06 February 21
February Is Going to be a Very Challenging Month
February is the shortest month. With 3 fewer days than December and January, February really puts us on a tight fundraising schedule. We won’t need less money, we’ll only have significantly less time to raise it.
What’s the way to address that? Reasonable support.
That’s all it ever takes.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
If you would prefer to send a check:
Reader Supported News
PO Box 2043
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06 February 21
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Michael Moore | Rashida, My Friend. We Are a Nation of Millions Who Support You
Michael Moore, Michael Moore's Facebook Page
Moore writes: "Rashida, my friend. Fear not. We are a nation of millions who support you. Protect you. You are our voice."
The video of you below is heartbreaking. It crushed me. I ask everyone to watch it.
Let me assure you: The bigots, the killers, their days of holding any power will soon end. They know it. It’s why they can’t go peacefully. It’s why they flail, like the dying dinosaurs did, and they are in a rampage because they are doomed. White Power and plutocrats know these are their end times. We are now the Majority. You are the majority. Women are the majority and people of color will soon be the majority. They know this and they are angry. They act like they’re going to have to do the dishes. They are! They act like their kids will marry people of color. They will! And you’re grandmother back in Palestine—she too will be free from apartheid. The younger generation here all know this is wrong. It will be fixed.
I am so sorry you have had to live in fear of losing your life. You are beloved in Detroit and throughout Michigan. You are an inspiration to us all.
Much love.
M
Bernie Sanders. (photo: Mary Altaffer/AP)
'This Isn't Bernie's First Rodeo': Senate Republicans Tried to Force Democrats to Take a Tough Vote on a $15 Minimum Wage, but It Did Not Go as Planned
Charles David and Joseph Zeballos-Roig, Business Insider
Excerpt: "The Senate unanimously passed a Republican amendment Thursday that seeks to prevent Democrats from doing something they never wanted to do: double the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour during the coronavirus pandemic."
In effect, Democrats, as well as the independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, joined with Republicans to drive the fact home during a so-called vote-a-rama.
Rather than double the minimum wage before the pandemic ends, President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats are proposing to raise it gradually to $15 an hour by 2025 as part of their $1.9 trillion stimulus package.
The amendment from Sen. Joni Ernst, an Iowa Republican, seemed intended to miscast Democrats' position - to enact a $15 minimum wage "during a global pandemic" - and put centrist Democrats on the spot to highlight divides within the party on the wage-hike plan.
Specifically, the amendment would grant the chair of the Senate Budget Committee the right to nix a wage increase as part of the reconciliation process - a legislative maneuver that allows the Democratic-controlled Senate to pass bills in the upper chamber with a simple majority instead of the 60 votes usually required.
Sanders, who is chair of the Senate Budget Committee, said during the floor debate that he would do "everything I can to make sure that a $15 minimum wage is included in this reconciliation bill." He rejected Republican framing that Democrats were seeking to double the wage during the pandemic.
"It was never my intent to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour immediately during the pandemic," Sanders said. "My legislation gradually increases the minimum wage to $15 an hour over a five-year period, and that is what I believe we ought to do."
Sanders put the amendment on a non-recorded voice vote in a move that most likely deflected criticism of his drive to increase the minimum wage. The measure is nonbinding. "We need to end the crisis of starvation wages in Iowa and across the United States," he added.
A senior Democratic aide, granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, argued that Republicans had bungled the effort to force moderate Democrats to take a politically difficult vote.
"This isn't Bernie's first rodeo," the aide said. "No one has to take a tough vote on a messaging amendment, and we can still try to pass minimum wage through the reconciliation bill."
It remains unclear whether Democrats will be successful in approving the minimum-wage increase through the strict budgetary rules governing the reconciliation process. The federal minimum wage was most recently raised in 2009, to $7.25 an hour.
Earlier this month, Ernst spoke out against including a wage increase as part of any stimulus package, saying such "liberal priorities" would hurt small businesses.
Ben Zipperer, an economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute, told Insider such an impact would be minimal, at worst, and arguably beneficial to businesses as well as workers, with higher wages reducing costly employee turnover.
Despite Republican opposition, however, raising the minimum wage is popular among voters. A recent poll from Quinnipiac University found that 61% of Americans supported Democrats' effort to hike it to $15 an hour.
