Valley, a major agricultural region in southeastern California. The report notes this lack of data "significantly impacted 2024 results" and resulted in a drop in the detection frequency for lambda-cyhalothrin in sediment, from 80% in 2023 to 30% in 2024.

Between 2020 and 2023, SURF data indicated both bifenthrin and lambda-cyhalothrin were more frequently detected than the other five non-PFAS pesticides.

The sediment analysis is far more limited due to smaller sample sizes, limited pesticide coverage and testing errors (see Table 2 footnote). 

Only two PFAS pesticides were tested for, despite several more being applied to crops, detected on produce and frequently found in nearby surface waters. 

These data gaps almost certainly lead to underestimated PFAS contamination in sediment. With more frequent and geographically diverse sampling, as well as consideration of a wider variety of chemicals, detections would likely rise. These limitations also hinder geographic comparisons of sediment.

Nevertheless, the findings in Table 2 indicate that, at minimum, bifenthrin and lambda-cyhalothrin have both contaminated sediment in areas near agricultural land in California. 

Need for more comprehensive monitoring

Our analysis looked at surface water and sediment test results from the California Department of Pesticide Regulation, or DPR, and the U.S. Geological Survey.

Bifenthrin, a PFAS pesticide that may be linked to cancer, was detected in almost half of all surface water samples and in over half of the sediment samples between 2020 and 2023.

Overall sampling data are limited in size and scope, so PFAS contamination from pesticide use is likely more widespread than the data currently suggest. This report emphasizes the need for much more extensive environmental monitoring. 

Current test panels don’t sample for all PFAS pesticides or the chemical breakdown products that can form in the environment, so the full picture of contamination remains unclear. But EWG’s findings, based on current data only, highlight ample reason for concern.

Addressing PFAS pesticides

To eliminate the concerns over PFAS pesticides and their presence on produce, sediment and surface water, California should move to phase out the use of these chemicals on crops. Ending the use of PFAS pesticides would safeguard our food and water systems and prevent PFAS pesticide buildup in the environment.

Furthermore, current monitoring of both surface water and sediment looks at individual pesticides only, not the highly concerning PFAS byproducts that can form from their partial breakdown.

Areas of Focus Food & Water Water Farming & Agriculture Toxic Chemicals Pesticides PFAS Chemicals Regional Issues California Authors Varun Subramaniam, M.S. David Andrews, Ph.D. May 27, 2026
Categories: G1. Progressive Green

SHELL STAFF REVOLT: WHEN EVEN THE PEOPLE INSIDE THE OIL MACHINE START COUGHING AT THE FUMES

Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com - Wed, 05/20/2026 - 08:54
Current and former Shell employees have publicly challenged the company’s climate strategy — raising the awkward question Shell would rather bury beneath a tanker-load of LNG: what happens if the fossil-fuel future it is betting on does not arrive? DISCLAIMER

This article is opinion and satirical commentary based on cited public sources. It is not financial advice, investment advice, or a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any security. Readers should conduct their own research and seek professional advice where appropriate. Site wide disclaimer also applies.

PART ONE: FACT-BASED TABLOID DEEP DIVE THE CALL IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE REFINERY

There are bad days in corporate public relations, and then there is the very special sort of day when your own current and former employees publicly challenge your climate strategy at your AGM.

That, according to the NL Times, is what Shell faced on Tuesday, 19 May 2026, when a group of current and former Shell employees challenged the company’s climate strategy at its shareholder meeting in London.

Their warning was blunt enough to cut through the usual corporate fog: Shell’s continued focus on oil and liquefied natural gas may expose both the business and investors to serious long-term risks.

In other words: the call may now be coming from inside the refinery.

The challenge was linked to a shareholder resolution coordinated by Follow This, which asked Shell to disclose how it would create shareholder value if oil and gas demand declines.

Follow This said the 2026 resolutions at Shell and BP were co-filed by 23 institutional investors with €1.5 trillion in assets under management and that — for the first time — current and former Shell employees co-filed the Shell resolution.

That is not exactly a fringe protest by someone wearing a polar bear costume outside the sandwich shop.

It is a governance question wrapped in a climate question wrapped in a large flashing neon sign reading:

What happens if the fossil-fuel gravy train meets a demand cliff?

THE AGM: DEMOCRACY, BUT WITH A VERY LARGE OIL SLICK

Shell’s 2026 AGM took place in London on 19 May 2026.

The company’s own voting results show that Resolutions 1 to 22 passed, while Resolution 23 — the shareholder climate-risk resolution — failed.

Resolution 23 received:

470,824,659 votes in favour — 13.01%

against

3,148,423,871 votes against — 86.99%

Shell immediately treated this as shareholder endorsement.

Chief Executive Wael Sawan said:

“Shell’s shareholders continue to strongly back our strategy as we transform Shell into a better performing and more resilient business. We are making progress towards our financial and climate targets, providing the oil and gas the world needs today while helping to build the energy system of the future. We will apply discipline and focus as we continue to deliver more value with less emissions.”

Translated from Corporate Cathedral English: shareholders voted down the awkward question, so management declared the choir in perfect harmony.

But 13.01% support for a climate-risk resolution at a fossil-fuel giant is not nothing.

It is hundreds of millions of votes saying, in effect:

“Could we at least see the spreadsheet for the scenario where the world does not burn hydrocarbons forever?”

SHELL’S NEW FAVOURITE CLIMATE SOLUTION APPEARS TO BE… MORE LNG

Shell’s answer to climate pressure is increasingly LNG — liquefied natural gas — the fossil fuel that arrives wearing a slightly cleaner tie than coal and expects applause for not being the dirtiest guest in the room.

In its LNG response document, Shell says it has a “positive outlook for LNG over the long term” and describes LNG as central to its strategy.

The company says it wants to be “the leading integrated gas and LNG business in the world” and argues that LNG can play a role in energy security and the transition.

Shell also states:

“For all these reasons, Shell believes that supplying LNG will be the biggest contribution we will make to the energy transition over the next decade.”

There it is: the energy transition, Shell-style.

Not so much “less fossil fuel” as:

Different fossil fuel, but with PowerPoint gradients.

To be fair, Shell’s argument is not invented out of thin air. Gas can displace coal in some power systems. LNG can provide flexible supply. Energy security is a real issue.

But the controversy is about scale, lock-in, methane leakage, capital allocation, and whether Shell is positioning itself for a genuine transition or merely putting a lower-carbon label on a very large fossil-fuel expansion strategy.

THE OFFICIAL STRATEGY: NET ZERO IN THE WINDOW, HYDROCARBONS IN THE WAREHOUSE

Shell says its Energy Transition Strategy supports its target to become a net-zero emissions energy business by 2050.

It says meeting growing energy demand while tackling climate change is “an urgent challenge” and “a transformative opportunity.”

The difficulty, as ever, is the gap between slogan and steel.

Shell’s critics argue that the company’s capital discipline has increasingly meant discipline for low-carbon ventures and enthusiasm for oil and gas cash generation.

In 2024, Shell paused construction of its large Rotterdam biofuels plant, a project previously presented as part of its lower-carbon push.

