Middleboro Review 2

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08 February 21

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FOCUS: Stacey Abrams | Our Democracy Faced a Near-Death Experience. Here's How to Revive It.

Stacey Abrams, The Washington Post
Abrams writes: "The violent Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, coupled with ongoing threats to election officials, election workers and lawmakers at all levels, represent unprecedented attacks on the foundations of our democracy."

Certainly, President Donald Trump and others in his party who inspired the attacks must be held accountable through all available means. But accountability alone will not be nearly enough.

Only meaningful reforms can undo the damage done — and establish a government that is truly representative of the people. The next real test of our democracy comes now.

Make no mistake: Democracy may have survived this year, but President Biden and Vice President Harris were elected despite, not thanks to, weakened electoral systems. Together with the Democratic Congress, they now have the opportunity to implement reforms that reaffirm our nation’s promises that our country represents and works for everyone. We as Democrats must act before it is too late.

Our democratic system faces extraordinary threats today because of sustained attacks from Republican leaders who throw up roadblocks to voting and, among the worst actors, stoke the flames of white supremacy and hyper-nationalism to cling to power. There can be no clearer example than the covid-19 pandemic. The deaths of more than 450,000 people in the richest country in the world are symptomatic of a democracy in crisis and a political system that rewards cronyism over competence. Despite strong public support for the Centers for Disease Control’s work, the Affordable Care Act, and other economic justice and safety-net policies that could save lives, millions nevertheless continue to contract the disease without adequate access to health care.

No thinking person can deny that the communities of color disproportionately suffering and dying from this pandemic are also the people whose votes — and ability to hold failed leaders accountable — have been continuously suppressed.

The pandemic has been a collision of tragedy and corroded institutions, and the challenge is in how we respond. We can either engage in collective amnesia about what we have just lived through, and leave an unaccountable government in place, or we can rise to meet this moment by fixing the broken social compact. Defeating Trump was not enough. Meaningful progress on health care, racial justice and the economy requires aggressive action on voting rights, partisan gerrymandering and campaign finance.

One of the first steps must be an overhaul of the Senate filibuster, which has long been wielded as a cudgel against the needs of millions who struggle. Today, the parliamentary trick creates a more sinister threat to our nation: the ability of a minority of senators, who represent 41.5 million fewer people than the Senate majority, to block progress favored by most Americans.

Democrats in Congress must fully embrace their mandate to fast-track democracy reforms that give voters a fair fight, rather than allowing undemocratic systems to be used as tools and excuses to perpetuate that same system. This is a moment of both historic imperative and, with unified Democratic control of the White House and Congress, historic opportunity.

The agenda to restore democracy also includes passing the For the People Act to protect and expand voting rights, fight gerrymandering and reduce the influence of money in politics; the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to restore the full protections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act; and the Protecting Our Democracy Act to constrain the corruption of future presidents who deem themselves above the law. These landmark bills have broad-based support, and would have passed long ago were it not for obstructionist leaders who fear losing their own influence if the American people have more power of their own.

Further, fixing our democracy requires we finally allow our fellow Americans in D.C. and Puerto Rico, the vast majority of whom are people of color, to have full access to our democracy. That means D.C. statehood and binding self-determination for Puerto Rico. In the District, as white extremist mobs destroyed the Capitol, murdered a police officer, and threatened the lives of elected officials and residents, Washingtonians were left defenseless because D.C. is not a state and its chief executive had no authority to deploy the National Guard.

Time is short. The forces standing against a democracy agenda seek to preserve and expand paths to power by shrinking the voting pool rather than winning voters over. In reaction to the historic turnout of 2020 and Democratic victories in places such as Georgia, already this year more than 100 bills have been put forward in state legislatures seeking to restrict voting access. Those efforts will not end without a fight.

We don’t know how many chances we will get to reverse our democracy’s near-death experience. We must not waste this one. We must go big — the future of democracy demands it.

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REPUBLICANS,UNITY,LIES

“They lie about the economy. They lie about our history. They lie about the news. They lie about their resumes. They lie about their own voting records. They lie about their fundraising. They lie about their coworkers. They lie about gerrymandering. They lie about their intentions. They lie about their financiers. They lie about being oppressed. They lie about science. They lie about the effects of policies. They lie about wanting compromise.

