30 November 20
With Trump Outvoted the Donations Have Disappeared
With the election finished the donations we normally count on seem to have vanished. Safe to sleep again, perhaps? What ever the case, when the funding isn’t there the process breaks down quickly and it will, you can be sure.
We’ll do what we must to RSN strong.
Help. Please.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
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30 November 20
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Robert Reich | Beware Going 'Back to Normal' Thoughts - Normal Gave Us Trump
Robert Reich, Guardian UK
Reich writes: "Fatigued by the coronavirus and Trump, the idea of going back to normal is seductive - we must guard against it."
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Former CIA Director John Brennan listens during a panel at The Center on National Security at Fordham Law School in New York, Sept. 4, 2018. (photo: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)
Former CIA Director John Brennan Says Iranian Assassination Was 'Criminal' and Risked Inflaming Conflict
Sophia Ankel, Yahoo! News
Ankel writes: "Former CIA Director John Brennan has condemned the assassination of a top Iranian nuclear scientist on Friday, calling it 'criminal' and 'highly reckless.'"
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Police officers in Ferguson, Mo., during a protest in 2014. Advocates want the Justice Department to step up its oversight of law enforcement in the incoming administration. (photo: Charlie Riedel/AP)
Advocates Push for Resurrection of DoJ Civil Rights Division Under Biden
Carrie Johnson, NPR
Johnson writes: "Six months after Donald Trump became president, he delivered remarks about law enforcement that set the tone for civil rights."
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Joe Biden during the Democratic presidential debate in Houston in 2019. (photo: Mike Blake/Reuters)
William Hartung and Mandy Smithberger | Shrinking the Pentagon: Will the Biden Administration Dare Cut Military Spending?
William Hartung and Mandy Smithberger, TomDispatch
Excerpt: "Now that Joe Biden is slated to take office as the 46th president of the United States, advice on how he should address a wide range of daunting problems is flooding in."
EXCERPT:
“The leaders of Western Europe have called Mr. Biden, as has the president of the world’s rising superpower, Xi Jinping of China. PayPal’s chief executive extended his ‘warmest congratulations to President-Elect Joe Biden, who will become the 46th president of the U.S.A.’ The Boeing Corporation, which benefited from Mr. Trump’s demands for big-ticket defense items, issued a statement on Friday saying, ‘We look forward to working with the Biden administration.’”
Not that I need to remind you, but we were then (as we are now) in the midst of the most bizarre post-election moment in American history. Donald Trump was doing every strange thing he could to hold onto power (or, at least, the fantasy of power) and defenestrate the American political system, while burying himself in a never-ending TV binge in the White House. Under the circumstances, it was hardly surprising that Joe Biden, the new president-elect, was being recognized by the governments of Western Europe (many of which The Donald had harried or spurned) and greeted by the president of China (a country he had gone after economically and even militarily). No surprise there. But you know you’re in a brand new American world when a major weapons-making corporation like Boeing acts as if it were a foreign government preparing to deal with a new president in a disputed election.
Think of Boeing, in fact, as the Boris Johnson of arms corporations. After all, Donald Trump, who may have put more money into the Pentagon than any president in memory, had been out on the hustings in Saudi Arabia (doing sword dances, no less) from the early moments of his presidency to sell the products of America’s largest arms makers (Boeing included). And that performance of his never ended. His administration, for instance, only recently approved major arms sales to Taiwan (another slap in the face to China), including 100 Boeing-made Harpoon Coastal Defense Systems and 135 Boeing-made air-to-ground cruise missiles.
