16 February 20
You do. As does everyone in the country - one way or another.
But who will tell the truth about what common, working people need and think? Who will tell the truth about what is happening across the country.
RSN: You know what we will do.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
Founder, Reader Supported News
If you would prefer to send a check:
Reader Supported News
PO Box 2043
Citrus Hts
CA 95611
Reader Supported News
PO Box 2043
Citrus Hts
CA 95611
15 February 20
Charles Pierce | So Trump Basically Confessed to the Ukraine Charges
Charles Pierce, Esquire
Pierce writes: "Not for nothing, America, but basically, he copped to it."
Charles Pierce, Esquire
Pierce writes: "Not for nothing, America, but basically, he copped to it."
EXCERPT:
From CNN:
The reversal came Thursday in a podcast interview Trump did with journalist Geraldo Rivera, who asked, "Was it strange to send Rudy Giuliani to Ukraine, your personal lawyer? Are you sorry you did that?" Trump responded, "No, not at all," and praised Giuliani's role as a "crime fighter."
"Here's my choice: I deal with the Comeys of the world, or I deal with Rudy," Trump said, referring to former FBI Director James Comey. Trump explained that he has "a very bad taste" of the US intelligence community, because of the Russia investigation, so he turned to Giuliani. "So when you tell me, why did I use Rudy, and one of the things about Rudy, number one, he was the best prosecutor, you know, one of the best prosecutors, and the best mayor," Trump said. "But also, other presidents had them. FDR had a lawyer who was practically, you know, was totally involved with government. Eisenhower had a lawyer. They all had lawyers." ...
Trump's past denials came in November, when the House of Representatives was investigating the President's conduct with Ukraine. Multiple US diplomats and national security officials testified that Giuliani was a central figure in the pressure campaign to secure political favors from Ukraine. Trump also mentioned Giuliani in his phone call last summer with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Ah, how wonderfully the elected fools and tools in the Congress must feel this morning. It's only a matter of time before this admission descends into the fog of, "Well, everybody knew that," in the national dialogue, and we all go back to worrying about whether Michael Bloomberg will let us sublet a bit of democracy after he buys it all up. But, even with the firings, and the frog-marches out of the White House, and the attorney general's meddling, this is the best piece of evidence we have yet of El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago's having been "emboldened" when the fools and tools acquitted him in the Senate. Susan Collins will embark on a sternly worded letter just as soon as she can locate a quill...and, perhaps, the odd brain cell or four.
Supporters cheer for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders during a primary night event on February 11, 2020 in Manchester, New Hampshire. (photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
The Passion of Bernie’s Base Is the Path to Victory
Meagan Day, Jacobin
Day writes: "Bernie Sanders’s greatest advantage is his intensely invested support base. Mainstream pundits are trying to reframe that passion as a drawback, but nurturing it is how we win."
READ MORE
Meagan Day, Jacobin
Day writes: "Bernie Sanders’s greatest advantage is his intensely invested support base. Mainstream pundits are trying to reframe that passion as a drawback, but nurturing it is how we win."
READ MORE
An agent with the U.S. Border Patrol Tactical Unit, known as BORTAC, an elite group that functions essentially as the SWAT of Border Patrol. (photo: Adrees Latif/Reuters)
Trump Is Sending Armed Tactical Forces to Arrest Immigrants in Sanctuary Cities
Nicole Narea, Vox
Narea writes: "The Trump administration is reportedly sending armed and highly trained law enforcement units to sanctuary cities across the country to support US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in carrying out immigration raids."
Nicole Narea, Vox
Narea writes: "The Trump administration is reportedly sending armed and highly trained law enforcement units to sanctuary cities across the country to support US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in carrying out immigration raids."
EXCERPT:
As first reported by the New York Times, 100 US Customs and Border Protection officers, including those from the SWAT-like Border Patrol Tactical Unit, will be deployed from February through May across nine sanctuary cities: Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Houston, Boston, New Orleans, and Newark, NJ.
Border Patrol Tactical Unit agents receive special training for high-risk law enforcement activities, including sniper certification and other advanced weapons training. Their primary charge has been tracking down drug traffickers on the US-Mexico border, where violence can often break out, but now they will also be responsible for conducting routine immigration arrests in some of America’s largest cities, according to the Times.
From left, Michael Bloomberg, Snapchat Co-Founder and CEO Evan Spiegel, and Yahoo News Global Anchor Katie Couric. (photo: Michael Kovac/Getty Images)
Mike Bloomberg in 2014:"We Should Hope" the NSA Is "Reading Every Email"
Alex Emmons, The Intercept
Emmons writes: "In October 2014, on a stage in San Francisco in front of a live audience, Katie Couric asked Mike Bloomberg whether he had ever 'sexted on Snapchat.' The former New York City mayor, speaking alongside Snapchat co-founder Evan Spiegel at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit, joked that he 'couldn’t answer the question.'"