By 2025, Shell was openly sharpening its focus on shareholder distributions, cost cutting, and higher-return businesses. Reporting at the time said Shell planned to cut spending, reduce low-carbon investment as a share of capital expenditure, raise shareholder payouts, and that CEO Wael Sawan’s pay package had increased after Shell’s renewed emphasis on oil and gas.

So the public message is “energy transition.”

The investor message appears rather more like:

Relax, the dividend cannon is still loaded.

FOLLOW THE MONEY: THE GIANT SHAREHOLDERS BEHIND THE CURTAIN

Shell is not some corner-shop oil concern run from a filing cabinet and a petrol-stained ledger.

Its shareholder base includes some of the largest institutional investors on Earth.

Recent ownership data compiled by TIKR listed Vanguard Group, BlackRock Institutional Trust, and Norges Bank Investment Management among Shell’s largest shareholders, with Vanguard shown at 186.8 million shares, BlackRock Institutional Trust at 179.5 million shares, and Norges Bank at 150.2 million shares.

That matters.

Because when Shell says shareholders back its strategy, the room is not just populated by individual investors clutching tea and biscuits.

It includes gigantic asset managers whose voting behaviour can help determine whether climate-risk resolutions become governance pressure or politely filed wallpaper.

Meanwhile, Net Zero Investor reported that a group of institutional investors — including West Yorkshire Pension Fund, Lothian Pension Fund, Ethos, PUBLICA, and Mercy Investment Services — urged other investors to support Resolution 23 at Shell’s 2026 AGM.

So there are really two investor stories here.

One is the big-vote story: Shell management won comfortably.

The other is the risk-story: a serious minority of investors, plus current and former employees, are increasingly unwilling to swallow the idea that fossil-fuel expansion and climate resilience are automatically the same thing.

THE COURT BACKDROP: SHELL WINS ONE ROUND, BUT THE COURTROOM SMOKE HAS NOT CLEARED

Shell’s climate strategy is not just being challenged at AGMs.

It has also been fought in court.

The Dutch climate case brought by Milieudefensie concerned whether Shell had a legal obligation to reduce the worldwide aggregate carbon emissions it reports across Scopes 1, 2 and 3 by at least net 45% by 2030, compared with 2019.

Shell notes that the District Court of The Hague imposed a “significant duty of effort” in 2021, but that the Court of Appeal dismissed Milieudefensie’s claim on 12 November 2024.

That appeal victory was significant for Shell.

But it did not magically turn climate risk into fairy dust.

In April 2026, Milieudefensie announced new climate litigation against Shell, keeping the legal pressure alive.

Shell may have won a courtroom battle.

It has not won the climate debate.

And it certainly has not won the physics.

THE AWKWARD TRUTH: EMPLOYEES RARELY GO PUBLIC UNLESS THE BOILER IS HISSING

The most striking feature of the 2026 challenge is not simply that Follow This filed another resolution.

That has happened before.

The striking feature is the involvement of current and former Shell employees.

Employees know the internal culture.

They know the slide decks, the buzzwords, the capital allocation debates, the executive mood music.

When insiders and alumni publicly attach themselves to a resolution questioning the resilience of Shell’s business model under declining oil and gas demand, that is not a minor HR issue.

It is a flare fired from inside the corporate perimeter.

And Shell’s answer — “the shareholders have spoken” — may be technically true but strategically complacent.

Shareholder majorities can be wrong.

Markets can misprice transition risk.

Boards can mistake today’s cash flow for tomorrow’s permission slip.

Ask any former empire.

The palace always looks strongest just before someone notices the foundations are damp.

THE SHELL PARADOX: CLIMATE LANGUAGE, FOSSIL-FUEL MUSCLE

Shell’s modern communications machine speaks fluent transition.

It talks of resilience, lower emissions, energy security, customer demand, and disciplined capital.

But the operational centre of gravity remains oil and gas, especially LNG.

That is the paradox at the heart of Shell in 2026: a company trying to look like a climate-aware energy transition leader while reassuring investors that the hydrocarbon banquet is not over.

The employees and former employees challenging Shell are not asking a mystical question.

They are asking a business question:

What if oil and gas demand falls faster than Shell wants?

What if regulators tighten?

What if clean technologies keep undercutting fossil demand?

What if LNG infrastructure built for decades becomes yesterday’s answer to tomorrow’s grid?

Shell’s board says its strategy is resilient.

Critics want the receipts.

And frankly, if a company is confident that its strategy survives declining fossil-fuel demand, disclosure should not be treated like a hostage negotiation.

CONCLUSION: THE SOUND OF POLITE REBELLION

The 2026 AGM did not overthrow Shell’s strategy.

Resolution 23 was defeated.

The board prevailed.

The machine kept humming.

But the optics are brutal.

Current and former Shell employees publicly challenging the climate strategy of one of the world’s most powerful oil and gas companies is not business as usual.

It is a warning label written by people who have seen the machinery from the inside.

Shell can point to the vote.

It can point to energy security.

It can point to LNG.

It can point to shareholder returns.

It can point to every glossy phrase in the corporate dictionary.

But the central question remains stubbornly alive:

Is Shell preparing for the energy transition, or merely trying to monetise the delay?

Because when even insiders start waving red flags, perhaps the problem is not the flags.

Perhaps it is the smoke.

PART TWO: SPOOF SHELL PR/SPIN SECTION Shell Internal Mood Statement, Possibly Drafted by a Committee of Polished Gas Pipelines

Shell welcomes robust dialogue from shareholders, employees, former employees, future employees, hypothetical employees, and any sentient beings willing to recognise the vital importance of hydrocarbons in delivering a lower-carbon future by continuing to sell hydrocarbons.

We are proud that our strategy remains focused on delivering more value with less emissions, more LNG with less awkwardness, and more confidence with less disclosure than some campaigners appear to desire.

At Shell, we believe the energy transition is best achieved through disciplined investment in profitable molecules, especially molecules capable of being liquefied, shipped, regasified, monetised, and described as “part of the solution” in investor presentations.

While a minority of shareholders supported Resolution 23, an overwhelming majority voted against it, demonstrating strong support for our existing approach of telling investors that everything is resilient because we have used the word “resilient” repeatedly.

We thank our current and former employees for their passion.

We also remind everyone that Shell has a proud tradition of listening carefully, engaging constructively, and then continuing with the strategy approved by the people holding the biggest voting cards.

Forward-looking statement: any resemblance between this satire and actual corporate language is purely coincidental, although admittedly not very surprising.

PART THREE: SPOOF BOT-REACTION / COMMENT SECTION

@DividendGoblin3000: “Climate risk? Sorry, I can’t hear you over the buybacks.”

@LNG_is_Love: “Shell says LNG is its biggest contribution to the energy transition. My biggest contribution to dieting is buying a slightly smaller cake.”

@FormerInsider47: “When the staff start challenging the climate strategy, maybe stop calling it stakeholder engagement and start calling it a smoke alarm.”

@BoardroomBarometer: “Resolution defeated. Physics abstained.”

@GreenwashDetector: “More value with less emissions sounds great until you notice the ‘more value’ is doing most of the work.”

