Chris Hedges's Blog, page 306

New Study Calls for ‘Immediate Action’ on Climate Crisis

LONDON—US scientists have peered ahead in more than five million ways, and they do not like the uncertain futures they see there. Unless the world collectively and in concert takes drastic steps to slow or halt global warming, generations to come face an intolerable prospect.

And even if humans do switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy, economise on resources and restore the world’s forests and grasslands, there is still no guarantee that disaster will not happen.

That is because the outcome depends not just on the steps humans take now, but on one of the great, unresolved scientific questions: just how sensitive is climate to shifts in the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?

If sensitivity is low, and humankind acts effectively and immediately, the future could be tolerable. But in a total of 5,200,000 computer-generated scenarios involving population growth, economic development, the role of carbon in the economy and the levels of climate sensitivity, this happens only relatively infrequently.

“If large abatement efforts are undertaken, warming is generally limited and damages are low. However, aggressive abatement action does not guarantee a ‘tolerable’ future,” the scientists write, in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Good luck needed

“Our simple analysis shows that, to achieve a tolerable future, we must also have the good fortune of living in a world with low climate sensitivity. Failure to rapidly increase abatement all but guarantees failure over a very wide range of climate sensitivities.

“We show that our generation has an important responsibility to ensure that coming generations have a tolerable future.”

And they conclude: “It is still, however, a gamble that depends on how sensitive the climate turns out to be and how soon the promises of negative emissions materialise, but we show immediate rapid growth in abatement remains our safest course of action.”

At the heart of all such studies is the question: how much time does human society have before climate change becomes dangerous and inevitable?

The scientists defined “tolerable” as a future in which global warming stopped, by 2100, at 2°C or less above historic levels, a future 195 nations have already agreed to work for in Paris in 2015.

To achieve this tolerable future, the scientists reasoned that the cost of abatement should be no more than 3% of the gross world product, and the damage wrought by climate change no more than 2%. Then they considered 24 levels of uncertainty in what they call the “human-Earth system” and generated their vast number of possible outcomes.

Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have already soared from around 280 parts per million to more than 400 ppm, and global average temperatures have soared with them, to around 1°C above the average for most of human history.

Climate scientists have already identified the costs of “intolerable” climate change. They warn that as the thermometer rises, so does the threat of devastating famine. Extremes of heat become increasingly lethal. Floods could become more devastating and sea levels rise  dangerously. Drought, rising temperatures and food shortages are likely to create the conditions for  dangerous conflict.

But in 2019 greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels  are likely to be higher than ever. The world is already midway through the hottest decade since records began. And the planet could tip the 1.5°C global average temperature rise – the target proposed in Paris – in the next decade.

No reassurance

The consequences of accelerated global warming could be calamitous, but there is still argument about the rate of change, the role of the natural cycles in atmosphere and ocean that influence climate, the scale of hazard to human civilisation and the nature of the steps vital to contain warming.

So the US researchers decided to look at the whole range of possible future outcomes. Their answers are not reassuring.

The message is that either global economies react now – at considerable cost and for no immediate reward – or that future generations must pay what could be a wretched price for present inaction.

“Despite massive uncertainties in a multitude of sectors, human actions are still the driving factor in determining the long-term climate,” said Jonathan Lamontagne, a civil engineer at Tufts University in Massachusetts, who led the study.

“Uncertainty is sometimes interpreted as an excuse for delaying action. Our research shows that uncertainty can be a solid reason to take immediate action.”

How The New York Times Flubs Its Terrorism Coverage

“What is terrorism, and who is a terrorist?” The New York Times (3/7/19) asked in a recent report on the hindering of peace negotiations between the United States government and the Taliban in Afghanistan—without suggesting any possible answers to these questions. When the headline of a story literally includes the phrase “Big Question: What Is Terrorism?” you might think it would offer at least one plausible definition proposed by any party or individual involved in these discussions. But not a single definition is suggested by anyone in the report, written by Mujib Mashal.

This isn’t the first time in the Times’ propagandistic coverage of the War on Terror that the paper has raised the question without attempting to answer it; a 2005 piece  (8/14/05) whose headline included the big question, “What Is Terrorism?,” also didn’t propose any definitions either.

In its recent story, the Times reported that the current snag in negotiations has to do with US negotiators insisting that the Taliban promise not to allow Afghanistan to be used by terrorist groups (implying that the Taliban should promise to abolish itself, since the Times also mentions that US leaders like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo consider the Taliban to be a terrorist group). The Taliban is reportedly balking, “saying there was no universal definition of terrorism,” but would promise not to allow Afghanistan to be used as a launching pad for international attacks.

While “terrorism” is notoriously difficult to define by scholars and journalists, the Times has admitted in other places that it and other outlets tend to say whatever law enforcement wants them to say in domestic cases (3/22/18): “For the most part, journalists tend to follow the lead of law enforcement on whether to call a crime an act of terrorism.”

While there’s no reason to treat the United States military’s Guide to Terrorism in the 21st Century definition of terrorism (8/15/07) as authoritative, its emphasis on the motivations of terrorists rather than their identities is useful in several ways. It defines terrorism as “the calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious or ideological.” It’s the exact opposite of the standard that the corporate media has consistently pursued in favor of sensationalist and racist coverage throughout the War on Terror, emphasizing the identity of the perpetrators, rather than their motivations (FAIR.org, 3/29/18).