Twenty states have already raised their own minimum wages in 2021.
Protesters gather after the killing of Andre Maurice Hill in Columbus, Ohio. (photo: Getty Images)
Bond Set at $3 Million for Fired Columbus Police Officer Who Killed Andre Hill
Gabe Rosenberg and Nick Evans, NPR
Excerpt: "Fired Columbus Police officer Adam Coy has pleaded not guilty to murder and other charges in the December killing of Andre Hill. His bond was set at $3 million."
Coy was arrested and indicted by a grand jury Wednesday on two counts of dereliction of duty, which are second-degree misdemeanors, and one count each of felonious assault and murder. If convicted, the charges carry a maximum sentence of life in prison.
With Coy appearing virtually via video feed, a Franklin County Court of Common Pleas judge accepted Coy's not-guilty plea and barred him from contacting witnesses or other police officers. She also added a $20,000 recognizance bond.
At Friday's arraignment, lawyers for the Ohio attorney general asked for a high bond, even as Coy's lawyers argued he was neither a flight risk nor a threat to public safety, since the incident was an on-duty use of force. The judge sided with the state.
"We don't see this very often, admittedly, but it did happen and a man lost his life," said special prosecutor Anthony Pierson of the Ohio Attorney General's Office.
Coy, who is white, fatally shot 47-year-old Andre Hill, who is Black, on Dec. 22. Coy and another officer, Amy Detweiller, were responding to an early-morning non-emergency call about a person turning on and off a vehicle, when they found Hill inside a garage. The homeowners later said Hill was dropping off Christmas money, and it's not clear whether Hill was the man referenced by the original caller.
Because neither Coy nor Detweiller had activated their body cameras, there is no audio available of the moments before the shooting. Because of a 60-second "lookback" feature, there is footage showing Coy firing shots just seconds after Hill turned around to face officers with a cellphone in his hand.
Footage from Coy and others at the scene also show that no officers attempted to provide first aid to Hill until 10 minutes after he was shot, although several officers do handcuff Hill while he's unresponsive on the ground. Columbus Police officials say investigations are ongoing into other responding officers, but have not announced either charges or discipline.
The two counts of dereliction of duty stem from Coy's failure to activate his body camera, and failing to alert his fellow officer that he felt Hill presented a danger. Detweiller told investigators that Coy repeatedly shouted Hill had a gun – in reality, Hill was unarmed – but she did not believe Hill posed any threat.
"Let me be clear," Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said when he announced the charges Wednesday, "I believe the evidence in this case supports the indictment and my office will vigorously prosecute this case."
Coy was fired from the department following the recommendations of Mayor Andrew Ginther and then-Columbus Police Chief Tom Quinlan. The Fraternal Order of Police, which represents local law enforcement officers, has not indicated yet if it will appeal Coy's firing, although it did file a grievance with the city on behalf of its membership.
Coy's attorneys, Mark Collins and Kaitlyn Stephens, objected in a press conference following the arraignment that bond was set too high, and promised to appeal. During the hearing, they asserted Coy had no access to guns since being fired from the department, and the case was not a "whodunit" but rather a matter of "whether or not our client was justified in using the force he did."
Outside the courthouse, Tamala Payne, the mother of Casey Goodson Jr., took part in a protest in solidarity with Hill's family. Goodson, who is Black, was fatally shot by Franklin County Sheriff's Deputy Jason Meade, who is white, on Dec. 4, just weeks before Hill's death.
"We have suffered through the holidays with our loved ones being murdered senselessly," Payne said.
No footage was available in Goodson's shooting, because Franklin County Sheriff's deputies at the time did not wear body cameras, and no eyewitnesses have come forward. Meade claimed that Goodson pointed a gun at him, while Goodson's family says he was shot in the back while holding Subway sandwiches. The U.S. Attorney's Office has yet to announce charges against Meade, who remains in his job.
In the case of Hill's shooting, Payne and other protesters argue that Coy should not have been allowed bond at all.
"For both of the murderers, the death penalty, but I think that's too easy," Payne said. "I think the death penalty is too easy. I think each one of the cowards should sit and be haunted with the murders of Casey and Andre for the rest of their lives."
Hill's family has said it won't be satisfied until Coy's case results in a conviction.
