Who could do a better lob of illustrating the importance of what we do than the corporate media? Not ready to make a donation? Watch MSNBC or CNN break down the news for you for a few minutes. The straight story may seem more worth supporting.
Expect the crew at Camp Runamuck to make a vaccine announcement, regardless of whether one has been proven safe and effective.
ell, this looks very promising as regards a unified national policy to confront the ongoing pandemic. FromABC News:
[Anthony] Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, shared the comments exclusively with National Geographic in avirtual panel discussionmoderated by [Deborah] Roberts. The discussion is scheduled to air Thursday at 1 p.m. ET. "I hope that the Russians have actually, definitively proven that the vaccine is safe and effective," Fauci said. "I seriously doubt that they've done that.”...
"Having a vaccine, Deborah, and proving that a vaccine is safe and effective are two different things," Fauci discussed with Roberts. He added that the U.S. is pursuing at least a dozen vaccines of its own and "if we wanted to take the chance of hurting a lot of people, or giving them something that doesn't work, we could start doing this, you know, next week if we wanted to. But that's not the way it works.”
Good Lord, Doc. Don’t give them any ideas.
Now, I wouldn’t buy an aspirin from Ol’ Doc Vlad’s House O’Curez, andneither should anyone else. But, as I am reminded to my horror almost daily, everybody is not me. As soon as the grifters down at Camp Runamuck find a way to turn a buck on it, they’re going to be shilling for Putin’s potion—or for some American, Trump-branded derivative that “builds on” the Russian “breakthrough.” If you’re scoping down the line for an “October Surprise,” this is a pretty good bet. The first step in preparing yourself for it is to start listening to Dr. Fauci. The second step is to know your charlatans. The Colombians seem to have a handle on that. FromCBS News:
Mark Grenon is the archbishop of the Genesis II Church of Health and Healing, based in Bradenton, Florida. The church is centered on use of the toxic chemical as a supposed sacrament it claims can cure a vast variety of illnesses ranging from cancer to autism to malaria and now COVID-19.Last month, multiple agencies were called to theGenesis II Church of Health and Healingin connection with search warrants and a federal order, CBS Miamireported.
Afederal criminal complaintfiled in July charged Mark Grenon, 62, and his sons, Jonathan, 34; Jordan, 26; and Joseph, 32, with conspiracy to defraud the U.S., conspiracy to violate the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act and criminal contempt...According to the Food and Drug Administration, the solution sold by the Grenons becomes a bleach when ingested that is typically used for such things as treating textiles, industrial water, pulp and paper.
Pro Tip: If you’re going to peddle dubious miracle cures, make sure that you are the ruler of an authoritarian state complete with nuclear weapons, and that you also have the President* of the United States in your pocket. You can get in trouble otherwise.
Janine Jackson interviewed the Sentencing Project’s Nicole Porter on Covid and decarceration for the August 7, 2020, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
Janine Jackson: It's hard to think of a worse place to be in a pandemic than a prison—crowded, unsanitary, inadequate healthcare. And, indeed, Covid-19 is spreading in US jails, prisons and immigration detention centers. Research by the Marshall Project reports at least 78,000 confirmed cases and 766 deaths among detainees through July 28, numbers that are certainly low. At one Ohio prison. virtually every inmate tested positive.
With the recognition that a prison sentence should not be allowed to become a death sentence, numerous advocates have been calling for, and some states undertaking, decarceral efforts, including releasing those who are medically vulnerable and reducing low-level arrests.
The treatment of incarcerated people in the face of a pandemic only highlights the ongoing problems with the prison system, including its racial bias. It also provides an opening to talk about decarceration more broadly—even when there isn't a life-threatening virus afoot—and what needs to happen to allow it to work for individuals and communities. Those questions, asked deeply enough, might change the conversation about why so many people are going to prison in the first place.
Joining us now to talk about Covid and decarceration is Nicole Porter. She's director of advocacy at the Sentencing Project. She joins us now by phone from Houston. Welcome to CounterSpin, Nicole Porter.
Nicole Porter: Thank you for having me.
JJ: As I said, some states are taking action, decarceral steps in the face of Covid-19. What has that looked like? And is it sufficient, do you think?
NP: No, it's not sufficient. Some states have taken action, and some states are doing more than other states, but in reality, no state is doing what they should be doing.
So, most recently, New Jersey lawmakers adopted legislation that has the potentiality to release up to 3,000 incarcerated prisoners in New Jersey. Those would be people within 10 months of release, who have certain sentences.