Although the Guide’s definition suffers from not distinguishing between politically motivated violence against civilians and insurgent guerrilla actions against the military forces of foreign occupiers and oppressive governments—a blurring that can lead to absurd designations, like Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress being categorized as terrorists by the US government until 2008 (NBC, 12/7/13). But its emphasis on the motives for violence allows it to be used to measure the United States’ own actions by making the nationality, ideology, military might and skin color of terrorists irrelevant considerations.

Foreign policy critic Noam Chomsky has observed (in Hegemony or Survival) that the primary reason even official definitions are avoided is that (if universally applied) it would inevitably follow that the United States is “a leading terrorist state,” which would blow apart the conventional thesis that terrorism is a “weapon of the weak” rather than “primarily a weapon of the powerful.”

One would never get the impression that the United States government is a leading sponsor and perpetrator of terrorism from the Times’ report. No mention is made of the United States’ history of supporting and arming the mujahideen fighters (the forerunners of Al Qaeda and ISIS) in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union in the 1980s (Salon, 11/17/15), or of its history of supplying Afghan children with textbooks containing violent images and militant Islamic teachings (Washington Post, 3/23/02).

From the article, one would also never find out that the Afghanistan War is in violation of the UN Charter (Guardian, 8/23/17), and that the United States has no legal right to insist or impose any conditions on the Afghan people when it euphemistically refers to the illegal invasion as a “military action,” which would legitimate violent resistance against an occupying force or aggressor, regardless of whether or not one considers the Taliban to be a legitimate, representative force of the Afghan people.

FAIR (9/30/16) has documented the irony of corporate media expressing no concern over exposing the United States, via “free trade” agreements’ Investor/State Dispute Settlement provisions, to lawsuits from foreign corporations against regulations that undermine corporate profits—while simultaneously abhorring legislation that would make it easier for 9/11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia on the grounds that it would expose the United States to foreign lawsuits for the terrorism it commits abroad. Such blatant double standards and implicit admissions over what constitutes terrorism make it hard to dismiss conclusions that “terrorism” is merely a “meaningless propaganda term,” cynically deployed by the corporate media to advance American foreign policy (Intercept, 6/19/15).

The Times reports that the Taliban seeks to avoid providing a definition of terrorism because it is a “sensitive and existential” issue for the group, as it “strikes at the core of the ideological narrative” they want to propagate. One could also argue that the Times and the rest of corporate media scrupulously avoid giving strict definitions of terrorism—even in articles explicitly about what terrorism is—because it is a sensitive and existential issue for US foreign policy, in the Middle East and elsewhere.

A serious discussion about terrorism that would permit questions over whether aspects of American foreign policy can qualify as terrorism would strike at the core of the media’s own preferred ideological narrative, and would jeopardize the United States’ basis for the War on Terror, since its credibility depends on the unchallenged assumption that the United States is not a terrorist state.

Stunned by Terror Attack, New Zealand Reaches Out to Its Muslim Community

CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand—New Zealand’s stricken residents reached out to Muslims in their neighborhoods and around the country on Saturday, with a fierce determination to show kindness to a community in pain as a 28-year-old white supremacist stood silently before a judge, accused in mass shootings at two mosques that left 49 people dead.

Brenton Harrison Tarrant appeared in court amid strict security, shackled and wearing all-white prison garb, and showed no emotion when the judge read him one murder charge. The judge said “it was reasonable to assume” more such charges would follow. Tarrant, who posted an anti-immigrant manifesto online and apparently used a helmet-mounted camera to broadcast live video of the slaughter in the city of Christchurch, appeared to make a hand sign, similar to an OK sign, that is sometimes associated with white nationalists.

The massacre during Friday prayers prompted a heartfelt response from Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who pronounced it “one of New Zealand’s darkest days” and said the shooter, an Australian native, had chosen to strike in New Zealand “because we represent diversity, kindness, compassion.”

Her fellow countrymen seemed to want to prove her right by volunteering acts of kindness. Some offered rides to the grocery store or volunteered to walk with their Muslim neighbors if they felt unsafe.

In online forums, people discussed Muslim food restrictions as they prepared to drop off meals for those affected.

“Love always wins over hate. Lots of love for our Muslim brothers,” read a handwritten card on a wall of flowers in a historic part of the city that stretched a full block.

Still, Muslims were advised to stay away from mosques while the nation’s security alert remained at the second-highest level a day after the deadliest shooting in modern New Zealand history.

Ardern said 39 survivors remained hospitalized Saturday, with 11 critically wounded. But updates were slow to come, and many families were still waiting to hear whether their loved ones were among the victims.

Outside one of the two mosques, 32-year-old Ash Mohammed pushed through police barricades in hopes of finding out what happened to his father and two brothers, whose cellphones rang unanswered. An officer stopped him.

“We just want to know if they are dead or alive,” Mohammed told the officer.

Hungry for any news, families and friends of the victims gathered at the city’s Hagley College, near the hospital.

They included Asif Shaikh, 44, who said he was among more than 100 people at the Al Noor mosque when the attacker came in. He said he survived by playing dead, but was desperate to know what happened to his friends who were there with him.

“It’s been 36 hours, I haven’t heard anything about them,” he said.

Nearby, Akhtar Khokhur leaned on the shoulders of her friend and cried as she held up her cellphone with an image of her husband.

“I still don’t know where he is,” she said.

Khokhur, 58, and husband Mehaboobbhai Khokhur, 65, had traveled from India to spend time with their son Imran, their first visit in the eight years since he moved to New Zealand. The couple was due to fly out Sunday.