"We are gonna make sure that all four convictions happen," daughter Karissa Hill said at a press conference Thursday. "That's what we want and that's what we're shooting for."
A mother holds her child as they surrender to U.S. Border Patrol agents. (photo: David J. Phillip/AP)
US Citizen Newborns Sent to Mexico Under Trump-Era Border Ban
Tanvi Misra, Guardian UK
Misra writes: "At least 11 migrant women were dropped off in Mexican border towns without birth certificates for their days-old US citizen newborns since March of last year, an investigation by the Fuller Project and the Guardian has found."
t least 11 migrant women were dropped off in Mexican border towns without birth certificates for their days-old US citizen newborns since March of last year, an investigation by the Fuller Project and the Guardian has found.
Based on multiple conversations with lawyers who work with asylum seekers at the border and a review of hospital records and legal documents, multiple US citizen newborns were removed to Mexico after their mothers were subject to a Trump-era border ban that the Biden-Harris administration has been slow to rescind.
Advocates suspect the actual number of such cases could be higher because the vast majority of these fast-track “expulsions”, as the administration calls them, have occurred away from the public eye and without the involvement of lawyers.
This recent pattern of removal of US citizens without birth certificates has occurred against the backdrop of immigration policies and practices in recent years that have harmed already vulnerable women and children, advocates and lawyers say.
Former president Donald Trump’s administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, which resulted in more than 5,000 children being separated from parents, and the rise in prolonged detention of children were the most visible policies, but represented only the tip of the iceberg. Homeland security agencies also detained 4,600 pregnant women between 2016 and 2018, with the number increasing by 52% between those two years. Several detained women have also complained of miscarriages and intrusive medical procedures.
Hélène*, a 23-year-old woman from Haiti, was nine months pregnant when she crossed into the United States in July 2020. She was in the custody of the US border patrol when her water broke. Agency officials transported her to a local hospital in Chula Vista, California, to give birth. She was happy when her baby girl was born – that everything went smoothly, she told the Fuller Project and the Guardian in a phone conversation through a translator.
Three days later, they were discharged. Hélène remembers thinking that she would be released to family and allowed to pursue her asylum case, she said. But 25 or so minutes later, she was back in Mexico, at the very border she arrived at a few days ago, pregnant at the height of summer, after a journey that lasted one month and three days. Panicking, she began to cry. She pleaded in Spanish to the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers who had driven her across the border. She knew they understood, she says. The officers did not respond.
They dropped her off across from the San Diego-Tijuana border, on the side of the road. She had no idea what to do or where to go. She also didn’t have her newborn’s birth certificate. When night fell, she and her baby slept right there on the street, on the other side of safety.
Hélène was subject to Title 42, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention order issued during the beginning of the government’s federal actions against the Covid-19 pandemic last March. The rule allowed CBP officials to summarily “expel” all migrants who entered the US without authorization, instead of letting them access the legal avenue to request protection, even those seeking asylum.
Fast deportations have happened before at the border but typically immigrants have had the right to be screened for asylum claims and to see an immigration judge if they are likely to face harm upon removal. Title 42 allows authorities to turn away people summarily. However, officials can exempt people on a case-by-case basis and grant entry in case of humanitarian or public interest considerations.
“Immigration [agencies have] the authority to be able to prevent that from happening but they’re refusing to do that,” said Luis M Gonzalez, a lawyer with the Jewish Family Services, who has represented two cases in which migrant mothers and their US citizen newborns were expelled. “They are placing [the] lives of US citizens in danger. In this case, newborns.”
In fiscal year 2020, CBP reported over 200,000 expulsions – including unaccompanied children – were turned back under the Title 42. In the first three months of fiscal year 2021 alone, expulsions have exceeded 190,000, to date. The Trump administration hailed Title 42 as “tremendously effective”.
On 2 February, Joe Biden issued an executive order directing his officials to “promptly review” Title 42 among other border policies. But advocates have been frustrated that more decisive, quicker action hasn’t already been taken. On 29 January, a three-judge panel comprising conservative judges appointed by Trump overturned a lower court decision to block the rule from applying to unaccompanied minors.
In a statement Tuesday, Omar Jadwat, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, called it “troubling” that Biden’s orders “did not include immediate action to rescind and unwind more of the unlawful and inhumane policies that this administration inherited – and now owns”.
