26 March 20
At the end of the day the “American political center” is defined by those who receive the bulk of their information on political and social issues from main stream commercial media sources. To be a part of centrist thinking you have to accept the rules of the theater. Once you exit the theater you are no longer an asset to the corporate media.
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25 March 20
George Monbiot | Covid-19 Is Nature's Wake-Up Call to Complacent Civilization
George Monbiot, Guardian UK
Monbiot writes: "A bubble has finally been burst - but will we now attend to the other threats facing humanity?"
George Monbiot, Guardian UK
Monbiot writes: "A bubble has finally been burst - but will we now attend to the other threats facing humanity?"
e have been living in a bubble, a bubble of false comfort and denial. In the rich nations, we have begun to believe we have transcended the material world. The wealth we’ve accumulated – often at the expense of others – has shielded us from reality. Living behind screens, passing between capsules – our houses, cars, offices and shopping malls – we persuaded ourselves that contingency had retreated, that we had reached the point all civilisations seek: insulation from natural hazards.
Now the membrane has ruptured, and we find ourselves naked and outraged, as the biology we appeared to have banished storms through our lives. The temptation, when this pandemic has passed, will be to find another bubble. We cannot afford to succumb to it. From now on, we should expose our minds to the painful realities we have denied for too long.
The planet has multiple morbidities, some of which will make this coronavirus look, by comparison, easy to treat. One above all others has come to obsess me in recent years: how will we feed ourselves? Fights over toilet paper are ugly enough: I hope we never have to witness fights over food. But it’s becoming difficult to see how we will avoid them.
A large body of evidence is beginning to accumulate showing how climate breakdown is likely to affect our food supply. Already farming in some parts of the world is being hammered by drought, floods, fire and locusts (whose resurgence in the past few weeks appears to be the result of anomalous tropical cyclones). When we call such hazards “biblical”, we mean that they are the kind of things that happened long ago, to people whose lives we can scarcely imagine. Now, with increasing frequency, they are happening to us.
In his forthcoming book, Our Final Warning, Mark Lynas explains what is likely to happen to our food supply with every extra degree of global heating. He finds that extreme danger kicks in somewhere between 3C and 4C above pre-industrial levels. At this point, a series of interlocking impacts threatens to send food production into a death spiral. Outdoor temperatures become too high for humans to tolerate, making subsistence farming impossible across Africa and South Asia. Livestock die from heat stress. Temperatures start to exceed the lethal thresholds for crop plants across much of the world, and major food producing regions turn into dust bowls. Simultaneous global harvest failure – something that has never happened in the modern world – becomes highly likely.
In combination with a rising human population, and the loss of irrigation water, soil and pollinators, this could push the world into structural famine. Even today, when the world has a total food surplus, hundreds of millions are malnourished as a result of the unequal distribution of wealth and power. A food deficit could result in billions starving. Hoarding will happen, as it always has, at the global level, as powerful people snatch food from the mouths of the poor. Yet, even if every nation keeps its promises under the Paris agreement, which currently seems unlikely, global heating will amount to between 3C and 4C.
Thanks to our illusion of security, we are doing almost nothing to anticipate this catastrophe, let alone prevent it. This existential issue scarcely seems to impinge on our consciousness. Every food-producing sector claims that its own current practices are sustainable and don’t need to change. When I challenge them, I’m met with a barrage of anger and abuse, and threats of the kind I haven’t experienced since I opposed the Iraq war. Sacred cows and holy lambs are everywhere, and the thinking required to develop the new food systems that we need, like lab-grown food, is scarcely anywhere.
But this is just one of our impending crises. Antibiotic resistance is, potentially, as deadly as any new disease. One of the causes is the astonishingly profligate way in which these precious medicines are used on many livestock farms. Where vast numbers of farm animals are packed together, antibiotics are deployed prophylactically to prevent otherwise inevitable outbreaks of disease. In some parts of the world, they are used not only to prevent disease, but also as growth promoters. Low doses are routinely added to feed: a strategy that could scarcely be better designed to deliver bacterial resistance.
In the US, where 27 million people have no medical cover, some people are now treating themselves with veterinary antibiotics, including those sold, without prescription, to medicate pet fish. Pharmaceutical companies are failing to invest sufficiently in the search for new drugs. If antibiotics cease to be effective, surgery becomes almost impossible. Childbirth becomes a mortal hazard once more. Chemotherapy can no longer be safely practised. Infectious diseases we have comfortably forgotten become deadly threats. We should discuss this issue as often as we talk about football. But again, it scarcely registers.
