14 December 20
“Where the Hell Does All This Money Go?”
Question posed by a reader today. Very well.
We are paying 12 regular full time employees, 6 regular contributing authors and a jillion related vendors, contractors and service providers.
It is and has always been a substantial organization, albeit dedicated to progressive and community values.
Yes we need a budget.
It is sorely lacking.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
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13 December 20
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Al Gore | Where I Find Hope
Al Gore, The New York Times
Gore writes: "This weekend marks two anniversaries that, for me, point a way forward through the accumulated wreckage of the past year."
The Biden administration will have the opportunity to restore confidence in America and take on the worsening climate crisis.
The first is personal. Twenty years ago, I ended my presidential campaign after the Supreme Court abruptly decided the 2000 election. As the incumbent vice president, my duty then turned to presiding over the tallying of Electoral College votes in Congress to elect my opponent. This process will unfold again on Monday as the college’s electors ratify America’s choice of Joe Biden as the next president, ending a long and fraught campaign and reaffirming the continuity of our democracy.
The second anniversary is universal and hopeful. This weekend also marks the fifth anniversary of the adoption of the Paris Agreement. One of President Trump’s first orders of business nearly four years ago was to pull the United States out of the accord, signed by 194 other nations to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases threatening the planet. With Mr. Trump heading for the exit, President-elect Biden plans to rejoin the agreement on his Inauguration Day, Jan. 20.
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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. (photo: J. Scott Applewhite/AP/Shutterstock)
AOC's Cooking Live Streams Perfect the Recipe for Making Politics Palatable
David Smith, Guardian UK
Smith writes: "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Or talk up a storm about the minimum wage, healthcare and the existential struggle for democracy."
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is using her millennial’s instinct for social media and her star quality to get her message across
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s latest Instagram live stream found the youngest woman ever elected to the US Congress standing at a chopping board with two lemons and a plastic jug as she expounded her political philosophy.
“Both Democrats and Republicans,” she said, scooping up a lemon with her right hand, “when they indulge in these narratives of commonsense policies being radical,” – setting the lemon down on the board again – “what they’re trying to do is really shorten the window of what’s possible.”
A twee icing contest on The Great British Bake Off this is not. And as far as we know, Gordon Ramsay, Ina Garten and Nigella Lawson have never been heard to exclaim, “Shoutout to my fellow radicals!” as Ocasio-Cortez did last Thursday night.
But for anyone worried that politics might become a little too boring under Joe Biden’s presidency, “AOC”, as she is universally known, is bringing comfort food. The 31-year-old New York Democrat has gained a vast social media following with her intimate videos of cooking, fashion tips, furniture assembly and behind the scenes in Congress.
This may say something about a public craving for authenticity in politicians: Biden, Donald Trump and AOC’s mentor Bernie Sanders have it, as far as their supporters are concerned. Similarly Ocasio-Cortez, from a working-class family in the Bronx, comes over more like your relatable drinking buddy than a Washington stiff but combines it with a millennial’s instinct for social media and a timeless star quality.
But it is also proof that entertainment and politics have become mutually indistinguishable. The trend arguably began 60 years ago with the televised Kennedy v Nixon debates, received a boost from Bill Clinton playing saxophone on a late-night talkshow and reached its apotheosis with Trump, who went from reality TV host to reality TV president.
So Ocasio-Cortez offers a glimpse of where we’re heading. Her Instagram live streams typically begin with the type of bit that might feature on daytime TV before pivoting to policy. It is a technique that serves journalists, novelists and other storytellers well: first hook your audience with something engaging, then move on to the substantial idea you really want to talk about.
A cooking video last year began with Ocasio-Cortez in an unglamorous kitchen, rinsing rice in the sink. What are you making? asked viewers. The answer: chicken tikka masala. “I am missing ginger, which is a really big bummer,” she said, before fielding questions on everything from Medicare for All to presidential impeachments.
In last Thursday’s edition, lemons were a suitably sour match for Ocasio-Cortez’s mood in a country where 3,000 people a day are dying from coronavirus, Congress has stalled for months over providing economic relief – and Biden appears in no hurry to put her progressive allies in his cabinet.
Wearing a “tax the rich” sweater, the congresswoman was visibly more angry and frustrated than usual. “If people think that the present day is like radical far left, they just haven’t even opened a book,” she said with expressive hand gestures. “Like, we had much more radicalism in the United States as recently as the 60s.