@InstitutionalInvestorBot: “We support climate action, provided it does not interfere with quarterly distributions, executive confidence, or lunch.”

@PlanetaryAccountsDept: “Your transition invoice is overdue.”

IMAGE CONCEPT

A dramatic satirical editorial illustration of a Shell corporate AGM in London.

A giant golden LNG tanker sits in the centre of a luxury boardroom table, leaking black oil onto climate-risk reports.

On one side, polished executives applaud beneath a glowing Shell logo.

On the other side, current and former employees hold warning signs reading:

“Transition Risk”

“Show The Scenario”

“Smoke Alarm”

Outside the window, planet Earth is half-melting, half-covered in gas pipelines.

Style: sharp tabloid editorial illustration, cinematic lighting, high contrast, provocative, non-photorealistic, no real people depicted.

SHELL STAFF REVOLT: WHEN EVEN THE PEOPLE INSIDE THE OIL MACHINE START COUGHING AT THE FUMES was first posted on May 20, 2026 at 4:54 pm.
©2018 "Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at john@shellnews.net

PFAS data vanishes from Maryland Department of the Environment website after unusual results appear

Military Poisons - Wed, 05/20/2026 - 08:05

By Pat Elder
May 20, 2026

The Maryland Department of the Environment briefly posted petrochemical and PFAS surface water samples showing an extraordinary pattern: 12 of 13 PFAS compounds in Piscataway Creek declined simultaneously within a single week.

By May 12, 2026, the document was publicly accessible on the agency’s website at:

Deleted MDE PFAS Monitoring PDF

Shortly afterward, the PDF vanished.

Fortunately, screenshots were captured before it disappeared.

This working page initially provided a link to the PDF under the section, Water Quality Monitoring, but that link has been deleted.  https://mde.maryland.gov/programs/land/OilControl/Pages/andrews.aspx

The deleted data raises serious questions about the validity of the PFAS results. The dataset showed an unusually uniform downward shift across nearly the entire suite of reported PFAS analytes. To the untrained eye, the figures might suggest that contamination levels in Piscataway Creek were rapidly improving. In reality, such synchronized movement across almost every compound over a single week would be extraordinarily unusual under real-world environmental conditions. Overall, the analytes declined by roughly 11 percent on average during the sampling interval, as shown in the chart below.

‍ Using a simple statistical model known as a binomial sign test, and assuming each analyte in the now-deleted database had an equal chance of either increasing or decreasing between sampling events, the probability of observing declines in 12 out of 13 analytes is approximately 0.17 percent, or about 1 chance in 585.

‍Sure, this type of calculation treats each analyte as an independent variable, which is not entirely realistic because many PFAS compounds are environmentally correlated and often rise or fall  due to fluctuating contamination sources, groundwater movement, and streamflow changes. Even so, the near-uniform downward movement across the dataset remains statistically striking.‍ ‍

Moreover, the Piscataway Creek watershed experienced extended drought conditions with no recorded rainfall from April 1, 2026 through April 20, 2026. Under prolonged dry-weather conditions, streamflow increasingly reflects groundwater baseflow rather than surface runoff. In watersheds contaminated with PFAS, this can actually intensify contamination levels because heavily polluted groundwater faces less dilution from rainfall and surface water inputs. Severe PFAS contamination in groundwater beneath Joint Base Andrews has already been documented by the Department of Defense (DoD).‍ ‍

In 2021, The DoD reported severely contaminated groundwater at JB Andrews with concentrations of 435,000 parts per trillion (ppt) of PFOA and 33,000 ppt of PFOS. The DoD only released results on these two compounds and did not publicly release broader analyte data.  An examination of MDE’s 4/13/2026 surface-water data shows that PFOA and PFOS together accounted for just 38.4% of the total PFAS burden detected in Piscataway Creek. This percentage shrinks further as additional analytes are examined. PFOS and PFOA are dangerous, but so are many of the newer compounds that are largely ignored. PFOS and PFOA remain among the most studied and toxic PFAS compounds, but many of the newer fluorotelomer compounds, sulfonamides, and short-chain replacement chemicals are also persistent, mobile, and potentially hazardous, despite receiving far less regulatory and public attention.‍ ‍

Against that backdrop, the near-uniform decline across nearly every compound over a one-week period is extremely unusual, especially considering the drought conditions that would normally be expected to increase the influence of contaminated groundwater on creek chemistry.‍ ‍

The pattern becomes even more suspect when viewed against the broader concentration trend shown in the data. Total PFAS concentrations increased from a low of 2,782 ppt in the 2021 Military Poisons dataset to 3,792.5 ppt in the 2026 MDE data, suggesting that overall contamination in the creek has increased substantially over time rather than sharply declining within a matter of days.‍ ‍

Additional weeks of testing shown on the MDE table for April 20 and April 28 were labeled “pending.” The entries appeared under the heading “JBA,” suggesting that Joint Base Andrews was also expected to provide additional sampling results for the 13 compounds. The table structure shown above indicates that the sampling program was ongoing, and that further analytical data either existed or was anticipated at the time the document was publicly accessible.‍ ‍

The pending status is notable because environmental laboratories commonly complete PFAS analysis within a week or two. By contrast, the Air Force and broader Department of Defense PFAS reporting process has often moved far more slowly, with months and sometimes years passing between sample collection, laboratory analysis, and public release of results. That delay has become a recurring source of frustration for communities near contaminated military sites, particularly where elevated PFAS concentrations in groundwater, surface water, or fish tissue have already been documented from independent sources. ‍ ‍

The Air Force addresses PFAS contamination through the CERCLA process — the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act — the federal hazardous waste cleanup framework commonly known as “Superfund.” CERCLA was developed primarily to investigate and remediate traditional contaminants such as petroleum hydrocarbons, solvents, heavy metals, and industrial chemicals. Critics argue that the framework is poorly suited to PFAS, whose extreme persistence, mobility, and resistance to destruction distinguish them from many conventional pollutants.‍ ‍

As a result, PFAS investigations and “cleanup” efforts at military installations often move at a painstaking pace, with years frequently passing between preliminary assessments, site inspections, remedial investigations, and feasibility studies. Critics have compared the government’s reliance on the traditional CERCLA structure for PFAS remediation to “forcing a square peg through a circular hole,” arguing that the process was designed for contaminants that behave very differently in the environment than highly mobile and virtually indestructible fluorinated compounds.‍ ‍

The deleted document suggests that additional PFAS and petroleum-related data either existed or was expected imminently when the table was released.  Then the data disappeared.‍ ‍

Public confidence in environmental investigations depends on continuity and transparency of data access. When datasets appear briefly during a high-profile contamination event and later vanish from public view before follow-up results are posted, it fuels skepticism among nearby residents and environmental groups already concerned about pollution from the base.