And yet, like the British prime minister, Boeing, too, has now turned on its man in the White House and publicly recognized the new president-elect. What more do you need to know about the world of big money and the 1% that we’re now pandemically immersed in? Unfortunately, there turns out to be so much more to know, as you’ll soon discover in the latest piece from Pentagon experts and TomDispatch regulars William Hartung and Mandy Smithberger. Tom
-Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch
Protesters outside Mike Bloomberg's house in Southampton on July 1, 2020. (photo: Steve Pfost/Getty Images)
Native Americans Have Been Taking on Billionaires in the Hamptons
Walker Bragman and Mark Colangelo, Jacobin
Excerpt: "Southampton, New York, is the famed summer retreat of billionaires and celebrities. Now it's the scene of an indigenous struggle for justice and survival."
A two-hour drive east from New York City, mansions line its picturesque beaches and luxury vehicles parade its streets. But just outside of town, a Native American group has been staging a month-long occupation for their tribe’s economic empowerment. The protest ends today, on the Native American National Day of Mourning, when millions will be celebrating Thanksgiving.
The Sovereignty Camp 2020 is set across the Sunrise Highway from a 61-foot tall electronic billboard featuring the Shinnecock Indian Nation seal. Down the side, ads for NYU Langone Health flash in brilliant technicolor. Recently, it also featured public safety messages from Southampton Town related to COVID-19 — ad space the Nation gave free of charge. The highway, which cuts through dense woods, doesn’t have lights or any other billboards, making this one a jarring sight at night. The Nation is planning to build another sign at the campsite, but the state of New York is fighting them in court.
To the moguls nearby, the billboards are an assault on their idyllic way of life — one they are trying to tear down. To the Shinnecock, the signs are monuments asserting their continued existence in the face of generational oppression. The billboards are also about immediate survival: When completed, the structures should generate millions in desperately needed revenue for the Nation from advertisers eager for visual promotion in a spot promising maximum visibility to an affluent audience.
The conflict spotlights not merely one local property battle, but the ongoing displacement of indigenous peoples from their own tribal lands. It is a parable affiliated in popular culture with South America and the western United States — and now it is playing out in the vacation hideaway of the wealthiest and most powerful people on the planet.
“Our Cherished Way Of Life”
The Shinnecock are one of 13 tribes indigenous to Long Island — and the only one with federal recognition, which they secured in 2010. Their original territory ranged about 146 square miles — from current day Eastport to East Hampton; from Peconic Bay to the Atlantic Ocean. Since their first encounter with English settlers in 1640, their holdings have been diminished to less than 1,000 acres.
There are 1,550 Shinnecock alive today — many of them descendants of enslaved natives and Africans. About half of that population lives on a 1.3 square mile reservation that borders Southampton. The Rez, as it is called by locals, accounts for most of Shinnecock tribal holdings and is stricken with poverty.
Meanwhile, about 100 yards from the Rez is Meadow Lane, also known as “Billionaire Lane.” This seaside road is home to the exclusive Meadow Club of Southampton as well as designer Calvin Klein, KKR & Co. co-founder Henry Kravis, hedge fund mogul Daniel Och, and Apollo Global Management co-founder Leon Black. In February, a home on Meadow Lane sold for $41 million. An 8-minute drive from The Rez is Coopers Neck Lane, ranked by Zillow as the 8th richest street in America in 2015, with a median home value of $11.8 million.
From the start, the Town of Southampton and New York State sought to stop the project before it ever got off the ground. The battle has received widespread media attention, even making an appearance on The Daily Show, which took out an ad on the billboard that read, “Relax and enjoy your stolen land.”
After several stop-work orders and a cease and desist were ignored, the New York Attorney General’s office filed suit in 2019 on behalf of the state’s Department of Transportation seeking to remove the completed structure and prevent construction of the second sign. The suit alleges that the Nation did not seek proper permitting, that there are safety concerns for highway drivers, and that the Westwoods is not Shinnecock land. In May, a New York State lower court judge denied the state’s request for a preliminary injunction to remove the monument, but the battle is far from over.
Meanwhile, residents from the surrounding community circulated a petition on Change.org demanding the removal of the billboard — and the controversy has driven advertisers away, depriving the tribe of desperately needed revenue.