In other states, governors have taken action to release people who were expected to be released anyway during 2020, that includes gubernatorial actions in California, Illinois and New York. Much of that has moved up release dates for people who were within a few months of their already-planned release. And while it is a good step to move those people out of prison sooner, so that social distancing could be followed within prisons, it’s still not enough.
What the United States has done, even collectively, pales in comparison to what other countries have done—even more autocratic countries, like Iran and Turkey, that have also released people who should never have been in prison to begin with, but their releases number tens of thousands of individuals.
JJ: Wow. I think, also, of all those people who are in jail before they've even had a trial.
NP: There have also been significant reductions in the jail population as well. And much of the decarceration impact has happened at the jail level, by changing practices that could be adopted even when we're not going through a global pandemic.
So in order to reduce jail populations, practitioners in many counties around the country decided not to admit residents for certain infractions. So they stopped arresting and booking into local county jail, residents on traffic violations and other minor offenses. Those are practices that could be implemented even when we're not going through a public health crisis. And the same, too, at the state level within prisons; much of the reduction in state prison populations is not because of active efforts to decarcerate, or move people out, but to reduce admissions into prisons.
And there's a range of reasons why that's happened over the last couple of months since the pandemic started. One is that courts have stopped or delayed proceedings, but with the goal of quarantine and social distancing within courts, which can be congregate settings. Another is that state prison systems refuse to admit newly sentenced prisoners from local lockup. Even conservative states like Florida and Oklahoma had those policies in place in the midst of the quarantine period. But that also influenced factors at the local level, because newly sentenced prisoners were still confined, and those changes required local officials, from sheriffs to district attorneys, to make changes around their local jail population.
So there's a range of different reasons why prison and jail populations have decreased during the pandemic. But it's still not enough; it's still nowhere near what needs to be happening.
JJ: What about at the federal level? Have incarcerated people been considered at all in these big pieces of Covid legislation that we've seen coming down?
NP: Not enough; there has been some decrease at the federal level. Some federal prisoners have been moved to home confinement. Federal prisoners who are medically vulnerable, who are elderly, have been released from prisons and allowed to continue their sentence under home confinement; there has been an ongoing effort to call attention to the incarcerated population in the CARES Act and other stimulus packages that have made their way through Congress. But there's been very little attention to that, despite a great deal of advocacy and attempt to call attention to our incarcerated residents.
One outcome that's been helpful in the midst of this pandemic is the easing of telephone and email fees that prisoners are generally required to pay in order to stay in contact with their family and loved ones. So during the pandemic, those fees have been waived.
So that's good, but it's still not enough, because there are people currently incarcerated who are at risk of contracting Covid, and if they do get the coronavirus, they could potentially have a fatal outcome from it. So this country needs to be doing a lot more to reduce the number of people in confinement, so that social distancing can be practiced for those left behind, and others can be moved to the community where they can better practice social distancing in the free world.
JJ: On the one hand, letting people out of prison is automatically frightening or sounds wrong to some people. But on the other hand, there's something different in the wind; an increased recognition that the US carceral system isn't just racist, isn't just unfair, but that it doesn't contribute to public safety in the way that people have been told. So “Abolish ICE” and “Defund Police” aren't jokes anymore. People are open to new visions.
So I would like to ask you to talk just a little bit, if you would, about what it would take, what needs to be built, to make decarceration work? It's not just ”letting people out,” and nothing more.
Nicole Porter: "Sentencing in the United States is way too extreme and has racist roots, and there should be an intentional effort to revisit them and recalibrate them."
NP:It should be about letting people out, because the system is way too extreme. There's a man down in Louisiana whose life prison term was upheld for stealing hedge clippers, because he had four prior convictions, and he was convicted under that state's habitual offender law. That man should not be in prison today. And letting him [out]—and other people convicted under that state's habitual offender law, for minor property offenses— should happen today, without any requirement that those people have to go through additional hoops to prove that they aren't a threat to public safety; they shouldn't have been in prison for as long as they have been.
There's another man in Mississippi, whose prison term was upheld earlier this year, before the pandemic even hit, because he had a cellphone while he was booked into jail, which means that the police officers who put him into jail failed at doing their job, because they did not properly search him. And that man was sentenced to 12 years in the state lockup, and that prison term was also upheld by the state supreme court. That man should not be in prison.
And all prisoners in Mississippi with minor property offenses, whose prison terms were too extreme, should be released, without question and without any additional hurdles that they have to go through, because those are racist laws that are extreme, and unduly burden and disappear Black residents from community life and from their families, because of who lawmakers imagine to be convicted of those laws, and the fact that they don't care about those individuals’ lives, their futures or their presents.
