Dear Friend,
Protesters pulled down a statue of Christopher Columbus in Baltimore, U.S. They threw the statue into the city’s Inner Harbor. Statues of Columbus have also been toppled in cities including Miami; Columbus, Ohio; Richmond, Virginia; St Paul, Minnesota; and Boston, where one was decapitated. In Baltimore, Demonstrators used ropes to topple the monument on Saturday night near the Little Italy neighborhood.
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Columbus statues toppled in U.S.
by Countercurrents Collective
Protesters pulled down a statue of Christopher Columbus in Baltimore, U.S. They threw the statue into the city’s Inner Harbor. Statues of Columbus have also been toppled in cities including Miami; Columbus, Ohio; Richmond, Virginia; St Paul, Minnesota; and Boston, where one was decapitated. In Baltimore, Demonstrators used ropes to topple the monument on Saturday night near the Little Italy neighborhood.
Protesters pulled down a statue of Christopher Columbus in Baltimore, U.S. They threw the statue into the city’s Inner Harbor.
Statues of Columbus have also been toppled in cities including Miami; Columbus, Ohio; Richmond, Virginia; St Paul, Minnesota; and Boston, where one was decapitated.
In Baltimore, Demonstrators used ropes to topple the monument on Saturday night near the Little Italy neighborhood.
Across the U.S., thousands of protesters mobilized by the death of George Floyd at the hands of police have called for the removal of statues of Columbus, Confederate figures and others.
They say the Italian explorer is responsible for the genocide and exploitation of native peoples in the Americas – the North and Latin America.
According to The Baltimore Sun, the statue was owned by the city and dedicated in 1984 by former mayor William Donald Schaefer and rightist President Ronald Reagan.
A spokesman for Baltimore mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young told The Sun the toppling of the statue is a part of a national and global reexamination over monuments “that may represent different things to different people”.
“We understand the dynamics that are playing out in Baltimore are part of a national narrative,” Lester Davis said.
Video posted on Twitter showed a group using ropes to pull the statue from its pedestal in the city’s Little Italy neighborhood as others cheered. It was then rolled to the city’s Inner Harbor and pushed into the water, The Baltimore Sun reported.
Attacks on statues of controversial figures, including Confederate generals and other leaders who owned slaves or who supported slavery or racist policies, is part of the fallout from anti-racism protests across the nation in the wake of the brutal arrest death of African America George Floyd in Minneapolis in May.
The U.S. President Donald Trump has become particularly incensed by statue destruction. He has vowed to punish those responsible.
There are two other statues of Columbus in the city.
Columbus, Ohio, also took down a statue of Christopher Columbus
Columbus, Ohio, removed a statue of its namesake, Christopher Columbus, from outside its City Hall on Wednesday morning.
The monument is one of the most recent to be taken down amid the countrywide call to replace statues of colonizers, slave owners and other controversial historical figures.
Crews arrived early Wednesday to begin taking down the statue. The removal took approximately three hours.
The statue, a gift from Genoa, Italy, in 1955, will be placed at a secure city facility.
Mayor Andrew Ginther announced on June 18 that the statue would be removed, stating that it does not reflect the city.
“For many people in our community, the statue represents patriarchy, oppression and divisiveness. That does not represent our great city, and we will no longer live in the shadow of our ugly past,” Ginther said in a statement at the time. “Now is the right time to replace this statue with artwork that demonstrates our enduring fight to end racism and celebrate the themes of diversity and inclusion.”
Columbus is regularly criticized for his brutal treatment and killing of Native Americans.
Ginther said he asked the city’s art commission to take the lead in the process of replacing the statue with public art that better reflects Columbus’ citizens and “offers a shared vision for the future.”
“By replacing the statue, we are removing one more barrier to meaningful and lasting change to end systemic racism,” Ginther said in the statement. “Its removal will allow us to remain focused on critical police reforms and increasing equity in housing, health outcomes, education and employment.”
The monument is not the first Columbus statue to be taken down in the U.S. In June, a statue of Columbus was removed in Boston after protesters beheaded it.
Protesters nationwide have toppled or vandalized controversial monuments as many cities have announced the removal or relocation of public works paying tribute to embattled historical figures.