“As residents of the Town of Southampton, we enjoy the beauty of our town and take great pride in our environment, which offers lush woods, beautiful waterways and the quaint communities in which we live,” the petition read. “But the large illuminated billboards that are being erected on Sunrise Highway threaten to damage our cherished way of life.”
The ongoing battle prompted the Warriors of the Sunrise, a Shinnecock-led activist group dedicated to the Nation’s economic development, to organize the 26-day Sovereignty Camp. The protesters argue that the site of the monument billboards, a territory known as the Westwoods, is Shinnecock land and thus New York State’s lawsuit represents an unlawful incursion on the Nation’s sovereignty. The Nation shares this position. The encampment also has the support of groups like The Long Island Progressive Coalition, Cooperation LI, and both the Nassau County and Suffolk County Democratic Socialists of America.
“Monuments can tell a story, and that’s exactly what this is,” said Tela Troge, spokesperson for the Warriors and a tribal attorney. “It’s a monument to the Shinnecock Nation and it’s a monument to the Nation’s continued existence.”
Southampton town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman told the Daily Poster that while he did object to the billboards when they first went up, believing them to be “out of character for the area” — a sentiment he still holds — the town was not standing in the way of their construction or operation.
“Large illuminated digital advertising displays are more typical of urban areas,” Schneiderman wrote in an email. “However, I respect the Nation’s desire for income to help address social and economic issues on the reservation. The town has not blocked the operation of the billboard or the construction of the second billboard. [New York] State believes that the billboards violate federal highway law.”
Schneiderman declined to say whether or not he felt the state’s lawsuit ought to continue.
Sixteen Coats, Sixty Bushels of Corn and Protection
At the heart of the state lawsuit is a 300-year-old land dispute over territory known as Shinnecock Hills, which separates the billboard monument sites — also contested land — from the reservation itself.
The Hills was Shinnecock territory for thousands of years before settlers first arrived and “purchased” land from the natives to establish Southampton in exchange for 16 coats, 60 bushels of corn, and protection from other tribes. The partition involved two dubious transactions in 1703 and 1859. In the first, the Shinnecock relinquished ownership of the Hills and Shinnecock Neck to the town in exchange for a 1,000-year lease. In the second, the state legislature approved a transfer of the Hills to the town’s proprietors in exchange for the Shinnecock reclaiming absolute ownership of the Neck — a move that reduced tribal holdings to less than 1,000 acres.
In his book “Colonizing Southampton,” the late David Goddard, a retired sociology professor at the City University of New York, noted that the Shinnecock had rejected similar offers from the town multiple times over the years, but faced mounting pressure in the form of continued encroachments on the land by the settlers and costly lawsuits.
There are also lingering questions about the signatures on the petition submitted to the legislature by the town. Around 1885, a dozen Shinnecock tribal members signed an affidavit alleging the signatures had been forged. Compounding those problems, Congress never authorized the exchange as required by The Federal Non‐Intercourse Act of 1790, which prohibits states and local governments from engaging in land transactions with Native American tribes without federal approval.
Efforts to reclaim the land by the Nation have thus far been unsuccessful. A 2005 suit against New York State ended a decade later with an unfavorable ruling from the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals that remuneration would be too “disruptive” to the non-Native communities. The decision had been the latest in a string of similar rulings by the 2nd Circuit against tribes seeking to reclaim their ancestral territories. Still, the tides may be turning nationally. Over the summer, the Supreme Court ruled that much of the State of Oklahoma was situated on tribal land for the purposes of jurisdiction.
The partition of the Shinnecock Hills may affect the outcome of the current litigation over the Westwoods billboard monuments.
In his May decision preventing removal of the existing sign, New York State Supreme Court Judge Sanford Neil Berland wrote that “not only is it undisputed that the Nation owns the land in question, but there is no doubt that the Nation has owned it for many decades, if not centuries, predating most, if not all, significant development in the area.”
