Lemdro.id

cross-posted from : https://news.abolish.capital/post/16129

The US is once again trying to gets its chlorinated fowl into UK markets, a strategy linked to their push for chlorinated chicken exports. Reportedly, it’s happening because of the collapse of an equally bad (if not worse) AI tech deal:

This confirms it.

The US is using the collapsed tech/AI deal to force Britain to accept chlorinated chicken and hormone-treated beef.

Food standards are the leverage point and the red line.

You can’t align with US tech power and stay aligned with Europe.… pic.twitter.com/Ru37rLPH80

— Liz Webster (@LizWebsterSBF) December 29, 2025

‘Farm to fork’

As Farming UKhave reported, British regulators are against chlorinated chicken because it’s at odds with the UK’s ‘farm to fork’ ethos. The UK is supposed to prioritise hygiene and welfare standards, the Americans, meanwhile, make up for laxer standards with an end-of-process chlorine rinse.

As we’ve reported before, the UK is far from perfect when it comes to welfare standards. However, accepting chlorinated chicken would be a step back; it means there’s work to be done getting our own house in order.

This is all happening now because the US-UK technology deal has faltered. In part, it’s due to the Americans’ position that the UK’s Online Safety Act will have a detrimental impact on their tech sector. We have voiced our own criticisms of the Online Safety Act, with Steve Topple writing in July this year:

When both the left and the right are united in their disdain for a piece of legislation, you know there must be something up. So, enter the Online Safety Act: a law so riddled with corruption, incompetence, and authoritarianism that you’d be forgiven for agreeing with Nigel Farage. But exactly what are the problems with this Tory written, Labour-allowed piece of legislation?

He added:

While the Online Safety Act was sold as a child‑safety milestone, critics argue it’s structurally incapable of delivering that outcome. Campaigners from organisations including Barnardo’s, the Molly Rose Foundation and CARE UK warn that loopholes around algorithmic recommendations, autoplay, live‑streaming, and age verification mean the legislation “will not bring about the changes that children need and deserve”. Rather than curtail harmful exposure, the law risks becoming symbolic rather than effective.

Since enforcement began on 25 July, age verification—via ID scans, facial estimation, or mobile verification—has triggered over five million age checks per day, mostly on porn sites. But this in turn has driven a rapid surge in VPN downloads as users seek to bypass access controls, shifting minors toward less‑regulated parts of the internet and raising their exposure to greater harms rather than reducing it.

Laws like the Online Safety Act ultimately benefit tech giants, but they also introduce additional layers of oversight. The tech overlords would prefer to get all of the benefits with none of the downsides, which is why they’ve worked so hard to ingratiate themselves with the Trump administration.

US President Donald Trump invited the world's richest billionaire oligarchs to sit at the center of his inauguration.

Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, & Google CEO Sundar Pichai symbolically sat with Trump's cabinet picks.

A dozen billionaires will be in the Trump admin. pic.twitter.com/9CHzpmFAEU

— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) January 20, 2025

Given that US tech oligarchs have attained ungodly levels of power since 2020, we shouldn’t want the UK to be more enmeshed with them, especially on this chlorinated chicken issue. Recent events have demonstrated the power that they have and why they choose to wield it:

Tech oligarchs are now openly conspiring against @RoKhanna because he dared to back a modest wealth tax. https://t.co/pCh170Oa3v

— Krystal Ball (@krystalball) December 28, 2025

Farmers rights

As Farming UKfurther note:

For British farmers, the stakes extend beyond poultry. The US is also pushing for greater access for hormone-treated beef, another area where UK standards are stricter than those in America.

Farming unions have warned that accepting such imports would weaken consumer trust in British food and risk eroding the premium attached to UK produce at home and abroad. Sir Keir has previously treated food standards as a red line, rebuffing Mr Trump’s demands to allow chlorinated chicken in exchange for lower tariffs.

Since Labour returned to power, right-wing politicians have been making a big show of supporting farmers and opposing chlorinated chicken. This is ironic given that they didn’t seem to give a shit when the Tories were in power. As journalist Jon Burke recently highlighted, other agriculture deals have gone incredibly poorly for us.

I see the @Telegraph is now reporting on the Australian trade deal disaster for which it campaigned.

Nobody, and I mean *nobody*, has betrayed this country like the libertarian wreckers who lied to the public about ‘Brexit benefits’. pic.twitter.com/fps85uTWaE

— Jon Burke is mainly posting on Bluesky (@jonburkeUK) December 27, 2025

The Australian trade deal that @trussliz struck – despite extensive warnings from civil servants – is turning out to be a disaster for British farmers, you say?

If only we could have foretold this in some way… https://t.co/aTlh0B3Bwv pic.twitter.com/0JJN5VQYCU

— Jon Burke is mainly posting on Bluesky (@jonburkeUK) December 27, 2025

The White House stated that our refusal to accept chlorinated chicken and hormone-pumped beef is an obstacle to them removing the tariffs that Trump introduced earlier this year. As Farming UK noted:

Any decision to relax those rules would carry significant political and economic consequences. Farming leaders argue it would not only threaten livelihoods in the poultry and beef sectors but also set a precedent for weakening food standards more broadly, potentially reshaping the future of British agriculture in trade negotiations yet to come.

Chicken

Starmer clearly wants to give the impression that he’s achieved something. As such, there’s a worry that he’ll accept whatever deal is on the table — possibly even one involving chlorinated chicken — so that he can act like he got a win. This is why it’s important to be clear that no one will accept capitulation to Trump as a victory.

Featured image via BBC

By Willem Moore

From Canary via This RSS Feed.

Economic concerns and growing disenchantment with both parties is draining support for Trump among Gen Z young men, a key bloc of support during the 2024 election

Male Gen Z voters are breaking with Donald Trump and the Republican party at large, recent polls show, less than a year after this same cohort defied convention and made a surprise shift right, helping Trump win the 2024 election.

