16 September 20
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An Anonymous Anti-Masker, Deep in the Vermont Woods
Bill McKibben, The New Yorker
McKibben writes: "It takes lots of patient, careful labor to make a society of any kind work."
ometimes, when I talk to people about my work on climate change, they’ll ask, “How do you keep from being depressed all the time?” I usually offer some variation of “I live in the woods, and so I go for a hike most days, and that helps.” Which is more or less true: I do live in the woods, and I do go for hikes, and it does often help. At the very least, it keeps me off the Internet for a time, which may be a reasonable approximation to mental hygiene in the twenty-first century.
Last week, I set off, with my dog, for a two-hour hike up a trail I’ve taken a hundred times before. It rises steeply through the woods until it connects to the Long Trail, a north-south hiking path that stretches the length of Vermont. I was meandering along, admiring the first hints of fall color on the maples, when my eye was caught by what looked like a handful of little yellow labels tacked to the smooth skin of a young beech tree. Upon closer inspection, I saw that they were tags of the sort you’d see at the bottom of a flyer posted outside a shop, except that, instead of offering dog-walking services or enrollment in a trial of a new medicine, they bore the words “Facemask Exemptions Facemask Science” and the URL for a video featuring a “doctor.”
I’m not going to tell you the “doctor” ’s name or link to his video, but it’s No. 708 (!) in a series that also includes anti-vax messages. It posits that face-mask laws are the result of letting people “with no educational requirements whatsoever—bureaucrats, legislators, governors, etc.” make the rules. In the past, the doctor says, “when there have been actual outbreaks of true infectious diseases,” you quarantined the diseased, “not the entire population.” This “attack on the world’s healthy population” shows how “docile” we have all become—even in Las Vegas, where he had just sojourned for a week, and where, he claimed, even though there was no mandate (there is), “thirty per cent of the people were still walking around with their masks on.” He expresses outrage that the “lowliest bag clerk in the grocery store” has “now been elevated to the rank of junior G-man. . . . Minimum wage and I get to join Youth for Hitler.” And so on, for twenty-nine minutes and forty-nine seconds. If only everyone would ignore the mask mandate, think “how much better our lives would be today,” he concludes, before urging viewers to catch his next video, about the “evils of contact tracing.”
Read The New Yorker’s complete news coverage and analysis of the coronavirus pandemic.
Material like this does real damage—the flyer sent me to watch the video on a service called BitChute, which the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League have described as a locus of racist, anti-Semitic content. (It’s where Alex Jones and InfoWars retreated to when YouTube had finally had enough.) Such videos also serve as a transmission mechanism for massive quantities of scientific disinformation. Millions of people have used the site to view “Plandemic,” a “documentary” that insists that Bill Gates helped create the coronavirus so that he could sell you the vaccine.
But I confess that I was disturbed less by the content of the video than by the fact that someone had taken the time to post ads for it along a lightly used trail through a federally designated wilderness in backwoods Vermont. Every few hundred yards, I found another little cluster of the tags tacked to another tree—they’d only been there a day or two, because the last rainfall hadn’t touched them. I did my best to collect all of them, but I bet I missed some; in any event, my hike was not the restful escape from the world’s cares that I’d been counting on. Instead, I was right back in the world. It reminded me of the plans that resurface from time to time to beam ads onto the surface of the moon, making them visible to half the residents of the Earth at any given moment. (If that ever happens, I’m moving underground.)
And it made me reflect anew on just how incredibly hard it is for anything useful to happen in our country right now. Between the President tweeting (sometimes a hundred times a day), Fox News shouting nightly, and Facebook serving as a right-wing echo chamber, it’s no wonder that we’ve become confused about basic facts. Do masks help? In the right-wing world, they didn’t, until the President said that they did. Are vaccines a useful addition to the modern world? The President used to have his doubts, but now he seems to be pinning his reëlection on one. Government agencies have become founts of misinformation—even the C.D.C. has apparently knuckled under, granting the White House the right to review information that it sends to health professionals.
This is not, of course, new. We’ve delayed action on the climate crisis for decades as a result of campaigns of organized lying. But in that case there was a profit motive: the goal was to keep the business model of the oil industry alive for a few more decades, even at the cost of breaking the planet. This other kind of freelance falsehood is more baffling. And it’s not entirely confined to the right. In Vermont, outbreaks of measles in past years tended to center on small, independent schools favored by people who would count themselves as environmentalists and progressives but don’t trust doctors about vaccines. (The Vermont chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics asked me to make a video a few years ago, trying to convince such people that—well, that science is good. I was happy to do it, but I did feel as if I’d been called to explain that gravity meant that if you leaned forward far enough you’d fall on your face.)