But in its amended complaint filed the next month, the state argued that actually the Westwoods “is separate and apart from the Shinnecock Indian Reservation” — an argument only made possible by the partition — and “is not aboriginal or sovereign lands.”
“We Are Seriously Struggling”
Contested land ownership has hindered Shinnecock efforts to develop economically. In 2007, plans for a casino and bingo hall in Hampton Bays on a Westwoods parcel fell through after the town sued and a federal judge ruled that the nation had lost aboriginal title to the Westwoods during colonial times.
At the time, the Shinnecock tribe was not federally recognized despite applying in 1978, and that lack of recognition presented a serious hurdle to its efforts. However, with the nation’s federal recognition in 2010, the outlook has changed. This past September, the nation announced that not only had the U.S. National Indian Gaming Commission approved its tribal gaming ordinance, but it had partnered with Native American gaming chain Seminole Hard Rock Entertainment and developer Tri-State Partners on plans for another casino.
But those plans are a ways off and The Rez is in desperate need now.
“Right now, [the billboard monument] is literally the only revenue that we have and it doesn’t even meet our minimum basic needs,” Warriors spokesperson Troge explained. “We are seriously struggling.”
She acknowledged that the situation is far from ideal in that the nation must rely on revenue from some of the same forces driving commercialization and development on the east end. The billboard has featured advertisements for Rolex, BMW, and other luxury brands.
“Everything about all of this is perverse,” she said.
But the reality is, 60 percent of The Rez’s population live below the poverty line according to the last census. Data compiled by TownCharts reveals that over half of the population earns less than $15,000 annually. Food insecurity, lack of basic supplies, and inadequate housing are persistent problems.
The COVID Threat
The COVID-19 pandemic has compounded the situation. The Shinnecock had to bar outsiders from their annual Labor Day Powwow at the Rez, which normally draws thousands and represents a substantial revenue source for the Nation. While Native Americans are disproportionately affected by the pandemic, the Shinnecock have been remarkably successful at containing the virus. Still, Troge said there has been a recent outbreak on The Rez linked to early voting, which could spell disaster.
“There’s a vast unmet need for a housing fund,” she said. “We have a situation where a lot of people on The Rez live in multigenerational households. Sometimes you have three or four generations living in one house so it’s almost impossible to quarantine from vulnerable members of your family.”
To her point, The Rez has a larger average household size than the rest of the state and the country as a whole, and 33 percent of families rely on a single earner.
“To make things worse, most houses have serious structural deficiencies,” she said. “Some lack plumbing, some lack heating, and it’s this widespread problem because we’re completely cut off from accessing any type of traditional capital that people would use for housing. Like, we can’t get mortgages, we can’t get home equity lines. So basically how people are building houses is like, you have to like, basically put away money from your paycheck each week or you have to max out your credit cards.”
Troge noted that there are tribal members who will be spending this winter living in tents on The Rez — and some who won’t even have that luxury.
Schneiderman, the Southampton town supervisor, told the Daily Poster that he has been working to secure a grant “to address some of the housing issues affecting a few of the elders living on the Reservation.” He also noted that he has supported “many of the Shinnecock Nation’s economic development initiatives, including the medical marijuana dispensary and the gas station.”
Asked about reparations, he cautioned that “the town would not be the proper party to discuss this. It would have to be at a federal level.”
A Debt Owed
Troge told the Daily Poster that economic development is part of a debt owed to the Shinnecock. Currently, economic development projects like the billboard account for 30 percent of the tribal government’s budget.
In the 400 years since they encountered settlers, the Shinnecock have faced genocide — outright enslavement and indentured servitude, decimation from foreign diseases like smallpox, forced assimilation through though Indian schools like the notorious Thomas Indian School of Eerie, New York and the Carlisle Indian School. That legacy of violence continues today through not only economic neglect, but continued encroachment and cultural desecration.
In 2018, a construction crew unearthed an ancient burial site while digging a foundation for a new development in the Shinnecock Hills, complete with skeletal remains and artifacts. While the Shinnecock long for their ancestors’ graves to be left in peace, there was little they could do to prevent the excavation, and the remains were removed from the site.
