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23 April 21
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Greta Thunberg | Why We Must Do More to Tackle the Climate Crisis
ALSO SEE: Greta Thunberg Blasts Congress for Climate Inaction:
'You Get Away With It Now'
Greta Thunberg, Vogue
Thunberg writes: "On Earth Day 2021, April 22nd, at the Leaders' Climate Summit led by United States president Joe Biden, countries will present their new climate commitments, including net-zero by 2050."
Greta Thunberg was just 15 when she began her weekly protests outside the Swedish parliament in Stockholm in August 2018, unable to fathom why no one was talking about the gravity of the climate crisis we’re facing. Since then, the 18-year-old activist has sparked a global movement that has seen millions of people take to the streets, making her one of the most recognizable faces of the environmental cause worldwide.
Here, Thunberg explains why she wants our leaders to move beyond “big words and little action” when it comes to tackling the climate crisis.
n Earth Day 2021, April 22nd, at the Leaders’ Climate Summit led by United States president Joe Biden, countries will present their new climate commitments, including net-zero by 2050. They will call these hypothetical targets ambitious. However, when you compare the overall current best-available science to these insufficient, so-called “climate targets,” you can clearly see that there’s a gap—there are decades missing where drastic action must be taken.
Of course, we welcome all efforts to safeguard future and present living conditions. And these targets could be a great start if it wasn’t for the tiny fact that they are full of gaps and loopholes. Such as leaving out emissions from imported goods, international aviation and shipping, as well as the burning of biomass, manipulating baseline data, excluding most feedback loops and tipping points, ignoring the crucial global aspect of equity and historic emissions, and making these targets completely reliant on fantasy or barely existing carbon-capturing technologies. But I don’t have time to go into all that now.
The point is that we can keep using creative carbon accounting and cheat in order to pretend that these targets are in line with what is needed. But we must not forget that while we can fool others and even ourselves, we cannot fool nature and physics. The emissions are still there, whether we choose to count them or not.
Still, as it is now, the people in power get away with it since the gap of awareness is so immense. And this is the heart of the problem. If you call these pledges and commitments “bold” or “ambitious,” then you clearly haven’t fully understood the emergency we are in.
I’ve met with many world leaders and even they admit that their targets are not in line with their commitments. And that’s natural. They are only doing what they consider to be politically possible. Their job is to fulfill the wishes of voters, and if voters are not demanding real climate action, then of course no real changes will happen. And thankfully, this is how democracy works. Public opinion is what runs the free world. If we want change then we must spread awareness and make the seemingly impossible become possible.
We understand that the world is complex, that many are trying their best and that what is needed isn’t easy. And, of course, these very insufficient targets are better than nothing. But we cannot be satisfied with something just because it’s better than nothing. We have to go further than that. We must believe that we can do this, because we can. When we humans come together and decide to fulfill something, we can achieve almost anything.
When leaders now present these pledges, they admit that they surrender on the 1.5 degrees Celsius target. They are surrendering on their promises and on our futures. I don’t know about you, but I sure am not ready to give up. Not in a million years. We will keep fighting for a safe future. Every fraction of a degree matters and will always matter.
You may call us naive for believing change is possible, and that’s fine. But at least we’re not so naive that we believe that things will be solved by countries and companies making vague, distant, insufficient targets without any real pressure from the media and the general public.
The gap between what needs to be done and what we are actually doing is widening by the minute. The gap between the urgency needed and the current level of awareness and attention is becoming more and more absurd. And the gap between our so-called climate targets and the overall, current best-available science should no longer be possible to ignore.
These gaps of action, awareness, and time are the biggest elephant that has ever found itself inside any room. Until we can address this gap, no real change is possible. And no solutions will be found.
Our emperors are naked—let’s call them out. And please, mind the gap.
Supreme Court building. (photo: Getty)
Nina Totenberg | Supreme Court Rejects Restrictions on Life Without Parole for Juveniles
Nina Totenberg, NPR
Totenberg writes: "The U.S. Supreme Court's new conservative majority made a U-turn on Thursday, ruling by a 6-3 vote, that a judge need not make a finding of 'permanent incorrigibility' before sentencing a juvenile offender to life without parole."
It was the first time in almost two decades that the high court has deviated from rules establishing more leniency for juvenile offenders, even those convicted of murder.
