RSN: Marc Ash | Sanders Gives the Democrats Legitimacy

17 February 20 Now Leaping Out the Window for Your Donation! In fairness it’s a first floor window above a soft landing of wood chips and leaves so it’s a purely symbolic expression. Nonetheless if it will help I’ll give it a try. Here goes … Marc Ash Founder, Reader Supported News Sure, I'll make a donation! If you would prefer to send a check: Reader Supported News PO Box 2043 Citrus Hts CA 95611 17 February 20 It's Live on the HomePage Now: Reader Supported News A SERIOUS, BUT VERY SOLVABLE FUNDRAISING PROBLEM - To end this fundraiser, quickly we need about “500” donations. We have gotten that in “1” day before. “500” of you will visit RSN in the next “20” minutes. With urgency. / Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News Sure, I'll make a donation! RSN: Marc Ash | Sanders Gives the Democrats Legitimacy Marc Ash, Reader Supported News Ash writes: "Independence frightens political party establishments but it comforts voters."  “On our side, right or wrong” is a bad formula for good governance. The voters rightly see political independence as a necessary thing when making critical decisions on policy. It speaks to the issue of doing the right thing versus doing the politically convenient thing, the former being significantly more respected and admired than the latter. Bernie Sanders’s position in the Senate as a career-long Independent is not a liability for the Democratic Party, it’s an asset. It gives the entire Democratic platform greater independence, credibility and legitimacy – not to mention a big leg-up with Independent voters, particularly in key battleground states. In the four years since the 2016 presidential election cycle, a number of public opinion polls have been conducted asking different variants of the question, “Which American politician do you trust most?”  Respondents have consistently rated Sanders highest in terms of honesty and as the political figure they trust most. That public perception of trustworthiness is an incredibly valuable asset for the Democratic party heading into the 2020 campaigns – in terms of defeating Donald Trump and in the down-ballot races as well. Trust matters. Sanders has it, and his status as a frontrunner for the Democratic nomination strengthens the entire party as a result. Democratic leaders love to talk about fighting for working Americans. Sanders’s grass-roots movement, a movement built tirelessly over the past five years, is made up of working Americans. That should be a perfect fit for the Democratic Party.   Sanders was the ideological architect of the issues that brought the Democrats to power in the House in 2018.  The conversation about single payer healthcare and the state of healthcare in the U.S. were issues Sanders forced to the forefront and the ones, unsurprisingly, the voters responded to. His influence over the voters, the political debate, and the Democratic Party was on full display in 2018. The result was a resounding win for working Americans and the Democratic Party.   Sanders represents the best, most valuable, and rarest kind of political power – political power through social relevance. He offers a rare opportunity for the Democratic Party to gain historic ground. This is one wave Democratic leadership can and should ride. Marc Ash is the founder and former Executive Director of Truthout, and is now founder and Editor of Reader Supported News. Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News. READ MORE Attorney General William Barr waits as he is introduced to speak at the National Sheriffs' Association Winter Legislative and Technology Conference. (photo: Susan Walsh/AP/Shutterstock) Over 1,100 Former Prosecutors and DOJ Officials Call on Barr to Step Down Peter Wade, Rolling Stone Wade writes: "More than 1,100 former Department of Justice officials have signed a scathing letter calling for Attorney General William Barr to resign." READ MORE 'As of Saturday in China, around 35 million people are living in cities that have been placed under mass quarantine due to the coronavirus outbreak.' (photo: Costfoto/Barcroft Media/Getty Images) Beijing's Deadly Mistakes on Coronavirus Brendon Hong, The Daily Beast Excerpt: "China's economy is 18 percent of global GDP. The more it falters, the more impacts are felt everywhere, and that would be the case even if this plague were confined. But it's not."  EXCERPTS; BEIJING QUARANTINES As of Saturday in China, around 35 million people are living in cities that have been placed under mass quarantine due to the coronavirus outbreak. That’s almost as many people as in California, the most populous state in America. For more than three weeks, people in Hubei province, where Wuhan is the capital, have been confined to their homes except for medical emergencies or quick supply runs. Police, drones, and zealous apparatchiks have been deployed around the country to maintain various levels of lockdowns. The economy is slowing down, with a dramatic effect on global oil prices, manufacturing supply chains on the far side of the world, and, of course, questions about public health in the many countries that have seen confirmed cases of the sickness.   