New York
Last week, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said The American Museum of Natural History will remove a prominent statue of Theodore Roosevelt from its entrance after years of criticism. Charleston, South Carolina, recently removed its statue of former vice president and slavery advocate John C. Calhoun.
Santa Fe
In Santa Fe, New Mexico, officials took down a statue of Diego de Vargas, a Spanish conquistador who brutalized Native Americans.
Denver
In Denver, Denver School Board member Tay Anderson has joined other activists to push for the renaming of schools named after figures such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, “who may have been founding fathers but they didn’t stand up to racism and slavery, so they were complicit.”.
Anderson also has been part of an effort to change the name of a neighborhood, Stapleton, named after former mayor and Ku Klux Klan member Benjamin Stapleton, whose name once also adorned the city’s airport.
“We are better than this,” says Anderson.
A new state flag for Mississippi
In past weeks, Mississippi passed a bill to create a new state flag without the Confederate battle emblem. In New Jersey, Princeton University took former President Woodrow Wilson’s name off a college, citing his racists views.
Countless other petitions and protests are calling for similar statue removals and name changes in an effort to at least spark a dialog about who deserves honoring. In many cases, such symbols were erected decades after the Civil War by the Daughters of the Confederacy, a civic group aimed at upholding the South’s racial segregation.
“There’s no question that all movements require conversation and dialog to truly move ahead,” says Melina Abdullah, a founding member of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles and a professor of Pan-African Studies at California State University, Los Angeles. “But what doesn’t require conversation is knowing things shouldn’t be named after people who dehumanized other people.”
It is hard to know how far this latest drive to rename landmarks will get. Almost every historical figure could be worthy of deeper review.
Orange County
In Orange County, south of Los Angeles, Democrats are pushing to rename John Wayne Airport because of racist statements made by the actor in a 1971 magazine interview. Wayne was quoted in Playboy as saying, “I believe in white supremacy.”
A Los Angeles Times editorial supporting the name change argues that it will help the county — a conservative stronghold in a largely Democratic state — confront its racist past. Wayne’s son, Ethan, 58, issued a statement strongly denying his father was a racist.
The fight over monuments
The statue of a young man, gun at his side, has sat outside the Harrison County Courthouse in Marshall, Texas, since 1905. Its main inscription reads “Confederate.”
That is enough to warrant its removal, says Demetria McFarland, a fifth-grade teacher who has started a petition to that end.
“That statue, in a public place, doesn’t represent my values as a Black woman, it represents slavery and the torture my ancestors went through,” says McFarland, founder of Marshall Against Violence. “Other cities are taking down these symbols of racial divide, so why not also here in our little east Texas town?”
History is on review as the 21st century’s latest civil rights movement catches fire, smoldering embers fanned by the death in police hands of George Floyd on Memorial Day.
From California to Washington, D.C., grassroots efforts such as McFarland’s are urging citizens and lawmakers to reject historical figures whose backstories reveal views or deeds that insult millions of Americans.
Amerigo Vespucci
Consider Amerigo Vespucci, the Italian seafarer who gave his name to America. Some historians contend that Vespucci exaggerated his claims, partnered in his enterprise with a man made rich from the slave trade, and stole the limelight from his contemporary, Christopher Columbus — whose own statues have been the target due to his murderous treatment of Indigenous people.
Change has arrived
Renaming is a powerful way to announce that change has arrived. For many people of color, the time has come to stop ignoring symbols of oppression, says Elena Ortiz, chair of the Santa Fe Freedom Council of The Red Nation, a New Mexico-based activist group focused on the liberation of indigenous peoples.
“The great reckoning is here,” says Ortiz, whose group successfully pushed to remove statues of Juan de Oñate, a 16th-century Spanish conquistador who raped Pueblo women and stole from enslaved tribal communities. “It’s time to fan the flames.”
Jefferson, a slaveholder
Ortiz says it is not appropriate to honor figures such as Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson and explorer Kit Carson. “Jefferson was a slave holder, Jackson believed the only good Indian is a dead Indian and Carson was an Indian murderer,” she says. “When people ask do we need to rename Carson City, Nevada, the answer is yes.”
