10 March 22
Donations have slowed to a trickle and they’re all small. Getting into big trouble very quickly on funding. People are coming but they are not contributing. The problems are mounting quickly.
Stop. Donate. Please.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
If you would prefer to send a check:
Reader Supported News
PO Box 2043 / Citrus Heights, CA 95611
Follow us on facebook and twitter!
10 March 22
Live on the homepage now!
Reader Supported News
Trump’s former press secretary discusses his relationship with the Russian leader in an interview with The View
In an interview with The View on Tuesday, Grisham discussed the former US president’s relationship with the Russian president, saying: “I think [Trump] feared [Putin]. I think he was afraid of him. I think that the man intimidated him. Because Putin is a scary man, just frankly, I think he was afraid of him.”
She went on to add: “I also think he admired him greatly. I think he wanted to be able to kill whoever spoke out against him. So I think it was a lot of that. In my experience with him, he loved the dictators, he loved the people who could kill anyone, including the press.”
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has resulted in more than 1,300 civilian casualties, including 474 killed and 861 injured, Trump has highly praised Putin for his actions, calling him a “genius”.
In an interview last month with a conservative radio show, Trump fawned over Putin, saying: “I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, ‘This is genius.’ Putin declares a big portion of … Ukraine. Putin declares it as independent. Oh that’s wonderful. So Putin is now saying, ‘It’s independent,’ a large section of Ukraine. I said, ‘How smart is that?’ And he’s gonna go in and be a peacekeeper. That’s the strongest peace force. We could use that on our southern border.”
Trump continued, saying: “There were more army tanks than I’ve ever seen. They’re gonna keep peace all right. No, but think of it. Here’s a guy who’s very savvy, I know him very well. Very, very well.”
Trump’s comments were criticized by the two Republicans serving on the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riot, who are among the few Republicans who have been critical of the former president. Liz Cheney tweeted that Trump’s statement “aids our enemies. Trump’s interests don’t seem to align with the interests of the United States of America.”
A car burns inside the yard of the hospital in Mariupol, southern Ukraine. (photo: AP)
ALSO SEE: A Direct Hit From Russia's Military Devastates
a Maternity Hospital in Mariupol
The attack came despite Russia agreeing to a 12-hour pause in hostilities to allow refugees to evacuate a number of towns and cities.
Mariupol city council posted a video of the devastated hospital in the city and accused Russian forces of dropping several bombs on it from the air.
"The destruction is enormous," said the council. "The building of the medical facility where the children were treated recently is completely destroyed."
Police in the Donetsk region said that according to preliminary information at least 17 people were injured, including mothers and staff, as a result of the attack.
Zelensky repeated his call for the NATO military alliance to declare a no-fly zone over Ukraine, as he expressed his outrage at the attack.
"Close the sky right now! Stop the killings! You have power but you seem to be losing humanity," he said on Telegram.
"Direct strike of Russian troops at the maternity hospital," Zelensky said, adding, "People, children are under the wreckage. Atrocity! How much longer will the world be an accomplice ignoring terror?"
Later Wednesday, Zelensky called the strike "final proof, proof of a genocide of Ukrainians taking place."
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova claimed, without providing evidence, that Ukrainian forces had "equipped combat positions" within the hospital. Video from the hospital after the bombing clearly showed there were both patients and staff there, including heavily pregnant women who were carried from the hospital.
The hospital attack received international condemnation, with the United Nations saying it would follow up "urgently" on the "shocking reports," and that healthcare facilities hospitals and health care workers should not "ever, ever be a target."
A city administration building and a university in Mariupol, less than a kilometer from the bombed-out hospital, has been identified by CNN as a second location in the city hit by an apparent Russian military strike.
Images on social media show significant destruction at the University and City Council Building.
The strategic port city of Mariupol on Ukraine's southeast coast has been under siege for days and has been "isolated" by Russian forces, a senior US defense official said Tuesday.
Russia continues to bombard Mariupol and its troops are not inside the city "in any significant way," added the official. Two officials said Wednesday that about 1,300 civilians there have been killed since the Russian invasion began.
Residents have been cut off from water and electricity for days, and on Tuesday Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba accused Russia of committing war crimes by holding 300,000 civilians "hostage."