“We talk about how labour unions started in this country. That was radical. People died, people died in this country, it was almost like a war for the 40-hour work week and your weekends. And a lot of people died for these very basic economic rights. We can’t go back to that time.”
She added: “Doubling the minimum wage should be normal. Guaranteed healthcare should be normal. Trying to save our planet should be centrist politics.”
She became even more irate as she talked about Covid-19. Hands resting on a plastic jug, she said animatedly: “Here’s the thing that’s also a huge irony to me, is that all these Republicans and all these folks who were anti-shutdown are the same people who weren’t wearing masks who forced us to shut down in the first place.”
The final 12 words of that sentence came in a rapid staccato, accompanied by Ocasio-Cortez’s left hand clapping or chopping her right for emphasis. “I wanna see my family,” she said. “I haven’t seen my family in a year, like many of you all. I wanna be able to visit my friends without being scared and I wanna be able to hang out with my friends when it’s cold outside and not have to be outside.”
If anyone was depending on AOC for their dinner that night, they were in for a long wait. Ilhan Omar, a fellow member of “the Squad” in Congress, teased her on Twitter: “@AOC you forgot to tell us what you were making tonight sis.”
Ocasio-Cortez confessed: “I tried to make salmon spinach pasta but got carried away about how jacked up our Covid response is and how badly we need stimulus checks and healthcare that all I did was zest a lemon I’ll post my meal when it’s done.”
And she eventually did post a photo for “accountability purposes”. (Her pet dog looked intrigued.)
The style has been honed over time. Last year there was the live stream of Ocasio-Cortez in her unfurnished apartment where she had been sleeping on a mattress on the floor. Again, relatable. “I’ve been living like a completely depraved lifestyle,” she said, chewing on popcorn (top tip: add ground pepper) and assembling a table. “There’s something very satisfying about putting together Ikea furniture.”
But she also delivered meat in the sandwich. “Your grandchildren will not be able to hide the fact that you fought against acknowledging and taking bold actions on climate change,” Ocasio-Cortez warned opponents. “We have 12 years left to cut emissions by at least 50%, if not more, and for everyone who wants to make a joke about that, you may laugh but your grandkids will not.”
Another classic of the genre came in August this year when Ocasio-Cortez shot a video for Vogue about her skincare and lipstick routine. On one level, it was glamorous and fun. On another, it was a golden opportunity to riff on patriarchy, the gender pay gap and what it is to live in systems largely built for the convenience of men – in a medium that was infinitely more digestible than a dry university seminar.
“The reason why I think it’s so important to share these things is that, first of all, femininity has power, and in politics there is so much criticism and nitpicking about how women and femme people present ourselves,” she said. “Just being a woman is quite politicised here in Washington.
“…… There’s this really false idea that if you care about makeup or if your interests are in beauty and fashion, that that’s somehow frivolous. But I actually think these are some of the most substantive decisions that we make – and we make them every morning.”
One of the keys to understanding the phenomenon of Ocasio-Cortez, and the backlash against her, is her years of working as a bartender and waitress. Critics seek to portray this as a weakness, with Twitter jibes such as “Shut up and sit down, bartender”. On the contrary, it is a strength, a schooling in the art of conversation and listening.
Ocasio-Cortez shot back last year: “I find it revealing when people mock where I came from, and say they’re going to ‘send me back to waitressing’, as if that is bad or shameful. It’s as though they think being a member of Congress makes you intrinsically ‘better’ than a waitress. But our job is to serve, not rule.”
The US constitution stipules that the president must be at least 35 years old. Ocasio-Cortez turns 35 less than a month before the next election. She is already campaigning from her kitchen without knowing it.
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Former GlaxoSmithKline pharmaceutical executive Moncef Slaoui waits to speak as President Donald Trump holds a coronavirus disease response event in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington, U.S., May 15, 2020. (photo: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
US Expects to Have Immunized 100 Million Against COVID-19 by End of March
Reuters
Excerpt: "The United States expects to have immunized 100 million people with the coronavirus vaccine by the end of March, the chief adviser for the U.S. COVID-19 vaccine program said on Sunday."
The first vaccine was authorized for emergency use by U.S. regulators on Friday night and began shipping on Sunday.