At the center of the case was Brett Jones, now 31, who was 15 when he stabbed his grandfather to death during a fight about Jones' girlfriend. He was convicted of murder, and a judge sentenced him to life without parole.
"In such a case, a discretionary sentencing system is both constitutionally necessary and constitutionally sufficient," the court's conservative justices wrote.
Writing for the majority, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said: "As this case again demonstrates, any homicide, and particularly a homicide committed by an individual under 18, is a horrific tragedy for all involved and for all affected."
He added: "Determining the proper sentence in such a case raises profound questions of morality and social policy. The States, not the federal courts, make those broad moral and policy judgments in the first instance when enacting their sentencing laws. And state sentencing judges and juries then determine the proper sentence in individual cases in light of the facts and circumstances of the offense, and the background of the offender."
Over the past two decades, the law on juvenile sentencing has changed significantly. The Supreme Court — primed by research that shows the brains of juveniles are not fully developed, and that they are likely to lack impulse control — has issued a half dozen opinions holding that juveniles are less culpable than adults for their acts. And the court has also ruled that some of the harshest punishments for acts committed by children are unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment.
After striking down the death penalty for juvenile offenders, the court, in a series of decisions, limited life without parole sentences to the rarest cases — those juvenile offenders convicted of murder who are so incorrigible that there is no hope for their rehabilitation.
But all of those decisions were issued when the makeup of the court was quite different than it is now. This case was the first time the court has heard arguments in a juvenile sentencing case with three Trump appointees on the bench, including new Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who replaced the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Previously, Justice Anthony Kennedy, who retired in 2018, repeatedly was the deciding vote in cases involving life sentences and other harsh punishments for juvenile offenders. But with Kennedy retired and replaced by Kavanaugh, and with Ginsburg replaced by Barrett, the court in this case indicated that it is not inclined to go the extra mile to protect juvenile offenders from the harshest punishments.
"It's like the wind was blowing one way and now it's blowing in the opposite direction," says Donald Ayer, a former prosecutor and deputy attorney general in Republican administrations. He and other former prosecutors and judges, including two former Republican U.S. Attorneys General, filed a brief siding with Jones in this case.
Jones was originally sentenced to life without parole in 2004, but when the Supreme Court ruled that those, like Jones, who committed crimes when they were minors could not be automatically sentenced to life terms, he had to be resentenced. By then, he had spent a decade in prison, had graduated from high school, and earned a record as a model prisoner.
At his resentencing hearing, the judge did consider Jones' youth at the time of the crime, but again sentenced him to life without parole. The judge did not make any finding that Jones was so incorrigible that he had no hope of rehabilitation.
Jones' lawyer appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, contending that consideration of a defendant's youth is not enough and that Jones, now in his 30s, should have at least a chance at parole because he has shown he is capable of rehabilitation.
Twenty-five states ban life without parole for juveniles entirely. And six more states do not have anyone serving that sentence for a crime committed when a juvenile. But 19 states do allow life without parole for juvenile murderers.
In a withering dissent Thursday, Justice Sonia Sotomayor used language from Justice Kavanaugh's past opinions to write that the court's decision was "an abrupt break from precedent." She accused he majority of using "contortions" and "distortions" to "circumvent" legal precedent. The majority, she said, "is fooling no one."
The court's previous rulings, she wrote, require that most children be spared from punishments that give "no chance for fulfillment outside prison walls" and "no hope." She quoted Jones as saying at his resentencing hearing, "I've pretty much taken every avenue that I could possibly take ... to rehabilitate myself ... I can't change what I've done. I can just try to show ... I've become a grown man."
Thursday's ruling will certainly make it more difficult for juvenile offenders like Jones to show judges they deserve another chance at freedom somewhere down the road, says Cardozo Law School's Kathryn Miller. "It's going to be much harder to convince judges" that evidence of rehabilitation is relevant, she says.
"A lot of times these judges really want to still focus on the facts of the crime" even though it is years or decades later, she said. "They're not interested in the rehabilitation narrative."
Neither, it seems, is the newly constituted conservative Supreme Court majority.
Supporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal gather outside the Criminal Justice Center. where a hearing in Common Pleas Court on a challenge to his conviction was being held. (photo: Jessica Griffin/Philadelphia Inquirer)
'Shackled to a Bed': UN Human Rights Experts Condemn US Treatment of Mumia Abu-Jamal
Azad Essa, Middle East Eye
Essa writes: "Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther member, in jail since 1981, has been subject to 'unnecessary suffering,' UN experts say."
n Tuesday, progressive movements and proponents of the Black Lives Matter movement breathed a sigh of relief when a 12-member jury in Minneapolis found Derek Chauvin guilty of murdering George Floyd, the unarmed Black man whose death sparked a movement against police brutality in the US and across the world last year.