Imran had dropped off his father, an electrical engineer, at the Al Noor mosque on Friday and was looking for a parking space when the shooting began. They have not heard from him since.

The gunman had posted a jumbled, 74-page manifesto on social media in which he identified himself as an Australian and white supremacist who was out to avenge attacks in Europe perpetrated by Muslims.

He livestreamed 17 minutes of the rampage at the Al Noor mosque, where, armed with at least two assault rifles and a shotgun, he sprayed worshippers with bullets, killing at least 41 people. More people were killed in an attack on a second mosque a short time later.

Facebook, Twitter and Google scrambled to take down the gunman’s video, which was widely available on social media for hours after the bloodbath.

The second attack took place at the Linwood mosque about 5 kilometers (3 miles) away.

The video showed the killer was carrying a shotgun and two fully automatic military assault rifles, with an extra magazine taped to one of the weapons so that he could reload quickly. He also had more assault weapons in the trunk of his car, along with what appeared to be explosives.

Two other armed suspects were taken into custody Friday while police tried to determine what role, if any, they played in the cold-blooded attack that stunned New Zealand, a country so peaceful that police officers rarely carry guns.

Tarrant’s relatives in the Australian town of Grafton, in New South Wales, contacted police after learning of the shooting and were helping with the investigation, local authorities said. Tarrant has spent little time in Australia in the past four years and only had minor traffic infractions on his record.

New Zealand Police Commissioner Mike Bush confirmed Tarrant was involved in both shootings but stopped short of saying he was the sole gunman.

During the Saturday morning hearing, a man who was not in court was charged with using writings to incite hatred against a race or ethnicity, but it was not clear if his case was related to the mosque attacks.

“We appear to primarily be dealing with one primary perpetrator, but we want to make sure that we don’t take anything for granted in ensuring New Zealanders’ safety,” Prime Minister Ardern said.

New Zealand, with a population of 5 million, has relatively loose gun laws and an estimated 1.5 million firearms, or roughly one for every three people. But it has one of the lowest gun homicide rates in the world. In 2015, it had just eight.

Ardern said Tarrant was a licensed gun owner who bought the five guns used in the crimes legally.

“I can tell you one thing right now, our gun laws will change,” Ardern said.

She did not offer too much detail, but said a ban on semi-automatic weapons would be looked at. Neighboring Australia has virtually banned semi-automatic rifles from private ownership since a lone gunman killed 35 people with assault rifles in 1996.

Before Friday’s attack, New Zealand’s deadliest shooting in modern history took place in 1990 in the small town of Aramoana, where a gunman killed 13 people following a dispute with a neighbor.

___

Associated Press writers Kristen Gelineau in Christchurch and Rod McGuirk in Canberra, Australia, contributed to this report.

Millions of Farmers Could Turn the Tide Against India’s Right-Wing Regime

This article was produced by Globetrotter , a project of the Independent Media Institute.

As India’s 2019 general election approaches, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is attempting to garner support among the country’s rural populace, which represents around two-thirds of the country’s total population.

Modi’s efforts to court India’s rural voters take place amid large-scale demonstrations held by Indian farmers. The wave of protests culminated last November, when thousands of farmers from across India gathered in New Delhi to demonstrate outside the Parliament building demanding a special three-week joint session on India’s agrarian crisis. The march—named the Kisan Mukti March, or Farmers’ Freedom March—was coordinated by the All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee, a coalition group of more than 140 farmer organizations, formed in June 2017.

The recent demonstrations have set the tone for this year’s general elections, reminding governments that there is a political cost to ignoring rural India.

India’s Agrarian Crisis: Debt, Suicide and Government Neglect

Over the past several months, millions of subsistence farmers, many with less than five acres of land, have staged protests demanding higher prices for their crops (also referred to as minimum support prices) and debt forgiveness.

Rural farmers in India, since the early 1990s, have had very limited access to credit from the country’s banks, a major problem for a livelihood that is cyclical and prone to a range of environmental setbacks. Without public-sector bank loans to depend on, small farmers were forced to turn to predatory informal lenders who charge annual interests of up to 60 percent.

Under the BJP government, economic conditions for Indian farmers have worsened due to rising input prices, weak government support systems, climate change–induced crop failures, declining commodity prices and stagnant farm incomes, forcing many farmers to give up their land.

P. Sainath, a renowned scholar and journalist who focuses on India’s rural economy, observes that India’s agrarian crisis has been marked by a sharp decline in the country’s full-time farmer population and has ushered millions into the ranks of the agrarian underclass of landless laborers.

“This means that countless once-landed farmers have lost their greatest asset—their land,” P. Sainath, a senior fellow with the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, goes on to note.

An equally alarming feature of rural distress among Indian farmers is the rising rate at which farmers are committing suicide as a result of their inability to pay off existing loans.

Due to India’s deep-seated agrarian crisis, a suicide epidemic has struck the country, with an unprecedented number of farmer suicides taking place across the subcontinent.

“We never heard of farmer suicides due to debt before the 1990s in India. Only in 1997, when the neoliberal attack on farmers took effect did you hear of debt-driven suicides, which by now exceeds more than 300,000 [farmers],” Marxist economist Utsa Patnaik said in a recent interview coordinated by the Thimar Collective, a research collective based out of Lebanon, which publishes and syndicates content regarding agriculture, environment and labor in the Arab world.

