13 October 20
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12 October 20
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RSN: Norman Solomon | All Left Hands on Deck. Step 1: Defeat Trump. Step 2: Challenge Biden.
Norman Solomon, Reader Supported News
Solomon writes: "The extreme dangers of this political moment have forced leftists to face contradictory truths about Joe Biden."
At once, he can be seen as dreadful and essential. A longtime servant of corporate America and a politician of last resort. The current top functionary for neoliberalism and the presidential candidate for a united front against neofascism.
Such contradictions should lead to clear analysis and strategic action. We need approaches that respond to imminent emergencies — first, bailing out the boat before it sinks, and then charting a course toward where we want to go.
The Trump regime must be brought down, or the left will be up against the wall. As Cornel West says, “A vote for Biden is ... a way of preserving the condition for the possibility of any kind of democratic practice in the United States.”
No one has described the current crossroads more astutely than Naomi Klein, who tweeted last month: “Vote for a more favorable terrain. Our struggle goes way beyond elections. We’re in the streets. We’re talking to our neighbors and co-workers. But who controls the presidency changes what’s politically possible for our struggles.”
Under the Trump regime, the terrain has a stone wall around what’s politically possible for progressives. And Trump is becoming more and more authoritarian, week by week, as he manipulates and expands executive-branch power.
With three weeks of voting to go, the race between Trump and Biden is likely much closer than the forecasts usually presented by corporate media. Biden’s lead in virtually every swing state is appreciably smaller than in national polling. Over the weekend, even while reporting that Biden is 12 points ahead of Trump nationwide in the new ABC-Washington Post poll, ABC noted that four years ago Hillary Clinton had a polling lead with the identical 12-point national margin a mere 17 days before her loss to Trump.
A recent open letter signed by 55 progressive activists and writers (including me) asserted that “voting for Biden in swing states is essential.” We added: “Protestations that Biden is beholden to elites are true but beside the point. The lesser evil is evil, but in this case, the greater evil is simply off the charts.”
The left should play a leading role in defeating Trump, the off-the-charts evil. That’s the first step. And if Trump is defeated, the second step is to confront President Biden from day one.
With systemic injustices now screaming out to all who are open to hearing, the left would have a historic opportunity under Biden to expose and confront the Democratic Party — which talks a good game while often helping corporate elites to rip off the public and pollute the planet. The coronavirus pandemic has “laid bare the inequities, corruptions, and cruelties of our political life — features that the [Trump] administration did not originate but which it has magnified and exploited,” The New Yorker declared two weeks ago in an editorial endorsing Biden.
The editorial acknowledges that returning to a pre-Trump status quo would not be enough: If Biden wins, “he will have to govern with boldness, urgency, tenacity, and creativity. In the face of such challenges, realism and radicalism are not so far apart.” The left will need to insist that “radicalism” can be the utmost of realism.
That will require persistently challenging the reflexive stances of corporate media and corporate Democrats. Helping to defeat Trump is the current imperative. An election victory would make it possible to immediately confront the Biden presidency with grassroots movements — relentlessly organizing against the fossil-fuel industry, systemic racism, income inequality, corporate power, militarism and so much more. As the Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg said days ago, “the chance of having some influence on his administration is just incomparably greater than the zero chance of influencing the Trump administration.”
In a cogent new video, Ellsberg offers clarity: “As a leftist, and antiwar and antinuclear activist for half of a century, I share all of the left-wing criticisms of Joe Biden and the Democratic Party. That means that I expect to have a lot of oppositional activity ahead of me in the next four years whoever is president. I want Joe Biden to oppose as a president in my activist activities rather than Donald Trump.”
Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and the author of many books, including War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. He was a Bernie Sanders delegate from California for the 2020 Democratic National Convention.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
Ramapough Lenape Nation Chief Dwaine Perry, center, speaks as members of the The Indigenous Peoples Day New York City Committee held a Circle of Belonging in Columbus Circle on June 30, 2020, in New York City. (photo: Byron Smith/Getty Images)
The Native History of Indigenous Peoples Day
Malinda Maynor Lowery, YES! Magazine
Excerpt: "As more cities and states consider marking Indigenous Peoples Day instead of Columbus Day, one Native American scholar aims to set the record straight on where the movement began."
