17 June 20
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Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
Founder, Reader Supported News
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16 June 20
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar | Why 'Gone With the Wind' Needs a Warning Label, Not a Ban
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, The Hollywood Reporter
Abdul-Jabbar writes: "I have mixed feelings on John Ridley's well-reasoned Los Angeles Times Op-Ed article asking HBO Max to temporarily remove Gone With the Wind, which the service then did on Jun 9. On one hand, Ridley is 100 percent correct."
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Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, The Hollywood Reporter
Abdul-Jabbar writes: "I have mixed feelings on John Ridley's well-reasoned Los Angeles Times Op-Ed article asking HBO Max to temporarily remove Gone With the Wind, which the service then did on Jun 9. On one hand, Ridley is 100 percent correct."
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A pharmacist displays a box of Dexamethasone at the Erasme Hospital amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in Brussels, Belgium, June 16, 2020. (photo: Yves Herman/Reuters)
Steroid Drug Hailed as 'Breakthrough' in COVID-19 as Trial Shows It Saves Lives
Kate Kelland and Alistair Smout, Reuters
Excerpt: "A cheap and widely-used steroid called dexamethasone has become the first drug shown to be able to save lives among COVID-19 patients in what scientists said is a 'major breakthrough' in the coronavirus pandemic."
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Kate Kelland and Alistair Smout, Reuters
Excerpt: "A cheap and widely-used steroid called dexamethasone has become the first drug shown to be able to save lives among COVID-19 patients in what scientists said is a 'major breakthrough' in the coronavirus pandemic."
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A demonstrator holds her hands up while she kneels in front of the Police at the Anaheim City Hall on June 1, 2020, in Anaheim, California, during a protest over the police killing of George Floyd. (photo: APU GOMES/AFP/Getty Images)
Why Our Union Is Asking the AFL-CIO to Get Rid of Police Unions
In These Times
Excerpt: "The entire bargaining unit of the In These Times union is calling on the Washington-Baltimore News Guild to urge the News Guild, as well as the CWA, to pass a resolution calling on the AFL-CIO to disaffiliate from the International Union of Police Associations and other police unions."
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In These Times
Excerpt: "The entire bargaining unit of the In These Times union is calling on the Washington-Baltimore News Guild to urge the News Guild, as well as the CWA, to pass a resolution calling on the AFL-CIO to disaffiliate from the International Union of Police Associations and other police unions."
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'Every person in pain deserves the dignity of life without medical bills.' (photo: John Moore/Getty Images)
Ross Barkan, Guardian UK
Barkan writes: "After he nearly died from Covid-19, Michael Flor probably thought he couldn't be shocked by much else. He had survived a battle with a deadly virus that had killed more than 100,000 people across America."
Coronavirus, momentarily, turned even the most jaded conservatives into socialists, as a broad consensus emerged that the federal government needed to spend trillions of dollars to save people’s lives. Tea Party Republicans called for coronavirus testing to be free. Josh Hawley, a Republican senator who hopes to be an heir to Donald Trump, has argued that the federal government should subsidize businesses to keep workers on their payrolls, mirroring the kind of programs carried out in nations like Germany, where the social safety net is far more robust.
In no civil or sane society should anyone experience what Mendez had to endure: astronomical medical bills and threatening, harassing calls from a hospital that is supposed to only care about sustaining life. But that is what happens when the profit motive is so directly tied to healthcare. Instead of a single-payer system that covers everyone and eliminates medical debt, we are left with a patchwork of private insurance companies that price gouge the sick and vulnerable.
The fallout from coronavirus, even in a world with a vaccine, promises to be more painful for Americans than Europeans who have health plans subsidized by their national governments. For Americans with shoddy health insurance or no insurance at all, the hospital bills may be staggering. No serious economic recovery is possible if thousands of people are choosing between paying a healthcare bill or buying groceries.
More importantly, it shouldn’t take a once-in-a-century pandemic to make policymakers understand the tragic absurdity of healthcare in the United States of America. Every day, people encounter medical crises that alter the trajectories of their lives. If it’s not coronavirus, it’s cancer or diabetes or a broken bone. Every person in pain deserves the dignity of life without medical bills.
Sebastian Gorka. (photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Sebastian Gorka Being Considered for Leadership Position at Voice of America
Brian Stelter and Jim Acosta, CNN
Excerpt: "Two top officials at Voice of America resigned on Monday as an appointee of President Trump prepares to take control of the international network and other US federally-funded media operations. The resignations were long in the making."