They lie about the lies they've already been caught telling. And when they're caught doing it, they lie about that too.
Whether because of ignorance, entitlement, profiteering or pandering, the core of the GOP lies at every turn.

The path to unity is not bound to travel through the GOP caucus, who want to reap all the concessions and be treated as a majority while they represent a statistical minority and offer no compromise, no olive branch, no concession, and no accountability.
The GOP takes. It does not give. The GOP demands. It does not compromise.

The unity the GOP wants is to be granted power it has rightfully lost - returned without sacrifice, without acknowledgement, and without responsibility.

The unity this country needs will come through the exposure of the decades of fraud and dishonesty peddled by the GOP, and accountability for the harm it has done to our nation.

Allowing them a voice in the conversation when the majority of the country has voted to take that voice away is far more divisive than any good-faith partisan undertaking advanced by the Democrats.

The path to unity does not involve advancing the goals of or entertaining the whims of the GOP.

The path to unity involves making the U.S. a better place for all of us who call it home.

And that requires no input whatsoever from the GOP.
Unity for the country does not need the consent of GOP members of Congress. 

What it needs is their silence unless and until they acknowledge the role they played in disrupting unity in the first place.”

-------- Alex Schiller

May be an illustration of one or more people, people standing and text

RSN: Harvey Wasserman | The Empire Strikes Back: The Racist Demand for Mailed-In Photo ID ... and Much, Much More

08 February 21

Folks please be serious. That is abusive of everything and everyone RSN stands for. If you are looking to be entertained, look elsewhere.

For the serious.

Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News

SHOULD I BE ANGRY ABOUT THE FUNDRAISING SITUATION? — Should I be angry when I see 20,000 people come to Reader Supported News every day while maybe 20 contribute? Yes I should be, and yes I am. If you want “free service” go to a service that provides what they say is that. If you want to be a part of something different and powerful stay here and — be a part. Sure I’m angry. / Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News

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RSN: Harvey Wasserman | The Empire Strikes Back (Part One): The Largest Voter Suppression Campaign in US History Is Underway

ALSO SEE: After Record 2020 Turnout, State Republicans
Weigh Making It Harder to Vote

Harvey Wasserman, Reader Supported News
Wasserman writes: "The Republican Party's post 2020 state-by-state assault on voting rights has begun with the demand that all mailed-in paper ballots include photo ID. The Jim Crow racism is beyond obvious."

The Jim Crow racism is beyond obvious. Instead of having to guess, mailed-in photo ID lets election officials quickly identify which ballots came from citizens of color … and then pitch them on the spot. By banning student IDs, they can also eliminate ballots coming from college campuses.

Thus the Nixon-Trump/Atwater-Rove-Bannon Republicans have picked up the KKK burning cross straight from hands of the Jim Crow Democrats.

They’re flooding at least 28 state legislatures with more than a hundred laws meant to undermine American democracy. 2020 taught them that, in Trump’s own words, if people of youth and color could cast ballots and have them reliably counted, “you’d never have another Republican elected again.”

The 2020 election was “stolen” in Trump’s eyes, not merely due to his false allegations about voting machines. What REALLY mattered was that voters of color — black, Hispanic, Asian-American, indigenous — were able to cast paper ballots and have them counted. They came in heavily against Trump, and are likely to escalate against his ilk for years to come.

Voters under 29 in 2020 voted at more than 60% to dump The Donald. Had the electorate been only Millennials and their younger Zoomer cohorts, Trump would have lost by more than 400 electoral votes, including in Texas, Florida, both Carolinas, Iowa and more.

So no Republican will ever consider an election with fair universal access to hand-marked, Vote by Mail, reliably scanned and counted paper ballots to be anything but “stolen.”