Search engines stall ‍ ‍

By May 18, 2026, a Google search could no longer retrieve the Maryland Department of the Environment page associated with the Joint Base Andrews fuel release, even though the URL itself remained active:
MDE Joint Base Andrews Monitoring Page‍ ‍

The page was last publicly accessible on May 12, 2026, when screenshots were captured showing the now-deleted PFAS data and the link to the PDF document. The image here shows the Google search query and results page from May 18, 2026.‍ ‍

Let’s examine publicly available data of PFAS in Piscataway Creek, dating back to 2018. Results are in parts per trillion.  

Military Poisons reported on 28 compounds; MDE, 13; the Air Force, 3. 

Sources:

2018 JBA - Final Site Inspections Report of Fire Fighting Foam Usage at Joint Base Andrews Prince George’s County, Maryland May 2018 AFFF Area 7 Table 30 Former Here Berry Farm #ANDRW07-004-SW-0001 See the PDF here.

2021 Military Poisons - Maryland issues first fish advisory for PFAS, October 19, 2021 https://www.militarypoisons.org/latest-news/maryland-issues-first-fish-advisory-for-pfas

2021 MDE - Table 5: PFASs measured in surface water (ng/l) MDE PFAS in Surface Waters and Fish Tissue in Piscataway Creek October, 2021https://mde.maryland.gov/PublicHealth/Documents/Pisctaway_PFAS_Study_Final.pdf

4/13/26, 4/20/26 MDE  -  The webpage and linked PFAS dataset that were publicly accessible until May 12 are no longer available online, aside from this article.

They are playing a shell game

The more robust dataset from Military Poisons in 2021 covered 28 PFAS compounds. It reflects a chronological layering of contamination from different generations of AFFF use at the base, combined with decades of environmental transformation occurring in soils, sediments, groundwater, and surface water. It is fascinating, but it is not stuff you learn when the U.S. government is only willing to divulge surface water results for 3 PFAS compounds and the state limits its results to 13 for the missing data. ‍ ‍

EPA Method 1633 is widely regarded as the modern gold-standard analytical method for PFAS testing in environmental media, including surface water, groundwater, sediment, soil, biosolids, and tissue. The method produces results for 40 PFAS analytes.

‍EPA 1633 provides results for ‍40 compounds
shown here.

Although the MDE uses EPA Method 1633, it reported just 13 compounds in its now missing 2026 data. The MDE’s reporting contains no disclaimer indicating that only 13 compounds were tested.

Letter from congressional Democrats
misses the mark

U.S. Senators Chris Van Hollen and Angela D. Alsobrooks joined all seven of the state’s Democratic representatives in Congress in writing a letter to the Air Force on May 6, 2026 criticizing the Air Force over transparency. It comes off as a kind of boiler plate reaction to the contamination du jour. Congress no longer calls the shots, although they like to pretend otherwise. Congressional letter writing like this is a recurring institutional feature of faux U.S. environmental oversight over the DOD since the 1980s.

This letter strays from the standard fuel leak boilerplate, however, by mentioning the PFAS contamination.

Maryland’s officials wrote, “Legacy pollution from Joint Base Andrews has already resulted in PFAS contamination in Piscataway Creek and the surrounding area, and this fuel spill adds to existing environmental stressors affecting the watershed.”

This is a true statement, although more context is needed. The original PFAS releases at Joint Base Andrews may be “legacy” in origin, but the contamination itself is not a past-tense problem. PFAS compounds continue to migrate through groundwater and surface water into Piscataway Creek, where they persist in sediments and bioaccumulate in fish and other aquatic life. Unlike many conventional contaminants that gradually degrade over time, PFAS remains chemically stable and continues moving through groundwater, sediments, wastewater systems, surface water, and the food chain long after the original releases occurred. ‍ ‍

Referring to PFAS primarily as “legacy pollution” therefore, risks creating the impression that the contamination is historical rather than ongoing. Meanwhile, the Air Force continues to address PFAS contamination through the ill-suited and slow-moving CERCLA process. For more than a decade after PFAS investigations began at Joint Base Andrews, the installation remains in the study and assessment phase, while no credible large-scale strategy has been presented for removing PFAS from the environment once it has dispersed through an interconnected watershed and food web. Modern science doesn’t have an answer. This truth fails to resonate.‍ ‍

Boilerplate congressional spill responses are politically convenient because petroleum contamination is a familiar environmental crisis with recognizable remediation pathways. Fuel spills are dramatic, visible, and easier for the public to conceptualize. Oil sheens can be photographed. Vapors smell. Excavation and groundwater recovery systems can substantially reduce concentrations.‍ ‍

PFAS presents a profoundly different challenge because the carbon-fluorine bond is among the strongest in organic chemistry. These compounds do not meaningfully biodegrade under ordinary environmental conditions. Instead of breaking down, they migrate. In the case of Joint Base Andrews, the carcinogens poison the Potomac and Patuxent watersheds. ‍ ‍

Meanwhile, the public remains largely unaware of the magnitude of the problem. The contamination continues moving through the environment while agencies release sporadic, partial datasets, delayed reports, and carefully managed public statements that obscure the larger reality: military and industrial operations have released highly mobile, virtually indestructible toxic compounds — including substances linked to cancer, immune suppression, developmental harm, and other serious health effects — into major ecosystems without possessing a viable strategy for removing them once they spread.

Conclusion‍ ‍

PFAS contamination at Joint Base Andrews is not a simple a story about a military base or a missing PDF. It reflects an alarming and dangerous gap between what government institutions know about forever chemicals and what they are willing to communicate publicly. Federal, state, and military officials continue to present PFAS contamination as a problem that can eventually be managed through investigation, monitoring, and incremental remediation, while failing to fully communicate the far more troubling scientific reality. ‍

The military has effectively positioned itself above the law. The entire structure is inherently conflicted: the U.S. Air Force is both the polluter responsible for the contamination and the federal entity entrusted with determining the extent of the pollution, controlling the release of information to the public, and directing a cleanup process for chemicals that may not be realistically removable once they have dispersed through groundwater, sediments, surface waters, and the food chain. Meanwhile the public is subjected to a vicious propaganda campaign.

Joint Base Andrews says it is “dedicated to environmental stewardship by proactively cleaning up past contamination to restore natural resources while integrating sustainable design and pollution prevention into all mission operations. To ensure public accountability, the base maintains a sustained commitment to resolving complex cleanup actions through transparent, close collaboration with the regulatory community.” They get the final word.

Categories: G1. Progressive Green

Baccarat Evolution Jadi Game Favorit Pecinta Casino Live

Socialist Resurgence - Wed, 05/20/2026 - 03:48
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Categories: D2. Socialism

ENCORE: May 19th! The Legacies of Ho Chi Minh and Malcolm X (both born today)

Green and Red Podcast - Tue, 05/19/2026 - 16:41
In this very special episode from 2020, we celebrate the shared birthday of iconic revolutionaries Ho Chi Minh and Malcolm X, both born on May 19th (1890 and 1925, respectively).…
Categories: B4. Radical Ecology

Response: New BC Hydro plan maintains key programs, but the province and utility are leaving larger household savings on the table

Clean Energy Canada - Tue, 05/19/2026 - 14:54

VICTORIA — Evan Pivnick, associate director of public affairs at Clean Energy Canada, released a statement in response to BC Hydro’s release of its new energy efficiency strategy, Power Smart 2.0:

“BC Hydro has a strong history of using energy conservation to reduce electricity use in B.C. as well as prepare for the growing demands for electrification. However, while this new plan makes meaningful investments and continues in this tradition, it falls short of fully harnessing the opportunities that household technologies have to save families—and BC Hydro—money.