A new alliance in St. Louis
In St. Louis, Moji Sidiqi, executive director of the Regional Muslim Action Network, has joined forces with an Israeli restaurant owner to start a petition to not only remove a statue of King Louis, the city’s namesake, but also to rename the city itself.
“History tells us King Louis was a Christian zealot who was an Islamophobe and anti-Semite” in 13th-century France, says Sidiqi. “We don’t want to see the statue broken or trashed, but it doesn’t need to be in a public place where Muslims and Jews and African Americans go to make memories with their families.”
For Sidiqi, the current push to rename things isn’t about erasing history but rather choosing what is worthy of celebration.
“Are we supposed to keep pretending our beautiful nation doesn’t have symbols of anti-inclusion and slavery everywhere?” she says. “We’re trying to take away symbols of hate and replace them with symbols of love and community.”
The movement also includes a growing call to rename mountains, parks and other destinations, says Jennifer Runyon, a research staffer at the U.S. Board on Geographic Names in Washington, D.C., which meets monthly to review petitions requesting such changes.
“We’ve gotten a half a dozen proposals related to racial issues lately, requests to change names that may have ‘squaw’ or ‘negro’ or ‘digger,’ which is offensive to some Native Americans,” says Runyon. “We are a reactive body, we don’t go looking for an issue. But if people bring one to us, we’ll review it all and see what people locally say. You just have to have a good name ready to replace it.”
One example of such change, years in the making, is in California. Instead of Jeff Davis Peak near Lake Tahoe being a tribute to Confederate president Jefferson Davis, it will be called Da-ek Dow Go-et Mountain, Washoe for “saddle between two mountains.”
“We are open to all petitions,” says Runyon. “All we ask is that you have a good and relevant name ready that speaks to what people in the community care about.”
Who and how to honor
Black Lives Matter (BLM) leader Abdullah suggests that perhaps instead of more statues to Abraham Lincoln, who helped officially emancipate slaves, why not celebrate “people like Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass, Black people who worked hard to free themselves and others?”
Activist Ortiz says why not move away from naming things after people, and instead focus on nature. “We need to step away from the worship of human beings, and in so doing accept that we’re not the center of the universe,” she says.
True societal shifts may remain elusive
Some said they are worried that by focusing intently on the removal of physical objects or name changes, true societal shifts may remain elusive.
“We strongly support the removal of statues that celebrate histories of genocide and aggression against Native people, we have to ensure that this doesn’t gloss over the real history of this continent,” says Michael Roberts, president of the First Nations Development Institute, a Longmont, Colorado, organization focused on the economic empowerment of Native Americans.
“These activities are only a first step toward true healing, justice and reconciliation between Native people and the larger society,” he says.
Historian Douglas Brinkley says in the past, presidents have made efforts to “expand the national narrative” on matters of race and equality, citing President Barack Obama’s executive orders on New York City’s Stonewall National Monument, which celebrates the fight for LGBTQ rights, and the Charles Young Buffalo Soldiers National Monument in Ohio, spotlighting African Americans who served in the U.S. military.
“That was the right thing to do then, and the right thing to do now is de-Confederatize America,” says Brinkley, professor of history at Rice University in Houston. “People aren’t in the mood for compromising.”
Not surprisingly, efforts to remove statues or rename places have drawn emotional reactions as some balk at what they see as the erasure of history.
A Catholic priest in San Francisco recently held a public exorcism on the site in Golden Gate Park where protestors had torn down a statue of Father Junipero Serra, who founded many California missions.
Serra was known to force Native Americans to convert and punish them if they rebelled.
“Evil has made itself present here,” Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone said in a video of the event.
In St. Louis, the local Roman Catholic Archdiocese issued a statement opposing efforts to change the name of the city. In siding with counter-protesters who do not want the statue removed or city renamed, the Archdiocese highlighted King Louis’ charity toward the poor, adding that “we should not seek to erase history, but recognize and learn from it, while working to create new opportunities for our brothers and sisters.”
Renaming does not solve the problem
Scholars say that the claim that taking away a statue or renaming a street erases history is questionable.
