04 July 20
Juan Cole | Baghdad Bob on the Potomac: Trump's Hoaxes, From "Disappearing" Covid-19 to Climate to Russiagate
Juan Cole, Informed Comment
Cole writes: "Authoritarian regimes breed lies like rotting meat breeds maggots, and as Trump marches the United States into an imperial presidency beyond accountability, his rate of lying has become astronomical."
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Juan Cole, Informed Comment
Cole writes: "Authoritarian regimes breed lies like rotting meat breeds maggots, and as Trump marches the United States into an imperial presidency beyond accountability, his rate of lying has become astronomical."
READ MORE
'While a more traditional president may have used an event at a national landmark to bring the country together, Trump once again looked to divide the nation in an attempt to fire up his most loyal supporters.' (photo: CNN)
ALSO SEE: Trump Uses Mount Rushmore Speech to Deliver Divisive Culture War Message
Maeve Reston, CNN
Reston writes: "On a very different Fourth of July holiday, when many Americans are wrestling with the racist misdeeds of the country's heroes and confronting an unrelenting pandemic with surging cases, their commander-in-chief is attempting to drag America backward - stirring fear of cultural change while flouting the most basic scientific evidence about disease transmission."
n a very different Fourth of July holiday, when many Americans are wrestling with the racist misdeeds of the country's heroes and confronting an unrelenting pandemic with surging cases, their commander-in-chief is attempting to drag America backward -- stirring fear of cultural change while flouting the most basic scientific evidence about disease transmission.
In a jaw-dropping speech that amounted to a culture war bonfire, President Donald Trump used the backdrop of Mount Rushmore Friday night to frame protesters as a nefarious left-wing mob that intends to "end America." Those opponents, he argued, are engaged in a "merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children."
On Saturday in the nation's capital, the Trump administration has planned July 4 celebrations that ignore Washington, DC, Muriel Bowser's concerns about public health guidelines, although at least there'll be some of the social distancing measures at the White House that were ignored in South Dakota, where the President largely acted as if the coronavirus didn't exist.
Instead, when Trump spoke on Friday night of a "growing danger," he was talking about an entirely different threat than rising coronavirus cases. He referred to a threat to America's "heritage" -- rhetoric intended to rev up his base at a time when many Americans are attempting to relearn the nation's history with greater attention to the wrongs inflicted on Black and Native American people.
Repeatedly using vague pronouns like "they" and "them," Trump sought to play on the fears of a minority -- that appears to be shrinking, according to polls -- who view the rise of Black Lives Matter as a threat to the historical dominance of White people. He described the goals of protesters who are attempting to right the wrongs of history as "alien to our culture, and to our values."
One of "their political weapons," he said, is "cancel culture," which would drive people from their jobs, shame dissenters and "demand total submission" from anyone who disagrees.
"We will expose this dangerous movement, protect our nation's children, end this radical assault and preserve our beloved American way of life," Trump said. He mysteriously described those who would tear down statues of racist leaders from the past as "a new far left fascism that demands absolute allegiance."
"If you do not speak its language, perform its rituals, recite its mantras and follow its commandments, then you will be censored, banished, blacklisted, persecuted and punished," Trump said. "It's not gonna happen to us," he said to cheers, as he revived his familiar "us versus them" language. "Make no mistake. This left-wing cultural revolution is designed to overthrow the American Revolution."
"To make this possible, they are determined to tear down every statue, symbol and memory of our national heritage," he said.
A pandemic all but forgotten
It was spectacle that unfolded before thousands of people, most without masks, who were seated close together in bleacher seats and on black folding chairs that were zip-tied together because of a local fire code, making physical distancing impossible.
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican and close Trump ally, set the tone earlier this week during an appearance on Fox News where she said there would be no social distancing as spectators gathered to celebrate freedom.
Like Trump's rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, last month -- where at least eight Trump campaign staffers came down with the coronavirus and dozens of Secret Service agents were forced to quarantine -- the South Dakota event ignored many of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines for large gatherings. The lack of any visible effort to keep people safe was effectively an act of sabotage against Trump's own public health officials, who fear that crowds gathering this holiday weekend could lead to frightening surges in cases and an increase in America's death toll from the pandemic.
