20 April 20
“Oligarchy (from Greek (oligarkhía); from (olígos), meaning "few", and (arkho), meaning "to rule or to command") is a form of power structure in which power effectively rests with a small number of people. These people could be distinguished by royalty, wealth, family ties, education, corporate, or military control.”
In contrast RSN is something you control through your contributions.
Think about it.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
Founder, Reader Supported News
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19 April 20
Jim Hightower | The Rich Wanted to Strangle a Tiny Government in a Bathtub to Avoid Taxes; Now It Turns Out We Need a Competent State
Jim Hightower, OtherWords
Hightower writes: "Amazingly, America has become a nation of socialists, asking in dismay: 'Where's the government?'"
Jim Hightower, OtherWords
Hightower writes: "Amazingly, America has become a nation of socialists, asking in dismay: 'Where's the government?'"
EXCERPT:
Nothing like a spreading coronavirus pandemic to bring home the need that all of us have — both as individuals and as a society — for an adequately funded, fully functioning, competent government capable of serving all.
Instead, in our moment of critical national need, Trump’s government is a rickety medicine show run by a small-minded flimflammer peddling laissez-fairyland snake oil.
“We have it totally under control,” Trump pompously declared after the first U.S. case was confirmed in January. For weeks, as the pandemic spread out of control, he did nothing. Meanwhile an increasingly anxious public found that they couldn’t even get reliable test kits from Trump’s hollowed-out government health agencies.
Still, he shrugged off all concern and responsibility: “By April, you know, in theory,” he said, “when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.” Not exactly a can-do Rooseveltian response to a national crisis!
By March the inconvenient fact of a rising death toll exposed this imposter of a president as incompetent, uncaring… and silly.
Young women wear face masks as protection against the coronavirus. (photo: Barry Lewis/In Pictures/Getty Images)
US and Russia Blocking UN Plans for a Global Ceasefire Amid Crisis
Simon Tisdall, Guardian UK
Tisdall writes: "The Trump administration and Russia are blocking efforts to win binding UN security council backing for a global ceasefire to help fight the coronavirus pandemic, which has claimed more than 150,000 lives worldwide."
READ MORE
Simon Tisdall, Guardian UK
Tisdall writes: "The Trump administration and Russia are blocking efforts to win binding UN security council backing for a global ceasefire to help fight the coronavirus pandemic, which has claimed more than 150,000 lives worldwide."
READ MORE
Travelers in Wuhan, China. (photo: AFP)
Americans at World Health Organization Transmitted Real-Time Information About Coronavirus to Trump Administration
Karen DeYoung, Lena H. Sun and Emily Rauhala, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "More than a dozen U.S. researchers, physicians and public health experts, many of them from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, were working full time at the Geneva headquarters of the World Health Organization as the novel coronavirus emerged late last year and transmitted real-time information about its discovery and spread in China to the Trump administration, according to U.S. and international officials."
Karen DeYoung, Lena H. Sun and Emily Rauhala, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "More than a dozen U.S. researchers, physicians and public health experts, many of them from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, were working full time at the Geneva headquarters of the World Health Organization as the novel coronavirus emerged late last year and transmitted real-time information about its discovery and spread in China to the Trump administration, according to U.S. and international officials."
A number of CDC staffers are regularly detailed to work at WHO in Geneva as part of a rotation that has operated for years. Senior Trump-appointed health officials also consulted regularly at the highest levels with the WHO as the crisis unfolded, the officials said.
The presence of so many U.S. officials undercuts President Trump’s charge that the WHO’s failure to communicate the extent of the threat, born of a desire to protect China, is largely responsible for the rapid spread of the virus in the United States.
The administration has also sharply criticized the Chinese government for withholding information.
But the president, who often touts a personal relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping and is reluctant to inflict damage on a trade deal with Beijing, appears to see the WHO as a more defenseless target.
Asked early Sunday about the presence of CDC and other officials at the WHO, and whether it was “fair to blame the WHO for covering up the spread of this virus,” Deborah Birx, the State Department expert who is part of the White House pandemic team, gently shifted the onus to China, and the need to “over-communicate.”
“It’s always the first country that get exposed to the pandemic that has a — really a higher moral obligation on communicating, on transparency, because all the other countries around the world are making decisions on that,” Birx told ABC’s This Week. “And when we get through this as a global community, we can figure out really what has to happen for first alerts and transparency and understanding very early on about … how incredibly contagious this virus is.”
Following a Trump-hosted video conference of the leaders of the Group of Seven industrialized nations on Thursday, a White House statement said “much of the conversation centered on the lack of transparency and chronic mismanagement of the pandemic by the WHO.”
The group’s focus on the global health organization during the call stemmed largely from Trump’s announcement two days earlier that he was freezing all U.S. funding for it, saying donors would be discussing “what do we do with all of that money that goes to WHO.” The United States provides up to $500 million a year in assessed and voluntary contributions, significantly more than any other nation.