On Friday, the central government declared that all residents of Beijing returning from the Chinese New Year holidays endure a 14-day “self-quarantine or go to designated venues to quarantine.” Things look dire, and it’s unclear when the viral outbreak will subside. Time and time again during the crisis, people have seen that the Chinese Communist Party, with its readiness to mobilize an enormous security apparatus that fuses waves of manpower with cutting-edge technological accoutrements, still lacks reasonable plans to handle this critical, nationwide emergency. While it’s hard to say what the actual toll on China’s population is so far—official numbers describing diagnoses and deaths don’t reflect conditions on the ground—what’s clear is the virus’ unexpected emergence and swift spread around the globe has changed how Chinese people express their views about their government. XI TO THE RESCUE? Chinese leader Xi Jinping has stated that officials need to hit economic growth targets for this year even though many businesses have ground to a halt. He expects them to make “adjustments” to minimize the virus’ impact on China's economic standing. State-owned enterprises are meant to have zero infections within their ranks.  Yet the party’s propagandists can’t pave over the numbers that every household in China is following. As of Saturday morning, there were nearly 66,600 confirmed coronavirus diagnoses in China. More than 1,500 have been recorded as killed by the virus. These are the official statistics issued by China’s National Health Commission.  Doctors in Hubei and medical experts around the world believe the figures to be far higher. But by using the numbers for a rough calculation involving only the 9,600 cases where we know the outcome (or failure) of treatment, we can see that while 8,100 people have been reported as “recovered,” given that 1,500 are dead the coronavirus has a tremendously high kill rate of between 15 and 16 percent—nearly eightfold the 2 percent lethality cited by Chinese authorities. GLOBAL CHILLS So far, only four people have died outside of mainland China due to complications brought on by the coronavirus—in Hong Kong, the Philippines, Japan, and, most recently, in France on Saturday. But its rapid spread has put many health authorities around the world on high alert. In the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has confirmed that some of its testing kits for the virus do not function properly. At the same time, new cases of infection are showing up in California and Texas, where evacuees from Wuhan are under medical observation. A cruise ship with more than 2,250 people on board wasn’t able to dock anywhere after being turned away from Thailand, Japan, Taiwan, Guam, and the Philippines—and it didn't even have sick people on board. Finally, on Thursday, Cambodia allowed it to steer into a port. Another cruise ship, the Diamond Princess floating off the shore of Yokohama, south of Tokyo, has been placed under a two-week quarantine. As of Saturday afternoonFriday morning, 285 of its passengers were diagnosed as carriers of the coronavirus. Vietnam has quarantined more than 10,000 people 40 kilometers from its capital, Hanoi. There’s good reason for nations outside of China to be worried. In Japan, none of the people who most recently tested positive for being infected have direct links to China, whether in their travel histories or interpersonal contacts. Ira Longini, a biostatistician and advisor to the World Health Organization, has warned that two-thirds of the world’s population could be infected. His calculation was based on each carrier infecting two to three people. The Chinese Communist Party has figured out how to govern 1.4 billion citizens—but only by instituting authoritarian, at times dystopian measures during peaceful times. When disaster strikes, the party’s bureaucratic machinery lacks fluidity and fails to adapt. It simply falls apart. Many in China, trapped at home, cycle through three feelings—boredom, anxiety, rage. After the death of the young doctor Li Wenliang, who tried to raise the alarm about the virus before it spread beyond one marketplace, the nation mourned—and did so without top-down guidance.  