“A recent study from Dunsky Energy + Climate Advisors found that distributed energy resources (electric technologies that can generate or store energy or control demand) could meet more than 10% of B.C.’s total peak electricity demand by 2040, saving ratepayers money by avoiding more expensive infrastructure build-outs while improving grid reliability. 

“As such, it’s good to see support for consumers to adopt clean solutions, from energy-efficient appliances to battery storage, that help realize this potential. But this is only a first step. B.C needs to follow the lead of other jurisdictions across North America that are going much further in advancing changes to their electricity systems and standing up new programs that can help households save on their energy bills.

“Beyond energy-efficient appliances, new technologies have unlocked much greater opportunities to save, like managed EV charging, smart panels, controllable water heaters, and household batteries that work in harmony with the grid. The new plan lays out a vision for using these technologies, but more should be done to encourage British Columbians to make the switch. The Dunsky study found that greater financial incentives, like rebates, and other ambitious installation programs, were key to realizing the full potential of distributed energy resources for reducing both household bills and costs to the utility. 

“What’s more, heat pumps will be vital to reducing power demand, offering the ability to displace power-hungry baseboard heating and air conditioning. With another hot summer around the corner, the provincial government should introduce regulations that ensure new permanent air conditioning systems are heat pumps. Our analysis shows that a province-wide switch to heat pumps could save a cumulative $675 million in annual energy bills: that translates to average savings of approximately $170 a year for those currently using natural gas with A/C.

“Already, B.C. has some of the lowest electricity rates in North America, making the switch to EVs and household electrification especially enticing for British Columbians. And while today represents a positive step, at a moment when the cost of living is top of mind for most families, there is much more we could be doing to lower electricity bills across the province—while simultaneously building a smarter, more cost-efficient electricity system.” 

The post Response: New BC Hydro plan maintains key programs, but the province and utility are leaving larger household savings on the table appeared first on Clean Energy Canada.

G7 Finance Ministers Let Big Oil Off the Hook Again

Common Dreams - Tue, 05/19/2026 - 08:43

On Monday and Tuesday, Paris hosted the G7 Finance Ministers’ meeting, bringing together finance ministers and central bank governors from some of the world’s most powerful economies, alongside counterparts from Brazil, India, Kenya, South Korea, Ukraine, Syria, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. But behind the diplomatic pageantry,and despite the G7’s call for innovative financial instruments to urgently address overlapping crises,French host Roland Lescure squandered a major opportunity.

While fossil fuel companies raked in billions in profits in the first quarter of 2026 amid the South-West Asia conflict, campaigners at 350.org condemn the French G7 presidency’s glaring inaction on windfall and excess profits taxes targeting the oil and gas industry.

Fanny Petitbon, 350 France Country Manager, said:


“France has built its G7 presidency on the bold promise to use this forum as a lever to reinforce economic security in times of crisis and to respond to the legitimate concerns of citizens. But fine words ring hollow. When it comes to taxing the obscene profits recently made by oil and gas corporations, Paris chose complete silence. Not a single word appeared in the final communiqué.

Once again, the interests of a powerful minority are being protected. Companies like TotalEnergies, which boast of their so-called foresight while doing little more than speculating on war and human suffering, have cashed in billions,while families around the world pay the price at the pump and on their energy bills.

The G7’s initiative to expand insurance coverage for people and countries experiencing extreme weather events is welcome. But without turning off the fossil fuel tap and forcing the biggest polluters to foot the bill, climate finance risks becoming little more than taxpayers cleaning up a mess that oil giants are still being paid to create.

President Macron has positioned himself as a global leader on climate and economic justice. Yet this silence tells a very different story. Is this really the legacy he wants to leave in his final G7 presidency? The Leaders' Summit, to be held in Évian from June 15 to 17, is the last chance to course-correct and finally choose people over profit.”

Categories: F. Left News

Notes on Isla Grande: Figurations of Environmental Violence and Beauty in the Colombian Caribbean

Undisciplined Environments - Tue, 05/19/2026 - 06:00

By Gracia Ramirez and David Vergara-Moreno

This photo essay looks at Isla Grande, the largest coralline island of Nuestra Señora del Rosario Archipelago, which is part of the Parque Nacional Natural Corales del Rosario y de San Bernardo, in the Colombian Caribbean. The essay considers the environmental beauty and the violence that underpin Black lives on the island, and the ways in which they have resisted as a community to go forward into the future.

DOCKS

La Bodeguita dock in Cartagena de Indias is the tourists’ gateway to the promised paradise of white-sand beaches and turquoise waters of the Rosario Islands. The docks and other hard boundaries of the port witness an encounter with the polluted waters around Cartagena. This port is responsible for 70% of the country’s maritime trade and has been categorized as the third most efficient port in the world.

Although rarely mentioned by the early chroniclers, it is reasonable to infer that —prior to and during the early centuries of colonization— Cartagena’s Bay was a lush mosaic of abundant coral reefs, dense mangrove forests, and towering tropical dry forest trees.

Today, however, the bay reveals another face: murky waters, laden with sediments, polluted by centuries of maritime traffic, urban and industrial waste, and dredging works that have radically transformed its ecological cycles.

While the departure of tourism to the islands is mainly managed from La Bodeguita dock, the journey out of the bay and into the sea allows visual contact with other docks along the coast.

This is a layered cartography of memories, economies, and spatial regimes: tourist piers, logistical cargo yards, shipyards, naval bases, and private marinas. The bay is not merely a coastal landscape, it is a friction zone between multiple socio-economic and political logics: tourism, military operations, goods trade, and the communities whose ways of life are subordinated to those regimes. This is a liquid frontier: a place of circulation, exclusion, and resistance.

LOGISTICS

The archipelago of the Rosario Islands is connected not just to the Atlantic but also to another body of water, the Canal del Dique. The Spanish colonizers began its construction in the 16th century using enslaved Indigenous and African labor, with the goal of linking the Magdalena River —the nation’s main fluvial artery— with the Cartagena Bay.

Map of the Northern part of Bolívar Department, Republic of Colombia 1886-1903 (Edward Stanford, 1899, cropped). It is possible to see Cartagena de Indias, Barú island below, the Canal del Dique and the Calamar-Cartagena Railway (red line). Source: Mapoteca Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia.

Since then, the Canal has played a strategic role in both domestic and foreign transport and trade, evolving from wooden barges in the 17th century, to the advent of steam-powered boats in the 19th century.

For over three centuries, the Magdalena River and its canal were the only connection between Colombia’s Caribbean and its Andean provinces, linking a nation divided by three mountain ranges and a wide variety of thermal floors and ecosystems. Socially, the Canal became the route to freedom, as many runaway enslaved people (cimarrones) followed its waterways and founded Maroons communities (palenques) in the surrounding wetlands and hills during the 17th and 18th centuries.