"The situation in Mariupol is desperate," Mirella Hodeib, spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), told CNN on Monday.
Evacuation corridors
On Wednesday, Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said both sides had agreed to a ceasefire and planned evacuation corridors from a number of cities in order to allow people to leave.
The attempted evacuation corridors were scheduled to operate from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m local time, with routes including Energodar to Zaporizhia; Mariupol to Zaporizhia; Volnovakha to Pokrovsk; Izium to Lozova; and four separate routes from Vorzel, Bucha, Irpin, Borodyanka, and Gostomel to the capital city of Kyiv.
A corridor also operated between Sumy and Poltava, a route that enabled about 5,000 Ukrainians to evacuate on Tuesday, according to Ukrainian Presidential Office Deputy Kirill Timoshenko.
But several hours after the evacuation was due to begin, there was no sign of people being brought out of Vorzel, Borodyanka, Hostomel, Irpin and Bucha in the bus convoys that had been organized.
The city council of Bucha accused Russian forces of blocking the evacuation in a statement on Facebook.
"The occupants are disrupting the evacuation. Currently, 50 buses are blocked by Russian military in the parking lot," the post read.
An attempted evacuation from Demidova, a town north of Kyiv that was not among the agreed corridors, ran into trouble. One police officer was killed and two more people seriously injured during an attempted evacuation of civilians, according to regional authorities.
In the east, it was impossible to evacuate civilians from the town of Izium "as we constantly hear explosions," said Oleh Syniehubov, administrative head of Kharkiv region.
However, greater progress appeared to be made in organizing buses to get people out of the central city of Enerhodar, as well as Irpin and Vorzel.
"The evacuation from the city continues," wrote Оleksandr Markushyn, mayor of Irpin, on Facebook. "There are buses in the center of Irpin. We are evacuating as many people as possible."
In Vorzel, all of the children that had been stranded in an orphanage have been evacuated, as has the local maternity hospital, according to Kyrylo Tymoshenko, an adviser in the president's office.
At least 2 million refugees have fled Ukraine since the beginning of the invasion, the UN estimates. But millions more remain trapped in towns and cities that have come under sustained attacks by Russian forces in recent days.
And on Tuesday Ukrainian Minister of Defense Oleksii Reznikov claimed more than 400 civilians have been killed, including 38 children, with the real death toll expected to be higher.
Reznikov accused Russia of "a real act of genocide" and "war crimes," claiming that Russian forces had fired on the evacuation corridors.
Kharkiv encircled
The city of Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine is encircled by Russian forces and continues to suffer heavy shelling, the UK Ministry of Defence tweeted Wednesday.
On Tuesday, Kharkiv Mayor Igot Terekhov told CNN the situation was "difficult" and there was "constant shelling from heavy artillery" on residential neighborhoods and civilian infrastructure.
"They're hitting our water and heating and gas supply," said Terekhov. "They're trying to interrupt our power supplies."
Kharkiv is home to 1.5 million people, said Terekhov, adding that utility services were working to keep people warm as cold weather approaches.
Terekhov said he regards indiscriminate shelling as "an act of genocide." He added that any aid or assistance would be gratefully received, and expressed hope about the ultimate outcome.
"I am absolutely confident that we will defeat the Russians," he added.
Zelensky calls for action to prevent 'catastrophe'
Russian forces also continue to bear down on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, and on Tuesday the head of the Kyiv Regional Military Administration, Oleksiy Kuleba, said the humanitarian situation in areas around the city remains difficult.
"The main issue today remains humanitarian aid. Bucha, Irpin, Gostomel, Makariv, Borodyanka, Vorzel - residents of these settlements are forced to stay in bomb shelters for days without water and food. The occupiers do not give humanitarian corridors, do not give guarantees," Kuleba said, naming five districts to the north and west of Kyiv.
On Wednesday, these five districts were named among evacuation corridors agreed by Ukraine and Russia.
Also on Wednesday, Zelensky repeated his call for military intervention from Western allies.
"Ukraine has been saying this to its partners from the first day of the war: If you don't close the skies, you will also be responsible for this catastrophe, a massive humanitarian catastrophe," he said.
