Chris Hedges's Blog, page 14

Los Angeles D.A.’s Husband Pulls Gun on Black Lives Matter Protesters

“You were supposed to meet with us six months ago,” an activist shouted at Los Angeles District Attorney Jackie Lacey during a Jan. 29 debate. He wasn’t the only one yelling. Multiple protesters came to confront Lacey about the more than 500 police shootings that have taken place during her seven-year tenure. They were angry about Lacey’s constantly delayed promises to meet with Black Lives Matter Los Angeles members and other activists about the shootings and other police concerns. They waited over two years for a meeting that never came, according to HuffPost.

They were tired of the delays, California State University, Los Angeles, professor and Black Lives Matter organizer Melina Abdullah told the Los Angeles Times, “So we decided to have the meeting in front of her house.” When approximately 30 protesters arrived Monday morning, a man met them with a gun.

According to the Times, “Video from the scene shows a man standing in Lacey’s doorway in Granada Hills pointing a gun and shouting, ‘I will shoot you. Get off of my porch.’”

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I’m front of DA Jackie Lacey’s house for that community meeting she promised with the @BLMLA crew. Rang her bell to invite her.

Her husband pulled a gun, cocked it, pointed it at my chest and said “I’ll shoot you. I don’t care who you are.” @WP4BL @RealJusticePAC @shaunking pic.twitter.com/WtazUWSJIC

— Melina Abdullah (@DocMellyMel) March 2, 2020

Los Angeles district attorney spokeswoman Shiara Davila-Morales confirmed to the Times that the man with the gun was Jackie Lacey’s husband, David Lacey, a retired investigative auditor for the district attorney’s Bureau of Investigation.

Police arrived at around 5:40 a.m., after someone reported the protesters, an officer confirmed to the Times. No one has been charged in connection with the protests. Kate Chatfield, senior adviser for legislation and policy at the Justice Collaborative, a criminal justice advocacy organization, told HuffPost that Lacey’s husband’s actions could be classified as making a criminal threat or assault with a firearm. Either could be considered “serious felonies” or “strikes” under California law, she said.

Abdullah and the other activists remained outside the home for two hours after Lacey pulled the gun. As HuffPost reports, “They took turns speaking and chanted, ‘Jackie Lacey must go, Jackie Lacey will go.’” They held signs reading “#ByeJackie” and “Honk if you think DA Jackie Lacey should prosecute cops who kill.”

The district attorney was unrepentant in a press conference Monday, accusing activists of trying to “embarrass” and “intimidate” her. According to HuffPost, she told assembled reporters, “I am grateful, however, for this challenge, because I had no idea how strong I was until I got ready to come down here.”

The incident occurred the day before Los Angeles is set to vote on whether to give Lacey another term. She faces two progressive challengers, George Gascón, a former San Francisco district attorney who enacted criminal justice reforms, and Rachel Rossi, a former public defender. Gascón declined to comment to the Times on the confrontation.

Rossi commented on Twitter, writing “I will never run from the community,” and “And I never thought I’d have to say it, but I will also never threaten to shoot community members protesting for change. What kind of leadership is this?”

Accurate Virus Reporting Is a Minefield for the Media

NEW YORK — Covering the coronavirus story requires careful navigation and constant attention.

News organizations trying to responsibly report on the growing health crisis are confronted with the task of conveying its seriousness without provoking panic, keeping up with a torrent of information while much remains a mystery and continually advising readers and viewers how to stay safe.

“It’s a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week, around-the-world story,” said Michael Slackman, assistant managing editor, international at The New York Times.

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The Times maintains a live news blog about the coronavirus that is refreshed 24 hours a day, with editors in New York, London and Hong Kong dividing responsibility. The Slack channel set up by Associated Press journalists to discuss coverage among themselves and contribute to the story has more than 400 members. Starting Monday, NBC News is turning its morning newsletter solely into a vehicle for talking about the disease.

The coronavirus has sickened thousands, quarantined millions and sent financial markets reeling — all while some cultural critics say the story is overblown.

“It’s hard to tell people to put something into context and to calm down when the actions being taken in many cases are very strong or unprecedented,” said Glen Nowak, director of the Grady College Center for Health and Risk Communication at the University of Georgia.

But that’s what journalists in charge of coverage say they need to do.

“We have been providing a lot of explainers, Q-and-A’s, trying to lay out in clear, simple language what the symptoms are and what the disease means for people,” said Jon Fahey, health and science editor at the AP.

Fear is a natural response when people read about millions of people locked down in China, he said. Yet it’s also true that, right now, the individual risk to people is very small.

Late last week, the Times’ Vivian Wang tried to illustrate some of the complexities in writing about a disease that has struck more than 80,000 people, with a death toll approaching 3,000. Most people have mild symptoms — good fortune that paradoxically can make the disease harder to contain because many won’t realize they have the coronavirus, she noted.

“I keep reminding the viewers that still, based on two very large studies, the vast majority of people who get this infection are not going to get sick,” said Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s medical correspondent. “They’re going to have a mild illness, if any, and they’re going to recover. This tends to be very reassuring to people. But I don’t want to minimize this. We’re dealing with something that is growing and becoming a legitimate pandemic.”

“Pandemic” — defined by Webster’s as an outbreak that occurs over a wide geographic area and affects an exceptionally high proportion of the population — is one of the scary-sounding words and phrases that some journalists take care about using.

Fahey said the AP avoids calling it a “deadly” disease because, for most people, it isn’t. Dr. John Torres, medical correspondent at NBC News, edits out phrases like “horrific” or “catastrophic.”

“I try not to delve too much in adjectives,” Torres said.

Nearly every day brings word of more cases, in more countries. That’s news. Yet should journalists consider the cumulative impact of a statistical drumbeat? “At some point the numbers become less meaningful,” Gupta said.

Images, too, merit careful consideration. Pictures of people wearing face masks often illustrate stories, despite evidence that the masks matter little in transmission of the virus, Nowak said.

Sensational headlines can grab attention yet also unnecessarily frighten. An Atlantic magazine article last week was headlined “You’re Likely to Get the Coronavirus.”

Sensationalism actually tends to decline in these situations, said Peter Sandman, a consultant and expert in risk communication.

“Reporters love to sensationalize trivia or rare risks — think flesh-eating bacteria — to give their audience a vicarious thrill,” Sandman said. “But when risks get serious and widespread, media coverage gets sober.”

The words and actions of journalists and other public figures send signals of their own.

CNN’s Gupta has talked about people needing to consider “social distancing” if pockets of infection build in the United States. He has revealed on the air that his own house is stocked with supplies in case his family has to remain home for any period of time.

“People could be frightened by that,” Gupta conceded. “It’s not the intent. It’s in the way that you convey these things.”

It was news last week, and also a little scary, when it was revealed that a federal health official had checked on the coronavirus readiness of her child’s school district. Donald G. McNeil, a science reporter at The New York Times, attracted attention for talking about his own preparedness on the newspaper’s podcast, “The Daily.”

“I spend a lot of time thinking about whether I’m being too alarmist or whether I’m not being alarmist enough,” he said.

Besides constantly reminding people about basics of the disease, journalists say it’s important to explain what they don’t know.

“It lets them know that we’re not just ignoring the questions or dismissing them, and it’s an opportunity to show readers how science progresses in real time,” said Laura Helmuth, health and science editor at The Washington Post.

The Post’s Lena H. Sun and Yasmeen Abutaleb wrote last week about the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services sending workers without proper training or protective gear to meet the first Americans who left the coronavirus epicenter of Wuhan, China.

The virus produces a seemingly endless supply of stories that stretch beyond the medical: Wall Street’s tumble, school and business closings, concert cancellations. The makers of Corona beer denied reports that the similarity of its name to the virus was hurting business. Italians are shying away from traditional kisses on the cheek. Churchgoers are nervous about handshake greetings of peace.

Last Thursday, the AP listed 17 coronavirus stories on the digest it sends to subscribers, including pieces from Japan, Italy, Australia, South Korea and China.

The Times takes pride in how it profiled the lives of people stuck in Wuhan, through reporting by Chris Buckley, Amy Qin and Elsie Chen. Such front-line reporting illustrates another need: The paper maintains a hotline with a medical professional to answer questions from reporters concerned about their own health, Slackman said.

As is inevitable in divided times, the coronavirus has become a political issue in the United States, where commentators are weighing in on how President Donald Trump is reacting to the crisis. On Fox News, Donald Trump Jr. said of the Democrats: “For them to try to take a pandemic, and hope it comes here and kills millions of people so they can end Donald Trump’s streak of winning, is a new level of sickness.”

CNN’s Gupta said he tries to be wary of what politicians say about the coronavirus.

“As a medical journalist, I don’t have the luxury of just getting somebody’s opinion about something,” he said.

Amy Klobuchar Ends Her Bid for the Presidency

Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar ended her Democratic presidential campaign on Monday and plans to endorse rival Joe Biden in an effort to unify moderate voters behind the former vice president’s White House bid.

She is flying to Dallas and plans to join Biden at his rally Monday night, according to her campaign.

Klobuchar was the third presidential candidate to drop out of the race in less than 49 hours, following Pete Buttigieg’s departure late Sunday and Tom Steyer’s exit late Saturday. Their decisions reflect an urgent push among moderates to consolidate behind Biden as a counter to progressive rival Bernie Sanders.

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Klobuchar outlasted several better-known and better-funded Democrats, thanks to a better-than-expected third-place finish in in New Hampshire. But she couldn’t turn that into success elsewhere, as she struggled to build out a campaign that could compete across the country and had poor showings in the next contests.

The three-term senator had one of this cycle’s more memorable campaign launches, standing outside in a Minnesota snowstorm last February to tout her “grit” and Midwestern sensibilities. Klobuchar argued that her record of getting things done in Washington and winning even in Republican parts of her state would help her win traditionally Democratic heartland states like Wisconsin and Michigan that flipped in 2016 to give Donald Trump the presidency.

She was hoping to own the moderate lane of a Democratic field that grew to some two dozen candidates. But that got much tougher when Biden joined the race in April, starting as a front-runner and remaining there. Klobuchar also was quickly overshadowed by Buttigieg, a fellow Midwesterner who shot from being the largely unknown mayor of South Bend, Indiana, to a top contender on a mix of intelligence, strong oratory and youthful optimism. Buttigieg dropped out on Sunday, saying he no longer had a viable path to the nomination. He has not endorsed anyone.

Klobuchar entered the race with low name recognition compared with many of her rivals, a disadvantage she was still citing a year into her campaign. Outside Minnesota, the lawyer and former prosecutor was best known for her questioning of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh during a 2018 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.

Klobuchar asked Kavanaugh, who was accused of sexually assaulting a fellow teenager when both were in high school, if he ever had so much to drink that he didn’t remember what happened. Kavanaugh retorted, “Have you?” Klobuchar continued, unruffled, and Kavanaugh later apologized to the senator, whose father is recovering from alcoholism.

Even before she got into the race, Klobuchar was hit with news stories claiming she mistreated her Senate staff, and she had a higher-than-usual turnover rate in her office. Klobuchar said she is a “tough boss” but countered that she has several longtime employees, including the manager of her presidential campaign.

She also face questions over her prosecutor past. In January, The Associated Press published a story about Klobuchar’s office in Minneapolis having prosecuted the case of a black teenager accused of the 2002 shooting death of an 11-year-old girl. Klobuchar has cited the story to show her toughness on crime. But an AP/APM Reports investigation uncovered new evidence and myriad inconsistencies, raising questions about whether Myon Burrell was railroaded by police. The issue followed Klobuchar on the campaign trail, with protesters forcing her to cancel a rally in suburban Minneapolis days before Super Tuesday.

Klobuchar campaigned on her productivity in Washington, where she led more than 100 bills that were signed into law. And she criticized the more liberal candidates in the field, Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Sanders, for running on promises she said they couldn’t keep.

Rather than advocate for “Medicare for All,” for example, Klobuchar favored expanding the Affordable Care Act and working to reduce prescription drug costs — changes she said had a chance of passing and would make a significant impact. She supported making community colleges free but said she wouldn’t promise to do the same for four-year colleges and universities because the U.S. cannot afford it.

“I’ve got to tell the truth,” she said during a CNN town hall at a college campus, where she acknowledged her position may be unpopular with younger voters.

Klobuchar was one of the first candidates to outline a plan for addressing addiction and mental health, an issue she described as personal because of her father’s longtime struggle. Her accounts of growing up with a father suffering from alcoholism and watching him be forced to choose between prison or treatment were some of the most compelling moments of speeches, interviews and discussions with voters. Klobuchar said that her father described getting help as being “pursued by grace” and that it’s an opportunity all people fighting addiction deserve.

But Klobuchar couldn’t match her top competitors in fundraising. She raised about $11 million in the last quarter of 2019 — roughly half of what Sanders and Buttigieg received. The lack of finances early on in the campaign meant Klobuchar wasn’t able to expand her operation on the ground in Iowa and New Hampshire until months after her rivals. She then scrambled to put an operation in place in Nevada, South Carolina and the 14 states that will vote on Super Tuesday.

Still, there were bright spots, including strong debate performances that helped bring in new donors. Her campaign credited Klobuchar’s showing in a debate days before the New Hampshire primary with helping her clinch a better-than-expected third place in the state’s primary, topping Warren and Biden. Klobuchar said she raised $12 million in the next week.

During one debate she addressed sexism in the campaign, questioning whether a woman with Buttigieg’s experience would qualify for the stage. She also pushed back at fears of a female candidacy, saying, “If you think a woman can’t beat Donald Trump, (House Speaker) Nancy Pelosi does it every day.”

In January, she earned endorsements from The New York Times, which also endorsed Warren, and the Quad-City Times, one of Iowa’s largest newspapers. But Klobuchar was sidelined for much of the last few weeks before the Iowa caucuses when she — along with fellow candidates Warren, Sanders and Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado — was stuck in Washington for the Senate impeachment trial.

She continued to rack up endorsements even as her campaign struggled, getting the backing of newspapers including the Houston Chronicle, The Seattle Times and the New Hampshire Union Leader.

___

Catch up on the 2020 election campaign with AP experts on our weekly politics podcast, “Ground Game.”

Time for a Referendum on America’s Criminal Injustice System

Prosecutors like to say they are engaged in a search for justice. Many are. But while reporting on criminal courts in California over the years, I’ve seen too many doing the opposite.

As a young reporter in Oakland, I watched how white prosecutors, judges and cops convicted and sentenced many young African American men, who were treated as targets by city law enforcement. That’s where I began to understand that what was portrayed as the criminal justice system often was really a system engaged in criminal injustice.

Decades of such persecution resulted in protests during the 1960s, mainly by the Black Panthers. The Panthers were brutally suppressed by law enforcement, but protests continued. Today, this protest has taken the form of a national movement to reform local prosecutors’ offices around the country, moving them out of a heavy “lock-them-up” mode.

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It is one of the most significant, if underreported, political developments in the country. As Emily Bazelon describes it in her important new book, “Charged”:

A movement of organizers and activists and local leaders and defense lawyers and professors and students and donors is … working to elect a new type of D.A. in city after city and county after county. The movement is a groundswell. It’s growing. And it’s causing the first major shift in the politics and incentives of American prosecution in decades.

All this is being played out in Tuesday’s primary election for district attorney of Los Angeles, the largest D.A.’s office in the country.

The district attorney, Jackie Lacey, the first African American and first female county chief prosecutor, is being challenged by two opponents who fit the mold of the reform movement. The best known is George Gascón, a former San Francisco district attorney and top Los Angeles Police Department commander. The other candidate is Rachel Rossi, a former Los Angeles County and federal public defender and congressional staff member specializing in criminal justice policy.

Their contest is a microcosm of the controversy over the role of prosecutors in today’s society.

Lacey worked her way up through an office dominated by old-school attorneys who share a hard-line approach long favored by the area’s two biggest law enforcement agencies, the Los Angeles Police Department and the county sheriff’s department.

Celeste Fremon, editor of the authoritative website WitnessLA, said it is a fight over whether the prosecutor should “seek justice rather than victory. That has not been the case in this office for quite some time.” The current D.A.’s office, she told me, has “the old-fashioned, law-and-order mindset.”

Gascón has a law enforcement background that’s deeper than Lacey’s. He was a Los Angeles police officer for 27 years, rising to first assistant chief under William Bratton. Gascón then became chief of the Mesa, Arizona, department, where he battled the anti-immigrant sheriff of the county, Joe Arpaio. He then moved to San Francisco as police chief, and later district attorney, leaving that job to run for L.A. County D.A.

Rossi lacks such street experience. But in a debate with Lacey and Gascón last month, she showed a command of the issues, hitting those that bother the community most, such as  homelessness and mentally illness.

The difference between Gascón and Lacey is illustrated by their positions on a ballot measure that reduced some felonies to misdemeanors. Gascón favored it, while D.A. Lacey was opposed. Gascón and Rossi want to eliminate cash bail; Lacey wants to modify it. Gascón and Rossi oppose the death penalty; Lacey favors it.

These and other points by Gascón and Rossi reflect the policies of the justice reform movement, a coalition of groups funded by grassroots contributions and wealthy donors such as George Soros. In general, the reformers want to end arrest policies that discriminate against Latinos and African Americans; halt mass incarcerations that have resulted in five to 10 times more people imprisoned in this country than in other liberal democracies; and reverse the convictions of people found to be innocent, efforts usually opposed by prosecutors. They also want to energetically investigate cases of police officers who shoot suspects and to prosecute cops who kill without apparent justification.

In the case of Los Angeles, there is a reluctance to file charges against such officers, WitnessLA’s Fremon said. “It too often feels [like] there is a two-track justice system. Law enforcement is treated differently than anyone else.” She added, “The wealthy are [also] treated differently.”

Because these efforts are taking place during a presidential election, they are not getting enough national attention. And with the sharp decline of hometown newspapers, they are also being shut out of local news coverage.

Yet the role of county and city prosecutors reaches into the deepest currents of American life.

In “Charged,” Bazelon writes, “American prosecutors have breathtaking power, leading to disastrous results for millions of people churning through the criminal justice system. Over the last 40 years, prosecutors have amassed more power than our system was designed for. And they have mostly used it to put more people in prison, contributing to the scourge of mass incarceration, which continues to rip apart poor communities. Especially if they are mostly black and brown, and long ago passed the level required for public safety.”

I’ve seen how it works with the arrests of the mentally ill. Los Angeles County imprisons 18,000 in its jails, and 30% of them are mentally ill. Most are on various forms of medication.

A substantial number are homeless. For them, jail is a revolving door; they are arrested for minor drug offenses, such as relieving themselves on the street or fighting. This is followed by release to the streets and then back to jail, often on poorly administered medication.

That’s how the prison system grows to an unmanageable size. The criminal justice — or injustice — system isn’t overtly as crudely racist as when I was introduced to it in Oakland many years ago. But what stirred the Black Panthers into action remains deeply embedded. A mandate to arrest and convict, rather than rehabilitate, guides prosecutors around the nation. The effort to change this attitude is one of the most pressing items on a national reform agenda.

America Faces an Epidemic of Retirement Insecurity

The Dow Jones Industrial Average just dropped nearly 1,200 points in a single day because of the coronavirus’s impact on global trade, leaving many Americans sick with worry.

It’s not just a rapidly spreading, mysterious disease that made Americans feel vulnerable. The Dow’s freefall erased millions of dollars from retirement accounts and exposed another kind of epidemic—retirement insecurity.

There once was a time when the combination of company pension plans, Social Security and personal savings could carry retirees through their golden years.

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No longer. Most companies eliminated defined-benefit plans providing a reliable income stream and implemented 401(k) plans that leave workers at the mercy of stock market volatility, like the kind that rattled investors recently and crushed workers in 2008.

Today, Americans have so much angst about the future that about 29 percent of baby boomers, 36 percent of Gen Xers and 77 percent of millennials fear they’ll never be able to retire or will have to work past normal retirement age.

Americans work hard so they can provide for their families and enjoy retirement. But no matter how carefully they plan, their retirements depend on factors beyond their control.

Patricia Cotton, a home health aide in Maryland, lost half of her $150,000 investment nest egg in the 2008 recession and retired 12 years later than planned.

In all, Americans lost about $2.4 trillion in retirement earnings during the second half of 2008, and the average household lost a third of its net worth.

Cotton was one of many who experienced losses so severe that they had to work longer than intended. The memory of the 2008 recession still gives Americans retirement jitters, and stock market drops like we’ve just seen compound the fear.

Before 401(k) plans dominated the retirement landscape, companies provided defined-benefit pensions. Workers earned specific—defined—amounts based on their wages and years of service. When workers retired, the employer provided those amounts no matter how the stock market fared.

But now, even workers and retirees with these plans can lose what they earned. For example, 1.3 million Americans are in about 150 multiemployer pension plans at risk of collapsing.

These plans, enrolling workers from two or more companies in fields such as transportation and paper, lost investment earnings in the 2001 and 2008 recessions. Some companies also used bankruptcies to wriggle out of pension obligations. Now, the plans owe more money to beneficiaries than they have coming in.

Because of financial problems plaguing her late husband’s plan, Mary Fry saw her pension cut by more than half, to $1,514 a month, in her early 70s. “It’s worrisome,” she said, “and I don’t think I need worry in my life right now.”

The U.S. House last year passed the Butch Lewis Act, a measure that would provide low-interest loans to save multiemployer plans, but Senate Republicans refuse to consider it.

Instead, Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee want to prop up the plans with higher taxes on workers and retirees. Workers didn’t create the problem, but Grassley and Alexander expect them to fix it.

The senators also want to impose hefty new fees on multiemployer plans, something that would push even the healthy ones into financial ruin.

Meanwhile, pensioners agonize about losing houses or paying medical bills if their plans fold. Others try to conserve as much as they can.

Alan Ebert, a United Steelworkers (USW) member who retired about four years ago from a Louisiana paper mill, is in a multiemployer plan at risk of insolvency in 10 years.

He wants to put off collecting Social Security as long as he can. Retirees who delay collecting benefits after their eligibility dates get bigger checks when they do tap into the system, and Ebert hopes to maximize his Social Security in case his multiemployer plan fails.

But Social Security also is imperiled. Some Americans fear it won’t even be around when they’re old enough to retire.

If Congress fails to bolster the trust funds within about 15 years, the program will have to reduce benefits by about 20 percent. That would impoverish millions of retirees.

Mass retirement of baby boomers stresses the program. By 2030, Social Security will have 44 recipients for every 100 workers paying into the system, up from 35 recipients per 100 workers in 2014. But that isn’t the only reason for the funding crisis.

Rich people don’t pay their fair share in Social Security taxes. That’s left billions in badly needed funding on the table.

Federal law ostensibly requires Americans to pay 6.2 percent of their wages in Social Security taxes. However, earnings above $137,700 aren’t taxed at all. That means millionaires and billionaires really pay a Social Security tax of less than 1 percent.

While average Americans pay Social Security taxes all year, a person making $1 million stopped contributing on February 19. Bigger earners finished even earlier.

Making millionaires and billionaires pay Social Security taxes at the same rate as ordinary Americans would stabilize the program.

Under the current, broken system, the rich feather their own nests at everyone else’s expense. They enjoy cushy retirements while average workers struggle to provide for the present, let alone the future.

Because of decades of stagnating wages, many workers live paycheck to paycheck. Some juggle multiple jobs.

They’re saddled with medical bills and college debt and can’t afford an unexpected $400 expense.

Many Americans have nothing to bank for old age.

Roberta Gordon, for example, worked all of her life. But she held a variety of low-paying jobs that provided no pension, meager Social Security benefits and zero savings.

So, at 76, Gordon spent her Saturdays working at a California grocery store, handing out food samples for $50 a shift. She got her own groceries at a church food bank.

Passing the Butch Lewis Act is one step the Senate can take to ease Americans’ retirement insecurity. Making the rich contribute their fair share to Social Security is another commonsense move Congress owes the American people.

Right now, many worry that their resources will expire before they do.

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

Tom Conway is the international president of the United Steelworkers Union (USW).

Ralph Nader: Trump Is Becoming a Dictator in Real Time

Delusionary, dictatorial Donald Trump is drunk on power. Trump’s monarchical and lawless actions are a clear and present subversion of our Republic and its Constitution. As soon as the impeachment trial ended and Trump was acquitted by the Senate’s supine Republican courtiers (except for Senator Mitt Romney), vengeance flooded Trump’s fevered mind.

Ignoring warnings from his advisors, Trump is lashing out in all directions, unleashing torrents of foul-mouthed tweets. Note with alarm how this American Fuhrer is consolidating control and using his presidential power to smash all opposition. Remember that last July Trump declared “I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as President.” He wasn’t kidding, America.

“Whether it is the air you breathe, the water you drink, the vehicles you ride in, or the toxins in your workplace, Trump’s corporatist wrecking crew is running federal agencies into the ground.”

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Onward, Christian Fascists



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Trump is shocking his current appointees—in addition to those who have quit or been fired in purges.  Without evidence, he is accusing the intelligence agencies and the FBI of conspiring against him! Trump has attacked both the Justice Department and Attorney General William Barr because of the sentencing recommendations by four DOJ prosecutors for convicted criminal and Trump advisor Roger Stone. Barr, a Trump toady, was shaken. Barr said it would be impossible for him to do his job if Trump kept interfering.

As Mark Green and I depicted in our new book—Fake President: Decoding Trump’s Gaslighting, Corruption, and General Bullsh*t— loser Trump always retaliates against opponents by charging fraud, fakery, and crookery. Trump’s intimidation of others is amplified by the media that gives no right of reply to Trump’s targets.

What is most troubling are the silences of the countervailing forces that Americans have a right to rely on to fight Trump the tyrant.

Post acquittal, Trump has doubled down on his numerous impeachable offenses (see the Congressional Record from December 18, 2019, page H 12197). But Democrats, who control the House, are not doubling down on their impeachment investigations. Instead, they are following orders from Speaker Pelosi and standing down.

Trump regularly attacks the judges who rule against him or dare to challenge his illegal acts. Yet there is only silence by the many judge’s associations and the many bar associations. The American Bar Association, which has over 194,000 members, remains asleep. All of its members, so-called “officers of the court,” are attorneys and should understand their responsibilities to uphold the rule of law.

Trump’s Party has a long history of vicious voter suppression (chronicled in the new documentary, Suppressed: The Fight to Vote, by Robert Greenwald). These anti-democratic actions should be considered serious crimes. However, the members of the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) are largely unprepared to protect voter rights and accurate counting of votes. Some Secretaries of State are aiding and abetting these electoral crimes. Current Georgia Governor Brian Kemp used his power as Georgia’s Secretary of State to suppress black voters, cheating his way to the Governor’s mansion in 2018.

Trump is now doing what all dictators do when they take power: he is purging the civil service of any critical voices of those who simply want to do their jobs. These civil servants made the “mistake” of enforcing health and safety laws that the supreme leader wanted to go unenforced to benefit the President’s big corporate buddies and donors. The government employee unions are not doing enough to fight back and explain what Trump the tyrant is doing to harm people—Trump voters and anti-Trump voters alike. Trump and his cronies are making America more dangerous again by scuttling protections that reduce deaths, injuries, and illnesses.

Whether it is the air you breathe, the water you drink, the vehicles you ride in, or the toxins in your workplace, Trump’s corporatist wrecking crew is running federal agencies into the ground. While corporate outlaws fill Trump’s coffers and hotels with riches, he gives them huge tax escapes and starves infrastructure. The word “corruption” cannot fully embrace how this insulting megalomaniac is tearing apart our country, our democratic practices, and our moral norms. Protections for children, the elderly, veterans and workers are all on Trump’s chopping block.

Who will stand up to this horrible bully who is intent on rolling back America’s gains and the anti-monarchy purpose of the American Revolution itself? Some in the media will sound the alarm. Sensing this threat, Trump interfered with government procurement to tilt a large contract away from Amazon because Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post, which has run many articles about Trump’s rampage. Trump’s Republican campaign committee just filed a loser suit against The New York Times. Whether Trump wins or loses, the intimidation of the media is his goal.

These tactics are working on Chairman Jerome Powell and the Federal Reserve, according to former Fed insiders. As a result, the Federal Reserve has stayed committed to lowering interest rates to the detriment of savers. Intimidation is also working on the House of Representatives Democrats, who abhor the lives ruined by the savage sexual predator. Sadly, these lawmakers are not demanding a House Judiciary investigation of Trump’s treatment of women. Credible tort lawsuits are being delayed by Trump’s lawyers.

The cowardly silence of Barack Obama is the most stunning. In his extraordinary new book, The Triumph of Doubt, that names names, former head of Occupational Health and Safety Agency (OSHA), Dr. David Michaels, documents “President Trump’s desire to reverse anything the Obama administration did—if Obama supported it, Trump would do the opposite no matter what the consequences.”

The results are more mercury and diesel particulates in your lungs, more deadly methane accelerating climate disruption, and more coal ash for your children to breathe. Trump’s administration is even failing to adequately invest in medical science, which could save you. Until the coronavirus came along, Trump demanded serious funding cuts for the Centers for Disease Control; these funding cuts were thwarted by Congress. Even more damning, the Trump administration fired the U.S. pandemic response team to save money! The CDC’s annual budget is equal to a mere three days spending by the Pentagon, whose budget Trump bloats.

So where is Obama? Critiquing music, making movies, attending NBA all-star festivities, and readying for March Madness. Obama is thoroughly enjoying himself. What about also using his high political poll ratings and his massive Twitter following (which is far larger than Trump’s) to combat Trump’s actions? If not for the wellbeing of the American people, Obama should at least want to protect his legacy.

If Obama remains so carefree in the critical months before November, he will need a sign beside the exhibits to be displayed at his forthcoming presidential library: REPEALED BY TRUMP.

Class: The Little Word the Elites Want You to Forget

Aristotle, Niccolò Machiavelli, Alexis de Tocqueville, Adam Smith and Karl Marx grounded their philosophies in the understanding that there is a natural antagonism between the rich and the rest of us. The interests of the rich are not our interests. The truths of the rich are not our truths. The lives of the rich are not our lives. Great wealth not only breeds contempt for those who do not have it but it empowers oligarchs to pay armies of lawyers, publicists, politicians, judges, academics and journalists to censure and control public debate and stifle dissent. Neoliberalism, deindustrialization, the destruction of labor unions, slashing and even eliminating the taxes of the rich and corporations, free trade, globalization, the surveillance state, endless war and austerity — the ideologies or tools used by the oligarchs to further their own interests — are presented to the public as natural law, the mechanisms for social and economic progress, even as the oligarchs dynamite the foundations of a liberal democracy and exacerbate a climate crisis that threatens to extinguish human life.

The oligarchs are happy to talk about race. They are happy to talk about sexual identity and gender. They are happy to talk about patriotism. They are happy to talk about religion. They are happy to talk about immigration. They are happy to talk about abortion. They are happy to talk about gun control. They are happy to talk about cultural degeneracy or cultural freedom. They are not happy to talk about class. Race, gender, religion, abortion, immigration, gun control, culture and patriotism are issues used to divide the public, to turn neighbor against neighbor, to fuel virulent hatreds and antagonisms. The culture wars give the oligarchs, both Democrats and Republicans, the cover to continue the pillage. There are few substantial differences between the two ruling political parties in the United States. This is why oligarchs like Donald Trump and Michael Bloomberg can switch effortlessly from one party to the other. Once oligarchs seize power, Aristotle wrote, a society must either accept tyranny or choose revolution.

The United States stood on the cusp of revolution — a fact President Franklin Roosevelt acknowledged in his private correspondence — amid the breakdown of capitalism in the 1930s. Roosevelt responded by aggressively curbing the power of the oligarchs. The federal government dealt with massive unemployment by creating 12 million jobs through the Works Progress Administration (WPA), making the government the largest employer in the country. It legalized unions, many of which had been outlawed, and through the National Labor Relations Act empowered organizing. It approved banking regulations, including the Emergency Banking Act, the Banking Act and the Securities Act, all in 1933, to prevent another stock market crash. The Federal Emergency Relief Administration provided the equivalent in today’s money of $9.88 billion for relief operations in cities and states. The Democratic president heavily taxed the rich and corporations. (The Republican administration of Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s was still taxing the highest earners at 91%.) Roosevelt’s administration instituted programs such as Social Security and a public pension program. It provided financial assistance to tenant farmers and migrant workers. It funded arts and culture. It created the United States Housing Authority and instituted the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which established the minimum wage and set a limit on mandatory work hours. This heavy government intervention lifted the country out of the Great Depression. It also made Roosevelt, who was elected to an unprecedented fourth term, and the Democratic Party wildly popular among working and middle-class families. The Democratic Party, should it resurrect such policies, would win every election in a landslide.

But the New Deal was the bête noire of the oligarchs. They began to undo Roosevelt’s New Deal even before World War II broke out at the end of 1941. They gradually dismantled the regulations and programs that had not only saved capitalism but arguably democracy itself. We now live in an oligarchic state. The oligarchs control politics, the economy, culture, education and the press. Donald Trump may be a narcissist and a con artist, but he savages the oligarchic elite in his long-winded speeches to the delight of his crowds. He, like Bernie Sanders, speaks about the forbidden topic — class. But Trump, though an embarrassment to the oligarchs, does not, like Sanders, pose a genuine threat to them. Trump will, like all demagogues, incite violence against the vulnerable, widen the cultural and social divides and consolidate tyranny, but he will leave the rich alone. It is Sanders whom the oligarchs fear and hate.

The Democratic Party elites will use any mechanism, no matter how nefarious and undemocratic, to prevent Sanders from obtaining the nomination. The New York Times interviewed 93 of the more than 700 superdelegates, appointed by the party and permitted to vote in the second round if no candidate receives the required 1,991 delegates to win in the first round. Most of those interviewed said they would seek to prevent Sanders from being the nominee if he did not have a majority of delegates in the first count, even if it required drafting someone who did not run in the primaries — Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio was mentioned — and even if it led to Sanders’ supporters abandoning the party in disgust. If Sanders fails to obtain 1,991 delegates before the convention, which appears likely, it seems nearly certain he will be blocked by the party from becoming the Democratic candidate. The damage done to the Democratic Party, if this happens, will be catastrophic. It will also all but ensure that Trump wins a second term.

As I wrote in my Feb. 17 column, “The New Rules of the Games,” “Sanders’ democratic socialism is essentially that of a New Deal Democrat. His political views would be part of the mainstream in France or Germany, where democratic socialism is an accepted part of the political landscape and is routinely challenged as too accommodationist by communists and radical socialists. Sanders calls for an end to our foreign wars, a reduction of the military budget, for ‘Medicare for All,’ abolishing the death penalty, eliminating mandatory minimum sentences and private prisons, a return of Glass-Steagall, raising taxes on the wealthy, increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour, canceling student debt, eliminating the Electoral College, banning fracking and breaking up agribusinesses. This does not qualify as a revolutionary agenda.”

“Sanders, unlike many more radical socialists, does not propose nationalizing the banks and the fossil fuel and arms industries,” I continued. “He does not call for the criminal prosecution of the financial elites who trashed the global economy or the politicians and generals who lied to launch preemptive wars, defined under international law as criminal wars of aggression, which have devastated much of the Middle East, resulted in hundreds of thousands of dead and millions of refugees and displaced people, and cost the nation between $5 trillion and $7 trillion. He does not call for worker ownership of factories and businesses. He does not promise to halt the government’s wholesale surveillance of the public. He does not intend to punish corporations that have moved manufacturing overseas. Most importantly, he believes, as I do not, that the political system, including the Democratic Party, can be reformed from within. He does not support sustained mass civil disobedience to bring the system down, the only hope we have of halting the climate emergency that threatens to doom the human race. On the political spectrum, he is, at best, an enlightened moderate.”

The Democratic Party leaders are acutely aware that in a functioning democracy, one where the rich do not buy elections and send lobbyists to Washington and state capitals to write laws and legislation, one where the danger of oligarchic rule is understood and part of the national debate, they would be out of a job.

The Democrats, like the Republicans, serve the interests of the pharmaceutical and insurance industries. The Democrats, like the Republicans, serve the interests of the defense contractors. The Democrats, like the Republicans, serve the interests of the fossil fuel industry. The Democrats, along with the Republicans, authorized $738 billion for our bloated military in fiscal 2020. The Democrats, like the Republicans, do not oppose the endless wars in the Middle East. The Democrats, like the Republicans, took from us our civil liberties, including the right to privacy, freedom from wholesale government surveillance, and due process. The Democrats, like the Republicans, legalized unlimited funding from the rich and corporations to transform our electoral process into a system of legalized bribery. The Democrats, like the Republicans, militarized our police and built a system of mass incarceration that has 25% of the world’s prisoners, although the United States has only 5% of the world’s population. The Democrats, like the Republicans, are the political face of the oligarchy.

The leaders of the Democratic Party — the Clintons, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Tom Perez — would rather implode the party and the democratic state than surrender their positions of privilege. The Democratic Party is not a bulwark against despotism. It is the guarantor of despotism. It is a full partner in the class project. Its lies, deceit, betrayal of working men and women and empowering of corporate pillage made a demagogue like Trump possible. Any threat to the class project, even the tepid one that would be offered by Sanders as the party’s nominee, will see the Democratic elites unite with the Republicans to keep Trump in power.

What will we do if the oligarchs in the Democratic Party once again steal the nomination from Sanders? Will we finally abandon a system that has always been gamed against us? Will we turn on the oligarchic state to build parallel, popular institutions to protect ourselves and to pit power against power? Will we organize unions, third parties and militant movements that speak in the language of class warfare? Will we form community development organizations that provide local currencies, public banks and food cooperatives? Will we carry out strikes and sustained civil disobedience to wrest power back from the oligarchs to save ourselves and our planet?

In 2016 I did not believe that the Democratic elites would permit Sanders to be the nominee and feared, correctly, they would use him after the convention to herd his followers into the voting booths for Hillary Clinton. I do not believe this animus against Sanders has changed in 2020. The theft this time may be more naked, and for this reason more revealing of the forces involved. If all this plays out as I expect and if those on the left continue to put their faith and energy into the Democratic Party, they are not simply willfully naive but complicit in their own enslavement. No successful political movement will be built within the embrace of the Democratic Party, nor will such a movement be built in one election cycle. The struggle to end oligarchic rule will be hard and bitter. It will take time. It will require self-sacrifice, including sustained protest and going to jail. It will be rooted in class warfare. The oligarchs will stop at nothing to crush it. Open, nonviolent revolt against the oligarchic state is our only hope. Oligarchic rule must be destroyed. If we fail, our democracy, and finally our species, will become extinct.

Refugees Mass at EU Border as Turkey-Syria Conflict Intensifies

KASTANIES, Greece—Thousands of migrants and refugees massed at Turkey’s western frontier Sunday, trying to enter Greece by land and sea after Turkey said its borders were open to those hoping to head to Europe. In Syria, Turkish troops shot down two Syrian warplanes after the Syrian military downed a Turkish drone, a major escalation in the direct conflict between Syrian and Turkish forces.

Turkey’s decision to ease border restrictions came amid a Russia-backed Syrian government offensive into Syria’s northwestern Idlib province. That offensive has killed dozens of Turkish troops and led to a surge of nearly a million Syrian civilians fleeing the fighting toward Turkey’s sealed border.

Turkey backs the Syrian rebels fighting in Idlib province, and has sent thousands of troops into the area. Idlib is the last opposition-held stronghold in Syria, and is dominated by al-Qaida linked fighters.

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A Turkish official said the fighting in Idlib was directly linked to Turkey’s decision to open the gates for refugees to Europe. He said Ankara had changed its focus to preparing for the possibility of new arrivals from Syria “instead of preventing refugees who intend to migrate to Europe.”

“Europe and others must take robust action to address this monumental challenge,” said Fahrettin Altun, the communications director for Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “We can’t be expected to do this on our own.”

Erdogan’s decision open his country’s borders with Europe made good on a longstanding threat to let refugees into the continent. His announcement marked a dramatic departure from a previous policy of containment, an apparent attempt to pressure Europe into offering Turkey more support in dealing with the fallout from the Syrian war to its south.

Under a 6 billion euro deal in 2016, Turkey agreed to stem the tide of refugees to Europe in return for financial aid, after more than a million people entered Europe in 2015. Turkey has since accused the EU of failing to honor the agreement, and Erdogan has frequently threatened to allow refugees into Europe unless more international support was provided.

Turkey already hosts 3.6 million Syrian refugees, as well as many others from Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Turkey borders Greece and Bulgaria, both European Union members.

On the Greek-Turkish land border, Greek army and police patrols using tear gas and stun grenades to thwart attempts by thousands to push into the country overnight.

Officials said the situation was much calmer Sunday morning. But in the afternoon, authorities used tear gas and water cannons to push back another crowd attempting to cross. Migrants threw rocks and other objects, and one policeman was injured. Greek authorities said they stopped about 10,000 crossing attempts Saturday, and another 5,500 on Sunday.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis convened the defense and foreign affairs committee Sunday evening. Afterward, a government spokesman said Greece was starting a one-month freeze on accepting asylum applications from migrants who enter illegally.

Europe’s border agency Frontex said it was “redeploying equipment and additional officers to Greece.”

A Greek government official said the Turkish authorities also fired teargas at the Greek border, using drones flying close to the border. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the matter with the media.

Stavros Zamalides, the president of the Greek border community of Kastanies, said Turkish soldiers used wire cutters to actively help people cross.

The United Nations migration organization reported at least 13,000 people had massed on Turkey’s land border by Saturday night, the vast majority apparently from Afghanistan.

In Istanbul, a steady stream of buses, taxis, cars and minibuses were ferrying hundreds more throughout Sunday to Edirne, a town near the border with Greece. The vehicles weren’t part of any regular bus route.

Those boarding the buses — the vast majority Afghans — said they were heading to Greece and eventually hoped to get to Germany.

On the Greek islands, more than 500 people had arrived from the nearby Turkish coast by Sunday evening, a clear increase in the usual number of people who arrive on eastern Aegean islands from Turkey.

Existing migrant camps on the islands are already dramatically overcrowded, and tensions there have mounted.

In a small harbor on Lesbos, angry local residents refused to allow migrants — including families with young children and babies — to disembark from a dinghy that had just arrived. Groups who arrived on other parts of the island remained there for hours because locals prevented buses from reaching them to transport them to the main camp.

On Sunday night, a former staging area used for new arrivals on Lesbos was set on fire.

More than 19,300 people already live in and around island’s migrant camp, which has a capacity of 2,840. Protests by island residents last week over the situation degenerated into clashes with riot police on Lesbos and Chios.

Greece said it was using “all available means” to tell migrants that the country’s borders were closed, including text messages to foreign mobile phones in the border area.

In Syria, fighting escalated on the ground and in the skies between Turkish and Syrian troops. Russia, a key ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government, remained largely on the sidelines through the weekend even as a Turkish-led counter offensive blunted and in some cases reversed Syrian government advances.

But the head of the Russian military’s Reconciliation Center in Syria, Rear Adm. Oleg Zhuravlev,, warned Turkey that its aircraft could be in danger if they fly over Syria.

“In view of the sharp exacerbation of tensions in the air space over Idlib, the Syrian government was forced to declare it closed,” Zhuravlev said in a statement released late Sunday. “In this situation, the Russian troops’ command can’t guarantee security of flights of Turkish aircraft in the skies over Syria.”

Syria’s official news agency SANA said the four pilots in the two jets shot down Sunday had ejected and landed safely. Turkey’s Defense Ministry said it had hit the two SU-24 aircraft as well as Syrian air defense systems after one of its aerial drones was downed.

Earlier Sunday, Syria said northwestern airspace was closed and any aircraft or drone that entered “will be treated as hostile and shot down.”

The Syrian announcement followed two days of Turkish drone strikes in Idlib province. Syrian activists said the strikes killed more than 50 Syrian government forces and allied fighters. Turkey has lost 54 soldiers in February, including 33 killed Thursday in a single airstrike. Outraged, Erdogan announced his country’s European borders were open Saturday.

The crisis in Idlib stems from a Syrian government offensive with Russian military support, which began Dec. 1. Turkey is worried it might come under renewed international pressure to open its now-sealed border with Syria and offer refuge to hundreds of thousands more Syrian civilians.

Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar, speaking from a military headquarters near the Syrian border, said Turkey aimed to confront Syrian government forces rather than Russian troops. He called on Moscow to persuade Assad to withdraw to 2018 cease-fire lines on the edges of Idlib.

Referring to losses inflicted on Syria, he said Turkey had “neutralized” more than 2,200 Syrian troops, 103 tanks and eight helicopters. The operation is Turkey’s fourth in the war-torn country since 2016.

Altun, the Turkish communications director, claimed 80,888 migrants had left Turkey for Europe “in the past several days.” There was no evidence to support his claim. Greece’s Foreign Ministry tweeted that these numbers were “false and misleading.”

___

Wilks reported from Ankara, Turkey. Robert Badendieck in Istanbul, Albert Aji in Damascus, Syria, Elena Becatoros in Athens and Zeina Karam in Beirut contributed to this report.

Virus Spreads Worldwide: Italy Cases Surge 50%; France Closes the Louvre

PARIS—Coronavirus cases surged in Italy, and France closed the world-famous Louvre Museum on Sunday as the deadly outbreak that began in China sent fear rising across Western Europe, threatening its tourism industry.

Italian authorities announced that the number of people infected in the country soared 50% to 1,694 in just 24 hours, and five more had died, bringing the death toll there to 34. France raised its number of reported cases to 130, an increase of 30 from the day before, and said it has seen two deaths.

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The number of countries hit by the virus climbed past 60, and the death toll worldwide reached at least 3,000.

New fronts in the battle opened rapidly over the weekend, deepening the sense of crisis that has already sent financial markets plummeting, emptied the streets in many cities and rewritten the routines of millions of people. More than 88,000 around the globe have been infected, with the virus popping up on every continent but Antarctica.

Australia and Thailand reported their first deaths Sunday, while the Dominican Republic and the Czech Republic recorded their first infections.

The U.S. government advised Americans against traveling to the two northern Italian regions hit hardest, among them Lombardy, which includes Milan. Major American airlines began suspending flights to Milan.

The travel restrictions against Italy and the rising alarm in France could deal a heavy blow to the countries’ tourism industries. Spring, especially Easter, is a hugely popular time for schoolchildren to visit France and Italy.

“We had already registered a slowdown of Americans coming to Italy in recent days,” Bernabo Bocca, president of Italy’s hotel association, said in a statement Saturday. “Now, the final blow has arrived.”

Tourism accounts for 13% of the economy in Italy, with its world-class art museums, archaeological sites and architectural treasures. More than 5.6 million Americans visit Italy every year, representing 9% of foreign tourists.

Iran, Iraq and South Korea, among other places, also saw the number of infections rise. Cases in the U.S. climbed to at least 74 with the first death in the United States reported on Saturday — a man in his 50s in Washington state who had underlying health problems but hadn’t traveled to any affected areas.

Panic-buying of daily necessities emerged in Japan, where professional baseball teams have played spring-training games in deserted stadiums. Tourist attractions across Asia, Europe and the Mideast were deserted. Islam’s holiest sites have been closed to foreign pilgrims. And governments have closed schools and banned big gatherings.

The United Nations said Sunday it is releasing $15 million from an emergency fund to help countries with fragile health systems contain the virus.

“We must act now to stop this virus from putting more lives at risk,” U.N. humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock said. The aid “has the potential to save the lives of millions of vulnerable people.”

In France, the archbishop of Paris told parish priests to put the Communion bread in worshippers’ hands, not in their mouths. French officials also advised people to forgo the customary kisses on the cheek upon greeting others.

The Louvre, home of the “Mona Lisa” and other priceless artworks, closed after workers expressed fear of being contaminated by the stream of visitors from around the world. Staffers were also concerned about museum workers from Italy who had come to the Louvre to collect works by Leonardo da Vinci that were loaned for an exhibition.

The Louvre, the world’s most popular museum, received 9.6 million visitors last year, almost three-quarters of them from abroad.

“We are very worried because we have visitors from everywhere,” said Andre Sacristin, a Louvre employee and union representative. “The risk is very, very, very great.” While there are no known infections among the museum’s 2,300 workers, “it’s only a question of time,” he said.

The shutdown followed a government decision Saturday to ban indoor public gatherings of more than 5,000 people.

Among the frustrated visitors was Charles Lim from Singapore. He and his wife, Jeanette, chose Paris to celebrate their first wedding anniversary and bought tickets in advance for the Louvre.

“We waited for about three hours before giving up,” he said. “It was incredibly disappointing.”

China, where the outbreak began two months ago, on Sunday reported a slight uptick in new cases over the past 24 hours to 573, the first time in five days that the number exceeded 500. They remain almost entirely confined to the hardest-hit province of Hubei and its capital, Wuhan.

South Korea reported 210 additional cases and two more deaths, raising its totals to 3,736 cases and 20 fatalities. South Korea has the second-largest number of infections outside China, with most of the cases in the southeastern city of Daegu and nearby areas.

South Korea’s president used a speech marking the 101st anniversary of an anti-Japanese independence uprising to call for national unity to overcome the crisis.

Iran’s death toll climbed to 54 as the number of confirmed cases jumped overnight by more than half, to 978. The new figures represent 11 more deaths than reported on Saturday.

Around the world, many cases of the virus have been relatively mild, and some of those infected apparently show no symptoms at all.

___

Barry reported from Milan. Associated Press writers Foster Klug and Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo; Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul, South Korea; Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran; Joe McDonald in Beijing; Zarar Khan in Islamabad; and Edith M. Lederer in New York contributed to this report.

Educating Girls Is Key to Fighting the Climate Crisis

If you really want to tackle the climate emergency, there’s one simple but often forgotten essential: throw your weight behind schools for girls, and ensure adult women can rely on the chance of an education.

Obviously, in a world of differences, some people can do more to tackle the climate crisis than others. So it’s essential to recognise how much neglected potential exists among nearly half the human race.

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But there’s a snag, and it’s a massive one: the women and girls who can do so much to avert global heating reaching disastrous levels need to be able to exercise their right to education.

Bold claims?  Project Drawdown is a group of researchers who believe that stopping global heating is possible, with solutions that exist today. To do this, they say, we must work together to achieve drawdown, the point when greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere start to decline.

The project’s conclusions are startling − and positive. One is that educating girls works better to protect the climate than many technological solutions, vital though they are, and including several variants of renewable energy.

Yet, the group finds, girls and women suffer disproportionately from climate breakdown, and failures in access to education worsen this problem. After the horrendous 2004 tsunami, for example, an Oxfam report found that male survivors outnumbered women by almost 3:1 in Sri Lanka, Indonesia and India. Men were more likely to be able to swim, and women lost precious evacuation time trying to look after children and other relatives.

But given more power and say in how we adapt to and try to prevent global heating, the female half of humankind could make disproportionally positive contributions, the project says.

Using UN data, it suggests that educating girls could result in a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of 51.48 gigatonnes by 2050. The UN Environment Programme says that total greenhouse gas emissions had reached a record high of 55.3 gigatonnes in 2018.

Multiple barriers

The Rapid Transition Alliance (RTA) is a UK-based organisation which argues that humankind must undertake “widespread behaviour change to sustainable lifestyles … to live within planetary ecological boundaries and to limit global warming to below 1.5°C”.

It says that although access to education is a basic human right, across the world. girls continue to face multiple barriers based on their gender and its links to other factors such as age, ethnicity, poverty and disability.

But the RTA adds: “Research shows that for each intake of students, educating girls has multiple benefits that go far beyond the individual and any particular society. It can also result in rapid and transformative change that affects the planet itself.”

One example it cites is from Mali, in West Africa, where women with secondary education or higher have an average of 3 children, while those with no education have an average of 7 children.

Environmentalists’ failure

It says that while the UN currently thinks the world’s population will grow from 7.3 billion today to 9.7 bn by 2050, with most of the growth happening in developing countries, recent research shows that if girls’ education continues to expand, that number would total 2 billion fewer people by 2045.

It argues that it is not just politicians and the media who fail to focus on this grossly slewed access to education. The RTA says the environmental movement itself rarely makes connections between the education of girls and success in tackling climate change.

One example of conservation work being tied successfully to educating and empowering women it cites is the Andavadoaka clinic in Madagascar, which is funded by a British charity, Blue Ventures Conservation (BVC).

The link between population growth, the lack of family planning facilities and the increasing pressure on fragile natural resources prompted BVC to establish the clinic, which has been running for over a decade and is part of a wider programme serving 45,000 people. As well as the original clinic other projects have grown up that concentrate on specific economic and participation opportunities for women and girls.

Making a difference

In the least developed countries women make up almost half of the agricultural labour force, giving them a huge role in feeding the future population. But there is a massive gap between men and women in their control over land, their ability to obtain inputs and the pay they can expect.

Individual girls and women continue to make a massive difference, whether Greta Thunberg spurring action on climate change or Malala Yousafzai, shot for trying to attend school in Afghanistan, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her campaign for girls’ education.

Women who have climbed high up the political ladder have sometimes used their success to ensure that girls are taken seriously. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first female president of an African country − Liberia − used her power to expand the quality of provision in pre-school and primary education by joining the Global Partnership for Education, and the former US First Lady, Michele Obama, spearheaded the Let Girls Learn organisation.

The Rapid Transition Alliance’s conclusion is short and simple: “Educating girls brings broad benefits to wider society as well improving efforts to tackle the climate emergency.”