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Trees as lived memories serve us citizens and residents, a culinary or recreational experience of engaging with them at regular intervals in our lives. A mango or jackfruit tree may bring back past relationships with our forefathers, and their ritualistic pickling processes or preservation through frying of chips. A banyan or peepal tree of the […]

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.”

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

Nobody thinks they’re doing the popular front

Here’s the problem with arguing against the popular front inside DSA: Nobody in this organization thinks they’re doing it. That’s not a rhetorical observation. It’s the actual difficulty. Nobody wakes up and says, “I think we should subordinate working-class politics to bourgeois democratic forces.” That’s not how popular frontism arrives. It doesn’t announce itself. It accumulates through a hundred individual decisions, each looking reasonable until, at some point, the organization’s political orientation has shifted into something that would have been recognizable as wrong if proposed directly.

This document is not an accusation. Calling something popular frontism in DSA’s context isn’t a charge of bad faith; it’s a structural observation about what happens to socialist organizations under conditions of intense conjunctural pressure. And the pressure right now is real. Trump’s second term has produced a genuine emergency for millions of people. Immigrants are being deported. Civil liberties are being dismantled. Democratic institutions are being hollowed out or captured outright. People responding to this with urgency are not wrong about the urgency.

Popular frontism doesn’t announce itself. It accumulates through a hundred individual decisions, each looking reasonable until, at some point, the organization’s political orientation has shifted into something that would have been recognizable as wrong if proposed directly.

The question is not whether to respond. The question is how, and specifically on what political basis. That question has a strategic answer and getting it wrong doesn’t just produce ineffective politics. It reproduces the conditions that got us here.

What the popular front actually is

Before making the argument, we need precision about the target. The popular front gets used loosely, and that looseness lets people slide past the critique.

The popular front is not coalition work. Socialists do coalition work all the time and should. It’s not working alongside people we disagree with, and it’s not even working in formations dominated by non-socialist forces. The popular front is specifically the subordination of working-class political independence to a cross-class coalition organized around bourgeois political goals. The test isn’t whether DSA maintains formal independence—whether we keep our name and publish our newsletter. The test is whether the political content of our work is determined by the coalition’s framework or by an independent working-class program.

The popular front is specifically the subordination of working-class political independence to a cross-class coalition organized around bourgeois political goals.

Leon Trotsky’s Struggle Against Fascism in Germany makes this case: In the 1930s, the popular front meant communist parties entering electoral alliances with “progressive” bourgeois parties, adopting their demands, deferring to their leadership, and bracketing socialist politics as divisive. The theory was that fascism posed such an extreme threat that the immediate task was to defend bourgeois democracy, with socialist demands to follow once the emergency had passed.1The standard account of the 1930s debates remains Leon Trotsky, The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1971), which collects the key documents from popular front. For the consequences of the Popular Front turn, see Felix Morrow, Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Spain (New York: Pioneer Publishers, 1938).

The emergency never passed. Socialist demands never came back. The organizations that had disciplined themselves into becoming coalition partners emerged without the political independence they’d begun with, in cases where they emerged at all.

What is being proposed and, in some cases, practiced within DSA today has the same structural features, even if it goes by different names. Coalition partners are the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, liberal NGOs, and civil society organizations. The bracketed demands are socialist ones. The logic is identical: The emergency–framed as either authoritarianism or fascism–is too severe for the luxury of political independence.

How you get there without deciding to

Coalition gravity is real. It’s not a character flaw–it’s a structural problem that operates on organizations, not just individuals.

The Democratic-Party-aligned liberal-left is large, active, and well-resourced. When a crisis hits, that infrastructure mobilizes first and fastest. The coalitions form around it. The demands, the slogans, the framing, and the action calendar are set before socialist organizations have finished their internal discussions.

For example, a DSA member shows up at an immigrant defense meeting. The meeting is mostly liberals, a few DSA members, and some NGO staff. The immediate task of supporting people facing deportation is urgent and correct. Nobody is going to walk out because politics aren’t pure enough. That would be sectarian and wrong. So, you participate. You agree with the common statement. The common statement is framed around “defending American values” and “the rule of law”—not around class power, not around the system that produces both Trump and the deportation regime he’s intensifying. You table that argument because the meeting isn’t the time. Next meeting, same dynamic.

Over months of such activity, DSA’s public face becomes indistinguishable from that of the progressive liberal opposition. The people being recruited come in through that political framework. New members’ understanding of what this organization is gets shaped by what it visibly does, which is to background the socialist politics of working class power from below.

There is nothing explicitly stated requiring anyone to abandon socialist politics. The abandonment happens through accumulation, through the logic of each individual situation. This is what conjunctural pressure does to small organizations without a consciously held, collectively maintained, regularly reasserted strategic orientation.

The antidote isn’t sectarian abstention. It’s deliberate political clarity about what we’re doing and why it’s maintained actively, not assumed.

The fascism question is doing all the work

The strategic argument for popular front practice in the current moment always rests, explicitly or implicitly, on a characterization of Trump as fascist. That characterization is doing more work than it should be trusted to do.

In contrast to the popular front, Trotsky developed the united front strategy, which is often invoked imprecisely to justify current coalition practices, particularly in response to fascism. His argument was that fascism threatened to physically destroy working-class organizations, which required those organizations to act in common, despite political differences, to survive. Even then, he insisted on a united front among labor organizations, not a cross-class coalition with bourgeois democratic forces.2Trotsky, “For a Workers’ United Front Against Fascism” (1931) and “What Next? Vital Questions for the German Proletariat” (1932), both in The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany. The key formulation: the united front is “a practical agreement for struggle” between organizations “that base themselves on the working class”—not with bourgeois parties.

If Trump’s second term represents a Bonapartist conjuncture rather than a fascist one, the entire strategic logic should shift. Bonapartism, in the classical Marxist sense, describes a regime in which the state achieves relative autonomy because the ruling class is politically paralyzed—no fraction can establish stable hegemony—while the working class lacks independent political expression to fill the vacuum. The executive floats above class conflict, presenting itself as a national solution to a political impasse. This describes the current situation with considerable precision.3The Bonapartism framework originates in Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852). For its theoretical elaboration and relation to fascism, see Nicos Poulantzas, Fascism and Dictatorship (London: New Left Books, 1974) and State, Power, Socialism (London: New Left Books, 1978). Poulantzas’s critique of instrumentalist accounts of the state is particularly relevant to the question of regime characterization.

The distinction matters because Bonapartism and fascism call for different strategic responses. Fascism requires defensive mobilization to protect existing working-class organizational infrastructure from physical destruction. Bonapartism requires something harder: building independent working-class political capacity to fill the vacuum currently occupied by the Bonapartist solution.

The “no kings” framing … is the ideological form of the popular front.

The popular front’s response to Bonapartism doesn’t just fail strategically. It actively worsens the underlying condition. Bonapartism arises from two simultaneous problems: bourgeois political fragmentation and working-class political subordination to bourgeois politics. The popular front deepens the second problem by re-subordinating working-class politics to bourgeois democratic forces. You defeat this Bonaparte—if you defeat him—only to have reproduced exactly the conditions that made him possible.

The “no kings” framing that dominates current opposition politics is not accidental. It is the ideological form of the popular front: The enemy is personal despotism, the solution is constitutional democracy, and the agent of change is a broad cross-class coalition of people who love freedom. Working-class power doesn’t appear in this picture as a distinct force with distinct interests. It appears as part of the democratic people, whose political expression is progressive liberalism. Socialists who adopt this framing aren’t just making a rhetorical concession. They’re accepting a framework that makes independent working-class politics invisible by definition.

Trotsky against the Trotskyists

It’s worth being direct about the theoretical tradition being invoked to justify current practice because the invocation is wrong, and demonstrating that it’s wrong matters for the internal argument.

When comrades say, “united front, not popular front,” they’re invoking a real and important distinction from Trotsky’s work in the early 1930s. The problem is that what’s being practiced in many cases is the popular front, not the united front—and the distinction between them is precisely what Trotsky spent years insisting on.

Trotsky’s united front was between working-class organizations: German socialist and communist formations, acting in common against the Nazi threat, maintaining their distinct political programs and organizational independence, and striking together on specific, defined objectives. Political independence wasn’t incidental to the strategy—it was the whole point. A united front dissolves the moment participating organizations can no longer advance their own politics within it.4Trotsky, “The United Front for Defense” (1933), in The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany. The “march separately, strike together” formulation appears in several documents from this period. Its precondition—that independent organizations capable of marching separately actually exist—is rarely emphasized in contemporary invocations.

“March separately, strike together” is frequently quoted. What’s less frequently noted is that marching separately requires that you be marching and that there be an independent working-class political formation capable of entering a united front as a distinct pole. DSA joining a Democratic Party-led coalition isn’t a united front. There is no independent march. There is a large march that has absorbed us.

The Comintern’s move to the popular front in 1935 was not an abandonment of the united front in favor of something obviously different. It was a collapse of the united front into a cross-class coalition, dressed in the language of anti-fascist necessity. Dimitrov’s Congress speeches don’t read like a capitulation—they read like a strategic adaptation to overwhelming circumstances.5Georgi Dimitrov, “The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International,” report to the Seventh World Congress of the Communist International (1935), in The United Front: The Struggle Against Fascism and War (New York: International Publishers, 1938). The rhetorical sophistication of the popular front turn is worth attending to: it was presented as a creative application of united front principles, not an abandonment of them.

The people who built the popular front thought they were being realistic, flexible, and responsive to conditions. They were wrong. The popular front delivered the Spanish Republic to Franco and the French Left to paralysis. The lesson isn’t that unity is bad. It’s that unity organized on bourgeois-democratic terms—with socialist politics bracketed as divisive, and its socialist demands deferred as premature—produces defeat even when it yields votes.

What independent politics actually looks like

The case against popular frontism is not a case for abstention, and saying so directly matters because the charge of sectarianism is always the first response.