Alex Emmons, The Intercept
Emmons writes: "In October 2014, on a stage in San Francisco in front of a live audience, Katie Couric asked Mike Bloomberg whether he had ever 'sexted on Snapchat.' The former New York City mayor, speaking alongside Snapchat co-founder Evan Spiegel at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit, joked that he 'couldn’t answer the question.'"
EXCERPTS:
In recent days, Bloomberg has come under fire for his dramatic expansion of the NYPD’s stop and frisk policy. In audio unearthed from a 2015 speech, Bloomberg can be heard saying that “95 percent” of “murders, murderers, and murder victims” were young male minorities, saying, “You can just take the description, Xerox it, and pass it out to all the cops.” He later tweeted that he apologized for “taking too long to understand” the impact of the policy and misleadingly said that he “cut it back” by 95 percent.
Bloomberg’s record on issues of civil liberties and surveillance is also coming under criticism. Bloomberg was elected mayor shortly after the September 11 attacks, and under his administration, New York City became a testing ground for surveillance and predictive policing technology in the name of counterterrorism. In the course of a few years, for example, the NYPD built a network of 3,000 smart surveillance cameras around downtown and midtown Manhattan — informally known as the “Ring of Steel,” which could reportedly detect dropped bags within minutes.
During Bloomberg’s mayoral tenure, the NYPD used undercover informants to spy on a number of activist groups, including Occupy Wall Street. Most infamously, the NYPD ran a yearslong surveillance program of Muslims in the greater NYC area that involved undercover informants and other types of surveillance. A Pulitzer prize-winning series by the Associated Press revealed that the NYPD’s Intelligence Division not only monitored numerous mosques, it also had a “Demographics Unit” that mapped “ancestries of interest.”
During his last year in office, Bloomberg even went so far as to suggest that American laws and interpretation of the Constitution had to change to accommodate counterterrorism. Following the Boston Marathon bombing in April 2013, and the revelation that the bombers may have intended to strike New York City’s Times Square as well, Bloomberg gave a press conference where he advocated for a shift away from privacy concerns.
“The people who are worried about privacy have a legitimate worry,” Bloomberg said. “But we live in a complex world where you’re going to have to have a level of security greater than you did back in the olden days, if you will. And our laws and our interpretation of the Constitution, I think, have to change.”
Food pantries like this one in Chicago could see a spike in visits as tens of thousands of Cook County residents are at risk of losing food stamps. (photo: Alyssa Schukar/Greater Chicago Food Depository)
"I Think People Will Starve." Experts Are Worried About the Hundreds of Thousands Who Could Lose Food Stamps Come April
Abby Vesoulis, Time
Vesoulis writes: "Kate Maehr’s job is about to get a lot harder. Maehr runs a food bank that’s part of a network distributing nearly 200,000 meals around Chicago every day."
Abby Vesoulis, Time
Vesoulis writes: "Kate Maehr’s job is about to get a lot harder. Maehr runs a food bank that’s part of a network distributing nearly 200,000 meals around Chicago every day."
EXCERPTS:
With so many people getting less help from the government, Maehr knows they will turn to her charity for help. What she doesn’t know is if she’ll be able to feed them. “We don’t have the ability to all of a sudden replace all of those meals that people will lose,” says Maehr, executive director and CEO of the Greater Chicago Food Depository. “I guess in my heart of hearts, the thing that keeps me up at night is that I think people will starve.”
This is not just Chicago’s problem. While Cook County just lost its benefits under existing guidelines, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers SNAP, recently finalized a rule that will make it harder for all states to make concessions for able-bodied adult SNAP beneficiaries in struggling areas going forward. Nearly 700,000 people across the country could lose their food stamps once the new rule kicks in in April, according to USDA’s own estimates.
The tightening of the food stamp program is part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to reduce government spending on social safety net programs. “We need to encourage people by giving them a helping hand, but not allowing it to become an infinitely giving hand,” Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue said in a press release announcing the rule change in December. “In the midst of the strongest economy in a generation, we need everyone who can work, to work.”
Miranda Fenske, a 35-year-old Oswego County, New York resident with severe hearing loss and glaucoma in both eyes, is one of the people who could lose her SNAP benefits. Though Fenske has disabilities, she does not receive disability payments through Social Security and therefore does not qualify for a personal exemption from the SNAP work requirements. She’d like to work in retail, she says, but has had a hard time finding even part-time work. “My hearing loss is pretty bad, nobody wants to hire me,” she said, having requested to communicate via text message due to her hearing impediment. “It’s not fair… what’s about to happen with SNAP. There are way too many people like myself that have disabilities, but are still able to work, but can’t find work.”
