21 March 20
Bernie Sanders Is Trying to Rescue America's Frail Democracy
Thomas Piketty, Jacobin
Piketty writes: "The Democratic Party elite insists nothing can be done to mobilize working-class nonvoters. By challenging their cynicism, Bernie Sanders is rendering a profound service to American democracy."
Thomas Piketty, Jacobin
Piketty writes: "The Democratic Party elite insists nothing can be done to mobilize working-class nonvoters. By challenging their cynicism, Bernie Sanders is rendering a profound service to American democracy."
et it be said at once: the treatment received by Bernie Sanders in the leading media in the United States and in Europe is unjust and dangerous. Everywhere on the main networks and the large daily papers we read that Sanders is an “extremist” and that only a “centrist” candidate like Biden could triumph over Trump. This biased and somewhat unscrupulous treatment is particularly regrettable when a closer examination of the facts actually suggests that only a full-scale reorientation of the type proposed by Sanders would eventually rid American democracy of the inegalitarian practices which undermine it and deal with the electoral disaffection of the working classes.
Let’s begin with the program. To say emphatically, as Sanders does, that a public, universal health insurance would enable the American population to be cared for more efficiently and more cheaply than the present private and extremely unequal system is not an “extremist” statement. It is on the contrary a declaration, perfectly well-documented by many research studies and international comparisons. In these difficult times when everyone deplores the rise of “fake news,” it is right and proper for some candidates to rely on established facts and not resort to obscure language and complex tactics.
Similarly, Sanders is right when he proposes large-scale public investment in favor of education and public universities. Historically the prosperity of the United States has relied in the twentieth century on the educational advance of the country over Europe and on a degree of equality in this field, and definitely not on the sacralisation of inequality and the unlimited accumulation of fortunes which Reagan wished to impose as an alternative model in the 1980s. The failure of this Reagan-style rupture is patent today with the growth of national income per capita being halved and an unprecedented rise in inequality. Sanders simply proposed a return to the sources of the country’s model for development: a very wide diffusion of education.
Sanders also proposes a considerable rise in the level of the minimum wage (a policy in which the United States were for a long time the world leaders) and to learn from the experiences in co-management and voting rights for employees on the Boards of Directors of firms implemented successfully in Germany and in Sweden for decades. Generally speaking, Sanders’ proposals show him to be a pragmatic social-democrat endeavouring to make the most of the experiences available and in no way a ‘radical’. And when he chooses to go further than European social democracy, for example with his proposal for a federal wealth tax rising to 8% per annum on multi-billionaires, this corresponds to the reality of the excessive concentration of wealth in the United States and the fiscal and administrative capacities of the American federal state, which has already been demonstrated historically.
Now, let’s deal with the question of opinion polls. The problem of the repeated assertions that Biden would be better placed to beat Trump is that they have no objective factual basis. If we examine the existing data such as those compiled by RealClearPolitics.com, it is clear in all the national opinion polls that Sanders would beat Trump with the same differential as Biden. These polls are of course premature, but they are just as much for Biden as for Sanders. In several key States, we find that Sanders would come out ahead of Trump, for example in Pennsylvania and in Wisconsin.
If we analyse the surveys on the primaries which have just taken place, it appears clearly that Sanders mobilises the working-class electorate more than Biden. It is true that the latter attracts a considerable share of the Black vote, an inheritance of the Obama-Biden ticket. But Sanders mobilises the vast majority of the Latino vote and crushes Biden amongst the 18-29 years age group, as he does in the 30-44 years group. Above all, all the polls indicate that Sanders has the best scores amongst the underprivileged (annual incomes below 50,000$, no higher education qualification), whereas Biden, on the contrary, has the best scores amongst the most privileged (annual incomes above 100,000$, higher education diploma), whether it be white voters or those from minority backgrounds, independent of age.
Now it so happens that the highest potential for mobilization is among the most underprivileged social categories. Generally speaking, voter turnout has always been relatively low in the United States: just barely above 50 percent, whereas it has long been between 70-80 percent in France and in the United Kingdom, before falling recently. If we examine things in greater detail, we also find that on the other side of the Atlantic, there is a structurally lower participation amongst the poorest half of the voters, with a difference in the region of 15-20 percent with the richest half (a difference which has also begun to be visible in Europe since the 1990s, even if it remains less marked).