The police in Wuhan had detained the doctor and designated him as a “rumormonger.” Then, after he died, the state appropriated his actions to repackage him as a national hero, a patriot. Party officials had set out to dye his legacy with the CCP’s colors and dogma. SARS-CoV-2 is a global menace, but it required a host—an organizational, systematic deficiency—to make it so deadly so quickly. The way that the CCP’s cadres run China is unhealthy for the nation and the rest of the world—as we can see now only too clearly. READ MORE A series of companies have been deploying facial recognition technology that claims to detect emotion. (photo: izusek/Getty Images/iStockphoto) AI Systems Claiming to 'Read' Emotions Pose Discrimination Risks Hannah Devlin, Guardian UK Devlin writes: "Artificial Intelligence systems that companies claim can 'read' facial expressions is based on outdated science and risks being unreliable and discriminatory, one of the world's leading experts on the psychology of emotion has warned." READ MORE Nadia King. (photo: Martina Falk) The Chain Reaction That Sent an 'Out of Control' 6-Year-Old From School to a Mental Health Facility Alex Horton, The Washington Post Horton writes: "The body-camera footage starts after police officers had already located their suspect, and she fit the description: hazel eyes, about four feet tall and really concerned about finding candy." EXCERPTS: In the footage, Nadia King, 6, emerges from Love Grove Elementary School on Feb. 4, holding the hand of a Jacksonville sheriff’s deputy. The officers were told Nadia was “a threat to herself and others” and was “out of control,” a police incident report later recounted, and it would lead to her committal in a mental health facility. But one of the officers was perplexed. The little girl in the back seat of her squad car, inquiring about snacks and stopping for sweets, was calm and bright-eyed despite her worry she was going to jail. “She is fine. There is nothing wrong with her,” the officer tells her partner, the video shows. “She’s been actually very pleasant.” Her partner agrees. “I think it’s more of them just not knowing how to deal with it,” he says, appearing to describe the school. Nadia moved through the system — from the school to the police to the mental institution, all without her mother’s consent — under a controversial Florida law known as the Baker Act. It allows law enforcement officers, school counselors and medical personnel to petition for someone who is perceived as being a danger to themselves or others to be institutionalized for 72 hours. The recently released footage of Nadia has heightened the debate about the Baker Act and whether the law is allowing cases of overstepping that do more harm than good. Nadia’s mother, Martina Falk, said she wasn’t notified about the incident until a third-party crisis intervention organization called her. The next 48 hours was a frightening ordeal for her special needs daughter, who found herself in a mental hospital sedated and confused. Now Nadia finds it hard to be around her doctors, Falk said. “She used to trust our pediatrician, and now she doesn’t want to set foot in there,” Falk, 31, told The Washington Post on Sunday. Reganel J. Reeves, an attorney for the family, said he plans to file lawsuits to learn more about how the state executes the law and how policies at Duval County Public Schools unfolded, saying it’s possible the application can be unconstitutional, especially for children. Nadia has been diagnosed with ADHD and global developmental delay, which stalls cognitive and physical development, Falk said. She chose the school because of its special needs teaching, she said, along with an education plan that documented Nadia’s conditions. The school itself did not decide to send Nadia to the hospital, Duval County Public Schools spokeswoman Laureen Ricks said in a statement. The school, fearing that Nadia was putting herself and others at risk, called a crisis hotline. A third party nonprofit, Child Guidance Center, dispatched a mental health professional, Ricks said. That clinician from Child Guidance Center decided to send Nadia to the hospital under the Baker Act provision. But it was not clear whether school officials considered other ways to resolve the incident, including calling Nadia’s mother or her physicians instead. Ricks declined to describe de-escalation tactics used with Nadia or whether her diagnoses were disclosed during an assessment by the clinical social worker from Child Guidance Center, citing privacy laws. Ricks also declined to describe the specifics of Nadia’s alleged behavior. The police report uses secondhand information about “attacking staff,” relayed to the deputies by the social worker. Falk disputed the urgency of the characterization and said the school had not relayed that information to her in their initial calls. She also said Nadia plainly shows when she is as agitated as the school described — her daughter’s nose and eyes become red and welted. “But when the police were there, she was fine,” she said. What made Nadia truly upset, Falk said, was when she learned her mother wouldn’t be taking her home. Child Guidance Center declined to describe its involvement, citing privacy laws, but Sherie Smith, a spokesperson for the center, said the center has the ability to send someone only for an involuntary examination. The receiving facility determines the length of stay, she said. The Baker Act has existed for nearly five decades, but it has been used more frequently in recent