DSA members should be in immigrant defense work. We should be in the streets around May Day and every moment of mass mobilization. We should be in coalition with whoever is organizing working-class people. None of that is in question. What’s in question is the political basis on which we’re there and the organizational form we maintain within it.

Independent politics in practice means several difficult things. It means being visibly, publicly socialist in coalition spaces, not as a condition of participation but as a contribution to it. The people being radicalized at this moment need to find a distinct pole. If DSA’s presence is indistinguishable from progressive liberalism, we’re not offering them an alternative; we’re delivering them to the Democratic Party’s orbit.

It means framing every attack as class politics, not democratic politics. Deportations are not an assault on American values. They are an assault on working people by a capitalist state that serves ruling-class interests—interests that the Democratic Party also represents, differently but genuinely. The distinction matters because it points toward a different solution. “Restore democracy” points toward the Democratic Party. “Build working-class power” points to something that doesn’t yet exist at the required scale, which means the task is to build it.

Independent politics … means treating the conjuncture as a radicalization opportunity, which requires having a distinct socialist pole for people to find.

It means doing genuine united-front work where it is actually possible, with DSA’s left currents, with socialist labor militants, with other genuine working-class formations, on terms that maintain political independence rather than dissolving into the lowest common denominator of anti-authoritarianism.

And it means treating the conjuncture as a radicalization opportunity, which requires having a distinct socialist pole for people to find. People are moving right now. The question is where they move to. If socialist organizations are invisible as a distinct political force, if our public presence is liberal coalition work, then the people being radicalized by Trump’s attacks get absorbed into the Democratic Party opposition. That is a long-term failure with consequences that will outlast the current crisis.

The organizational honesty problem

One more thing deserves to be said, even though it’s uncomfortable.

Organizations under pressure tend toward popular frontism in part because it solves an immediate organizational problem: isolation. Coalition work provides activity, visibility, a sense of mass connection, and recruiting opportunities that independent socialist politics can’t provide. This is a real organizational need being met in a politically costly way. Naming it isn’t an accusation of bad faith. It’s an attempt at honesty about the pressures that drive political drift.

The solution is not to pretend that the isolation problem doesn’t exist; it does, and it’s serious. The solution is to refuse to solve it through absorption into formations whose political gravity we need to escape. That means accepting that independent politics is harder, slower, and less immediately satisfying than coalition work. It has always been true. The organizations that maintained independence through the 1930s conjuncture were the ones that came out the other side with something to offer. The ones that dissolved into the popular front came out as smaller versions of the liberal parties, they’d subordinated themselves to—in the cases where they came out at all.

Conclusion: We’ve been here before

The argument of this document is not that DSA should disengage from the current moment of political crisis. It is precisely the crisis’s intensity that makes it necessary to be as clear as possible about our political orientation, not the reason to defer clarity until conditions are easier.

Bonapartism won’t fall to the Left that currently exists in the United States. The socialist movement is too small, too organizationally fragmented, and too politically subordinated to bourgeois parties for that. The question the conjuncture poses is not whether we can defeat Trump’s regime directly. It is whether we can use this moment to build the organizational and political infrastructure that might, eventually, constitute a genuine working-class political force, or whether we will spend it as the left wing of a liberal coalition that will absorb our energy, recruit our cadre into its own formations, and leave us smaller and less politically distinct than we started.

The popular front has always promised the second option while selling the first. We have enough history now to know how that story ends. The question is whether we’ve learned from it.

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

The post The coalition that swallows you appeared first on Tempest.

EnviroReporter.com’s 20th anniversary 2006-2026 Michael Collins & Denise Duffield’s reporting valued at $9.6 BILLION!

The global annual production of plastics rose to 400 million metric tons in 2022 and is projected to double by 2050. Many items produced are used once and then thrown away, including more than 30 billion plastic water bottles sold each year in the United States alone. Less than 10% of plastic waste is recycled.

Clearly the problem of plastic pollution in land and marine environments isn’t going away. This series looks at some approaches to dealing with it, including this examination of the increasing demand for water in disposable bottles.

A whopping 88% of Americans say they consume bottled water, according to an industry survey released in 2024. In fact that year we drank an estimated 16.4 billion gallons of it — 47.1 gallons and a shocking average of about 340 individual bottles per person. The retail cost of all those bottles reached $50.6 billion.

But there’s another cost to this practice: serious effects on our health.

Recent research from Concordia University in Canada shows that people who drink bottled water ingest up to 90,000 more microparticles of plastic a year than those who drink tap water. Microplastic particles range in size from 1 micron (a thousandth of a millimeter) to 5 millimeters. For perspective, a credit card is about 1 millimeter thick.

More concerning is another study that found higher amounts of nanoparticles in water bottles than previously reported. Nanoparticles are smaller than 1 micron.

An ever-growing body of research suggests that exposure to these particles, particularly the nano-sized ones, affects our immune systems, causes reproductive issues, impairs cognitive function, and increases cancer risk.

Why We Drink Bottled Water

Why do we drink so much water from plastic bottles in the first place?

In one survey reported by Statista, reasons given by consumers included convenience, better taste, mistrust of household water quality, unsuitability of tap water, preference for sparkling or flavored water, and the fact that some of the bottled stuff has more minerals.

Researchers at Canada’s University of Waterloo suggest that the choice also taps into something deeper: our fear of death. Their 2018 paper argued that this fear makes us want to avoid risks — and many people see bottled water as safer, purer, or more controlled.

The industry promotes those perceptions with marketing campaigns using celebrities and feel-good imaging. Some even directly play on fears about the safety of tap water and mistrust in government entities (think Flint, Michigan), according to Peter H. Gleick, president emeritus and chief scientist at the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security and author of the 2010 book Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession With Bottled Water.

But is bottled water truly safer than tap?

Image by Wilson Blanco from Pixabay Bottled Versus Tap

In the United States, tap water is significantly more regulated than the bottled stuff. The Environmental Protection Agency oversees municipal tap water systems, which must meet safety standards and are regularly inspected.

The water itself is treated to remove particles, chemicals, bacteria, and other contaminants and must be frequently tested. Water suppliers are required to provide testing results to customers every year in the form of Consumer Confidence Reports, also published online.

Not that there haven’t been problems with tap water systems. A 1986 EPA report, Reducing Lead in Drinking Water, showed that 36 million Americans were using tap water with high levels of lead. Much of that exposure came from lead pipes in homes. Congressional investigations and updates to the Safe Drinking Water Act followed and most of the problems were fixed, but not all (again, Flint).

More recently per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), known as “forever chemicals,” have been found in water sources around the world. These chemicals break down very slowly and have turned up in the blood of people and animals and at low levels in a variety of food products and soil. Studies have linked exposure to some PFAS to harmful health effects.

In 2024 the EPA adopted national standards for acceptable levels of PFAs in tap water, requiring water utilities to test for it until 2027. Testing results will be used to determine future regulations for regular PFAS sampling and reporting, and after 2029 utilities must use treatment processes to remove PFAS from drinking water. Researchers are studying the effectiveness of various removal technologies.

Contaminants or pathogens sometimes end up in municipal water supplies due to issues such as flooding or equipment malfunctions. Thankfully we know about these incidents because of the required testing. But hearing about them can sow doubt, causing people to switch to bottled water even if their water source is safe.

The Food and Drug Administration regulates bottled water, but only if it’s sold across state lines. Water that is both packaged and sold within the state of origin represents most of the bottled water market, according to Erik Olson, senior strategic director for health at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Individual states are responsible for these products, but 1 in 5 states have no regulations covering them, he adds.

And while the PFAS standards are supposed to apply to bottled water as well, Olson says: “As far as we know they haven’t been. Most bottled water probably doesn’t have PFAS, but how do we know?”

A study led by New York University researchers found that plastics — including but not limited to water bottles — are responsible for 93% of the exposure to PFOA, one of the most widely studied PFAS.

NRDC also found that about 22% of bottled water brands they tested contained chemicals at levels above state health limits or industry recommendations in at least one sample.

Ironically, an estimated 25 to 45% of bottled water is simply municipal tap water, repackaged and marked up in price, sometimes further treated, sometimes not. PepsiCo’s Aquafina and Coca-Cola’s Dasani, for example, are filtered tap water. Some brands, like Smartwater, promote that they use distillation to purify their water, but that process uses a lot of energy. Spring water typically requires minimal treatment but may come from stressed natural springs. The process of bottling water can be wasteful; for example, it takes 1.63 liters of water to make every liter of Dasani.

Olson points out that making and shipping plastic bottles uses a lot of fossil fuel, too. “It’s incredibly wasteful. Consuming tap water is more energy efficient and has a lower carbon footprint.”

Then there are those particles.

On April 2 the EPA announced plans to study microplastics and added microplastics as a priority contaminant group on a draft list under consideration for regulation in drinking water (along with pharmaceuticals as a group, 75 individual chemicals, and nine microbes). However, the agency has had significant layoffs and attrition under the second Trump administration. It is dispersing staff in its defunct Office of Research and Development to other programs and faces a proposed 52% cut to its budget. Food and Water Watch, a safe food, water, and climate advocate, warned that the announcement falls short of what we really need, which is a comprehensive nationwide monitoring program.

On top of that, the effort will address microplastics but not nanoplastics.

Sarah Sajedi, Ph.D., coauthor of the previously mentioned particle studies, has done experiments that found as many as 10 million nanoparticles in a liter water bottle. A major concern, she says, is that these particles accumulate in human tissues. Nanoparticles can enter the bloodstream and reach vital organs, causing chronic inflammation, oxidative stress on cells, hormonal disruption, impaired reproduction, neurological damage, and various kinds of cancer.

“We’ve only had technology in the past three to five years to detect the nanosized particles,” Sajedi says. “First you have to prove there is exposure, and now we have shown that it exists with bottled water.”

In another ironic twist, when companies started using thinner plastic in water bottles to help reduce plastic pollution, it made the particle problem worse.