Indeed, the whole history of the modern Republican Party (like the race-based Democrats before) has been built on voter suppression. In Georgia and elsewhere, they are pushing bills to:

massively strip and restrict the right to register to vote and have those registrations protected
vastly expand the ability of states to purge voter rolls

ban sending out paper ballots to all registered voters

ban sending a paper ballot to any absentee voter who does not have a certified medical excuse

demand photo ID from all voters who show up at the polls

demand photo ID to be included in any mailed-in ballot application

demand photo ID to be included in any mailed-in ballot

demand ballots be witnessed and stamped by one or more notary public

eliminate acceptance of student ID (as in Texas, gun licenses will still be accepted)

ban drop boxes

ban allowing any voter, including those with special needs, from designating anyone to carry their ballot into an election board or voting center

ban election day registration

ban prohibitions against caging, which allows party operatives to defraud voters of their ballot

ban early voting

tighten time tables for receiving mailed-in ballots

make it easier for challengers to demand elimination of received ballots

tighten signature verification, making it easier to arbitrarily pitch ballots

eliminate precincts primarily in non-white, lower-income areas, and at college campuses

impose electronic ballot marking devices at voting stations where they can break down, causing long lines

impose electronic ballot marking devices producing paper ballots that hinge on bar codes illegible to any voter

use ballot marking and scanning devices with proprietary source code that cannot be monitored by the public

impose financial and other restrictions effectively banning any third party from gaining an access line on a ballot

allow local election officials to eliminate saved digital ballot images even though saving them adds no cost to administering an election while vastly enhancing the ease and accuracy of doing recounts

restrict public audits and recounts of contested elections

enshrine gerrymandering to guarantee minority Republican rule in swing-state legislatures and the US House of Representatives.

This list goes on.

Many of these bills could be overruled if the massive, extremely complex HR-1 Bill (and its Senate counterpart) would pass the Congress. But with the filibuster still in tact, the odds are dicey.

HR-1 also has its imperfections, among them clauses that could doom nearly all third-parties.

Some 400 pro-democracy bills have also been proposed. But in the key swing states of Wisconsin, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, Texas, Arizona and others, gerrymandered GOP legislatures are poised to beat them back.

The future of any remnant of US democracy might thus depend on the ability of grassroots activists in these key states to somehow override these corrupt legislatures.

It will also ride on grassroots uprisings for state constitutional amendments and other legal means to end gerrymandering altogether, and to establish fair election practices that can’t be trashed by Republicans who so deeply fear actual democracy. Such victories have been won in places like Michigan, Iowa, California and elsewhere.

Winning DC statehood, burying the Electoral College and banning money from electoral politics are also on the agenda.

But the fact remains that the “perfect storm” of decades of dedicated grassroots election-protection work combined with the COVID and other factors in 2020 (and the 2021 US Senate runoffs in Georgia) to produce the most fair, accurate, and truly democratic elections in all of US history.

The shock to the Republican Party has been primal. GOP operatives know that without massively restricting the vote and reversing the fair ballot counting that came with digital scanners and paper-based recounts, they are in terminal danger.

Thus their all-out campaign against all aspects of the democratic process.

The response from the election protection movement must be immediate and forceful. We have just survived a violent attempt to overthrow our democracy. The forces now trying to radically undermine our elections through the state legislatures are quieter, but far better organized and financed.

As a movement we have learned and accomplished great things in this new millennium.

With a coordinated national grassroots campaign, we can enter new realms of democratic fairness the US has never seen before.

Our very survival hangs in the balance.

So let’s do it!

Harvey Wasserman co-convenes the Grassroots Emergency Election Protection Coalition Monday zooms at 5 pm Eastern. His People’s Spiral of US History is at www.solartopia.org, along with The Strip & Flip Disaster of America’s Stolen Elections, written with Bob Fitrakis.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

Bernie Sanders. (photo: Matt Rourke/AP

'Unbelievable': Bernie Sanders Slams Democrats Who Want to Narrow Income Eligibility for Stimulus Payments
John L. Dorman, Business Insider
Dorman writes: "Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont on Saturday criticized Democrats who are seeking to lower the income eligibility for the next round of COVID-19 relief stimulus checks."

Sanders, the newly-minted Independent chairman of the powerful Senate Budget Committee who caucuses with the Democrats, said it was "unbelievable" that some in the party "want to lower the income eligibility for direct payments from $75,000 to $50,000 for individuals, and $150,000 to $100,000 for couples."