years, including 7,500 times with children since 2012, the Tampa Bay Times reported last year. There is little oversight by lawmakers, the Times investigation found, amid public outcry that the system speeds children into hospitals as guardians watch powerlessly from afar. The law was meant to allow intervention in cases of imminent danger, said Mark Cavitt, the director of Pediatric Psychiatry Services at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg. But generally in the state, Cavitt told The Post, the law has become an increasingly common tool because of inadequate training or resources for mental health inside the school system. “It always mystifies me when it’s used for disruptive behavior,” Cavitt said of the Baker Act. It can also be used by schools to offload their liability for a student to a third party, Cavitt said. But it can also cut the other way, illuminating unevenness in the application; the Parkland gunman was not detained under the law despite concerns from school officials a year before the 2018 massacre, The Post previously reported. Nadia has been moved to a temporary school for children with autism, said Falk, who was left shaken watching her daughter in the body camera footage. At one point in the video, the officer tries to put a bright spin on where they are headed. It’s a field trip, the officer tells Nadia. “We’re going on a field trip?” Nadia asks, excited about the prospect. READ MORE Police detain Yelena Grigoryeva during an anti-LGBT discrimination rally in St. Petersburg, Russia, on April 17. (photo: Anton Vaganov/Reuters) Russian LGBTQ Activist Is Killed After Being Listed on Gay-Hunting Website Tim Fitzsimons, NBC News Fitzsimons writes: "A Russian LGBTQ activist, Yelena Grigoryeva, was fatally stabbed in St. Petersburg Sunday night after her name was listed on a website that encourages people to 'hunt' LGBTQ activists, inspired by the torture-themed film 'Saw.'" EXCERPTS: On Tuesday, Idrisov updated his post to note that Grigoryeva's mother had identified her body and that investigators in St. Petersburg had taken over the case. Other activists said on social media that Grigoryeva's body was found near her home over the weekend with stab wounds and signs of strangulation, The Moscow Times reported. Even as the Russian government, led by President Vladimir Putin, criminalizes LGBTQ activism and cracks down on “homosexual propaganda,” a recent survey suggests that average Russians are much less united against the LGBTQ community than the state. A May poll showed that 43 percent of respondents said “gays and lesbians should enjoy the same rights as other citizens,” according to The Moscow Times, an independent English-language daily. Russia faces little international blowback for its regression on LGBTQ rights. This month the European Court of Human Rights ordered the country to pay just 42,500 euros ($47,400) in damages to LGBTQ groups whose registration the state had refused. READ MORE 'The air can taste slightly acidic, sometimes making you feel nauseated.' (photo: Arctic-Images/Corbis) 'The Only Uncertainty Is How Long We'll Last': A Worst Case Scenario for the Climate in 2050 Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac, Guardian UK Excerpt: "It is 2050. Beyond the emissions reductions registered in 2015, no further efforts were made to control emissions. We are heading for a world that will be more than 3C warmer by 2100."  The Future We Choose, a new book by the architects of the Paris climate accords, offers two contrasting visions for how the world might look in thirty years (read the best case scenario here) t is 2050. Beyond the emissions reductions registered in 2015, no further efforts were made to control emissions. We are heading for a world that will be more than 3C warmer by 2100. The first thing that hits you is the air. In many places around the world, the air is hot, heavy and, depending on the day, clogged with particulate pollution. Your eyes often water. Your cough never seems to disappear. You think about some countries in Asia, where, out of consideration, sick people used to wear white masks to protect others from airborne infection. Now you often wear a mask to protect yourself from air pollution. You can no longer simply walk out your front door and breathe fresh air: there might not be any. Instead, before opening doors or windows in the morning, you check your phone to see what the air quality will be. Fewer people work outdoors and even indoors the air can taste slightly acidic, sometimes making you feel nauseated. The last coal furnaces closed 10 years ago, but that hasn’t made much difference in air quality around the world because you are still breathing dangerous exhaust fumes from millions of cars and buses everywhere. Our world is getting hotter. Over the next two decades, projections tell us that temperatures in some areas of the globe will rise even higher, an irreversible development now utterly beyond our control. Oceans, forests, plants, trees