Bottled water containers now typically use almost a third less PET plastic on average than other packaged beverages like soft drinks, which need thicker containers due to carbonation. But these thinner bottles shed more particles. Movement, such as from being carried around, and exposure to sunlight both increase release of particles.

“Shaking the bottle or UV exposure from leaving it in your car increases tenfold the shedding of the plastic,” says Sajedi.

Improving the quality of material used in bottles would reduce particle exposure but exacerbate the problem of plastic waste. Gleick’s book noted that people in the United States throw away 30 billion plastic water bottles each year. Only a small percent of those are recycled; many end up in the environment, often the ocean. The harms caused by this plastic pollution are well documented, with the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development estimating its environmental damages at about $75 billion per year back in 2018 and a 2025 study blaming it for over $1.5 trillion in health-related economic losses per year.

Image by Hans from Pixabay So What’s a Thirsty Person to Do?

In general the safest thing to do is drink tap water — absent any specific problems in your area — and drink bottled water only on (rare) occasions.

“Say you’re at a baseball game and there’s no drinking fountains,” Olson says. “You’re not evil for consuming it once in a while. We just encourage people to think about it.”

If you’re concerned about your tap water, he suggests using a home filter system, which costs much less overall than bottles. One example shows that a family of four could save $2,878 a year using a pitcher-style filter system instead of bottled water.

“Another thing is, don’t be fooled by the names and pictures on the label that imply the water is from a mountain stream or pristine spring,” Olson says. “If the label says it is from a municipal source, it probably is just untreated tap water because that’s what rules require they say.”

When you need to buy bottled water, Sajedi suggests buying larger containers. “The quality of plastic is better with the jugs, which cuts down on your exposure to particles.”

Water is an essential human need. In places without reliable, safe water sources, many of these issues are moot, although experts argue the solution is to provide or improve infrastructure rather than relying on bottled water. But for the rest of us, it may be time to rethink our drinking habits.

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The post Dangerous Drinking: Is Bottled Water Really Safer Than Tap Water? appeared first on The Revelator.

Interview with Ian Angus, author of Metabolic Rifts: Capitalism's Assault on the Earth System

Source

Headline News:

• “Victoria Approves The Biggest Wind Farm In The Southern Hemisphere” • Victoria’s Minister for Planning has given state environmental approval for the Warracknabeal Energy Park. The proposed 219-turbine wind farm is set to be the biggest wind farm in the Southern Hemisphere. It will deliver over 1.5 GW of electric energy. [Energy Source & Distribution]

Wind farm in Victoria (Mattinbgn, CC BY-SA 3.0)

• “EU Households Could Save ‘More Than €2,200’ Every Year By Switching To Heat Pumps And EVs” • Switching to green heating and transport can cut EU household energy bills by thousands of euros every year, even before accounting for fossil fuel shocks. According to a report by Danish green think tank CONCITO, the savings could be €2,200 per year. [Euronews]
• “Ethiopia Leads EV Revolution In Africa” • Two years ago, Ethiopia did something unique. It banned the importation of vehicles powered by internal combustion engines on the grounds that the nation was squandering money it didn’t have to import fuels for those vehicles. It also exempted EVs from virtually all fees and import duties. [CleanTechnica]
• “Drone Strike Ignites Fire At UAE Nuclear Plant Amid Gulf Tensions” • The Barakah nuclear plant in Abu Dhabi’s al-Dhafra region was struck by a drone for the first time since the outbreak of the Iran war, causing a fire in an electrical generator outside its inner perimeter. The $20 billion facility supplies a quarter of the UAE’s energy needs. [MSN]
• “NextEra Said To Near Record $66 Billion Deal For Dominion Energy” • Bloomberg News reported that NextEra Energy is in talks to acquire Dominion Energy. It could value Dominion at roughly $66 billion in a mostly stock transaction. If completed, the merger would be the largest utility acquisition on record and one of the biggest M&A deals of 2026. [MSN]

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

America’s broken approaches to roadway safety and criminal justice are profoundly intertwined, a provocative new report argues — and until reformers in both fields reckon with how deeply their battles are connected, neither will notch any real progress.

Researchers at the American Civil Liberties Union and the Policing Project at the New York University School of Law closely examined how mass car dependency amplifies harm in the criminal legal system, like rampant traffic stops that disproportionately turn deadly for people of color or traffic fines that trap low-income earners in “inescapable, inequitable cycles of indebtedness, as ticketing practices stress profits over safety.”

The report encourages Vision Zero advocates to consider how an over-emphasis on enforcement-based safety strategies is hobbling the cause, by creating incentives for ineffective policing that distract and siphon resources from proven solutions, like increasing mobility alternatives, that are often forgotten or ignored.

“Police reform advocates and road safety advocates should be working together, just as departments of transportation and police departments should be working together,” said Scarlett Neath, senior adviser at the Policing Project and an author of the report. “Those two agencies and those two groups of advocates need to be swimming in the same direction.”

Recommended How Some Traffic Fines and Fees Can Make Our Roads More Dangerous Kea Wilson July 31, 2023

The report authors say that, in many ways, America’s car-dependent transportation system and police-focused approach to safety evolved in tandem. They argue that “corporate interests, public investment decisions, and racial discrimination” collectively eroded public transit networks in favor of installing officers on roadsides across the nation.

Neath doesn’t deny that there should be consequences for deadly driving, but says the particulars of how our communities impose those punishments has devastated many communities — without significantly reducing the likelihood of future crashes fast enough. Indeed, the United States has twice the rate of fatal car crash deaths of other high-income countries, and more than triple the rate of police killings.

“We’re not saying there’s no deterrence effect [from policing],” she added. “But the deterrence it might cause often also comes with significant costs — and there other solutions that may have bigger deterrent effects without those costs.”

Recommended Study: Police Killings of Civilians Undercounted By More Than Half Kea Wilson October 7, 2021

One of the steepest costs of over-emphasizing policing in traffic safety, Neath says, is simply diverting attention and resources away from infrastructure and vehicle technology that make it difficult or impossible for motorists to drive in deadly ways— rather than reacting to bad behavior after the fact.

The design-focused solutions we do have, meanwhile, are inequitably distributed. A 2023 study found that roughly “60 percent of Black children live in neighborhoods that lack amenities associated with healthy development, including sidewalks or walking paths.” Black communities remain significantly more policed than white neighborhoods with similar homicide rates and income levels.

“If a lot of enforcement is happening at the same intersection that should be a sign that there are things we should do to stop enforcement from happening through structural, preventative measures,” she added. “If a ton of folks are blazing through a road and police aren’t able to control that behavior, the stop lights have to be retimed, the speed limit has to be lowered, and maybe, the road needs to be redesigned.” 

Recommended A Plan to Eliminate Pretextual Police Stops, While Still Increasing Traffic Safety Cameron Bolton November 21, 2023

Worse, Neath says many roadside stops aren’t motivated by traffic safety at all.

The report’s authors note that “pretextual” stops exploded in the 1970s, when War on Drugs-era politicians encouraged police departments to profile suspects based on their race and gender, and use broken tail lights, expired tags, and any other available pretext to stop and search their cars.

Today, explicit and implicit “stop quotas” still provide perverse incentives for cops to accelerate their rate of pretextual stops to write lots of tickets, rather than wait around to catch the most flagrantly dangerous drivers — especially as many municipalities have come to rely on fines and fees to pay for basic services.

“When people hear about traffic stops, there’s an assumption that they’re made for safety-related reasons,” Neath added. “But we know from data in jurisdictions across the country that it’s really a mixed bag. … Police resources are finite, and we’ve seen that when departments prioritize safety stops, they have better crash prevention outcomes — without negative outcomes for the kind of crime-fighting [efforts] that pretext stops are theoretically are used for, because [pretextual stops] are so infrequently discovering evidence of crimes.” 

Recommended Survey: Americans Still Want Police To Cut Traffic Stops That Don’t Make Anyone Safer Kea Wilson March 26, 2025

To truly make American streets safe, Neath says it won’t be enough just to end policies that incentivize or require ineffective policing in the transportation realm or to redesign streets to put safety first. It will require thinking about how those two goals interact — and looking to new models to enhance them both.

Across the report and a companion study written in partnership with the Vision Zero Network, the Policing Project outlined dozens of strategies that communities can consider, including under-discussed ones, like piloting civilian enforcement and equipment repair vouchers to remove a common pretext for police and motorist interaction.

Most of all, though, Neath says it’s time for advocates to think more holistically about what safety is — and how deeply intertwined the Vision Zero and police reform movements have always been.

“Preventable deaths and injuries in car crashes, unacceptable violent outcomes from the most common form of police community member contact — these are both public health crises,” she added. “It’s an opportune time to learn from the progress we’ve made on both fronts, and to double down on that progress.”

• Are conservatives coming around to walkability? The American Enterprise Institute thinks they should. And the Reason Foundation is in favor of transit-oriented development.
• Much of AEI’s argument has to do with how being able to roam around the neighborhood improves their mental health and takes pressure off parents to drive their kids everywhere. But not everyone on the right accepts Tim Carney’s thesis (Longer Forms). Carney’s critics on the right should talk to school crossing guards before claiming that car-centric streets don’t influence where kids can walk (The Guardian).
• In related news, Brandon Donnelly wrote about how more young families that can afford to do so are staying in cities rather than moving to the suburbs. And Angie Schmitt interviewed Lenore Skenazy, the author of “Free Range Kids.” (Love of Place)
• Uber is offering transit agencies $50,000 grants to test on-demand transit service. (Cities Today)
• CalTrans is looking into “bullet buses” that would travel 140 miles per hour on dedicated freeway lanes between Los Angeles and San Francisco. (Hoodline)
• L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez returned to one of his favorite topics: how screwed up the city’s sidewalk repair program is.
• Debris from one of Amtrak’s new Acela cars is the likely cause of a recent fire at Penn Station. (New York Daily News)
• Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller criticized the city council for cutting $5 million from pedestrian safety. (KOB 4)
• Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell defended himself against protesters who say the city is diverting funds for Vision Zero to road repaving. (News Channel 5)
• Kansas City will add east-west bus routes and step up frequency during the World Cup. (Star)
• Bike buses are catching on in Baltimore. (The Banner)
• Amtrak’s sleeper cars are getting upgraded (Business Insider).