That said, in order to lean into the conservative gaze that has to be explored for credible reforms to be adopted at the state and at the federal level, there are a range of considerations that advocates and lawmakers can be working on.
One is that the sentencing in the United States is way too extreme and has racist roots, and there should be an intentional effort to revisit them and recalibrate them. There’s a practice we encourage at the Sentencing Project called racial impact statements, which look at the racial disparity of sentencing laws and their impact on prison systems. Lawmakers could adopt those policies within states; in states where they are already the law, states like New Jersey and Oregon, lawmakers could expand what racial impact statements consider, and could go through a deliberate process where they look at how the current sentencing practices result in racially disparate outcomes in state prison populations, and intentionally go back to repair the harm. One would be recalibrating property offenses that can disappear people away for the rest of their lives, like in Louisiana or, for more than a decade, like in Mississippi, and there are many states, if not all states, have similar extreme outcomes for property offenses, ranging from robbery to burglary.
JJ: I certainly don't mean to be leaning into the conservative gaze; I really only mean to say that I think folks are due something when they come out of prison, beyond letting them out, which is the first thing and the ultimate thing.
NP: I think folks are due something, and I think communities are due something. So that could be a part of a reparations agenda and a racial justice agenda.
There's a concept that has never been fully implemented, called justice reinvestment, which was pioneered in the early 2000s. And the theory is that every year, millions of dollars are extracted from high-incarceration communities by disappearing residents and, with them, resources: their potential labor and contribution to their communities, as well as public monies that are spent on their incarceration, rather than on investments in those high-incarceration communities -- quality housing, equitable funding of public education and the funding of other public support and social services, to communities that have been divested from over the last 30 to 40 years following civil rights, when many white folks decided they didn't want to live next to Black people.
So there's a lot that people are owed, and there's a lot that communities are owed. And decarceration, and reprioritizing and shifting resources back into those communities through an intentional effort, through reparatory justice and through some redress of the significant harm that entire communities have undergone during the era of mass incarceration, would be one step to address what people are owed.
JJ: We've been speaking with Nicole Porter, director of advocacy at the SentencingProject. They're online at SentencingProject.org. Nicole Porter, thank you very much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.
While a lethal pandemic and economic crisis wreak havoc on working families, McConnell and the GOP are dead set on protecting business interests and enriching the wealthy.
enate Republicans’ shameful priorities are on full display as the nation continues to grapple with an unprecedented health and economic crisis.
Mitch McConnell and the GOP refuse to take up the HEROES Act, passed by the House in early May to help Americans survive the pandemic and fortify the upcoming election.
Senate Republicans don’t want to extend the extra $600 a week in unemployment benefits, even though unemployment has soared to the highest levels since the Great Depression.
Even before the pandemic, nearly 80 percent of Americans lived paycheck to paycheck. Now many are desperate, as revealed by lengthening food lines and growing delinquencies in rent payments.
McConnell’s response? He urges lawmakers to be “cautious” about helping struggling Americans, warning that “the amount of debt that we’re adding up is a matter of genuine concern.”
McConnell seems to forget the $1.9 trillion tax cut he engineered in December 2017 for big corporations and the super-rich, which blew up the deficit.
That’s just the beginning of the GOP’s handouts for corporations and the wealthy. As soon as the pandemic hit, McConnell and Senate Republicans were quick to give mega-corporations a $500 billion blank check, while only sending Americans a paltry one-time $1,200 check.
The GOP seems to believe that the rich will work harder if they receive more money while people of modest means work harder if they receive less. In reality, the rich contribute more to Republican campaigns when they get bailed out.
That’s precisely why the GOP put into the last Covid relief bill a $170 billion windfall to Jared Kushner and other real estate moguls, who line the GOP’s campaign coffers. Another $454 billion of the package went to backing up a Federal Reserve program that benefits big business by buying up their debt.
And although the bill was also intended to help small businesses, lobbyists connected to Trump – including current donors and fundraisers for his reelection – helped their clients rake in over $10 billion of the aid, while an estimated 90 percent of small businesses owned by people of color and women got nothing.
The GOP’s shameful priorities have left countless small businesses with no choice but to close. They’ve also left 22 million Americans unemployed, and 28 million at risk of being evicted by September.
For the bulk of this crisis, McConnell called the Senate back into session only to confirm more of Trump’s extremist judges and advance a $740 billion defense spending bill.