The Democratic-controlled Senate and House both moved last week to start the reconciliation process for President Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion relief package, which was originally envisioned to provide $1,400 direct payments under the previous income thresholds - $75,000 for individuals and $150,000 for couples.

Similar to the previous COVID-19 stimulus bills, the direct payments would phase out for individuals who earned more than $75,000 or couples who earned more than $150,000.

On February 1, A group of 10 Republicans led by GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine unveiled a smaller $618 billion stimulus plan that would target checks to lower-income households and reduce direct payments to $1,000.

Sanders was incredulous at the prospect that people who received checks under former President Donald Trump would be excluded from direct payments in Biden's plan.

"In other words, working class people who got checks from Trump would not get them from Biden," Sanders tweeted. "Brilliant!"

I strongly oppose lowering income eligibility for direct payments from $75,000 to $50,000 for individuals and $150,000 to $100,000 for couples," he wrote. "In these difficult times, ALL working class people deserve the full $1,400."

He added: "Last I heard, someone making $55,000 a year is not 'rich.'"

Over the past week, senators have toyed with the idea of adjusting the income thresholds for direct payments as concerns have been raised that high earners did not need additional checks.

On February 2, The Washington Post released a report that several Democrats discussed the idea of initiating a phase-out for checks for individuals who earned above $50,000, $75,000 for taxpayers who are heads of households, and $100,000 for married couples.

Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia has been a leading voice in questioning the need for direct payments for higher-income families and feels that those most affected by the economic fallout of the pandemic should be targeted.

"I don't think a single person on this floor would disagree to target the relief to our neighbors who are struggling to pay rent and put food on the table," Manchin said last week.

Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York retweeted the message from Sanders and added her own words of support.

Maskless Super Bowl celebration in the street. (photo: Getty Images)

Thousands of Maskless Tampa Fans Flooded the Streets, Celebrating the Super Bowl Win While Risking a Superspreader Event
Jaclyn Peiser, The Washington Post
Peiser writes: "Outside Raymond James Stadium on Sunday night, three barefaced Buccaneers fans jumped up and down on the roof of a white car, waving their arms."

One man held out his phone and recorded the largely maskless Tampa crowd cheering, flying flags, hugging and colliding into each other as the Tom Brady-led Buccaneers won the franchise’s first Super Bowl in 18 years.

Other antics ensued, including hundreds gathering around a man who climbed a tree and swaying it back and forth; pedestrians walking against traffic as cars drove by with celebrators standing through sunroofs waving team flags; and police officers getting knocked down as intoxicated patrons poured out of the bars by the thousands.

Throughout Tampa this weekend, hordes of football fans crammed into bars, clogged streets and belted chants — many without masks, despite dire warnings from public health experts that the Super Bowl could become a superspreader event.

In the days leading up to football’s biggest night, Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert, urged Americans to stay home and “just lay low and cool it.” Tampa Mayor Jane Castor (D) made a video asking fans to cover their faces, after she updated the city’s mask mandate to include all outdoor areas used for Super Bowl events and gatherings.

In a news conference on Sunday, Castor also pleaded fans to act responsibly if the Buccaneers won, the Tampa Bay Times reported.

“Well, we’ve done so well in putting on a safe Super Bowl, when we do win tonight, I just want to keep safety at the forefront of everyone’s minds,” she said. “Celebrate, but do it safely. Simply wear a mask.”

There have been more than 1.7 million cases of the coronavirus in Florida and more than 28,000 deaths, according to The Washington Post’s covid-19 tracker. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has battled against many restrictions, and mask mandates or occupancy restrictions throughout the state have been difficult to enforce since the governor lifted all covid restrictions in September.

A report posted on the preprint server medRxiv on Sunday found that a more contagious and possibly more deadly mutation of the virus first discovered in the United Kingdom is rapidly spreading in Florida. The study said that the state has the most cases of the variant in the country.

Although hospitalizations are up, cases in Tampa have been declining. But public health experts warn that the events in Tampa over the weekend could lead to another surge.

Marissa Levine, a professor of public health practice at the University of South Florida in Tampa, told The Post that the conditions around the Super Bowl are ripe for spreading the coronavirus. Celebrations, she said, often lead to people letting their guards down and cheering in close range with others can create the “perfect conditions for transmitting covid.”

