07 November 20
Progressivism Is Not Dead, It’s Just Beginning
You find out who you are in times of adversity. Is Donald Trump strong enough to defeat the values we struggle for every day? If we stand together the answer is certainly no.
Embrace this fight - stand with RSN.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
If you would prefer to send a check:
Reader Supported News
PO Box 2043
Citrus Hts, CA 95611
06 November 20
It's Live on the HomePage Now:
Reader Supported News
Garrison Keillor | A Call for Reconciliation: It's Time
Garrison Keillor, Garrison Keillor's Website
Keillor writes: "The past few years have seen a tremendous increase in grudgery in our country - need I point this out?"
READ MORE
Dylan Key, seven, of Detroit, leans against his mother, Nicole Key, as they wait in line for same-day voter registration in Detroit, Michigan, on 4 August. (photo: Brittany Greeson/Getty)
How Young, Black Voters Lifted Biden's Bid for the White House
Kenya Evelyn, Guardian UK
Evelyn writes: "Joe Biden almost dropped out of the race to become the Democratic presidential nominee this year after several disappointing results in early voting states - until Black voters in South Carolina delivered him a resounding win."
And while the race between Biden and Donald Trump remained too close to call on Thursday evening, it appears Black Americans once again stepped up to give the Democrat the backbone of his support, especially in key battleground states including Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Record turnout among African American voters could be the difference between a Biden win and a Biden loss.
“What we’re all re-learning, both the pundits in DC and uninspired Black voters, is the value of our net worth when we show up at the ballot box,” said Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist in South Carolina. “Even when we’re suppressed, depressed, or misinformed, we still show up.”
According to exit poll data, Black voters overwhelmingly backed the Democratic candidate by a margin of 87% to Donald Trump’s 12%. But Seawright had “been saying Black voters will decide the election since 2017”, last predicting South Carolina’s loyal Black moderates would propel Biden to victory in the state’s February Democratic primary.
With ballots still being counted, mail-in or absentee ballots from Democratic-leaning counties, most with large Black populations, are likely to be the deciding factor in who becomes the next US president, amplifying the power of the Black electorate.
Analysts pinpoint a surge in turnout among young people of all races, but especially Black Americans.
Early voting data already showed young people turning out in record numbers, and with four in 10 eligible Black voters being millennials or from generation Z, the push in urban centers like Philadelphia, Atlanta and Detroit was critical for Biden.
“Every major movement in this country has been fueled by young people and Black people on the frontlines defining what change looks like,” Seawright said. “This election is going to be defined as a movement election for the American experiment.”
As racial justice protests ignited throughout the country this summer after the killing of George Floyd by police in Minnesota in May – then accelerated with the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in August – Americans took sides divided mostly along racial lines.
Trump and Republicans took notice, capitalizing on existing racial tensions and preying on lingering fears of some conservatives of a less white America, where people of color will soon be the majority of the US population.
“[Trump] made a conscious decision to make an enemy of an entire movement for Black lives, going as far to use his authority and justice department not only to excuse law enforcement accountability but to target those within the movement,” said David Bowen, a Wisconsin state representative.
“[Young people are] out here making their voices heard and the power of their vote felt on a president who made a target out of them,” he added.
In Milwaukee, young men and women registering to vote for the first time dominated turnout at mostly empty polling stations on election day, as Black Americans were more likely to use mail-in or early voting methods nationwide.
Twenty-year-old Brianna – who did not want her surname published – picked up her aunt outside of her home in their north side community and “dragged her out to make her voice heard”, noting then that Black women would be the deal-breakers in the race.
“I’ve voted before but this was my aunt’s first time,” she said, relaying that she voted for Biden. “To me, both parties give lip service to us and don’t really have our issues at heart but I had to use my vote in some way to demand change from how it is now.”
Generally, results tallied so far show a contrast between blue cities and suburbs surrounded by red rural areas as seen in 2016, despite the president and Republicans attempting to capitalize on racism and fear in the traditionally white suburbs.