In efforts to ease agrarian hardships, Indian farmers are demanding that government officials implement the recommendations issued in a 2004 government-nominated commission (known as the Swaminathan Commission), which was created in order to identify solutions to the problems faced by farmers in India.

However, 15 years have passed since its release, and Indian lawmakers have yet to hold a serious debate on the report’s findings and recommendations.

BJP Seeks to Win Back the ‘Farm Vote’

Meanwhile, as part of its 2019 electoral campaign strategy, the BJP is already disingenuously positioning itself as the advocate of farmers in an effort to garner support among the country’s rural population, who plays an important role in determining the outcome of the country’s upcoming elections.

Typically, in order to temporarily appease agrarian constituencies, ruling parties at both state and national levels placate rural discontent by granting subsidies on farm inputs such as energy and fertilizer.

Most recently, however, farmers have taken to the streets to demand that the Modi administration deliver on several long-standing policy pledges, including: the cancelation of more than $50 billion of farm debt; the implementation of a procurement formula guaranteeing farmers a return of at least 1.5 times their costs of production; and promises to double farm incomes by 2022.

Unfortunately for farmers, since Modi came into office, debt among agricultural households has intensified, while farm incomes remained stagnant.

According to a 2018 survey, more than half the agricultural households in the country have outstanding debt, and farm incomes have stayed largely the same.

“The last 25 years have been pure hell for the agrarian communities. Millions have drowned in debt, lost land to corporations and moneylenders, millions have seen their livelihoods collapse and migrated out of the occupation or to other villages, towns and cities—in search of jobs that are not there,” P. Sainath said via email.

Empty Promises

Due to Modi’s failure to make good on a long list of promises, some analysts believe that he will be unable to replicate the same level of support he received from Indian farmers during his 2014 electoral campaign.

The BJP’s failure to address the diverse demands of India’s enormous rural population was regarded by many experts as one of the underlying factors that led to the party’s electoral defeats in the important 2018 state assembly elections of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.

Instead, the Indian National Congress Party (INC) victory over the BJP in the states of Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh suggest that Modi’s attempts at raising farm wages have been ineffective in generating support for the BJP at the ballot box.

The fact that agriculture accounts for 44 percent, 65 percent, and 62 percent of employment in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, respectively, further indicates that the recent electoral shift is likely indicative of growing disenchantment among rural voters with regard to the BJP’s election promises to raise farm wages.

PM Modi Maintains National Popularity

However, despite mounting frustration among some the country’s rural voters, in the weeks leading up the country’s national elections, Modi still appears on course to win another five-year term, with around a 60 percent job-approval rating, according to at least one recent polling survey.

Modi led his right-wing, Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party to a sweeping victory in 2014.

During his campaign for a second term, in order to deflect attention away from growing dissatisfaction around worsening economic conditions, particularly among the country’s rural population, Modi is placing Hindu nationalism as the centerpiece of his campaign platform, appealing to voters based on religious identity politics.

Some electoral analysts have even speculated that the most recent military spat between India and Pakistan serves as a distractive measure in efforts to bolster Hindu nationalist sentiment, which would subsequently generate broader national support for the Modi administration as he heads into the elections.

Regardless of this year’s electoral outcome, one thing is for certain: As India’s agrarian crisis deepens, so too will the social unrest, which may force future elected officials to take action on the growing demands of India’s powerful rural populace.

Woman, Jew, Mother, Justice

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“The Unstoppable Ruth Bader Ginsburg, American Icon”
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“The Unstoppable Ruth Bader Ginsburg, American Icon”

A book by Antonia Felix, foreword by Mimi Leder

Any book about Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will be notable simply because she is remarkable.

Antonia Felix, a biographer, and Mimi Leder, a film and television producer, authors of “The Unstoppable Ruth Bader Ginsburg, American Icon,” have created a wonderful opportunity for readers to get to know Ginsburg through her own reflections on her life.

These authors drew upon and compiled a variety of Ginsburg’s presentations, arguments and other materials not normally published, to give the reader a unique insight into the mind of this extraordinary justice.

Born Ruth Joan Bader on March 15, 1933, the second daughter of Russian immigrants Nathan and Celia Bader, she grew up in a low-income, working-class neighborhood in Brooklyn.

Separate chapters take the reader from Ginsburg’s early years, detailing her frustrations at being discriminated against as a woman, and following her growth into the stalwart justice we see today. Throughout the book, Ginsburg refers to her mother’s guidance; she notes that “my mother told me two things constantly. One was to be a lady, and the other was to be independent.”

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Fandom Grows With ‘Notorious RBG’ Show



by Liesl Bradner

Her mother worked in a garment factory to help pay for her brother’s college education. At the same time Ginsburg studied hard in high school to win a spot at Cornell University. Her mother never saw her daughter graduate from high school with honors, or go on to be an attorney: she died from cancer the day before Ginsburg’s high school graduation. School personnel delivered Ginsburg’s honors to her at home, the next day.

During Ginsburg’s years growing up in Brooklyn, the values of Judaism were stressed as guidelines on how to live her life. She followed the dictums to work hard and achieve through study. She often tells about the Hebrew letters of the command from Deuteronomy: “Zedek, Zedek tirdof.” “Justice, justice shalt thou pursue.” In a speech on dissenting opinions she gave at Ahavath Achim Synagogue in Atlanta, she reflected on the Jewish artwork in her chambers.

She met her husband, Marty Ginsburg, on a blind date as undergrads at Cornell, when she was 17 and he was 18. “He was the first boy I ever knew who cared that I had a brain. Most guys in the ’50s didn’t,” Ginsburg is often quoted as saying.