Commemorations took place at the road intersection in Minneapolis where bystanders had pleaded with Chauvin, 45, to remove his knee from Floyd's neck.
Further rallies were planned for Wednesday across major cities in the US, as activists looked to draw attention to a rare indictment and conviction of a police officer accused of killing someone while on duty.
But just as politicians took to social media and network television to discuss how the verdict might reinvigorate America's long walk towards redressing racial injustice, a group of UN human rights experts issued a scathing statement about the conditions under which an an elderly and ailing African American man is being held in a Pennsylvania prison.
The UN High Commission of Human Rights said in a statement that Mumia Abu-Jamal, a 67-year-old former Black Panther member and journalist, in jail for allegedly killing a police officer in 1981, was shackled to a hospital bed and subject to "unnecessary suffering" in conditions it described as "deplorable".
"This ongoing and continuing cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, including deliberate disregard of his dignity and inhumane conditions of confinement, is a clear violation of Mr Abu-Jamal's most fundamental rights," the experts added.
"International standards on the treatment of prisoners clearly stipulate that instruments of restraint are to be imposed only when no lesser form of control would be effective to address the risks posed by unrestricted movement," the statement read.
Maria A Bivens, press secretary for the Department of Correctional Services (DOC) in Pennsylvania, told Middle East Eye that the DOC was "following all legal and internal policies and procedures as it relates to the health and well-being of inmate Abu-Jamal."
"Because of confidentiality, I cannot address certain statements in the release that are inaccurate," Bivens said.
Meanwhile, activists following Abu-Jamal's situation accused authorities of trying to accelerate his death.
"It does appear like an attempt to try and kill him in prison," Suzanne Ross, an activist and long time supporter of Abu-Jamal, told MEE.
"The United States gets a way with a lot of things. There is a huge prevalence of police brutality. So many Black people have been killed by the police. Everyone is making a fuss about the jury finding Chauvin guilty, when it is such an exception to the rule."
"And you cannot be fooled by that. They gonna play this up by showing that America is great.
"I think its very significant that this UN report came out on the same day as the conviction and it shows a greater determination to do something about these crimes in the US," Ross added.
Always maintained innocence
Abu-Jamal was a part-time cab driver and journalist who wrote critical pieces about the ways in which the police treated MOVE, a Black radical group based in Philadelphia.
In 1981, he was arrested for the murder of a police officer named Daniel Faulkner.
Abu-Jamal has always maintained his innocence, with his supporters claiming he was framed by the Philadelphia police department; his case reportedly tangled in a series of irregularities.
Following a series of appeals, in 2011, his death sentence was commuted to life in prison, though he remained mostly in solitary confinement.
For years prior to the case, Abu-Jamal was reportedly targeted by the FBI's COINTELPRO programme which sought to interfere and discredit political dissidents, such as the Black Panthers. During his trial, Joe Davidson, president of the Association of Black Journalists, accused the media of being obsessed with his religion and political beliefs.
In 2000, Amnesty International published a 31-page report in which it concluded that "the proceedings used to convict and sentence Mumia Abu-Jamal to death were in violation of minimum international standards that govern fair trial procedures and the use of the death penalty [...] the interests of justice would best be served by the granting of a new trial to Mumia Abu-Jamal."
According to the UN statement, Abu-Jamal was not only denied visits from his family and lawyers, he was also placed in an undisclosed hospital for heart surgery that took place last week.
"The department does notify inmate designated next-of-kin of health updates regarding incarcerated individuals who are out of the facility for certain medical procedures. In addition, the department has allowed for inmates to talk to their families while hospitalized," Bivens from the DOC, said.
Abu-Jamal also suffers from cirrhosis of the liver caused by Hepatitis C, a severe skin condition, as well as hypertension. He also contracted Covid-19 in late February.
On Tuesday, Ross told MEE that their demands remained the same.
"We want him to be treated with dignity while he is in their care, but we still want him to be released because he is innocent," Ross said.