“We would have immunized 100 million people by the first quarter of 2021,” U.S. Operation Warp Speed chief adviser Dr. Moncef Slaoui said in an interview with Fox News Sunday.
He said the United States hopes to have about 40 million doses of vaccine distributed by the end of December, which would include the just authorized vaccine from Pfizer Inc and one from Moderna Inc expected to get a similar emergency use nod later this week.
Another 50 million to 80 million doses will be distributed in January, and the same number in February, Slaoui said. The vaccine requires two shots per person.
“We are working with Pfizer to continue helping them and supporting them achieve the objective of providing us with another 100 million doses in the second quarter of 2021,” Slaoui said.
The first to be vaccinated would be front line healthcare workers, as well as residents of long-term care facilities, he added.
For the United States to get “herd immunity,” which would halt transmission of the deadly virus, the country would need to have immunized about 75% or 80% of the population, he said, adding that he hoped to reach that point between May and June.
“It is however critical that most of the American people decide and accept to take the vaccine,” Slaoui said. “We are very concerned by the hesitancy that we see.”
He said he hoped people will keep an open mind, “listen to the data and openly agree that this is a very effective and safe vaccine and therefore take it.”
In a large clinical trial, the Pfizer vaccine was 95% effective in preventing illness with few serious side effects.
Slaoui downplayed suggestions that there might not be enough vaccine to go around. He noted that a vaccine from Johnson & Johnson is likely to be ready for authorization late in January or early in February, and that he expected AstraZeneca’s vaccine to be “potentially approvable somewhere late in February.”
Political pressure for vaccines to be approved was “not helpful, because it’s not needed,” Slaoui said in response to questions about reports that White House chief of staff Mark Meadows called Food and Drug Administration head Stephen Hahn on Friday to urge him to authorize the vaccine that day or possibly lose his job.
A tweet on Friday by President Donald Trump, who has been critical of both the FDA and Pfizer, said to “Get out the damn vaccine NOW, Dr. Hahn.”
“If that phone call happened, I think it was useless and unfortunate, and so are some of the tweets,” Slaoui said.
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Supporters of President Donald Trump rally at Freedom Plaza to protest the outcome of the 2020 presidential election on December 12, 2020 in Washington, D.C. (photo: Jose Luis Magana/Getty Images)
Pro-Trump Protesters Chant "Destroy the GOP," Boo Georgia Senate Candidates at Rally
Daniel Politi, Slate
Politi writes: "Thousands of supporters of President Donald Trump gathered on Saturday to make clear they are not ready to accept that President-elect Joe Biden won the election two days before the electoral college is set to make it official. "
housands of supporters of President Donald Trump gathered on Saturday to make clear they are not ready to accept that President-elect Joe Biden won the election two days before the electoral college is set to make it official. The mostly maskless protesters included hundreds of members of Proud Boys, the far-right organization, that seemed intent on intimidating those around them while wearing helmets and bulletproof vests. Although the gathering was large, it was significantly smaller than the pro-Trump protest last month.
The Trump supporters gathered a day after the Supreme Court dismissed a case from Texas that sought to overturn the results of the election. So, of course, many of those who spoke at the rally expressed anger at the justices, as well as Fox News and Biden. They also made clear they are angry with the Republican Party. “In the first Million MAGA march we promised that if the GOP did not do everything in their power to keep Trump in office, then we would destroy the GOP,” conservative commentator Nick Fuentes said from a megaphone while standing on a stage. “As we gather here in Washington, D.C. for a second Million MAGA March, we’re done making promises. It has to happen now. We are going to destroy the GOP.” The crowd loudly cheered and started chanting: “Destroy the GOP! Destroy the GOP!”
Nick Fuentes speaks to a crowd of Trump supporters and gets them chanting “destroy the GOP!” for failing to protect Trump from not getting a second term. pic.twitter.com/AUAqU402Dz
— Ford Fischer (@FordFischer) December 12, 2020
In a move that is likely to make many Republican leaders nervous, Fuentes went on to blast the Georgia Senate candidates who will be competing in a January runoff that will be key for control of the Senate. “The GOP wants us to hold the line and vote for ‘RINOs’ like Davie Perdue and Kelly Loeffler in the Georgia Senate runoffs,” Fuentes said. That led to loud boos from the crowd. Republican leaders have been worrying for weeks that all the baseless talk of fraud would lead many Trump supporters in Georgia to sit out the Jan. 5 elections in which Sen. David Perdue is running against Democrat Jon Ossoff and Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler is facing off against Rev. Raphael Warnock.