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Brian Stelter and Jim Acosta, CNN
Excerpt: "Two top officials at Voice of America resigned on Monday as an appointee of President Trump prepares to take control of the international network and other US federally-funded media operations. The resignations were long in the making."
The Trump administration had been trying to get its nominee, Michael Pack, through the Senate confirmation process for two years.
Earlier this month, after Trump applied additional pressure, the Republican-controlled Senate voted Pack through, adding to a sense of apprehension at Voice of America, VOA for short, about what comes next.
VOA director Amanda Bennett and deputy director Sandy Sugawara, both veteran journalists, bid farewell to the staff on Monday morning.
Referencing Pack, they said, "as the Senate-confirmed CEO, he has the right to replace us with his own VOA leadership. We depart with the gratitude and joy that has marked our time together, with a dedication to our mission and admiration for each one of you."
Some journalists at VOA fear that Pack — best known for making films with a conservative bent — will interfere with the organization's independent newsroom and turn it into a pro-Trump messaging machine.
Trump has repeatedly railed against VOA and accused it of disseminating Chinese propaganda — charges that Bennett strongly denied.
Bennett defended the newsroom staff and, in a series of recent memos, emphasized the organization's traditional journalistic values.
In Monday's memo, Bennett and Sugawara reiterated some of the same points. "Nothing about you, your passion, your mission or your integrity changes," they wrote. "Michael Pack swore before Congress to respect and honor the firewall that guarantees VOA's independence, which in turn plays the single most important role in the stunning trust our audiences around the world have in us. We know that each one of you will offer him all of your skills, your professionalism, your dedication to mission, your journalistic integrity and your personal hard work to guarantee that promise is fulfilled."
Monday's resignations renewed concerns that Pack, an ally of former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, will attempt to clean house at VOA, which is part of the US Agency for Global Media, USAGM for short.
A well-placed VOA employee said there are internal discussions about a sizable shakeup coming to the agency that may include former White House official and conservative radio host Sebastian Gorka taking on a leadership position. Given Gorka's partisan background, such an appointment would send a major message about VOA shifting to become a mouthpiece for the administration.
A source close to the White House said there is some discussion among the president's advisers about making Gorka a USAGM board member.
The previous board of governors was disbanded after Pack's confirmation earlier this month. Obama-era legislation consolidated power in the CEO role -- now occupied by Pack -- and called for just an advisory board to support the CEO.
It is unclear if the administration is close to making appointments to the advisory board.
White House officials have yet to comment.
A VOA employee, who requested anonymity, said there are concerns among agency employees that Pack will attempt to tear down the "firewall" between the VOA director position, which is now vacant, and the newsroom's editors and correspondents.
"That certainly is unlikely to hold with a Trump appointee running VOA," the employee said.
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Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (photo: EPA)
Israel Nuclear Stockpile Increased to 90 Warheads: Report
teleSUR
Excerpt: "Israel has allegedly increased its nuclear stockpile from 80 warheads in 2019 to 90 in 2020, according to a report published Monday by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri), a leading global arms watchdog."
teleSUR
Excerpt: "Israel has allegedly increased its nuclear stockpile from 80 warheads in 2019 to 90 in 2020, according to a report published Monday by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri), a leading global arms watchdog."
A red tree vole. (photo: Michael Durham/NRDC)
These Tiny, Treetop-Living, Ewok-Looking Creatures May Be Getting Socially Distanced to Extinction
Jason Bittel, NRDC
Bittel writes: "In the dark forests of northern Oregon, there dwells a rusty colored mammal species most of us will never see."
Jason Bittel, NRDC
Bittel writes: "In the dark forests of northern Oregon, there dwells a rusty colored mammal species most of us will never see."
Red tree voles spend their whole lives in Oregon’s treetops, but deforestation has cut them off from the rest of their kind.
Known as red tree voles, these four-inch critters are the size of Smurfs, but build solo nests in the sky that look like Ewoks made them. In fact, you might say red tree voles are the ultimate social distancers, since they live alone and almost never venture to the forest floor.
And why would they? Red tree voles survive almost entirely on a diet of twigs and pine needles, which they carefully nibble at in particular places to avoid the needles’ defensive resin ducts. (And with their tiny black eyes, fuzzy round bodies, and long furry tails, they couldn’t be more adorable while nibbling.)
“It’s one of the most specialized mammals in the world,” says Damon Lesmeister, a research wildlife biologist with the U.S. Forest Service. In fact, the critters live completely off the pine needles they collect. Lesmeister says they don’t even need to drink water.
