11 April 20
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11 April 20
Edward Snowden: Governments Are Using Coronavirus to Build 'the Architecture of Oppression'
Trone Dowd, VICE
Dowd writes: "There is nothing more foreseeable as a public health crisis in a world where we are just living on top of each other in crowded and polluted cities, than a pandemic. And every academic, every researcher who's looked at this knew this was coming."
Trone Dowd, VICE
Dowd writes: "There is nothing more foreseeable as a public health crisis in a world where we are just living on top of each other in crowded and polluted cities, than a pandemic. And every academic, every researcher who's looked at this knew this was coming."
he future may be unpredictable, but global pandemics aren’t. There isn’t a single government on the planet that hasn’t been warned, repeatedly, that at some point a viral pandemic will sweep the globe, causing untold death and economic disruption.
And yet most failed to prepare for the novel coronavirus.
“Every academic, every researcher who's looked at this knew this was coming,” says famed whistleblower Edward Snowden in an exclusive interview with VICE co-founder Shane Smith. “Yet when we needed it, the system has now failed us, and it has failed us comprehensively.”
Snowden is the first guest in the new “Shelter in Place” series debuting on VICE TV on Thursday at 10 p.m. EST, which looks at the global response to COVID-19 and its lasting impact around the world. Smith will discuss these themes, as well as how to survive quarantine, with a host of thinkers from science, entertainment, economics, and journalism.
In the premiere episode, Smith talks to Snowden, who blew the lid off of the National Security Agency’s surveillance of the American people in 2012. In the interview conducted from Smith’s home in Santa Monica over video chat, the two tackle topics including the lack of preparedness in the face of a global pandemic, how long this will be a threat to humanity, and whether the power we’re handing to global leaders will come back and bite us in the ass.
Smith: Why does it seem like we're so ill-prepared?
Snowden: There is nothing more foreseeable as a public health crisis in a world where we are just living on top of each other in crowded and polluted cities, than a pandemic. And every academic, every researcher who's looked at this knew this was coming. And in fact, even intelligence agencies, I can tell you firsthand, because they used to read the reports had been planning for pandemics.
Are autocratic regimes better at dealing with things like this than democratic ones?I don't think so. I mean, there are arguments being made that China can do things that the United States can't. That doesn't mean that what these autocratic countries are doing is actually more effective.
If you're looking at countries like China, where cases seem to have leveled off, how much can we trust that those numbers are actually true?I don't think we can. Particularly, we see the Chinese government recently working to expel Western journalists at precisely this moment where we need credible independent warnings in this region.
It seems that [coronavirus] may be the greatest question of the modern era around civil liberties, around the right to privacy. Yet no one's asking this question.As authoritarianism spreads, as emergency laws proliferate, as we sacrifice our rights, we also sacrifice our capability to arrest the slide into a less liberal and less free world. Do you truly believe that when the first wave, this second wave, the 16th wave of the coronavirus is a long-forgotten memory, that these capabilities will not be kept? That these datasets will not be kept? No matter how it is being used, what’ is being built is the architecture of oppression.
Sen. Bernie Sanders. (photo: Getty Images)
Bernie Sanders Proposes Emergency Version of 'Medicare for All' for the Pandemic
Reader Supported News
Excerpt: "Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is a full-time senator again, and he wants Democrats to back legislation that would cover health care for all during the coronavirus pandemic."
Reader Supported News
Excerpt: "Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is a full-time senator again, and he wants Democrats to back legislation that would cover health care for all during the coronavirus pandemic."
Now off the campaign trail, the senator joined Rep. Pramila Jayapal to float a temporary universal health care program.
Sanders and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) proposed an emergency version of their signature “Medicare for All” legislation on Friday: the Health Care Emergency Guarantee Act, which would have Medicare reimburse all out-of-pocket costs for both insured and uninsured Americans throughout the coronavirus pandemic.
Congress has already passed a bill to make testing for the coronavirus free, and Democrats have also been pushing for coronavirus treatment to be cost-free as well. Even President Donald Trump said the federal government will pay providers for treating uninsured patients. But this plan from Sanders and Jayapal goes significantly further.
The two lawmakers want a federal backstop for the millions of Americans who have lost their health insurance due to unemployment in recent weeks, as well as some financial aid for the potentially high costs of hospitalization and treatment for COVID-19 patients.
“What we are seeing today is the fundamental fallacies of the employer-based health care, and the reason for that is that it is likely, over the two-month period, tens of millions of Americans are going to lose their jobs and lose their health care as well,” Sanders told HuffPost in a phone interview. “The idea that we look at health care in America as an employee benefit is totally absurd.”