Former national security adviser Michael Flynn was among the speakers at the rally as he delivered his first public remarks since Trump pardoned him last month. Flynn encouraged Trump supporters to keep the hope alive that they’d be able to overturn the election results. “Don’t get bent out of shape,” Flynn said. “There are still avenues … We’re fighting with faith, and we’re fighting with courage.” At one point Trump appeared to pass over the protesters in the Marine One helicopter three times. “That’s pretty cool,” Flynn said. “Imagine being able to jump in a helicopter and go for a joyride around Washington, D.C. I love it. I love the fact that he does that.”
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Jill Biden speaks during a Pennsylvania Biden-Harris rally in November 2020. (photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)
A Wall Street Journal Op-Ed About Jill Biden Pairs Virulent Sexism With Academic Elitism
Cameron Peters, Vox
Peters writes: "On Saturday, the Wall Street Journal editorial page published an op-ed criticizing incoming First Lady Jill Biden's use of the title 'doctor' - and immediately drew backlash for the article's open sexism and condescension."
The article has been roundly criticized for attacking Biden for using the title “doctor” before her name.
The piece, “Is There a Doctor in the White House? Not if You Need an M.D.” by Joseph Epstein, an emeritus lecturer of English at Northwestern University, is ostensibly a foray into an ongoing debate over whether only medical doctors can claim the title, or whether it can also be used by PhDs or others with doctorates, such as Biden, who has a doctorate in educational leadership. (Many publications, including Vox, follow the Associated Press stylebook, which reserves “Dr.” for medical doctors.)
Epstein’s op-ed, though, went beyond this argument to specifically belittle Biden’s credentials and her field of study, beginning with addressing Biden — who is 69 — as “kiddo.” In the op-ed, he describes her decision to use the title of doctor as something that “sounds and feels fraudulent, not to say a touch comic.” He also dismisses her doctoral dissertation, about keeping community college students enrolled, as “unpromising,” though he does not make clear whether he has read it.
Many women in academia struggle to be addressed with the same respect given their male colleagues. And community colleges have long fought a stigma that the education they offer is inferior to their four-year counterparts.
Epstein’s op-ed played into both of those tropes — and struck a justifiable nerve.
Biden’s students call her “Dr.” — but the op-ed insists she doesn’t deserve the title
Biden, according to Politico, has two master’s degrees and earned her doctorate in educational leadership from the University of Delaware in 2007; she was a community college professor in northern Virginia while her husband was vice president. Though she took a leave of absence during the campaign, she has said that she will continue to teach while in the White House. Her students, according to Politico, call her “Dr. B.”
But Epstein suggests that Biden does not deserve to be referred to this way, writing that “a wise man once said that no one should call himself ‘Dr.’ unless he has delivered a child. Think about it, Dr. Jill, and forthwith drop the doc.” For anyone else who has earned the title to use it is “pathetic” to Epstein’s mind, and he claims it is meaningless anyway.
Epstein goes on to argue the value of a doctorate has diminished in recent years in comparison to the olden days at Columbia University, when “a secretary sat outside the room where these [doctoral examinations] were administered, a pitcher of water and a glass on her desk. The water and glass were there for the candidates who fainted.”
Epstein, who has an honorary doctorate himself but lacks one earned by study, also digresses from his critique of Biden to complain about the proliferation of honorary degrees, which recognize noteworthy contributions to scholarship, culture, or society, but don’t imply academic achievement. This is apparently a hobbyhorse of his: According to Epstein, he once sent a “complaining email” to the president of Northwestern University after Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers received honorary doctorates.
As Danielle Keifert, an assistant professor of education at the University of North Texas, succinctly put it on Twitter, “the suggestion that honorary degrees water down the value of an earned doctorate is laughable. This dude thinks because he had one given to him the rest of us didn’t earn it.”
Epstein’s claims elicited strong reactions from many who found his tone offensive and his logic lacking — critics, ranging from members of Biden’s team to her fellow academics, repeatedly pointed out that the piece seemed ill-informed, paternalistic, and misogynistic.