Taken with wider polling suggesting Democrats will lead in the midterms, the findings on young men spell serious trouble for the Republican Party in 2026.

Younger Gen Z men, those born between 2002 and 2007, may be even more anti-Trump, according to October research from YouGov and the Young Men’s Research Project, a potential sign that their time living through the social upheavals of the Covid pandemic and not being political aware during the first Trump administration may be shaping their experience.

The boxes had water damage, so i got some plastic boxes. Then i put almost everything in the new plastic boxes. Managed to get rid of a whole box worth of shit, including an old crock pot.

I gotta go fill up a box with rocks i guess.

Here is the entire report by S&P: Russia Manufacturing PMI (pdf)

TL;DR:

• Russian manufacturing output in December decreased for the tenth month running, and at the fastest pace since March 2022 due to weak demand conditions and a reduction in new orders.
• In line with lower new orders, Russian manufacturers cut their workforce numbers at the end of the year. Employment has fallen in three of the last four months.
• Goods producers were less confident in the outlook for output over the coming year in December. The level of optimism dropped to the lowest since May 2022 amid concerns regarding subdued demand conditions.
• December data signaled an increase in cost burdens at Russian manufacturers. The pace of inflation was the fastest since March as firms noted higher supplier and raw material prices. That said, the rate of increase was well below the series trend.

Web archive link

Bill Watterson.

AI-generated videos promoting Poland's exit from the European Union have appeared on Polish-language social media, featuring non-existent, attractive young women advocating for "Polexit".

One TikTok account called "Prawilne Polki" published content showing women dressed in T-shirts bearing Polish flags and patriotic symbols, European analytics collective Res Futura said. The content targeted audiences aged 15 to 25.

The videos featured statements including: "I want Polexit because I want freedom of choice, even if it will be more expensive. I don't remember Poland before the European Union, but I feel it was more Polish then."

He does this sometimes. At least he doesn’t sit on the keyboard (usually).

cross-posted from : https://news.abolish.capital/post/16199

Alarm is growing over the treatment and deteriorating health of eight pro-Palestinian activists jailed in the United Kingdom who are on hunger strike to protest their detention. The activists remain imprisoned as they await trial over charges linked to their work with Palestine Action, which the British government has banned under its Terrorism Act over direct action protests against Israel’s…

Source

From Truthout via This RSS Feed.

• European Union has agreed to phase out Russian fossil fuel imports
• Decline in imports follows closure of Ukrainian route
• TurkStream is the only remaining route

...

The EU has said it will cease importing Russian gas by the end of 2027, as part of it effort to overcome the bloc's dependency on Russian energy and to withhold funds that could be used for its military campaign in Ukraine.

...

Previously, Europe was Russia's biggest source of budget revenues from oil and gas sales, on the basis of pipelines that were built from the Soviet Union to western Europe in the 1960s and 1970s.

Russian pipeline gas exports to Europe peaked at more than 175-180 billion cubic metres per year in 2018-2019 - and were worth tens of billions for Gazprom and the Russian state that holds a controlling stake in the company.

...

But this year, Gazprom's supplies totalled just 18 bcm and were sent through the TurkStream undersea pipeline after Ukraine chose not to renew the transit deal with Russia.

That is the lowest level since the early 1970s.

...

cross-posted from: https://lemmus.org/post/18955895

Via Li Chen's Mastodon.

Flint Sit-Down Strike (1936)

Wed Dec 30, 1936

Image: Sit-down strikers guarding window entrance to Fisher body plant number three. Photo by Sheldon Dick, 1937.

On this day in 1936, auto workers at the GM Fisher Number One Plant in Flint, Michigan began a highly organized 44-day occupation of their factory, winning a 5% wage increase.

The victory was an extremely successful recruitment tool for the just-formed United Automobile Workers (UAW), with approximately half a million workers signing up with the union over the next few years.

The UAW had formed in 1935 and decided to adjust its organizing strategy to target the most valuable auto factories and employers. They decided to target GM factories in Flint, which were essential to multiple lines of GM cars, and to the cars of GM's subsidiary companies like Chevrolet and Buick.

As Wyndham Mortimer, the first UAW officer put in charge of organizing the campaign in Flint, entered the town, he was surveilled by men from GM. The company had also infiltrated local union shops (which had very few of the local auto workers) with spies. The UAW was thus forced to organize in secret.

On December 30th, the union learned that GM was planning to move dies essential to the Fisher #1 plant's strategic value out of the factory. UAW lead organizer Bob Travis immediately called a lunchtime meeting at the union hall across the street from the plant, explained the situation, then sent the members across the street to occupy the plant, beginning the Flint Sit-Down Strike.

The state government refused to get involved, so GM attempted to break the occupation by cutting power and water, and interfering with food deliveries. Workers organized committees dedicated to defense, cleaning, organized recreation, and postal service.

On January 11th, 1937, the police, armed with guns and tear gas, attempted to enter the plant. They were successfully repelled by the workers, who pelted the cops with hinges, bottles, and bolts. Fourteen strikers were injured by gunfire during the battle.

GM obtained two injunctions against the strike, however these were ignored by the workers. One injunction was issued by a judge who owned over three thousand shares of GM, leading him to getting disbarred after the UAW discovered this information.

On February 11th, 1937, GM signed a one-page agreement that formally recognized the UAW as a bargaining representative. The UAW gained significant credibility - in the following year, its membership grew from 30,000 to 500,000 members. Employees of other car manufacturers such as Ford joined the organization, and the entire industry rapidly unionized.

• Date: 1936-12-30
• Learn More: en.wikipedia.org, socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu.
• Tags: #Labor.
• Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org