Our multiple crises, of which these are just two, have a common root. The problem is exemplified by the response of the organisers of the Bath Half Marathon, a massive event that took place on 15 March, to the many people begging them to cancel. “It is now too late for us to cancel or postpone the event. The venue is built, the infrastructure is in place, the site and our contractors are ready.” In other words, the sunk costs of the event were judged to outweigh any future impacts – the potential transmission of disease, and possible deaths – it might cause.
The amount of time it took the International Olympic Committee to postpone the Games could reflect similar judgments – but at least they got there in the end. Sunk costs within the fossil fuel industry, farming, banking, private healthcare and other sectors prevent the rapid transformations we need. Money becomes more important than life.
There are two ways this could go. We could, as some people have done, double down on denial. Some of those who have dismissed other threats, such as climate breakdown, also seek to downplay the threat of Covid-19. Witness the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, who claims that the coronavirus is nothing more than “a little flu”. The media and opposition politicians who have called for lockdown are, apparently, part of a conspiracy against him.
Or this could be the moment when we begin to see ourselves, once more, as governed by biology and physics, and dependent on a habitable planet. Never again should we listen to the liars and the deniers. Never again should we allow a comforting falsehood to trounce a painful truth. No longer can we afford to be dominated by those who put money ahead of life. This coronavirus reminds us that we belong to the material world.
Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago. (photo: Kamil Krazczynski/Getty)
Democrats Blocked Trump From Handing Himself a Chunk of the $500 Billion Coronavirus Bailout
Greg Walters, VICE
Walters writes: "President Trump hinted last weekend he might just hand himself a big, juicy loan from the billion emergency economic stimulus deal finally reached by Congress and the White House last night. So Democrats added language to the bill that explicitly stops him."
Greg Walters, VICE
Walters writes: "President Trump hinted last weekend he might just hand himself a big, juicy loan from the billion emergency economic stimulus deal finally reached by Congress and the White House last night. So Democrats added language to the bill that explicitly stops him."
EXCERPTS:
At a press conference Sunday, Trump refused to promise not to bail out his own troubled hotel businesses once his administration takes control of the crisis fund.
Asked about that possibility, Trump complained that he doesn’t get enough credit for refusing to accept his $450,000 presidential paycheck, and then said, “Let’s just see what happens.”
Trump reported earning over $400 million in income in 2018, but his 11 hotels around the world could face serious problems from the disruption to the hospitality industry caused by the outbreak.
Six of Trump’s top-seven revenue-generating hotels and resorts have shuttered due to restrictions caused by the spreading virus. Since then, Trump has complained that the economic shutdown caused by the disease is “worse than the problem itself.”
Democrats said they also added other features into the bill aimed at increasing transparency over how the crisis loans will be administered. Lawmakers said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will have to disclose who gets a loan in real time, instead of six months later as Republicans had originally proposed. The bill also creates an inspector general for pandemic recovery to oversee the fund and a panel appointed by Congress to conduct oversight.
Republicans, who rolled out the original stimulus plan last week, had accused Democrats of holding up desperately-needed stimulus while playing politics and trying to achieve liberal goals like fighting climate change.
CNN's chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta. (photo: Alex Wong/Getty)
Donald Trump Must Face First Amendment Suit for Revoking Press Badges
Eriq Gardner, Hollywood Reporter
Gardner writes: "A New York federal judge on Tuesday ruled that PEN America may proceed on some of its claims against Donald Trump. Specifically, the U.S. president must continue to face allegations of violating the First Amendment by revoking press badges and security clearances."
Eriq Gardner, Hollywood Reporter
Gardner writes: "A New York federal judge on Tuesday ruled that PEN America may proceed on some of its claims against Donald Trump. Specifically, the U.S. president must continue to face allegations of violating the First Amendment by revoking press badges and security clearances."
Pen America is a literary organization that fights to protect free speech. The group sued Trump in October 2018 for using his power to punish and intimidate The Washington Post, CNN, NBC, the White House press corps and others who cover his administration.