For days now, numerous experts, including the nation's top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci and White House coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx, have warned that Americans should not attend crowded gatherings as cases surge in 36 states, with alarming positivity rates in parts of Florida, Texas and Arizona.
Trump, however, has continued gas-lighting Americans about the rising number of cases, insisting they are due to increased testing. In a late Thursday night tweet before playing golf on Friday, Trump inaccurately said that the rise in coronavirus cases is "because our testing is so massive and so good, far bigger and better than any other country."
"This is great news, but even better news is that death, and the death rate, is DOWN," Trump tweeted. "Also, younger people, who get better much easier and faster!"
The President's appearance at the non-socially distanced event in South Dakota came at a time when the virus creeps ever closer to him. Before she was set to attend the South Dakota event, Kimberly Guilfoyle -- the girlfriend of Donald Trump Jr. and a top fundraiser for the Trump campaign -- tested positive for coronavirus, according to a top official for the committee she leads.
And while some of his closest allies are urging Trump to take a greater leadership role on masks, and even Trump himself told Fox News Business this week that he has nothing against masks, the President has refused to wear one publicly in front of the press.
Protecting statues
Just like he does on his Twitter feed, which is dominated by dismay over the toppling of statues of racist figures from America's past, Trump minimized the dangers of the pandemic Friday night in South Dakota, expressing more concern for the safety of statues than of the American people.
"Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our founders, deface our most sacred memorials and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities," Trump said. "Many of these people have no idea why they're doing this, but some know exactly what they are doing. They think the American people are weak and soft and submissive. But, no, the American people are strong and proud, and they will not allow our country, and all of its values, history and culture to be taken from them."
He also waded into the controversy over the legacies of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, two presidents etched into Mount Rushmore. He delivered his own history lesson of sorts on each of the White men chiseled into the South Dakota mountain. Earlier this week, Trump threatened protesters accused of throwing red paint on a Manhattan statue of Washington -- who owned more than 300 enslaved people until he freed them in his will at the time of death -- with 10 years in prison.
The President suggested that the monument towering above him, which includes the faces of Washington, Jefferson and former Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, was also at risk as America reconsiders its past. "I am here as your president to proclaim before the country and before the world, this monument will never be desecrated," Trump said.
The Black Hills, where the monument stands, are a sacred place to Native Americans who live in the area. Sioux tribes roamed the area for thousands of years, but tribal ownership of the Black Hills was officially guaranteed by the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie. The Sioux were soon forced off the land after the discovery of gold in the area. Native American activists have called for the lands to be returned. In 1980, the Supreme Court upheld that the seizure of the Black Hills was illegal under the Fifth Amendment. The legal battle continues to this day.
In this moment of racial reckoning, the racist past of Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor who created Rushmore and was also a member of the Ku Klux Klan, has also drawn national attention. Borglum was also appointed to carve the giant relief of three of the most prominent Confederate figures, Jefferson Davis and Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson on Georgia's Stone Mountain.
In recent days, the President has suggested that a 2015 Obama housing program, which was intended to rectify decades of discriminatory practices, has been "devastating" to the suburbs. On Wednesday, he called the words Black Lives Matter a "symbol of hate." He has also threatened to veto a must-pass defense policy bill because it includes an amendment that calls for the removal of the names of Confederate leaders from all military assets within three years.
Trump has doubled down on those race-baiting tactics even as he has fallen far behind his opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, in the polls and a majority of Americans across racial and ethnic groups are expressing support for the Black Lives Matter movement, according to recent polling by the Pew Research Center.
Protesters on Interstate 5. (photo: David Ryder/Getty Images)
Two Women Injured as Car Drives Through Seattle Protest Crowd
Associated Press
Excerpt: "Two women were struck by a car which sped through a protest-related closure on a freeway, authorities in Seattle said early on Saturday."
