01 September 20
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William Saletan | Trump Is a Coward
William Saletan, Slate
Saletan writes: "One of Donald Trump's biggest frauds is that he's a strong leader. He says he's tough on China, tough on borders, and tough on looters and anarchists."
Biden calls the president weak on crime, Russia, and the coronavirus. Trump proves him right.
But when toughness really counts, he’s craven. He sucks up to Vladimir Putin, writes love letters to Kim Jong-un, begs Xi Jinping for help in getting reelected, and causes thousands of deaths by refusing to face a catastrophic virus. On Monday, Joe Biden launched a frontal assault on Trump’s cowardice. And Trump, in a press conference afterward, validated Biden’s indictment.
Trump thinks the recent wave of violence in certain cities—some of it related to protests against shootings by police—can help him change the subject from COVID-19 to law and order. Biden, speaking in Pittsburgh, directly addressed that issue. “If Donald Trump wants to ask the question, ‘Who will keep you safer as president?,’ let’s answer that question,” said Biden. “When I was vice president, violent crime fell 15 percent. … The murder rate is up 26 percent across the nation this year under Donald Trump.”
Biden argued that in street clashes between left- and right-wing extremists, real political courage consists of standing up to the miscreants on your own side. Trump hasn’t just failed that test, Biden said; he’s ducked it. “He’s got no problem with right-wing militia, white supremacists, and vigilantes with assault weapons, often better armed than the police,” said Biden. Trump’s “failure to call on his own supporters to stop acting as an armed militia in this country shows how weak he is.”
Biden coupled this attack with a scathing assessment of Trump’s appeasement of Russia. “The Kremlin has put bounties on the heads of American soldiers,” said Biden. But “instead of telling Vladimir Putin … that there’d be a heavy price to pay if they dare touch an American soldier, this president doesn’t even bring up the subject in his multiple phone calls with Putin.” Biden also pointed to reports that “Russian forces just attacked American troops in Syria, injuring our service members. Did you hear the president say a single word? Did he lift one finger? Never before has an American president played such a subservient role to a Russian leader. It’s not only dangerous. It’s humiliating.”
Trump has surrendered to the novel coronavirus as well, Biden noted. The former vice president likened the disease to a wartime adversary, noting that it had killed more Americans than “every war since Korea combined.” He observed that COVID’s death toll dwarfs the current threat from street violence. “More cops have died from COVID this year than have been killed on patrol,” said Biden. While hyping manageable threats, Trump ignores the big one.
Above all, Biden lambasted Trump for shrinking from his duties. Images of urban violence in Trump’s ads, Biden noted, “are images of Donald Trump’s America today. He keeps telling you if only he was president, it wouldn’t happen. … He is president.” This flight from responsibility—running away from bad news in Syria and Afghanistan, blaming violence on mayors, abandoning governors to deal with COVID on their own—defines Trump’s failure as a leader. He is, in Biden’s words, “a bystander in his own presidency.”
Against this cowardice, Biden promised to govern the country with backbone. He rebuked left-wing vandals who abuse the protest movement. “Rioting is not protesting. Looting is not protesting. Setting fires is not protesting,” Biden declared. “It’s lawlessness. … And those who do it should be prosecuted.” He mocked Trump’s simultaneous caricatures of him as an establishment dinosaur and a communist stooge. “Do I look like a radical socialist with a soft spot for rioters?” he joked.
But Biden also argued that to lead with strength, a president must do more than bluster. He must listen and heal. The reason Trump can’t extinguish racial unrest, said Biden, is that “he refuses to even acknowledge that there’s a racial justice problem.” And the reason Trump can’t get aid to people whose livelihoods have been wrecked by COVID is that he can’t “pull together the leaders in Congress.” Biden contrasted Trump’s insecurity and rigidity with his own record of bringing people together: police, nonwhite communities, and lawmakers, mayors, and governors from opposing parties.
At a press conference hours after Biden spoke, Trump vindicated Biden’s criticisms of him. The president disowned responsibility for the violence in cities, calling them “Democrat-run.” When a reporter asked Trump why he wasn’t meeting with the family of Jacob Blake, a Black man who was shot in the back seven times by police last week, the president said it wasn’t safe, because the family wanted its attorney to join the conversation by phone. “I thought it would be better not to do anything where there are lawyers involved,” he pleaded.