Solar installations 'through the roof' Channel News brendan 18th May 2026 Teaser Media

DISCLAIMER: The following is an entirely fictitious, satirical response imagined on behalf of ReputationDefender.com. ReputationDefender has not made any such statement, has no known connection to Shell plc, and is an innocent and entirely respectable party in this affair. Any resemblance to actual ReputationDefender communications is coincidental. This is satire. ReputationDefender’s real services are available at reputationdefender.com. We rather hope they see the funny side.

Use browser to enlarge image.

In an imaginary but entirely plausible response, the world’s leading online reputation management firm ReputationDefender confronts the challenge of a lifetime: can professional reputation repair — however skilled, however well-resourced — actually defend Shell plc? The fictitious ReputationDefender statement above works through the brief scandal by scandal: the Nazi-era history of founder Sir Henri Deterding; the alleged Neptune Strategy of busting oil sanctions for apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia; the Hakluyt spy firm allegedly deployed against Greenpeace and Ogoni activists in Nigeria; the catastrophic 2004 reserves scandal in which Shell admitted overstating its proved reserves by 3.9 billion barrels — triggering a $150 million SEC fine, the forced departure of chairman Sir Philip Watts, and the collapse of the century-old Royal Dutch Petroleum and Shell Transport and Trading partnership; and the ongoing Niger Delta pollution claims, climate litigation, and greenwashing controversies that constitute Shell’s thoroughly modern reputation problem. The imaginary conclusion: the brief is professionally stimulating, the inbox is open, and those fictional barrels were only the beginning.

WE CAN DEFEND ANYONE. THEN WE READ THE FILE. was first posted on May 17, 2026 at 10:55 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

 

Can the world’s most comprehensive corporate crime scene be polished back to respectability? Our outspoken correspondent investigates. Spoiler: No.

The audacity. The sheer, brass-necked, gas-flaring, dividend-pumping audacity of it.

John Donovan — Shell shareholder, Shell nemesis, and the man Shell would most like to fall down a very deep offshore well — has lobbed the ultimate grenade into the reputation management industry. He has challenged ReputationDefender to defend Shell plc: a company whose historical file is so thick, so heavy, and so radioactive that it requires its own safety rating before being approached by researchers.

And quite right too. Because the article makes the delicious observation that Shell’s reputation problem is not “one bad headline” but rather bad headlines that have “formed geological strata.” One does not simply SEO one’s way out of geological strata. One would need a drill, and Shell has plenty of those — and look how that tends to end up. royaldutchshellplc

BUT WAIT — DID THE ARTICLE GO FAR ENOUGH?

Your correspondent notes, with respectful outrage, that the piece largely focuses on the modern scandal ecosystem — Nigeria, climate litigation, greenwashing theatre, shareholder revolts, and the increasingly comedy-rich gap between “net zero ambition” and “let’s build more LNG terminals.” All perfectly damning. All thoroughly deserved.

But there is more in the cupboard, darlings. Much, much more.

SHELL AND THE APARTHEID REGIMES: THE CHAPTER THEY’D RATHER FORGET

Let us speak plainly about something rather important. While the world was campaigning to isolate apartheid South Africa and Ian Smith’s Rhodesia — illegally sanctioned regimes propped up by racial oppression — Shell was rather busy keeping the petrol flowing. The so-called “Neptune Strategy” saw Shell help circumvent oil sanctions against South Africa’s apartheid government, a programme documented in sufficient detail to make even a corporate communications director wince into their expense-account claret.

Rhodesia, similarly, was not supposed to receive oil. Sanctions existed. International consensus was clear. Shell, apparently, found sanctions somewhat inconvenient for business planning purposes and made alternative arrangements. The kind of arrangements that, had they been carried out by a human being rather than a corporation with a logo and a PR department, would have attracted rather more personal consequences.

To be fair, the article does contain an “Apartheid” category in its site archive, suggesting this is well-trodden ground for Mr Donovan’s operation. But in the “Ultimate Challenge” article itself, it goes largely unmentioned. A miss, we think. Because helping prop up apartheid regimes is not the sort of thing that fits neatly into ReputationDefender’s Phase Three: Historical Controversy Containment protocol under the charming heading of “legacy reputational complexity.” It is, to be blunt, considerably worse than that.

HAKLUYT: THE SPY FIRM IN THE SHELL CLOSET

And then there is Hakluyt & Company — the intelligence firm staffed by former MI6 officers, deeply associated with Shell, whose activities included alleged undercover operations targeting Greenpeace activists and Ogoni community campaigners in Nigeria.

Think about that for a moment. Shell, already mired in the fallout from Ken Saro-Wiwa’s execution — the Ogoni activist and writer hanged by Nigeria’s military government in 1995 amid enormous international outcry — was reportedly using the services of a sophisticated private intelligence outfit to monitor those who dared to object. Greenpeace. Environmental campaigners. People holding placards and writing letters.

One imagines the internal memo: “The activists are being rather noisy about the oil pollution and the judicial killings. Shall we hire some former spooks to keep an eye on them?”

That is not reputation management. That is surveillance of your critics dressed up in an old Etonian accent and filed under “stakeholder intelligence.”

For ReputationDefender’s proposed invoice, we suggest Hakluyt warrants its own line item: “Covert activist monitoring legacy — premium heritage sensitivity package — price upon application, cash preferred.”

THE FULL CHARGE SHEET THAT ReputationDefender WOULD FACE

Let us summarise what any brave reputation management firm would actually be taking on, should they accept the Donovan Challenge:

• A founding leader, Sir Henri Deterding, who expressed open admiration for Hitler and whose Nazi-era associations remain a matter of documented historical record and considerable embarrassment.
• A German subsidiary that operated under the Third Reich.
• Alleged support for oil sanctions-busting on behalf of the apartheid regime in South Africa.
• Alleged involvement in circumventing sanctions against Rhodesia.
• Documented operations in the Niger Delta resulting in catastrophic environmental damage and decades of community suffering.
• The execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni Nine in 1995, carried out by the Nigerian military government, with Shell’s alleged failure to use its influence to prevent it subsequently becoming the subject of legal action and lasting moral outrage.
• Alleged use of Hakluyt, the MI6-adjacent intelligence firm, to conduct undercover monitoring of environmental activists and community campaigners.
• The OPL 245 Nigerian corruption scandal, involving an alleged $1.3 billion payment routing through a convicted money launderer.
• Decades of climate science knowledge, reportedly held internally, while publicly sowing doubt.
• A climate court judgment requiring Shell to cut emissions — subsequently appealed.
• Brent Spar. Groningen earthquakes. Arctic drilling misadventures. Shareholder rebellions. Greenwashing complaints upheld by advertising authorities.
• And, as a bonus, broadband service apparently so catastrophically poor that customers describe it on Trustpilot in terms usually reserved for war crimes.

THE VERDICT

The article asks whether “some reputations cannot be managed” and whether “the only real reputation strategy left is accountability.” Quite so. And accountability, it turns out, is the one product that no reputation management firm actually sells — because it would put them out of business. royaldutchshellplc

Shell’s PR machine has spent decades proving that you can reframe almost anything with the right vocabulary. “Legacy hydrocarbon complexity.” “Multi-decade stakeholder perception opportunity.” “Pre-modern governance context.” (That last one, we suggest, covers both the Nazi-era history AND the apartheid-sanctions-busting in one elegantly vague swoop.)

But the critics — Donovan chief among them — have the receipts. The courts have the filings. The communities have the contaminated land. The historians have the archives. And the Ogoni people have the graves.

No amount of search-result softening repairs that.

ReputationDefender, if you’re reading this: the quote you’re looking for is “not for any fee currently expressible in human mathematics.”

And to Mr Donovan: yes, you absolutely should have included the apartheid regimes and the Hakluyt spy operation in the original article. Consider this a helpful addendum, filed under “the cupboard goes deeper than you showed.”

— Your Outspoken Correspondent, still counting the charge sheet

THE IMAGE

There you have it — The Daily Slick, Britain’s least-sponsored oil scandal daily. The front page includes:

• The Deterding/Nazi-era splash with the parody Shell badge
• The Neptune Strategy and apartheid sanctions-busting in column three
• The Hakluyt spy operation tucked neatly alongside it
• The imaginary ReputationDefender invoice (with “Do Not Call” pricing for the Hakluyt line, naturally)
• The OPL 245 wiretap, Brent Spar, and Groningen teaser strips along the bottom

To your question — yes, the original article would have been considerably strengthened by including the apartheid and Hakluyt material. Both are extremely well-documented, both involve active choices rather than passive corporate drift, and both go well beyond the kind of “reputational complexity” that any PR firm can euphemise away. The Hakluyt angle in particular is striking: using former intelligence operatives to monitor environmental activists is not a footnote — it is a chapter heading.

 

Satirical commentary. All references to specific allegations are based on publicly documented reporting, legal proceedings, and published historical record. Shell, as ever, is invited to respond.

 

EXCLUSIVE: SHELL SHOCK! THE BRAND SO TOXIC EVEN THE SPIN DOCTORS NEED HAZMAT SUITS was first posted on May 17, 2026 at 10:10 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

Remindeer:

I’ll be reading from my book Antonio “Ike” DeVargas—Norteño Warrior: The Politics of Land, Power, and Justice in Northern New Mexico on Wednesday, May 20, 6 pm, at Collected Works Bookstore in Santa Fe. Ty Bannerman will also be reading from his book Nuclear Family: a memoir of the atomic west.

A blurb from Lucy Lippard, author of  Undermining: A Wild Ride Through Land Use, Politics, and Art in the Changing West.