Throughout it all, McConnell has insisted his priority is to shield businesses from Covid-related lawsuits by customers and employees who have contracted the virus.
The inept and overwhelmingly corrupt reign of Trump, McConnell, and Senate Republicans will come to an end next January if enough Americans vote this coming November.
But will enough people vote during a pandemic? The HEROES Act provides $3.6 billion for states to expand mail-in and early voting, but McConnell and his GOP lackeys aren’t interested. They’re well aware that more voters increase the likelihood Republicans will be booted out.
Time and again, they’ve shown that they only care about their wealthy donors and corporate backers. If they had an ounce of concern for the nation, their priority would be to shield Americans from the ravages of Covid and American democracy from the ravages of Trump. But we know where their priorities lie.
Protesters outside the Minneapolis 1st Police precinct during a demonstration against police brutality and racism in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Saturday. (photo: Kerem Yucel/Getty)
Poll: Americans' Confidence in Police Falls to Historic Low N'dea Yancey-Bragg, USA TODAY Yancey-Bragg writes: "Americans' confidence in the police fell to the lowest level recorded by Gallup in the nearly 30 years it has been tracking such data, driven in part by a growing racial divide on the issue." READ MORE
Post Officer worker. (photo: Getty)
Trump Says Postal Service Needs Money for Mail-In Voting, but He'll Keep Blocking Funding Jacob Bogage, The Washington Post Bogage writes: "President Trump says the U.S. Postal Service is incapable of facilitating mail-in voting because it cannot access the emergency funding he is blocking, and made clear that requests for additional aid were nonstarters in coronavirus relief negotiations." READ MORE
Medical staff at a hospital treating patients with COVID 19. (photo: AP)
The True Coronavirus Toll in the US Has Already Surpassed 200,000 Denise Lu, The New York Times Lu writes: "Across the United States, at least 200,000 more people have died than usual since March, according to a New York Times analysis of estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This is about 60,000 higher than the number of deaths that have been directly linked to the coronavirus." READ MORE
Jeffery Ryans, shown in his attorney's office, Aug. 5, 2020, is suing Salt Lake City police after he says officers used excessive force when they commanded a police dog to attack him repeatedly while he was on his knees with his hands in the air. (photo: Leah Hogsten/The Salt Lake Tribune)
Salt Lake Police Suspend K9 Program After Video Shows Dog Biting Black Man With His Hands Up Tim Stelloh, NBC News Stelloh writes: "The Salt Lake City Police Department suspended its K9 program on Wednesday, one day after the release of an officer's body-camera footage that showed his dog appearing to repeatedly bite a Black man kneeling on the ground with his hands up."
The victories of Jamaal Bowman, Rashida Tlaib, Cori Bush and Ilhan Omar are worrying for groups like AIPAC, the Democratic Majority for Israel and their allies
Among the list of finalists who were under consideration by the Biden campaign for the VP role, Harris had the clearest record of support for Israel. Her selection helped guarantee that the 2020 Democratic presidential ticket would be impervious to insinuation from the Trump campaign that Biden’s Israel policy could somehow be hijacked by the more progressive Bernie Sanders-led camp.
But the jubilant celebrations regarding the top of the ticket obscured a far less pleasant reality for groups like AIPAC, the Democratic Majority for Israel and their allies – the reality of the congressional primaries, where these pro-Israeli groups suffered a string of painful losses.
On the same day as the Harris announcement, the decisive victory by Rep. Ilhan Omar in her Minnesota primary sealed a 0-4 string of losses for pro-Israeli groups in their efforts to beat back the growing strength and popularity of the group known as the “Squad” – young, largely female progressive candidates of color.
The Squad originally contained four members of Congress who were first elected in the 2018 midterm election: Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ayana Pressley (D-MA), and the two first-ever Muslim women elected to Congress, Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN). The group has been at the forefront of Congressional criticism against the Israeli government, and its members have joined Senator Bernie Sanders’ call to condition military aid to Israel.
In this year’s Democratic primaries, a battle line had been drawn, with the Squad and other left-wing Democrats on one side, and pro-Israel groups on the other. So far, in every major contest, the Squad emerged victorious. The pro-Israel groups hoped to knock down at least one of the group’s members, but instead, the group is likely to expand in the next Congress.
The first big sign of trouble for AIPAC and its allies began on June 23 in the primary for New York’s 16th district where challenger Jamaal Bowman, a progressive educator, defeated Eliot Engel, a 16-term Jewish veteran congressman and the chairman of the powerful House Foreign Affairs Committee.