Another reporter asked Trump why he hadn’t said anything about his fans who drove trucks through Portland on Saturday, firing paintballs and pepper spray at adversaries and bystanders. “That was a peaceful protest,” Trump said of the truck caravan, and “paint is not bullets.” When a third reporter asked about Kyle Rittenhouse, the white vigilante who shot two people to death in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Tuesday, Trump defended the shooter. “He was trying to get away from them,” said Trump. “They very violently attacked him.” If Rittenhouse hadn’t shot them, Trump argued, “he probably would have been killed.”
Trump is a coward. He hides from COVID. He refuses to confront Putin about the alleged bounties. He refuses to criticize assailants and killers who support him. He won’t even talk to a Black family about a loved one shot by police. He’s afraid of the family’s lawyer. Lots of people are cowards, but you can’t give them this kind of responsibility. When the president is a coward, people die.
Edward Snowden. (photo: Yuriy Chichkov/Der Spiegel)
Fresh Snowden Reports Have One Lawmaker Questioning if Congress Was Surveilled
Brandi Vincent, Nextgov
Vincent writes: "In a letter penned to the Director of National Intelligence and the head of the National Security Agency Friday, Rep. Anna Eshoo, demands details about every time intelligence community personnel collected communications or metadata on any Congress member, federal judge, Supreme Court Justice, or other judicial or legislative branch employee during the last decade."
The note was sparked by recent allegations that former government contractor-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden sifted through classified surveillance databases for congressional communications. Snowden leaked classified documents about government surveillance in 2013, was charged with violating the Espionage Act and escaped to Russia where he remains. The reports surfaced in a book released in May by Barton Gellman, a journalist who received leaked classified material from Snowden.
“The book includes a previously unpublished revelation: Mr. Snowden used XKEYSCORE, an NSA surveillance tool, to search for communications associated with a publicly listed, official email address of a Member of the House of Representatives. The book states that the email address was ‘Something in the @mail.house.gov domain,’” Eshoo wrote. “The very fact Mr. Snowden was even able to use an IC tool to search for emails of a member of Congress is deeply concerning.”
Snowden said he wiretapped the internet communications belonging to Congress’ current Gang of Eight (a group of each chamber’s top leaders) and the Supreme Court—though the claim proved to be false, the book reveals and Eshoo notes, because he couldn’t find the government officials’ personal email addresses. Eshoo said it’s “frightening” that the only thing preventing the wiretapping of lawmakers was the contractor’s inability to quickly uncover their personal digital contacts, and she also highlighted previous allegations of the Central Intelligence Agency collecting files on Congress members in the 1970s.
On top of calling for details into the scope of information collected by the intelligence community on Congressional insiders, Eshoo also asked whether technical safeguards exist that would keep IC personnel “from querying databases, without express legal authorization or as part of a court-approved investigation” for data about legislative or judicial branch members—and posed several other questions.
She asks the directors to respond by Sept. 28.
“The surveillance of Congressional and judicial communications by the executive branch seriously threatens the separation of powers principles of our Constitution,” Eshoo wrote.
Protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, sheltered themselves Tuesday from pepper balls fired by law-enforcement officers. (photo: WSJ)
Trump Compares Police Shootings to Golfing and Defends Teenager Who Shot Protesters
Tom McCarthy, Guardian UK
McCarthy writes: "Before his visit to Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Tuesday, Donald Trump defended a teenager who shot two anti-racism protesters dead in the city last week."
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Mitch McConnell. (photo: Olivier Douliery/Getty Images)
Head of USPS Board of Governors Is Also Director of Mitch McConnell Super PAC
Alex Woodward, The Independent
Woodward writes: "The chairman of the US Postal Service governing board continues to direct Mitch McConnell's multi-million dollar super PAC, following accusations that Donald Trump's administration aided by congressional Republicans have threatened to suppress mail-in voting efforts as Democrats accuse agency leadership of conflicts of interest."
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Ivanka Trump helped distribute food boxes as part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Farmers to Families Food Box program on July 20 in Washington. (photo: Al Drago/Getty Images)
Now in Government Food Aid Boxes: A Letter From Donald Trump
Isaac Arnsdorf, ProPublica
Arnsdorf writes: "Millions of Americans who are struggling to put food on the table may discover a new item in government-funded relief packages of fresh fruits and vegetables, dairy and meat: a letter signed by President Donald Trump."