"When Barack Obama was president, our movement unravelled a little because of the excitement around a Black president being in charge. I am happy that people are a lot less naive about Biden's ability to change things... there isn't the same seduction as there was with Obama.
"There are thousands of people like Mumia in prison, so when we struggle for Mumia, we are struggling for everybody," Ross added.
Scores of row houses burn in a fire in the west Philadelphia neighborhood. Police dropped a bomb on the militant group MOVE's home on May 13, 1985, in an attempt to arrest members, leading to the burning of scores of homes in the neighborhood. (photo: AP)
Bones of Black Children Killed in 1985 MOVE Bombing Were Used in Ivy League Anthropology Courses
Ed Pilkington, Guardian UK
Pilkington writes: "The bones of Black children who died in 1985 after their home was bombed by Philadelphia police in a confrontation with the Black liberation group which was raising them are being used as a 'case study' in an online forensic anthropology course presented by an Ivy League professor."
Remains of those killed in 1985 Move bombing in Philadelphia serve as ‘case study’ in Princeton-backed course
he bones of Black children who died in 1985 after their home was bombed by Philadelphia police in a confrontation with the Black liberation group which was raising them are being used as a “case study” in an online forensic anthropology course presented by an Ivy League professor.
It has emerged that the physical remains of one, or possibly two, of the children who were killed in the aerial bombing of the Move organization in May 1985 have been guarded over the past 36 years in the anthropological collections of the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton.
The institutions have held on to the heavily burned fragments, and since 2019 have been deploying them for teaching purposes without the permission of the deceased’s living parents.
To the astonishment and dismay of present-day Move members, some of the bones are being deployed as artifacts in an online course presented in the name of Princeton and hosted by the online study platform Coursera. Real Bones: Adventures in Forensic Anthropology focuses on “lost personhood” – cases where an individual cannot be identified due to the decomposed condition of their remains.
It uses as its main “case study” the events of May 1985, producing as prime evidence a set of bones belonging to a girl in her teens retrieved from the ashes of the Move house at 6221 Osage Avenue in Philadelphia.
The revelation comes just days before Philadelphia stages its first official day of remembrance over the 1985 bombing, following a formal apology issued by the city council last year.
The disclosure, first reported by the local news outlet Billy Penn, also lands in the middle of a fevered debate over academia’s handling of African American remains that has been rocket-charged by the nationwide racial reckoning in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis last year by a police officer.
On 13 May 1985, Philadelphia police dropped a bomb from a helicopter on to the roof of a communal house occupied by members of Move, an organization that bore comparison to the Black Panthers combined with back-to-nature environmental activism. In the ensuing inferno, the Move house as well as the entire surrounding neighborhood was razed to the ground.
Eleven people linked to the group were killed. Among them were five children, aged seven to 14.
Last year the city apologized formally for the “immeasurable and enduring harm” caused in the bombing, paving the way to this year’s inaugural commemoration.
The forensic anthropology course in which the bones of a Move child are being used has almost 5,000 enrolled students. It was filmed in February 2019 and is taught by Janet Monge, an adjunct professor in anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania and a visiting professor in the same subject at Princeton.
The Move “case study” is broken up into five online videos, in which Monge relates the history of the 1985 catastrophe. In one video she picks up the bones and holds them up to the camera.
Monge describes the remains in vivid terms. They consist of two bones – a pelvis and femur – that belonged to a small girl probably in her teens that were discovered held together “because they were in a pair of jeans”.
The pelvis was cracked “where a beam of the house had actually fallen on this individual”. The fragment showed signs of burnt tendons around the hip joint.
“The bones are juicy, by which I mean you can tell they are the bones of a recently deceased individual,” Monge continues. “If you smell it, it doesn’t actually smell bad – it smells kind of greasy, like an older-style grease.”
The UPenn and Princeton academic does not inform her students that she is displaying the remains without permission of the girl’s family. She is, however, open about the tragic nature of the confrontation that led to the child’s death in Osage Avenue.
“It was one of the great tragedies, to witness the remains as they were found and moved from this location … I still feel unsettled by many aspects of it,” she says. She also shares with the class that Move continues to exist to this day: “The organization is still active in Philadelphia.”
The display of the human remains of a Black girl who would be in her forties today had she survived the police bombing that took her life is certain to intensify the debate over the way the remains of Black people are handled by academia. The subject has been a talking point for decades, but has intensified in recent months following the mass protests over Floyd’s death.