Until the late 19th century, the Dique was merely a narrow, shallow ditch less than 15 meters wide, which was impossible to navigate during droughts. But throughout the 20th century, the canal was radically transformed. U.S. companies carried out major dredging and straightening projects that widened it to 100 meters, reducing its original 270 meanders to only 55, dramatically increasing its flow and sediment loads, altering the ecological balance of Cartagena and Barbacoas Bays and surroundings.

Despite these efforts, the canal became almost obsolete after the construction of two major highways that linked the Caribbean to the Andean region of the country in the 1950s. However, around the same time, Colombia’s largest oil refineries were established in Barrancabermeja and Cartagena.

As human geographer Austin Zeiderman argues, such infrastructures articulate geo-racial regimes and hierarchies of white and black, urban and peripheral, central and insular, that become sedimented into both Cartagenian landscapes and bodies.

MATERIALS

Excavations on the ground reveal the coralline stone, compacted after centuries of pressure and erosion. Isla Grande is a coral reef fossil itself. Coral reefs are vital ecosystems: they protect shorelines from storms, sustain local fisheries, support biodiversity, and form the ecological backbone of a tourism industry that underpins much of Cartagena city’s economy. Yet their very skeletons have been quarried and consumed. Entire islets were built for elite leisure by filling the sea with broken coral, the moneyed class literally manufacturing new islands from the bones of the reef.

Coral grounds. Photo by Gracia Ramirez.

The Canal del Dique continues this slow and silent violence. Each rainy season, it expels plumes of sediment-laden freshwater that spread across several square kilometers, covering turquoise waters with brown stains. These pulses reduce salinity and block light, suffocating photosynthesis and interrupting coral reproduction cycles that coincide with the wet months. In fact, the deposits of sediment have turned the formerly island of Barú into a peninsula, following the interventions of USA engineering companies in the twentieth century.

The history of Isla Grande is intimately linked to that of Barú. Around the time of the Spanish colonization, these territories were called Bahaire after the indigenous chief that ruled them before the conquest. The Spaniards used enslaved labour to excavate quarries in Barú and Tierra Bomba, extracting coralline stone used in Cartagena’s colonial architecture. They also built kilns to burn coral stone, producing mortar for the city’s fortifications and lime for its characteristics whitewashed walls.

In the eighteenth century, the nearby island of Barú became a strategic point for cimarrones and Dutch and English smugglers who used enslaved workforce for the logistics related to trafficking. Some enslaved workers, in turn, were secretly saving money to buy their freedom to their masters –mostly Spaniards–.

Over the nineteenth century, with the crisis of slavery and the independence wars, Barú became an instance of a horizontal community formed mostly by cimarrones, freed slaves and mestizos. Their economy was based on subsistence agriculture, fishing, bartering and mutual support.

Wooden house. Photo by Gracia Ramirez.

On June 7 of 1850, groups of neighbours from Barú bought an old hacienda to its then owner for 1.200 COP and finished their payment on May 19, 1851. Just two days later, the abolition of slavery was signed in the country. Thus, Barú become a Black community with collective property before the establishment of the modern-day Republican State. Coconut became the main crop and some families from Barú moved to the neighbouring Rosario Islands to extend the plantations.

Islander dwellings echo this layered material history. Traditional houses rely on wooden boards and palm-thatched roofs, fragile yet renewable. Modern constructions import thin red bricks and cement from the mainland, materials that, as they degrade, seep into the calcareous soil and alter its composition.

Seashell. Photo by David Vergara.

Cement itself is ambivalent: it raises luxury resorts that displace the community, yet it also fortifies schools and homes through collective labor. In their very texture, these materials tell two stories at once—of extraction and restriction, but also of resilience and re-creation.

ORIKA

Right at the centre of Isla Grande is now the town of Orika. An old rubber tree guards the town’s square and provides shelter from the sun. The Cultural House is the gathering place where local council meetings (juntas) take place. The story of Orika is one of socioecological struggle and resistance.

Over the twentieth century, Barú started supplying agricultural goods to the growing Cartagena population, shifting toward intensive production of coconut, fish and mangrove charcoal. Up until the 1950s –when roads were constructed to connect Cartagena with other inland cities– the Rosario islands and Barú were the main providers of food sold at the city’s Getsemani market.

Rubber Tree in Benkos Biohó Square, Orika, Isla Grande, PNNCRSB. Photo by Gracia Ramirez.

The first tourists were members of Cartagena’s urban elite. They arrived at the Rosario Islands between the 1930s and 1940s and started building recreational homes. While tourist infrastructure was consolidating around Cartagena and the islands, a beetle plague destroyed the coconut plantations in the 1950s.

In order to “protect” the islands, the government declared them National Natural Park in 1977, but the National Park mainly considered the sea, not the ground islands themselves. The decree sought to “conserve flora, fauna, landscapes, and historical and cultural manifestations with scientific, recreative or aesthetic goals”, but omitted any mention of the Blacks communities that already inhabited the territory (Rosario Islands, Barú, Santa Ana and Ararca).

New prohibitionist environmental policies, coupled with the rise of tourism, relegated local families to the hinterlands of Isla Grande and to the backs of hotels and resorts, where they worked as subordinate labor.

In the 1980s, the government declared the Rosario Islands to be State-owned vacant lands, unrecognising the community as a “organized population” for the use of land but allowing other economical uses such as tourism and recreation. This enabled a wave of land grabs by private investors that further marginalised the community. However, the 1991 Constitution and the ensuing law 70 of Black Communities of 1993 provided legal tools to transform the memory of dispossession into a fight for recognition.

The community used environmental education programs to strengthen social organizations and articulate their historical demands into a juridical argument. In 2001, after years of legal limbo, the Colombian state began the land restitution process.

Fearing expulsion from the territory, the families decided to establish a new village in the center of Isla Grande: Orika, in honor of the daughter of Benkos Biohó, a cimarron leader and hero of San Basilio de Palenque, the first Black free village in the Americas (1714). In just two months, the community cleared the land and built their houses, a gesture of dignity and memory, affirming their right to exist as a Black community in their ancestral territory. After collecting evidence and going through endless administrative hurdles, in 2014 the Constitutional Court recognized the collective deed title for the Black community of Isla Grande, becoming the only community having achieved that so far within the national park.

UNBOUNDEDNESS

Sunset horizons and native trees may meet the tourist’s gaze as landscapes ready for easy consumption— postcards of “untouched nature.” Yet the town of Orika unsettles this commodified view. Its soundscape resists containment: sound systems (picós) blasting loud music reverberates from the main square, echoing through every coralline ground cavity, vibrating as much in bodies as in stone.

In language, too, survival leaves its trace. The word Dios circulates as the name of the Christian god, but within it hides the untranslatable presence of African spirits, invoked yet unconfined by letters. This is not syncretism as tourist folklore, but the deep mimicry of African cosmologies that persisted beneath colonial surveillance.

In the Colombian Caribbean, enslaved Africans lived not in the vast monocultures of the sugar plantations of Brazil or Cuba, but in smaller, multiethnic communities tied to haciendas, cattle ranches, mines, and urban centres under the close watch of the Inquisition tribunal of Cartagena.