Children will also suffer as a result of the new policy, its critics say. Though adults with dependents don’t have to be working to receive food stamps, parents often provide other types of support for their children even if they don’t live with them or claim them as dependents, Maehr points out. “They may not live in the household, but they might provide critical support and resources. If they all of a sudden lose their SNAP benefits, and now there are fewer resources, that will impact children,” she says. “Make no mistake, it will affect children. It will affect people with disabilities, it will affect older adults.”
People stand in ceremony as police arrive to enforce Coastal GasLink’s injunction at Unist’ot’en Healing Centre near Houston, British Columbia, on Monday. (photo: Amber Bracken)
Canada: Protests Go Mainstream as Support for Wet'suwet'en Pipeline Fight Widens
Amber Bracken and Leyland Cecco, Guardian UK
Excerpt: "As armed Canadian police officers advanced through snow towards their camp, the group of Indigenous women was absorbed in a drumming ceremony to honour the spirits of missing and murdered Indigenous women across the country."
Amber Bracken and Leyland Cecco, Guardian UK
Excerpt: "As armed Canadian police officers advanced through snow towards their camp, the group of Indigenous women was absorbed in a drumming ceremony to honour the spirits of missing and murdered Indigenous women across the country."
Protesters have blocked railways and barricaded ports in wave of dissent – and the pressure on Justin Trudeau has increased
s armed Canadian police officers advanced through snow towards their camp, the group of Indigenous women was absorbed in a drumming ceremony to honour the spirits of missing and murdered Indigenous women across the country.
Rows of red dresses hung from a fishing line slung across the road, and from pine and spruce trees in the surrounding forest – each one a memorial to the thousands of Indigenous women killed or disappeared in recent years.
A pair of helicopters buzzed overhead, but on the ground, the women’s voices and drums drowned out the officers as they warned them to leave or face arrest.
“We remained in ceremony – even as the tactical officers surrounded us and began pick off individuals,” said one of the women, Dr Karla Tait.
Set amid dense evergreen forests near the bank of the Wedzin Kwah, or Morice River, the remote cabins at Unist’ot’en camp have become a place of healing for Indigenous youth, who take lessons on trapping and traditional medicines.
But the camp in north-western British Columbia is also the last line of defence in the Wet’suwet’en nation’s fight against a controversial natural gas pipeline.
The long-simmering conflict came to a head this week, as Canada’s national police force deployed helicopters, armed officers and dogs to enforce a court injunction and clear Indigenous activists who had been blocking work crews from the route of the C$6.6bn (US$5bn) Coastal GasLink project.
Twenty-eight people were arrested by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, including three Wet’suwet’en matriarchs – Tait, Freda Huson and Brenda Michell.
“I felt overwhelmed with sadness, and pain over the fact that we were being removed from our territory,” said Tait, remembering the moment she was escorted past the fluttering red dresses towards a police vehicle. She made sure to touch each dress as she left.
But she and the other “land defenders” remain defiant. Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs, who oversee 22,000 sq km of territory, have stubbornly opposed the project and remain locked in a battle with the courts, the pipeline company – and the government of Justin Trudeau.
And in recent days, their fight has been taken up by other groups across the country.
For more than a week, members of the Tyendinaga Mohawk have blocked freight and commuter rail traffic in Ontario, in support of the Wet’suwet’en. Elsewhere, protestors have blocked roads, barricaded access to shipping ports and occupied the offices of elected officials in a wave of dissent.
Late on Thursday, Canadian National Railway, the country’s largest freight operator, said it was shutting down its operations in the east of the country due to the continuing blockade, and warned of temporary layoffs. Soon after, Via Rail, which operates much of Canada’s passenger rail service, said its entire service would be suspended until further notice.
Climate action groups have also taken up the cause of the Wet’suwet’en, seeing their fight as part of a broader one against resource extraction projects in the country.
The demonstrations have piled pressure on Canada’s prime minister, who has vaunted his commitment to diversity and tackling the deep-rooted inequities facing Indigenous peoples.
“Trudeau has gone to the United Nations to shed tears about the history of Canada’s relationship with indigenous people,” said Tait. “And on the other hand, he’s essentially authorizing the use of force against our unarmed people for upholding our rights.”
This week, Trudeau has expressed his support for peaceful protest – but also criticised the rail blockades.
Amid pleas from business leaders for a swift end to the crisis, other politicians have been even more outspoken in their condemnation.
In Alberta – a province whose economy relies on oil and gas – the conservative premier, Jason Kenney, has warned that the current unrest is a “dress rehearsal” for future opposition to fossil-fuel based projects.
“This is not about Indigenous people. It’s not about carbon emissions. It’s about a hard-left ideology that is, frankly, opposed to the entire modern industrial economy,” said Kenney. “It’s about time that our police services demonstrated that this is a country that respects the rule of law.”