Biden’s future communications director Elizabeth Alexander called the piece “sexist and shameful” on Twitter, while Biden’s spokesperson, Michael LaRosa, wrote, “If you had any respect for women at all [the Wall Street Journal] would remove this repugnant display of chauvinism from your paper and apologize to her.”
“Dr. Biden can absolutely use her honorific. It was not bestowed upon her, she earned it,” Dr. Cathleen London tweeted. “Those of us with MD will not suffer for her using it,”
Sarah Parcak, an archeologist with a doctorate, responded with a tweet that reflected the overall response of many women doctors on Twitter, writing, “Dear Joseph Epstein, author of this garbage sexist article, Kiss my ass and go f*ck yourself.”
As Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at Georgetown University, points out on Twitter, there’s a good reason that doctors outside of the field of medicine, and especially women, make a point of using the title “doctor.”
“This debate comes every so often on twitter,” Moynihan tweeted as part of a longer thread, “so here is the conclusion: PhDs predate MDs, and the medical profession grabbed the title of doctor to make themselves appear more credible [and] Female & POC scholars often [use “doctor”] as a way to insist people ... not overlook their real credentials.”
The op-ed also implied that studying community colleges is useless
Epstein, early in his op-ed, described Biden’s dissertation, titled “Student Retention at the Community College Level: Meeting Students’ Needs,” as “unpromising.” That dismissive comment — and again, it’s unclear if Epstein actually read the dissertation, or engaged with it at all beyond sniping at its title — does a grave disservice to an important issue.
According to data from fall 2018, community college students make up about a third of the US undergraduate population — but from 2017 to 2018, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, the retention rate for two-year institutions, at about 62 percent, was almost 20 percent lower when compared to four-year institutions.
There is some debate on what this means — as Grace Chen points out for Community College Review, some students transfer from community colleges to four-year institutions without first completing an associate’s degree. But it’s hard to argue that bolstering retention rates for students who might otherwise never complete a degree isn’t a valuable enterprise. And this debate underscores the fact that it is a topic that requires further scholarship — making Biden’s addition to the field all the more germane.
And Biden has made community colleges a priority beyond her dissertation. She has chosen to teach at one, the Northern Virginia Community College, for what the Los Angeles Times reports is less than she might have earned at a state or private institution.
Perhaps none of this should be surprising: Epstein has previously mourned the rise of “inclusive and anti-racist learning spaces” in an August op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, in which he rhapsodizes about the “tough-guy tradition” of his undergraduate days.
And in 2015, in an essay described by New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait as “bizarre” and “rambling,” Epstein wrote that Hillary Clinton would be “not only be the nation’s first woman president but our second affirmative-action president,” after Barack Obama.
“How have we come to the point,” Epstein writes, “where we elect presidents of the United States not on their intrinsic qualities but because of the accidents of their birth: because they are black, or women, or, one day doubtless, gay, or disabled — not, in other words, for themselves but for the causes they seem to embody or represent, for their status as members of a victim group?”
In the present day, Epstein’s final suggestion is every bit as bizarre as the rest of his Saturday op-ed: “As for your Ed.D.,” he writes, “Madame First Lady, hard-earned though it may have been, please consider stowing it, at least in public, at least for now. Forget the small thrill of being Dr. Jill, and settle for the larger thrill of living for the next four years in the best public housing in the world as First Lady Jill Biden.”
It’s not clear why Epstein believes this to be an either-or proposition, but it isn’t. And regardless of what Epstein thinks on the topic, in roughly a month’s time, there will be a First Lady Dr. Jill Biden in the White House.
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Survivors of the Mai Kadra massacre being treated at the Gondar University Hospital, in the city of Gondar. (photo: Eduardo Soteras/AFP)
Survivors Recount Horrific Details of Mai Kadra Massacre
Zecharias Zelalem, Al Jazeera
Zelalem writes: "With communications gradually being restored to parts of Ethiopia's war-hit Tigray region, survivors and residents in the town of Mai Kadra have been able to share harrowing accounts of the slaughter of civilians more than a month ago, the worst confirmed atrocity in a weeks-long conflict between government forces and the now-fugitive regional government."
Witnesses and relatives of victims say the bloodletting in the small town in Ethiopia’s war-hit Tigray region went on unabated for almost 24 hours.