The Ukrainian government has meanwhile announced that it will ban exports on key agricultural goods, including wheat, corn, grains, salt, and meat, after passing a cabinet resolution Tuesday.
Ukraine's minister of agrarian policy and food, Roman Leshchenko, said the steps had been taken "to prevent a humanitarian crisis in Ukraine" and "meet the needs of the population in critical food products."
Protesters supporting "Medicare for All" hold a rally outside PhRMA headquarters in Washington, D.C., on April 29. (photo: Win McNamee/Getty)
Health care policy researchers Erin C. Fuse Brown and Elizabeth McCuskey tracked the number of unique single-payer bills introduced in state legislatures across the country from 2010 to 2019, finding a sharp uptick in bills introduced since 2017. During each of those three years, at least 10 single-payer proposals were introduced, according to Brown and McCuskey’s research, for the first time since 2013. In total, state legislators proposed more single-payer bills from 2017 to 2019 than in the previous seven years combined. And for 2021, we’ve identified 10 single-payer bills that legislators introduced across the country, from liberal states like California and Massachusetts to more conservative ones including Iowa and Ohio.1
What do all these proposals have in common? They’ve all universally failed. In fact, Vermont, the only state that managed to pass single-payer health care in 2011, ended up shelving its plan three years later.
It makes sense why single-payer advocates have tried to take these fights to the states. States have traditionally been seen as the “laboratories of democracy,” and some advocates of single-payer health care have argued that liberal states could provide unique opportunities to advance single-payer health care. But as I’ll explain, passing single-payer health care at the state level is next to impossible, as states are particularly limited in how they can allocate federal and private health care funds. There is, however, evidence that Americans may have an appetite for a public option, or government-run health insurance that people can opt into at the state level. Three states (Colorado, Nevada and Washington) have already passed a public option. It’s not single-payer health care reform, but it’s possible that we might see more states adopt their own public-option reforms.
One big reason single-payer proposals haven’t caught on at the state level is because finding a reliable way to pay for such a program is challenging. Single-payer advocates originally envisioned a federal proposal that would cover all Americans under a more generous version of a preexisting program — that is, Medicare, but now for all. Doing this state-by-state would require each state to apply for waivers to divert federal funds used for Medicare, Medicaid and Affordable Care Act exchanges to be used for their own single-payer plans. And that’s tricky because the Department of Health and Human Services has wide discretion to approve or deny states’ requests, which makes any proposal highly dependent on the national political climate.
This isn’t just a theoretical debate either: Trump’s administrator for the Centers for Medicare … Medicaid Services Seema Verma said in 2018 that she would deny waivers from states to create single-payer systems, while Biden’s Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra has expressed more favorable sentiments. Almost all single-payer proposals depend on these waivers and states don’t often have fallback plans for if this federal funding gets denied.
Employer-sponsored health insurance plans, which cover 54 percent of Americans, are another hurdle for states trying to pass single-payer health care. Federal law largely prevents states from regulating employer-provided health insurance, so states can’t just stop employers from offering their own health care benefits. The exact scope of this law has been litigated for decades, but suffice it to say that it’s successfully put the kibosh on many statewide health care reforms. Single-payer health insurance is particularly tricky as there’s no way to get everyone onto the plan without first changing how private insurance works. States have tried to address this through measures like increasing payroll taxes or restricting providers’ ability to accept reimbursement from private insurance plans. But the more elaborate these mechanisms get, the more complicated it becomes to implement — and the more people that could slip through the cracks.
Finally, another big financial barrier is that state governments have far less leeway than the federal government to increase budgetary spending. That means tax increases, which come with their own political challenges, are often necessary for states to secure the funding they need.
Take California’s single-payer proposal, which failed in late January. It would have required two-thirds of voters to pass a separate constitutional amendment to implement the necessary tax increases to pay for it. Concerns over tax increases also contributed to the demise of single-payer proposals in Colorado and Vermont. It’s true that a recent analysis of New York’s single-payer health care plan found that it would lower overall health care spending by 3 percent by 2031, but it would also require additional state tax revenue of $139 billion in 2022 — over 150 percent of the current state budget. Politicians facing the next election cycle may be leery of proposing short-term tax increases, even if the end result is long-term savings.