Cut off early from eighteen century renewed arrivals of African captives, these populations developed distinctive spiritual practices, an instance of what Sylvia Wynter called “black indigenization”— that in intertwining African, indigenous, and Christian forms, found ways of being human when colonial hegemony ruled otherwise.

Orika inhabits this layered spiritual geography. It is not simply a village bounded by its streets, but a porous space where music, light, and faith exceed enclosure—an unlimited terrain of survival, memory, and reinvention.

ROOTS

Mangrove forests form the living roots of Isla Grande. They are among the most resilient trees on Earth—thriving where others would perish. Their bodies adapt to saline soils and shifting tides, standing firm where land is not yet land.

Propagules germinate while still attached to the parent tree, dropping into the water as living seedlings that drift across lagoons and channels, anchoring themselves wherever conditions allow. Each root is a promise of survival, each forest a nursery that shelters fish, crabs, and birds in any of their stages of life. Mangroves breathe through aerial roots that rise above the mud, searching for oxygen in conditions too harsh for most species. Always green, they embody endurance.

The mangrove is never alone. Its leaves, roots, and fallen branches decompose into nutrients that sustain fish and crustaceans; its tangled roots interlace with seagrass meadows and coral reefs in a single inter-ecosystemic web. Together, these systems form the ecological triangle of the Caribbean coast: corals buffer waves, seagrasses filter and stabilize sediments, mangroves hold the shoreline while feeding both sea and land. In Isla Grande, these roots not only prevent erosion but also connect the island’s fragile ecology to Cartagena’s coastal mangroves, weaving life across waters.

For Orika, the mangrove is more than ecology—it is a metaphor for community. Like the red mangrove that elevates itself above its roots, the people rise from centuries of exclusion, rooted yet expansive. Their history drifts like propagules, carried by tides of resistance until finding ground to grow.

The mangrove teaches resilience, interconnection, and renewal: lessons for a community that continues to defend its territory while imagining futures where culture and ecology flourish together. Roots here are not only in soil, but in memory and struggle, anchoring Orika to both the Caribbean Sea and to its own unfolding horizon.

DRIFT

There are no roads in Isla Grande, only sandy footpaths weaving through the tropical dry forest and the mangroves. No motorized vehicles circulate within the island, people walk or ride bicycles, while boats and yachts, arriving from Cartagena, leave trails of oil shimmering over the turquoise surface.

Caribbean Sea water around Isla Grande. Photo by Gracia Ramirez.

Plastic bottles and rubbish drift ashore, carried by tides that remember more than the islanders would wish. Drift here is both material and historical: traces of empire, slavery, tourism, and extraction wash against the reef, staining waters once clear. The islands themselves are a coral body in constant erosion and recomposition, a living drift of stone, memory, and survival.

Plastic and vegetable waste. Photo by Gracia Ramirez.

Yet drift is not only decline—it is also possibility. Orika, born out of dispossession, has become a node of reorganization and creativity. The community council anchors collective life, negotiating with agencies and hotels that now contribute resources for communal projects.

Every weekend, and on national and local holidays, happiness brightens the whole town in shared spaces like the main Plaza (Benkos Biohó Plaza), the picós, the cockpits, houses and the Casa Cultural. A new foundation works with children and youth, teaching them to stage traditional dances and music, reweaving ancestral ties to the palenques and to African rhythms long suppressed.

Ecotourism initiatives, led by younger generations, form alliances with older community projects, offering alternatives that value culture and ecology together.

Buildings around Benkos Biohó Square in Orika. Photo by Gracia Ramirez.

Drift, then, also gestures toward a different horizon. In Orika, the tides carry not only the weight of history but also the seeds of futures yet to come. The Rosario Islands are a historical drift still evolving—where coral, memory, and community recombine into new forms of life.

 

The post Notes on Isla Grande: Figurations of Environmental Violence and Beauty in the Colombian Caribbean appeared first on Undisciplined Environments.

Categories: B4. Radical Ecology

A Canada-led clean trade pact would show that middle powers mean business

Clean Energy Canada - Tue, 05/19/2026 - 02:56

Prime Minister Mark Carney has won deserved praise for standing firm against the Trump administration’s threats and imposition of tariffs. But political credit is only as good as the strategy that follows, and Canada now faces a genuine opportunity to do something more ambitious than weather the storm.

Carney’s approach has sparked a broader conversation among the world’s ‘middle powers’ – countries with significant economies like Japan, South Korea, Australia, and the U.K. that share a commitment to rules-based trade but sit outside the U.S.-China superpower axis. These are countries that are actively looking for a different economic path forward, one that doesn’t simply mirror the nationalism coming out of Washington and Beijing.

Keep reading this post, co-authored by Ryan Mulholland and Ollie Sheldrick, in Policy Options.

The post A Canada-led clean trade pact would show that middle powers mean business appeared first on Clean Energy Canada.

May 14, 2026: See CBS TV coverage of Greenaction Blasting Navy’s latest radioactive scandal at Hunters Point Naval Shipyard Superfund Site

Green Action - Mon, 05/18/2026 - 23:46

May 14, 2026:

See CBS TV coverage of

Greenaction Blasting Navy’s latest radioactive scandal at Hunters Point Naval Shipyard Superfund Site

Click here to watch

Why the Yellow Vests Defy Politics as Usual w/ Prof. Ida Susser

Green and Red Podcast - Mon, 05/18/2026 - 17:13
The Yellow Vest, or gilets jaunes, are grassroots worker movement that have defied politics as usual in France and the rest of the world. In our latest, Scott talks with…
Categories: B4. Radical Ecology

Politico Pro: Newsom sticks with controversial funding deferral in mixed-bag schools budget

Public Advocates - Mon, 05/18/2026 - 10:58

May 14, 2026—Politico’s Eric He reports on Gov. Newsom’s May Revise budget proposal, which calls for deferring $3.9 billion in Proposition 98 school funding despite revenues coming in $16.5 billion above projections. The move has drawn swift condemnation from teachers unions, school boards, and Democratic lawmakers who argue the constitutionally-guaranteed funding is urgently needed — including by Los Angeles Unified, which is counting on state dollars to honor $1.2 billion in new union contracts. On the positive side for education advocates, the governor preserved $1 billion for community schools expansion. Public Advocates Managing Attorney John Affeldt weighed in on the deferral, saying that while restraints are warranted, it’s “not a crazy maneuver given the volatility of our revenue picture.”

Read the Story

The post Politico Pro: Newsom sticks with controversial funding deferral in mixed-bag schools budget appeared first on Public Advocates.

Outlandish Merger of Giant Power Companies NextEra and Dominion is ‘Contrary to Public Interest’

Common Dreams - Mon, 05/18/2026 - 09:18

Massive Florida-based power company NextEra Energy announced today its plan to acquire Virginia’s Dominion Energy, citing the growth of A.I. data centers as the impetus for the move. In response, Public Citizen Energy Program director Tyson Slocum issued the following statement:

“This absurd proposal to merge two massive, well-capitalized utilities should be dead on arrival for state and federal regulators. Household customers have everything to lose and nothing to gain by allowing two behemoths, NextEra and Dominion, to merge.