On November 12, nearly two weeks after the start of the fighting in the northern region, an Amnesty International investigation cited witnesses as saying that forces linked to the embattled Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) had gone on a rampage in the small town three days earlier.
Armed with weapons including machetes and knives, the attackers hacked and stabbed residents to death, the witnesses told Amnesty, which said it could confirm “the massacre of a very large number of civilians” after examining and verifying gruesome photographs and videos from the scene.
Days later, a preliminary investigation by a government-appointed rights watchdog stated that there may be as many as 600 victims, saying the killings were committed by a local youth group with the support of other Tigrayan civilians, police and militia.
Home to up to 45,000 people of Tigrayan, Amhara and other ethnic origins, Mai Kadra had been under the control of the TPLF until its forces retreated from the town a day after the massacre as Ethiopian government troops made advances in western Tigray.
Despite the Ethiopian government’s capture of the Tigrayan capital of Mekelle on November 28, fighting between the TPLF and Ethiopian army units is believed to be continuing in parts of rural Tigray. Swaths of the region remain inaccessible to journalists and aid workers, making it hard to verify claims from all sides and leaving observers fearing that additional war crimes may yet be uncovered.
The federal government imposed a communications blackout when it began its military operation on November 4, but Mai Kadra has had its phone services restored for a little more than a week now. Al Jazeera has been able to communicate with a total of six survivors, witnesses and relatives of victims who were in Mai Kadra on November 9 and said the bloodletting went on unabated for nearly 24 hours.
‘I thought it was the end’
Solomon Chaklu said he had come to Mai Kadra from the town of Dansha to inspect a vehicle he had intended to buy.
“Police and TPLF youth militias went all over town searching for non-Tigrayans to kill,” Solomon told Al Jazeera on the phone. “At around 3pm, police and the youths with machetes came to the home we were hiding in,” he said.
“They dragged me outside, where I saw maybe 20 or 30 bodies of people who lay dying or were dead. I thought it was the end for me.”
The Ethiopian government maintains that a TPLF-backed Tigrayan youth militia dubbed the “Samri” singled out men like Solomon and Ferede, who are of ethnic Amhara descent. There have been long-standing tensions between Tigrayans and Amhara and militia members from the Amhara region neighbouring Tigray have taken part in fighting against the TPLF’s forces alongside the Ethiopian army.
Solomon said he, his friend Ferede Leu and a third man were asked to produce ID cards that would identify their ethnic group. The third man was left alone after he pleaded for his life in Tigrinya, the language of the assailants, according to Solomon.
“They tried to kill me,” he said. “I was surrounded by four men and one of them struck me in the head and back with his machete. I remember the others laughing as they watched him.”
When he regained consciousness, Solomon was informed that his friend, Ferede, had been hacked to death. He himself was bleeding profusely and the next day was taken to hospital in the city of Gonder some 260km (162 miles) away. Discharged after two weeks, he is currently recovering from multiple machete blows and a broken leg in his home in Dansha.
“Men turned into bloodthirsty beasts that day,” he said.
‘We can still hear the horrific sounds’
Ethiopian state media reported that the massacre was the result of surviving TPLF units taking out their frustration on the town’s residents after having been routed in battles with the Ethiopian army.
Hadas Mezgebu, whose husband of 17 years was murdered in front of the family’s home in Mai Kadra, said she believed the attackers “had planned this for days”.
“They had asked to see people’s identity cards. When the killings started, they knew which homes to go to. They knew my husband was Amhara.”
On the day of the killings, Tilahun Getnet says he hid in the home of his half-brother, Tebekaw Zewdu, who had lived in Mai Kadra for nearly 30 years.
“We heard the Samri gang wasn’t targeting women and children, so we lay hidden just above the ceiling of my brother’s home for hours,” Tilahun said on the phone. “Twice they searched the home and left after only finding my brother’s wife and children.”
But the machete-wielding killers came back for a third search of the home and grew frustrated when they could not locate Tebekaw, 37. They began threatening his wife and son.
“When she refused to reveal where her husband was hidden, they seized their 11-year-old son and threatened to slaughter him if she didn’t reveal his husband’s whereabouts. That’s when my brother came out from hiding. They hacked him to death there, in front of his wife and son who screamed for mercy.”
Tilahun said his half-brother’s family has since moved out of Mai Kadra. “We can still hear the horrific sounds of that day when we dream at night.”