It takes lots of patient, careful labor to make a society of any kind work. I’ve written about Vermont’s success in containing the coronavirus, at least compared with other areas of the country. Part of that success is attributable to high levels of public trust, which have made mask-wearing almost ubiquitous, even without a government mandate—precisely the kind of social solidarity that the wilderness pamphleteer was attempting to undercut. We’ve let our governor and his bureaucrats do their jobs, and followed their advice, and it’s gone pretty well—at the moment, there’s no one in the state hospitalized for Covid-19.
That same kind of hard work seems to be paying off in our colleges, which have not become the coronavirus hot spots that we’ve seen elsewhere in the nation. Middlebury College, where I work, sits down the hill from the trail where I found the flyers. It has managed to welcome back more than two thousand students, from all fifty states, with only two testing positive for COVID-19 so far; both were immediately quarantined and have now recovered. Administrators have worked for months with public-health officials to establish tight protocols; they’ve had to send a few students home for disobeying the carefully worked-out rules, but for the most part the students have been champs, understanding that normal college life isn’t in the cards right now. Our local public schools have begun to open without incident, though with lots of masks. Expertise actually matters; coöperation in a joint task is still possible. We can do this—or, we could, if there weren’t constantly people insisting that somewhere there lurks a conspiracy, or the Gestapo, or George Soros.
I suspect that Vermont is sensible enough to work its way through the nonsense, but who knows? We are assailed in this world by microbes, by carbon-dioxide molecules, and by a kind of rampaging ignorance so aggressive that it won’t even cede the woods and the mountains to common sense. Perhaps it will lessen if the President is removed; perhaps that happy event would only increase its spread. In any event, it is clearly hardy enough that we need to be dealing with it directly. Along with our other tasks, we should all be working diligently toward a cure—or a mask—that will keep this kind of foolishness at bay and let us get on with life. Or, at least, with a hike.
The San Francisco skyline seen from Treasure Island on September 9, 2020 in San Francisco, California. (photo: Philip Pacheco/Getty)
"We're Out Here Choking to Death": What It's Like Being Homeless on the Front Lines of the Climate Fires
Sarah Lazare, In These Times
Excerpt: "I don't see the city out here. They're not prepared for anything. We're out here choking to death and the city is not doing anything."
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Protesters hold signs showing Breonna Taylor during a rally in her honor in Frankfort, Ky., on June 25. The city of Louisville will pay several million dollars to the mother of Breonna Taylor, city officials announced Tuesday. (photo: AP)
Breonna Taylor's Family Gets a Settlement - but Not Justice
Sophia A. Nelson, The Daily Beast
Excerpt: "It is, in some ways, a staggering settlement by the city of Louisville. But settlements still largely let officers who commit these acts walk away."
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From left, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass. (photo: J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
After an ICE Facility Allegedly Performed Numerous Hysterectomies the Squad Wants Answers
Carter Sherman, VICE
Sherman writes: "Members of the progressive 'Squad' in the U.S. House, and at least one other Democratic official, are already calling for investigations into the Georgia detention center accused of 'jarring medical neglect,' including performing a disproportionately high number of hysterectomies on immigrant women."
The whistleblower complaint, filed Monday on behalf of a nurse named Dawn Whooten who works at Irwin County Detention Center, also accuses the facility of endangering both detained immigrants and Irwin employees by failing to follow procedures meant to protect people from COVID-19. The facility in Ocilla, Georgia, is run by the private prison company LaSalle Corrections and houses people detained by Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE).
“I became a whistleblower,” Wooten said in a press conference in Atlanta on Tuesday afternoon. “Now I’m a target. But I’ll take a target any day to do what’s right and just than sit and be a part of what’s inhumane.”
In a tweet, Washington state Rep. Pramila Jayapal declared that she was looking into the matter, alongside her colleagues in the House. Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley, a fellow Democrat, called for “a Congressional investigation into these heinous human rights abuses immediately.”
Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib demanded on Twitter that ICE be abolished, while Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar called for a “full reckoning with the torture and cruelty inflicted by this administration and all who are complicit in it.” Pressley, Tlaib, and Omar are all known as members of the so-called Squad.
“The fact of the matter is the United States has engaged in a program of mass human rights violations targeting immigrants,” New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat and squad member, wrote on Twitter. “This includes mass child separation, systemic sexual assault of people in detention, kangaroo-court procedures, and more. Our country must atone for it all.”