Ginsburg reflected on college women, saying, “One of the sadnesses about the brilliant girls who attended Cornell is that they kind of suppressed how smart they were. But Marty was so confident of his own ability, so comfortable with himself, that he never regarded me as any kind of a threat.”

Ginsburg earned her bachelor’s degree in government from Cornell in 1954, finishing first in her class. She married Marty, who was then a law student at Harvard, that same year. Life was challenging for the young couple in 1954. Marty was drafted into the military and served for two years; after his discharge, the couple returned to Harvard, where Ginsburg also enrolled.

Then Marty received a diagnosis of testicular cancer and was given a dire prognosis. Ginsburg managed the household while her husband was in treatment. Ginsburg helped him with school by getting notes from his classmates, and cared for him and their baby while keeping up with her own classes.

After recovery, Marty went into tax law in New York, so Ginsburg transferred to Columbia Law School to be with her husband.

At Columbia she was tied for the top of her class, but no one would hire her. She has been candid about the ’50s not being kind to professional women.

She reflected on the three strikes she was up against: “In the fifties, the traditional law firms were just beginning to turn around on hiring Jews,” she wrote. “To be a woman, a Jew and a mother to boot—that combination was a bit too much.”

Finally, she landed a faculty position at Rutgers Law School, which was known to be more progressive than most schools; thirty years later, Rutgers Law would name its great hall in honor of the justice. She returned to Columbia Law as its first tenured female professor. She became a litigator for women’s rights, arguing a number of landmark cases in that domain that changed the lives of many.

She joined the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) while at Columbia University School of Law in 1972, and co-founded the ACLU Women’s Rights Project. The discrimination and barriers she faced as a woman, mother and a Jew propelled her drive as she handled groundbreaking cases through the 1970s, always keeping the calm, steady “lady’s composure” her mother had instilled in her. She earned the name “steel butterfly,” and, after a strong dissent on the Supreme Court, she also became known as the “notorious RBG.”

She was appointed by President Carter to the U.S. Court of Appeals in 1980. In 1993, she was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Clinton.

Ginsburg saw the opportunity to serve on the Supreme Court as a privilege and calling beyond any other. In a speech before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, in Washington, D.C., she stated her deep feelings on being a justice: “Some of you asked me during recent visits, why I want to be on the Supreme Court. It is an opportunity, beyond any other, for one of my trainings to serve society,” she said. She fervently believes that in her lifetime, she expects to see three, four and perhaps more women on the high court bench: “Women not shaped from the same mold, but different complexions.”

The book takes a look behind the scenes of the court to share with the reader the backroom formalities among the justices. Before each day in court begins and before each discussion, as they enter the Robing Room, they shake hands, all nine of them shaking hands with one another for a total of 36 handshakes.

In 2007, she spoke about the process of logging a dissenting opinion, which, she believes is critical to the ultimate result. Her experience taught her that nothing is better than an impressive dissent to improve an opinion for the court. She states that a well-reasoned dissent will lead the author of the majority to refine and clarify his or her initial position.

In a speech to a group of new U.S. citizens, she recalled the words of our Constitution’s beginning: “We the people of the United States,” as it sets out to “form a more perfect union.” Even though those early citizens were white, property-owning men, she reflected that that finally changed over the years to include people who had been held in slavery, women and Native Americans. She embraced her new fellow citizens as fitting the mold of those who came before them and helped to make America a more vibrant country.

“The Unstoppable Ruth Bader Ginsburg, American Icon” is filled with photos, drawings and quotes that give the reader a rare look inside Ginsburg’s psyche. The editors are clearly enthralled with their subject, and accomplish their goal of providing readers with a visual journey through her life, as well as a window into her inner thoughts and beliefs on the law.

To have Justice Ginsburg on the highest court of the land in the United States is a gift for those who seek justice for all.

Students Globally Protest Warming, Pleading for Their Future

WASHINGTON — Students across a warming globe pleaded for their lives, future and planet Friday, demanding tough action on climate change.

From the South Pacific to the edge of the Arctic Circle, angry students in more than 100 countries walked out of classes to protest what they see as the failures by their governments.

Well more than 150,000 students and adults who were mobilized by word of mouth and social media protested in Europe, according to police estimates. But the initial turnout in the United States did not look quite as high.

“Borders, languages and religions do not separate us,” eight-year-old Havana Chapman-Edwards, who calls herself the tiny diplomat, told hundreds of protesters at the U.S. Capitol. “Today we are telling the truth and we do not take no for an answer.”

The coordinated “school strikes” were inspired by 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who began holding solitary demonstrations outside the Swedish parliament last year.

Since then, the weekly protests have snowballed from a handful of cities to hundreds, fueled by dramatic headlines about the impact of climate change during the students’ lifetime. Unless emissions of heat-trapping gases start dropping dramatically, scientists estimate that the protesters will be in their 40s and 50s, maybe even 30s, when the world will reach dangerous levels of warming that international agreements are trying to prevent.

Thunberg, who has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, said at a rally in Stockholm that the world faces an “existential crisis, the biggest crisis humanity ever has faced and still it has been ignored for decades.”

Alexandria Villasenor, a 13-year-old co-coordinator of the New York City protest that culminated in a die-in at the steps of the American Museum of Natural History, said while she was pleased with the number of demonstrators, a big turnout isn’t the point.

“It won’t be successful until the world leaders take some action,” Villasenor said.

