07 June 20
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06 June 20
Bill McKibben | Trump's Churchill Role-Play Was a Colossal Flop
Bill McKibben, The New Yorker
McKibben writes: "If the battle of Lafayette Park turns - as seems possible - into Donald Trump's most telling misadventure, part of the credit should go to Winston Churchill."
EXCERPT:
It’s difficult to imagine a greater contrast with our current President, who needed police in riot gear and National Guard troops to clear the way for him simply to walk across the street. But it’s not just Trump—the G.O.P.’s harder-liners also love to cosplay Churchill. Tom Cotton—the junior senator from Arkansas, who supports using U.S. troops against American citizens—accepted the “statesmanship award” at the Claremont Institute’s annual Churchill Dinner, in 2018, using the occasion to rally against the “cosmopolitan élites.” The world, Cotton told the assembled conservative grandees, “is a struggle for mastery and dominance . . . in which you run the show or the show runs you. Dictators organize their domestic order with force and violence and live in constant fear for their own lives and grasp on power, so they understand this all too well.” Indeed.
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Bill McKibben, The New Yorker
McKibben writes: "If the battle of Lafayette Park turns - as seems possible - into Donald Trump's most telling misadventure, part of the credit should go to Winston Churchill."
EXCERPT:
It’s difficult to imagine a greater contrast with our current President, who needed police in riot gear and National Guard troops to clear the way for him simply to walk across the street. But it’s not just Trump—the G.O.P.’s harder-liners also love to cosplay Churchill. Tom Cotton—the junior senator from Arkansas, who supports using U.S. troops against American citizens—accepted the “statesmanship award” at the Claremont Institute’s annual Churchill Dinner, in 2018, using the occasion to rally against the “cosmopolitan élites.” The world, Cotton told the assembled conservative grandees, “is a struggle for mastery and dominance . . . in which you run the show or the show runs you. Dictators organize their domestic order with force and violence and live in constant fear for their own lives and grasp on power, so they understand this all too well.” Indeed.
READ MORE
Joe Biden. (photo: Saul Loeb/Getty Images)
Biden Secures Democratic Presidential Nomination for November Showdown Against Trump
Adam Edelman, NBC News
Edelman writes: "Joe Biden won enough delegates on Saturday to become the Democratic presidential nominee in November's election against President Donald Trump, NBC News projects."
READ MORE
Adam Edelman, NBC News
Edelman writes: "Joe Biden won enough delegates on Saturday to become the Democratic presidential nominee in November's election against President Donald Trump, NBC News projects."
READ MORE
Breonna Taylor, 26, was killed March 13. (photo: Taylor Family)
Say Her Name: Breonna Taylor Was Killed by Police in March. Why Haven't the Officers Faced Charges?
Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "Protesters are calling for charges against the officers involved in the death of Breonna Taylor, the 26-year-old African American woman who was an emergency room technician treating COVID patients and was shot to death by police inside her own apartment in March."
Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "Protesters are calling for charges against the officers involved in the death of Breonna Taylor, the 26-year-old African American woman who was an emergency room technician treating COVID patients and was shot to death by police inside her own apartment in March."
Then-San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, center, with Eli Harold and Eric Reid, right, kneel during the national anthem before their NFL game in 2016. (photo: Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group/Getty Images)
NFL Decision to Permit Kneeling Protest by Players Enrages Donald Trump
Harriet Sherwood, Guardian UK
Sherwood writes: "The US National Football League is embroiled in a standoff with President Donald Trump after it said players would be allowed to 'take the knee' during the American national anthem in protest against racism."
Harriet Sherwood, Guardian UK
Sherwood writes: "The US National Football League is embroiled in a standoff with President Donald Trump after it said players would be allowed to 'take the knee' during the American national anthem in protest against racism."
After the NFL announced its U-turn, Trump tweeted late on Friday night: “We should be standing up straight and tall, ideally with a salute, or a hand on heart. There are other things you can protest, but not our Great American Flag – NO KNEELING!”
Support among sports personalities and organisations for the Black Lives Matter movement was also bolstered by an announcement from basketball star Michael Jordan that he was donating $100m (£79m) to organisations promoting racial equality. The move was a significant departure from the former Chicago Bulls player’s previous reluctance to be drawn into politics.
The NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said late on Friday that the league’s earlier ban on players taking the knee had been mistaken. “We were wrong for not listening to NFL players earlier, and encourage all to speak out and peacefully protest,” Goodell said.
In a video posted on social media, he added: “We, the National Football League, believe black lives matter. Protests around the country are emblematic of the centuries of silence, inequality and oppression of black players, coaches, fans and staff. I will be reaching out to players who have raised their voices and others on how we can improve.”
The change in the NFL’s position came after some players urged the league to “condemn racism and the systemic oppression of black people”.
The practice of taking the knee during the national anthem before games started in 2016 as a protest by black player Colin Kaepernick against racial injustice. In the past two weeks, it has become an international symbol of opposition to racism.
Trump has frequently denounced the action. Two years ago, he praised the NFL’s ban on taking the knee during the pre-game national anthem, saying: “You have to stand proudly for the national anthem. Or you shouldn’t be playing, you shouldn’t be there. Maybe you shouldn’t be in the country.”
Last week, the president criticised New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees for dropping his opposition to NFL kneeling protests. Brees said, “it breaks my heart to know the pain I have caused”, adding that his earlier comments lacked “awareness, compassion or empathy”.
Trump tweeted that Brees “should not have taken back his original stance on honoring our magnificent American Flag. OLD GLORY is to be revered, cherished, and flown high …”
In a response on Saturday, Brees said: “We must stop talking about the flag and shift our attention to the real issues of systemic racial injustice, economic oppression, police brutality, and judicial and prison reform.”
Jordan, 57, said he and his company, Jordan Brand, would give $100m over 10 years to the fight for racial equality and social justice.
In a statement, the Jordan Brand said: “Black lives matter. This isn’t a controversial statement. Until the ingrained racism that allows our country’s institutions to fail is completely eradicated, we will remain committed to protecting and improving the lives of black people.
“Today, we are announcing that Michael Jordan and the Jordan Brand will be donating 100 million over the next 10 years to organisations dedicated to ensuring racial equality, social justice and greater access to education.”
The Jordan Brand is a subsidiary of Nike, the shoe giant that on Friday pledged $40m over the next four years to support the black community.
On Monday, Jordan issued a statement on George Floyd and the killings of black people at the hands of police. He said: “I am deeply saddened, truly pained and plain angry. I see and feel everyone’s pain, outrage and frustration. I stand with those who are calling out the ingrained racism and violence toward people of colour in our country. We have had enough.”
A protest against police brutality. (photo: MSN)
Buffalo Police Officers Arrested After Shoving 75-Year-Old Protester
Aaron Katersky, Matt Foster and Christina Carrega, ABC News
Excerpt: "Two Buffalo, New York, police officers are now facing criminal charges in connection with the graphic caught-on-video shove of a 75-year-old man during a protest, prosecutors said."
Aaron Katersky, Matt Foster and Christina Carrega, ABC News
Excerpt: "Two Buffalo, New York, police officers are now facing criminal charges in connection with the graphic caught-on-video shove of a 75-year-old man during a protest, prosecutors said."
EXCERPTS:
Officers Aaron Torglaski and Robert McCabe were charged with second-degree assault during their video arraignments on Saturday and were released on their own recognizance. They both entered no guilty pleas and are expected back in court on July 20.
The Thursday protest at Niagara Square had less than 20 demonstrators and several members of Buffalo Police Department's Emergency Response Team, officials said.
One of the protesters, Martin Gugino was seen on video walking in the direction of the crowd of uniformed officers when Torglaski and McCabe allegedly shoved him.
Gugino fell flat onto his back and bumped the back of his head on the concrete, video shows. The sound of the man's head hitting the ground silenced the crowd, according to the video.
A trail of blood can be seen seeping from the head of the motionless man as several officers walked by him.
Another officer, possibly a National Guard member, who went to aid the bleeding man was pushed by fellow officers, the video shows.
The spokesperson for the city and police department, Mike DeGeorge, initially said in a statement that the man "tripped and fell."
"Once the department became aware of additional video from the scene, they immediately opened an investigation," DeGeorge told ABC News on Thursday.
Both officers were suspended and the Erie County District Attorney John Flynn launched an investigation.
The police union opposed the suspensions and in response 57 officers on the emergency team resigned from their positions, but will remain on the force.