“We make a mistake saying memorials are about history,” says philosopher Susan Neiman, director of the Einstein Forum in Berlin, Germany, which promotes the cross-cultural exchange of ideas. “We don’t memorialize all our history, we pick and choose to remember men and women who live by the values we share.”
Neiman said the debates over which statues, streets and schools should be renamed should remain local, allowing community members to decide what gets scrapped, what finds its way to a museum with context and what perhaps gets turned into an art project that changes the meaning of the offending symbol.
“It’s not about history,” she says. “It’s about values.”
That was the approach South African leaders took in trying to reconcile that country’s racist past. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, established by President Nelson Mandela in 1996, aimed to help Black and white South Africans come to grips with the country’s racist apartheid past while speeding up a transition to democracy.
While that process did not involve much statue and location renaming beyond the removal of tributes to Hendrik Vorwoerd, the architect of apartheid, it did highlight the impact of having government officials be part of the reckoning, says Ronald Slye, a law professor at Seattle University who was an advisor to the TRC.
“One of the lessons to be taken from the TRC is in order for real change to come about, the push for change needs to be part of a broader process in society and there needs to be clear political support for it,” says Slye.
Slye says the sheer size of the U.S. and its divided political makeup means it is more likely that local movements aimed at renaming landmarks will precede changes at a national level. But the point isn’t just to change a name, he says.
“In the end, it’s easy to change a name of a street or take down some monuments and say, ‘Now we’re fine,’” he says. “But it’s not the street that’s the problem, it’s broader.”
Robbie Powelson is fine with starting with a street. Growing up in Marin County, just across the Golden Gate Bridge, Powelson did not give much thought to the name of an English explorer whose name adorns a local street, school and statue.
But inspired by the Black Lives Matter social justice movement and its efforts to remove symbols of the Confederacy, Powelson now leads a campaign to revisit the tributes paid to Sir Francis Drake, best known for a 16th-century sail that claimed California for England and less known for being a slave trader.
“Changing the names of things is significant because it is visceral and real to people,” says Powelson, founder of Tam Equity Campaign, a local activist group. “Through these symbolic changes, we can have a substantive shift in local consciousness.”
Lamberto Zannier: “Global Problems Need Global Solutions”
by Slavisha Batko Milacic
he pandemic has also led to the real renationalization, closure of boarders, everybody is looking for itself. It’s fully understandable, but global problems need global solutions. It’s very difficult to work on global strategies and sustainable development that we very need today because geopolitical divisions make it
impossible. The renationalization of the policy leads to progressive disinvestment of countries on multilateral framework
After George Floyd’s Murder: Social and Ecological Justice Converge
by Roy Morrison
The visceral reaction to the murder of George Floyd unleashed deep personal reflection about racism, social justice, and fairness, and launched a powerful, broad based social movement. The pursuit of justice, fairness, and the shape of our common futures encompasses but also transcends the questions of racism and raises questions about the nature of our civilization.
The visceral reaction to the murder of George Floyd unleashed deep personal reflection about racism, social justice, and fairness, and launched a powerful, broad based social movement.
The pursuit of justice, fairness, and the shape of our common futures encompasses but also transcends the questions of racism and raises questions about the nature of our civilization.
In this way, the Covid-19 pandemic is understood to fall disproportionally upon people of color, on the poor, on the millions imprisoned in the American gulag, upon undocumented migrants and their families, on residents of nursing homes and longterm care facilities. A substantial portion of our population is placed at risk by their everyday lives.
There is a clear convergence in our minds and in our politics that failures of justice and fairness are driven by root inequalities and inequities created and maintained by our social, economic and political system that are experienced and understood in terms of failures of social and ecological justice.
A substantial portion of our population is not only first to fall victim to covid-19; their homes are washed away by climate change driven flooding; they are poisoned by industrial chemicals, and toxic exhaust where they live and where they work, they have no choice but to use poisoned drinking water, and suffer from poisoned lead pipes that damage their children’s brains, or often have no water at all in the midst of a pandemic where the instruction is to wash and wash your hands; their schools are under funded and failing, their jobs are deemed essential and they are forced to go to work without either seek leave or a living wage or lose everything. Many millions of Americans and billions of the world’s people have the knee of the police and the powerful too often, both literally and figuratively, pressing mercilessly on their necks.