All of this creates a daunting picture for statewide single-payer health care. But the failures of single-payer doesn’t entirely close the door on health care reform, especially if these reforms are supplementing the existing system instead of entirely replacing it. Colorado and Nevada, for instance, successfully passed a public option in 2021, joining Washington, which passed one in 2019. Colorado’s success in advancing a public option is particularly striking, given that almost 80 percent of people voted against its single-payer proposal in 2016.
To be sure, though, efforts to implement a public option aren’t without their own challenges. In 2021, during its first year of implementation, Washington state’s public option struggled to enroll people and get health care providers to agree to lower payment rates. State lawmakers have tried to fix this problem by introducing legislation that would require more providers to participate and bring down premiums by increasing subsidies. Proponents have also cautioned that it might take years before the public option really gains a foothold with Washington state residents.
It’s not clear yet how successful these state-run public option plans will be, but it is possible that a public option may prove more popular than single-payer. For starters, while single-payer health care is popular among Democrats, the public option still polls much better among Republicans and independents. According to a Morning Consult/Politico poll from March 2021, the public option was roughly as popular as Medicare for All among Democrats — about 80 percent said they supported each. But support for the public option was much higher than support for Medicare for All among both Republicans and independents. Just 28 percent of Republicans and 50 percent of independents supported Medicare for All versus 56 percent of Republicans and 63 percent of independents who supported a public option.
Moreover, a public option may align more naturally with Americans’ existing views on the role of government in health care. Polls have long found that Americans still want a choice in their health care, even though they believe that providing health insurance to the uninsured is the government’s responsibility.
Ultimately, any health care reforms would be easier to implement on a federal level than a patchwork, state-by-state approach. But Washington, Colorado and Nevada remain important tests of state governments’ ability to implement a public option in lieu of action by the federal government. It’s not single-payer, but it’s still some of the most consequential health care reforms in decades — and a potential sign of where the debates over health care are heading.
A protester at a 'fair maps' rally in March 2019. The justices ruled 6-3 on Monday not to block the new North Carolina maps from going into effect. (photo: Reuters)
Party urged justices to overturn maps imposed in North Carolina and Pennsylvania that made elections more competitive
A majority of the justices ruled on Monday not to block the new North Carolina maps from going into effect, with justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas saying they would have paused the state supreme court’s ruling.
In the Pennsylvania case, there were no noted dissents from the court’s decision. That case will now go to a panel of three federal judges and Republicans can appeal whatever ruling they issue to the US supreme court in the future.
Both decisions are a win for Democrats politically, as well as voting rights groups that have turned to state supreme courts recently to try to police partisan gerrymandering. The US supreme court said in 2019 that federal courts could not police partisan gerrymandering, but said state constitutions could.
In North Carolina, the state supreme court struck a congressional map that would have probably given Republicans an advantage in 10 of the state’s 14 congressional districts, in a state that is extremely competitive. The map was so egregiously distorted towards Republicans that it ran afoul of a provision in the state constitution that guarantees free elections. After Republicans failed to produce a fairer map, the supreme court replaced it with a plan that gave the GOP a 7-6 advantage with one highly competitive seat.
Republicans wanted the US supreme court to block that map, arguing that the US constitution explicitly gives state legislatures the power to set the “time, manner, and place of elections”. By drawing new districts, they argued, the state supreme court has overstepped its authority. Embracing such an argument, experts warned, would emboldened state legislatures to enact new restrictive voting measures with little oversight.
The court issued its decision on an emergency basis and did not explain its reasoning. They also do not have to reveal how they voted, and it’s unclear whether it was John Roberts or Amy Coney Barrett – or both – who cast their vote with the liberal justices to keep the maps in effect.
Writing a separate concurring opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said it was too close to the state’s primary to impose new maps, but said the case “advanced serious arguments on the merits” and that the court should hear it with full briefing and argument.
“Today’s move by the court reinforces that legislatures do not have a ‘free pass’ to violate protections against partisan gerrymandering when drawing districts that undeniably hurt voters. North Carolinians can now expect to vote in elections under fair congressional maps free of backdoor dealings, extreme partisanship and racial discrimination,” said Hilary Harris Klein, senior counsel for voting rights at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, which represented some of the challengers in the North Carolina case.