Reports of Tigrayans targeted
Thousands of people are thought to have been killed since fighting began in Tigray on November 4, with the United Nations saying that an estimated one million people have been displaced across the region, in addition to the nearly 50,000 who have fled to neighbouring Sudan.
In the Sudanese refugee camps, a number of Tigrayan refugees have told journalists they escaped after Tigrayan civilians in Mai Kadra had been killed by Ethiopian federal forces and members of an Amhara militia. Some said they had seen hundreds of bodies and described scenes of ethnically motivated attacks, including killings with knives and beatings.
Amid the divergent accounts, TPLF leader Debretsion Gebremichael has dismissed accusations of his forces’ involvement in any mass killings as “baseless”, while Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has said the federal forces have not killed a single civilian during their operation against the TPLF.
When probed by Al Jazeera, TPLF official Fesseha Tessema said the group is aware of killings involving Tigrayan victims. “The heinous crime committed against Tigrayans in Mai Kadra is just one among similar crimes that should be investigated by an international body,” he said.
Earlier this week, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said there is “an urgent need” for independent monitoring of the developments in Tigray, warning that the “exceedingly worrying and volatile” situation “is spiralling out of control, with appalling impact on civilians”.
Amnesty, meanwhile, concurs there may be victims of additional atrocities among people of both ethnicities during the fighting, but its lead Ethiopia researcher said the organisation has no doubt as to who was behind the killings of November 9.
“We have had follow-up interviews with victims, who say the killers were provided support by armed local [TPLF] militia,” Fisseha Tekle, Amnesty’s lead Ethiopia researcher, told Al Jazeera. “Youth groups were armed with axes, machetes and knives and told to go home to home in search of Amhara men.”
While Ethiopian officials say the conflict is dwindling down and reject what they describe as outside “interference”, the United Nations continues to press the government to grant it access to people in war-torn areas to provide much-needed humanitarian aid.
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A California sea lion comes across a discarded face mask in Monterey, Calif. Many types of masks contain plastics that taint ocean ecosystems and disrupt marine food chains. (photo: Ralph Pace/WP)
A Pandemic Side Effect: Used Masks Polluting California Coastal Waters
Scott Wilson, The Washington Post
Wilson writes: "At the small pebble beach near a park called Blackies Pasture, a surgical mask is tangled in the marsh at the edge of the Bay. A little farther on is another, then another on the other side of the path, waiting to be blown into the sea."
he pale blue is easy to spot among the dry-brown reeds.
People walk here along the northern coast of the San Francisco Bay, crowding a path that bends to the contour of the shore. At the small pebble beach near a park called Blackies Pasture, a surgical mask is tangled in the marsh at the edge of the Bay. A little farther on is another, then another on the other side of the path, waiting to be blown into the sea.
“I mean this is a high-wealth area and even here you see it,” said Peter Ottesen, a fit 74-year-old tossing the ball to his black lab, Addie, on a recent clear morning. “It’s now like cigarette butts or anything else. You see it on the sides of the path, the sides of the road, and if you don’t see it, you are not looking.”
There is the economic crash, the education gap, the depression of solitary life. Now another unwelcome and potentially enduring side effect of the coronavirus pandemic has emerged: the masks, gloves, disinfectant wipes and other items of “personal protective equipment” meant to save lives are also polluting the environment.
Since the pandemic began early this year, masks have become a go-to item of the national wardrobe, especially here along the California coast where mask-wearing rates are high. But many are careless with the new accessory and, in windy places like many along this state’s 840-mile coast, the masks and other products are ending up on sidewalks, skittering into storm drains, blowing onto beaches and ending up in the Pacific Ocean and its bays.
And this is before the state’s traditional rainy season, which washes urban flotsam and jetsam into the sea. It is due to begin this month.
Many types of masks, including the most common surgical variety, contain plastics that taint ocean ecosystems and disrupt marine food chains. The bottom line is that, in the era of covid-19, another form of mass-produced human stuff is making its way into places where humans do not live.
“Whatever the product may be this is a new, additional plastic threat,” said Adam Ratner, associate director of the conservation education program at the Marine Mammal Center based in the Marin headlands, which rescues and heals seals, sea lions, otters and other animals along a 600-mile stretch of California coast.