This is the institutional practice not only of racism, but of ever deepening inequities and inequalities in a global liberal capitalist order that savages both social and ecological justice and is rushing pell mell toward global climate catastrophe.
In 2020 we are at a crossroads. Either the Unites States will reject Trumpism and it’s malign incompetence, white nationalism, insensate cruelty, and ecological abuse and embrace a broad agenda in pursuit of social and ecological justice for all, or dive further, perhaps for decades into authoritarianism and unleash irrevocable ecological collapse.
Valuing Sustainability
Our system of inequality and injustice is built upon social and ecological pillage. Both people and the living world are consumed, valued for the profits generated by their destruction. The living world is reduced to resources to fuel the machine. Working people and their communities are increasingly employed as powerless gig workers to be used, and cavalierly discarded at the pleasure and of the bosses.
A fundamental principle for social and ecological justice must be a valuing of sustainability as a crucial expression of social and ecological value on the balance sheets of businesses and government and the fair distribution of such wealth to fairly benefit all.
Sustainability, we will see, is not just a luxury for the rich, but the basis for a real and enduring practice of social and ecological justice that benefits all of us. Sustainability will represent the practice of justice and fairness and eventually a global convergence on sustainable norms for all the world’s people, not just the global consuming class on a planet run for the benefit of the billionaires and now aspiring trillionaires.
Sustainability means preservation, and improvement of the living world, of habitat, of so-called natural capital upon which all life is dependent, and upon whose destruction all life, and all economic wealth is being placed at risk
Making Sustainability Count: Sustainability Credits
Valuing sustainability is not just a good will gesture or airy-fairy
foolishness. Valuing sustainability is essential for the continuation of market systems, to avoid ecological collapse and for a prosperous and sustainable ecological civilization transforming industrial business and pollution as usual.
foolishness. Valuing sustainability is essential for the continuation of market systems, to avoid ecological collapse and for a prosperous and sustainable ecological civilization transforming industrial business and pollution as usual.
Valuing sustainability is an essential tool for building wealth and real assets, for leveling the playing field for all of us to participate in and to share in the benefit of sustainable and ecological wealth. Sustainability, valued on balance sheets as Sustainability Credits (SCs), can become the essential store of value, the new gold. And unlike a metal whose use value is minor, sustainability credits represent the enduring health and the real wealth supporting our social and economic systems.
A sustainability credit, an SC, is equal to the ecological value ,as determined by the National Academy of Sciences, of displacing one metric ton of carbon dioxide or 2204 pounds.
SCs are what is called a regulatory asset, similar to, but much more significant, than an existing regulatory asset like a REC or Renewable Energy Credit. Today a REC, as defined by states, manifests the renewable nature of sun or wind or hydro or geothermal generation . A REC is quite different in nature and value than an SC.
An SC is created every year based on the amount of carbon dioxide displaced. A typical solar farm for example may operate for thirty years of more, producing SCs every year of operation.
A REC is a one time thing used to subsidize the building of renewable energy to be purchased by competitive energy suppliers as mandated by state regulators or voluntarily by energy users.
An SC is monetized as a balance sheet asset by a green bank or a Bank of the Commons (BOC) in accord with law and Federal Reserve or other central bank regulation of the currency. An SC is the creation of an enduring capital asset.
A REC is an expense for both energy suppliers and energy users raising the price of energy to be sold by energy suppliers or purchased by energy consumers.
An SC is booked as paid-in-capital on the right side of balance sheets aof a green bank nd as cash on the left side with a value of $100 per SC created by carbon dioxide displacement as defined by the NAS.
The SC can create not only the $50 trillion estimated by Wall Street to finance a 100% renewable transformation in 31 years by 2050 and the hundred of trillions of productive investment for a complete transformation of an ecological civilization.
An SC creates ecological capital and a powerful market signal for productive renewable investment as an ongoing and ever increasing part of a national and global market system based upon ecological economic growth, not as oxymoron, but as the basis of a sustainable civilization.