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A woman holds a sign that reads, 'How many more deaths are we going to carry on?,' Bogota, Colombia, Aug. 30, 2020. (photo: Twitter/@laradiodelsur)
Colombia: Armed Groups Kill Another Social Leader in Antioquia
teleSUR
Excerpt: "Colombia's social leader Sandra Meneses Monday was killed by irregular armed groups in the rural area of Taraza, in Antioquia Department."
Over 1,000 community leaders have been killed in this South American country since 2016.
Meneses, who was the president of El Paraiso Community Action Council, is one of the 17 human rights defenders who have been murdered in Antioquia so far this year.
"The woman was murdered in the 90's neighborhood," Social Process of Guarantees spokesman Oscar Zapata reported, adding that it is unknown whether the social leader or her family received any death threats.
"This cruel act will not go unpunished," Antioquia's Governor Luis Suarez assured and requested an investigation to discover the killers' identity.
"The wave of violence that Colombia is facing does not seem to have an end," Zapata said while he recalled that there are already 203 leaders murdered in the country this year.
A few hours after Meneses' murder, Santander Department's authorities announced the killing of Alfonso Ariza (70) and his son Jairo (47) in the Sucre municipality.
Over 1,000 social, environmental, and LGBTQ+ leaders have been killed in Colombia since 2016, according to the Institute for Peace and Development Studies (Indepaz).
Authorized fishers use artisanal methods to harvest in the Torre Guaceto reserve. (photo: Giuseppe Affinito)
How to Save the Sea: Lessons From an Italian Fishing Community
Agnostino Petroni, YES! Magazine
Petroni writes: "When Cosimo Di Biasi, 66, decides it's the right day to fish, he begins at 5 p.m. He drives 4 miles to the port of Torre Santa Sabina, boards Nonno Ugo, his 21-foot fiberglass boat, and navigates south for a half-hour to reach a marine reserve in Puglia, in southern Italy."
The rocky coast is interspersed with sandy beaches, and at the tip of a tiny peninsula, a majestic tower overlooks the coast. Built by the Aragonese in the 16th century to spot the invading Turkish, the tower is now the symbol of Torre Guaceto—a marine reserve spanning 5,400 acres of sea and 5 miles of coastline, where only five boats and seven fishers are allowed to fish.
Di Biasi has been operating in the area since he was 10. He would skip school to fish with his father, and he would bring baskets of fish to the teacher to excuse his absences. Still, she failed him in grade six three times.
When his boat is in position, Di Biasi throws the half-mile-long leaded net into the water, which is then held up by a series of floating buoys. After this quick operation, the fisher returns home. The invisible wall will lay all night, waiting for fish to get entangled. The morning after, Di Biasi wakes up at sunrise, goes to the bar to get a coffee and a croissant, and navigates his boat back to the reserve to load up the abundant catch of the day.
Back at the port in Santa Sabina, locals, restaurant owners, and other buyers wait for Di Biasi. Many of them have already reserved fish from Di Biasi’s catch the night before. The species, like mullet, are common here; their incredible size sets Di Biasi’s catch apart.
While other fishers in the Mediterranean struggle to make ends meet, going out every night and extracting fish of any kind and size, from anchovies to dolphins, Torre Guaceto’s fishers enter the reserve only once a week, making stellar revenues of up to $10,000 a day. They are part of a cooperative management project that allows the sea to recover while they thrive economically.
But what may seem like a fairy tale today came after years of struggles and conflicts. Conservationists began the difficult task of working with local stakeholders more than 25 years ago, in a region plagued by organized crime and aggressive exploitation of natural resources. Now those fishers are the marine reserve’s greatest allies.
“We are the guardians,” Di Biasi says proudly. “This stretch of sea is ours.”
Historic exploitation
Alessandro Ciccolella, the director of Consorzio di Gestione Torre Guaceto, the management entity of the natural reserve, says that before they took over in 2001, this stretch of coast was a no-man’s-land. Organized crime had a stronghold in the area, using the shores of Torre Guaceto as a port for tobacco and drug smuggling.
“Ciccolella would tell us that one day Torre Guaceto would be a reserve. But we didn’t believe him, and we didn’t care,” Di Biasi says.
Fishers would detonate homemade bombs underwater, harvesting the dead fish that floated to the surface. In the process, though, they were killing marine life, destroying the reef, and risking their lives. Plus most of the kill went to the seafloor, while clouds of dust filled the waters. According to Ciccolella, fishers thought they were plowing the sea for good.