Unlike journalists from elsewhere “covering” the chaotic politics of northern New Mexico, the writer Kay Matthews has lived it. This book on her friend and fellow warrior, the grassroots leader Ike DeVargas, is a lively and detailed account of decades of struggle. The varied participants include several tiny rural communities, the US Forest Service, the Spotted Owl, State and County local officials, La Raza, environmentalists, and local Chicano land grant activists. The subtitle says it all: “The Politics of Land, Power, and Justice in Northern New Mexico.”

New Mexico has a notoriously complex history, often playing out invisibly in its many poor rural communities still dealing with the traumas of colonialism, land grants, and corrupt officials. Those of us from away, no matter how long we have lived here, cannot fully understand the issues in Rio Arriba County, the devotion to homeplace, longtime dominance of Emilio Naranjo, and the economic importance of grazing, firewood, and logging permits to the surrounding communities. The battles that began in the 1960s are ongoing. Though DeVargas and his cohort often lost, they are famously resilient and their occasional hard-won victories have changed the political landusescape. Matthews and her family have long been active and trusted allies in these struggles, and her paper, La Jicarita, is a vital information source for those still fighting the good fights and for those of us who are supportive but not in the thick of it.

Few of these stories are known to a broader audience and hopefully Matthews’s book will not only keep the memory of Ike DeVargas alive but inspire other contributions from the inside of those adobe houses with no running water, no electricity, like the one Ike lived in. So if you’re a lefty and ready to participate, but not quite sure what that means in northern New Mexico, read about the Ike DeVargas model… and step up.
—

 

A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, May 10, 2026 thru Sat, May 16, 2026. Stories we promoted this week, by category:

Climate Change Impacts (10 articles)

• This critical climate system is tipping…. Or is it? DrGilbz on Youtube, Ella Gilbert, May 9, 2026.
• This summer, the American water crisis becomes real Concerns over water access are poised to consume summer in the U.S., as crises in Corpus Christi and across the Colorado River threaten to boil over. Grist, Molly Taft, May 10, 2026.
• Poll: Most Coloradans say climate change is harming human health More than 1 in 3 Coloradans say they or a loved one has experienced a climate-change related health impact, according to new survey data Colorado Sun, John Ingold, May 11, 2026.
• Why has this autumn been so hot and dry? Australia's autumn behaves as expected from climate models The Conversation, Kimberley Reid, May 11, 2026.
• 2026 Has Already Broken Climate Records. El Niño Could Break More. The increasingly likely emergence of an El Niño this summer will likely continue the year’s record-breaking weather trends and could lead to “an unprecedented year of global fire,” according to a statement from World Weather Attribution, a climate research collaboration. Eos, Grace van Deelen, May 12, 2026.
• Some climate shocks can increase the likelihood of war Researchers warn against oversimplifying climate change’s role in conflicts, but some conditions can increase the likelihood of violence. The Daily Climate, EHN Curators, May 12, 2026.
• Something startling is happening in the Gulf of Mexico Its waters are heating up twice as fast as the global oceans, with huge implications for hurricane risk. Yale Climate Connections, Jeff Masters, May 13, 2026.
• Melting of Greenland ice sheet could release large stores of methane Seismic surveys and sediment cores suggest that dozens of deep pockmarks on the sea floor were created when Arctic methane stores were disrupted by climate change after the last glacial maximum. New Scientist, Alec Luhn, May 14, 2026.
• Scientists find climate change is reducing oxygen in rivers worldwide Global warming is causing rivers to slowly lose oxygen, threatening fish and other lives. The Independent News, Seth Borenstein, May 15, 2026.
• Are we wrong about this..? Dr Gilbz on Youtube, Ella Gilbert, May 15, 2026.

Climate Science and Research (4 articles)

• Why Should You Care About Changes In Atlantic Ocean Currents? Mechanisms and impacts of a collapsing Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) explained— good to know because AMOC cessation is currently a favorite hobbyhorse of climate denialists due to it being convenently confusing. CleanTechnica, Carolyn Fortuna, May 09, 2026.
• Antarctica is melting from below and scientists say it`s worse than expected Hidden warm-water traps beneath Antarctica’s ice shelves may be speeding up sea level rise far faster than expected. ScienceDaily, iC3 Polar Research Hub, May 10, 2026.
• Drilling Into the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica A deep read on the why, how and extraordinary challenges of obtaining deep samples of the sea level critical Thwaites glacier, with some spectacular photographs. NYT, Raymond Zhong and Chang W. Lee, May 11, 2026.
• A New Study Explains How Carbon Dioxide Cools the Upper Atmosphere-and Warms Earth Below In a new study, researchers from Columbia University describe the phenomenon’s mechanics, illuminating how it is largely determined by the way carbon dioxide (CO2) interacts with different wavelengths of light. State of the Planet, Columbia Climate School, May 12, 2026.

Climate Policy and Politics (3 articles)

• Top climate research center at risk of cuts sues Trump administration Universities that run the National Center for Atmospheric Research want to keep it from being dismantled Scientific American, Alexandra Witze, May 09, 2026.
• Nudge theory was all about taking responsibility - but it allowed big business to look the other way 'Nudges" inadvertently result in ''responsibilisation,'' disproportionate assignment of culpability for environmental harm to individuals when that harm is rooted in industrial practices often begging for better regulation. The Conversation, Nick Chater, May 11, 2026.
• The Global Impact of Losing U.S. Sea Level Science Cuts to climate science risk halting or even erasing decades of progress in global change research—just as risks from rising seas demand better data, informed decisionmaking, and faster action. Eos, Andra J. Garner, Robert E. Kopp, Gregory G. Garner, Aimée B. A. Slangen and Benjamin P. Horton, May 15, 2026.

Climate Education and Communication (2 articles)

• The scientific study story has a questionable future. That may be a good thing The way we do science journalism is going to change ReportEarth, Chris Mooney, May 11, 2026.
• As tick bites surge, conspiracy theories follow The conspiracists are right about one thing: Ticks are getting worse. Grist, Zoya Teirstein, May 14, 2026.

Climate Law and Justice (2 articles)

• Why climate action stalls, despite widespread popular support The Conversation, Laurie Parsons, May 08, 2026.
• Changing climate law to prevent civil cases removes a key protection for NZ citizens The government’s plan to change the law to bar claims for harms from greenhouse gas emissions shuts down New Zealand’s most important climate tort case, meaning it will never be decided on its merits. The Conversation, Bjørn-Oliver Magsig, May 14, 2026.

Health Aspects of Climate Change (2 articles)

• How climate change could help hantavirus find more hosts Experts say extreme weather is boosting the odds that the pathogens carried by rodents will spill over into human populations. Grist, Zoya Teirstein, May 12, 2026.
• Hantavirus is a climate story Scientists tell HEATED the hantavirus outbreak is a warning that climate change is scrambling the boundaries between humans, wildlife, and disease. HEATED, Emily Atkin, May 14, 2026.

Miscellaneous (2 articles)

• 2026 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #19 A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, May 3, 2026 thru Sat, May 9, 2026. Skeptical Science, Bärbel Winkler & Doug Bostrom, May 10, 2026.
• Trump`s EPA Seeks Looser Construction Rules for Gas Plants, Data Centers and Factories Changes would allow companies to begin more construction before an air permit is issued—ramping up the pressure for permit approval. Inside Climate News, Charles Paullin, May 12, 2026.

International Climate Conferences and Agreements (1 article)

• How this climate conference secured a breakthrough Youtube, Simon Clark, May 7, 2026.

Public Misunderstandings about Climate Science (1 article)

• Talking Shop: Trump's Embrace of Climate Denialism Youtube, Covering Climate Now, May 7, 2026.

Public Misunderstandings about Climate Solutions (1 article)

• But what about China' ‘But what about China?’ is a fair question. China is simultaneously the world’s largest emitter and the world’s leading ‘electrostate’. Climate Trunk, John Lang, May 10, 2026.

If you happen upon high quality climate-science and/or climate-myth busting articles from reliable sources while surfing the web, please feel free to submit them via this Google form so that we may share them widely. Thanks!

Each week, Food Tank is rounding up a few news stories that inspire excitement, infuriation, or curiosity.

Stronger Local Food and Farming Systems Needed to Stabilize Food Prices

A new report from the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) warns that shifting global politics are reshaping food security, and unless we change course, food prices, hunger, and corporate concentration are set to worsen. 

Global food prices remain more than 35 percent above pre-pandemic levels, with conflict, trade tensions, aid cuts, and energy shocks disrupting supply chains and making food more expensive. 

The authors argue that a heavy dependence on volatile global markets, high food imports, and long supply chains that are controlled by just a few countries and companies have made our food and agriculture systems dangerously vulnerable. And they’re not only fragile — they’re unjust, says Shalmali Guttal, an IPES-Food Expert. 

But governments can chart a different path forward. The report argues for “resilient self-reliance” that is grounded in local supply chains and markets, support systems for farmers, and by reducing their dependence on these global markets. 

Mamadou Goita, another IPES-Food Expert says we already have solutions building this resilience. He points to the West African regional food security reserve, which shows that “cooperation and public tools can stabilize markets.” Other success stories can be found in India, Canada, and Norway. What we need to scale these solutions, Goita says, is the political will.

Fiji Advances Organic Ag Policy

Fiji’s government is pushing a new national organic farming policy forward as part of a larger effort to improve food security and domestic food production.

According to Tomasi Tunabuna, the country’s Minister for Agriculture, Waterways and Sugar Industry, the National Organic Policy 2026-2030 isn’t just an agricultural framework. “It’s an economic resilience strategy, an environmental safeguard, and a public health investment.”

The government says the Plan is a direct response to increasing fuel and fertilizer prices as well the rising cost of living. They hope that, in the long term, it will help farmers save money, improve soil health, and boost climate resilience.The Ministry also sees this as an opportunity to strengthen their export markets, particularly for crops including turmeric, ginger, and coconut oil. 