In the complaint, Wooten said she’d talked to several detained women at Irwin who’d undergone hysterectomies but were not able to explain why. One detained woman said she knew five people who’d had hysterectomies while being detained between October and December 2019. The detained people, she said, were often sent to see a gynecologist who works outside of Irwin.
“Like an experimental concentration camp”
“When I met all these women who had had surgeries, I thought this was like an experimental concentration camp,” the woman said, according to the complaint. “It was like they’re experimenting with their bodies.”
Additional information about another woman detained at Irwin came out during the press conference. Rev. Leeann Culbreath, the founding co-chair of the South Georgia Immigrant Support Network, shared the story of a friend who she said had undergone a “questionable gynecological procedure” while she was detained for years at Irwin. (Since then, the woman has been transferred to a facility in Texas, Culbreath said.)
The woman had been told by a doctor that she’d had an ovarian cyst, Culbreath said. “She got a shot, she came back, she was told the cyst had grown. She was not given an indication of that, no medical records to show that that was true.”
Culbreath said the woman was then recommended to have a D&C, which is a procedure to remove tissue from inside a uterus. When she awoke from the anesthesia, Culbraeth said, the woman was told that part of her fallopian tube had had to be removed. The woman was informed that she would no longer be able to have children naturally.
“She was of course very upset,” Culbreath said. “At her follow-up care, she confronted the doctor about the lack of consent. He changed his story about the procedure.”
A spokesperson for LaSalle didn’t immediately request for comment on Culbreath’s allegations. In a statement to VICE News about the complaint, ICE said it does not comment on matters handled by the Office of the Inspector General but “takes all allegations seriously.”
“That said, in general, anonymous, unproven allegations, made without any fact-checkable specifics, should be treated with the appropriate skepticism they deserve,” the agency added.
Robert Trammell, a Democratic Georgia state representative, also sent a letter to Georgia’s medical and nursing boards on Monday. He demanded that they suspend the licenses of the providers named in the complaint pending a full investigation. Trammell also asked the boards to “update me on your efforts to investigate other allegations and/or patterns of provider misconduct” at several other facilities that have ICE contracts.
COVID conditions
The complaint describes Irwin’s alleged failures to shield people from the coronavirus. ICE reported in August that 41 immigrants at Irwin have tested positive for COVID-19, according to the complaint, but Wooten believes the true number is higher because people were not being tested for the virus — even when they asked for tests.
The detained immigrants were also unable to socially distance at Irwin; their beds, for example, were just three feet apart, according to the complaint. People have also allegedly been transferred in and out of the facility.
“What broke the back, and the last straw, was looking in and living it for yourself,” said Wooten, who said she was told to come to work even though she had COVID-19-like symptoms and her doctor told her to stay home. (Wooten has sickle cell anemia, a pre-existing condition that makes Wooten fear she wouldn’t survive a case of the coronavirus. She’s a single mother of five children.)
Although she told her supervisor that she couldn’t work because she was quarantining, Wooten was later reprimanded for not formally calling out sick. Her hours at Irwin were then slashed.
“I know I was demoted because I raised questions” about the medical treatment of detained immigrants, Wooten said. “All I want is that people are treated and triaged medically correct, and they’re treated in medical timeliness.”
The advocacy groups Project South, Georgia Detention Watch, Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, and South Georgia Immigrant Support Network all helped file Wooten’s whistleblower complaint, which was sent to the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General. That office didn’t immediately respond to a VICE News request for comment on the complaint and Culbreath’s allegations.
Project South has been tracking alleged abuses inside Irwin for years; it released a report on the subject back in 2017. In early September, Project South also filed a complaint about Irwin to the Office of the Inspector General. That complaint also emphasized on the “gross lack of protection against COVID-19 for both immigrants and employees,” Project South staff attorney Priyanka Bhatt said at the Tuesday press conference.
Drug-overdose deaths were up 13% in the first seven months of this year compared to 2019. (photo: iStock))
Medicating Isolation, Drug Use in the Covid-19 Moment
Mattea Kramer, TomDispatch
Kramer writes: "What people do in the face of protracted isolation and despair is turn to whatever coping strategy they've got - including substances so strong they can be deadly."
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Yoshihide Suga stands up after being elected as Japan's new prime minister at parliament's lower house in Tokyo, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2020. (photo: Koji Sasahara/AP)
Yoshihide Suga Named Japan's Prime Minister, Succeeding Abe
Mari Yamaguchi, Associated Press
Yamaguchi writes: "Japan's Parliament elected Yoshihide Suga as prime minister Wednesday, replacing long-serving leader Shinzo Abe with his right-hand man."