Some numbers
A five megawatt solar farm built today in MA, for example, will produce about 6 million kilowatts of power AC. Each kilowatt, on average, displaces about 1 pound of carbon dioxide from the existing power mix of renewables, fossil fuels and nuclear energy. 6 million pounds of carbon dioxide is equal to 2,722 metric tons of carbon dioxide with 2,722 SCs valued at $272,200 a year or about $8 million over 30 years (since solar output currently decreases by about ½% a year.)
But that’s just the start.
Each year, $272,000 is monetized on the books of a green bank or Bank of the Commons to be used for further investment in carbon dioxide reduction.
The money creating magic underlying the banking system;s everyday operation means a bank must maintain about 10% of its own assets to support their loan portfolio. The $272,000 can therefore in normal bank loan business and be increased 9 fold to about $2.5 million in new renewable investments a year creating more and more SCs each year that are similarly reinvested at a leverage of 9 to one.
In 2018 global carbon emissions according to Statistica amounted to 36.6 billion metric tons globally. This means the global total potential for yearly creation of SCs for further renewable investments in sustainability is $3.6 trillion a year on books of green banks for a yearly investment of $32 trillion dollars a year in sustainability.
This is the financial basis for a system based on ecological economic growth. This is what can finance a green new deal globally. This is what can support a living wage for all and a global convergence on justice and fairness for all the world’s people.
This is the future promise of turning a hitherto self-destructive economic practice toward sustainable ends.
This is not helicopter money and running the printing presses to produce cash or using our tax dollars to further benefit the rich and bail out wall street yet again.
SCs represent the real value of sustainability and of the repair and protection of the living world and of building a fair and just society for all.
This is the movement set into motion by the death of George Floyd that can lead to a global transformation for the common benefit to set in motion building of an ecological civilization.
Not Just Energy
Valuing sustainability will support and drive the transformation not just of energy, but of agriculture, forestry, fishing, aquaculture, of an industrial industry to pursue sustainable norms in the context of the pursuit of sustainability and social and ecological justice.
By valuing sustainability on balance sheet.s we will at the same time be able to generate many trillions of dollars necessary not only for a quick transformation from fossil fuels to 100% renewable energy, but can, in fact, provide the investment capital necessary to make economic growth mean ecological improvement and build an ecological civilization.
The ecological failure of our market system, that is also inextricably connected to its social failure, is rooted its its failure to value sustainability and therefore its inability to send price signals for that leads the market to support sustainable conduct.
This failure of market systems to send proper price signals for sustainability is the basis not only for systemic market failure, but one whose consequence is not just bankruptcy, but ecological collapse.
Valuing Sustainability Credits (SCs) as a new regulatory asset on balance sheets is a rather simple reform, but it is one that will have profound positive consequences. It will create trillions of dollars of real value to be invested in ecological transformation and greatly expand the economy as a paradigmatic expression of ecological economic growth in the 21st century and beyond. It is a far superior instrument then a carbon tax that raises prices. An SC creates and invests wealth and protects and can be he path to share ecological and financial assets fairly for all.
The transformation, for example, of the global energy system toward 100% renewables using for example, wind, solar and green hydrogen produced from renewably powered electrolyzers will lead not just to enormous economic growth, but enormous decreases in pollution, depletion and ecological damage.
What threatens our future is the specific nature of economic growth and its consequences. What need concern us ecologically and socially is not economic growth as a primary evil to be abolished, but the ecological and social consequences of economic growth that can be shaped and mitigated to serve the pursuit of sustainability, of social and ecological justice.
We can trade for example a near limitless amount of information a renewably powered world wide web with minimal ecological damage. All aspects of our economy and civilization can be profitably transformed to pursue sustainability in the context of social and ecological justice. Its crucial to understand in the context of the Black Lives Matter moment, No Justice, No Peace. It is impossible to build a fair, durable, and sustainable civilization without concomitant improvements in social and ecological justice.
The power of SCs is their ability to create enormous amounts of capital wealth for investment and our ability to use these investments for the pursuit of sustainability and social and ecological justice.
SCs can create trillions. Our challenge is to use that wealth wisely and fairly.
Sustainability Credits (SCs) represent a simple, attainable and yet fair and powerful reform that can be the basis for profound social and ecological benefit. The valuing of sustainability through the creation of SCs should be a transformative idea, like democracy, whose time has come.