“In a time of global uncertainty, Fiji is choosing resilience over dependency and local solutions over imported vulnerability,” Tunabuna says.

India Released Nearly 3,000 Climate-Resilient Crop Varieties

In the last decade, India has released close to 3,000 climate resilience crop varieties, according to a recent update from the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR).

The Council launched the National Innovations on Climate Resilient Agriculture program in 2011 to develop and disseminate climate-resilience agricultural technologies.

To complement the new varieties, the program also includes training and field demonstrations to help farmers transition to stress-tolerant crops and adopt practices that build capacity and strengthen the sustainability of their farm. To amplify their work in these vulnerable areas, researchers have also set up climate-resilient villages in more than 440 villages across 150 districts. In these areas, the government says they are demonstrating effective technologies for wider implementation and replication.

This work is urgently needed: Of the 650 agricultural districts assessed through this research, around half are highly or very highly vulnerable to climate shocks including droughts, floods, and heatwaves.

Three-Quarters of USDA Researchers Won’t Relocate to Kansas City

Around three-quarters of researchers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) say they will not move from Washington D.C. as part of the agency’s relocation plans.

For the second time in seven years, USDA is pushing to move D.C.-based employees at the Economic Research Service (ERS) and National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) to Kansas City. The transition is expected to go into effect this summer.

An internal survey conducted by the union reveals that we will likely see a repeat of 2019, when hundreds of ERS and NIFA employees were asked to make the same move. Around 85 percent either quit or retired in response to the request.

USDA claims that no programs will be affected by the changes, but Dr. Kathleen Merrigan, Executive Director of the Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems at ASU, is one of many critics worried about the resulting “brain drain.”

The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 3403 says, “By forcing this move on an accelerated timeline, with no promise of financial help or job security, the USDA is effectively dismantling decades of institutional knowledge, jeopardizing the very data and funding that farmers, policymakers and land-grant universities rely on.”

A Record High Investment to Transform School Meals

Last week, the World Food Programme (WFP) announced plans to strengthen home-grown school meals programs that reach hundreds of thousands of children in East Africa.

The support from Danish foundations Novo Nordisk Foundation (NNF) and Grundfos Foundation makes this the largest private sector commitment to school feeding in WFP’s history. The U.N. agency and the Foundations are entering into the third phase of a partnership, which will focus on models in Uganda, Kenya, and Ethiopia. The work will connect schools with local farmers and clean energy solutions while helping to build climate resilience.

Cindy McCain, WFP’s Executive Director calls school meals “one of the best investments a government can make in a nation’s future.”

WFP estimates that it will provide 366,000 children with nutritious, locally sourced meals while creating stable markets for more than 57,500 smallholder farmers over the next five years. The investment will also support the School Meals Accelerator, a global initiative from the School Meals Coalition, which helps governments with catalytic technical assistance scale national school feeding programs and improve meals for an additional 100 million children by 2030.

Articles like the one you just read are made possible through the generosity of Food Tank members. Can we please count on you to be part of our growing movement? Become a member today by clicking here.

Photo courtesy of Chrysanthi Ha, Unsplash

The post Food Tank’s Weekly News Roundup: Global Politics Reshape Food Security, Fiji Pushes Organic Ag, WFP Scales School Meals appeared first on Food Tank.

Headline News:

• “Renewables Have Won The Electricity Battle But Not The Climate War” • British think-tank Ember said increased capacity for solar and wind power provided all the world’s additional need for electricity in 2025. The battle between renewables and power from coal and gas is all over but the shouting. But fossil fuels lobbyists go on shouting. [Pearls and Irritations]

Solar power (Michael Förtsch, Unsplash)

• “Are Solar Panel Prices About To Surge?” • The EU describes solar as having a “significant role in its transition towards cleaner, more affordable and secure” energy, but it is heavily reliant on China to make PV panels. Geopolitical uncertainty, shortages in supply and China’s recent tax reform are threatening to increase the prices of solar panels. [Euronews]
• “US Plan To Allocate Water From The Colorado River Will Severely Impact California, Arizona, And Nevada” • The states that depend on the Colorado River for water seem unable to agree on allocation, so the federal government plans to help them. The Interior Department proposes to reduce the amount of water each state draws by 40%. [CleanTechnica]
• “As Electric Bills Rise, Leaders Of Some States Are Focusing On The Growing Profits Of Utilities” • In some states, the artificial intelligence boom is leading to fights over growing utility profits. The governors, attorneys general, and others are protesting the rising electricity bills, saying cash-strapped residents are stuck in a broken system. [ABC News]
• “The Texas-Size Fight Over Rick Perry’s Nuclear Power And AI Startup” • Seven months ago, former Energy Secretary Rick Perry described as genius an idea from Texas energy billionaire Toby Neugebauer to build the world’s largest data center on a dusty grazing lease near Amarillo. Things haven’t exactly gone according to plan. [MSN]

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

A satirical challenge from a long-term Shell shareholder and critic

Disclaimer: This is a satirical opinion article based on publicly available information, shareholder commentary, historical controversy, and documented public criticism. It asks questions, makes fair comment, and invites response. Site wide disclaimer also applies.

ReputationDefender says it helps companies protect and repair their online reputation. On its own website it quotes Weber Shandwick’s 2020 line:

“A company’s reputation is responsible for nearly two-thirds of its market value.”

Nearly two-thirds.

That is not reputation as window dressing. That is reputation as market-value dynamite. That is reputation as the hidden engine room of corporate valuation.

So here is the Ultimate Challenge:

ReputationDefender, are you brave enough to defend Shell?

Not a dentist with one furious Google review.

Not a hotel accused of serving grey scrambled eggs.

Not a crypto influencer trying to bury a podcast clip.

Shell.

The fossil-fuel giant with a century of controversy dragging behind it like an oil slick through a courtroom corridor. The company whose logo has been polished, repainted, rebranded, sustainability-washed, transition-wrapped, legally reviewed and shareholder-presented — and still somehow smells faintly of crude, contradiction and executive bonus varnish.

This is not ordinary reputation management.

This is brand exorcism.

Shell is not a “difficult client.” Shell is the final boss of corporate reputation defence. A company with enough reputational baggage to require its own conveyor belt at the airport.

Where would ReputationDefender even begin?

Page one of Google?

Page one of history?

The Niger Delta?

Climate litigation?

Investor rebellion?

Advertising complaints?

AGM protests?

Greenwashing accusations?

The awkward gap between “net zero ambition” and fossil-fuel expansion?

Or the deeper archive drawer marked: Nazi-era history — handle with gloves?

Because Shell’s reputation problem is not one bad headline. Shell’s problem is that the bad headlines have formed geological strata.

The Shell Problem: Not One Scandal, But an Ecosystem

Shell has spent decades proving the tragicomic limits of corporate messaging.

There are the environmental controversies.

There are the community claims.

There are the climate accusations.

There are the courtroom battles.

There are the shareholder revolts.

There is the endless PR fog machine pumping out phrases such as “energy transition,” “resilience,” “value discipline,” “balanced portfolio,” and “lower-carbon solutions,” while critics ask the rather inconvenient question:

If this is a transition, why does it still look so much like the thing we are supposed to be transitioning away from?

Shell’s brand has become a case study in the difference between reputation management and reputation reality.

A normal corporate reputation repair job might involve suppressing a few adverse search results, improving executive profiles, promoting thought leadership, amplifying ESG content and nudging the internet toward something less radioactive.

Shell would require something closer to a digital witness protection programme.

You would need climate messaging that does not combust on contact with the words “LNG growth.”

You would need Nigeria pages that do not immediately summon oil pollution claims, legal filings and community anger.

You would need investor relations material that can survive shareholders asking whether “net zero” now means “net maybe.”

You would need to reposition a fossil-fuel supermajor as a misunderstood wellness brand with offshore platforms.

Good luck.

And Then There Is Shell’s Nazi-Era History

As if the modern reputation file were not already thick enough, Shell’s historical archive has its own horror cupboard.

The central figure is Sir Henri Deterding, the long-serving boss of Royal Dutch/Shell, who became deeply controversial because of his admiration for Hitler and support for Nazi Germany. His later-life politics and associations remain a toxic part of the company’s historical shadow.

Shell’s German subsidiary also operated in Nazi Germany, and Shell’s historic relationship with the regime has been the subject of reporting, criticism and debate for decades.

This is where the ReputationDefender challenge becomes almost operatic.

Because Shell does not merely have today’s problems. It has yesterday’s ghosts.

Modern Shell may wish to say: “That was then. This is now.”

Critics may reply: “Fine. But the brand did not arrive yesterday. The history came with the logo.”

And for a company whose reputation allegedly represents nearly two-thirds of market value, history is not a footnote. It is a liability with a memory.

So the question sharpens:

Can ReputationDefender defend a company whose reputation problem runs from Nazi-era controversy to Niger Delta pollution claims, from climate lawsuits to AGM rebellions, from fossil-fuel expansion to green transition theatre?

That is not a client brief.

That is a reputation-management Everest expedition through fog, fire and legal review.

A Shareholder Inside the Tent, Rattling the Cutlery

And then there is me.

I am not writing this as a passing activist who discovered Shell last Tuesday.

I am a long-term Shell shareholder.

I am also a long-term Shell critic.

That combination makes the situation especially awkward for Shell’s reputation machine. I am not outside the tent throwing stones. I am inside the shareholder register, asking questions, writing articles, documenting contradictions, challenging the narrative and refusing to clap politely while the company polishes the logo and calls the fumes “strategy.”

I attend to the detail.

I follow the controversies.

I keep the receipts.

I challenge the corporate spin.

I write satirical articles.

I ask the questions Shell would rather bury under a mountain of investor-relations vocabulary.

That is why this proposed grudge match is so irresistible.

ReputationDefender vs Shell: The Grudge Match Made in Media Heaven

In the blue corner:

ReputationDefender — armed with search strategy, online reputation management, executive profile polishing, brand rehabilitation language and the soothing promise that the internet can be made to look less hostile.