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Associated Press
Excerpt: "Two women were struck by a car which sped through a protest-related closure on a freeway, authorities in Seattle said early on Saturday."
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From left, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-MI, Rep. llhan Omar, D-MN, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY, and Rep. Ayanna Pressley. (photo: J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
Kadia Goba, BuzzFeed
Goba writes: "Members of the Squad are launching a fundraising committee to raise money for their reelections and progressive campaigns all over the country."
embers of the Squad are launching a fundraising committee to raise money for their reelections and progressive campaigns all over the country.
Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib are combining their star power as outspoken first-term members of Congress to support other progressive hopefuls. The group will announce Wednesday accompanied by a short video.
As a joint fundraising committee, the Squad Victory Fund can only donate to political action committees already associated with each member’s individual campaign. Those PACs can then donate to other progressives.
At least half of the money will go to the congress members' individual campaigns to fend off opponents backed by high-spending.supporters. The Washington Post reported a slew of fundraising from the financial industry poured into Michelle Caruso-Cabrera's campaign who ran an unsuccessful primary against Ocasio-Cortez earlier this year.
The Squad has also received ire from President Donald Trump during campaign rallies and on Twitter.
Ocasio-Cortez and Omar are among the 30 strongest fundraisers in Congress; Ocasio-Cortez is the fifth-highest and has raised $2 million more this cycle than House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, another prolific fundraiser. In line with their grassroots approach to fundraising, they’ll reject money from lobbyists, corporate PACs, fossil fuel companies, and — a decision arrived on the heels of George Floyd’s killing — police organizations. (Not that much would likely be coming their way from such interests, as the four Democrats push to defund the police.)
“The progressive policies that my sisters and I are fighting for — Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, racial justice, an end to mass incarceration — have never been more important,” Ocasio-Cortez told BuzzFeed News.
Omar noted the “unprecedented historical moment” facing the nation. “People in our districts and across the country are demanding solutions to crises of public health, economic, and racial justice,” she said.
The Squad’s fundraising effort comes after several long-standing congressional members have already faced tough progressive challengers during 2020 primaries and lost. Jamaal Bowman who has likely unseated House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Eliot Engel. (An overwhelming number of mail-in votes due to the coronavirus will significantly delay a final tally, but Bowman leads significantly with more than 50,000 votes counted.)
“Last week’s elections showed the strength of progressive candidates of color who can speak to their communities,” Omar told BuzzFeed News, referencing Bowman’s likely win. “But they also showed the length the establishment is willing to go to cling to power.”
All four members backed progressives in the presidential primaries; all but Pressley — who backed Sen. Elizabeth Warren — endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders.
But the fervor to oust moderate Democrats in Congress — and moderate Democrats’ continued worries about being primaried — began this cycle in September 2019 when Ocasio-Cortez backed Marie Newman, a progressive, who ultimately ran a successful campaign against Illinois Rep. Dan Lipinski, one of the last anti-abortion Democrats in Congress.
The Squad’s progressive movement is rooted in Ocasio-Cortez’s 2018 unexpected win against Rep. Joe Crowley, a longtime incumbent and favorite to succeed Speaker Nancy Pelosi in leadership. Omar, Pressley, and Tlaib were elected at the same time and quickly became a noticeable force within the House Democratic caucus.
But even with the backing of progressive political PACs, the progressive wing of the Democratic caucus has struggled with gaining support for policies like the Green New Deal and Medicare for All. The lawmakers are helping to level the playing field.
“Wall Street and Trump donors poured over $3 million into an attempt to defeat me and now they’re preparing to do even more to stop this progressive momentum in its tracks,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “The Squad Victory Fund will help us fight back.”
Jerome Montgomery (right), executive director of Chicago's Project Vida, meets with a client June 19. The group provides Covid-19 testing to one of the hardest-hit communities in the state of Illinois. (photo: ITT)
The Grassroots Efforts to Save the Lives of Immigrants Who Can't Get Covid-19 Testing From the State
Maurizio Guerrero, In These Times
Guerrero writes: "When Soraida and her husband experienced Covid-19 symptoms in mid-March, no one at the New York City hotlines, meant to direct residents to testing sites, answered their calls for support."