No president in modern history has won the general election by just winning the majority of white voters – diversity has always been essential. But since the founding of Black Lives Matter, and parallel social justice organizations, activists have kept pressure on Democrats to push for bold changes to the party platform.
Protests many groups have led since May are also translating into newly registered voters, increasing political power and global prominence.
“To all the counted-outs, the forgotten-abouts, the marginalized, and the pushed-asides. This is our moment. That’s how we build the political revolution,” Cori Bush, a community organizer and Black Lives Matter activist, tweeted as her victory speech.
Bush won her race for a US House seat in Missouri on Tuesday. After two previous attempts, she now becomes first Black woman to represent the state in Congress.
But support for Democrats has declined among Black voters, and young Black Americans are defecting most. A survey from the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies found “young Black Americans tend to view Democrats much less favorably – and Republicans more favorably – than their older peers”.
Biden did experience hiccups courting Black voters throughout the election cycle, facing criticism for questioning the Blackness of non-supporters, as well as for describing Black communities as less diverse than their Latino counterparts.
Bowen insisted young voters eventually backed Biden as “a down payment toward a bigger goal in the future”.
“A lot of people see Biden as the doorway, not the destination,” he said. “We’re not going to see it in one election cycle, or through one level of government, but there’s this understanding that we’re on a trajectory toward attaining the justice we want to see.”
A camera on a computer records as Lehigh County workers count ballots as vote counting in the general election continues, Thursday, Nov. 5, 2020, in Allentown, Pennsylvania. (photo: Mary Altaffer/AP)
Lawyers From Both Parties Puzzled by Donald Trump's Election Legal Strategy
Matthew Mosk, Katherine Faulders and John Santucci, ABC News
Excerpt: "Legal experts who reviewed the lawsuits said they saw no evidence of fraud."
Some see a public relations motive, likening cases to "tweets with filing fees."
fter weeks of speculation about the potential for a tight 2020 presidential contest to wind up in court, the Trump campaign appears to have unveiled its strategy: a succession of lawsuits in hard-fought swing states and a full-court press to give the impression that the election and ballot-counting process were rife with fraud.
"Guys, this is fraud. This is absolute fraud," Eric Trump, the president's son, said at a press conference Wednesday after filing a complaint about what he considered a lack of transparency at a Philadelphia vote processing center. "They're trying to make a mockery of the election of this country."
In a series of suits filed in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia and Nevada, the Trump team argued a range of complaints, mostly focused on their view that campaign observers were being denied sufficient access to watch mail-in ballots opened. That was paired with the president, his family and surrogates suggesting that there were ballots dumped at counting locations and that his lead "magically" disappeared on election night.
But legal experts who reviewed the lawsuits said they saw no evidence of fraud. And many told ABC News they puzzled over the ultimate objective of cases because they did not seem destined to find the president significant numbers of votes or change the election's outcome.
Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, called one Pennsylvania case, which complained that voters were given a chance to correct their mail-in ballots, "a tweet with a filing fee" in an interview with ProPublica. The case reportedly would only affect 93 ballots, by one estimate.
"I don't see any real legal strategy here," said Wendy Weiser, who directs the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law. "They look more like public relation stunts meant to create a false impression that the election is filled with improprieties and fraud."
Fighting for observer access
Those behind the president's legal moves told ABC News their chief aim has been to draw attention to the vote-counting process, especially for those ballots cast by mail. The president has long made the unsubstantiated argument that mail-in voting, which millions availed themselves of during the coronavirus pandemic, was primed for widespread fraud.
Deputy campaign manager and senior counsel Justin Clark released a statement accusing Pennsylvania Democrats of trying to "steal this election from President Trump ... [by keeping] eyes off of the absentee ballot counting process."
Under election rules, both candidates are permitted to dispatch observers to watch the election workers open ballots and review them to ensure they are legitimate. But in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, many states have enforced social distancing rules that Trump observers argued has made it difficult for them to see and compare voter signatures or find other potential flaws in the ballots. President Donald Trump said on Thursday his campaign's observers had to "use binoculars" to watch the process.