Even though the court declined to step in on Monday, there are signs it may be willing to in the future.
In a dissent joined by Gorsuch and Thomas, Alito signaled a willingness to limit the power of state supreme courts when it comes to policing partisan gerrymandering and the authority of a legislature to set election rules. “If the language of the elections clause is taken seriously, there must be some limit on the authority of state courts to countermand actions taken by state legislatures when they are prescribing rules for the conduct of federal elections. I think it is likely that the applicants would succeed in showing that the North Carolina supreme court exceeded those limits.”
In Pennsylvania, the state supreme court picked a new congressional map after the state’s Republican legislature and Democratic governor were unable to agree on a plan. The plan gives Republicans an 8-6 advantage and gives the state three highly competitive districts, according to 538.
Republicans similarly argued that the state supreme court overstepped its authority, but the supreme court rejected the argument.
“This case has now been referred to a three-judge court, and the parties may exercise their right to appeal from an order of that court granting or denying interlocutory injunctive relief,” the justices wrote.
Wisconsin Republicans are also appealing a ruling from the state supreme court setting new electoral districts. That case remains pending before the court.
Sen. Ron Wyden is seeking an investigation into an ICE program, which obtained millions of people's financial records was constitutional. (photo: Getty)
Sen. Ron Wyden is seeking an investigation into whether the program, which obtained about 6 million records from people in several Southwest states, was constitutional.
The mass collection of financial data — in this case money transfer records — is sure to place more scrutiny on law enforcement practices at an agency that’s best known, and often criticized, for arresting and deporting immigrants. Wyden and one privacy expert who spoke to BuzzFeed News raised concerns about the government surveilling people not because they were suspected of a particular crime, but simply because they used money transfers, which are popular in low-income and immigrant communities that are less likely to have access to banks. And if the program was in fact unconstitutional, it could also jeopardize criminal cases that used its data as evidence.
Wyden, the Oregon Democrat who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, wrote in Tuesday’s letter that ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations officials briefed his staff in February on the program and informed them that they had been using a type of administrative subpoena to obtain approximately 6 million records about money transfers above $500 to or from Arizona, California, New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico since 2019. ICE officials said the records, according to a Wyden aide, included the senders and recipients’ names and addresses.
Wyden’s staff had contacted DHS in January requesting the briefing, and the information provided was the first time anyone in Congress had been told about the effort, he wrote. ICE stopped the practice earlier this year after Wyden’s office inquired about it, he said.
HSI officials informed Wyden’s staff that they had sent eight custom summonses — the administrative subpoena used by the agency — to Western Union and Maxitransfers Corporation to demand records for a six-month period after the subpoena. Six of the subpoenas were sent to Western Union while two were sent to Maxitransfers.
HSI directed the companies to send the data to an organization, Transaction Record Analysis Center (TRAC), that facilitates local, federal, and state law enforcement access to bulk data. Law enforcement officials with access to the database are able to use it “without any kind of court supervision,” Wyden wrote in the letter, which was obtained by BuzzFeed News.
Once officials within ICE and DHS headquarters heard of the summonses — and the lack of policy and privacy safeguards — they directed HSI to terminate the existing summons and begin a legal analysis and policy guidance, said one DHS official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to comment freely. (Wyden also noted that no one in the local field office in Phoenix that issued the summonses sought legal guidance from HSI or DHS headquarters in Washington, DC.)
“Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) is committed to ensuring that our criminal investigative methods are not only effective in combatting transnational criminal actors and other security threats, but also consistent with the law and best practices," a DHS spokesperson said. "HSI has paused its use of customs summonses while it works to ensure that policy properly guides the agency’s use of these and other administrative subpoenas and accounts for the appropriate role of such summonses in supporting criminal investigations." The pause in summonses is specifically for the program involving money transfers.
A Western Union spokesperson said that the production to TRAC, which they described as once an agency of the Arizona attorney general’s office, came as a requirement of an anti-money laundering agreement that was enforced through a court order. Wyden wrote in his letter that the company provided the information as part of a settlement agreement with Arizona in 2010. The letter says that in 2019 the settlement expired and ICE stepped in and issued the summonses to Western Union, “each directing the company to transmit records of money transfers directly to TRAC for the next six months. In 2021, HSI started issuing similar customs summonses to Maxi.”