Trump, in reaction to the lawsuit, moved to dismiss with the argument that PEN lacks standing to sue because none of its members have been injured (except for CNN's White House correspondent Jim Acosta, whose pass was reinstated after being revoked), that it failed to state a plausible claim and that the court lacks the power to control the official, discretionary actions of a sitting president.
U.S. District Court Judge Lorna Schofield rules Tuesday that PEN does have standing for at least some of the claims — revocation of press badges and security clearances — and can "establish a causal connection between the injuries and the challenged conduct."
The judge says the plaintiff may proceed in an attempt to get a declaratory ruling that President Trump is violating the First Amendment. PEN, however, won't be able to obtain an injunction.
"The Complaint explicitly pleads, quoting from the Press Secretary’s e-mail, that [Trump] and his staff are ready to heed a court decision on proper rules of conduct for governing the White House press corps," states the opinion.
This decision comes merely a day after the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals considered whether a lower judge was correct to order President Trump to restore the press badge of Playboy's White House correspondent Brian Karem. PEN's dispute could provide some legal clarity beyond that singular situation.
However, PEN won't get to challenge some of Trump's other conduct allegedly flouting the First Amendment.
Schofield writes the literary group does not have associational standing to bring a suit over Trump's threats to revoke broadcast licenses, the Department of Justice's challenge to the AT&T-Time Warner merger and regulatory threats to internet companies — among other things.
PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel commented about the judge's decision: "It’s hard to think of a moment in American history in which unvarnished, accurate news reporting has mattered more than it does now. This decision is a victory not just for PEN America and our own writers, but also for the journalists and media outlets doing the vital, risky work of keeping us all informed. But above all, it is a win for all individuals who depend on a free press to dig out the facts and hold leadership accountable without fear of reprisal. We sued the president because we believe the First Amendment prohibits him from retaliating against speech he dislikes. We are grateful that this essential suit can move forward, vindicating the rights of all those who rely on a free press."
A British Airways flight takes off as a Virgin Atlantic airplane waits at terminal 3 of Heathrow Airport in London, England. (photo: Leon Neal/Getty)
Nationalize the Airlines
Paris Marx, Jacobin
Excerpt: "The airline industry will not survive the coronavirus. Now is the time to nationalize it - and use this moment to chart a course to a low-carbon future."
READ MORE
Paris Marx, Jacobin
Excerpt: "The airline industry will not survive the coronavirus. Now is the time to nationalize it - and use this moment to chart a course to a low-carbon future."
READ MORE
Office. (photo: Ian Gavan/Getty)
Against Productivity in a Pandemic
Nick Martin, The New Republic
Excerpt: "Why are we being told - by bosses, by fitness apps, by ourselves - to optimize this 'new' time to get things done?"
READ MORE
Nick Martin, The New Republic
Excerpt: "Why are we being told - by bosses, by fitness apps, by ourselves - to optimize this 'new' time to get things done?"
READ MORE
Delia Giovanola. (photo: LucÃa Cholakian Herrera)
Decades After Argentina's Dictatorship, the Abuelas Continue Reuniting Families
LucÃa Cholakian Herrera, NACLA
Excerpt: "The struggle to hold the military to account for crimes against humanity are a part of Argentinian identity. A group of grandmothers leads the story of that struggle."
LucÃa Cholakian Herrera, NACLA
Excerpt: "The struggle to hold the military to account for crimes against humanity are a part of Argentinian identity. A group of grandmothers leads the story of that struggle."
t was an atypical grandmother’s birthday. On February 18, Delia Giovanola, who had just turned 94, sang along surrounded by a group of people that included her comrades from Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo. She clapped with excitement and, once the song was over, turned to hug her grandson MartÃn. Even though he is 44, it was just their fourth birthday together. MartÃn has only been MartÃn since the day he got the phone call that changed his life.
On October 16, 1976, Stella Maris Montesano and Jorge Oscar Ogando, 27 and 29, respectively, were kidnapped by the military. They were taken to the Pozo de Banfield, one of the many centers for clandestine detention that operated under the Argentine military civic dictatorship. The intention was to torture and kill the mostly young detainees in an alleged crusade against the “subversive germ.”
Argentina’s dictatorship took place in the context of systematic extermination of guerrillas and left-wing ideas in many other Latin American countries. Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, and other countries had similar dictatorships, gathered under Plan Cóndor, a U.S.-backed campaign that united the military governments through intelligence to detect and suppress any potential opposition to their power. The activists in Argentina were mainly divided in two groups: Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo and Montoneros. After the 1976 coup d’etat, most of them went into hiding and organized in secret.