Part of the work of the movement for social change catalyzed by the murder of George Floyd is to pursue the development of Sustainability Credits as a tool for ecological transformation and the pursuit of social and ecological justice. Sustainability Credits can represent a new global tool for freedom, equality, and justice.
Roy Morrison builds solar farms. Www.RenewableSunPartners.com. His next book will be EIG
(Ecological Economic Growth)
Fact check
Carbon dioxide emissions totals
Amount of one pounds of carbon per kwh power
In the U.S., on average a kWh of electricity produces a bit more than 1-pound carbon dioxide per kWh. https://blueskymodel.org/kilowatt-hour.
Nation Academy of Sciences (NAS) value of One metric ton carbon doxide emissions
The $100 value has been most recently used in proceedings of the National Academy of Science (NAS) climate change analysis in “Declining CO-2 Price Paths”.
Morgan Stanley recently estimated a $50 trillion dollar investment to bring global carbon emissions to zero by 2020- 2050 (31 years).
“Decarboniztion The Race to Zero Emissions”Nov. 25, 2019.
COVID-19 Pandemic: The Drug Pushers On Top Of The World
by Dr P S Sahni
India has become the third worst affected country globally in relation to COVID-19 pandemic; the triad consists of India, USA and Brazil.
Quite early in the course of the pandemic the Indian government either gifted or sold the drug Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) – a drug primarily used against malaria and a host of other diseases including autoimmune diseases like SLE. A section of medical scientists in India had a belief – with not an iota of scientific evidence – that HCQ could be useful in preventing n-coronavirus infection as also in severe pneumonia due to COVID-19.
Akhil Gogoi: A peasant leader jailed for supporting the poor and oppressed
Co-Written by Atul and Sandeep Pandey
Akhil Gogoi-a peasant leader and Right to Information activist from Assam has been in jail since December 2019. His crime is that he exercised his fundamental right of speech and expression by protesting against the Citizenship Amendment Act.
Flood in Assam: Watch The Documentary “Māti”
Co-Written by Wenceslaus Mendes
and Anupam Chakravarty
Torrential rains, this monsoon like every other has worsened the flood situation in Assam. This year already around 1.1 million people have been affected in 23 districts and the fatalities due to flood this year has gone up to 24 and counting.
Gaumutra to Coronil: Infodemics in Times of Pandemic
by Dr Biplove Kumar
In the month of March, people got lined up for ‘miracle drink’ in Delhi at a Sabha organised by Akhil Bhartiya Hindu Mahasabha, to have their share of Gaumutra (cow’s urine). The craze for this madness was created by an infodemic, which said: ‘Covid is an avatar, which has taken form of virus to kill non – vegetarians and people who will have this gaumutra will not be touched by the same’.
Gulabo-Shitabo In The First Place
by Haider Abbas
A film review
COVID19: An Opportunity To Gotabaya To Establish His Military Rule
by Kumarathasan Rasingam
Gotabaya Rajapakshe the first time President, an Army veteran has proved himself as guardian of Sinhala Buddhist heritage and champion of the Armed forces. He openly and loudly said NO to Tamil political party TNA} for devolution or power sharing and the full implementation of the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord of 1987. In his vocabulary devolution has become a bad word.
Mass media, why all of them report on a similar way
by Ganatantrik Adhikar Surakha Sangathan
Various non-business media agencies and their journalists have been harassed by the government and by the supporters of the ruling party for their honesty
towards their work. Has this situation changed at time of Corona pandemic and the subsequent lockdown, or is the same situation prevailing?
The freedom of press comes from the Right to Speech which is guaranteed to all the citizens by the constitution of India vide article 19 (1) (a). The media has been recognised as the fourth pillar of democracy, four in row to save and to strengthen it. In the last seventy years of independence, we have seen exponential growth in the number of TV channels and newspapers. All these channels and newspapers, on the basis of their propensity, can aptly be divided into two groups; business media and non-business media. Though generated millions of viewers/readers, the business media has always been controlled by very few wealthy people. Today, the business media has been a medium to increase both the business value and vote bank of their owner/s. On the other hand, various non-business media agencies and their journalists have been harassed by the government and by the supporters of the ruling party for their honesty towards their work. Has this situation changed at time of Corona pandemic and the subsequent lockdown, or is the same situation prevailing?