The Move bones have never positively been identified. But given their small size and features, they almost certainly belong to one of the older Move girls who died in the inferno.
The oldest was a 14-year-old called Tree Africa (all members of Move take the last name Africa to denote their collective commitment to Black liberation). Michael Africa Jr, a Move member who was a friend of Tree’s and who was six at the time of the bombing, described her as a responsible kid who, as her name suggested, was passionate about climbing trees.
“When we went to a park, the first thing she would do is scout out the biggest tree. She was always the first one up, and she always went the highest,” he told the Guardian.
Tree’s mother is Consuela Dotson Africa. At the time of the fire she was serving a 16-year prison sentence related to an earlier police confrontation with Move in 1978; she still lives in the Philadelphia area.
The other possible identification of the bones would be Delisha Africa, who was 12 in 1985. When she died, both her parents – Delbert Africa and Janet Africa – were similarly in prison in relation to the 1978 confrontation.
They were part of the so-called Move 9 who were each sentenced to 30 years to life for the contested shooting of a police officer.
Both Delisha’s parents were released from prison after more than 40 years behind bars. Delbert died last June, five months after he was paroled.
Janet was set free in 2019, just three months after Monge recorded her forensic anthropology course using bones that potentially belonged to Janet’s daughter. Janet Africa continues to be an active Move member living in Philadelphia.
Neither Janet nor Consuela have commented on the revelation that their daughters’ remains are possibly being used to teach online anthropology courses. But it is understood that neither of them gave their consent for them to be used that way.
“Nobody said you can do that, holding up their bones for the camera. That’s not how we process our dead. This is beyond words. The anthropology professor is holding the bones of a 14-year-old girl whose mother is still alive and grieving,” Michael Africa Jr said.
Africa Jr said that the discovery of the online course just days before the inaugural day of remembrance of the 1985 bombing was “such a shame, such a tragedy. After 36 years we find out that not only were these children abused and mistreated and bombed and burned, they haven’t even been allowed to rest in peace.”
The precise sequence of events relating to the Move bones remains sketchy. For years they sat in a cardboard box at the Penn Museum, part of the University of Pennsylvania where Monge is the leading bones expert.
It transpires that a Penn anthropologist, Alan Mann, acquired the remains after he was asked in the immediate aftermath of the bombing to provide specialist advice to the Philadelphia medical examiner in an attempt to identify the fragments. Mann kept possession of the bones, and in 2001 took them with him when he transferred to Princeton.
The remains appear to have shuttled between the two Ivy Leagues until 2019, when Monge, who had worked closely with Mann over many years, filmed her online course using the pelvis and femur fragments.
Where the bones are now located remains a mystery. The University of Pennsylvania told the Guardian that a set of remains of two bones from one individual, who has never been identified, “have been returned to the custody of Dr Mann at Princeton University”.
But Princeton told the Guardian that it had only become aware of the issue this week and insisted it was not in possession of the bones. “We can confirm that no remains of the victims of the Move bombing are being housed at Princeton University,” a spokesman said.
Monge did not respond to Guardian inquiries.
The controversy over the Move bones comes just a week after Penn Museum apologized for the “unethical possession of human remains” in its Samuel Morton Cranial collection.
The collection was compiled in the first half of the 19th century and used by Morton to justify white supremacist theories; it contained the remains of Black Philadelphians as well as 53 crania of enslaved people from Cuba and the US, which will now be repatriated or reburied.
Anthropologists and historians have become increasingly sensitive to the issues around the handling of remains. Michael Blakey, professor of anthropology at the College of William & Mary, was involved in the first reburial of African American bones from the Smithsonian Institution, which took place a year after the Move bombing, in 1986, and involved the remains of Black Philadelphians.
In the 1990s he directed the development of the African Burial Ground in New York, which was turned into a national monument following the full involvement of the local Black community. “We decided then we would not conduct any research without the permission of the community, and we created the precedent for informed consent involving any skeletal remains,” Blakey said.
The Guardian asked Blakey for his reaction to the news that anthropologists were still deploying African American bones in their teaching to this day in the absence of community permission. He replied: “The United States continues to operate on the basis of white privilege. What you are seeing here is the scientific manifestation of that – the objectification of the ‘other’, and the disempathy that is socialized in a society in which whites assume that they have control”.