Dana Fisher, a University of Maryland sociology professor who tracks protest movements and environmental activists, said action could possibly be triggered by “the fact that we’re seeing children, some of whom are quite small, talking about the Earth they’re going to inherit.”

Across the globe, protesters urged politicians to act against climate change while highlighting local environmental problems:

— In India’s capital of New Delhi, schoolchildren protested inaction on climate change and demanded that authorities tackle rising air pollution levels, which often far exceed World Health Organization limits.

— In Paris, teenagers thronged streets around the domed Pantheon building. Some criticized French President Emmanuel Macron, who sees himself as the guarantor of the landmark 2015 Paris climate accord but is criticized by activists as too business-friendly and not doing enough to reduce emissions.

— In Washington, protesters spoke in front of a banner saying “We don’t want to die.”

— In San Francisco, 1,000 demonstrators descended on the local offices of Sen. Dianne Feinstein and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, wanting passage of the massive “Green New Deal” bill proposed in the U.S. Congress.

— In St. Paul, Minnesota, about 1,000 students gathered before the state Capitol, chanting “Stop denying the earth is dying.”

— In South Africa’s capital, Pretoria, one protester held a sign reading “You’ll Miss The Rains Down in Africa.” Experts say Africa, with more than 1 billion people, is expected to be hardest hit by global warming even though it contributes least to greenhouse gas emissions.

— Hundreds of students took to the streets of downtown Los Angeles chanting “What do we want? Science! When do we want it? After peer review.”

— Thousands marched in rainy Warsaw and other Polish cities to demand a ban on burning coal, a major source of carbon dioxide. Some carried banners that read “Make Love, Not CO2.”

— Protests in Madrid and more than 50 other Spanish cities drew thousands. The country is vulnerable to rising sea levels and rapid desertification .

— In Berlin, police said as many as 20,000 protesters gathered in a downtown square before marching through the German capital to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s office.

Some politicians praised the students.

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said he was inspired by the student climate strikers to call a special summit in September to deal with what he called “the climate emergency.”

“My generation has failed to respond properly to the dramatic challenge of climate change,” Guterres wrote in an opinion piece in The Guardian. “This is deeply felt by young people. No wonder they are angry.”

In 2015, world leaders agreed in Paris to a goal of keeping the Earth’s global temperature rise by the end of the century well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) compared with pre-industrial times.

Yet the world has already warmed by 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees) since then and is on track for an increase of 4 degrees Celsius, which experts say would have far-reaching consequences for life on the planet.

In Stockholm, Thunberg predicted that students won’t let up their climate protests.

“There are a crisis in front of us that we have to live with, that we will have to live with for all our lives, our children, our grandchildren and all future generations,” she said. “We are on strike because we do want a future.”

___

Jordans reported from Berlin. Rishahb R. Jain in New Delhi; Monika Scislowska in Warsaw, Poland; Nqobile Ntshangase in Pretoria, South Africa; Angela Charlton in Paris; Jari Tanner in Helsinki, Finland; Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark; Olga Rodriguez in San Francisco; Steve Karnowski in St. Paul, Minnesota; and Todd Richmond in Madison, Wisconsin; Brian Witte in Annapolis, Maryland; Amanda Myers in Los Angeles and Bernat Armangue in Madrid contributed to this report.

Midwest Flooding Closes Stretches of Major River, Interstate

OMAHA, Neb. — Flooding in the central U.S. on Friday forced some residents along waterways to evacuate, threatened to temporarily close a nuclear power plant and closed stretches of a major river and an interstate highway, foreshadowing a difficult spring flooding season.

The high water prompted by a massive late-winter storm, pushed some waterways to record levels in Nebraska, South Dakota, Iowa and Minnesota. The flooding was the worst in nearly a decade in places, though the situation was expected to improve quickly over the weekend, according to Mike Gillispie, National Weather Service hydrologist in Sioux Falls.

Flooding remained a big concern in the lower Missouri River region — which is a major source for the Mississippi River — with the weather service issuing warnings of high water along the river and its tributaries from southeastern South Dakota to St. Louis in Missouri.

Officials in eastern Nebraska said more than 2,600 people living along the Missouri, Platte and Elkhorn rivers there had been urged to evacuate, as waters breached levees in several rural spots.

“Things are moving and changing at a rapid pace,” Douglas County Commissioner Mary Ann Borgeson said Friday at a news conference. “We need you to follow instructions and evacuate when we say you need to evacuate.”

Dozens of people also had been rescued from flooding vehicles and buildings, Omaha Fire Chief Dan Olsen said at the news conference.

That included several first responders in two rescue boats that capsized on the Elkhorn River late Thursday night near Fremont. The boats capsized as they tried to reach people surrounded by floodwaters. Nebraska State Patrol helicopters were used to pull the crew members from the frigid water. Olsen said some were in the water “for an extended period” and were taken to a Fremont hospital for treatment. All are expected to fully recover.

Rising waters on the Missouri River also led Iowa officials on Friday to shut down much of Interstate 29 from the Missouri state line north about 85 miles (137 kilometers) to about Missouri Valley, Iowa. The closure was reminiscent of historic flooding along the river in 2011 that saw segments of the interstate in western Iowa washed away. Officials on Friday said the river is expected to crest well below what was seen in 2011.

The U.S. Coast Guard on Friday shut down all traffic on the Missouri River from about 50 miles (80.5 kilometers) south of Omaha, Nebraska, downstream to St. Joseph, Missouri, a stretch of about 70 miles (112.7 kilometers).