For its part, Western Union said that it works with law enforcement to comply with valid subpoenas and other legitimate requests. “We are also committed to protecting the personal data of our customers and take our obligations regarding privacy very seriously. We are unable to comment further on law enforcement investigations,” the spokesperson said.
Wyden’s claims are just the latest to raise questions about the agency’s use of administrative subpoenas to obtain records. ICE issued an administrative subpoena to BuzzFeed News demanding that the news organization identify its sources. The effort was later dropped after BuzzFeed News published a story exposing the subpoena. The DHS inspector general had also reported in 2017 that Customs and Border Protection had misused the customs summons authority in violation of agency policy.
Nathan Freed Wessler, an attorney with the ACLU who specializes in privacy issues, believes Wyden’s discovery could raise a whole set of problems, including with any criminal cases that relied on the records.
“This dragnet surveillance program from the Department of Homeland Security is illegal, and it is stunning that it was allowed to run for even a single day. Despite a total lack of individualized suspicion, and based only on the happenstance of living in a southwestern state, details of a huge number of people’s private financial transactions with family members and others were funneled straight to the government,” he said. “Courts have made clear that narrow subpoena authorities like the one DHS relied on cannot be stretched to enable indiscriminate bulk collection of Americans’ personal transactional data.”
Wessler said that if evidence in local or federal criminal cases was connected to this program, it could be tossed by judges.
Meanwhile, Wyden believes that the program showed that ICE had “abused its customs summons authority to engage in bulk surveillance” and should have known that it did not have the authority to conduct this type of surveillance. The fact that ICE funneled the information to TRAC meant that it had “outsourced” hosting of a bulk surveillance database to an entity outside of the federal government, he said.
Maxi and TRAC didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Wyden also wrote that ICE officials had told him that “dozens of money transfer companies” have been sharing their data with TRAC voluntarily and that Western Union had asked for the subpoena of the records. A Wyden aide also said that the data from ICE represented about 3% of the records in the TRAC database.
“If this characterization is true, these companies utterly failed to protect the privacy of their already at-risk customer base. These money transfer businesses are disproportionately used by low-income, minority, and immigrant communities. Many users of these services are unbanked, and therefore unable to send money using electronic checking or international bank wire transfers, which are often cheaper,” Wyden wrote.
Wyden said he supported federal law enforcement investigating drug smuggling and money laundering but wanted such work to be done in a targeted way.
“Instead of squandering resources collecting millions of transactions from people merely because they live or transact with individuals in a handful of Southwestern states or have relatives in Mexico, HSI and other agencies should focus their resources on individuals actually suspected of breaking the law,” he wrote.
People attend Brazilian musician Caetano Veloso's performance during a demo in defense of Earth and the environment and against the environmental policies of Bolsonaro. (photo: AFP)
Demonstration against what activists call a historic assault floods capital after musician Caetano Veloso’s call for action
The “Ato pela Terra” (Stand for the Earth) demonstration was held in Brasília to oppose what activists call a “death combo” of five environment-related bills being considered by Brazil’s congress.
The senate is expected to vote on three of those bills in the coming weeks, while two are expected to face votes in the lower house.
If approved, the proposals would greenlight commercial mining on indigenous lands and jeopardize the land rights of tens of thousands of indigenous people; loosen environmental licensing requirements and regulations over pesticide use; and boost land grabbers and illegal loggers in the Amazon, where deforestation has soared under Brazil’s far-right president.
“It’s ecocide,” said Janaína Fernandes, a 49-year-old jeweller who was among those who had turned out to voice anger at the assault on Brazil’s environment that followed Bolsonaro’s 2018 election.
Veloso, who was joined at the rally outside congress by celebrities including the rapper Emicida, the actor Lázaro Ramos and the singer Daniela Mercury, urged citizens to fight legislation that posed “a clear threat to the environment”.
“I think it’s time for us to get out on to the streets and to show our faces,” said the 79-year-old songwriter.
“I’m optimistic about the future of Brazil. That’s to say, I’m taking action to foster something new here, something that might enlighten the world,” Veloso told the Guardian. “But right now it’s hard to cling on to this mindset.”