"We were supposed to be allowed by law to observe the counting of the ballots," Trump's personal lawyer, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, said Wednesday. He said the Trump team has not been able to see if ballots were properly postmarked, properly addressed, properly signed on the outside -- "all the things that often lead to disqualification of ballots."
Neither signature issues nor other flaws in ballots, on their own, are necessarily indications of fraud. Thousands of ballots have been rejected in the past several election cycles, mainly for issues with signatures and other technical issues. In Pennsylvania, elections officials also have to provide voters notice of problems and give them a chance to "cure" their ballots so their votes will count.
Weiser called the request for closer access fairly routine, though one made more complicated by the pandemic. But nothing about the case would yield the president more votes in the state, or work to negate votes already counted for his opponent. That's because any ballots already removed from mailing envelopes are machine-counted anonymously -- there is no way to trace their origin.
By the time the lawsuits were filed, huge numbers of ballots had already been processed. Observers would have to discover huge numbers of faulty envelopes or mismatched signatures in the remaining pool for there to be an appreciable difference. Past elections indicate those errors are relatively rare.
When a Pennsylvania judge issued an order telling elections officials to permit observers the ability to move a few feet closer, Biden campaign officials did not raise many objections. The state Democratic Party opted against joining an appeal filed by the city of Philadelphia.
"We don't care if your observers are 18 feet away or 15 feet away or 6 feet away -- as long as election officials can do their jobs," tweeted Biden spokesman Bill Russo.
Weiser noted that several of the cases were filed in tandem with press conferences featuring Trump's most loyal insiders -- including Eric Trump and Giuliani.
In his first press conference, Giuliani called the spacing rule for poll observers "one of the most anti-democratic things I've ever seen or encountered" without explaining himself further.
Weiser said she viewed the suits as manufactured news events used by the president to sow doubt in the electoral process, regardless of their outcome.
"It all looks more like an effort to inject conspiracy theory into the public," Weiser said, "an attempt to sway public opinion to believe something dramatic is going on when there actually is no drama."
A rerun of Bush v. Gore?
In the closing weeks of the 2020 presidential campaign, the potential for the outcome to end up in court became a heavy focus for both campaigns. Trump speculated openly that it might be important to have his new appointee to the U.S. Supreme Court in place for the election (Amy Coney Barrett has since been confirmed) -- and that the result could wind up being a repeat of the 2000 election. That contest wound up before the nation's high court in the case of Bush v. Gore, and concluded with a 5-4 decision that decided the presidency.
In the weeks leading up to Election Day, the Trump team mounted a sizable legal effort. Biden countered by building a massive legal team led by former Obama White House counsel Bob Bauer and former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.
It appeared the campaigns were headed for a serious dispute that could reach the U.S. Supreme Court over a case in Pennsylvania that argued ballots arriving by mail should not be counted if they arrived after Election Day. Republicans argued that a move to grant mail-in voters a three-day grace period for their ballots to arrive would need to come from the state legislature -- as prescribed in the Constitution.
The constitutional question captured the attention of four conservative justices. The court declined to act on the matter because the election was so close, but Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh all offered initial views on the broader question of whether election changes could only be imposed by a state legislature.
Weiser said the statements by those justices -- with which she disagreed -- grabbed attention in the legal community.
But over the last 48 hours, the campaign's legal strategy has instead been focused largely on smaller skirmishes over ballot-counting observers.
Bauer on Thursday seemed almost bemused as he answered questions about the Trump team's legal fusillade, which he called "silliness."
"The lawsuits are meritless," Bauer said. "All of this is intended to create a large cloud that, it is the hope of the Trump campaign, that nobody can see through. But it is not a very thick cloud. It's not hard to see what they're doing. We see through it. So will the courts, and so do election officials."
In interviews with ABC News, three current and former Trump advisers said privately that they agree that the strategy, if there is one, appears aimed more at influencing public opinion. None would agree to be identified for fear of running afoul of the president, but all of them told ABC News they found the legal approach misguided and disorganized, and found it notable that neither the campaign's general counsel nor veterans of the president's Washington legal team -- other than Giuliani -- have participated in the bulk of the cases.