The Coast Guard and Corps also requested all river vessel operators create as little wake as possible between St. Joseph downstream to Kansas City to minimize levee damage.

The restrictions came as the river reached moderate flood stage at nearly 32 feet on Friday at Omaha, where it’s expected to crest at nearly 34 feet on Monday, according to the National Weather Service. The river is expected to crest at St. Joseph on Tuesday at just over 30 feet. Major flood stage at St. Joseph is 27 feet.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which manages the river, increased releases from Gavins Point Dam in southeastern South Dakota due to limited storage capacity behind the dam for the excess runoff. The releases could worsen flooding downstream, though the agency was helping with levee monitoring and other flood response measures, and it stopped releases from Fort Randall Dam upstream from Gavins Point.

The swollen Missouri threatened a nuclear power plant in southeastern Nebraska. The Nebraska Public Power District said it was likely the Cooper Nuclear Station about 59 miles (95.5 kilometers) south of Omaha would be shut down early Saturday.

Officials are confident that the flooding around the plant presents no danger to the public, power district spokesman Mark Becker said.

The storm also significantly increased spring flood worries in the Red River Valley in the Upper Midwest, where the neighboring cities of Fargo, North Dakota, and Moorhead, Minnesota, experienced a record flood 10 years ago.

The two cities have implemented several measures such as home buyouts and levees since then. They could be tested this year. The National Weather Service in an updated outlook Friday said “significant” snowmelt flooding is likely in the valley. The chance the river will reach major flood stage in Fargo increased from 50 percent last week to 90 percent.

The midweek storm crippled parts of Colorado and Wyoming with blizzard conditions . More than 25,000 homes and businesses were still without power Friday in Colorado, mostly in the Denver area. Xcel Energy said crews were being brought in from other states to help restore service. Most schools and government offices in the two states were reopening Friday.

The storm also spawned at least three tornadoes in Michigan and Indiana on Thursday, according to the National Weather Service. There are no immediate reports of any injuries, but homes and trees were damaged and power was knocked out to thousands. Flooding, hail and strong winds also were reported in parts of the two states. The weather service recorded a 60 mph (97 kph) wind gust at Indianapolis International Airport.

Trump Issues His First Veto After Rebuke of Border Order

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump issued the first veto of his presidency on Friday, overruling Congress to protect the emergency declaration he’d used to circumvent lawmakers to build his border wall.

Flanked by law enforcement officials as well as the parents of children killed by people in the country illegally, Trump maintained that he is not through fighting for his signature campaign promise, which stands largely unfulfilled 18 months before voters decide whether to grant him another term.

“Congress has the freedom to pass this resolution,” Trump said, “and I have the duty to veto it.”

A dozen defecting Republicans joined Senate Democrats in approving the joint resolution on Thursday, which capped a week of confrontation with the White House as both parties in Congress strained to exert their power in new ways. It is unlikely that Congress will have the two-thirds majority required to override Trump’s veto, though House Democrats will try nonetheless.

Despite the sharp rebuke from Congress, Friday’s event had the victory lap feel of a bill-signing ceremony. Trump was surrounded in the Oval Office by supporters who offered profuse thanks and frequent applause. After many had spoken, Trump dramatically signed his veto message and then held the document up for the cameras to capture.

He then distributed pens as mementos of the occasion.

Trump wants to use the emergency order to divert billions of federal dollars earmarked for defense spending toward the southern border wall. It still faces several legal challenges from Democratic state attorneys general and environmental groups who argue the emergency declaration was unconstitutional.

Those cases could block Trump from diverting extra money to barrier construction for months or longer. American Civil Liberties Union, which filed one of the cases, said the veto is meaningless, like the declaration in the first place.

“Congress has rejected the president’s declaration, and now the courts will be the ultimate arbiter of its legality. We look forward to seeing him in court and to the shellacking that he will receive at the hands of an independent judiciary,” said Executive Director Anthony Romero.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Trump’s veto a “lawless power grab,” and railed that, even after both chambers tried to stop him, Trump “has chosen to continue to defy the Constitution, the Congress and the will of the American people.”

Trump, however, insisted the situation on the southern border is “a tremendous national emergency,” adding, “our immigration system is stretched beyond the breaking point.”

Two years into the Trump era, a dozen Republicans, pushed along by Democrats, showed new willingness to take the political risk of defecting. The 12 GOP senators, including the party’s 2012 presidential nominee, Mitt Romney of Utah, joined the dissent over the emergency declaration order that would enable the president to seize for the wall billions of dollars Congress intended to be spent elsewhere.

“The Senate’s waking up a little bit to our responsibilities,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., who said the chamber had become “a little lazy” as an equal branch of government. “I think the value of these last few weeks is to remind the Senate of our constitutional place.”

Many lawmakers said the vote was not necessarily a rejection of the president or the wall, but protections against future presidents — namely a Democrat who might want to declare an emergency on climate change, gun control or any number of other issues.

Thursday’s vote was the first direct challenge to the 1976 National Emergencies Act, just as a Wednesday vote on Yemen was the first time Congress invoked the decades-old War Powers Act to try to rein in a president. That resolution seeking to end U.S. backing for the Saudi Arabian-led coalition fighting in Yemen was approved in the aftermath of the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul and is expected to be the subject of Trump’s second veto.