Videos flooded social media on Sunday night showing fans whooping and chanting “Tampa Bay” and Brady’s name, all tightly packed outside the stadium and on bar-lined streets in Tampa’s SoHo and Ybor City neighborhoods, according to the Times. A Times reporter estimated that tens of thousands gathered in Ybor City on Sunday night.

Police patrolled the streets, but it is unclear if they handed out any citations for people not wearing masks. The fine could be up to $500. It is also unclear how many people were arrested amid the celebrations or if any property was damaged.

Before the Super Bowl, maskless crowds were also a common sight around Tampa. News reports showed people without face coverings standing shoulder-to-shoulder in bars on Saturday despite mandates in Hillsborough and Pinellas counties requiring all patrons in businesses to wear masks.

A four-day series of parties hosted in part by Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy at an oceanfront bar attracted thousands of partygoers. Images published on TMZ from one of the events show DJ Steve Aoki spraying champagne on a crowd of maskless partygoers.

In the days leading up to the Barstool-hosted series, James Judge, a spokesman for the event, said that all guests and staff were required to wear masks unless they were eating or drinking and that guests showing symptoms of the coronavirus would have to take a rapid test. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, people who are asymptomatic can still transmit the virus.

“We want to save lives. But at the same time, there has to be some sort of balanced approach where we make sure that we don’t further destroy our economy in the process,” Judge told The Post.

A party hosted by rapper 50 Cent at an airport hangar in St. Petersburg, Fla., on Friday night was crowded with barefaced concertgoers not social distancing.

The event attracted ire from St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman (D) on Twitter.

“This isn’t how we should be celebrating the Super Bowl,” Kriseman wrote. “It’s not safe or smart. It’s stupid. We’re going to take a very close look at this, and it may end up costing someone a lot more than 50 Cent.”

Rep. Richard Neal. (photo: Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)

Democrats to Unveil $3,000 Direct Cash Payments to Families With Children
Kadia Goba, Axios
Goba writes: "Democrats will introduce a proposal attached to the next stimulus package that would provide $3,000-per-child direct payments in certain households."

Why it matters: The new legislation, led by Ways and Means chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.), comes shortly after Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) introduced a similar proposal, lending bipartisan support to expanding cash benefits for families with children.

The Biden Administration has reviewed and supports the proposal, according to the Washington Post who first reported the plan. The legislative proposal, reviewed by Axios, will be revealed Monday along with other Ways and Means provisions.

The IRS would begin depositing payments into bank accounts July 1.

The payments would come in monthly installments.

Qualifying household incomes would be based on the previous year with lower payouts for individuals making $75,000 for individuals and $150,000 for those filing jointly.

Eligible households with children 17 to 6 could receive payments of $3,000 for each child and $3,600 for children under 6.

What they're saying: “The pandemic is driving families deeper and deeper into poverty, and it’s devastating, Rep. Ritchie Neal (D-Mass.), chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, said in a statement.

"We are making the Child Tax Credit more generous, more accessible, and by paying it out monthly, this money is going to be the difference in a roof over someone’s head or food on their table," he said.

A woman speaks through a megaphone during a demonstration in favour of legalising abortion, after lawmakers approved a constitutional reform that would reinforce the ban, near the Congress in Tegucigalpa, Honduras January 25, 2021. (photo: Fredy Rodriguez/Reuters)

Honduras Hardened Its Abortion Ban. These Women Remain Undeterred
Natalie Alcoba, Al Jazeera
Alcoba writes: "In the days since the Congress of Honduras hardened its absolute prohibition of abortion, the ranks of a feminist organization that has been campaigning for decriminalization in the staunchly conservative nation have been swelling."

Honduran Congress put a lock on decades-old ban on abortion weeks after Argentina legalised it in landmark decision.

The new recruits to the women’s rights group, Somos Muchas, are mostly young women between the ages of 18 and 30 who have been moved into action by recent events. For local activists, it is a sign that change is still possible in a country with some of the most severe restrictions on abortion in the world.