For uninsured Americans, the bill would cover “any health care items and services that are medically necessary or appropriate” to maintain a person’s health, get a diagnosis, or go through rehabilitation, at Medicare rates, which are substantially lower than what private insurers pay providers. In other words, this would not cover elective surgeries like a hip replacement during the pandemic, but would cover cancer treatment or an inhaler for asthma. Many hospitals have stopped elective treatments during the pandemic as health care providers struggle to get the resources they need to address the surge in COVID-19 cases.
For those who are insured, the bill would cover deductibles, copayments and any cost-sharing burdens patients have. The emergency coverage would last until the Food and Drug Administration approves and widely distributes a coronavirus vaccine.
Sanders’ colleagues in the House and Senate, like Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), have also been out front calling for the government to help cover coronavirus treatments. Gallego’s proposal in the House would have Medicaid, the federal health insurance program for low-income Americans, cover treatment.
But Sanders’ and Jayapal’s teams were concerned that going through Medicaid, which is run on a state-by-state basis, would encounter issues in lower-income states and in states that have been less willing to expand the program. And they saw the need for coverage beyond coronavirus treatment.
“Assuming there were political consensus that everyone should have this protection from health care costs during the crisis, Medicare is a natural vehicle since it already exists everywhere,” said Larry Levitt, who oversees health policy work at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “While many insurers have voluntarily waived cost-sharing for COVID-19 treatment, this goes quite a bit further in covering out-of-pocket costs for all health care. It’s sort of a temporary Medicare for All, grafted on top of our existing insurance system.”
Sanders’ office noted that this emergency proposal is not an expansion of Medicare, unlike his “Medicare for All” plan, which would move all Americans onto a single supercharged Medicare program. Jayapal authored the House version of the Medicare for All bill introduced in 2019.
That said, there’s been little political consensus around expanding health coverage beyond COVID-19 testing, and so far changes have been on the margins. Congress expanded Medicare’s coverage of telemedicine in the last relief bill but did not include subsidies for COBRA, the federal law that allows recently unemployed Americans to continue their health plans at personal cost, or for the Affordable Care Act. The Trump administration decided against reopening the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces to the 28 million people who were uninsured before the pandemic.
Since then, Republican leaders have been singularly focused on giving aid to small businesses instead of working on a broader relief package. Democrats’ demands to pass widespread coverage for coronavirus treatment have gone nowhere so far.
More than 17 million Americans have filed for unemployment in the past four weeks; those who lost health benefits are eligible to extend their benefits through COBRA, buy into the ACA, or in many cases apply for Medicaid. Even for those with insurance, there have been reports of massive hospital bills for coronavirus treatment.
“At a time so many people are losing their jobs, or seeing fewer hours they can work, a reduced income, what you want to do now is say, ‘OK, we are going to take one burden off your shoulders: You’re not going to have to pay for the health care that you need,’” Sanders said.
Work continues at a winery in Clarksburg, Calif., last month. Farms are operating as essential businesses amid the coronavirus pandemic. (photo: Rich Pedroncelli/AP)
White House Seeks to Lower Farmworker Pay to Help Agriculture Industry
Franco Ordonez, NPR
Ordonez writes: "New White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is working with Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to see how to reduce wage rates for foreign guest workers on American farms, in order to help U.S. farmers struggling during the coronavirus, according to U.S. officials and sources familiar with the plans."
Franco Ordonez, NPR
Ordonez writes: "New White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is working with Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to see how to reduce wage rates for foreign guest workers on American farms, in order to help U.S. farmers struggling during the coronavirus, according to U.S. officials and sources familiar with the plans."
EXCERPT:
U.S. farmers say they have had to cut back on production because of the high number of restaurant and hotel closures. Cory Lunde, a spokesman for the Western Growers Association, said U.S. farmers are fighting to keep "our farms afloat in the face of the near-total collapse of the food-service sector" and more recent slowdown in the retail market.
Lee Wicker, deputy director of the North Carolina Growers Association, said Trump administration officials are trying to look at ways to help because "they understand that we're in trouble and they want to secure the food supply for the American people."
"When a farmer goes out of business, you know, he doesn't come back," Wicker said. "Food supply is a national security issue and, as bad as this COVID-19 crisis is, perhaps it can be a catalyst to start a conversation about our agriculture policy and having sustainable agriculture and diversity."
A healthcare worker and a patient. (photo: ABC News)
Hundreds of Young Americans Have Now Been Killed by the Coronavirus, Data Shows
Chris Mooney, Brady Dennis and Sarah Kaplan, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "Two weeks after her husband died alone in an intensive care unit in Fort Myers, Fla., Nicole Buchanan is quarantined at the home they shared with their 12-year-old daughter, wrestling not only with grief but also with why and how the coronavirus could steal someone so young and healthy."