During the first years of the military government, their political activity was suppressed and young activists went missing. After democracy was restored in 1983, investigations were opened and society began to find out about the crimes against humanity during the dictatorship. Some of them involved disappearing the bodies in “death flights,” throwing prisoners out of planes into the RÃo de la Plata.
Argentinian society was paralized and under a state of terror. Human rights organizations were the few who went fearlessly out on the streets to demand information about missing people, led by a group of mothers and grandmothers who were desperately looking for their children and grandchildren. The Abuelas of Plaza de Mayo association continues their search today. They developed scientific methods to identify their grandchildren, and achieved the construction of public policy to search for traces of the violence during the dictatorship.
Families like MartÃn’s have been reunited through their struggle. Stella Maris, his mother, was eight months pregnant when she was kidnapped. She gave birth to a boy named MartÃn on December 5, 1976. Shortly after, she was taken to another clandestine center. Both her and her partner Jorge remain disappeared, two of the 30,000 missing people after the genocide.
Juana Elena Arias de Franicevich, a midwife who collaborated with the dictatorship, forged Baby MartÃn’s birth certificate. She is known to have forged at least 10 other certificates. She died in 1995 and her crimes went unpunished.
The fate of the children born in captivity varied. Many were adopted by military families and grew up in violent and oppressive environments. Others, including MartÃn, were raised by families who had no clue of their origin. This is why MartÃn chooses to use the word “adoption” as opposed to “appropriation” when he refers to the family in which he grew up.
MartÃn was raised as Diego and lived a healthy and happy youth. When he was 22, he moved to Miami in search of new opportunities, where he made his career selling electronic devices. He got married and had two daughters, who were 11 and seven when he found out the truth about his identity.
MartÃn, unlike many of the almost 130 adults who have had their identity restored, showed up intentionally to find out if he was a nieto. Most people his age knew by heart the campaign of the Abuelas that ran on TV, radio and newspapers during their youth: “If you were born between 1976 and 1983 and have any doubts about your identity, call.”
MartÃn’s adoptive father was open about the fact that he was not his biological father. MartÃn began actively searching for his true identity after his adoptive parents died. That year, 2015, he visited the Buenos Aires office of the Abuelas. A few days later, he was already back in Miami getting the DNA test at the consulate.
“I was determined to find out the truth about my identity,” he recalls. His sample was sent to the National DNA Data Bank (BNDG), the archive of genetic material extracted from relatives of disappeared people.
Seven months later, he was at his office in Miami when his phone rang. It was Claudia Carlotto, head of the National Commission for the Right to Identity (CONADI).
“Sit down,” Claudia said to MartÃn. “I’ve got some news.” Claudia informed him that his DNA tests came back positive, and that he was the son of Stella Maris and Oscar.
“And you have a grandmother,” she added. “She’s been searching for you like crazy for 39 years.”
Finding MartÃn
Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo are now a worldwide symbol, but their struggle went unrecognized for many years. Delia was one of the 12 founders of the organization and searched relentlessly for over 500 missing babies born in captivity. She still does, as 400 remain missing. MartÃn was the grandchild number 118 that the Abuelas found with support from the CONADI and the National Bank of Genetic Data.
When she found out about MartÃn, Delia was in a car heading to a conference about the search for the missing grandchildren. She received a phone call from Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo asking her to come to a meeting. She refused; Delia never misses commitments. Back at the office, they asked the organizers of the conference to tell Delia it was cancelled. After they did, Delia agreed to go to the Abuelas office, with no clue of the news she was about to receive.
The three words that she’d been waiting for came from the president of the Abuelas, Estela de Carlotto:
“We found MartÃn.”
Delia broke into what she describes as a mix of laughter, tears, and shrieks. Her joy grew when Claudia added that he wanted to talk to her on the phone. This was a first: Grandchildren usually take their time before contacting their families of origin. MartÃn was enthusiastic about hearing the voice of the woman who had searched for him for almost 40 years.
“Hola, MartÃn! MartÃn!”
“Hola...You are calling me MartÃn, but my name is Diego...”
MartÃn was hesitant. He was sitting down, and the surroundings in his office stood still while his life transformed with each passing second. Delia told him that she had searched for him under the name of MartÃn—that it was the name that his mother had chosen for him. And again, he absorbed the new information. He accepted being called MartÃn.