“They did it out of fear,” said Neesa Medina, an activist with Somos Muchas, about lawmakers’ push to strengthen the prohibition. “Because they think they can ban the future. But you can’t ban the future.”

It has been forbidden to terminate a pregnancy in Honduras under any circumstance, even rape, incest, or if the life of the mother is in danger, since 1985.

The Congress has now put a legal lock on that position by explicitly adding the abortion ban to its constitution, and setting the number of votes required in order to make a future change at the highest level – three-quarters of Congress.

A chorus of international organisations, including the United Nations and the European Parliament, sounded the alarm, and urged the legislative body to reconsider a move they said not only violates human rights standards but will inflict further harm on women and girls.

Response to Argentina

The Congress ratified the amendment on January 28 and celebrated the approval on Twitter, where it shared messages of congratulations from politicians and anti-legalisation groups around the world, including Spain, Colombia, Brazil and the Dominican Republic.

“This state power is committed to continue defending and fighting for life,” the Twitter account for the National Congress posted.

Their decision came as feminist movements across Latin America are reasserting their prominence, in particular after Argentina legalised elective abortion until the 14th week.

That landmark approval in December was hailed by campaigners as a sign of things to come in the region – and triggered Mario Perez, a Honduran legislator for the ruling National Party, to draft the “shield against abortion in Honduras” law, which he hopes will serve as a “padlock” against efforts to legalise in the future. Honduras is also in the middle of an election campaign.

“Honduras is a country that is very Christian, most of us are Christian, and I’d like to think that on the street, in the valley, people would not [be in support of legalisation],” Perez said in an earlier interview.

Honduras is one of six countries in Latin America and the Caribbean to prohibit abortion completely.

Several allow it in certain circumstances, such as rape or if the life of the mother is at risk. Argentina, Uruguay, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Mexico City and the Mexican state of Oaxaca allow women to terminate pregnancies in the early stages without having to provide a reason.

Unsafe abortions

But while it is illegal and subject to anywhere from three to 10 years in jail for the woman or medical practitioner, abortions are still happening in Honduras in secret, and sometimes dangerous, settings – and those who are caught violating the law are sent to jail.

An estimated 51,000 to 82,000 unsafe abortions happen every year, according to a working group of UN experts. Emergency contraception is also banned, and UN experts say that, along with a lack of access to contraception in general, contributes to a high rate of unwanted pregnancy.

Honduras has the second-highest rate of adolescent pregnancy in Latin America. One in four girls under the age of 19 has been pregnant at least once.

Somos Muchas has organised an online orientation session to walk the new, young activists through their mandate. The group also is devising strategies to mount a legal challenge to the legislative change and to get health information to women.

But in the meantime, Medina said the recent reform will instil more fear on the ground. “In Honduras, there are women who have miscarriages, and they’re too afraid to look for help because the only thing they hear is that abortion is a crime; it’s bad,” she said. “There are few words of compassion for them.”

Regina Fonseca, a psychologist, longtime feminist and founder of the Centre for Women’s Rights in Honduras, also said clandestine abortions would increase in price as a result of the hardened prohibition.

“And that affects poorer and younger women, who have less access to resources, and may submit themselves to dangerous practices, which can generate more deaths,” she said.

Human Rights Watch said, “The reform violates international human rights law, which establishes that denying women and girls access to abortion is a form of discrimination and jeopardizes a range of human rights.”

It also said the bill “misleadingly” refers to Article 4(1) of the American Convention on Human Rights, which protects the right to life.

“The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has made clear that Article 4(1) does not recognize an absolute right to life before birth. The court has also found that the embryo cannot be understood to be a human being for the purposes of Article 4(1).”

Legislators, religious groups defend move

But members of Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez’s conservative National Party, along with religious forces, said it is life, which must be protected.

“Abortion is murder, it is taking the life of the person who wants to be born,” Pastor Oswaldo Canales, president of the Evangelical Confraternity of Honduras, said at a public consultation session with religious leaders that was televised from the National Congress prior to the vote.

During that same session, Mauricio Oliva, president of the National Congress, said Honduras cannot follow “in the footsteps of evil” taken by other nations that have legalised “an act as infamous as taking the life of a growing fetus”.