READ MORE
Amy Coney Barrett, whose confirmation hearing begin Monday, was a member of the University Faculty for Life at Notre Dame from 2010 to 2016. (photo: Reuters)
Barrett Was Member of Anti-Abortion Group That Promoted Clinic Misleading Women
Stephanie Kirchgaessner, Guardian UK
Kirchgaessner writes: "Amy Coney Barrett, the supreme court nominee, was a member of a 'right to life' organization in 2016 that promoted a local South Bend, Indiana, crisis pregnancy center, a clinic that has been criticized for misleading vulnerable women who were seeking abortions and pressuring them to keep their pregnancies."
More evidence that supreme court nominee has advocated against abortion rights and publicly supported reversal of Roe v Wade
Barrett, whose confirmation hearing before the Senate judiciary committee is set to begin on Monday, was a member of the University Faculty for Life at Notre Dame from 2010 to 2016. Online records show that the group began promoting South Bend’s Women’s Care Center in 2016 on its website, adding a link to the group under a section called “Pro-Life Links”.
The revelation adds to a growing body of evidence that Barrett, who has served as an appellate court judge since 2017, has advocated against abortion, abortion rights, and publicly supported the reversal of Roe v Wade in the years before she joined the federal bench. The Guardian has reported that she signed a letter in a newspaper in 2006 that called for the landmark abortion law to be reversed and called the legacy of Roe “barbaric”.
The Women’s Care Center (WCC) in South Bend has, according to local activists and local media reports, been at the centre of the city’s contentious fights over women’s reproductive rights for years.
Like other CPC’s, an online advertisement and link to the WCC is listed online when a user searches on Google under the term “abortion” and “South Bend”. A link to the only clinic that does provide abortions to women in South Bend, called Whole Woman’s Health Alliance (WWHA), appears under the ad for the WCC.
The WCC’s website appears to offer women abortion services at first glance, as well as free pregnancy tests and ultrasounds. If a user clicks on the “abortion” tab, the clinic states on its website: “If you’re considering abortion, we offer free, confidential services to help you find out the facts and make a plan that is best for you.”
It also offers to give women information so that they can “understand the procedure”, using either the abortion pill RU486 or surgical abortion.
In fact, the clinic does not offer abortion services and is clearly supported by conservative faith and pro-life student groups in South Bend and at Notre Dame university.
In a letter to then-mayor Pete Buttigieg, who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2019, the WWHA abortion clinic spoke out against an attempt by WCC – the crisis pregnancy center – to open up another clinic next door to the abortion clinic. The mayor’s office ultimately vetoed the plan. At the time, Buttigieg wrote in a letter of his decision that he did not believe it would benefit the city “to place next door to each other two organizations with deep and opposite commitments on the most divisive social issue of our time”.
Sharon Lau, midwest advocacy director for Whole Woman’s Health Alliance, said in a statement: “At Whole Woman’s Health and Whole Woman’s Health Alliance, we have heard story after story from patients from multiple states who came to us after accidentally going to WCC where they were shamed, manipulated and lied to by WCC staff in order to impose their own anti-abortion agenda. Pregnant people deserve to access birth control, abortion and other reproductive services without shame or judgement.”
Barrett’s membership in the University Faculty for Life, which was disclosed on her Senate questionnaire, is the most direct link the judge has to the WCC crisis pregnancy center. But Barrett has been involved in a number of other university and faith-based organizations with ties to WCC.
A promotional video on YouTube by the Notre Dame student Right to Life group shows a brief snippet of Barrett speaking with the students in 2013, in what was described as a meeting to “build knowledge on every aspect of the life issue”. In the same video students say volunteering at the WCC represents an important way to show that the group cares “not only about the unborn child but about the woman involved in the pregnancy”.
“The Women’s Care Center really provides this opportunity for us to show that love and support,” the video states. It also shows the students writing letters of congratulations to women who are in crisis pregnancies, as a way to show their support.
The WCC has also counted members of Barrett’s Charismatic Christian faith group, the People of Praise, on its board and as volunteers, as well as leaders in the Catholic church she attends.
The White House declined to comment.
Crisis pregnancy centers such as WCC scored an important legal victory in the supreme court in 2018, when the court’s conservative majority, joined by Justice Anthony Kennedy, ruled that crisis pregnancy centers were not obliged to tell women when state aid might be available to obtain an abortion.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose seat Barrett is poised to fill, opposed the decision.
Michael Reagan at home in New York City. Lingering cognitive and neurological symptoms have forced him to take a leave from his job. (photo: Hiroko Masuike/NYT)
'I Feel Like I Have Dementia': Brain Fog Plagues Virus Survivors
Pam Belluck, The New York Times
Belluck writes: "After contracting the coronavirus in March, Michael Reagan lost all memory of his 12-day vacation in Paris, even though the trip was just a few weeks earlier."