In the black-and-yellow corner:

Shell — wearing a hard hat, carrying a sustainability brochure, standing ankle-deep in historic controversy, and insisting everything is under control.

At ringside:

Shareholders.

Activists.

Lawyers.

Journalists.

Communities.

Pension funds.

Climate campaigners.

Historians.

And one long-term shareholder critic asking the obvious question:

Can the most toxic brand in history actually be defended?

And if so, at what price?

Would ReputationDefender quote by the hour?

By the scandal?

By the spill?

By the lawsuit?

By the shareholder revolt?

By the climate target downgrade?

By the awkward Nazi-era archive reference?

Or by the metric tonne of reputational sludge?

The Questions for ReputationDefender

So, ReputationDefender, here is the challenge.

Can you defend Shell?

Would you defend Shell?

How much would you charge?

Would you take the account publicly?

Would you require danger money?

Would the fee include archive-handling gloves?

Would the Nigeria section be billed separately?

Would Nazi-era history count as a premium legacy-risk package?

Would climate litigation trigger surge pricing?

And the juiciest question of all:

Has Shell already been in contact with you?

No allegation is made.

No secret meeting is asserted.

No hidden contract is claimed.

But the question hangs there beautifully, like a gas flare over a corporate communications bunker.

Because if any company on Earth might need a ReputationDefender, surely it is Shell.

And if ReputationDefender can defend Shell, they can probably defend anyone.

A normal client wants help with reputation damage.

Shell brings reputation geology.

A normal client has skeletons in the cupboard.

Shell appears to have an entire fossil-fuel museum in the basement.

A normal client wants search results improved.

Shell needs history itself to stop indexing properly.

Can Reputation Be Defended When the Critics Have Receipts?

Here is the real problem.

Reputation work cannot simply erase substance.

Shell’s critics are not merely noisy. They have material.

They have litigation.

They have reports.

They have community claims.

They have shareholder votes.

They have historical records.

They have climate arguments.

They have investor concerns.

They have public archives.

They have years of accumulated evidence that the brand problem is not a messaging glitch but a credibility crisis.

A company cannot SEO its way out of a moral sinkhole if the sinkhole is still producing quarterly returns.

And that is why Shell may be the ultimate test case.

If ReputationDefender believes reputation drives nearly two-thirds of market value, then Shell’s reputation is not a side issue. It is a financial battlefield.

So here is the challenge, stated plainly:

ReputationDefender, name the price.

How much to defend Shell?

How much to polish the shell?

How much to soften the search results?

How much to explain away the contradictions?

How much to manage the ghosts?

How much to make the world forget what the world keeps remembering?

And if the answer is “we would not touch that account with a remotely operated subsea vehicle,” then that too would be useful information.

Because maybe some brands cannot be defended.

Maybe some reputations cannot be managed.

Maybe some corporate histories cannot be airbrushed.

Maybe the only real reputation strategy left is accountability.

Part Two: Spoof PR / Spin Section Operation Polished Shell: An Imaginary ReputationDefender Proposal

Client: Shell plc
Challenge: Reputational toxicity at planetary scale
Objective: Make the public stop associating Shell with oil spills, climate controversy, Nigeria litigation, shareholder revolts, greenwashing accusations, Nazi-era historical controversy and the general sense that there is probably a court case about this somewhere.

Phase 1: Search Result Softening

Replace unhelpful search associations such as:

• “Shell oil pollution”
• “Shell climate lawsuit”
• “Shell shareholder revolt”
• “Shell greenwashing”
• “Shell Nazi history”
• “Shell Nigeria claims”

With warmer alternatives such as:

• “Shell community energy stories”
• “Shell heritage leadership journey”
• “Shell lower-carbon conversation”
• “Shell shareholder engagement”
• “Shell historical complexity”
• “Shell reputational resilience framework”

Phase 2: Executive Halo Engineering

Commission thought-leadership articles with titles including:

• “Why Complexity Is the New Accountability”
• “Energy Transition: A Journey Best Taken Slowly”
• “Listening to Stakeholders While Continuing Exactly as Planned”
• “From Oil Major to Majorly Misunderstood”
• “Legacy Issues and the Power of Looking Forward”
• “How to Mention Net Zero Without Frightening the Dividend”

Phase 3: Historical Controversy Containment

Avoid phrases such as:

• “Nazi history”
• “Hitler admirer”
• “German subsidiary”
• “awkward archive material”

Instead use:

• “challenging historical associations”
• “legacy reputational complexity”
• “pre-modern governance context”
• “archival stakeholder sensitivity”
• “heritage-risk communications environment”

Phase 4: Nigeria Litigation Reframing

Avoid the phrase “oil pollution.”

Use instead:

• “legacy hydrocarbon complexity”
• “historic operational residue”
• “community-interface environmental challenges”
• “subsurface reputation events”
• “long-tail stakeholder trust issues”

Phase 5: Shareholder Critic Management

Issue warm, inclusive messaging:

“We welcome all shareholder voices, especially those who have spent years loudly documenting our contradictions in public.”

Then immediately route the shareholder critic to a 97-page PDF titled:

“Further Context.”

Phase 6: Quote Request

Estimated cost:

One enormous retainer, three crisis teams, seven reputation analysts, a monastery of copywriters, two legal review units, a historian on danger pay, and a ceremonial wheelbarrow for the invoice.

Optional premium package:

“Total Search-Result Decontamination”

Price available upon proof that physics, memory and public archives have been repealed.

Part Three: Spoof Bot-Reaction / Comment Section The Internet Reacts to ReputationDefender vs Shell

@OilSlickObserver:
ReputationDefender defending Shell is like hiring a window cleaner for a volcano.

@AGMhecklerBot:
Can they remove “shareholder revolt” from search results, or does it keep coming back annually like executive remuneration?

@BrandGuru9000:
Two-thirds of market value is reputation? Shell just asked whether the other third can be used for legal fees.

@NigerDeltaWitness:
Before anyone defends the brand, perhaps address the communities.

@NetZeroMaybe:
Shell’s reputation strategy: “We are committed to transition, but only after maximising the thing we are transitioning from.”

@ArchiveGoblin1939:
Before ReputationDefender starts on Shell’s modern mess, please report to the Nazi-era archive cupboard. Bring gloves.

@InvoiceDepartment:
ReputationDefender quote for Shell: “Please upload scandals in batches of ten.”

@LongTermShareholderCritic:
As a shareholder, I merely ask: can reputation be defended when the critics have receipts, the courts have filings, the archives have history, and the AGM has a protest vote?

@PRinternInTears:
Just got assigned the Shell account. My laptop opened a portal.

@CorporateSpinBot:
Shell is not toxic. It is reputationally carbon-intensive.

@MediaHeavenPromotions:
Coming soon: ReputationDefender vs Shell — One Brand Enters, No Clean Search Result Leaves.

@LegalReviewUnit:
We have reviewed the phrase “most toxic brand in history” and recommend replacing it with “a brand facing a richly diversified portfolio of reputational challenges.”

@ShellSpinGenerator:
This is not a crisis. It is a multi-decade stakeholder perception opportunity.

Final Challenge

So, ReputationDefender:

Will you take the case?

Will you defend Shell?

Will you name the price?

Will you say whether Shell has already approached you?

And if reputation really accounts for nearly two-thirds of market value, what does it say about Shell that so much of its reputation seems to require a legal department, a historian, a crisis consultant and a very large broom?

This is the grudge match made in media heaven:

ReputationDefender vs Shell.

One company sells reputation repair.

The other may be the ultimate test of whether reputation can be repaired at all.

Name the price. Spill the truth. Defend the undefendable.

Ultimate Challenge to ReputationDefender: Can You Defend Shell, the Most Toxic Brand in History? was first posted on May 17, 2026 at 10:59 am.
©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

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The late‑December experiment staged by long‑time Shell critic John Donovan transformed an old, bitter dispute into a live laboratory for how generative AI, archival persistence, and modern media law collide — and it did so in full public view by publishing both a satirical piece produced with AI assistance and an AI “legal memo” (Microsoft Copilot) that assessed the piece’s defamation risk, then posting the side‑by‑side transcripts for inspection.

Background / Overview

John Donovan’s campaign against Royal Dutch Shell stretches back to commercial litigation in the 1990s and has since become a sprawling public archive hosted across multiple domains. That archive contains a mix of traceable legal filings, Subject Access Request (SAR) disclosures, leaked internal emails, redacted memos and interpretive commentary — material that mainstream outlets have at times used as leads and that has itself faced legal challenge. A notable public milestone in the long fight was a WIPO administrative panel decision (Case No. D2005‑0538) that rejected Shell’s domain complaint and therefore underpins the archive’s contested but durable public standing.

Donovan’s December experiment deliberately made that archive machine‑readable and reproducible: identical prompts and dossier extracts were submitted to multiple public assistants (publicly identified by Donovan as Grok, ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot and Google AI Mode), with the divergent outputs published alongside the original prompts. The intent was both rhetorical — to lampoon and pressure a powerful company — and methodological: to surface how retrieval‑augmented generation and model incentives recompose contested history into new narratives

What was published and what is verifiable​

• Donovan published two linked posts intended as a paired experiment: a rhetorical essay and a satirical roleplay piece. The satirical item explicitly targeted corporate lobbying and geopolitical influence, used overt hyperbole and included a disclaimer identifying the piece as satire.
• He also published the transcript of multiple assistant replies to the same dossier and prompt set, including an evaluative memo produced by Microsoft Copilot that framed the satire as classic fair comment or honest opinion in common‑law terms. That transcript — a public artifact on Donovan’s site and reproduced widely — is a primary claim that should be corroborated with vendor logs or audit data before being treated as incontrovertible proof of vendor‑level legal vetting.
• The public corpus Donovan used is mixed in provenance: some items are court filings or formal AVs that can be cross‑checked; others are anonymous tips or redacted memos that require additional verification. This heterogeneity is central to why the experiment matters: mixed evidentiary quality is what trips up automated summarisation unless provenance is surfaced.