In September, the Southampton town board, after months of protest from tribal members, unanimously adopted the Graves Protection Act and placed a moratorium on construction in parts of the Shinnecock Hills. The move earned praise from Shinnecock Nation Chairman Bryan Polite who said it marked “a new brighter chapter in the three-hundred-and-eighty-year relationship between the Town of Southampton and the Shinnecock Nation.”
In our correspondence, Schneiderman called the act “landmark legislation.” But Rebecca Genia, a longtime Shinnecock activist and member of the Warriors, said the town’s actions were “watered-down” and took way too much work.
“For decades, we’ve been pleading with them to adopt these laws and keep the bulldozers out of our sacred hills,” she said, explaining that the the moratorium came “finally with more pressure, more public people, more allies coming together to email the town board, to call them to text them, to have personal conversations with them. We had a demonstration in January of 2020. It was freezing cold out there but 150 people showed up to stop the desecration of the Shinnecock Hills.”
Genia expressed doubt that much will change even with the moratorium in place. She noted that despite the protesters’ efforts, one home was still allowed to be constructed.
Troge said that the construction in the Hills has not stopped even now.
“They keep building. It’s horrible. It’s horrible to watch,” she said. “We’ve actively been there watching as they’re taking our ancestors’ skulls out of the ground.”
Troge said a justification often given for removal is that the remains could be from victims of MS-13 related gang violence. She said the desecrations are alarmingly common and necessitate “repatriation ceremonies” wherein the Nation repossesses the remains that have been removed, and buries them as close as possible to their original resting places. According to Genia, in the previous year alone, the Shinnecock have conducted over one hundred such ceremonies.
“I can’t explain the toll that it takes on you,” Troge added, describing having been in attendance.
The largest gravesite desecration happened in 1891 with the construction of the Shinnecock Hills Golf Club — the same Club that hosted the 2018 U.S. Open, an event from which the Shinnecock did not benefit financially except for being allowed to charge visitors for parking on their land. Untold numbers of gravesites were excavated during construction of the course. As there were no protocols for dealing with ancient remains, Genia explained, many of the bones ended up in trash cans, in people’s attics, or were swept into the golf course’s bunkers.
“These billionaires build their mansions on stolen land,” Genia said, “and play golf on our cemeteries.”
Unemployment is expected to be one of Macron's biggest challenges in the run up to the 2022 vote. (photo: Ludovic Marin/AP)
Is Emmanuel Macron Pandering to the Far Right?
Rebecca Rosman, Al Jazeera
Rosman writes: "The French president faces a tough balancing act, pressured to appeal to the right, but not so far as to abandon the left."
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Charleston, South Carolina on November 15, 2020. (photo: Mic Smith/AP)
Should Charleston Wall Itself Off From Rising Sea Levels?
Michelle Liu, Associated Press
Liu writes: "The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is weighing a $1.75 billion sea wall proposal to ward off storm flooding in Charleston, South Carolina. Residents want a solution as sea levels rise, but question the project's environmental and social impacts."
ickie Hicks, who weaves intricate sweetgrass baskets in the historic city market in Charleston, South Carolina, remembers climbing onto the table at her grandmother’s booth downtown when the floodwaters rushed by.
Decades later, the seasoned seller of this art form passed down by descendants of West African slaves still works downtown, where merchants regularly set out sandbags and scrutinize daily weather forecasts. Ms. Hicks says the flooding’s only gotten worse.
“God’s taking back his land,” she said.
Now, the low-lying Atlantic seaport is considering its most drastic measure yet to protect the lives and livelihoods of residents like Ms. Hicks from the threats of climate-driven flooding: walling off its peninsula from the ocean.