A CBP spokesperson, who asked the information she provided be attributed to the agency, said the agency does not track how many women with US citizen newborns were subject to Title 42 and declined to answer other questions about such cases. “Per policy, CBP does not comment on individual cases due to privacy reasons,” the spokesperson, who asked not to be named, said via email.
They added: “Hospitals are responsible for providing birth certificates and CBP does not hinder individuals, regardless of immigrations status, from acquiring birth certificates for US citizen children.”
CBP also told a local reporter last year that at least one new mother from Honduras was given the option to give her baby up to US child services before returning to Mexico.
“That’s not really a choice,” said Mitra Ebadolahi of the American Civil Liberties Union of San Diego, who along with Gonzalez from Jewish Family Services, filed a complaint to the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General last summer asking for an investigation into the case of this Honduran mother.
The Honduran woman, her husband and their nine-year-old, had turned themselves in to border patrol agents last June when the woman was nine months pregnant. The family had already been turned back to Mexico once in March before Title 42 came into effect. During their time in Mexico, they were threatened by armed men and “endured significant personal and material insecurity”, according to the 10 July complaint.
The woman, experiencing acute pain due to her late-term pregnancy, was taken to the hospital in Chula Vista, California, while her partner and son were expelled to Tijuana, Mexico, a city the state department itself notes is a hot spot for targeted homicides and turf wars. Two days later, the woman and her baby were also sent to Tijuana.
In another case Gonzalez represented, a migrant woman who had undergone a C-section, an invasive procedure that takes weeks to heal, was nevertheless removed to Mexico within the week of her surgery, along with her newborn. Gonzalez later successfully petitioned authorities to allow both families to enter on humanitarian grounds.
“I know it’s cliche, but there’s a very Kafkaesque quality to these processes that really scrubs out the humanity of the migrants’ experiences,” Ebadolahi said. “I have struggled to come up with language that adequately conveys the harm and the damage done.”
Natalia*, 24, wakes up in her apartment in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, across the border from McAllen, Texas, where she gave birth to her baby girl last April. Throughout the day, she takes care of the baby and her four-year-old son. If she is able to get to America in the future, the first thing she wants to do is get her hands on her toddler’s birth certificate, which she still didn’t possess in early January when she last spoke to the Guardian.
Issues can arise for mothers in her position: they can have a hard time getting their children vaccinated and registered for early education, and have issues obtaining food assistance and other government benefits, said Nicole Ramos, director of Al Otro Lado’s Border Rights Project, a legal services organization for migrants.
“For all intents and purposes, that child is stateless, which is going to create a whole host of barriers … because they’re unable to establish citizenship,” said Ramos, who says her organization has dealt with nine such cases including Hélène’s and Natalia’s.
In the last two years, camps have mushroomed along the US-Mexico border to house families stuck in limbo due to Trump’s border policies, who struggle with access to basic services like food, clean water and medical help.
Human Rights First, an advocacy organization, has documented more than 1,300 cases of violent assaults, kidnappings, rapes and murders among migrants placed in the Migrant Protection Protocols – through which migrants are made to wait in Mexico for their US court hearings, now suspended during the pandemic.
Through this time, border shelters in Mexico have become more strained and hospitals more crowded. Desperate, many migrants have tried to cross into the United States again, only to be sent back under Title 42.
All of these policies put people who have already suffered significant trauma through repetitive cycles of harm, advocates say.
“It has become really clear that the right to life protection of the children is about protecting white, Christian children … not about brown children born to immigrant mothers,” Ramos says.
On 3 February, the Washington Post reported Mexico revealed, not publicly, they would stop accepting Central American families expelled by the US, but would continue to accept single adults.
In January, as Natalia’s baby girl cooed and fussed, she said she’d like Americans to know: border officials told her before her expulsion to Reynosa that her daughter would not be able to get a birth certificate because she was born to parents who were migrants without rights. Her daughter would not have rights either, they said.