"I don't see any evidence of a strategy at this point," said one senior Republican attorney who has at times advised the administration.
So far, the campaign has seen little success beyond the one Pennsylvania ruling. A judge in Georgia outright dismissed the campaign's suit in the state Thursday morning, citing lack of evidence. And just a few hours later a judge in Michigan announced her intent to deny another suit filed there.
"Come on now," Michigan Judge Cynthia Stephens said while looking over the evidence presented by the president's lawyers in an attempt to halt the counting of ballots. "What I have, at best, is a hearsay affidavit.”
A supporter of President Donald Trump argues with people in Philadelphia protesting in support of counting all votes. The presidential election in Pennsylvania still remains too close to call while ballots are still being tabulated. (photo: Chris McGrath/Getty)
Wisconsin Republicans Caught Apparently Encouraging Voter Fraud in Pennsylvania
Jeva Lange, The Week
Lange writes: "Republican Party officials in Wisconsin allegedly urged their volunteers to call Pennsylvanians and implore them to send in late - and therefore illegal - votes."
resident Trump raged on Wednesday that he wants "all voting to stop." But emails obtained by The Daily Beast and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel revealed Friday that it was Republican Party officials in Wisconsin who have allegedly been urging their volunteers to call Pennsylvanians and implore them to send in late — and therefore illegal — votes. "That would be exactly what the president and his campaign are accusing Democrats of doing," one legal expert observed to The Daily Beast.
The email was sent by a group called Kenosha For Trump around 5 p.m. on Thursday. "Trump Victory urgently needs volunteers to make phone calls to Pennsylvania Trump supporters to return their absentee ballots," the email read. The scheme seemed aimed to take advantage of a ruling in the state that said absentee ballots received by 5 p.m. on Friday must be counted — so long as they were properly postmarked by Election Day.
"[B]allots received by that point without postmarks, or with illegible postmarks, will be considered to have been mailed in time 'unless a preponderance of the evidence demonstrates that it was mailed after Election Day,'" the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports, adding that "in Pennsylvania, postage is prepaid on some ballot envelopes. These prepaid envelopes are not automatically postmarked." The idea appeared to be to slip votes through by the Friday deadline in order to swing margins in the state back in Trump's favor, although Ben Geffen, an attorney at the Public Interest Law Center in Philadelphia, mused to The Daily Beast, "I wonder if they’re doing this in hopes of slipping one through and then waving it around as an example of the flawed process."
Either way, experts agreed the plan was exceedingly dumb. "This seems deeply stupid as it seems to be a solicitation to commit voter fraud," Richard Hasen, an elections law specialist, told the Journal Sentinel. "It's hard to believe this is real."
Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon. (photo: Stephanie Keith/Getty)
ALSO SEE: Eric Trump Is an Election Disinformation Superspreader
Twitter Bans Steve Bannon for Video Suggesting Violence Against Fauci, FBI Director Wray
Jaclyn Diaz, NPR
Diaz writes: "Twitter permanently suspended an account associated with former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon after he suggested in a video posted online Thursday that Dr. Anthony Fauci and FBI Director Christopher Wray should be beheaded."
Bannon made the comments calling for medieval violence during a livestream of his talk show and podcast, War Room: Pandemic.
"I'd put the heads on pikes. Right. I'd put them at the two corners of the White House. As a warning to federal bureaucrats: Either get with the program or you're gone," he said in the now-deleted video previously posted on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. However, it has been recirculated through other accounts.
CNN reported the video was viewed at least 200,000 times on Facebook before it was deleted.
The show's Twitter account, @WarRoomPandemic, was suspended after it posted the video. It violated the social media website's "policy on the glorification of violence," a Twitter spokesperson told NPR.
Facebook and YouTube removed the video, saying it violated their policies against inciting violence and harassment, according to company spokespeople.
Bannon's message comes as some members of President Trump's inner circle have amped up inflammatory rhetoric while the election results remain unresolved. Donald Trump Jr. said this week the president should "go to total war" over the election.