Sadly, the red tree vole may not be around for much longer. Their numbers are in decline, and thanks to deforestation and wildfires, they’re finding fewer and fewer places to build their treetop homes.
A thousand years ago, the Pacific Northwest was a red tree vole’s paradise. Dense stands of old-growth forest covered up to 85 percent of the Oregon coastal range. Back then, a tree dweller like the vole could look out on what seemed like a continent of interlocking branches covered in prickly green food for hundreds of miles. But in the mid-1800s, gigantic natural fires swept across this region, razing as much as 800,000 acres at a pop. About a century later, loggers started cutting down what was left, reducing the ancient forests to a fraction of their former glory.
Today, a genetically distinct group of red tree voles in northwestern Oregon are stranded on a handful of small habitat islands. Worse still, the vole clusters are disconnected from each other, with no opportunities to mingle and breed. In their separation, their numbers grow smaller by the day. This is why in 2007 the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) and other environmental groups petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to add the “distinct population segment” (DPS) of red tree voles to the Endangered Species List.
Without old-growth trees, red tree voles can’t exist, says Noah Greenwald, the endangered species director at the CBD. “They’re not going to go across clearcuts. So once they’re lost from an area, it’s hard to get them back.”
Indeed, Lesmeister says something as small as a swift stream can be enough to cleave a red tree vole habitat in two, provided there are no interlocking branches running overhead.
Fortunately, after a year of reviewing the available scientific material, the FWS agreed that a listing may be warranted, which sent the whole issue into a full-scale review. By 2011, the agency completed its assessment and declared that adding the red tree vole to the Endangered Species List was “warranted but precluded”. This means that while the red tree voles were dwindling, other species were of a higher conservation concern at the time for the FWS’s limited staff and financial resources. Fair enough. But the finding became a pattern. When the agency conducted its annual reviews, every year between 2012 and 2016, they all ended at the same stop: “warranted but precluded.”
Then in 2017, something happened. Using satellite data and a new kind of survey technology called LiDAR, which stands for Light Detection and Ranging, scientists were able to create a better, more realistic estimate of what Oregon’s treetops looked like. And this led them to conclude that 26 percent of the area surveyed could potentially serve as home to the red tree voles. (To be clear, the report didn’t say the species inhabited all of that space; just that it could.) And while 26 percent of something may not sound like very much, this was actually an increase in habitat from earlier estimates of only 11 percent. Additionally, two of the remaining 11 red tree vole population clusters looked to be in pretty good shape. With protections, the species might stand a chance.
And yet, the FWS declared last December that the red tree vole no longer required federal protection. (Not that it had ever received it, mind you.)
“It really felt like an about-face,” says Quinn Read, Oregon policy director for the CBD. “Their decision is completely at odds with the outlook that was painted in their own assessment.”
For instance, while there are two population blocks doing rather well, five other blocks were found to be of “low resiliency,” which means they don’t have a great chance at persisting. What’s worse, four of those five blocks are estimated to be so small that they will inbreed themselves into oblivion within the next 60 years.
And as for the two good clusters, Read says either one could be wiped out in a single large fire event, which is of course occurring with greater frequency these days, thanks to climate change.
While Lesmeister stopped short of saying he disagrees with the FWS decision, he agrees there is cause for concern. “There's definitely a pretty high risk of extirpation of the remaining isolated populations in the northern part of the DPS,” he says.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. According to Lesmeister, if we managed those forested areas to promote better connectivity between populations, those voles would still have a shot. Better yet, saving the red tree vole doesn’t require a moratorium on logging or other economic activity.
Within 20 years, even a clearcut area could regrow to provide enough canopy cover to help voles disperse into new areas or commingle with existing populations, says Lesmeister. But he stresses that to optimize regrowth, it would be best to let stands of trees grow for 50 to 60 years rather than the 30 to 40 years commonly practiced now.
Honestly, if the red tree vole disappeared tomorrow, most of us would have no idea. Lesmeister studies these animals for a living and says you can search for days without spotting a single fluff.
But the threatened northern spotted owl would certainly take notice. The owls rely on voles for a substantial part of their diet. And there’s little doubt the loss of this species would echo throughout these forests.
“It’s a very important ecological species,” says Lesmeister. “Without red tree voles on the landscape, it becomes a sort of compounding effect.”
The good news is the fur balls may yet get their day in court. In April, the CBD and several other environmental groups made public an intent to sue the FWS over its decision to keep the vole off the Endangered Species list. Nearly a decade and a half have already passed since those same organizations first raised the alarm about the species. All the while, the red tree vole continues to live on the edge.
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