In addition to concerns about COVID safety, workers at Amazon have expressed frustration about impossibly high productivity expectations and are therefore starting to unionize. (photo: Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)
The Fight to Organize Amazon Is a Fight for Racial Justice
Nora De La Cour, Jacobin
De La Cour writes: "Jeff Bezos joined Black Lives Matters' calls for racial justice last year. But Amazon workers in the majority-black town of Bessemer, Alabama are trying to unionize - and Amazon has fought them tooth and nail."
ast spring and summer, we heard impassioned calls for racial justice reverberate through the mainstream media. Self-styled anti-racism experts surged to the top of the New York Times bestseller list. CEOs declared they would “stand with” “the Black community” and pledged eye-popping sums for so-called racial justice programs.
Never one to miss the zeitgeist, Amazon CEO, and multi-multi-billionaire Jeff Bezos leapt on board, tweeting support for his black employees and donating $10 million to “combat[ting] systemic racism.” Amazon inserted a “Black Voices” tab into its streaming service and put money behind projects like the recently released One Night in Miami. Bezos publicly scolded racist Amazon customers, winning widespread praise.
But what story might Bezos’s warehouse workers tell, were they to be released from their nondisclosure agreements?
The Union Campaign in Bessemer
On February 8, ballots will be mailed out to some six thousand Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama who will begin voting on whether to join the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (RWDSU). If enough vote in favor, the Bessemer Robotics Sortable Fulfillment Center will make history as the first unionized Amazon facility in the United States.
Despite its best efforts, Amazon has had to contend with a partially organized labor force in Europe, where unions have won some pro-worker concessions. But in the United States, Amazon has successfully thwarted unionization using a range of tactics, including hiring intelligence analysts to track “labor organizing threats,” spying on employees’ interactions in closed Facebook groups, and training managers to observe and report “early signs” of organizing such as increased camaraderie between workers and the use of terms like “living wage.”
The last time Amazon faced a union election at a US facility was in 2014, when tech workers in Middletown, Delaware voted against joining the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers following a barrage of pressure tactics from Amazon. The retail giant has mounted a similarly aggressive campaign to extinguish the current union challenge.
Bessemer warehouse workers told the American Prospect that they faced threats of job loss for their involvement with RWDSU, and Bloomberg reported this week that employees are being ordered to attend meetings where management pushes anti-union propaganda. The company has hired the same high-powered anti-union law firm, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, that helped it undercut the organizing effort in Delaware.
Last November, RWDSU petitioned the National Labor Relations Board to hold an election at the Bessemer facility, asking the federal body to include fifteen hundred workers in the bargaining unit. Amazon successfully negotiated to expand the unit to encompass seasonal employees, and those hired to perform safety training and medical care, making it one of the largest-scale efforts to organize private sector employees in recent US history.
Although the bigger unit makes the union’s task more challenging, RWDSU went along with the move, suggesting organizers believe they have enough momentum to run a successful community-wide campaign. There’s some reason for optimism: RWDSU has a long history in the South and currently represents some seventy-five hundred poultry workers in Alabama, meaning that local members have been able to help with the union’s BAmazon campaign.
Amazon has fought hard for the union vote to be held in person, which would make it impossible for sick workers to participate. In a January 15 decision, an NLRB official called Amazon’s claims that in-person voting would be safe “not persuasive.” Amazon has appealed that decision; the board’s response is expected shortly.
In addition to concerns about COVID safety, workers have expressed frustration about impossibly high productivity expectations. Once a picking or stowing job is assigned, workers are given a number of seconds to complete it. Computers record whether they finish in time, and Amazon uses that data to discipline or fire people.
While bathroom breaks are not explicitly prohibited, the expectation that workers prepare four hundred items for delivery in a single hour creates a situation where employees feel they are risking their jobs when they use the bathroom or tend to other human needs. It’s no wonder that reports have proliferated of Amazon workers peeing in bottles to avoid the cost of a break.
An Issue of Racial Justice
Bessemer, a southwestern suburb of Birmingham, is a poor, majority-black town. Over a quarter of its residents fall below the federal poverty line. The state’s minimum wage is just $7.25.
At the Amazon plant, the work speedups make it difficult to breathe, much less take stock of one’s situation. The pandemic has interfered with workers’ ability to connect socially. Their employer is a viciously anti-union company that operates more like an empire than a firm — “a modern-day East India Company,” as Natasha Lennard called it.
Progressive International calculated that Jeff Bezos could personally afford to pay a $105,000 bonus to all of Amazon’s 1.2 million employees and still be as rich as he was before the pandemic. Instead, he is building a massive clock in a hollowed-out mountainside.