To put it clearly: this electoral alienation of the American working classes is so long-standing that it will certainly not be reversed in one day. But what else can we do to deal with it than to undertake a far-reaching reorientation of the election program of the Democratic Party and to discuss these ideas openly in national campaigns? The cynical, and unfortunately very commonplace vision among the Democratic elites, that nothing can be done to mobilize further the working-class vote, is extremely dangerous. In the last resort, this cynicism weakens the legitimacy of the democratic electoral system itself.
People wear face masks in New York's Times Square. (photo: Eduardo Munoz/VIEWpress/Getty Images)
US Intelligence Reports From January and February Warned About a Likely Pandemic
Shane Harris, Greg Miller, Josh Dawsey and Ellen Nakashima, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "U.S. intelligence agencies were issuing ominous, classified warnings in January and February about the global danger posed by the coronavirus while President Trump and lawmakers played down the threat and failed to take action that might have slowed the spread of the pathogen, according to U.S. officials familiar with spy agency reporting."
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Shane Harris, Greg Miller, Josh Dawsey and Ellen Nakashima, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "U.S. intelligence agencies were issuing ominous, classified warnings in January and February about the global danger posed by the coronavirus while President Trump and lawmakers played down the threat and failed to take action that might have slowed the spread of the pathogen, according to U.S. officials familiar with spy agency reporting."
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Immigrant children in a detention center. (photo: Ross D. Franklin/Pool Photo)
Close Immigration Prisons Now
César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández and Carlos Moctezuma García, The New York Times
Excerpt: "Inside an immigration court in southern Texas this week, a judge asked one of us to stand at the far end of the courtroom and not submit any documents on behalf of a client, perhaps as a health precaution."
READ MORE
César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández and Carlos Moctezuma García, The New York Times
Excerpt: "Inside an immigration court in southern Texas this week, a judge asked one of us to stand at the far end of the courtroom and not submit any documents on behalf of a client, perhaps as a health precaution."
READ MORE
A police vehicle in New York City. (photo: ScreensPro)
A New York Police Officer Was Caught on Camera Apparently Planting Marijuana in a Car - for the Second Time
Alice Speri, The Intercept
Speri writes: "When a police officer in Staten Island was caught by his own body camera in the apparent act of planting marijuana in the car of a group of young men, the video evidence against him was strong enough to prompt prosecutors in the resulting case to throw out the marijuana charge in the middle of a pretrial hearing."
Alice Speri, The Intercept
Speri writes: "When a police officer in Staten Island was caught by his own body camera in the apparent act of planting marijuana in the car of a group of young men, the video evidence against him was strong enough to prompt prosecutors in the resulting case to throw out the marijuana charge in the middle of a pretrial hearing."
More Jason Serranos
Serrano spent the five days after his arrest handcuffed in a hospital room, waiting for his abdominal wound to close. When he arrived there, he recalled, a medic told police “this guy is in no condition to resist anyone.”
Yet he was charged with resisting arrest, as well as obstruction of government administration, unlawful possession of marijuana, and criminal possession of a controlled substance. That last charge stemmed from a zip-close bag police claimed they found in Serrano’s jacket — even though Erickson and Pastran can be seen repeatedly searching the jacket in the video, and finding nothing. It’s not clear what was in the bag: a laboratory analysis of its contents reviewed by The Intercept says that “federally controlled substances are indicated; however, their identification is not confirmed at this time.” Serrano and his attorneys maintain that there was no bag at all in his jacket, and body camera footage shows Erickson fiddling with Serrano’s jacket for several minutes after searching the car, although it is impossible to see what he is doing.
After leaving the hospital Serrano was sent home on supervised release. Three months later, a judge found that he had violated the terms of his release and set his bail at $500 — but Serrano couldn’t pay it, and in order to avoid jail, he agreed to plead guilty to the resisting arrest charge only. “The court put him in the position of having to make that choice of whether he was going to continue to fight charges that he knew he was innocent of, or whether liberty was more important to him,” said Christopher Pisciotta, the attorney in charge of Legal Aid’s Staten Island division. “This is something that with our bail reform laws would not have happened. And even under the old law, a judge would have been extremely reluctant to ever set bail where there was actual video proof that the person was innocent.”
Under sweeping criminal justice reforms that were recently implemented in New York state — prompting a swift backlash — prosecutors would have accessed police body camera footage within 24 hours, and Serrano’s attorneys would have received it within 15 days of his arraignment. That would have allowed them to push for the charges to be dismissed. But Serrano and his attorneys didn’t learn there was camera footage of the incident until much later.