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An oil rig towers over houses last week in Nigg, Scotland. Major players in the oil industry expect depressed oil demand and low prices to continue well into next year. (photo: Peter Summers/Getty)
Oil Demand Has Collapsed, and It Won't Come Back Any Time Soon
Camila Domonoske, NPR
Domonoske writes: "2020 is shaping up to be an extraordinarily bad year for oil."
In the spring, pandemic lockdowns sent oil demand plummeting and markets into a tailspin. At one point, U.S. oil prices even turned negative for the first time in history.
But summer brought new optimism to the industry, with hopes rising for a controlled pandemic, a recovering economy and resurgent oil demand.
Those hopes are now fading. In a report Tuesday, the influential advisory body called the International Energy Agency revised its forecasts for global oil consumption downward, warning that the market outlook is "even more fragile" than expected and that "the path ahead is treacherous."
It's the latest in a flurry of diminished forecasts from major energy players. On Monday, oil cartel OPEC slashed its expectations of oil demand, just as Trafigura, a large oil trading company, warned that another large oil glut is building.
And energy giant BP, which has grabbed headlines with its new carbon-neutral commitments, raised the possibility that the world might never again use as much oil as it did before the pandemic.
A pair of recent OPEC reports reflect the rapid shift in mood.
Its August oil forecast assumed that by 2021, "COVID-19 will largely be contained globally with no major disruptions to the global economy." OPEC also predicted that economic activity would be rebounding steadily and oil demand would be recovering.
But on Monday, OPEC released a much grimmer forecast.
"[S]tructural changes to the global economy are forecast to persist," the oil cartel wrote. Travel and tourism "are not expected to achieve pre-COVID-19 levels of activity before the end of 2021."
The IEA, a well-regarded source of global energy data, agreed with the oil cartel's latest assessment, writing that "it is becoming increasingly apparent that COVID-19 will stay with us for some time."
"There's some negative vibes out there," said Neil Atkinson, the head of Oil Industry and Markets Division at the IEA. "It just doesn't appear to be a simple case of this horrible thing comes along in the first six months of the year and then mercifully goes away again and we can all go back to normal. It's just not happening like that."
The world still relies heavily on oil and natural gas. For 2020, OPEC predicts total oil demand will be slashed by nearly 10% — nowhere near the large-scale pivot away from fossil fuels that scientists say is necessary to fight climate change.
But from the industry's perspective, this year's decline is tremendous and destabilizing. Producers around the world are already radically rethinking their production plans, shutting down drilling rigs and hitting pause on major projects.
Many U.S. producers have gone bankrupt. Saudi Arabia, which has been trying to diversify its economy to be less reliant on oil as the sole source of prosperity, pushed the wider group of countries called OPEC+ to slash output and drag prices up out of the doldrums.
These disruptions come as a growing number of investors, regulators and even energy giants are projecting bigger shifts in oil demand in the years to come as much of the world takes action to try to limit the most damaging consequences of climate change.
BP and Shell are among the European oil and gas giants that have pledged to reshape their businesses to focus more on zero-carbon energy sources. Total, the French energy company, recently acknowledged that the shift away from fossil fuels will cause some of its current oil investments to become "stranded assets," meaning they will not be as valuable as expected in a world that has reduced its reliance on oil.
BP published its annual energy outlook this week and laid out three possible trajectories for the future of oil demand. In two of those pathways, the world would take meaningful action on climate change, and the current drop in demand — instead of being a pandemic-induced blip — would become the pivot point leading toward a lower-emissions future.
In the third path, where the world continues with "business as usual" instead of acting more swiftly to stop global warming, BP predicts oil demand would increase slightly over the next few years — but still peak within the decade.
BP says its scenarios are not forecasts, but "a range of possible outcomes."
Carolyn Kissane, an energy expert and an academic director at New York University's Center for Global Affairs, says BP's experts aren't the only ones who see a possibility that energy demand may have already peaked.
She notes many factors will affect demand — including economic developments, government policy decisions and, of course, the pandemic. And big questions remain about just how profoundly our behavior might shift as a result of pandemic disruptions.
"Maybe we are making this more dramatic, radical transition that's going to have much deeper impacts," she says. "There is that uncertainty."
Transitioning away from fossil fuels will not be quick, easy or simple, Kissane says. But it's possible the pandemic is pushing companies and oil-producing countries to think now about how to adapt to a world with reduced oil demand — one they once expected would arrive further into the future.
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