Yet despite the odds, workers have been managed to get “sufficient showing” to qualify for an election. One of the likely reasons is that RWDSU has imbued its campaign with the spirit of racial justice.
Its organizing drive, which is headed by mostly black union members from poultry plants in the region, is based on reaching out to the Bessemer warehouse workers, many of whom are also black, with a clear message: you deserve to be treated fairly. “I am telling them they are part of a movement that is worldwide,” Michael Foster, an organizer and poultry worker, told the New York Times. “I want them to know that we are important and we do matter.” The BAmazon website urges workers to “with[stand] management’s tricks,” and move forward together to force the company to give workers a “seat at the table” and accord them the respect and dignity they deserve.
Amazon’s anti-union website, meanwhile, features a cartoon puppy dancing in front of a turntable and images of workers with various complexions grinning behind their masks. The site encourages workers to “stay friendly” by rejecting a “restrictive” dues-paying relationship with the union.
The private intimidation tactics have been less comical. One RWDSU organizer told the Times that an unidentified man at the Bessemer facility used a racist slur when attempting to make her leave her post outside the warehouse — a threat freighted with bloody precedents in a region where anti-unionism and white supremacist violence have long gone hand in hand.
Union organizers are working to build strength in the face of this intimidation the same way civil rights organizers sought to topple Jim Crow in the face of white terrorism. Their tool is solidarity. Speaking of workers who are fearful of management’s reaction to the campaign, Foster told the Times, “We want to show them we are not leaving them until this is done.”
Civil Rights Unionism at Amazon
Following the murder of George Floyd and the explosion of Black Lives Matter protests last summer, there was much talk about the need to dismantle systems of white supremacy. But corporate America’s squishy pledges to fight a hazily undefined “racism” are hollow and profit-driven. The anti-racism programs that come from employers often just consolidate bosses’ power over workers. Bestselling anti-racism authors purport to have answers, but their earning power depends upon the persistence of the problem.
So what does fighting racism actually look like? How do we take aim at the villains who offer false words of anti-racist solidarity while profiting from the dehumanization of a disproportionately black and brown workforce? How do we change the structures that oppress people?
Worker organizing at the Bessemer fulfillment center is one example of what true racial justice organizing can look like. People from different backgrounds are teaming up to contest Amazon’s exploitation of workers in a majority-black city. They are challenging a tech giant so muscular it makes their local politicians swoon. They are demanding conditions befitting their humanity. And in so doing, they are striving to take power back from a company that aids law enforcement in inflicting violence on communities of color, allows slavery in its supply chains, and perpetuates deadly environmental racism.
If Amazon actually thought black lives mattered, the company would have already voluntarily recognized the union. But workers in Bessemer just might get their union in spite of the company’s threats — and perhaps even spread their model of “civil rights unionism” to the rest of the country.
Anger has grown in Myanmar since the coup that overthrew the country's civilian leaders. (photo: AFP)
Myanmar Blocks Twitter, Instagram in Tightening Crackdown
Bloomberg News
Excerpt: "Myanmar's military-run government throttled internet access and ordered service providers to block Twitter and Instagram, tightening a crackdown to stifle dissent and curb communication after this week's coup."
A government directive requires all mobile operators to temporarily shut down the data network, though voice and short-message services remain open, Telenor Myanmar said in a statement on Saturday. Another order added the two social media platforms to the existing prohibition on Facebook.
The internet blackout came as videos emerged online appearing to show fresh street protests in commercial capital Yangon. Myo Swe, an official at the communications ministry, didn’t pick up calls seeking comment.
Aung San Suu Kyi has called on supporters to resist the generals after being unseated in the Feb. 1 coup. The military seized power after claiming, without presenting evidence, that her landslide victory in November’s election was tainted with fraud. It pledged polls after a yearlong state of emergency.
The takeover has been criticized by many countries. The U.S., China and other members of the United Nations Security Council called Thursday for the “immediate release” of all those detained in Myanmar while emphasizing the need for the “continued support of the democratic transition” there.