Twitter has notably beefed up its response to tweets viewed as harassment or incitement of violence in recent months. The social media company also created a "civic integrity policy" focused on flagging tweets that are considered sharing disputed or misleading information related to the election. At times, the president's posts have been flagged as a result of this policy.
Permanently suspending an account on Twitter is the social media site's strongest enforcement action, according to the company. However, users can still appeal this action and be reinstated.
Permanently suspending an account will remove it from view, and the violator will not be allowed to create new accounts during that time, according to Twitter's rules.
YouTube and Facebook channels for War Room: Pandemic are still live.
"We've removed this video for violating our policy against inciting violence," Alex Joseph, a YouTube spokesperson, told NPR. "We will continue to be vigilant as we enforce our policies in the post-election period."
YouTube has a "three-strikes" policy before an account is terminated. Any strike temporarily disables uploading for at least a week.
In August, Bannon pleaded not guilty to wire-fraud and money-laundering charges over his alleged involvement in the "We Build the Wall" online scheme. Prosecutors said Bannon and three others advertised the campaign as a fundraising effort to build portions of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, defrauding hundreds of thousands of people in the process.
Bannon or representatives from War Room couldn't be immediately reached for comment.
Democrat Joe Biden supports a new U.S. approach to Cuba and called the current White House policy a total failure. (photo: Luoman/Getty)
Biden for a New Political Approach Towards Cuba
teleSUR
Excerpt: "Former Vice-president and Democrat nominee Joe Biden has recently addressed the issue of Cuba and US relations and remarked that if he should win the Presidency of the United States, he will reverse Trump's policies toward the island."
Among his first measures will be the elimination of the restrictions on remittances and travel to the island. He also promised to address the existing migration program between the two countries, including the backlog of more than 20,000 visas that increased under the Trump administration.
While Biden repudiates Trump's policies, the Republican's proposals are focused on tightening sanctions against Cuba. As a result, Trump claims that actions taken during his current administration have put the island's rulers in serious trouble.
During the last four years, the 60-year-long US blockade on Cuba has seen an unprecedented rise in coercive measures that seek to increase the pressure on the Cuban economy and international standing, even amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
His administration has tightened the economic, financial, and commercial blockade on Cuba: it blocked investments and trade with the island. It practically closed the recently inaugurated US embassy in Havana, after some mysterious "acoustic attacks" on its diplomats, never fully clarified. He returned Cuba to the list of countries that do not cooperate against terrorism, increased the deportation of Cuban asylum seekers, and has limited the channels for sending family remittances to the island.
Recently it has pushed for strangling the oil supply to the island and organized a worldwide campaign to discredit the globally recognized labor of Cuban doctors around the world, helping other countries fight the COVID-19 pandemic.
Trump's recent victory in the State of Florida is a clear indication of how his policies have been received by the majority of Cuban Americans, who have long been Republican-leaning but began drifting toward the Democratic fold during Barack Obama’s successful presidential campaigns and Hillary Clinton’s run in 2016 when she blew Trump away in Miami-Dade.
Humpback whale in Wilhelmina Bay, Antarctica. (photo: Gary Bembridge)
Frustration as Antarctic Conservation Summit Fails to Declare Marine Sanctuaries
Elizabeth Claire Alberts, Mongabay
Alberts writes: "A proposition to establish three new marine protected areas in East Antarctica, the Antarctic Peninsula and the Weddell Sea was not approved at a recent meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources."
he Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), a governing body of 25 member states and the European Union, missed an opportunity to establish a network of three marine protection areas (MPAs) in the Southern Ocean, according to conservation experts who attended the commission’s recent meeting.
Each year, the CCAMLR meets in Hobart, Tasmania, to discuss matters related to the management and protection of the Southern Ocean and its rich marine life. Conservationists hoped that this year’s meeting would address a proposition to form three new MPAs in East Antarctica, the Antarctic Peninsula, and the Weddell Sea, and that CCAMLR members would reach a consensus to bring these plans into fruition. But due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the commission met online instead of in-person during the last week of October, which didn’t provide ample time for proper negotiations and discussions, according to attendees. By the meeting’s end, the MPA proposals had not been approved.