When the mail-in ballots were finally counted and the final result announced on July 17, the tally showed a humiliating loss for an established incumbent – Engel only won 40% of the vote to Bowman’s 55%. It was a far cry from Engel’s cakewalk in the primaries two years earlier in 2018, when Engel had effortlessly beaten back his primary rival Jonathan Lewis 73% to 16%, and viewed as a repeat performance of a New York upset two years earlier – when Ocasio-Cortez beat Democratic Caucus chair Joe Crowley in the 2018 primaries.
Engel’s defeat was a devastating blow for AIPAC and its allies, since his position as the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee made him a key asset for Israel supporters. Engel consistently lined up with the pro-Israeli lobby on issues like Iran, Palestinian statehood and Israeli settlements. He was a Democrat who had actively promoted moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, and supported President Donald Trump when he made the move – one of many times he reached across the aisle and worked together with Republicans when it came to legislation, resolutions and letters of concern, regarding Israel.
Because of this, Engel had been vigorously backed by pro-Israel PACs. According to the campaign funding website Open Secrets, Engel was the member of Congress who received the largest amount of pro-Israel funds for his primary race – $546,213. That included a controversial television attack ad against Bowman funded by the Democratic Majority for Israel, hitting Bowman for non-payment of taxes. Bernie Sanders publicly decried the ad, tweeting that the Democratic Majority for Israel PAC “is a corporate/Republican-funded super PAC that runs ugly, negative ads against progressives. This is establishment big-money politics at its worst, and why we have to transform the Democratic Party.” Ultimately, Engel felt compelled to ask the PAC to remove the ad.
Then, on August 4, came a double whammy. Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib – a supporter of BDS and opponent of a two-state solution – easily won her primary in Michigan’s 13th district, defeating Brenda Jones, president of the Detroit city council, with 66% of the vote to Jones’ 34%. Tlaib’s margin of victory over Jones was far wider than it had been when the two faced off in 2018, defying the assessments of local Israel supporters earlier in the race that Tlaib was “beatable.”
In fact, she proved far less beatable than she had been in 2018, when the roles were reversed – Jones was the incumbent and Tlaib the newcomer – when Tlaib only squeaked ahead by fewer than 1,000 votes.
On the same day as Tlaib’s victory, Missouri’s Cori Bush, a progressive activist prominent in the Black Lives Matter movement and a supporter of BDS, scored her upset primary win against another powerful incumbent – Rep. William Lacy Clay Jr. – whom she had unsuccessfully challenged two years earlier.
Bush’s victory was slim but definitive – with 48% of the vote to Clay’s 45%. Her victory over Clay beat back a campaign that attacked her for her BDS support and cooperation with activist Linda Sarsour. Her win against a member of a political dynasty whose family had held that Misouri’s 1st congressional seat for five decades, was hailed as the biggest progressive triumph since the ascendance of Ocasio-Cortez two years earlier.
The Bush-Clay contest, like Tlaib’s Michigan primary, was a rematch. Bush had challenged Clay in 2018, but was heavily outspent and lost to him 56%-36%. This time around, she seriously upped her fundraising game, coming closer to matching the funds Clay had assembled than in their first race. Her victory in this heavily Democratic district all but ensures that come January 2021, when the next Congress is sworn-in, the Squad will add a new members to its ranks.
Finally, on Tuesday, August 11, the final blow came with the victory of Omar, who successfully retained her seat in Minnesota’s fifth district. Omar and Tlaib have become heroes for Israel’s opponents on the left, demonized and targeted on the far right, and have attracted lots of media attention and controversy for their views regarding Israel, the Palestinians and BDS. In August of 2019, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu banned Omar and Tlaib from a planned visit to Israel and the West Bank, citing regulations that “forbid the entry of people calling for and acting to placing a boycott on Israel.”
Almost a year later to the day, final election results had Omar devastating her challenger, attorney Antone Melton-Meaux, 57%-39%, overcoming the fact that, although Omar initially led in fundraising, in the months running up to the primary, Melton Meaux’s financial war chest dwarfed Omar’s six-fold.
According to the Minnesota Post, 20 percent of total large-dollar donations to Melton-Meaux came from pro-Israel Political Action Committees. Melton-Meaux “raised $382,000 in donations bundled by the Pro-Israel America PAC, a nonpartisan political committee that supports both Republican and Democrat pro-Israel candidates. He also raised nearly $106,000 in bundled donations through NORPAC, a political action committee that supports conservative policies in Israel,” the Post reported, adding that an additional $34,000 came in from a long list of pro-Israel groups, including “Citizens Organized, Friends of Israel, Grand Canyon State Caucus, Heartland PAC, Maryland Association for Concerned Citizens, Mid-Manhattan PAC, Pro-Israel America PAC and Sun PAC.”