At the same time, Myanmar’s military leaders -- some of whom were already sanctioned by the Trump administration for a brutal crackdown on Rohingya Muslims -- remain on good terms with China.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken pressed China on Friday to “join the international community in condemning the military coup,” while China’s top diplomat Yang Jiechi reiterated that the international community should create a favorable environment to solve the problem.
Telenor Myanmar, one of two wholly foreign-owned mobile operators in the country, said the order to close the data network referenced “circulation of fake news, stability of the nation and interest of the public.” Telenor added that freedom of expression should be “maintained at all times, especially during times of conflict.”
A Twitter spokesperson said it was “deeply concerned about the order to block internet services in Myanmar.”
The military has detained Suu Kyi and Reuters reported Saturday that Sean Turnell, an Australian who advised her on economic matters, was also being held. Efforts to reach him by mobile phone were unsuccessful.
The Australian government said it was very concerned about reports of the arbitrary detention of Australian and other foreign nationals, adding it was providing consular assistance to a number of its citizens and had “serious concerns” about one detained at a police station.
The military ruled Myanmar for a half a century before Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party scored a landslide victory in elections in 2015. The nation and Suu Kyi’s image were later badly damaged by the violent crackdown against Rohingya that prompted accusations of genocide.
The Agusan Marsh Wildlife Sanctuary. (photo: Louie Pacardo/A Nomad's Perspectives)
The World's Wetlands Are Slipping Away. This Vibrant Sanctuary Underscores the Stakes.
Sarah Gibbens, National Geographic
Gibbens writes: "In the lush, bright-green thickets of the Philippine's Agusan Marsh, nestled in the country's far south Mindanao island, children steer canoes through meandering waterways and swim in lakes."
It’s been 50 years since an international treaty to protect wetlands was created but, around the world, wetlands are still disappearing three times faster than forests.
The marsh is a playground, as well as a source of food, shelter, and culture for the Manobo Indigenous tribe that lives there in moored floating houses that rise and fall with the rainy seasons. For hundreds of years, this wetland ecosystem has been a veritable paradise for the Manobo people who make a living there hunting and fishing. The more than 100,000 inland acres is also home to nearly 200 species of birds, as well as mammals, reptiles, and fish living in the region.
The Agusan Marsh represents everything wetlands can offer—storm protection, food security, biodiversity, carbon storage—but also the large challenges they face.
Upstream pollution, climate change, and habitat destruction threaten the sanctity of this ecosystem. Pollutants from mining operations and palm oil plantations compromise water quality, and critical, carbon-rich peatlands are being drained and burned to make room for more palm oil, rice, and corn.
Fifty years ago today, on February 2, 1971, representatives of 18 nations meeting in Ramsar, Iran, adopted the Convention on Wetlands, also called the Ramsar Convention, a treaty aimed at conserving wetlands around the world. Today, 171 countries have signed the treaty. But since 1971, more than 35 percent of the world’s wetlands have been drained for urban development or agriculture, polluted, paved over, or lost to sea level rise.
February 2 remains a day devoted to calling attention to the plight of wetlands, and this year, World Wetlands Day is highlighting them as a critical source of freshwater at a time when that commodity is becoming ever more scarce.
“Wetlands and their species and ecosystems services are still in decline, and that is after 50 years of concerted international effort through the contracting parties to the Convention. Something more is needed,” says Max Finlayson, an author of a 2018 report that assessed the state of the world’s wetlands.
What are wetlands and what do they do?
Wetlands comprise a diverse array of ecosystems that are either flooded permanently or seasonally. They’re often along the coast, in the form of grassy marshes or mangrove forests, but can also be further inland, like forested swamps or peat bogs where water collects and saturates the ground. They’re often fed by rivers and tributaries and contain lakes.
In Agusan, freshwater marshes are surrounded by forested swamps, peatland, rivers, and 59 lakes.
“I think they’ve suffered for a long time from the perception as muddy, buggy areas that didn’t have a lot of value,” says Jennifer Howard, Senior Director of Conservation International’s Blue Carbon Program. “We’ve shown recently you’re very hard pressed to find an ecosystem that’s more productive, that has all the environmental and climate benefits rolled into one.”
It’s estimated that nearly a billion people depend on wetlands for a living in some way—be it farming, fishing, tourism, or transportation—and around 40 percent of the world’s species breed in wetlands or use them as nurseries.