So far, Ratner said, no animals have been rescued this year after being entangled in personal protective items. It is the extent of the pollution that is the primary concern, he said, given that ocean trash poses the biggest risk to the recovery of the endangered Hawaiian monk seal and the threatened Guadalupe fur seal.
“We want to see people use masks, we want to see people use all of the protective equipment and stay healthy,” Ratner said. “But now is the time to stop this, and ocean trash knows no international borders.”
A study published last summer in the journal Environmental Science & Technology estimated that 129 billion masks and 65 billion plastic-containing gloves are used globally each month, with “a significant portion” ending up in the world’s oceans.
Along the Pacific Ocean, the world’s largest, the evidence has been literally piling up.
Each year the California Coastal Commission holds a cleanup day, drawing thousands of volunteers from San Diego to Eureka. The normally one-day event this year was held over the entire month of September, and once completed, the commission reported that 70,000 pounds of trash were pulled from parks, creeks, beaches and other public areas.
About 75 percent of the debris contained plastic, most of it single-use items such as masks, straws, water bottles and takeout containers.
The surprise was that masks, gloves and other personal protective items ranked 12th out of the 50 categories of recovered trash. In a state where 80 percent of ocean trash originates on land, the items had never accounted for enough of the debris to require their own category.
“This should not be on the ground in the first place, it should be on your face,” said Eben Schwartz, who directs the Coastal Commission’s marine debris program. “Most synthetic materials have the potential to leach chemicals into the environment, particularly plastics into the environment, and as a result disrupt the food web.”
This is a state that has tried to take plastic pollution seriously, sometimes at the risk of becoming the butt of jokes in doing so.
The state has a law that requires restaurants provide plastic straws only on request. But this year the legislature narrowly defeated a much more stringent proposal that would have called for the reduction in single-use plastic by 75 percent over the next decade. The legislation is likely to return.
The cities and counties around the Bay have moved even more aggressively.
San Francisco has banned plastic straws, many of which end up in the water, as have Oakland and Berkeley on the other side of the Bay. San Francisco environmental officials estimated that a million plastic straws a year ended up in the Bay before the regulations took hold last year. In Berkeley, nearly any item that commonly accompanies takeout food, from ketchup packs to plastic utensils, is provided only on request.
Masks and gloves, while not found littering the Bay in the same quantity as some other plastic trash, have undermined much of the progress made by those regulations, which conservatives dismiss as the kind of disruptive, trivial rules that liberals love to impose.
But the new flotsam is nonetheless bountiful around the Bay, as a recent tour from the still-crowded streets of East Oakland, through the wealthy coastal communities of Marin County, and over the Golden Gate Bridge to the edge of the continent showed.
“It’s all over the place now,” said Gonzalo Cruz, 62, who picks up trash along the streets of Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood for Peralta Services Corp.
On a recent morning, Cruz was working along International Boulevard, a radio playing ranchera music strapped to his chest. Trash cans overflowed on the sidewalks of a neighborhood brutally hit by the coronavirus.
Along a single block, Cruz stooped to pick up five masks tucked between parked cars and the curb.
“Every day,” he said. “Every day there’s more.”
Bending around the Bay to the north, there is a roadside park in the town of Larkspur, where Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) lived with his family before decamping for Sacramento. Diana Lonergan, an estate manager, walked a whippet and an Irish wolfhound along the narrow path between a marsh and the Bay on a warm winter morning.
Within 100 yards of the trailhead, a blue surgical mask caught the sun in a thicket of reeds, a flock of bufflehead ducks paddling through the calm waters in a V formation just a few yards away.
“It’s just gross,” she said. “When I see it, I always think, ‘Who does that?’ ”
In the middle distance loomed the San Francisco skyline and neat rows of avenues, each sloping steeply to the Bay. It is easy to see why a mask dropped even in the middle of downtown ends up bobbing in the ocean.
Over the bridge and a short jog west leads to Lands End, the park at the end of the continent.
The edge is rugged, buffeted by a consistently rough sea, and blown by a stiff breeze. Hiking trails carve through cypress and pines and fir. A foghorn bleats in the distance.
Where the cliff drops to Mile Rock Beach, ice plants and brush cling to the soft dirt. There are seabirds and a seal below. But what stands out most, in the near distance, is what dangles from the undergrowth like fruit.
The blue of masks, a half dozen of them in one stand of ice plants alone. There are dozens more in the branches.
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