Siekopai elders Roberto Piaguaje and Gilberto Payaguaje collect Yai Kajoro (Jaguar's ear), Ecuadorian Amazon. The plant is used to cure many ailments that affect the liver, such as hepatitis. (photo: Jeronimo Zuñiga/Amazon Frontlines)
Triple Crisis of Pipelines, Pesticides and Pandemic Is an Existential Threat to Ecuador's Indigenous Peoples
Mitch Anderson, Mongabay
Anderson writes: "Ten days after showing his first symptoms, Dannes Piaguaje struggled to breathe as he leaned over a traditional steam remedy in his leaf-thatch jungle home in the Ecuadorian Amazon."
Mitch Anderson, Mongabay
Anderson writes: "Ten days after showing his first symptoms, Dannes Piaguaje struggled to breathe as he leaned over a traditional steam remedy in his leaf-thatch jungle home in the Ecuadorian Amazon."
EXCERPTS:
In mid-March, his and neighboring Secoya communities confronted two separate crises that threatened their food sovereignty at the worst possible moment. Days after Ecuador declared a state of emergency on March 15, the Secoya people’s principal fishing river, the Shushufindi, was poisoned by a massive pesticide runoff from nearby African palm plantations, decimating local fish stocks. Three weeks later, a devastating rupture of the country’s biggest oil pipelines spilled crude oil into the Napo river, a tributary of the Amazon, leaving dozens of indigenous villages and tens of thousands of peoples without access to clean water and traditional fishing resources, including the Secoya village of Painkenape. (Only weeks before the spill, Ecuador’s oil minister Rene Ortiz described the pandemic as an “opportunity” to ramp up oil production.)
This triple-crisis provides a window into the unique vulnerabilities of indigenous communities across the Amazon. In villages like Piaguaje’s, the pandemic has arrived on top of the slow-motion catastrophe of oil activity that is contaminating local sources of food and water. Only now, the long supply trips to frontier towns that this contamination has made necessary threaten to bring the virus back into the forest. Illegal loggers and poachers present another possible vector.
The regional governments’ have largely abandoned indigenous populations to their fate, a decision with painful historical echoes of the sixteenth-century arrival of smallpox and other diseases that decimated once-thriving indigenous populations. In the rainforest regions of Ecuador, Peru and Brazil, overwhelmed and understaffed public health offices focus what resources they have on larger urban areas like Manaus and Iquitos, where the bodies have piled up in the streets.
The first indigenous fatalities in Ecuador occurred in mid-April, a month after the government declared a national state of emergency, and following the oil spill on the Coca and Napo Rivers. Under pressure from my organization, a government “health brigade” was sent to the village where the first death occurred, called Bellavista. It took 15 days for the community test results to come back. By then, the virus had spread to potentially dozens of families. In many villages, there were either no tests provided, or the results were lost in a backlog of tens of thousands of samples, according to sources within the Health Ministry.
Regardless of what happens for the duration of the pandemic, the loss to the imperiled cultures of the region has already been great. Dannes Payaguaje’s grandfather was a treasure chest of forest knowledge handed down over the centuries. The very same forest knowledge, for instance, that would have known that Hacha Caspi, which contains quinine, might provide effective relief for the symptoms of this novel disease. “The sickness crept into my grandpa, and took him away from us into the sky,” said Dannes. “What will happen if this sickness continues to spread? Our elders are the most vulnerable.”
In the days before his grandfather died, Dannes’ mother Ines fed her father banana gruel with a spoon and spoke to him in whispers. The old man had been bed-ridden for several years, and she was experienced in caring for him. But her emotion was palpable on the morning, shortly before his death, when she whispered into his ear, “This sickness I have is going to be what takes you away. “I’m going to be the one that causes your death.”
A 'feather star' crinoid on the Mytilus seamount in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument. (photo: NOAAS Okeanos Explorer Program)
Trump to Open Atlantic Marine National Monument to Commercial Fishing
Laura Parker, National Geographic
Parker writes: "The decision will trigger another court battle over whether he has the power as president to essentially erase a national monument."
Laura Parker, National Geographic
Parker writes: "The decision will trigger another court battle over whether he has the power as president to essentially erase a national monument."
resident Trump vowed Friday to open the nation’s only national monument in the Atlantic Ocean to commercial fishing, saying he was giving Maine back part of its history and the fishermen their industry.
He signed a proclamation declaring the opening after attending a roundtable discussion with commercial fishermen in Bangor, Maine, that included a wide-ranging conversation about unwanted regulations and tariffs on the seafood trade.