The misuse of Black remains for scientific purposes has a long history in America. In 1989, construction workers in Augusta, Georgia, discovered almost 10,000 individual human bones under the former premises of the Medical College of Georgia.
The fragments came from corpses that were sold to the college by grave robbers and taken from Augusta’s cemetery for impoverished African Americans. The college used them in medical training and dissections.
Samuel Redman, a historian at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and author of Bone Rooms: From Scientific Racism to Human Prehistory in Museums, said the discovery of the Move bones was all the more disturbing given how recently the deaths occurred.
“There are people alive who are affected by this, not just in an emotional way but in a trauma-inducing way that could be harmful. The notion of ‘do no harm’ should be part and parcel of our research and teaching – we need to wrestle with this problem much more completely.”
The Ingenio neighborhood of Toa Baja in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Here flooding reached up to 13 feet during Hurricane Maria in 2017. (photo: Christopher Gregory)
New Probe Confirms Trump Officials Blocked Puerto Rico From Receiving Hurricane Aid
Nicole Acevedo and Alec Hernandez, NBC News
Excerpt: "The administration of former President Donald Trump obstructed an investigation looking into why officials withheld about $20 billion in hurricane relief for Puerto Rico following the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Maria in 2017, one of the deadliest U.S. natural disasters in over 100 years, a new report says."
A Department of Housing and Urban Development Office of Inspector General report made public Thursday also found that tensions between the department and the Office of Management and Budget resulted in unprecedented procedural hurdles that produced delays in the disbursement of the congressionally approved funds.
It all started after 2018 when OMB began requiring HUD to send grant notices for disaster funds through an interagency review process for approval, making it hard for HUD to publish the notices needed to unlock funding in a timely manner. Investigators found that OMB had never before required such a review process for a notice allocating recovery funds.
Former HUD Deputy Secretary Brian Montgomery told investigators about a phone call he had with then-OMB Director Russell Vought in which Montgomery told Vought the actions from his office were equivalent to holding disaster-relief funds “hostage,” according to the report.
Investigators said they were unable to obtain testimonies from officials who ordered the interagency review process. Former HUD Secretary Ben Carson and another former HUD official also declined to be interviewed by investigators.
Access to HUD information was delayed or denied multiple times throughout the course of the investigation, the report said, and several former senior administration officials at the OMB refused to provide requested information about their decision-making process in regard to the Puerto Rico relief funds.
However, investigators were able to interview 20 current and former HUD officials and two Puerto Rico housing officials.
The Office of Inspector General said its oversight authorities do not allow for a review or official opinion of actions taken by Trump administration officials.
The Trump administration's OMB also insisted on overhauls to Puerto Rico’s property management records, suspension of its minimum wage on federal contracts and other prerequisites to access relief funds, according to the report. Some HUD officials worried such requirements were potentially beyond HUD’s authority to impose on grantees.
The Office of Inspector General began the review in March 2019 after Congress asked it to look into hurricane aid delays as the island sought to recover from a storm that resulted in the deaths of 2,975 people and triggered the world's second-longest blackout.
Seven months after the probe was launched, two top HUD officials admitted to knowingly missing the congressionally mandated deadline to issue a notice that would have unlocked billions in federal recovery funds to Puerto Rico. Carson later defended his agency's actions by echoing Trump talking points — citing concerns about corruption, fiscal irregularities and "Puerto Rico's capacity to manage these funds."
Throughout his term, Trump repeatedly opposed disaster funding for Puerto Rico while disputing and failing to acknowledge Maria's death toll. Trump had also told top White House officials "that he did not want a single dollar going to Puerto Rico," the Washington Post reported in 2019. "Instead, he wanted more of the money to go to Texas and Florida."
Under Trump, Congress had approved a total of $20 billion in HUD funds for Puerto Rico's post-hurricane reconstruction, a historic amount. But the agency stalled the release of the aid in 2019 and imposed additional restrictions and requirements last year on how Puerto Rico could gain access to the funds, citing corruption and financial mismanagement concerns.
Office of Inspector General audits published last year found that Puerto Rico needs to have a better system for requesting and monitoring federal grants to rebuild after Hurricane Maria — but Texas and Florida had similar issues and their funds were not held up after natural disasters.
The latest probe comes two days after President Joe Biden's administration removed Trump-era restrictions unique to Puerto Rico limiting its ability to access recovery funds through HUD. The agency also unlocked access to $8.2 billion in Community Development Block Grant Mitigation funds to help the island build resiliency against future disasters. The aid was approved by Congress in 2018.