The condition is affecting thousands of patients, impeding their ability to work and function in daily life.
Several weeks after Erica Taylor recovered from her Covid-19 symptoms of nausea and cough, she became confused and forgetful, failing to even recognize her own car, the only Toyota Prius in her apartment complex’s parking lot.
Lisa Mizelle, a veteran nurse practitioner at an urgent care clinic who fell ill with the virus in July, finds herself forgetting routine treatments and lab tests, and has to ask colleagues about terminology she used to know automatically.
Galveston, TX, police officers identified Brosch and Smith arresting Donald Neely, who they escorted to the police station with a rope and handcuffs while both officers were riding horseback. (photo: shaunking/Twitter)
Black Man Led on Rope by Texas Police on Horseback Sues for Million
CBS News
Excerpt: "A lawsuit filed last week in Galveston County district court on behalf of Donald Neely, 44, alleged the officers' conduct was 'extreme and outrageous' and injured Neely and caused him emotional distress, news outlets reported, citing the court documents."
Neely is seeking a jury trial, reports CBS Houston affiliate KHOU-TV.
Photos of the August 2019 encounter showed Neely being led by the officers on a rope linked to handcuffs - reminiscent of pictures showing slaves in chains.
Neely, who was homeless at the time, was sleeping on a sidewalk when he was arrested for criminal trespass and led around the block to a mounted patrol staging area. In body-camera video, one officer could be heard twice saying that leading Neely by rope down city streets would look "bad."
The lawsuit accused the city and the department of negligence, and stated that the officers should have known Neely would consider it offensive to be led on the rope "as though he was a slave."
"Neely felt as though he was put on display as slaves once were," the lawsuit stated.
In a statement at the time, Police Chief Vernon Hale called the tactic a "trained technique and best practice in some scenarios." However, he said he believed his officers "showed poor judgment," adding that the department since changed its policy to prevent use of the technique.
KHOU notes that investigators released police body cam footage from the encounter that quickly went viral and sparked outrage, prompting a formal apology from the department and a probe by the Texas Rangers.
That investigation determined the officers didn't break the law.
Neely's criminal trespass charge was dismissed in court. His lawsuit also alleges malicious prosecution connected to the charge.
City officials declined to comment on the lawsuit to news outlets.
A status conference was set for January.
Members of the Belarusian diaspora carry a giant former Belarus white-red-white flag on October 4, 2020 during a rally on Independence Square in Kiev demanding to free jailed opposition activists. (photo: Sergei Supinsky/AFP
Belarus Police Threaten to Use Firearms on Protesters
Agence France-Presse
Excerpt: "Belarusian police on Monday threatened to fire live bullets at protesters, claiming that opposition demonstrations against strongman Alexander Lukashenko were becoming more radicalized."
READ MORE
Smooth-coated otters (Lutrogale perspicillata) have a midday snack at Jurong Eco Garden, Singapore. (photo: JJ Harrison/Wikimedia Commons)
Singapore Embarks on a Million-Tree Planting Spree to Protect Its Future
Claire Turrell, Mongabay
Turrell writes: "In addition to adding wildlife habitat, researchers say reforestation will help sequester carbon, lower the temperature of the city, and provide buffers against erosion and a rising sea."
anguishing in the soft, silty mud, the living fossil looked as if it didn’t have a care in the world as it feasted on the fish left stranded in the tidal mangrove pools of the Sungei Buloh wetlands. However, the saltwater crocodile (Crocodylus porosus) might have been a little less at ease if it knew nearly 90% of its mangrove habitat in Singapore has been lost over the past century.
But now Singapore is looking to reverse this loss by mounting an ambitious reforestation campaign. In August 2020, the Singapore government announced the launch of the new Sungei Buloh Park Network, a 400-hectare (990-acre) park in the northern portion of the island that is a refueling site for migratory birds and is home to oriental hornbills, otters, saltwater crocodiles, and many other species.
Sungei Buloh is part of a wider project that aims to plant 1 million trees over the next 10 years as the government tries to improve habitat quality for the city-state’s wildlife while improving living conditions for its human residents.
Important habitat
The Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve has a storied history. It is where Singapore’s smooth-coated otters (Lutrogale perspicillata) were first discovered in the 1990s after they were assumed locally extinct, and it is also the location of the critically endangered Eye of the Crocodile tree (Bruguiera hainesii). The city-state has 11 of the world’s last remaining 200 trees.
The Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve is also an important stop for migratory waterbirds as they fly from Russia and Alaska to Australia and New Zealand along the East Asian-Australasian flyway. By forming the Sungei Buloh Park Network, Singapore is effectively tripling the size of the protected area comprising the reserve. This new park aims to safeguard the biodiversity of multiple areas, including the Kranji marshes, the Mandai mangrove and mudflat, and the coastal Lim Chu Kang Nature Park, which is state land. Within this patchwork of habitats, researchers have recorded 279 species of birds. These areas comprise many different kinds of ecosystems; Lim Chua Kang Nature Park alone boasts mangrove, woodland, scrubland and grassland habitats, and its diversity has attracted coastal birds such as the gray-headed fish eagle (Ichthyophaga ichthyaetus) and baya weaver (Ploceus philippinus).
Geography professor Dan Friess from the National University of Singapore has studied Singapore’s mangroves for 11 years and heads up the university’s Mangroves Lab, which focuses on the study of coastal wetlands in Southeast Asia. He says Singapore’s mangroves have an outsize ecological impact.
“Singapore’s mangroves punch way above their weight,” Friess told Mongabay. “We only have a small area of mangroves, but within that we have huge biodiversity. For instance, in the U.S. they only have three species of mangrove plant species, while in Singapore you can find 35 different species of plant species in its mangroves.”
Singapore’s mangroves are relatively easy to access, providing a living laboratory for researchers who have uncovered many of their secrets through decades of study.
“In the Mandai mangroves alone researchers have found 20 species that are new to science,” Friess said.
Researchers have also discovered that the Sungei Buloh wetlands and nearby Mandai mudflat are interdependent; seeds travel from the Mandai mangroves to the Sungei Buloh wetlands, and they are both important parts of the habitat of migratory shorebirds. Bird surveys and satellite tracking technology show that birds roost at Sungei Buloh while they feed on the mollusks, crustaceans and worms at Mandai when its extensive mudflat is exposed at low tide.
Visitors can currently view the Sungei Buloh wetlands from boardwalks and watchtowers, but starting in 2022, the public will also be able to watch migratory birds from hides situated near the Mandai mudflat. Those interested will also be able to tour the new coastal Lim Chua Kang Nature Park, where a historic 1910 colonial building at the end of a jetty is slated to become an education center.
Helping ourselves by helping the forest
As a city-state with limited land resources, Singapore has long been torn between urban development and protecting nature. It lost much of its primary forest in the 19th century to logging, then a century later, a fast-growing population and rapid urban development meant that trees were removed for land reclamation and to build reservoirs for water security.
This expansion has taken a big toll on the region’s mangroves. In 1953, Singapore’s mangrove forests covered an estimated 63.4 square kilometers (24.5 square miles); by 2018, researchers estimate that number had been reduced to 8.1 km2 (3.1 mi2) — a loss of more than 87%. The country is now working to replace its losses by turning areas used for industry and infrastructure back into natural-looking landscapes. The National Parks Board (NParks) has already had some success with this, converting a brutalist stormwater canal that ran through a residential area into a natural grassy floodplain to cope with urban water runoff, and reestablishing the Sungei Api Api and Pulau Semakau mangroves.
Launched on March 4, 2020, the One Million Trees project involves restoration of both inland and mangrove forests. As of October, 51,819 trees have been planted. Four varieties of native coastal and black mangroves tree species have been selected by NParks to be used in reforestation efforts: Palaquium obovatum, Buchanania arborescens, Fagraea auriculata and Sindora wallichii. The latter two species are considered critically endangered in Singapore.
The trees are sourced from Singapore’s tree banks, which include nurseries as well as trees that have been salvaged from construction sites. Up to 13,000 trees could be removed over the next 15 years to make way for transport and housing projects in Singapore, but the government has stated that for every tree it removes it will replant another. Trees from the tree bank are destined for Singapore’s parks, university grounds, rooftop gardens, roadsides and its outlying islands. They will also be used to help create 26 therapeutic gardens across the city for the aging Singaporean population. By the time One Million Trees officially wraps up in 2030, a goal is for all Singaporean households to be just a 10-minute walk from a park.