“The claim that the tie-up is needed to address data center demand is a false narrative; the merger will do nothing to increase generating capacity, let alone desperately-needed renewable generating capacity. These mega-utilities are merely using rising concern about data centers as an excuse to concentrate political and economic power of two giant utilities to maximize financial returns to shareholders. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and state regulators should reject this outlandish, unnecessary merger as completely contrary to the public interest.“

Categories: F. Left News

50 rights groups blast Meta for brazen policy reversal of Instagram end-to-end encrypted messaging

Common Dreams - Mon, 05/18/2026 - 03:23

Fight for the Future, Access Now, the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and other leading human rights organizations are demanding Meta immediately course correct and make good on promises to protect Instagram DMs with end-to-end encryption by default.

Led by Fight for the Future, 50 human rights groups are expressing outrage over Meta’s decision to discontinue “opt-in” end-to-end encryption for Instagram messages, as well as its apparent reversal of plans to protect Instagram messages with end-to-end encryption by default. The groups sent a letter to Meta calling on the company to immediately course correct and follow through on promises to ensure users’ direct messages (DMs) are safe from third-party access.

For the communities represented by the organizational endorsers of the letter, including activists, LGBTQ+ people, abortion seekers, journalists and other targeted groups around the world, privacy online is not “optional.” It’s a matter of life and death.

Meta’s removal of “opt-in end-to-end encryption” for direct messages on Instagram—a feature only available to users in certain regions—took effect on May 8, 2026. Meta has claimed the move was driven by “lack of interest from users.”

The decision and rationale represent a complete reversal of Meta’s well-established commitments to end-to-end encrypted communications, as well as its promises to make end-to-end encryption the default setting for Instagram messages.

”Meta has repeatedly articulated the importance of end-to-end encryption, sometimes mirroring the exact language our organizations have used for years to explain why online messages must be protected and private. Does Meta expect us to simply forget this history? Does the company expect us to accept the absurd justification that ‘users aren’t interested in E2EE’ when Meta knows very well we shouldn’t be forced to opt-in to life-saving privacy features?” said Leila Nashashibi, Campaigner at Fight for the Future. “Meta has defended E2EE in the past, even when it wasn’t politically convenient. Clearly the company’s political calculus has shifted. Is Meta axing its E2EE plans in order to curry favor with Trump, who wants unfettered access to our messages so his administration can spy on us and target us? Or does the company believe that the profit potential of violating our privacy and harvesting our most sensitive information—our private messages—is simply too great to pass up? We deserve to know the truth behind this total betrayal of users’ safety and privacy. We’re calling on organizations and users all over the world to reject this shameful move. If Meta wants to keep its Instagram users, it must make DMs safe NOW.”

”Secure E2EE messaging is a BASIC digital need and right. Several years ago, we joined in asking Meta to encrypt DMs. As Meta has acknowledged, privacy online is actually critical to people’s safety online AND offline. Now, Meta says they’re rolling this safety measure back after offering E2EE as a difficult to find optional setting? That’s so disingenuous and disappointing,” said Maya Morales of WA People’s Privacy. “If Meta wants people to use its platforms, it has to ensure that using them doesn’t actively endanger us. Without encryption, our personal conversations have been fed straight to government agencies or officials we might critique, to DHS/ICE, to data brokers, into AI models, you name it. This is not a trivial issue. Unsecured DMs can—and have—resulted in people’s entire lives being destroyed. E2EE should be the default setting for all apps that offer messaging, and AI should never be used in ANY messaging service without non-coerced, opt-in consent. If Meta’s not going to keep users safe, is it prepared for a mass-exodus?”

Fight for the Future and a coalition of civil society organizations strongly applauded Meta’s implementation of default end-to-end encryption on Facebook Messenger in December 2023. The move came after public outcry and pressure in response to Meta handing over unencrypted Messenger direct messages between a Nebraska teenager and her mother to law enforcement—messages that led to the teen’s prosecution for choosing to have an abortion.

In the months preceding the December 2023 announcement, Rob Sherman, VP and Deputy Chief Privacy Officer for Policy at Meta, sent a letter to Fight for the Future stating: “We remain committed to rolling out default end-to-end encryption for private conversations on Messenger in 2023, and shortly afterwards for Instagram.”

In the the letter, Mr. Sherman notes:

People expect technology companies to provide the best security to protect their personal information, and we believe end-to-end [encryption] is an important component of building trust with our users because it:
  • Promotes a fundamental right to privacy, which allows loved ones to communicate without fear.
  • Helps prevent both serious and common crimes like hacking and identity theft.
  • Enables journalists, civil society, religious groups, scholars, and artists to exercise their rights to free and private speech without surveillance or retaliation.

Meta’s backtracking on its end-to-end encryption commitments comes on the heals of yet another disappointing decision: On May 5, Meta announced that the company will be “developing” a tool that can determine a user’s age based on visual, physical characteristics. Under the guise of kids safety, this will mean scanning every single picture posted on the platform to determine people’s ages, with no guardrails. Fight for the Future has been warning for years that online ID checks in all of its forms, regardless of the public relations term in use (age assurance, age verification, age estimation) is a censorship and privacy nightmare that will lead to Big Tech companies cobbling together even more information about users of all ages.

Categories: F. Left News

Russia’s anti-war prisoners: Outcasts in their own country

People and Nature - Sun, 05/17/2026 - 23:55
By Simon Pirani Russia’s political prisoners are “outcasts in their own land,” Sergei Dudchenko, a biker tortured and framed by the security services, told his trial judges this month before being handed a seven-year prison sentence. Those arrested for opposing the war on Ukraine had “fewer rights than a stray dog, and on top of […]
Categories: B1. EcoAnarchism

Red Stone Movement Goes Public: Tribal Nations Demand Protection of Sacred Pipestone Site

Indigenous Environmental Network - Sat, 05/16/2026 - 12:12
Red Stone Movement Goes Public: Tribal Nations Demand Protection of Sacred Pipestone Site FLANDREAU, SD – The controversial Magellan Pipeline issue is heating up again. The pipeline, owned by OneOk of Tulsa, Oklahoma, had its construction permit rescinded by the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission on January 7, 2025. The proposed route would build a new […]

May 15, 2026 Read the story on MSN.com Greenaction blasts the Navy over continued botched “cleanup” at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard Superfund Site

Green Action - Fri, 05/15/2026 - 18:31
May 15, 2026 Read the story on MSN.com Greenaction blasts the Navy over continued botched “cleanup” at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard Superfund Site Click here to read the Article on MSN.com

May 14 2026, Bay City News Article on the Latest Scandal with the U.S. Navy and the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard Superfund Site:

Green Action - Fri, 05/15/2026 - 18:29

May 14 2026

Bay City News Article on the Latest Scandal with the U.S. Navy and the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard Superfund Site

Click Here to read the Bay City News Article

“SF: Cabinet Storing Radiological Materials Discovered At Former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard”

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