Although residents recognize the need for action before Charleston is overwhelmed by the unfolding effects of climate change, many are not certain the wall will do enough to address flooding woes that go beyond storm surges. Some oppose walling off the city from its picturesque waterfront that helps draw millions of visitors each year. Others fear the wall will damage wetlands and wildlife, or that poor neighborhoods will be left out of flooding solutions.
Though Charleston has remained relatively unscathed this hurricane season, the city of 136,000 has seen higher tides and wetter, more frequent rainstorms in recent years with climate change.
In 2019, the downtown flooded a record 89 times according to the National Weather Service – mostly from high tides and wind pushing water inland. And the city could flood up to 180 times per year by 2045 according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
There’s also the threat each year that hurricane-driven storm surge could inundate the city's peninsula, which is at the confluence of three rivers and mostly less than 20 feet above sea level.
Earlier this year, the Army Corps of Engineers unveiled a proposal for an eight-mile-long wall that would surround the peninsula and reach a height of 12 feet above sea level.
The barrier is reminiscent of fortifications that colonists built around Charleston 350 years ago to keep out invaders, but the Corps says the new wall is designed to keep out storm surge.
The agency's proposal includes a floating breakwater offshore and some nonstructural measures, such as raising homes not situated behind the sea wall. The entire project is estimated to cost $1.75 billion.
The Corps has three years and $3 million to find a fix for storm surge on the peninsula, though there’s no guarantee yet that it will be funded and built.
The Charleston study is part of $111 million funded by Congress in 2018 to address flooding and coastal storm issues in 14 states, Puerto Rico, and the United States Virgin Islands. The wall is one of several engineering solutions, along with pumps, surge gates, and levees proposed by the Corps in cities including Miami and Galveston, Texas.
Mark Wilbert, Charleston’s chief resilience officer, said the city needs to do something to address current flooding and plan for the future.
"Why the wall? Why now?” Mr. Wilbert said. “It’s about preparedness. You know, it’s about preserving property and preventing lives lost for a future that we know will bring more frequent storms, more intense storms, in an area that we know is very vulnerable to that.”
The Corps plan, which requires city approval and cost sharing, has created confusion among some residents who wonder why the city might pursue a solution only for storm surge at the expense of other flooding problems.
The Corps says it's constrained by its congressional mandate, which doesn’t address other sources of flooding the city faces, such as stormwater runoff. That's mostly handled by the city.
A call for public comments this summer elicited hundreds of responses.
Conservation groups said the proposal needed a more rigorous environmental review, because the wall would cut through water-absorbing wetlands and wildlife habitats.
Resoundingly, residents said they needed more time to make sense of the proposal that would wall off one of the city's most defining traits – the waterfront, with its oleander-lined promenades, antebellum houses, fountains, and expansive oaks – from the harbor.
Trying to please everyone by expanding the wall's scope may drive the project's costs past viability, Mr. Wilbert said, noting non-structural measures such as raising flood-prone homes could still provide adequate protection to neighborhoods left out of the plan.
The plan focuses on the peninsula, where the city’s economic engines – its historic downtown, tourism hub, and medical district – are located, although some neighborhoods extend beyond that.
The wall stops short of two mostly Black neighborhoods – one a low-income apartment complex and the other a historic community called Rosemont.
The Corps has said both areas are high enough to use other solutions, such as flood-proofing homes and buying out property owners. But residents of Rosemont, many elderly, are not readily able to move, said Nancy Button, Rosemont Neighborhood Association president.
“Where are they going to go?” she asked.
Naomi Yoder from the environmental policy organization Healthy Gulf questioned whether money for expensive engineering solutions posed by the Corps in coastal cities could be better used to elevate and fortify houses, and to create evacuation corridors for disasters. “Is there really a possibility for us to out-engineer the storms?” Ms. Yoder said.
Whether the city builds the wall or not, the process has accelerated the conversation Charleston needs to have about sea level rise, said Winslow Hastie of the Historic Charleston Foundation.
“There’s a benefit to the community coming together and having some soul searching," he said.
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