In the parks, city gardeners have been planting soil-boosting, nitrogen-fixing plants such as petai (Parkia speciosa) and great grasshopper tree (Archidendron clypearia), fruit-bearing trees such as the common sterculia (Sterculia parviflora) and the kumpang (Horsfieldia irya), and pollinator-attracting trees like pulai penipu paya (Alstonia angustifolia). They have also been helping to regenerate the rainforest by removing invasive weed species.
The government hopes greening the city will also help mitigate the “heat island” effect created by its pavement and skyscrapers, which absorb and radiate solar radiation and increase the temperature of Singapore’s urban core. Researchers have found there can be up to a 7° Celsius (12.6° Fahrenheit) difference in temperature between Singapore’s downtown and its less built-up portions.
Mangroves provide many ecosystem services to human communities. They can help stop soil erosion by holding it in with their roots, as well as reduce the impact of waves on the shore. And as mangroves can trap sediment between their roots and create their own soil, researchers say they may be able to help keep coastal cities like Singapore above water as the oceans rise due to global warming. (However, studies show mangroves may not be able to keep pace if greenhouse gas emissions accelerate and cause sea levels to rise too quickly.)
Trees play an important role in creating a livable environment, says NParks Conservation Group director Adrian Loo. “They serve as natural air filters, they reflect radiant heat and cool surfaces and [provide] ambient temperatures through shade and evapotranspiration; and help to mitigate the urban heat island effect and climate change,” he said. “Healthy forests also play a role in regulating the water cycle, slowing down floodwaters and cleaning the water that flows into waterways.”
The city also plans on more than doubling the amount of its “Nature Ways,” which aim to make the streets cooler and more aesthetically pleasing while replicating some of the habitat value of forests by planting trees, shrubs and ground cover along sidewalks.
“The planting along these Nature Ways [is] not only designed to cool the environment (with a higher leaf area index), but also attract butterflies, garden birds and small mammals, bringing biodiversity and nature into our urban landscape,” Loo said.
Carbon storage champions
There’s another, not-so-local benefit to restoring mangroves: healing the global climate. Getting excess carbon out of the atmosphere through reforestation is a key strategy of multinational efforts to curb climate change. And research indicates that, pound for pound, mangroves can sequester far more carbon than rainforests do.
“Mangroves can store three to five times more carbon per hectare than other forest types can do,” Friess said.
Just why are mangroves so good at carbon storage? Friess said it’s because they are particularly effective at locking up carbon in soil.
“In a normal forest, leaves and branches would die, fall to the forest floor, and quickly get broken down by bacteria and fungi, which releases the carbon back into the atmosphere,” Friess said. “Mangrove soils are waterlogged so they have a different microbial community, so organic matter is not broken down and the carbon stays locked up in the soils.”
Friess and his colleagues found that even at their current reduced extent, Singapore’s mangroves held 450,571 metric tons of carbon. However, this is not enough to compensate for the city-state’s emissions. A report by the National Environment Agency states that the city-state released 48.6 million tons of CO2 in 2014, the last year for which data are available.
Friess says the fact these mangroves are still found in modern metropolises such as Singapore gives him hope that they can hang on and make a comeback in other coastal cities as well.
“It gives you an idea of how resilient they are and that they can cope with these modified urban conditions,” he said.
Professor Lian Pin Koh, a conservation scientist and director of the new Centre for Nature-based Climate Solutions at the National University of Singapore, says natural measures like reforestation are hugely important because they are immediately deployable.
“Nature had already done the research and development, the proof of concept and even the implementations at scale of carbon capture and storage,” Koh said. “Manmade solutions are still many years and perhaps even decades away from becoming commercially viable and operational at scale.”
When it comes to gauging the success of reforestation projects like One Million Trees, Jurgenne Primavera, former co-chair of the IUCN Mangrove Specialist Group, prefers to focus on science and ecology rather than targets or quotas. She said that problems with reforestation projects often arise when the wrong species are planted at the wrong sites. But she adds there are key signs when reforestation has been done effectively.
“High survival and growth rates and healthy forests of the correct trees species,” Primavera told Mongabay. “For mangroves, for example, these would be Avicennia marina and Sonneratia alba along coastlines facing the open sea. For terrestrial species these would be native species and not exotics.”
To safeguard the trees, NParks carries out regular inspections and offers best-practice workshops to organizations across the island. But Adrian Loo said that for the One Million Trees project to be considered effective, everyone needs to be involved: “The success of the project is also measured by our ability to instill a sense of stewardship among Singaporeans — towards our trees and environment.”
This article was originally published on Mongabay.
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