Delia told him she was very modern and used social media and Whatsapp daily, so they could connect easily. The subsequent calls were through Skype, the platform in which they “met” officially. He travelled to Argentina a few weeks later, in December. He visited with his now ex-wife and two daughters.
“I had told my grandma I would visit after lunch,” MartÃn says. “But we arrived a bit later. That’s what she told me when she saw me: that I was late!”
A New Start
Delia has a reputation for fearlessness. During the beginning of the Falklands War in 1982 that Delia seized on the presence of international media in the country, and held a sign in front of the news cameras that read, “Malvinas are Argentinian, the disappeared too.” The courage of the Abuelas was a threat to the military government, and many of them were kidnapped and disappeared. Nothing stopped them.
She was grandmother to a girl, too. Virginia was MartÃn’s older sister. When Jorge Oscar and Stella Maris were kidnapped, Delia took her in and raised her. Virginia joined the struggle of the Abuelas to find the truth about what had happened to her parents and to find her little brother. But the pain was unbearable and Virginia died by suicide in 2011. Delia recalls this as one of the hardest moments of her life.
Now, MartÃn shares her family history. He says, “This is what came with my search: my history. It’s a very hard truth.” Still, he is happy he found it. After finding out about his true identity, MartÃn started traveling back to Buenos Aires every month.
“Having been in the U.S. for a long time, I felt uprooted from Buenos Aires for the first time after 2015,” he remembers. His work allows him to spend time both in Buenos Aires and Miami, where his daughters still live.
Being part of the Latinx diaspora in Florida, MartÃn faced a double challenge: He had to adapt to his new identity in a different country that did not share the consciousness of what it means to be a grandson to Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo. Luckily, MartÃn is mainly surrounded by Latinx friends and colleagues, making it easier to share his story. Before the DNA result, he had barely spoken about the fact that he knew he was adopted. Only his ex-wife knew about his doubts. Now, in spite of keeping Diego as his legal name in the United States, he is open about his story.
The life of the grandchildren change swiftly when their identities are restored. Many re-do their lives completely, change careers, separate from lifelong partners, and move to different cities. One thing that MartÃn shares with many of the 128 restored grandchildren is the commitment to their new families and particularly to the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo. With the aging of the Abuelas, the grandchildren know they will be the ones to carry out the project in the future. And the search will grow even more complex. The grandmothers started looking for children, then for young men and women. Now, they are searching for mature adults and even great-grandchildren.
MartÃn is aware of the privilege he had by being able to connect with his grandmother and finding her healthy enough to share adventures. Delia was revitalized when she found him. Each time he visits, she makes plans for both of them, takes him to different conferences, and expects him to spend time with her in her house in Villa Ballester, in the northern suburbs of Buenos Aires. He has his own room: She moved into a smaller bedroom so that he could be comfortable. In spite of being part of a league of exceptional and now world-famous grandmothers, Delia is a typical granny. She even resists cursing in front of him.
The Fight Continues
Every DÃa de la Memoria gathers hundreds of thousands marching across the country under the slogan “memory, truth and justice.” These three words have not only defined the generation of young people that lived under terror during those years but have also constituted a social identity that shapes today’s youth.
After singing happy birthday, after Delia hugged MartÃn for several minutes—something she had been dreaming about for 39 years—Estela de Carlotto invited some school students who were visiting the Association for the first time to share cake and wish Delia a happy birthday. As she let them in, she warned them:
“You are now in the house of Las Abuelas, where there is no sorrow. Only lucha.”
And the Abuelas will never lose their perseverance: The struggle will go on for all of them until all of their grandchildren are reunited with their families.
Andrew Wheeler, Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty)
Trump Administration Is Still Rolling Back Environmental Protections as Nation Wrestles With Coronavirus
Ellen Knickmeyer, Associated Press
Knickmeyer writes: "The Trump administration is steadily pushing major public health and environmental rollbacks toward enactment, rejecting appeals that it slow its deregulatory drive while Americans grapple with the pandemic."
Ellen Knickmeyer, Associated Press
Knickmeyer writes: "The Trump administration is steadily pushing major public health and environmental rollbacks toward enactment, rejecting appeals that it slow its deregulatory drive while Americans grapple with the pandemic."
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