Wetlands are also an important source of “green” infrastructure. Like a levee that shield a town from a hurricane, coastal wetlands lessen the damage from powerful storms, helping to control flooding by blocking incoming storm surges, while reducing the impact from wind. One recent study found that one lost hectare (about 2.5 acres) of coastal wetland increased the cost of damage from major storms by $33,000 on average.
While forests are often described as the “lungs of the Earth” because they’re important sources of oxygen, wetlands are described as the kidneys because they filter upstream pollutants.
When a wetland disappears, it’s like pulling a linchpin out of a healthy environment. As pollutants and sediments float downriver, “wetlands grab all that and hold onto it,” says Howard. “Sediments are a detriment to coral reefs, and when wetlands disappear, they can choke corals.”
To mitigate the effects of climate change, we need to do more than just reduce our emissions, say scientists. We also need to conserve large areas of land like forests, grasslands, and wetlands, which help remove carbon from the atmosphere by containing it in their roots and locking it in the soil. These types of environments are called “carbon sinks,” and globally, they store millions of tons of carbon every year.
Wetlands are “one of the few ecosystems that goes from being a super-efficient [carbon] sink to a source of carbon emissions if it’s damaged,” says Howard. It’s estimated that cumulatively, wetlands contain a third of the carbon stored in soil and biomass on land. When wetlands disappear, that carbon is released into the atmosphere.
Issues in Agusan
How wetlands should be conserved and what it will take to do so is no mystery, say environmentalists. The hard part is drumming up enough political will and money.
The Philippines declared the Agusan Marsh Wildlife Sanctuary a protected area in 1996. It spans approximately 101,000 acres. On the international level, it’s recognized as both a “wetland of international importance” under the Ramsar Convention and Heritage Park by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
Yet the last Asian Waterbird Census of the park’s birds, done in 2020, found an overall 11 percent decrease in the past year; 17,780 from 72 different species were counted, as opposed to over 20,000 in 2019. Overall bird counts had been trending up since the census began in 2014, especially as the park expanded its census staff and added new monitoring stations, but a drought in 2019 is thought to have left birds with fewer feeding grounds.
Ibonia says the park needs more resources to accurately track the marsh’s many species.
“The park lacks technical capacity to carry out all its mandate due to very limited manpower resources,” says Emmilie Ibonia, the protected area superintendent for the Agusan Marsh Wildlife Sanctuary. She writes via email that only about nine employees are contracted to manage the park.
As parts of the wetland dry out from drought or from draining by agricultural companies, the park’s protectors must also now contend with forest fires. In 2019 and 2020, an estimated 240 acres of peatland and swamp forests were burned. But Ibonia says they lack the fire-fighting equipment to suppress them.
Solutions in Agusan and globally
One of the biggest hurdles to conserving wetlands is changing how people think about them, says Howard.
For example, when given the choice between turning oceanfront property into a lucrative hotel or leaving a muddy expanse of marshland untouched, it can be hard to convince people to do the latter, she says.
In a paper published last year, a group of scientists argued that wetlands should be granted legal rights.
“Recognizing rights of nature, including for wetlands, may not be conventional in the minds of some, but equally we have seen a transition in the recognition of the rights of people in recent history,” says Finlayson, one of the study’s authors. The Yurok Tribe on the U.S. West Coast bestowed legal rights on the Klamath River in 2019.
Despite little progress in the past 50 years, conservationists are hopeful that the movement to save wetlands could finally gain traction. Wetland ecosystems have become popular contenders for carbon offset programs, in which polluters offset their carbon emissions by paying to conserve stored carbon elsewhere.
“From the private sector, demand for this carbon offset outstrips supply by a lot,” says Howard. “People realize this is a good thing we want to invest in.”
Martha Rojas Urrego, who oversees the Convention on Wetlands as its secretary general, thinks that despite an overall loss in the amount of wetlands since 1971, the world could be at a turning point in its appreciation of them. The current pandemic has raised awareness of the importance of nature, she says, as scientists warn that destroying critical wildlife habitat could lead to the emergence of more viruses like the one that causes COVID-19.
“Increasingly, we have seen that there is a recognition of the link between nature and people,” Rojas Urrego says. “This is a tragic situation that we are living in, at the same time it is showing what we do to nature has an impact on us.”
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