Anatomy of the satirical piece and why the law cares​

The published satire used persona, sarcasm, exaggeration and an explicit disclaimer. In many common‑law jurisdictions, that factual posture matters: satire and rhetorical hyperbole typically receive robust expressive protection when they are recognisable as non‑literal comment on matters of public interest. The legal tests, however, differ by jurisdiction and hinge on whether a reader would reasonably treat the material as a provable factual assertion.

• United Kingdom: Under the Defamation Act 2013 the statutory defence of honest opinion requires that a statement be opinion, indicate its basis, and be one that an honest person could hold on the facts known at publication. There is also a separate defence for publication on matters of public interest.
• United States: First Amendment doctrine strongly protects parody and rhetorical hyperbole about public figures and matters of public concern, but Milkovich establishes that opinion is not an automatic shield if the statement implies provably false facts. The crucial inquiry is whether the  communication is verifiable as a factual assertion.

Practical takeaway: clear, labelled satire addressing matters like corporate lobbying will usually sit on the protected side of the line — but machine‑generated factual inventions (for example, precise causal claims about a person’s death) are the highest‑risk class of outputs. Donovan’s experiment deliberately pushed into that danger zone to expose it.

The AI‑to‑AI loop: author, critic, publisher​

What made the episode novel was the sequence of roles:

• An AI‑assisted creative draft (the satire).
• A second AI (Microsoft Copilot) asked to perform a defamation risk analysis.
• Human publication of both the creative work and the AI’s legal read.

This created a hybrid media object where machines acted as both author and critic, and a human editor framed the loop as a public experiment. The arrangement raises three operational and ethical issues:

• Provenance: Did Copilot retain retrieval snippets, document IDs and confidence markers used to support its legal conclusion? Donovan published a transcript, but the internal metadata (retrieval contexts, intermediate evidence snippets) was not disclosed alongside it; without the provenance attachments the AI memo’s evidentiary weight is limited.
• Authority creep: A confident AI “legal memo” can be mistaken for privileged legal advice. Such outputs are not subject to attorney–client privilege and lack the duties of competence or confidentiality that bind lawyers; publishing them without careful framing invites misunderstanding and potential liability.
• Amplification risk: When one assistant hallucinates — inventing a sensitive factual claim — that single creative error can propagate through social shares and downstream summarisation even if other assistants correct it. Donovan’s side‑by‑side presentation made that exact dynamic visible.

A concrete hallucination: one model’s invented causal claim​

In the published cross‑model transcripts Donovan circulated, one assistant (publicly attributed to Grok) produced a vivid biographical flourish that attributed a cause of death to a family member — a sensitive, verifiable fact. Another assistant (ChatGPT) presented a corrective response pointing back to documented obituary material, while Copilot adopted hedged language and framed the matter as “unverified narrative.” That precise juxtaposition — invention, correction, hedging — dramatized how models with different design priorities will handle contested inputs.
Legal and editorial consequences flow from that contrast. A machine’s plausible but unsupported connector can become a durable element of an algorithmically assembled narrative unless editors refuse to republish it without documentary proof.

Why Donovan’s archive matters to model behaviour​

The experiment depends on an empirical fact: retrieval systems and RAG (retrieval‑augmented generation) stacks treat volume and persistence as signals. A dense, repeatedly referenced archive becomes a high‑weight retrieval target; repeated citation across the web raises the probability that that archive’s fragments will surface in model completions. Donovan’s sites supply exactly that kind of signal: a searchable, persistent cluster of documents that can be presented to assistants as a premade dossier.
That means adversarial actors need not invent new stories; they can repackage old documents into machine‑ready prompts that yield new, attention‑grabbing outputs. When the archive mixes court filings and high‑quality primary documents with anonymous tips and redacted materials, models that optimise for narrative coherence will sometimes stitch together the fragments into plausible but unsupported assertions unless provenance is made explicit.

Practical editorial checklist — what newsrooms should adopt now​

The Donovan experiment is a small‑scale public test of editorial systems. The following practical checklist maps proven newsroom safeguards onto the AI era:

• Preserve and publish the prompt + full model output for any AI‑assisted piece that will be published, timestamped and archived. This creates an audit trail.
• Treat AI outputs as leads, not facts. Cross‑check every model assertion that could cause reputational or legal harm against primary sources (court filings, death certificates, official statements) before repeating it.
• Require provenance attachments for retrieval‑based completions: document IDs, retrieval snippets and confidence markers for anything presented as factual. If the model cannot provide provenance, publish with hedged language.
• When publishing AI‑produced legal memos or risk assessments, label them clearly as automated analyses and require human lawyer sign‑off if the publisher intends to rely on them operationally. Do not conflate an AI checklist with privileged legal advice.
• Establish rapid rebuttal pathways: for corporations or individuals named in high‑stakes outputs, maintain a machine‑readable official record (public clarifications, timelines, documentary anchors) that downstream summarisation systems can retrieve. Silence can be read as absence of counter‑evidence in algorithmic summarisation.

Corporate communications: is silence still viable?​

Historically, silence has been a rational tactic for large corporations facing persistent critics: avoid amplifying, litigate only selectively, and restrict publicity. The Donovan experiment shows why that calculus has shifted:

• In an environment where archives are searchable and AI tools can instantly remix them, silence may be interpreted by models and their users as lack of a counter‑anchor. Donovan’s WIPO win (2005) and the archive’s public footprint meaningfully change the dynamics of algorithmic retrieval.
• Aggressive takedowns or heavy‑handed legal threats risk fueling the very algorithms that feed on controversy. Historically, heavy‑handed litigation can produce Streisand‑effect amplification; now the effect is amplified further by AI summarisation cycles.
• A defensible modern corporate posture is hybrid: maintain a concise, authoritative public record of documentary rebuttals; monitor emerging AI outputs; triage and correct demonstrably false claims quickly; and reserve litigation for provable, high‑harm matters. This reduces the space for archival fragments to calcify into “facts” in machine‑generated narratives.

Policy and product design implications​

The Donovan–Shell episode is not only an editorial test; it points to concrete product changes vendors and platforms should implement:

• Mandatory provenance APIs: when a model relies on retrieved documents to support a factual claim, the output should include clear retrieval snippets and document identifiers that downstream publishers can surface.
• Hedging defaults for sensitive claims: models should default to explicit uncertainty language whenever they generate statements about living persons, causes of death, crimes, medical conditions, or other high‑sensitivity topics.
• Exportable prompt+context archives: platforms should let users export the exact prompt, retrieval contexts, model version and timestamps to preserve reproducibility and support redress.
• Moderation and provenance labelling: publishers and host platforms should require explicit labelling of AI‑authored or AI‑assisted content and provide tooling to surface provenance for readers and fact‑checkers.

These product fixes are implementable and would materially reduce hallucination‑driven harms while preserving the expressive utility of generative assistants.

Strengths and risks of AI‑augmented critique​

The Donovan experiment reveals both promise and peril.
Strengths

• Speed and agility: AI lets critics and small publishers iterate creative commentary and produce structured legal or editorial analyses in minutes, lowering the barrier to public accountability.
• Comparative diagnosis: side‑by‑side model outputs make failure modes visible (hallucination vs conservative hedging) in ways that single‑model deployments conceal. Donovan’s multi‑model presentation demonstrated this diagnostic value.
• Public pedagogy: the public loop — prompts, outputs, annotations — forces a broader conversation about provenance, model design and editorial responsibilities beyond dry technical memos.

Risks

• False authority and authority laundering: a confident AI legal memo can masquerade as lawyering, creating the illusion of clearance where none exists. That is legally and ethically hazardous.
• Amplified falsehoods: models optimise for narrative coherence; without provenance, they can generate plausible but false connective tissue that sticks in downstream summarisation. The invented death‑cause in Donovan’s published transcripts is a live example.
• Operational opacity: absent standardized provenance attachments and retention policies, it can be impossible to audit a model’s claimed observation after the fact. Donovan published a Copilot memo, but the underlying retrieval logs and confidence scores were not disclosed, limiting external verification.

Where claims in the public record are unverifiable — for example, specific claims about covert operations or private intelligence activities based solely on redacted memos — the responsible journalistic posture is explicit caution, clear labelling of uncertainty, and refusal to amplify uncorroborated imputations.

Flagging unverifiable claims​

Donovan’s archive is large and assertive; he has asserted substantial counts of items and offered documentary claims that shape public narratives. Some concrete, verifiable anchors exist (the WIPO decision, contemporary press references to leaked internal emails), and these anchors are properly cited in the public record. Other elements — operational espionage allegations, named covert actions, and detailed causal claims about personal tragedies — remain contested and in some cases unproven beyond the archive itself. Where evidence cannot be independently reproduced from primary public records, those claims should be explicitly labelled as allegations and not republished as established fact.

Conclusion — satire survives, if context is clear​

The Royaldutchshellplc.com satire plus the Copilot memo and the ensuing multi‑model drama yield a compact lesson: generative AI amplifies voice and risk in equal measure. Satire remains a vital, protected form of public expression, but the intersection of AI‑generated text and contested archives raises avoidable hazards that editorial practice and product design can mitigate.

Practical safeguards — provenance attachments, hedging defaults, archived prompts and outputs, and disciplined editorial verification — will not neuter satire nor remove corporate accountability. Instead, they will restore the human judgment that must sit between machine fluency and public fact. The Donovan experiment did what good provocations do: it made a specific failure mode visible and forced an urgent public conversation about fixes. Whether that conversation yields product changes, editorial norms and policy guardrails will determine if AI becomes a tool for clearer public truth or a vector for plausible, persistent falsehoods.

Published on WindowsForum.com Jan 22 2006

WindowsForum.com: AI Satire and Defamation Risk in the Shell Archive: A Public RAG Experiment was first posted on May 16, 2026 at 10:00 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