In a statement to Al Jazeera, Tomas Zambrano, a member of the National Party and the secretary of the National Congress, said legislators are aware of the arguments put forward by human rights groups and the UN.

“This has to do with a measure that is in harmony with our values and social and cultural principles that make us unique as a society and that should be protected and respected according to the principle of free determination of peoples, which is also protected by the Charter of the United Nations and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,” he said.

The government said the ratification vote was 90 in favour, in a Congress of 128 seats, but did not specify the number of votes against or if there were any abstentions.

Fonseca said the process was riddled with “anomalies” and that activists intend to fight the results at the Supreme Court, although the timeline is not yet clear. There are also discussions about whether activists should start working more publicly to share information about safe abortion practices.

“There is a lot of international support and solidarity, and there are more people who understand a little better the contempt towards women, and that helps us to act with more public support,” said Fonseca, who also noted the topic failed to capture the attention of the local mainstream media.

Still, Medina said she is encouraged by the number of legislators who did not approve the measure, as it was far greater than the number who had supported a bid to relax the prohibition in 2017. Only eight out of 128 legislators voted that year in favour of allowing abortion in cases of rape, incest, when the mother’s life is at risk, or when the fetus cannot survive outside the womb.

“You can see the cracks in the system, in the government, and that’s why they’re closing ranks,” said Medina. “And it’s in those cracks that this will all crumble.”

Rescuers scrambled to find people after a broken glacier caused a river surge that swept away bridges and roads in the Chamoli district of Uttarakhand on Feb. 7. (photo: Indo-Tibetan Border Police/AFP/Getty Images)

About 130 Feared Dead as Glacier Causes Dams to Burst in North India
Hannah Ellis-Petersen, Guardian UK
Ellis-Petersen writes: "About 140 people are feared dead in northern India after a Himalayan glacier broke off and caused a high velocity surge of water down a river, sweeping away one dam in its path and damaging another."

A frantic rescue mission began to recover the scores of bodies washed away when an avalanche of water, mud and rocks swept down a narrow gorge in Chamoli district, in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand.

Nine bodies had been recovered by Sunday night, officials said, and 140 people remained missing.

According to India’s national crisis management committee (NCMC), the flood along the Himalayan valley was caused by a mountain glacier partially breaking off into Rishiganga river and causing a dramatic rise in water levels upstream.

While some have said the incident shows the growing impact of the climate crisis – a 2019 survey found that the Himalyan glaciers are melting at “alarming speed” – local activists and writers have also blamed the intensive building along Uttarakhand’s rivers and mountains of dams and hydropower infrastructure, which they argue is destabilising the ecologically fragile Himalayan region and resulting in more extreme weather events.

There are 550 dams and hydroelectric projects in the state of Uttarakhand alone, with 152 big dam projects, and in the area affected by Sunday’s flash flood, there are 58 projects along the rivers and their tributaries. A new road is also being built into the mountains to ease access for tourists to Uttarakhand’s famed Kedarnath temple, which has involved blasting into the rocks and the reported dumping of mud and rubble into the waters.

Hridayesh Joshi, author of Rage of the River, about a similar flooding incident in Kedarnath, Uttarakhand in 2013 which took almost 6,000 lives, said that experts and activists had already been raising questions over the dam and road projects.

“In this Himalayan area, there are 10,000 big and small glaciers so we should be very careful about building any development projects in this ecologically fragile region, especially as climate change makes it even more fragile,” said Joshi.

“But instead the government wants to exploit hydropower for income and gives approval to all these big dam projects on every river, who we then see flouting environmental laws. We can’t say these projects are entirely to blame for this latest disaster, but they are definitely one of the contributing factors.”

According to footage and witness accounts, on Sunday morning a towering surge of water swept down the river at high speed, gathering momentum as it moved through the narrow gorge, and completely wiped out the small privately run Rishiganga hydroelectric dam on the river as well as enveloping buildings, trees and people in the vicinity.

As it surged into the tributary Dhauliganga river, it then impacted a larger 500MW hydropower dam, currently under construction by the government’s National Thermal Power Corporation.