And after protesters barricaded the entrance to British Columbia’s legislative assembly, the province’s premier, John Horgan, called the demonstrations a “shift from traditional protest – to something quite different”.
Molly Wickham, a spokesperson for the Wet’suwet’en who also has the hereditary name Sleydo’, agreed. “Indigenous people see what’s happening to us and see what’s happening to our territory and our pristine waters – and to our people on the ground, having semiautomatic weapons aimed at us,” she said. “People are responding to that in appropriate ways.”
More than just a row over a pipeline, the Wet’suwet’en protests also reflect Canada’s often fraught relationship with First Nations.
“Ever since colonization, the aim has been to dispossess our people from our lands. To impoverish us. To assimilate us. To eliminate us,” said Tait. “We know that our self-determination, our sovereignty, our very identity, is based on us having control over our lands.”
In November, British Columbia became the first province in Canada to pass legislation promising to uphold the United Nations declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples. But such promises seem empty in the wake of recent police actions, said Wickham.
“There were tactical teams walking around with semi-automatic weapons in my territory. Industry was allowed to come and go freely. White settlers were allowed to come and go freely,” she said. “But if you were a Wet’suwet’en person, you are not permitted on your own territory.”
Controversy around the Coastal GasLink project has been compounded by questions over who has the right to speak for the Wet’suwet’en.
Coastal GasLink has signed benefit agreements with the 20 elected First Nations councils along the route, including five of the six elected band councils in the Wet’suwet’en nation. But Wet’suwet’en chiefs say the authority of these groups only applies to reservations – not traditional territory where the pipeline is proposed.
Unlike in much of Canada – where relationships between First Nations and the state are governed by treaties – few aboriginal nations in British Columbia ever signed deals with colonial authorities, meaning the federal government still operates in a vacuum of authority on their lands.
In 1997, the Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan nations won a landmark case in which the supreme court ruled that their aboriginal title had not been extinguished when Canada became a country. But the case did not establish the boundaries of that title and the court suggested subsequent cases would be needed to settle the issue.
“Aboriginal title claims of the Wet’suwet’en people have yet to be resolved either by negotiation or litigation,” wrote the justice Marguerite Church in her decision to grant Coastal GasLink the injunction. “While Wet’suwet’en customary laws clearly exist on their own independent footing, they are not recognized as being an effectual part of Canadian law.”
Legal experts believe the Wet’suwet’en would probably have a strong case to establish title to the land in the courts, enabling them to better fight the project. But such cases can take decades to adjudicate and cost millions of dollars, a prospect Tait called “insufficient” given the pipeline’s imminent construction.
For those on the front lines of the fight, the nationwide support is a vindication that the long-simmering frustrations over land claims and a fraught Indigenous relationship with the state are facing a long-overdue reckoning.
“This is far from over,” said Wickham. “We’ve had day after day of invasion and we’re still here. We’re still not giving up.”
Desert locusts have swarmed into Kenya by the hundreds of millions from Somalia and Ethiopia, where such numbers haven't been seen in a quarter-century. The insects are decimating farmland, threatening an already vulnerable region. (photo: Ben Curtis/AP)
A Plague of Locusts Has Descended on East Africa. Climate Change May Be to Blame.
Madeleine Stone, National Geographic
Stone writes: "Desert locusts have swarmed into Kenya by the hundreds of millions from Somalia and Ethiopia, where such numbers haven't been seen in a quarter-century. The insects are decimating farmland, threatening an already vulnerable region."
Madeleine Stone, National Geographic
Stone writes: "Desert locusts have swarmed into Kenya by the hundreds of millions from Somalia and Ethiopia, where such numbers haven't been seen in a quarter-century. The insects are decimating farmland, threatening an already vulnerable region."
EXCERPT:
Tracking a plague
According to Cressman, the desert locust crisis traces back to May 2018, when Cyclone Mekunu passed over a vast, unpopulated desert on the southern Arabian Peninsula known as the Empty Quarter, filling the space between sand dunes with ephemeral lakes. Because desert locusts breed and reproduce freely in the area, this likely gave rise to the initial wave. Then, in October, Cyclone Luban spawned in the central Arabian Sea, marched westward, and rained out over the same region near the border of Yemen and Oman.
Desert locusts live for about three months. After a generation matures, the adults lay their eggs which, under the right conditions, can hatch to form a new generation up to 20 times larger than the previous one. In this way, desert locusts can increase their population size exponentially over successive generations, Cressman says. Ultimately, these two 2018 cyclones enabled three generations of wildly successful locust breeding in just nine months, increasing the number of insects buzzing over the Arabian desert roughly 8,000-fold.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.