“We’re opening it today,” Trump said. To the fishermen, he added: “We’re gonna solve your fishing problem....Basically, they took away your livelihood. It’s ridiculous.”
Trump’s move to open fishing in the Northeastern Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument will surely open a new front in the ongoing legal battle over the limits of presidential powers regarding national monuments. Native American tribes and environmental groups are already challenging administration efforts to reduce the size of two monuments in Utah.
In this case, as some who attended the Maine meeting pointed out, the president is not seeking to change the marine monument’s boundaries. Environmental groups nonetheless immediately vowed to sue the Trump administration.
“A significant change to the monument or its protections—such as allowing commercial fishing—must be done by Congress, not by the president,” Brad Sewell, senior director of Oceans for the Natural Resources Defense Council said in a statement. “The Antiquities Act gives the president power to protect special areas for future generations, not the opposite power, to abolish those protections.”
He added: “We are prepared to sue the Trump administration.”
Enric Sala, a marine biologist and founder of National Geographic’s Pristine Seas program, who helped to create marine monuments in the Pacific and elsewhere, says leaving the boundaries intact makes little difference if commercial fishing is allowed.
“National monuments, by law, are to preserve the integrity of America’s natural and historical sites,” he says. “We need pristine areas set aside so that we can see nature as it was before we overexploited it, and understand the true impact of fishing. If commercial fishing were allowed in a monument, it would become just a name on a map, and no different than any other place in the ocean.”
Sportfishing already allowed
The Seamount marine monument, created by President Obama in 2016, sprawls over nearly 5,000 square miles of the Atlantic, about 130 miles off the coast of Cape Cod. It protects a collection of underwater canyons and mountains, including four extinct volcanoes, and is home to sea turtles, endangered whales, and deep-sea, cold-water corals.
The monument is open to sportfishing, but commercial fishing is prohibited, with the exception of the red crab and lobster fisheries. Those fisheries have been allowed to continue for a seven-year transition period that ends in 2023.
Administration lawyers are already defending in federal court what they see as the president’s authority to change a national monument. That case concerns Trump’s 2017 decision to drastically shrink two large national monuments in Utah created by President Obama, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante.
The Seamounts monument, for its part, is also already embroiled in a suit in federal court. In 2017, five groups, including two lobster and three commercial fishing associations, sued the federal government, arguing that Obama exceeded his authority and created the monument illegally.
The case was dismissed by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in 2018. Last December, D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the lower court that none of the fishing associations’ arguments had merit. The fisheries groups have been granted an extension to file an appeal to the Supreme Court because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Fishermen’s economic worries
Trump’s move to open the Seamounts monument to fishing comes at a time when commercial fishermen are seeking regulatory relief to help them through the economic crisis set off by the pandemic, which closed restaurants and hotels, major purchasers of fish. On May 7, he announced a new initiative promoting economic growth of the American seafood industry. (Read more on that here.)
In response, Trump received a request by the Western Pacific Fishery Council (WESPAC) to open the four Pacific marine national monuments to commercial fishing. Last week, all eight regional fishing councils—quasi-governmental bodies that set fishing season schedules and annual catch limits—wrote to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross asking that all five marine monuments be opened to commercial fishing.
The May 29 letter said that “at a time when our nation’s fisheries are experiencing devastating impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic,” the councils believe “that immediate action to support American fisheries is urgently needed.” The fishery managers councils also reiterated their long-standing opposition to marine monuments that prohibit fishing: "Marine monument designations have the potential to be counterproductive to achieving fishery management goals.”
In their meeting with Trump in Maine, fishermen described a trade that is handed down from generation to generation and faces growing difficulties on multiple fronts. Their efforts to talk to the Obama administration about the hardships that fishing restrictions would create had fallen on deaf ears, they said. The monument was designated “in back rooms with special interests,” said Kristan Porter, president of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association.
Several other fishermen said they see the creation of Seamounts as the first of more areas that will be closed to them.
“We really worry about the precedent this sets,” said Porter. “You can close large areas of the ocean and (that) puts all of us in smaller and smaller boxes.”
After listening to and agreeing with the fishermen, Trump asked the group what it needed from him. When he was told the signed proclamation would do the trick, he observed: “You’re so lucky I’m president.”
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