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Maurizio Guerrero, In These Times
Guerrero writes: "When Soraida and her husband experienced Covid-19 symptoms in mid-March, no one at the New York City hotlines, meant to direct residents to testing sites, answered their calls for support."
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Social media and chat forums are full of suggestions for how to find safer ways to protest Beijing's move. (photo: Tyrone Siu/Reuters)
Hong Kong Protesters Use 'Hidden Language' to Dodge Security Law
Al Jazeera
Excerpt: "People of Hong Kong are finding creative ways to voice dissent after Beijing blanketed the city in a new security law and police began arresting people displaying now forbidden political slogans."
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Al Jazeera
Excerpt: "People of Hong Kong are finding creative ways to voice dissent after Beijing blanketed the city in a new security law and police began arresting people displaying now forbidden political slogans."
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Higher rates of deforestation in Brazil have been widely reported, but this started well before the coronavirus crisis struck. (photo: Laurie Hedges/Mongabay)
COVID-19 Lockdown Precipitates Deforestation Across Asia and South America
James Fair, Mongabay
Fair writes: "On May 15, authorities in the northeastern province of Si Sa Ket in Thailand arrested two Cambodians and six Thai workers for illegally removing a large Siamese rosewood tree from an area designated as a wildlife sanctuary."
James Fair, Mongabay
Fair writes: "On May 15, authorities in the northeastern province of Si Sa Ket in Thailand arrested two Cambodians and six Thai workers for illegally removing a large Siamese rosewood tree from an area designated as a wildlife sanctuary."
The eight men had taken the tree clean out of the ground and tried to persuade the Huai Sala Wildlife Sanctuary officers that they were replanting it elsewhere, according to a report filed by the Asian News Network.
But one of the Cambodian men eventually confessed to hiring the men for about $6,200, with the tree valued at more than $70,000.
Siamese rosewood has been described by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime as the “world’s most trafficked wild product,” accounting for a third of all seizures by value between 2005 and 2014. Demand for it comes mainly from China, where it is made into luxury hongmu furniture.
The incident reveals that, despite the government-imposed lockdowns and worldwide economic stasis as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is still both the wherewithal to illegally harvest products from tropical forests and sufficient demand for those products. According to reporting carried out for Mongabay, similar situations are playing out throughout the tropics, with reports of increased activity in numerous countries in Asia and South America especially.
To date, there appears to be firm evidence of increased forest clearances in Brazil, Colombia, Cambodia, Indonesia, Nepal and Madagascar, with more anecdotal reports emerging from Myanmar and Peru.
Brazil
Higher rates of deforestation in Brazil have been widely reported, but this started well before the coronavirus crisis struck. The Brazilian Amazon lost more than 9,000 square kilometers (3,500 square miles) of forest cover during the year to March 2020, the highest annual recorded loss since 2008, according to Brazil’s national space research institute, INPE.
Forest loss in April was up by 64% for the same period in 2019, and totaled 1,200 km2 (463 mi2) for the first four months of the year, an increase of 55%. “This includes deforestation in areas protected by law, such as the national parks Mapinguari, Campos Amazônicos, Juruena, and Acari,” WWF told Mongabay in a statement.
WWF added that, though the government had sent in the military to stop illegal deforestation, this was undermining the work of environmental agencies, including the federal environmental authority IBAMA.
“We believe this effort will be insufficient to protect the rainforest if the federal government continues to send signals that it is on the side of illegal land grabbers, miners and loggers.”
Indonesia
The Rainforest Action Network (RAN) told Mongabay there have been increasing rates of forest clearing to make way for oil palm plantations in eight separate areas of the Leuser Ecosystem on the island of Sumatra. It says this is happening in violation of both Indonesian laws and the zero-deforestation policies of major retail brands that buy palm oil from this part of the world.