The surge of water lasted about 15 minutes. In the aftermath, the army was deployed to help the rescue operation. Most of those still missing had been constructing or working on two dams decimated by the surge of water, as well as local shepherds who had been grazing their sheep and goats.

In a dramatic rescue, 16 workers were pulled out alive from a tunnel beneath one of the dams hit by the flash flood, which had been enveloped by mud and debris.

Vivek Pandey, a spokesman for the paramilitary Indo Tibetan border police, said at least 30 workers remained stranded inside another tunnel.

“The rescuers used ropes and shovels to reach the mouth of the tunnel. They dug through the debris and entered the tunnel. They are yet to come in touch with the stranded people,” said chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat, Uttarakhand’s top elected official.

An additional 140 workers at the two plants were missing, Pandey said. Surjeet Singh, a police official, said at least nine bodies were recovered.

Fears of flooding led to hundreds of villages downstream being evacuated but the authorities later said there was no risk.

The prime minister, Narendra Modi, said he was closely monitoring the situation. “India stands with Uttarakhand and the nation prays for everyone’s safety there,” he tweeted after speaking with the state chief minister.

Geologist Dwarika Dobhal, from the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, had a different theory to the authorities on what caused the flooding and said he believed it was an avalanche, not a broken glacier, that had likely caused the flood. He said it was “more likely” that in recent weeks there had been a debris blockage in the river upstream, causing a lake to form and water to gradually build up. An avalanche had then “caused this lake to breach and the water to surge down the valley at speed”.

“Climate change will make these events more common,” said Dobhal.

For the local community in Uttarakhand, the floods evoked traumatic memories of the Kedarnath disaster of 2013, when a multi-day cloudburst led to landslides and flooding along dozens of rivers and almost 6,000 people lost their lives. In the aftermath of Kedarnath, the supreme court halted the clearance of every dam project in the state, and an expert committee later concluded that the large dams had a role in aggravating the disaster.

Local activist Vimal Bhai of the environmental NGO Matu Jansangthan, has been working on Uttarakhand’s rivers for 33 years and was part of the fight to halt new dam building in the state after the Kedarnath disaster in 2013.

“We have been saying for years how these huge infrastructure projects are making the area more fragile and dangerous but no-one listened to us,” said Bhai. “And now the same thing has happened again. Why will the government not learn the lessons of the past?”

The Kuukpik 5 rig at sunset, drilling the ConocoPhillips' Putu well south of Nuiqsut in February 2018. (photo: Judy Patrick/ConocoPhillips)

Judge Temporarily Halts ConocoPhillips Oil Drilling Project on Alaska's North Slope
Yereth Rosen, Yahoo! News
Rosen writes: "A weekend court ruling has temporarily blocked winter construction at a huge ConocoPhillips oil project on Alaska's North Slope."

U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason issued an order Saturday barring ConocoPhillips from starting planned gravel mining and gravel-road construction at its Willow project. With an estimated 590 million barrels of oil and the potential to produce 160,000 barrels per day, Willow would be the westernmost operating oil field in Arctic Alaska. First oil is planned as early as 2024, according to ConocoPhillips.

Gleason's injunction came in response to an environmental lawsuit claiming the Trump administration’s Willow approval failed to properly consider wildlife and climate-change impacts. The judge last week rejected environmentalists' request for a more sweeping injunction. Her new order halts gravel-related work until at least Feb. 20, giving the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals time to weigh in.

ConocoPhillips had intended to start blasting gravel on Feb. 12, according to Gleason's order.

The plaintiffs have shown "there is a strong likelihood of irreparable environmental consequences once blasting operations commence," the order said. Additionally, the plaintiffs' arguments concerning climate change "could well be likely to succeed on the merits" at the appeals court, Gleason said.

Gleason's order does not stop construction of seasonal ice roads, which melt away in summer.

Plaintiff representatives noted that Biden is reviewing Trump administration oil policies, including the approval of Willow.

"We're hopeful this terrible project can be stopped, either by the courts or the Biden administration's review," Kristen Monsell, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement on Sunday.

ConocoPhillips Alaska spokeswoman Rebecca Boys said by email that the company does not comment on pending litigation.

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