The area was so worn out that in 2001 the Consorzio, formed by World Wildlife Fund and the nearby cities of Brindisi and Carovigno, decided to close the waters of the reserve for five years to let it recover from the past exploitation.
“They took away a piece of the sea from us. We used to keep our boats there, and the tower was the place where we cooked and hung out,” De Biasi says. “From one day to the other, we couldn’t fish anymore.”
Friction arose between the fishers and the management of the reserve escalating to slashed tires and broken car windows. The local fishers kept fishing illegally at night, to make a point, even if they still had the rest of the sea to fish. The coast guard occasionally caught them, confiscated their boats, and gave hefty fines.
“We needed to know what was underwater and let it recover,” Ciccolella says, explaining the fishing ban. “We were able to do it because the area was not too big, and it was easier to reason with fewer people. But the benefits of a small reserve are way larger than you can think of.”
Restoring abundance
Paolo Guidetti, a professor of Ecology at Nice University in France, played a crucial role in developing the reserve’s sustainable fishing model. He says it wasn’t easy to start a dialogue with the fishers, but it turned out to be crucial to the reserve’s success. In 2005, after five years of the fishing ban, the fishers were allowed in for a fishing trial.
“We met God’s abundance,” Di Biasi says. Catches were fivefold compared to the outside area, and fish were bigger and of higher value.
The Consorzio teamed up with Guidetti and Marcello Longo, president of Slow Food Puglia, a local chapter of an international movement that fights the disappearance of local food cultures around the world. They organized meetings with the bewildered fishers to create a protocol to start fishing again while preserving the biodiversity of the area.
“The fishers themselves proposed to fish just once a week,” Guidetti says with excitement. Fishers would also use shorter nets—0.75 miles long instead of 2.5 miles—and larger mesh size to free smaller and juvenile fish.
While a day of fishing in the outer sea might give fishers a couple of hundred dollars in revenues, within Torre Guaceto, the fishers had miraculous days, and Di Biasi says, could catch up to $10,000 worth of fish a day.
The biodiversity had recovered, and in the following years, because of the renewed—but limited—fishing pressure, catches stabilized at almost twice the weight of catches from outside waters. According to Guidetti, the biologist, Torre Guaceto gives the highest catches per unit in the Mediterranean.
The biologist is sure that including the fishers in the decision-making process made Torre Guaceto a success story. Understanding the value of protecting the area, illegal fishing essentially stopped. Fishers turned into sentinels, helping the coast guard spot poachers. Researchers and managers developed friendships with fishers. “A top-down ministerial approach has never worked,” Guidetti says.
And the positive outcome of the reserve goes way beyond the limits of the Torre Guaceto waters.
An increase of the fish population within a reserve pushes juveniles out of the area to find their own territory. This spillover is called “reserve effect”and benefits the areas immediately around the reserve. But there is an even more significant contribution from the sanctuary. With less fishing pressure, female white seabream inside the reserve can grow to twice the size of females outside and produce 100 times more eggs. A unique study by Guidetti followed those fish eggs and found that marine currents carried them south for hundreds of miles, repopulating far away areas. He called this a “shower effect.”
Guidetti says that Torre Guaceto is the only reserve in the world with continuous and precise monitoring of the fish population, which shows the positive impact of a well co-managed marine reserve.
“It would be optimal to have a Torre Guaceto every 30 kilometers, to repopulate the rest of the sea,” Guidetti says.
Expanding protections
The biggest problem for a Marine Protected Area seems to be control and management. Many projects similar to Torre Guaceto fail because of the absence of precise control of the territory. Now, after years of struggling, Torre Guaceto can count on the rigorous vigilance of the Italian Coast Guard and of the fishers. But even with such control, some illegal fishing still happens at night.
Today an unlikely event is happening: Fishers are the ones asking for the protection for the sea. “We requested the director to enlarge the marine reserve,” Di Biasi says. The request is now under examination by the Ministry of Environment. In the meantime, 10 other fishers from nearby towns have already started fishing with shorter nets and wider mesh sizes, hoping the reserve will be extended to include their coastlines soon.
Now Di Biasi goes to elementary schools to explain the importance of sustainable fishing. He also goes to fishing communities in other Mediterranean countries to tell incredulous fishers that it is possible to make more money while preserving the sea.
“We hope they will follow our example and create a marine reserve,” Di Biasi says. “It took us time to learn this, but now we hope that others will do [it] too.”
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