1. In India, the first positive case of Corona infection was detected on 30 January 2020. In consequence, in the first week of February the World Health Organisation (WHO) had warned that this Corona epidemic could turn into a pandemic. But Bharatiya Janata Party led the Union government during this period was engaged in ‘Namaste Trump’ – welcoming president Trump of US (February 24 -25). The mainstream business media joined with chorus and coined slogans like “Faithful friend of India” and “Main protector of India” etc. At the same time thousands of Indians were coming from the Corona affected countries like Italy, Spain and US etc. The media did not highlight the case hinting at fitting testing measures and the very ignoring of institutional quarantine. Rather it engaged in highlighting the victory of BJP in Madhya Pradesh (March 19 -20). None of them had brought the warning of W.H.O. before the government.
2. Had the government given a week’s time instead of announcing the complete shut-down, within four hours (March 24), lakhs of migrant workers could have reached home and would not have been blamed as carrier of the virus. Had it been, the farmers could have collected crops from their field, the businessmen could have transported their business items and the examinations of lakhs of students could have been completed. Further, the students would not have gone through a period of uncertainty and trauma like today.
Instead of highlighting the difficulties that the people faced, the business media projected clapping, ringing, lighting-off and showering flowers in such a way as if all these were the part of public health system at the behest of the Corona pandemic. Also those media did not restrict themselves to violate one’s right to privacy and comments of the Supreme Court (March 30) but highlighted police beating, torture and abuse, kneel down to implement the instructions of the government.
3. The declaration of Emergency (1975) could be cutting line in the post independent history of Media. Up to such time, some of the wealthy individuals those had less political leanings, trust and publication house owned the media houses. However, during the emergency and after that, the media started ‘crawling’ when it was asked to bend.
Today, the media owners have made business out of it and are not confined to this sector only. They have gone in investing mining, entertainment, education, construction and retail business in this phase of globalisation and have invested in each other’s project in cross-shareholding design. This is the reason why all business media are reporting almost in a similar fashion. In some of the rare occasions, the media reports us as per leanings of its owners’ political party. Largely the business media has been playing both as advertisement agency of the government and like North Korean media agency if it comes across any anti-people decision of the government.
Ganatantrik Adhikar Suraksha Sangathan, Odisha (GASS) is a member-based autonomous democratic rights organization, working for the protection of human and democratic rights of common people in the state and outside. GASS stands for repealing of sedition law and abolition of capital punishment as also opposing communal, caste, gender and state violence. It brings out bi-monthly Odia magazine ‘Ganabhiti’ on human rights issues, prepare small booklets on different issues and organise various programes through the members and join with others on issues of human rights.Email: gassbhubaneswara@gmail.com
Lemmings
by Gary Steven Corseri
Here’s a poem about US—and much of the world’s–politics in this “modern age,” in which the emphasis of our “hidden persuaders” (and, often, blatant manipulators) is not so much on what we think as on how we think—i.e., shallow thinking. Those who dare to chart their own course, probe deeply, think for themselves,draw their own conclusions, are too often ignored, or mocked, or excoriated.
Rhetoric of Victimisation in Delhi Crime and Unbelievable
by Richa Chilana
Delhi Crime and Unbelievable, shows which released on Netflix in 2019, are based on actual cases of rape in Delhi and Washington respectively but make conscious attempts to not show
rape on screen, as many among us have got used to rape porn or “the voyeristic view of quasi sexuality”
Love, Dating and Relationships in Covid-19
Co-Written by Sritama Chaudhuri & Dr. Suraj Beri
In order to battle Covid-19, both urban and rural population who are potentially looking for or are in “ pyaar” “ mohabbat” and “ Bhalobasha” must, learn to deal with partner’s health and hygiene history with scientific temper and not with prejudice. It seems that what has happened is physical distancing, not social distancing and people will continue to be social albeit in different ways, keeping the spirit of “aatmanirbharta” alive.
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