In statements following the G-7 call, however, other leaders emphasized the need to build up the WHO, rather than tear it down.
French President Emmanuel Macron “expressed his support for the WHO and underscored the key role it must play,” according to a statement from his office. German Chancellor Angela Merkel “made clear that the pandemic can only be defeated with a strong and coordinated international response,” her spokesman said. “In this context, she expressed full support for the WHO as well as a number of other partners.”
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas warned that the WHO “cannot be weakened or in any way be called into question politically. … Every inch that the U.S. withdraws from the wider world, especially at this level, is space that will be occupied by others — and that tends to be those that don’t share our values of liberal democracy,” he said.
Canada, Japan and the European Union — all of whom participated in the call — also issued strong statements backing the organization.
A G-7 statement issued after the call supported the need to review WHO performance. “We cannot have business as usual and must ask the hard questions about how [the pandemic] came about,” British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, standing in for virus-stricken Prime Minister Boris Johnson, said. But he stressed a post-crisis review should be “driven by science.”
In announcing the funding cutoff, Trump charged last week that the WHO parroted incorrect Chinese statements and “failed to investigate credible reports … that conflicted directly with the Chinese government’s official accounts.” He criticized “the inability of the WHO to obtain virus samples” that China continues to refuse to supply.
A Senate aide who has tracked the issue said “there was clearly an effort” by China “not to provide transparent data and information” in the early stages of the outbreak.
“We were looking to WHO to provide that information, and they did not. It was unclear as to whether they didn’t get that transparency from the Chinese, or that they chose not to share what they did get under pressure from the Chinese,” said the aide who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.
But some noted that the WHO has no power to compel member governments to do its bidding.
The organization “has no intelligence capabilities, and no investigatory power,” said Daniel Spiegel, who served as ambassador to the United Nation’s Geneva-based organizations, including the WHO, for the Clinton administration. “They should have been more skeptical about what the Chinese were telling them, but they’re totally at the mercy of what governments provide.”
Among his complaints, Trump seems most aggrieved by the initial WHO failure to support his Jan. 31 decision to partially ban incoming travel from China. Days later, at a meeting of the WHO executive board, Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said there was no need to “unnecessarily interfere with international travel and trade” to halt the spread of the disease. That message reiterated what he had said before Trump’s announcement, after meeting with Xi in Beijing.
Trump called Tedros’ statement “one of the most dangerous and costly decisions from the WHO. … They were very much opposed to what we did,” he said last week. “Fortunately, I was not convinced and suspended travel from China, saving untold numbers of lives.”
International public health experts have long debated whether border closures helped stem the spread of infectious diseases, or worsen the situation by blocking cooperation among countries. But many, including Antony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases and a leading member of the administration's coronavirus task force, have said it was probably helpful in this case as the efforts of individual countries to contain and mitigate the virus were outpaced by its rapid global spread.
On Saturday, Trump said without elaboration that “we’re finding more and more problems” with the WHO. Speaking at a White House virus briefing, he said the administration was “doing some research” on “other ways” to spend money originally intended for both the WHO and the National Institutes of Health, which he said was “giving away $32 billion a year.”
The meaning of Trump’s reference to NIH, whose fiscal year 2020 budget totals $41.6 billion, was unclear.
The administration’s 2019 Global Health Security Strategy advocates increased cooperation with the WHO and other international health organizations. But although the United States has a three-year seat on the WHO executive board, expiring in 2021, the post has remained vacant. Last month, Trump nominated Assistant Secretary for Health Brett Giroir for the position.
U.S. participation in the range of Geneva-based U.N. organizations is supervised by the State Department’s Bureau of International Organization Affairs, whose assistant secretary left office last November after the department’s inspector general issued a sweeping condemnation of his leadership, including “political harassment” of career officials deemed insufficiently loyal to Trump. It is currently headed in an acting capacity by a deputy.
But below the level of political appointments, communication between the U.S. government’s public health bureaucracy and the WHO has continued throughout the Trump administration.
In addition to working at WHO, on assignments first reported Saturday by Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank, CDC officials are often members of its many advisory groups. The emergency committee advising the organization on whether to declare “a public health emergency of international concern” during deliberations in mid to late January included Martin Centron, director for CDC’s Division of Global Migration and Quarantine.
When China eventually agreed to let a joint WHO mission into the country in mid-February, it included two U.S. scientists among 25 national and international experts from eight countries, although the Americans were not permitted to visit the “core area” in Wuhan.
From the beginning of the outbreak, CDC officials were tracking the disease and consulting with WHO counterparts. A team led by Ray Arthur, director of the Global Disease Detection Operations Center at CDC, compiles a daily summary about infectious disease events and outbreaks, categorized by level of urgency, that is sent to agency officials.
Arthur, according to a CDC official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, has participated in the CDC daily “incident management” calls, discussing information he learned from WHO officials.