But despite the financial support from such groups, Omar triumphed by an even larger margin than in 2018, when she received 48.2 percent of the vote – with her closest competitor, Margaret Kelliher trailing with 30.4 percent. Her overall share of the vote grew by almost 10%, ensuring that she will return to Washington for at least one more Congressional term.
The results in these primary races, from New York to Missouri and Minnesota, show that the Squad is here to stay. And while pro-Israeli groups are relieved to have Biden and Harris at the top of the ticket, the Sanders-led wing of the party is far from negligible, and will continue to try and push the party to the left on Middle East policy.
A large patch of leaked oil travels on ocean currents near the Pointe d'Esny in Mauritius on Saturday. The worsening oil spill is polluting the island nation's famous reefs, lagoons and oceans. (photo: AFP)
The Oil Spill at Mauritius Is a Disaster. And It Could Soon Get Worse Camila Domonoske, NPR Domonoske writes: "A Japanese cargo ship struck a reef off the coast of Mauritius more than two weeks ago and has now leaked more than 1,000 metric tons of oil into the pristine waters and unique ecosystems of the island nation."
Mauritius has declared a state of environmental emergency, and the French government has sent technical support to assist with the disaster response. In addition, independently-organized local volunteers have been working to clean up and protect beaches with improvised materials.
But an even bigger danger looms.
A crack inside the ship's hull has been growing, and government officials warn the entire ship could split in half, releasing all the oil remaining inside the vessel.
Efforts are underway to pump that oil out of the ship before it breaks apart. As of Tuesday, just over 1,000 metric tons of oil had been pumped out of the ship, while some 1,800 metric tons of fuel oil and diesel remain on board, according to the company that owns the ship.
The ship, the Wakashio, was a cargo ship, not an oil tanker, carrying 4,000 metric tons of fuel to power its engines (in comparison, supertankers can carry hundreds of thousands of metric tons of oil.) However, any oil spill larger than 700 metric tons is classified by industry groups as a large spill, and this spill has already released more oil than the combined total from every tanker spill documented in 2019.
Mauritius has declared a state of environmental emergency, and the French government has sent technical support to assist with the disaster response.
The Mauritian government has urged residents to stay home and leave the clean-up to authorities, the BBC reports, but residentshave organized themselves anyway and assembled home-made oil booms — floating barriers to contain and absorb the toxic spill.
Reuters reports that sugar cane leaves, plastic bottles and human hair (cut off and donated by residents) are being sewn into makeshift booms.
"People have realized that they need to take things into their hands. We are here to protect our fauna and flora," environmental activist Ashok Subron said, according to AFP.
Subron told a local news outlet the collective action by everyday citizens demonstrated "the failure of the state," and other residents are angrily asking why action wasn't taken sooner to prevent this unfolding disaster.
"The authorities did nothing for days," Fezal Noordaully, a taxi driver from a coastal village in Mauritius, told The Guardian. "Now they are but it's too late."
When the Wakashio initially ran aground on July 25, its hull was intact and no major oil spill was detected. A Dutch company was brought in to refloat the ship and prevent spills.
But late last week, oil began to escape from the ship's tanks; the ship's owners issued a statement blaming bad weather and rough seas for the breach. The vessel's operators acknowledged "the regretful harm to the beautiful nature in Mauritius."
The island nation of Mauritius is located east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. It's home to a number of endemic species, or plants and animals that live nowhere else — from the pink pigeon, recently saved from extinction, to the blue-tailed day gecko, which pollinates a rare flower that only has 250 plants remaining.
The Mauritian Wildlife Foundation, which is dedicated to protecting endangered plants and animals that exist only in Mauritius, says it has helped lay booms to protect the Ile aux Aigrettes nature preserve as well as protected wetlands on the main island.
But the key challenge is stop the flow of oil, the group says; until the source of the leak is addressed, shoreline clean-up will accomplish little.
In addition to environmental devastation, the spill could have "dire consequences for Mauritius' economy, food security and health," Greenpeace Africa warns. Tourism is an important part of the economy and had already taken a hit from the coronavirus pandemic.
ell, this looks very promising as regards a unified national policy to confront the ongoing pandemic. From ABC News:
