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14 June 20

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An American Spring of Reckoning

A memorial to George Floyd set up near where he was arrested. (photo: Carlos Barria/Reuters)

Jelani Cobb, The New Yorker
Cobb writes: "The impunity of the American police has been achieved by slow accretion through the decades, and with the tacit understanding that it would be deployed in great disproportion against black people. But, whatever ensues now, we are in a different moment."

EXCERPTS:

Now consider a different idea, that the death of George Floyd did occur in another country: the traumatized version of America inhabited by black people. Fifty-two years ago, following the storm of riots that swept through 1967 and 1968, the Kerner Commission report noted that “our nation is moving toward two societies—one black, one white, separate and unequal.” Today, the weight of grief and poverty in this country still falls disproportionately on black shoulders. The eight minutes and forty-six seconds during which a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd as three others looked on cannot be understood outside the context of a pandemic in which African-Americans have died at three times the rate of white Americans. The chaotic, angry, defiant tableaux in the streets of Minneapolis, Seattle, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Oakland, Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, Louisville, San Francisco, Indianapolis, Charleston, Detroit, Baltimore, and beyond represent a reckoning, a kind of American Spring, one long in the making and ignited not just by a single police killing. In death, George Floyd’s name has become a metaphor for the stacked inequities of the society that produced them.

Race, to the degree that it represents anything coherent in the United States, is shorthand for a specific set of life probabilities. The inequalities between black and white Americans are documented in rates of morbidity and infant mortality, wealth, and unemployment, which attest that although race may be a biological fiction, its reality is seen in what is likely to happen in our lives. The more than forty million people of African descent who live in the United States recognize this reality, but it’s largely invisible in the lives of white Americans.

There have been other developments. The argument once mired in pointless circumambulation, between “All Lives Matter” and “Blue Lives Matter,” has been settled. Muriel Bowser, the mayor of Washington, D.C., renamed a street leading to the White House Black Lives Matter Plaza, emblazoning the phrase on the asphalt in gigantic yellow letters. The near-ubiquity of those words in the past three weeks—Amazon, Apple, and Airbnb all added some version of it to their home pages—has prompted a consideration of what this means in practical terms. Critics on social media were quick to assert that the truest endorsement of Black Lives Matter lies not in what you say on your Web site but in what you do for your black employees.

The American Spring has not toppled a power, but it has led to a reassessment of the relationship between that power and the citizens from whom it is derived. It has resolved any remaining questions regarding Donald Trump’s utter ineptitude as President; it has laid bare the contradictory and partial democracy that the United States holds before the world as exemplary. Most significant, it has clarified our terms. Floyd’s life is the awful price we have paid for a momentarily common tongue, a language that precisely conveys what we are speaking of when we say “American.” Fourteen successive days of protest opened the possibility that George Floyd died in America, not simply in its black corollary. The task that remains is to insure that more of us might actually live there.

A healthcare worker and a patient. (photo: ABC News)

As Coronavirus Cases Rise, Fauci Says Some 'Normality' Could Be a Year Away
Derek Hawkins, Paul Schemm, Meryl Kornfield, Brittany Shammas and Adam Taylor, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "With President Trump's rally in Tulsa less than a week away, health experts warned that the indoor venue and potentially large crowd could help spread the coronavirus, putting attendees and others at risk."

The scheduled rally comes as new infections are trending upward in at least 21 states across the South and the West, prompting some governors to rethink reopening plans and renewing concerns that the country could be a long way from containing the pandemic. Alabama, Oregon and South Carolina are among the states with the biggest increases. Alabama saw a 92 percent increase in its seven-day average, while Oregon’s seven-day average was up 83.8 percent and South Carolina’s was up 60.3 percent.

George Floyd protests. (image: Pexels)

The Coddling of the American Pundit
Edward Ongweso Jr., VICE
Ongweso writes: "Commentators think the George Floyd protests have vindicated their weird obsession with American campus culture. But they're simply anxious about the delegitimization of power and privilege."
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Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden. (photo: Boston Globe)

Veepstakes: Joe Biden Narrows List of Potential Running Mates
Al Jazeera
Excerpt: "Media in the United States reported on Friday that Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden's search for a running mate is entering a second round of vetting - and the narrowed list circulating in some circles is as much notable for who is not on it as who is."
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Senator Mitch McConnell. (photo: J. Scott Applewhite/AP)

Kentucky Rep Charles Booker Plans to Unseat Mitch McConnell With Progressive Policies Amid Racial Unrest
Arielle Mitropoulos and Kelsey Walsh, ABC News
Excerpt: "A young Kentucky legislator with hopes of unseating Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is voicing his concerns over the racial injustice in his community and across the country."

Booker, 35, is locked in a tight Democratic primary with Amy McGrath.

young Kentucky legislator with hopes of unseating Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is voicing his concerns over the racial injustice in his community and across the country.

"A lot of people are facing a lot of trauma, a lot of pain and they are dealing with a lot of situations that are very similar to the struggle I've grown up in," state Rep. Charles Booker said Friday during an interview on ABC News Live.

The 35-year-old Booker, a native of Louisville, Kentucky, is the youngest black legislator in the state and is running on a platform of economic, social and racial justice in hopes of attracting a progressive following.

"The injustice is happening not only in Kentucky, but across the country. I think it's opening the eyes of more people to see how interconnected we need to stand together," Booker told ABC News Live. "We have been ignored for a long time, and especially, for my entire life.

"Mitch McConnell was elected two weeks after I was born. No one cares about our concerns, no one asks what we want, they tell us what we want," Booker added.

As civil unrest and demonstrations have swelled across the nation, Booker explained that the police killings leading to them have hit close to home. Months after the death of Breonna Taylor, an EMT who was shot and killed by police inside her Louisville, Kentucky, home, there have been renewed cries nationally for justice for the 26-year-old.

"It started with protests like here in Kentucky, and in Louisville, with Breonna Taylor," he said. "Cries for justice have evolved into conversations about structural change and people are rising up all over the country, and so I'm going to Washington with a big coalition that will not accept the status quo so we're going to get a lot of work done in short order there."

In a letter to Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron in May, Booker called for an independent investigation into Taylor's death.

"As a Black man and a legislator representing a community that has suffered from this type of trauma for years, I am personally committed to making sure that justice is done for Ms. Taylor and her family," Booker wrote. "Every family in Louisville and Kentucky should feel safe and protected by law enforcement, not threatened by them. History shows us that police killings like this one are disproportionately carried out against people who look like Ms. Taylor, like me, and like you."

Booker has also called for a "transparent investigation" into the death of David McAtee, a restaurant owner who was shot and killed by a National Guardsman in a Louisville neighborhood in the early hours of June 1, following a night of protests.

Booker has been endorsed by progressive leaders Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and two of Kentucky's most widely circulated newspapers, The Lexington Herald Leader and Courier-Journal. However, his Democratic opponent for the primary, retired Marine fighter pilot Amy McGrath, not only has the backing of the Democratic establishment, but has also raised more money than both Booker and McConnell.

The Democratic primary will be held on June 23.

With eyes on a Senate seat, Booker did not shy away from his differences with the incumbent. Booker suggested that McConnell, 78, has only won five consecutive elections because Kentuckians played into the political game. He added that most Louisville residents are more worried about things such as poverty and racial injustice than what is happening with Washington insiders.

"Kentucky has been one of the most disenfranchised states in the country. Turnout is typically low," he said. "People are dealing with a lot of poverty and so they're too busy trying to survive and [not] worrying about corrupt politicians and he's been in office for so long."

Booker said that he is confident in his campaign's momentum, saying, "We're absolutely going to beat him. We do not like Mitch McConnell, he has been screwing us for a long time."

He continued, "People are rising up all over the country and so I'm going to Washington with a big coalition that will not accept the status quo, so we're going to get a lot of work done in short order there."

Protester carries a Lebanese flag in Jal El Dib, Beirut, Lebanon, June 11, 2020. (photo: EFE)

Lebanon: Mass Night Protests as the National Currency Dives
teleSUR
Excerpt: "Citizens took to the streets for the second night in a row to protest against Lebanon's Prime Minister Hassan Diab who has failed to control the strong depreciation of the Lebanese pound against the U.S. dollar."
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White shark, Gansbaai: Ten years ago, there were an estimated 300 breeders in the white shark the population. The minimum to avoid inbreeding is thought to be around 500. (photo: Olga Ernst via Wikimedia)

Where Are South Africa's Great White Sharks?
Heather Richardson, Mongabay
Richardson writes: "South Africa's great white shark population has been the subject of international scrutiny since 2017, when cage-diving operators reported a sudden, sharp decline in sightings around False Bay and Gansbaai."

EXCERPTS:

Orcas

The answer most white shark scientists point to is the presence of orcas in the area — two in particular. Port and Starboard, as they have been named, were first spotted in False Bay in 2015 (though orcas had become increasingly present since 2009). At this time, several carcasses of broadnose sevengill sharks (Notorynchus cepedianus) were found in the bay — and the predator appeared to be the orcas. These were the first records of orcas predating on sharks in South Africa.

Kock published a paper on “the first documentation of a novel feeding technique”: The killer whales were using force to break the shark’s pectoral girdle to enable them to bite out the liver, discarding the rest of the carcass.

Following the attacks, sevengill sharks vanished from the bay — one of the largest known aggregation sites for this species anywhere in the world — for up to a month.

Then, in 2017, five white shark carcasses washed up on the shores around Gansbaai. Like the sevengill sharks, only their livers had been removed. Teeth marks clearly pointed to orcas as the predators. Sharks’ livers are rich in fat and make up a third of their total weight, so it’s no surprise these incredibly intelligent predators target this nutritious organ.

Fisheries

In media coverage of South Africa’s white sharks, demersal shark longline fisheries have been portrayed as a central culprit for their disappearance — but many white shark scientists are quick to point out the lack of data.

The longline fisheries target small sharks that are important prey for juvenile white sharks (mature sharks tend to eat marine mammals, such as seals). Scientists from South Africa’s Department of Environment, Forestry and Fisheries recommend catch control based on their data, but there are currently no limits in place and there are concerns about the impact on the ecosystem of overfishing sharks such as soupfins and common smooth-hounds. Additionally, the monitoring of South Africa’s coastlines is notoriously weak and some boats still fish in the no-take zones of marine protected areas.

Uncertainties and COVID-19

Kock emphasizes the importance of taking a wider view. “If you talk to people in the Western Cape … the shark spotters aren’t seeing [the white sharks], the surfers aren’t seeing them, the fishermen aren’t seeing them, the cage diving operators aren’t seeing them, our science shows that we’re not seeing them. But if you talk to fishermen in Algoa Bay and the Eastern Cape, they’ll tell you the opposite — [they’ve] never seen so many white sharks,” she says. “When people focus on just one aggregation area, they’re missing the bigger picture.”

COVID-19 means there will be a gap in the data. Towner, who works for Dyer Island Conservation Trust in Gansbaai and alongside a local cage-diving operator, says the blue NGOs engaged in white shark research in South Africa are “heavily reliant” on international tourism, partly for the funding, but also with the cage-diving boats affording continuous monitoring of the sharks. Towner says the emergence of bronze whaler sharks in Gansbaai saved the industry when the white sharks dropped off in 2017.

“We’ve got the largest database,” Towner says. “It’s been 15 years and still going, with no seasonal interruptions in the data. So, we notice if something’s wrong very quickly.”

But with South Africa on a strict lockdown, tourism — even domestic — has ground to a standstill and, at the time of writing, researchers aren’t allowed out to sea.

Perhaps what has captivated people so much about the white shark population in South Africa is all these unknowns and how an array of possible factors — the orcas, a decline of prey species, climate change, culling — may be impacting these elusive apex predators. What is clear is that without data, we cannot draw any firm conclusions.

Kock laughs when asked about the expected publication date of the paper on the orca impacts she’s been working on with Towner, which is in the process of being submitted, after which it will undergo peer review.

“The slowness of science is frustrating for everyone — but it is slow for a reason,” she says. “It has to be verified.”

Original story by Mongabay

Philadelphia officer surrenders to authorities, faces aggravated assault charges in protest beatings

The peaceful protests taking place for weeks now, across the United States, have been marred by law enforcement’s continued practice of brutalizing citizens. A microcosm case of such illegal treatment of Americans was filmed on June 1, in downtown Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was here that 21-year-old Temple University student Evan Gorski was hit in the head with a baton by Police Staff Inspector Joseph Bologna. Gorski was held for two days in jail before being released, not charged, with proof that it was Bologna who assaulted the unarmed student and not the other way around.

On Monday, Bologna surrendered to authorities, facing charges of aggravated assault, reckless endangerment, and possession of an instrument of crime. This comes a week after the incident in question, and after the video of Bologna’s assault on protesters went viral. It took about 48 hours to drop charges and release Evan Gorski from imprisonment, and it took Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw and others four days before they took Bologna “off the street,” saying they would be conducting a “more thorough and methodical Internal Affairs investigation with results that might not be known for some time.” District Attorney Larry Krasner decided to go with the clear evidence at hand, trumping Commissioner Outlaw’s announcement by telling the press he planned to charge Bologna.

Early Monday, Bologna left from the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5 to turn himself in. A crowd of Philadelphia police and residents came out to watch. A lot of police cheered Bologna.

To quote criminal defense attorney David Menschel, on Twitter, “When a cop who violently beats the people he ostensibly serves is greeted by the cheers of fellow cops, it’s pretty strong evidence that the whole fucking barrel of apples is spoiled.”

John McNesby, the head of Philadelphia’s police union has said he is “disgusted” by the charges against Bologna. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that as video of Bologna’s assault on Gorski made its way around the internet, more people began releasing videos purporting to show Gorski in the days before, and after, the incident, both lunging at a reporter as well as throwing his bike and tackling “a woman who had apparently tapped its tire.”

People are under a lot of pressure right now. Jobs have different stress points. But law enforcement cannot become more dangerous when stress levels are increased. That is the opposite of what we demand of our law enforcement. Regardless of what happens here, whether or not any real punitive consequences come officer Bologna’s way or not, the financial costs to the city of Philadelphia will be high.

Gorski will have a very clear case against the city. A young man, beaten by law enforcement, wrongfully imprisoned, and falsely charged. There are calls across the country to defund law enforcement organizations. As we go into a deeper and deeper economic depression—in part the result of our country’s mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic—municipalities will be looking to make budget cuts as deficits will run high. We already know that politicians love to take money away from teachers and public schools, while frequently increasing the military-style forces of law enforcement. Maybe now will be a time to budget with smarter math in mind.

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RSN: The Virus Will Win

14 June 20

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The Virus Will Win

People eat at a restaurant along Ocean Drive in Miami Beach, Florida. (photo: Joe Raedle/Getty)

Yascha Mounk, The Atlantic
Mounk writes: "Americans are pretending that the pandemic is over. It certainly is not."

EXCERPT:

For the rest of us, the order of the day was simply to stay at home and slow the spread. It was a modest task, which made it all the more galling that some people fell short. But this nitpick obscures how many people did do what they could to get us all through the crisis: They checked in with their relatives and cooked for the elderly. They took to their balconies to thank health-care workers or sang songs to cheer up the neighbors. By and large, they stayed at home and slowed the spread.

Thanks to the effort of millions of people, we were close to a great success story. But because of the failures of Trump and Chauvin, of the CDC and the WHO, of public-health experts and Fox News hosts, we are, instead, likely to give up—and tolerate that hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens will die needless deaths.

Pandemics reveal the true state of a society. Ours has come up badly wanting.

FOLKS, WE CAN'T DO THIS WITHOUT FUNDING: It's that simple. No accounting trick, no “new way of thinking,” no “better approach” will solve the problem. Funding is funding, we have to have it. So far this month we do not. In earnest. / Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News

RSN: As Calls to Defund the Police Grow Louder, Joe Biden Wants to Give Them More Money

14 June 20

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As Calls to Defund the Police Grow Louder, Joe Biden Wants to Give Them More Money

Joe Biden. (photo: Frank Franklin II/AP)

Alice Speri, The Intercept
Speri writes: "As tens of thousands of Americans have descended into streets for nearly two weeks to protest police violence, they have articulated a clear demand among the calls for justice and accountability: defund the police."

EXCERPTS:

“I do not support defunding police,” Biden wrote in an op-ed for USA Today. “The better answer is to give police departments the resources they need to implement meaningful reforms, and to condition other federal dollars on completing those reforms. … Every single police department should have the money they need to institute real reforms.”

As the force of the defund police movement has taken some by surprise, Biden has hardly been the only politician to seek to defend the status quo. Even his one-time rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders, indicated in a recent interview that he objected calls to defund the police. “I think we want to redefine what police departments do, give them the support they need to make their jobs better defined,” said Sanders. “So I do believe that we need well-trained, well-educated, and well-paid professionals in police departments.”

That’s what officials have promised for years. Proponents of police reform, including some who sit on Biden’s criminal justice task force, have been pitching solutions to police violence that include more resources for police at least since the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. The protests that followed ushered in an era of massive investment, much of it with federal dollars, to pay for things like bias training, as well as body cameras and, especially, more officers to staff “community policing” initiatives flooding already over-policed neighborhoods and schools.

These proponents usually call for “procedural” reforms that do little to tackle the underlying problems of the institution itself, said Alex Vitale, author of “The End of Policing.”

“School is a microcosm of society,” he added. “There is actually a very clear path towards abolishing police in schools, which I think presents an opportunity for the broader movement as we think about defunding police more broadly.”

Through the 1994 Crime Bill, the federal government has played a leading role in the escalation of school-based police. COPS, for instance, has provided some $1 billion for law enforcement initiatives in schools, most of it going toward the hiring of “school safety officers.” As The Intercept has previously reported, school-based police have greatly contributed to the criminalization of children, and their presence has proved particularly devastating to students of color and undocumented students.

But schools are also where calls to redirect funds from police to initiatives that keep students safe and thriving, like mental health counseling and job programs, have been the longest running and most successful. In Milwaukee, for instance, black students have led a campaign to rewrite the public school system’s racist discipline code. They have also won a $1 million divestment from school-based police, reducing the number of police officers in their schools from 16 to six, said Dakota Hall, executive director of Leaders Igniting Transformation, the youth group behind the effort. The group has now joined others across the country in calling for an end to federal incentives to police, particularly school-based police, and for a reinvestment of more than $300 billion into K-12 education.

RSN: Bill McKibben | A Guy Named Craig May Soon Control a Large Swath of Utah

15 June 20

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Bill McKibben | A Guy Named Craig May Soon Control a Large Swath of Utah

Bill McKibben. (photo: Wolfgang Schmidt)

Bill McKibben, The New Yorker

McKibben writes: "It's what we think about when we think about 'the West,' a truly mythic place."

ven if you’ve never been to the vast red-rock desert country around Moab, Utah, you’ve been there—its mesas and buttes, its towering arches, have been the backdrop for a thousand movies (and even more S.U.V. commercials). It’s what we think about when we think about “the West,” a truly mythic place. Some of it has been protected in national monuments and parks: Arches and Canyonlands. But the fate of a large swath of it, though nominally belonging to the American people, may soon fall to a guy named Craig Larson.

Here’s the story so far. Under a long-standing law known as the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920, anyone can “nominate” a parcel of federal land for oil-and-gas development—it doesn’t cost a thing. The rules are so lax that you don’t even have to supply your name if you want to nominate a piece of land, but Prairie Hills Oil & Gas did provide at least that much context when it asked the federal Bureau of Land Management to set aside land between Arches and Canyonlands. Prairie Hills Oil & Gas, of North Dakota, it turns out, is headquartered at a home that Larson, an attorney, co-owns in Big Lake, Minnesota, about forty miles northwest of Minneapolis. After the land is nominated, and certain review processes are completed, the B.L.M. moves to set up a lease auction, which, in the case of Larson and Utah, is scheduled for September. (Although Larson has nominated the parcels, anyone, in fact, could be the ultimate winning bidder.)

The minimum competitive bid for an acre is two dollars, and that’s often the price it goes for in areas like Moab—the prospects are far from guaranteed. The lease has a term of ten years, and, after the gavel comes down, the annual rental fee per acre would be a dollar and a half for the first five years, and two dollars for the second. As Steve Bloch, of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, explained it to me, “If Company A buys a hundred-acre lease, they will write B.L.M. a check for five hundred and twenty dollars.” That would include the bid, the first-year rental rate, and an administrative fee. If the company drills for oil and gas, it also pays the government a royalty of 12.5 per cent on the production, and the lease can be extended.

I recently called Larson to ask him about the company’s plans, and he couldn’t have been more polite or more unhelpful.

“I was curious how it was you decided to ask for those leases,” I said.

“You know, I really don’t have much to add than what we’ve done as far as the nominations,” he answered.

“Are you worried about the local Native American groups? Some have been upset.”

“I don’t really have anything more to say about it other than that our actions are public record.”

“What are the next steps in the disposition?”

“It’s up to the B.L.M. to decide the next steps.”

“Does the current economic environment around oil and gas give you pause?”

“I guess our actions speak for themselves, and I really don’t have much more to add. . . .”

“These aren’t technical or legal questions. I was trying to get at whether you took seriously the things people were raising.”

“I understand.”

Larson does not seem like a villain to me here, and he’s done nothing illegal. In fact, what’s preposterous is how entirely legal it all is. The law itself is the crime—a gift to the oil and gas businesses. It awards the industry chunks of federal land through a process designed to move real estate out of public control as easily as possible. Perhaps you could argue that, a century ago, it was an improvement over the previously unregulated disorder that gave industrialists almost literal free rein over the landscape, in that it provided at least some government oversight. But now?

Now Moab, a city of some five thousand people, makes a lot of money each year from mountain bikers and rafters, from people coming to visit the parks—though not during a pandemic. It’s world-famous for its dark skies; an Instagram capital of Milky Way viewing. Will oil wells flaring off gas help that business? “When you look at that map it just sends chills up your spine,” the chairwoman of the local county council told Bloomberg Law. (She also asked, “Why would you put an oil well in the center of a Picasso or van Gogh?”)

Now the world is awash in oil. The pandemic crash could mean that the planet reached peak oil demand in 2019, and that, as economic recovery follows, any new growth in energy supplies is likely to come from solar and wind power.

And now, above all, the world is overheating, and dangerously; the last thing it needs is more oil. The rivers of the Southwest are perfect examples of the mortal peril we now face. Moab is situated in the Colorado Plateau watershed. In February, a new study showed that, over the past century, the flow of the Colorado River was down by twenty per cent, owing mainly to climate change, and that it could fall another twenty per cent by 2050, if we don’t cut emissions. But, instead, as Bloch told me, the Trump Administration is “putting the Interior Department and B.L.M.’s pedal to the floor to sell as many leases as possible.” (A B.L.M. spokesperson said that the agency “follows its congressional mandate regarding lease sales.”) Indeed, the B.L.M. has scheduled nearly twenty oil-and-gas-lease sales on federal land nationwide through the end of 2020, and the Administration has shrunk the size of wildernesses and national monuments, paving the way for more drilling. It is a classic land rush.

The Southwest is not my landscape—I’ve spent my life in the wet mountains of the East, where an unobstructed view comes only if you devote a day to climbing the highest peaks. But I know that others feel entirely at home in that sere, spectacular region. “This land is beautiful,” Davis Filfred, a Navajo leader, told me, as he was delivering groceries to people suffering through the coronavirus pandemic, which has hit the Navajo Nation with particular force. At least, it’s beautiful until the fossil-fuel companies get there. “Where they’ve come, the land is completely contaminated,” Filfred said. “The water base is completely contaminated with petroleum, and with arsenic and selenium. The air—it smells like a rotten egg.” He added, “A hundred years from now—let’s say when my kid’s grandkids are here, we’re robbing them. I want them to see this land as it was Day One.”

I first got to know the region through the writings of Edward Abbey, whose classic book from 1968, “Desert Solitaire,” plays out against that remarkable terrain. “Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread, “ he wrote. “A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying the principle of civilization itself.” I visited Abbey in Moab when I was in my mid-twenties, gathering string for what became my book “The End of Nature.” It was a memorable trip, ripping around desert backroads in a rental car; I was a little overwhelmed both by Abbey’s outsized personality and by the scale of the place itself. (I asked Craig Larson if he’d had a chance to read any Abbey. “I thank you for your call, but I really don’t have anything more to tell you,” he said.) In later years, I’ve gotten to know the land better through the eyes of a dear friend, the writer Terry Tempest Williams, who has succeeded Abbey as the chronicler of that region. I asked her to describe the scene near Moab as spring turns toward summer. “I was up before dawn this morning just watching light touch the desert and fill it with birdsong,” she wrote. “The globe mallow are blooming. Claret cup cactus, too. Clouds like schooners sailing across the blue skies.”

As it happens, Terry and her husband, Brooke, went to a B.L.M. auction in 2016 and tried to lease land—they paid $1,680 for a ten-year lease on 1,120 acres, plus a processing fee, and formed a company, Tempest Exploration L.L.C. (Not all the parcels were leased in the auction, and some were discounted afterward, in a sort of “fire sale.” That’s where Terry and Brooke obtained their lease.) She had no hesitation in explaining her motives, as she wrote in an Op-Ed for the Times, “The energy we hope to produce through Tempest Exploration is not the kind that will destroy our planet, but the kind that will fuel moral imagination. We need to harness this spiritual and political energy to sustain the planet we call home.” They made it clear that they would not drill for oil “until science could show it was worth more above ground than below.” The lease was eventually denied; they appealed, and a decision is still pending, four years later.

Another friend, an environmentalist named Tim DeChristopher, bid for leases on a large area at a competitive Salt Lake City auction, in 2008. He bid $1.8 million, and then said that he had no intention of paying the sum, which he didn’t have. For that, he was sentenced to two years in a federal correctional facility, in California. I visited him there, and remember thinking that Ed Abbey would have been proud of him. (He served twenty-one months, and was released in 2013.) Terry Tempest Williams has been one of his biggest supporters.

Now, finally, something may change. Joe Biden has promised, repeatedly, that, if elected President, he would end new leasing on federal lands for oil, gas, and coal. As he said during a primary debate in March, “No more drilling on federal lands. No more drilling, including offshore. No ability for the oil industry to continue to drill, period.” That would make a massive difference for the climate: fossil fuels pulled from public lands account for about twenty per cent of the nation’s total greenhouse-gas output.

But it would also make a massive difference for those parts of the Utah desert that have lain empty and sublime. I don’t know exactly whom they belong to—Native people, all of us, the coyotes, God? But the answer clearly shouldn’t be some guy named Craig.

A protester hold a sign as the Atlanta Wendy's where Rayshard Brooks was fatally shot by police. (photo: AP)

Atlanta Police Chief Resigns After Law Enforcement Fatally Shoots Rayshard Brooks

Rachel Siegel, The Washington Post

Siegel writes: "Atlanta police chief Erika Shields resigned Saturday after video emerged of another fatal police shooting of an African American, and as protests over police brutality and racism continued for the third straight weekend.

“The killing of Black Americans by government has got to stop,” Lieu wrote.

emocratic presidential candidate Joe Biden did not comment on the Atlanta case specifically, but tweeted Saturday afternoon that “we need real policing reform — and we need it now.”

In Atlanta, a 25-year-old nurse named Parker Hutson echoed the calls for reform.

“It’s important to support our black brothers and sisters,” he said, adding that recent police shootings have been “a tipping point for a lot of people” to join the movement. He’s been protesting since last week.

Hutson, who is white, said he sees incidents of racism in health care, such as patients who refuse to be treated by black nurses or caregivers. He said he wants to be part of the change.

Atlanta police chief Erika Shields resigned Saturday after video emerged of another fatal police shooting of an African American, and as protests over police brutality and racism continued for the third straight weekend.

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, who announced Shields’s departure, also called for the immediate termination of the police officer involved in the shooting of 27-year-old Rayshard Brooks after a DUI stop, saying she did not “believe that this was a justified use of deadly force.”

“What has become abundantly clear over the last couple of weeks in Atlanta is that while we have a police force full of men and women who work alongside our communities with honor, respect and dignity, there has been a disconnect with what our expectations are and should be, as it relates to interactions with our officers and the communities in which they are entrusted to protect,” Bottoms said at a Saturday evening news conference.

Bottoms’s words were not enough to quell protesters, who gathered Saturday in front of the Wendy’s outside of which the shooting took place and chanted, “Say his name! Rayshard Brooks!” By evening, the Wendy’s was in flames.

Just after 7 p.m., a second group had joined after marching three miles from the CNN Center. Loud cheers greeted them along with chants of “Whose street?” “Our street!” and “The people united will never be divided!” Fists in the air, they then held a moment of silence in honor of Brooks, and leaders on a bullhorn called for supporters to both refuse to spend money and refuse to go to work on Juneteenth — June 19, a commemoration of the end of slavery.

By 11 p.m., protesters who had blocked all lanes of Interstate 75/I-85 on a bridge over University Avenue, the street where Brooks was shot and killed by police the night before, were arrested. The road was cleared. At one point, police used tear gas and fireworks to disperse a crowd of protesters that had been around a vehicle.

Activists and Democratic lawmakers have also called on the city to make broader reforms. Stacey Abrams, who ran for governor of Georgia in 2018, tweeted that Brooks’s killing “demands we severely restrict the use of deadly force.”

“Yes, investigations must be called for — but so too should accountability,” Abrams wrote. “Sleeping in a drive-thru must not end in death.”

The Atlanta Police Department identified the officers involved as Devin Bronsan, hired in September 2018, and Garrett Rolfe, hired in October 2013. Rolfe has been fired and Brosnan was placed on administrative duty, Sgt. John Chafee said early Sunday.

Officers were dispatched Friday night to a Wendy’s on a complaint about a man parked and asleep in the drive-through, according to a preliminary report by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. The officers performed a sobriety test on the man, later identified as Brooks. When Brooks failed the test, officers attempted to put him in custody. The response escalated when Brooks grabbed an officer’s stun gun.

According to a Wendy’s surveillance video released by the GBI on Saturday afternoon, Brooks ran from the officers. In the video, one of the officers is seen chasing Brooks. After running the equivalent of six or seven parking spots, Brooks turns back toward the officer and appears to point the stun gun at him, at which point the officer draws a weapon from his holster and fires at Brooks. Brooks falls to the ground as other cars in the lot pull aside, and both officers stand over him. An ambulance later arrives and takes Brooks away. Brooks was taken to a hospital, where he died after surgery.

The Wendy’s video does not appear to show Brooks’s initial struggle with the officers. A cellphone video posted to Twitter on Friday night purportedly showed Brooks’s clash with two police officers in the parking lot, and the Atlanta Police Department released dash cam and body cam footage early Sunday.

The body cam footage begins with Bronsan, who wakes up Brooks while the man is asleep behind the wheel of a white sedan in the drive-through lane. Brooks moves his car to the corner of the restaurant parking lot. Rolfe arrives. He conducts an interview and sobriety test, which last about a half-hour.

After Brooks takes a breathalyzer test, Rolfe decides to arrest Brooks. Brooks pulls away as the officers try to handcuff him. The trio fall to the ground in a scuffle. The officers shout at Brooks to stop fighting. More shouts follow: “Hands off the Taser.” The officers’ body cams fall off and land pointed at the sky.

Brooks is tased. Rolfe, outside the view of the dash and body cams, fires his gun. The police cameras record only the sounds of the gunshots.

On Saturday night, lawyers for the Brooks family said that Brooks had been celebrating his daughter’s birthday Friday night.

“Mr. Brooks was not perfect,” attorney Justin Miller said. “But the officer had the last, best chance to stop that from happening. He had the most training to stop that from happening, and he didn’t do that and that resulted in our client’s death.”

GBI director Vic Reynolds said he was releasing the footage in an effort to be transparent. Reynolds also said agents have been directed to expedite the investigation. “We want everyone to see what we have seen in this case,” Reynolds said.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) said he is “confident GBI Director Vic Reynolds and his team will follow the facts to ensure justice is served.”

Bottoms said it was Shields’s decision to step down, and that she will remain employed by the city in an undetermined role. In a statement, Shields wrote “it is time for the city to move forward and build trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve.”

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Brooks’s death marks the 48th officer-involved shooting the GBI has been asked to investigate in 2020. Earlier this month, a judge in Glynn County, Ga., ruled that three white men accused in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old black jogger, in February will stand trial for murder.

William “Roddie” Bryan, who captured Arbery’s death on a cellphone, told investigators that Travis McMichael uttered a racial slur before police arrived, according to testimony by a GBI agent.

Once the GBI completes its independent investigation, the case will be turned over to the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office for review. On Saturday, the office said it had already launched “an intense, independent investigation of the incident” and that officials were also on the scene after the shooting. According to local outlet 11 Alive News, the two officers involved in the shooting have been removed from duty pending the outcome of the investigation.

On Saturday, the Georgia NAACP called for the release of body camera footage and all surveillance video from surrounding buildings.

“This is not the first time a black man has been killed for sleeping,” the Rev. James Woodall, state president of the Georgia NAACP, said on a call with reporters. “While Atlanta is often called ‘the Black Mecca,’ the Atlanta Police Department has a continued history of antagonizing our communities.”

Woodall said the Georgia NAACP has hired a private investigator and that a news conference would take place Tuesday morning.

As video footage circulated more widely on Saturday, politicians and civil rights activists called for lasting police reform to protect black Americans. Those calls continued even after Bottoms announced Shields’s resignation as protests continued into Saturday night.

Julián Castro, the former mayor of San Antonio who served as housing secretary under President Barack Obama and ran for president last year, asked why armed cops should “be the first responders to a call for a man SLEEPING IN HIS CAR?” Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) tweeted that after watching footage of the Atlanta shooting, “there is enough probable cause to arrest the police officer for murdering a Black civilian running away from him.”

Standing a bit back from the crowd was pastor Keith Jamal Hammond, who preaches at nearby New Generation Baptist Church.

“We have to pastor these people while we’re hurting ourselves,” said Hammond, who is black. “We can’t seem to get past one issue before another one hits us in the face.”

Hammond said he had spoken with friends and family of Brooks who visited the site throughout the day, and that he feels deeply for them.

In other cities across the U.S., activists continued to protest the killing of George Floyd in Minnesota. In cities including New York, Chicago, Paris and Zurich, demonstrators marched through streets and demanded an end to racial injustice and police brutality. The diversity, breadth and endurance of the protests since Floyd’s death on May 25 offer an indication of the growing power of the Black Lives Matter movement.

In Palmdale, Calif., where a 24-year-old black man was found hanging from a tree last week, protesters gathered Saturday to demand answers from local authorities. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said an initial investigation indicated the man, Robert Fuller, committed suicide — a conclusion rejected by his family.

The third weekend of protests in Chicago turned to a side of the city that rarely gets people marching in the street: Jefferson Park, a neighborhood located on the far northwest side of the city known primarily as a bedroom community populated by many police, firefighters and blue collar workers. Hundreds of demonstrators showed up with signs Saturday for the first time, surprising many of the residents.

“You have to go where they live,” said Sterling, 27, a black protester who declined to give his last name.

A group of teenagers in Mason, Ohio, organized a march of about 600 people in the Cincinnati suburb — chanting “black lives matter” in the overwhelmingly white town.

Mariah Norman, a 17-year-old Mason High School junior who helped organize the event, said the Republican-leaning town is “ready to join the fight” for racial equality.

“It’s like the town has woken up,” she said.

The massive protests over Floyd’s death and quickly shifting public opinion about racism and policing have already moved political leaders to begin enacting policy changes.

The Minneapolis City Council unanimously passed a resolution Friday aimed at transforming its approach to public safety, part of a sweeping tide of police policy revisions being embraced by state and local leaders from New York to Seattle.

New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) signed into law new police accountability measures, including one that would allow officers’ disciplinary records to be disclosed. The package also included a ban on chokeholds.

“Police reform is long overdue,” Cuomo said Friday during the signing ceremony.

In Iowa, the front page of Saturday’s Des Moines Register newspaper featured a picture of Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) signing police reform legislation that bans most chokeholds and increases accountability. Surrounding her were black lawmakers with their fists raised in the air.

Body Cam Footage of Rayshard Brooks’ Death Shows Calm, Then Chaos

Protesters Burn Atlanta Wendy’s Where Cops Fatally Shot Rayshard Brooks

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People wearing masks sit at Gantry Plaza State Park, Long Island City with the Manhattan skyline in the background on May 30, 2020. (photo: Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images)

The CDC - Finally - Has New Guidelines for Reducing Covid-19 Risk Post-Lockdowns
Brian Resnick, Vox
Resnick writes: "At long last, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued new Covid-19 pandemic guidance documents to help the public minimize risk while venturing out into public spaces."
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President Trump exaggerated his administration's gains against the Islamic State in a commencement speech Saturday at the United States Military Academy at West Point. (photo: Anna Moneymaker/NYT)

Why Trump Loves the US Military - but It Doesn't Love Him Back
Julian Borger, Guardian UK
Borger writes: "When all else fails - and that has happened a lot - the president has embraced the flag and hugged the military. But these days the military is not hugging back."

EXCERPT:

When all else fails – and that has happened a lot – the president has embraced the flag and hugged the military. But these days the military is not hugging back. It stands to attention as duty demands, but as inertly as Old Glory, the banner which Trump has taken to fondling at public events.

The president likes to refer to the soldiers around him as “my generals” and “my military”. The possessive pronoun always jarred with the spirit of civ-mil rectitude, even before it became evident how literally Trump interpreted it.

Saturday’s ceremony at West Point was the embodiment of the president’s approach. More than a thousand cadets from the class of 2020 were called back from their homes to the campus, 50 miles north of New York City, despite the coronavirus pandemic, so Trump could give a televised speech.

Fifteen cadets tested positive. The rest had to quarantine for two weeks. The whole show was widely disparaged as stage dressing for Trump’s re-election campaign, days after the president crossed a line in the exploitation of military leaders as props.

On 1 June, the president had the area around the White House cleared of peaceful demonstrators who were protesting police killings of black Americans. Tear gas and other chemical irritants were used as well as rubber bullets, baton charges and mounted police, all so Trump could walk across Lafayette Square to pose with a Bible in front of St John’s, the so-called “church of the presidents”.

In his entourage were the defense secretary, Mark Esper, and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Mark Milley, the latter dressed in battle fatigues. In the presence of scores of soldiers from the national guard, it certainly looked like Trump’s suppression of peaceful protests was a military operation, in violation of norms that have underpinned US military conduct for a century and a half.

Trump planned to go much further, invoking the 1807 Insurrection Act to deploy an elite combat unit from the 82nd Airborne on the streets of the capital.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed speaks during a news conference at the future site of a Transitional Age Youth Navigation Center on January 15, 2020 in San Francisco, California. (photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Unarmed Professionals Will Now Respond to Non-Criminal Police Calls in San Francisco to Reduce 'Police Confrontations'
Sarah Al-Arshani, Business Insider
Al-Arshani writes: "Police will no longer respond to non-criminal calls, San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced as part of a set of policies to address structural inequities."
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Hundreds of people linked to far-right groups gathered in central London. (photo: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

Far-Right Protesters Clash With Police in London
Al Jazeera
Excerpt: "Far-right protesters clashed in London on Saturday with anti-racism demonstrators and police trying to keep the two sides apart after they rallied in London in rival demonstrations, despite strict restrictions and warnings to stay home to contain the coronavirus."
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Vultures squabble over an elephant carcass in Kenya. (photo: Jen Guyton/2018 Wildscreen Panda Awards)

The Vultures Aren't Hovering Over Africa - and That's Bad News
Stephen Moss, Guardian UK
Moss writes: "It's hard to love vultures. Their bare-headed appearance, scavenging habits and reputation as the refuse disposal workers of the bird world rarely endear them to a public who prefer more conventionally attractive creatures. But amid growing fears that the birds are facing extinction, conservationists are calling for more to be done to save these unloved birds of prey."

Unlovely and unloved, vultures play a vital role as nature’s clean-up squad but are now one of the most threatened groups of birds on the planet

India began to notice that vultures, which usually gathered in huge flocks around animal carcasses, were declining at an unprecedented rate.

But in just 15 years, from 1992 to 2007, India’s most common three vulture species declined by between 97% and 99.9%. The consequences were catastrophic: only once the vultures had gone did people realise the crucial job they had been doing in clearing up the corpses of domestic and wild animals. Rotting carcasses contaminated water supplies, while rats and feral dogs multiplied, leading to a huge increase in the risk of disease for humans.

key cause was confirmed. Asia’s vultures were feeding on animal carcasses containing diclofenac, an anti-inflammatory drug routinely given to domestic cattle but poisonous to birds.

16 old world vulture species. They are found in towns and cities as well as in the savannah, where again they perform the vital role of the clean-up squad.

Africa, these birds have been a reassuring and seemingly permanent presence wherever big game animals roam. But now there are signs that Africa’s vulture populations are also plummeting at an alarming rate.

– a significant proportion of the entire world population – died in Guinea-Bissau in March. The deaths were due to poisoning, and reports suggest they may be linked to the trade in vulture parts amid a widespread belief that possessing the head of a vulture guards against harm and acts as a good luck charm.

red list. Twelve species of vulture are now listed as endangered or critically endangered, meaning vultures are one of the most threatened groups of birds on the planet.

Endangered Wildlife Trust, recalls that in June 2013 several hundred vultures were poisoned at an elephant carcass in the Zambezi region of Namibia. More recently, in June last year, 537 vultures of five different species were poisoned at elephant carcasses near Chobe national park in Botswana.

RSPB senior conservation scientist specialising in vultures, says that while deliberate poisoning by poachers does occur, other cases are unintentional. “Pastoralists and rural farmers try to protect their livestock from wild dogs, jackals, lions and hyenas by poisoning predators, and vultures are the unfortunate collateral damage.”

BirdLife South Africa, deliberate and accidental poisoning now accounts for well over half of all unnatural vulture deaths in Africa.

Conservation partnerships across eastern and southern Africa are focusing on trying to reduce the death toll from poisoning by providing training for law enforcement officers and rangers, and rapidly removing poisoned carcasses – though with such huge areas involved, that is not an easy task.

All of these actions are recommended in the Multi-species Action Plan to Conserve African-Eurasian Vultures, which has been adopted by all African states where vultures occur, and provides a road map to halt the decline in vulture populations over the next 12 years.

Vulture Safe Zones across the region. These encourage owners of large tracts of land to keep vultures safe, with anti-poisoning measures, education projects and ways to prevent habitat loss, yet another factor in the birds’ decline.

The situation is not helped by a lack of appreciation of the importance of vultures, as Beckie Garbett of BirdLife International Africa admits.