Chris Mooney, Brady Dennis and Sarah Kaplan, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "Two weeks after her husband died alone in an intensive care unit in Fort Myers, Fla., Nicole Buchanan is quarantined at the home they shared with their 12-year-old daughter, wrestling not only with grief but also with why and how the coronavirus could steal someone so young and healthy."
EXCERPT:
The percentage of younger deaths, which The Post has defined as people under the age of 50, varies widely among states. It is just 0.8 percent of all deaths in Massachusetts, but 8 percent in Louisiana and 9 percent in Illinois.
By far the largest number of such deaths have come in New York, which has the country’s biggest outbreak. As of Wednesday, six New York residents under the age of 20, 33 people in their 20s, 118 in their 30s and 265 in their 40s had died.
Even more young people are getting cases of serious disease that require hospital care to beat. In Colorado — where the state health department reports age data for both hospitalizations and deaths — 247 people under 50 have been hospitalized. Of these patients, nine have died.
Data on more than 1,400 hospitalizations released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that just over 25 percent of people hospitalized with covid-19 were under age 50.
An immigrant detention center. (photo: ABC)
Over 100 Immigrants Detained in California Are Staging a Hunger Strike
J. Edward Moreno, The Hill
Moreno writes: "More than 100 immigrants detained at the Mesa Verde Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Processing Center in California are staging a hunger strike and sit-in asking for their release amid the coronavirus pandemic."
READ MORE
J. Edward Moreno, The Hill
Moreno writes: "More than 100 immigrants detained at the Mesa Verde Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Processing Center in California are staging a hunger strike and sit-in asking for their release amid the coronavirus pandemic."
READ MORE
A motorcyclist drives past a destroyed building in Sana'a. Yemen has been in a state of civil war since 2014. (photo: Yahya Arhab/EPA)
Four Journalists in Yemen Sentenced to Death for Spying
Middle East Eye
Excerpt: "A Houthi-run court in Yemen has sentenced four journalists to death after they were convicted on spying charges, their defence lawyer has said."
Middle East Eye
Excerpt: "A Houthi-run court in Yemen has sentenced four journalists to death after they were convicted on spying charges, their defence lawyer has said."
The four were accused of “collaborating with the enemy", meaning the Saudi-led coalition that has been at war with the Iran-backed rebels since 2015, Abdel-Majeed Sabra told the Associated Press.
Sabra identified the four who were sentenced to death as Abdel-Khaleq Amran, Akram al-Walidi, Hareth Hamid and Tawfiq al-Mansouri.
Last year Amnesty International called on the Houthis to release the men, who were part of a group detained in 2015 and held for four years. The men suffered beatings and were held in solitary confinement, the rights group said.
“These men are being punished for peacefully exercising their right to freedom of expression.”
Nine of them were arrested in a raid on a hotel in Sanaa, the capital which is controlled by the Houthis, while one man was detained at home by Houthi forces.
The court in the rebel-held capital, Sanaa, convicted the other six journalists on charges, including “spreading false news and rumours” to aid the Saudi-led coalition, but ordered their release after time served, Sabra said.
He said the Houthis did not allow defence lawyers to attend the trial. The verdict can be appealed.
Rights groups have accused all parties in the four-year conflict, including the coalition and Hadi's government, of carrying out arbitrary detentions.
The conflict, seen widely in the region as a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, has killed tens of thousands of people and pushed Yemen to the brink of famine.
Solar panel installations and a wind turbine. (photo: AFP/Getty Images)
Oil Companies Are Collapsing, but Wind and Solar Energy Keep Growing
Ivan Penn, The New York Times
Penn writes: "A few years ago, the kind of double-digit drop in oil and gas prices the world is experiencing now because of the coronavirus pandemic might have increased the use of fossil fuels and hurt renewable energy sources like wind and solar farms."
Ivan Penn, The New York Times
Penn writes: "A few years ago, the kind of double-digit drop in oil and gas prices the world is experiencing now because of the coronavirus pandemic might have increased the use of fossil fuels and hurt renewable energy sources like wind and solar farms."
EXCERPT:
That is not happening.
In fact, renewable energy sources are set to account for nearly 21 percent of the electricity the United States uses for the first time this year, up from about 18 percent last year and 10 percent in 2010, according to one forecast published last week. And while work on some solar and wind projects has been delayed by the outbreak, industry executives and analysts expect the renewable business to continue growing in 2020 and next year even as oil, gas and coal companies struggle financially or seek bankruptcy protection.
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