“At the beginning of this year, there was a huge increase in machinery that companies have brought in,” RAN forest policy director Gemma Tillack said in an interview. “There have been increases in deforestation in the concessions of eight different companies for palm oil development.”
Any loss of forest could have an impact on Sumatran tigers, rhinos and orangutans — all three of which are regarded as critically endangered by the IUCN — with the tiger population estimated at fewer than 400, and rhinos at fewer than 80. Habitat fragmentation exacerbates the severe threats these and other species face through increased risk of poaching and conflict with local communities.
Tillack said the increase in deforestation was also concerning because there had been a steady decline in the four or five years up until 2019. “This unexpected uptick threatens to undermine years of progress in uplifting the international status and conservation oversight of the Leuser Ecosystem,” she said.
How much of the increased activity has been specifically caused by the lockdown is open to question, but Øyvind Eggen, of the Rainforest Foundation Norway (RFN), says he is certain there is a correlation.
“Where government and NGO presence is reduced, it clears the way for illegal activity,” he said in an interview. “We have reports of hundreds of miners coming in on boats on rivers, primarily in Brazil and Peru. Gold prices have increased because of the financial crisis, which is obviously a factor in this, but for the moment, we think that reduced law enforcement is more significant.”
Cambodia
Increased logging in the Prey Lang Wildlife Refuge in Cambodia has been extensively reported. There is evidence for this both from the Global Land Analysis and Discovery (GLAD) lab at the University of Maryland, which registered more than 22,000 alerts during the week of April 27, and from reports from the Prey Lang Community Network (PLCN).
“We have observed transportation of timber in the forest,” said the PLCN’s Hoeun Sopheap in an email. “There have also been the Ministry of Environment reports which found 399 cases of illegal logging during 511 patrols in four months.”
According to the PLCN, the Cambodian government banned it from patrolling Prey Lang in February and this coincided with the spike in illegal activity.
“The reason that the government banned the PLCN from patrolling was because it didn’t want us to see the illegal logging activities and share this information publicly or with the media,” Sopheap said.
Colombia
In Colombia, the Amazon Institute for Scientific Research (SINCHI) recorded nearly 13,000 hot points, indicating a higher risk of forest fires, during March — three times the more than 4,700 detected in March 2019. Hotspots don’t always indicate a forest fire, but according to scientists 93% are later confirmed as being one.
Several fires occurred in Chiribiquete National Natural Park, which at 43,000 km2 (16,600 mi2) is the largest national park in Colombia and the world’s largest national park protecting tropical rainforest.
“Since Colombia went into lockdown in late March, monitoring flights by the armed forces that normally circle the region have significantly reduced,” WWF said in a statement. “This could allow armed groups to take advantage of this lack of environmental control and continue to clear the area for cattle, coca plantation or other crops, as long as quarantine measures persist.”
Madagascar
WWF representatives say their partner NGOs in Madagascar have reported to them an increase in harvesting of mangroves for charcoal production in the northwest of the country. Encroachments in other areas are also believed to have happened.
Again, the absence of enforcement and monitoring may be a factor in this, as is the suspension of economic activities, leaving “traditional farming and fishing communities no other choice than to exploit forests and mangroves to meet their most basic needs for food and fuel,” WWF said.
Nepal
Nepal’s Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation and WWF-Nepal have conducted a preliminary review of case data from 11 protected areas, and recorded a huge increase in illegal extraction of forest resources compared with the month before the lockdown began, with harvesting especially high in important tiger habitat areas.
More instances of illegal extraction, either timber or other forest products, were recorded in the one-month period immediately following the lockdown, the WWF-Nepal report says, than in almost the entire previous year — 514 as opposed to 483 in 11 months. In addition, the first 10 days of April saw a further 610 cases.
“This increased pressure puts ongoing restoration efforts across more than 1.3 million hectares of critical forests and decades of globally lauded conservation efforts at risk of derailment,” WWF told Mongabay in a statement.