Biden eliminated restrictions requiring incremental grant obligations, a federal financial monitor to supervise the aid and additional oversight from the island’s federally imposed financial oversight board, according new HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge.
The federal government has allocated nearly $69 billion to help the island recover from Maria as well as other disasters that have hit the island over the past few years. But most of the money, specifically funds for housing and infrastructure relief, hasn't made its way to communities on the island. Puerto Rico has received $19 billion, according to the Office of Recovery, Reconstruction and Resiliency.
Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chairs Mark Pocan and Pramila Jayapal. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty)
Rep. Mark Pocan Demands Israel Allow US Lawmakers Entry to Gaza Strip
Ben Samuels, Haaretz
Samuels writes: "Rep. Mark Pocan, one of the most vocal supporters of Palestinian rights in Congress, called on the Israeli government on Wednesday to immediately allow U.S. lawmakers entry into the Gaza Strip."
Wisconsin Democrat Rep. Mark Pocan tells Americans for Peace Now that Israeli policies funded by U.S. tax dollars form an obstacle to realizing the two-state solution
ep. Mark Pocan, one of the most vocal supporters of Palestinian rights in Congress, called on the Israeli government on Wednesday to immediately allow U.S. lawmakers entry into the Gaza Strip.
The Wisconsin Democrat told a webinar for Americans for Peace Now, a nonprofit whose stated aim is to help find a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that he is particularly concerned about the deteriorating humanitarian situation in the Strip. He described the coastal enclave as an “open-air prison,” and lamented the conditions he says are radicalizing Gazan residents.
Pocan decried both the general ignorance of the humanitarian crisis as well as the Israeli government for preventing U.S. lawmakers from entering Gaza. He said he is “almost obsessed” with the situation; in 2016, he, along with Reps. Hank Johnson and Dan Kildee, attempted to enter the Gaza Strip during a 2016 trip to Israel, but was denied access. The Israeli government did not give him a reason why.
“The last member of Congress to enter Gaza was Keith Ellison more than a decade ago. That is crazy. That is completely unacceptable,” he said. “They can’t block American policymakers, especially with the friendship and assistance we give. We need to be able to see what's happening and we need to be able to share those stories.”
Pocan, who is currently in his fifth term, said that he believes in the two-state solution, but that it is unfeasible “under the current steps that are being taken in the region – whether it be in continued settlements, the demolishing of homes in the West Bank or the conditions in Gaza.”
The possibility of such a solution is slowly vanishing on multiple fronts, he said. “When you see the continued settlement encroachment within the West Bank and you see the continued demolition of homes, often with U.S. taxpayer dollars being involved, I see all those as hindrances,” he said. Another obstacle to peace, he added, is the Israeli detention of Palestinian youth through military courts.
“I don't personally use the word apartheid, but people have to be careful because when you see big walls and different roads that people can travel on, you're going hear things like apartheid mentioned,” he cautioned.
Pocan credited the wave of progressive Democrats elected for the evolving conversation on Capitol Hill, saying that the current political breakdown empowers progressives to help dictate the agenda.
He described Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's 2015 speech to Congress on the Iran nuclear deal as a turning point in U.S. lawmakers’ questioning of unqualified support for Israel, and gave way to the partisanship regarding the conflict seen in Congress today. “That was a pivotal moment of stopping these bipartisan blinders on not looking at what was happening in the region, and now more of us are willing to look and try to be objective.”
He highlighted Rep. Barbara Lee’s chairing of the Foreign and State Operations appropriations subcommittee as a notably positive development in achieving substantial change. He described her as a key policymaker and a tremendous advocate for peace and human rights, and believes she will be willing to diverge from the status quo regarding regional issues.
Pocan recently co-lead a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken urging the U.S. government to push Israel to better facilitate COVID-19 vaccinations for the Palestinians. He also co-sponsored Rep. Betty McCollum’s recent bill specifying various actions Israel may not finance with U.S. taxpayer funding, as well as calling for additional oversight of how aid is distributed.
“We can't just sit back and do nothing, you can't just pick a side and move forward,” Pocan said, noting that he supports Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system and general security funding to Israel.