The new laws eliminated cash bail for most defendants and put an end to prosecutors’ ability to withhold evidence until trial. But within days of their implementation on January 1, the reforms came under a string of ferocious attacks from police, prosecutors, and some pundits, and elected officials quickly began giving in to pressure and signaling their intention to scale back the reforms.
Children play at dusk in the Inuit community of Labrador. (photo: Darren Calabrese)
Indigenous People 'at Much Greater Risk' Amid Coronavirus Pandemic
Jillian Kestler-D'Amours, Al Jazeera
Kestler-D'Amours writes: "One of the simplest pieces of advice health workers give to mitigate risk of contracting the novel coronavirus is to wash your hands regularly with soap and water, but for Indigenous communities across North America, that is not always easy."
Jillian Kestler-D'Amours, Al Jazeera
Kestler-D'Amours writes: "One of the simplest pieces of advice health workers give to mitigate risk of contracting the novel coronavirus is to wash your hands regularly with soap and water, but for Indigenous communities across North America, that is not always easy."
During the H1N1 swine flu pandemic in 2009, Aboriginal people accounted for 10 percent of the approximate 8,700 hospitalisations and 428 deaths in Canada between April and August of that year, a University of Manitoba study found. Aboriginal people only represented about four percent of the country's population.
"Pandemic H1N1 hit Aboriginal populations in Canada disproportionately hard, pointing to a broader history of poorer health outcomes for Aboriginal people," the researchers said. "The current state of Aboriginal health, and its potential vulnerability during a pandemic, is increasingly recognised as the result of complex political and socioeconomic factors and long colonial histories."
Canada was also widely criticised during the H1N1 pandemic for sending body bags to two remote First Nations communities in the province of Manitoba. Chief Jerry Knott of Wasagamack First Nation, an Oji-Cree community about 600 km (373 miles) north of Winnipeg, told CBC News that he received 30 body bags from Health Canada.
"We had asked for funding so we can get organised and to ensure medicines, hand sanitisers and other preventive kits were in place but, instead, we are shocked to receive the body bags," Knott said at the time. "To me, this is unacceptable."
Stephane McLachlan, a professor in the department of environment and geography at the University of Manitoba in central Canada, is involved in a newly funded research project that aims to outline Indigenous-led ways to combat COVID-19.
Rural communities of the Coloradas de la Virgen and Choreachi, in the Sierra Tarahumara, in Chihuahua, Mexico, 2018. (photo: Pajaropolitico/Twitter)
Mexico: One in Three Violent Attacks Are Against Land Defenders
teleSUR
Excerpt: "In Mexico, one out of every three violent attacks is directed against environmental and land defenders, mainly those who oppose energy projects, according to study."
teleSUR
Excerpt: "In Mexico, one out of every three violent attacks is directed against environmental and land defenders, mainly those who oppose energy projects, according to study."
EXCERPTS:
Between 2012 and 2019, 83 environmental defenders died, while hundreds more were beaten and threatened.
Most of those killed were from rural and Indigenous communities affected by renewable energy mega-projects, the Mexican Center for Environmental Rights (CEMED) revealed in a recent study.
They were killed "for demonstrating against these invasive projects, promoted in 2013 with the energy reform of then-President Enrique Peña Nieto," the research said.
"Land defenders denounce to UN representative abuses suffered in Mexico."
"This reality reveals that, in Mexico, environmental defenders lack freedom and security to exercise a basic human right: to defend their beliefs and properties," a CEMDED spokesperson said.
Furthermore, the figures position Mexico as one of the most dangerous nations in the Americas for the defense of the environment, the report added.
Since the country declared war on drugs in 2006, the escalation of violence has increased. Aggressions are selective, and, in the face of them, impunity persists, the report concluded.
Green sandpipers are a mid-summer visitor to Somerset. (photo: Saverio Gatto/Alamy)
How Wildlife Finds Sanctuary on Our Unwanted Scraps of Land
Stephen Moss, Guardian UK
Moss writes: "Wherever you go in Britain - in city, town or country - you can come across a hidden wildlife haven. It may be home to sand lizards and stoats, adders and orchids, butterflies and bush-crickets, water voles, peregrine falcons, or great crested grebes."