Rodolfo Werner, a wildlife conservationist who attended the CCAMLR as an official observer and scientific representative of the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition (ASOC), said this year’s meeting was “frustrating for several reasons.”
“While it is positive that the meeting took place, albeit virtually, the meeting’s agenda was very limited, and important issues such as the impact of climate change were not addressed, nor were new marine protected areas (MPAs) established,” Werner told Mongabay in an email. “The latter [was] particularly frustrating given that the proposals to establish these MPAs have already been discussed in previous years and are based on the best available science.”
This year’s discussions mainly focused on the renewal of fishing authorizations, according to Werner. He said “CCAMLR’s mandate includes protecting Antarctic wildlife and designating large marine protected areas that contribute to the resilience of the marine ecosystem to climate change,” but that “[w]ithout a doubt, the emphasis in discussions focused on fishing activity casts doubt on CCAMLR’s international credibility.”
Another topic of discussion was the fate of a Russian vessel, the F/V Palmer, which is suspected of illegally fishing for Patagonian toothfish (Dissostichus eleginoides) in the Ross Sea, based on aerial surveillance evidence presented by the New Zealand government. The CCAMLR keeps a running list of vessels that are suspected or confirmed to be engaging in illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing, but delegates did not agree to add the F/V Palmer to the list.
“Unfortunately, this vessel will be allowed to continue to fish this season, without any consequence,” Andrea Kavanagh of Pew Charitable Trusts, who also attended this year’s CCAMLR meetings as an ASOC representative, told Mongabay in an email. “To date, CCAMLR has been a leader in combatting IUU fishing but that position took a sharp blow this year. When a country can successfully block itself from getting placed on the IUU vessel list the system is broken.”
Conservationists say they are also discouraged with the CCMLAR’s inaction on protecting the Pine Island Glacier region, which holds enough ice to raise global sea levels by 1.2 meters (4 feet), and is rapidly losing ice in response to climate change.
“The UK put up a proposal a few years ago to freeze any fishing in any area that experienced a calving event (of more than 15% of its size) so that it could be studied by scientists,” Kavanagh said. “Pine Island glacier was the first to go into the automatic closure, but it had to move to a second stage after two years and China blocked it moving to stage two on the grounds that not enough data had been gathered yet. So now that area will be completely unprotected by May of 2021.”
But conservationists say there were also some positive results from the meeting. For instance, a majority of delegations signed a pledge to support the establishment of the MPAs. Australia and Uruguay joined as new co-sponsors for the Weddell Sea MPA, joining the EU, Germany and Norway. Likewise, Norway and Uruguay became new co-sponsors of the East Antarctica MPA, joining the EU, France and Australia.
“The active participation of Uruguay is excellent news that leads to reinforcing the work of the countries of the Latin American region, such as Argentina and Chile, in promoting the creation of new marine protected areas in Antarctica,” Werner said. “Something to celebrate.”
Together, the three MPAs would span 4 million square kilometers (1.5 million square miles) of the Southern Ocean, constituting about 1% of the global ocean. If these MPAs are eventually established, the world would inch closer toward the goal of protecting 10% of the oceans, a key target for ocean protection as set out by United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 14 and the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Aichi Target 11. Right now, only about 5% of the world’s oceans are fully protected with MPAs, according to the Marine Conservation Institute.
The intended MPAs would also help protect Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) and Patagonian toothfish, species that are heavily fished in the Southern Ocean and which are being adversely affected by climate change, experts say.
Next year, the CCAMLR’s 40th meeting will take place, coinciding with the 60th anniversary of the Antarctic Treaty going into effect. While anticipating diplomatic obstacles ahead, conservationists say they are hopeful the MPAs will be approved at the 2021 meeting.
“2021 would be a very important year,” Werner said. “[A]ll members, and stakeholders (including the NGOs) will work very hard to put great pressure on China and Russia (which are the blocking members) to get the MPAs in place.”
This article was originally published on Mongabay.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.