In an interview with Mongabay, Alistair Monument, WWF’s lead on global forest practice, said: “The theory is that a lot of people are returning from India where they have been working to places such as the Terai [the lowland area of southern Nepal] and that has resulted in the increase in illegal logging and other activity. We believe there may other risks such as poaching, too.”
Wildlife known to have been poached include one Asian elephant, three gharials (a species of crocodile only found today in India, Bangladesh and Nepal, and assessed as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List,) and six musk deer taken in Sagarmatha National Park.
Myanmar
A report published in The Global New Light of Myanmar at the end of May said that 5,000 tons of illegal timber had been seized in the Sagaing region, in the north of the country, between October 2019 and April 2020, according to the forest department. An unnamed forest department official was quoted in the report as saying they had expected illegal timber extraction to decline because of the enforced lockdown, but it hasn’t.
According to the International Tropical Timber Organization’s (ITTO) Market Report for the second two weeks of May, the forest department for the Mandalay region seized 1,400 tons of illegal timber in the first five months of the year, including 400 tons of hardwoods.
RAN’s Gemma Tillack said major palm oil producers and brands now need to come to the fore and keep promises made last October about establishing a radar-monitoring system in collaboration with the World Resources Institute (WRI). Companies involved include Cargill, Golden Agri-Resources (GAR), Nestlé, PepsiCo and Unilever. “Those companies clearing forest for new plantations need to be contacted by the companies doing the deals with them, by the mills who take their fruit, by the brands taking their products and told it’s not acceptable,” Tillack said.
The international police organization Interpol confirmed in a statement sent to Mongabay that increased rates of illegal logging, and other activities including illegal mining and agricultural expansion, during the COVID-19 pandemic had taken place, “almost certainly a result of reduced law enforcement capacity to disrupt criminal activities” and other socioeconomic pressures such as increased unemployment and poverty that are driving people to exploit forest resources.
“An assessment conducted by Interpol has found capacity to be significantly reduced worldwide, with staff and budgetary resources either furloughed or reallocated to focus on policing matters directly related to the pandemic, including controlling the movement of people and securing the supply chain of relevant medical products,” the statement said.
The anticipated global economic recession is likely to hit many developing countries where the forestry sector contributes significantly to government revenue. “In these countries, it is likely that the overall rates of illegal logging will continue to increase, since the negative impacts of the pandemic on forestry law enforcement is likely to continue for many months and perhaps years,” Interpol said.
Most experts agree that this is a critical time for the way in which the global community tackles the environmental crisis. Øyvind Eggen of RFN said even if deforestation isn’t increasing by very much during the first stage of the crisis, he is very concerned about the long-term implications.
“First, it opens areas up for more illegal practices, with local communities out of desperation moving to more short-term use of natural resources,” Eggen said. “But you are also seeing attempts to deregulate business justified by COVID-19. So more importantly, perhaps, if the recovery becomes less green, that will have an impact for decades. The environment and rainforest protection have moved up the political agenda in recent years, but if they are not one of the top three or five issues in the recovery, we will have lost a lot for decades.”
His thoughts were echoed by Alexandra Reid, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) specializing in organized crime and policing issues, who said the economic downturn could have a number of impacts working in different directions.
On the one hand, it could reduce demand for timber, but it could also result in more demand for less sustainably harvested and illegal timber. “Illicit timber is so much cheaper [than that which has been legally harvested],” Reid said in an interview. “Going through the compliance procedures is very expensive.”
Statistics in recent Tropical Timber Market Reports reveal the other side of this story, suggesting the legal trade in tropical hardwoods is already declining. China’s imports of tropical hardwood logs, for example, fell by 26% in volume (to 1.3 million cubic meters, or 46 million cubic feet) and 37% in value (to $3.25 million) compared with the same period in 2019.
The volume of tropical hardwoods exported to China by the Solomon Islands fell by 54% and by the Republic of the Congo by 45%. Papua New Guinea was the largest supplier, with 39% of the market share (and only a 7% drop in actual quantity). Exports from Myanmar and Laos were also down steeply by 82% and 59% respectively.
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