Pocan, who is openly gay, praised Israel’s treatment of its LGBTQ community while drawing a contrast with Palestinian treatment of its LGBTQ community. But, he noted, “That doesn’t stop me as a human being from caring about whether a kid who throws a rock should be shot or if we should take out someone’s home so we can have settlers encroaching into the West Bank,” he said. “You can’t expect me to flutter my eyes because of this one issue.”
He has spoken with Deputy Assistant Secretary for Israeli and Palestinian Affairs Hady Amr, Biden's point person on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, on a number of issues including U.S. equipment being used in demolitions and renewed U.S. aid for Palestinians. Pocan is quick to praise him, saying Amr understands that peace cannot be reached via a one-sided approach.
“This is a person who is a professional, not a political appointee. We’re in agreement on priorities toward peace. When they said they were going to release funds, they did release funds,” he said, saying that the move bolstered his confidence in Amr. “I came away from our conversation feeling like we have someone who truly listens and understands.”
Photograph of the upper part of the Muldrow Glacier, with Denali in the background, in March 2021. (photo: National Park Service)
Glacier Is Surging Down Denali Mountain in Alaska
Chelsea Harvey, E&E News
Harvey writes: "Muldrow Glacier, perched on the side of Alaska's highest peak, is on the move for the first time in more than 60 years."
The slumping ice is moving 50 to 100 times faster than usual
uldrow Glacier, perched on the side of Alaska’s highest peak, is on the move for the first time in more than 60 years.
Scientists noticed last month that the 39-mile stretch of ice had begun to “surge” down the northeast slope of Denali.
Surges are natural events in which ice begins to flow downhill at faster and faster speeds. Muldrow is speeding down the mountain at a rate of about 30 to 60 feet per day—that’s 50 to 100 times faster than its normal rate over the last 60 years, according to the National Park Service. It might continue for several more months.
This surge was a long-awaited event, scientists say. Muldrow typically surges about once every 50 years, and the last event was back in 1956.
In fact, some researchers had begun to suspect climate change might be preventing the glacier from surging.
It may sound counterintuitive. It seems as though an increase in warming and melting should speed up the flow of ice.
But that’s not always the case.
Only a small number of mountain glaciers ever surge at all, according to Martin Truffer, a glaciologist at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Among those that do, surges are typically triggered by a long series of events.
Ice tends to build up near the tops of mountain glaciers where temperatures are colder. It happens over the course of years or decades, as snow falls and freezes onto the surface of the ice.
At the same time, any ice that melts will flow downslope. Some of this meltwater gets trapped near the bottom of the glacier, making the ground slippery.
“So over time, the glacier grows in the upper areas and it diminishes in the lower areas,” Truffer said. “So it gets steeper and a bit thicker in the upper areas.”
Eventually, the glacier gets so out of balance that the ice rushes forward.
Climate change, however, can disrupt this process. As temperatures rise and glaciers melt at faster rates, ice might not accumulate quickly enough to trigger a surge.
Truffer has seen it happen at other sites.
Black Rapids Glacier is another rare surge-type glacier in Alaska—or at least it used to be. Its last surge occurred in 1937, and it hasn’t happened again since.
As the climate has warmed, the part of the mountain where freezing happens faster than melting has moved farther and farther upslope. That point is now so high up that ice isn’t accumulating fast enough to trigger a surge, Truffer said.
“That one, for all intents and purposes, it looks like it’s not gonna surge again,” he added.
That’s not to say all mountain glaciers respond to warming in the same way. It’s possible that symptoms of climate change in some parts of the world could actually raise the risk of surging—for instance, if an increase in rainfall makes the ground more slippery.
There are also recent reports of mountain glaciers catastrophically collapsing, at least in part because of warming.
Southeast of Denali, in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, a single glacier actually crumbled twice—once in 2013, and then again in 2015. A study later concluded that unusually warm temperatures, which spurred an increase in melting, helped trigger the events.
More generally, mountain glaciers all over the globe are shrinking as they melt away. A study published in January in the journal The Cryosphere suggests mountain glaciers worldwide have lost at least 6 trillion tons of ice since the 1990s.
Muldrow Glacier is one of them. Research from the National Park Service suggests the ice there has gotten shallower over time, thinning by at least 60 feet between 1979 and 2004.
It seems the glacier is still able to surge, though—at least for now.
“The surge right now is really going; it’s a real thing,” Truffer said. “There hasn’t really been a surge like that in the Alaska Range in at least 20 years. So it’s kind of exciting.”
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