Stephen Moss, Guardian UK
Moss writes: "Wherever you go in Britain - in city, town or country - you can come across a hidden wildlife haven. It may be home to sand lizards and stoats, adders and orchids, butterflies and bush-crickets, water voles, peregrine falcons, or great crested grebes."
Yet often these oases are not official nature reserves, but little scraps of land we rarely consider important for nature. Churchyards, roadside verges, railway cuttings and disused quarries may not appear to have much in common. But they were all originally created for humans’ needs, before becoming places where wild creatures thrive. Together, they add up to an area larger than all our official nature reserves combined.
Not that these spots are unimportant to people. Often on the edge of urban areas, they are accessible to more people than rural nature reserves – especially to those who, by an accident of birth, background or geography, do not have access to “real” countryside.
These places also matter for another, even more urgent reason. Since the second world war, a continuous drive towards more intensive farming has turned much of our countryside into a wildlife-free zone.
That’s where the sites featured in this book come in. They provide a much-needed refuge for otherwise scarce species. Without them, some of our most vulnerable wild creatures would already have disappeared.
I don’t need to tell you that Britain’s wildlife is under threat. Loss of habitat, pollution, persecution and, above all, the global climate emergency, mean that even our once common and widespread species are now struggling.
So, at the start of this make-or-break century, as our wildlife enters one of the most challenging periods in its history, I have travelled round the country to visit these unheralded sanctuaries. Without them, nature in modern Britain might not be able to survive at all.
Reclaimed docks, Belfast
My taxi driver looked puzzled. ‘No, fella – there’s nothing down there except an industrial estate. I’ve never even heard of the “Window on Wildlife”!’ Fortunately, Google Maps came to our aid, and we headed through the rush-hour traffic towards Belfast docks.
Twenty minutes later, we arrived outside “WoW” – the RSPB’s Window on Wildlife. The first thing that struck me was the strident calls of black-headed gulls, floating en masse over the lagoon before drifting down to land on artificial nesting rafts. They were accompanied by more delicate, wraith-like birds – common and Arctic terns – and dozens of black-tailed godwits, feeding voraciously.
During the 1960s, when the port was being regularly dredged to permit the passage of large ships, the mud was dumped into three large pools. The plan was that eventually the mud would settle, and the land could then be reclaimed for building. But nature had other ideas. The fertile combination of water and mud created the ideal habitat for waterbirds such as ducks and waders, and they came here to feed in their thousands.
Gradually, it became clear that the area was a real hotspot for birds: not just migrants and winter visitors, but breeding species too. Local people began lobbying to save this precious place from development. After long negotiations with the port authorities, the middle of the three lagoons was set aside for wildlife.
Back at the visitor centre I had a chat with two regular volunteers, Ken and Phyllis. Ken reflected on the irony that somewhere that looks so natural is entirely created by humans, while Phyllis had noticed that, as the nearby industrial estate and business park grows, more and more workers are dropping in, lured by the sign outside.
Belfast WoW is, to be honest, a bit out of the way to attract casual passers-by, as my taxi driver confirmed. But that’s all the more reason why places like this need championing. Phyllis told me she loves the reaction from visitors when they enter the observation area for the first time. ‘They just say, “Wow!”’
Brownfield Reserve at Canvey Wick, Essex
The southern migrant hawker is one of the most attractive of all our two dozen dragonfly species, and not only because it is so rare. The male is a dazzling cerulean shade, each azure segment interspersed with jet black. Close up, through my zoom lens, I could see the pale blue eyes and the lattice-like wings, laced with tiny shards of gold.
This was just one of the amazing insects I saw on a recent visit to Canvey Wick, Britain’s first “brownfield” nature reserve. It is also home to a plethora of birds such as the whitethroat and stonechat as well as reptiles including adders and common lizards. In the early 1970s, this site was earmarked for an oil refinery, but the oil crisis led to the cancellation of the entire project. Afterwards, it was simply allowed to return to the wild.
Had someone wanted to design a nature reserve for insects, they could hardly have done better – yet Canvey Wick is perhaps the most genuinely accidental habitat in this book. The poor, sandy soils only allow vegetation to grow slowly, so the wildflowers and grasses are not swamped as they might be elsewhere. And the large, circular stands of asphalt where the oil tanks would have stood built retain heat, creating a microclimate ideal for continental, warmth-loving species such as the shrill carder bee. Then there is the location: Canvey Island is one of the sunniest, warmest and driest places in the whole of the UK.