Addressing members of congress before the rally, Veloso said Brazil had reached its most critical environment crossroads since the return of democracy in the 1980s. “Amazon deforestation is out of control … our international credibility has been shattered,” he said, urging politicians to reject the five bills.
Ana Carolina Tessmann, a 31-year-old teacher, said she was marching against “the worst and cruelest” moment in Brazilian history. “I understand that it is my obligation as a citizen to actively take part in these protests,” Tessmann said.
Protesters hope to convince lawmakers to reject or modify the bills – which have the support of the powerful agribusiness lobby – to reflect concerns over the climate emergency and the traditional populations affected by environmental destruction.
“We want to tell [congress] that we will not accept this … If some of these bills pass, they will spell our destruction,” said Txai Suruí, 25, an indigenous activist from Rondônia, an Amazon state that is a deforestation hotspot.
Marcio Astrini, an environmentalist who is one of the event’s organizers, warned the five pieces of proposed legislation could have devastating consequences for Brazil’s environment and the global climate.
“The protest’s message is: do not vote for these bills in their current form because they are a disaster,” said Astrini, the executive director of the Climate Observatory.
“They doom the country, they doom the environment, they doom our international reputation and they put the survival of the Amazon – and thus the Paris agreement targets – at risk.”
Environmentalists fear that if the bills become law, they will enshrine Bolsonaro’s anti-environmental policies into law for years to come – even if he fails to secure a second term in this year’s election.
Polls suggest Bolsonaro will lose October’s election to his leftwing rival, the former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, having appalled many voters with his anti-scientific handling of a Covid pandemic, which has killed more than 650,000 Brazilians. But by then, Astrini warned, long-lasting damage to the environment might already have been done.
“Even if we change the president and we change Brazil’s environmental stewardship, these [new] rules would make it very hard to fight environmental crime,” he said.
“It would be like taking all of the harm being done by the government today, and ensuring it will continue causing harm and deforestation for years and decades to come.”
Bruna Brelaz, the 27-year-old head of Brazil’s national union of students, urged the country’s youth to make its voice heard in this year’s election. “Register to vote and get Bolsonaro out,” she told demonstrators. “This is the calling of our generation – and it is this generation that will get rid of Bolsonaro and transform this country.”
A manatee calf nurses from its mother inside of the Three Sisters Springs in Crystal River, Florida. (photo: Scott Audette/Reuters)
The lettuce, funded by more than 1,000 individual donations, is offered to manatees that gather in the warm water discharge near a power plant on Florida’s east coast as they typically do during cold months.
Officials from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said in a conference call that the feeding program has made a difference.
“That’s a substantial amount,” said Ron Mezich, feeding program coordinator for the Florida wildlife commission. “We’re not done yet.”
The unprecedented feeding response came after a record 1,100 manatees died last year, largely because of starvation. The problem requires a long-term solution because pollution from agriculture, septic tanks, urban runoff and other sources is killing the seagrass on which the marine mammals rely.
Through Feb. 25 this year, about 375 confirmed manatee deaths have been recorded. That compares to 389 during the same period last year; both are far above the 136 deaths reported in 2020 during the first two months.
More than 80 rescued manatees are currently being cared for at facilities in Florida, Texas, Puerto Rico and Ohio, according to Terri Calleson of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Some of those are abandoned calves that typically take longer to recover.
Florida legislators last year provided $8 million for several seagrass restoration projects that will get off the ground this year, officials said. But it won’t be an immediate solution.
“We’re not solving the seagrass issue in a year,” said Tom Reinert of the Florida wildlife commission.
There are currently about 7,500 manatees, also known as sea cows, living in Florida waters. They are listed federally as a threatened species, although there are efforts to give them the heightened endangered designation.
The approach of warmer weather means manatees will disperse to areas where food is more plentiful, officials said.
“It’s warming up, and that’s a good thing for manatees. They’ll be moving on,” Reinert said.
Officials say most distressed manatees in Florida are reported by people who spot them and call a state hotline at 888-404-3922.
Follow us on facebook and twitter!
PO Box 2043 / Citrus Heights, CA 95611
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.