and soil had for many years absorbed half the carbon dioxide we spewed out. Now there are few forests left, most of them either logged or consumed by wildfire, and the permafrost is belching greenhouse gases into an already overburdened atmosphere. The increasing heat of the Earth is suffocating us and in five to 10 years, vast swaths of the planet will be increasingly inhospitable to humans. We don’t know how hospitable the arid regions of Australia, South Africa and the western United States will be by 2100. No one knows what the future holds for their children and grandchildren: tipping point after tipping point is being reached, casting doubt on the form of future civilisation. Some say that humans will be cast to the winds again, gathering in small tribes, hunkered down and living on whatever patch of land might sustain them. More moisture in the air and higher sea surface temperatures have caused a surge in extreme hurricanes and tropical storms. Recently, coastal cities in Bangladesh, Mexico, the United States and elsewhere have suffered brutal infrastructure destruction and extreme flooding, killing many thousands and displacing millions. This happens with increasing frequency now. Every day, because of rising water levels, some part of the world must evacuate to higher ground. Every day, the news shows images of mothers with babies strapped to their backs, wading through floodwaters and homes ripped apart by vicious currents that resemble mountain rivers. News stories tell of people living in houses with water up to their ankles because they have nowhere else to go, their children coughing and wheezing because of the mould growing in their beds, insurance companies declaring bankruptcy, leaving survivors without resources to rebuild their lives. Contaminated water supplies, sea salt intrusions and agricultural runoff are the order of the day. Because multiple disasters are often happening simultaneously, it can take weeks or even months for basic food and water relief to reach areas pummelled by extreme floods. Diseases such as malaria, dengue, cholera, respiratory illnesses and malnutrition are rampant. You try not to think about the 2 billion people who live in the hottest parts of the world, where, for upwards of 45 days per year, temperatures skyrocket to 60C (140F), a point at which the human body cannot be outside for longer than about six hours because it loses the ability to cool itself down. Places such as central India are becoming increasingly challenging to inhabit. Mass migrations to less hot rural areas are beset by a host of refugee problems, civil unrest and bloodshed over diminished water availability. Food production swings wildly from month to month, season to season, depending on where you live. More people are starving than ever before. Climate zones have shifted, so some new areas have become available for agriculture (Alaska, the Arctic), while others have dried up (Mexico, California). Still others are unstable because of the extreme heat, never mind flooding, wildfire and tornadoes. This makes the food supply in general highly unpredictable. Global trade has slowed as countries seek to hold on to their own resources. Countries with enough food are resolute about holding on to it. As a result, food riots, coups and civil wars are throwing the world’s most vulnerable from the frying pan into the fire. As developed countries seek to seal their borders from mass migration, they too feel the consequences. Most countries’ armies are now just highly militarised border patrols. Some countries are letting people in, but only under conditions approaching indentured servitude.  Those living within stable countries may be physically safe, yes, but the psychological toll is mounting. With each new tipping point passed, they feel hope slipping away. There is no chance of stopping the runaway warming of our planet and no doubt we are slowly but surely heading towards some kind of collapse. And not just because it’s too hot. Melting permafrost is also releasing ancient microbes that today’s humans have never been exposed to and, as a result, have no resistance to. Diseases spread by mosquitoes and ticks are rampant as these species flourish in the changed climate, spreading to previously safe parts of the planet, increasingly overwhelming us. Worse still, the public health crisis of antibiotic resistance has only intensified as the population has grown denser in inhabitable areas and temperatures continue to rise. The demise of the human species is being discussed more and more. For many, the only uncertainty is how long we’ll last, how many more generations will see the light of day. Suicides are the most obvious manifestation of the prevailing despair, but there are other indications: a sense of bottomless loss, unbearable guilt and fierce resentment at previous generations who didn’t do what was necessary to ward off this unstoppable calamity. READ MORE Contribute to RSN  Update My Monthly Donation