Canvey Wick has been described as “England’s rainforest”, but as the Guardian’s wildlife writer Patrick Barkham pointed out, “England’s savannah” is a better description, given the absence of large trees. Like so many other wildlife-rich sites I have visited, it is a mosaic of mini-habitats: birch and willow scrub, brambles, dry and damp reedbeds, long grass and earth banks, which between them create exactly the right mix of ecological niches.
Canvey Wick may not look special, but for invertebrate life it rivals well-known nature reserves such as Minsmere, Wicken Fen and Dungeness. As ecologist Dr Sarah Henshall notes, its unusual history gives it a special place in our natural heritage: “Canvey Wick is wild, it’s different, it’s rough around the edges. Wildlife thrives in the untidy messiness – that’s what makes the site unique.”
I am reminded of my childhood, when I played for hours in places like this. Canvey Wick is the clearest possible evidence why the label “brownfield site” is so unhelpful – indeed positively detrimental. To those who care about Britain’s wildlife, it’s these messy corners that need to be prioritised, not the green swathes of agri-desert that make up so much of our lowland countryside.
Gravel pits and reservoirs around London
In May 1974, I cycled from my home to the village of Datchet, where the Queen Mother Reservoir was being built. I walked slowly through the heat-haze towards a distant strip of water, where a slim bird took off a few yards in front of me, giving a persistent, high-pitched whistle I now know was a sign of alarm.
I lifted my binoculars to see a small, long-winged wader circling low over the gravel. When it landed, I could see the plain, brownish back, black mask and, most importantly, a thin, lemon-yellow eye-ring: my first ever little ringed plover.
This was a classic example of a species adapting to an “analogue habitat”. On the continent, little ringed plovers nest on the shingle banks of rivers, swept clean of vegetation by winter floods. The bare shingle allows them to disguise their eggs, especially from aerial predators such as kestrels. Gravel pits and reservoirs provided an ideal substitute for riverbanks, and during the post-war years they allowed the little ringed plover to gain a foothold this side of the Channel.
About this time, I came across Adventure Lit Their Star, by Kenneth Allsop. The name will be familiar to readers of a certain age, for Allsop was a familiar face on TV during the 1960s. This was a Boys’ Own adventure story, in which an airman recovering from tuberculosis joins forces with two young lads to foil attempts by an egg-collector to steal a precious clutch of little ringed plovers’ eggs. The message is that birds need to be protected and welcomed and, more importantly, that nature can offer a form of therapy. This was something Allsop, who had lost a leg in the war and suffered periodic bouts of depression, understood only too well.
Little ringed plovers went against expectations to breed in what Allsop described as “the messy limbo that is neither town nor country”. As a definition of the Accidental Countryside, this could hardly be bettered.
Peat diggings, Somerset
It took me five minutes to walk round. At the edge of the peat diggings a few miles from Glastonbury I saw 10 birds, of just four species. And yet, apart from the five loitering mallards, the others confirmed these changing times.
The first bird was a little egret. I am old enough to remember when one of these impossibly white birds made any birding trip a red-letter day. Even now, I still feel a jolt of pleasure whenever I see this little heron, which when I was growing up was still confined to the area around the Mediterranean.
Moments later I saw a buzzard, another bird that wouldn’t have been here 20 years ago. Whereas the little egret extended its range northwards thanks to climate change and habitat restoration, the buzzard benefitted from an end to persecution by gamekeepers, enabling it to recolonise its former haunts.
The next bird was one of my favourites: the green sandpiper. I half expected to see it here on this warm, early-August evening, as they drop in to feed on their journey south to Africa. For me, they are the first sign of autumn, despite appearing at the height of summer.
The final pair of birds would once have been a very rare sight here. But there are now several dozen great white egrets on the Somerset Levels, and recently they have begun to visit my local patch.
Birds like the great white, little and cattle egrets (another recent colonist), give the lie to the idea that all our wildlife is in decline. It’s not, but it wouldn’t take much to destroy these temporary, liminal habitats on which so many wild creatures depend.
Before I left, I heard the piping call of that lone green sandpiper, and watched it rise into the sky. As it disappeared, I wished it good luck. It would need it, for just as places like this are being destroyed, so its stop-over points are also under threat, from wetlands being drained, or drying up because of climate change.
One day, I fear, I will watch one disappear over the horizon, and that will be the last time I ever see a green sandpiper; not just here, but anywhere. Birds are resilient creatures, for sure, but are they resilient enough?
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