Information is passed up the chain of command from CDC to the Department of Health and Human Services in daily reports and telephone discussions, this official said.
Any information of a sensitive nature about the growing outbreak was and continues to be shared by CDC officials with other U.S. officials in a secure facility located behind the CDC’s Emergency Operations Center at its Atlanta headquarters.
In the early days of the virus response, those officials included HHS Secretary Alex Azar. Information about what the WHO was planning to do or announce was often shared days in advance, the CDC official said.
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown in 2015. Brown recently signed an executive order to prevent debt collectors from seizing federal stimulus checks. (photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Private Debt Collectors Can Seize Stimulus Checks. Some States Are Trying to Stop Them.
Zeeshan Aleem, Vox
Aleem writes: "Oregon Gov. Kate Brown signed an executive order on Friday that prohibits debt collectors from seizing federal stimulus checks meant to help Americans endure the economic shock caused by the coronavirus pandemic."
READ MORE
Zeeshan Aleem, Vox
Aleem writes: "Oregon Gov. Kate Brown signed an executive order on Friday that prohibits debt collectors from seizing federal stimulus checks meant to help Americans endure the economic shock caused by the coronavirus pandemic."
READ MORE
Kansas gov. Laura Kelly at a Statehouse news conference at which she outlined steps aimed at helping small businesses that have shut down in an attempt to slow the spread of the coronavirus. (photo: Jim McLean/Kansas News Service)
Federal Judge Blocks Kansas Limits on Religious Gatherings
Associated Press
Excerpt: "A federal judge on Saturday blocked Kansas from limiting attendance at in-person religious worship services or activities to 10 people or fewer to check the spread of the coronavirus, signaling that he believes that it's likely that the policy violates religious freedom and free speech rights."
Associated Press
Excerpt: "A federal judge on Saturday blocked Kansas from limiting attendance at in-person religious worship services or activities to 10 people or fewer to check the spread of the coronavirus, signaling that he believes that it's likely that the policy violates religious freedom and free speech rights."
EXCERPTS:
Broomes’ action comes amid strong criticism of the Democratic governor’s order from the Republican-controlled Legislature and increasing pressure from GOP lawmakers to lift at least part of a stay-at-home order for all 2.9 million Kansas residents that took effect March 30 and is set to continue until May 3.
COVID-19-related deaths rose Saturday by two, to 86, and confirmed coronavirus cases increased by 85 to 1,790. Kelly's office said six deaths and 80 cases are tied to religious gatherings.
"And we will continue to be proactive and err on the side of caution where Kansans’ health and safety is at stake,” Kelly said.
Top Republican legislative leaders moved last week to revoke Kelly’s order on church gatherings themselves, only to see the Democratic governor thwart their efforts by contesting their action before the Kansas Supreme Court. The state’s highest court let her order stand on technical grounds, without deciding whether it violated freedoms guaranteed by the U.S. or Kansas constitutions.
Kansas House Speaker Ron Ryckman Jr., a Kansas City-area Republican, texted that people need to stay home, but, "the state cannot and should not set up a double standard.”
Ammunition that displaced villagers say was fired by the Tatmadaw, in September 2019. (photo: Verena Hoe/Al Jazeera)
Myanmar Military Steps Up Attacks Over Past Month
Verena Hoelzl and Cape Diamond, Al Jazeera
Excerpt: "The unrest continues even as the United Nations urges an end to conflict worldwide, and despite calls for a nationwide ceasefire from armed groups, diplomats and civil society groups, many of whom are worried the coronavirus outbreak in Myanmar could be catastrophic given the poor state of its healthcare system and lack of capacity to carry out testing. The country has recorded 74 cases so far."
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Verena Hoelzl and Cape Diamond, Al Jazeera
Excerpt: "The unrest continues even as the United Nations urges an end to conflict worldwide, and despite calls for a nationwide ceasefire from armed groups, diplomats and civil society groups, many of whom are worried the coronavirus outbreak in Myanmar could be catastrophic given the poor state of its healthcare system and lack of capacity to carry out testing. The country has recorded 74 cases so far."
READ MORE
A coyote wanders around Curry Village looking for a meal in Yosemite Valley on April 11, 2020. Yosemite National Park is closed to visitors due to the coronavirus, Covid 19. (photo: Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times/TNS)
'Nature Welcomes the Change': With No Tourists, Wildlife Roams California's Yosemite
Norma Galean and Rosalba O'Brien, Reuters
Excerpt: "A bear ambles across a forest glade and a herd of deer stroll down a silent road. At Yosemite National Park in Northern California, coronavirus restrictions mean no tourists - and bolder wildlife."
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Norma Galean and Rosalba O'Brien, Reuters
Excerpt: "A bear ambles across a forest glade and a herd of deer stroll down a silent road. At Yosemite National Park in Northern California, coronavirus restrictions mean no tourists - and bolder wildlife."
READ MORE
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