Despite the embarrassing defections, Trump’s grip on the party remains strong and the White House made it clear that Republicans resisting Trump could face political consequences. Ahead of the voting, Trump framed the issue as with-him-or-against-him on border security, a powerful argument with many.

But Friday, Trump said he had sympathy for Republicans who voted against him and emphasized that he never truly twisted the arms of lawmakers, because he knew there were not enough votes to override the veto.

“Look, they were doing what they have to do,” Trump said, insisting he “put no pressure” on lawmakers to vote against the resolution because he realized that the measure was likely to pass.

Still, a White House official said Trump won’t forget when senators who opposed him want him to attend fundraisers or provide other help. The official was not authorized to speak publicly on internal deliberations so spoke on condition of anonymity.

Speaking in the Oval Office, Trump painted his usual portrait of a lawless and violent border. He cited “thousands and thousands” of gang arrests and claimed many of the asylum seekers released into the U.S. were “stone-cold killers,” ignoring data that shows immigrants are less likely to commit crime. He noted, correctly, a spike in the number of people coming to the border to claim asylum.

Trump initiated the showdown months ago when he all but dared Congress not to give him the $5.7 billion he was demanding to build the U.S.-Mexico wall, by threatening a federal government shutdown.

Congress declined and the result was the longest shutdown in U.S. history. Against the advice of GOP leaders, Trump invoked the national emergency declaration last month, allowing him to try to tap about $3.6 billion for the wall by shuffling money from military projects, and that drew outrage from many lawmakers. Trump had campaigned for president promising Mexico would pay for the wall.

America’s Economy Is Rigged From Top to Bottom

The children of working stiffs learned a brutal lesson this week as federal prosecutors criminally charged rich people with buying admission to elite universities for their less-than-stellar children.

The lesson is that no matter how hard you work, no matter how smart or talented you are, a dumb, lazy rich kid is going to beat you.

It’s crucial that everyone who is not a wealthy movie star, hedge fund executive, or corporate CEO—that is, 99 percent of all Americans—sees this college admissions scandal for what it really is: a microcosm of the larger, corrupt system that works against working people, squashing their chances for advancement.

This system is the reason that rich people and corporations got massive tax breaks last year while the 99 percent got paltry ones. It is the reason the federal minimum wage and the overtime threshold are stuck at poverty levels. It is the reason labor unions have dwindled over the past four decades.

This system is the reason we cannot have nice things. Despite all that land-of-equal-opportunity crap, the rich ensure that only they can have nice things, starting with what they can buy legally and illegally for their children and rising through what they can buy legally and illegally from politicians who make the rules that withdraw money from the pockets of working people and deposit it into the bulging bank accounts of the fabulously rich.

When the mastermind of the elite university admissions scheme, William Singer, pleaded guilty this week, he exposed the launching pad available to the well-heeled to guarantee that their children will be well-heeled. Even after the wealthy pay for their heirs to attend prohibitively expensive private preparatory academies, their grades, test scores and extracurricular activities may not add up to enough to gain them entrance to Ivy League universities, from which a degree virtually assures an overpaid position on Wall Street, and with it, another generation of wealth accumulation.

Singer admitted he developed a work-around for the wealthy. The indictment revealed that, through Singer, parents handed between $15,000 and $75,000 to college entrance exam administrators to fabricate top-notch test scores for low-achieving offspring.

That lower amount—$15,000—paid by the rich to pad SAT and ACT scores is a good example. It’s a figure of trifling import to a one-percenter. It is, however, the entire year’s earnings of a parent working full-time at the federal $7.25 minimum wage. That parent may have a child who received a perfect SAT score—without cheating—who has earned straight As, even in advanced placement classes, who excelled in soccer and served as class president. But that child of a minimum-wage worker won’t get into Harvard because the rich kid took his place with falsified test scores and faked athletic achievements.

And the rich kid and his parents have the means to ensure that members of the next generation of the family have the same opportunity to cheat their way to the top and remain there. They have the money to buy just the right politicians, something that the perverse Citizens United and McCutcheon decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court facilitated. The right-wing court ruled that rich people and corporations could give unlimited money to elect politicians of their choice.

Politicians chosen by the wealthy won’t support labor unions, minimum wage increases or higher overtime thresholds. They won’t cultivate opportunity for the 99 percent. They won’t require corporations to treat workers as humans with dignity.

Politicians chosen by the rich have passed legislation in state after state intended to bankrupt labor unions, the very organizations that were so crucial to creating the middle class in America. Under the legislation, labor unions are forbidden to collect small fees from people who choose not to join. This weakens unions because they are required by federal regulations to provide services for all those who labor in a unionized workplace, whether they join the union or not. So what these politicians are doing is requiring unions to represent nonmembers for free. It has devastated labor organizations in some places, including Wisconsin. The result is lower wages and worse benefits for all workers because higher union-bargained pay pulls up all incomes in a region.

The logic here is simple: less for workers, more for fat cats.

And, of course, politicians chosen by rich people will not raise the minimum wage. The federal minimum has remained at a painfully low $7.25 for a decade. Now, it’s a poverty wage. It means a person who works full-time cannot support himself, and certainly can’t provide for a family. In Washington, D.C., and other expensive cities, some full-time minimum-wage workers are homeless. The substandard minimum wage pulls down all wages.

Similarly, politicians chosen by the rich will not significantly increase the $23,660 overtime threshold under which all workers must be paid time-and-a-half for hours beyond 40 in a week. Former Labor Secretary Tom Perez, now chair of the Democratic National Committee, proposed in 2016 doubling the threshold to $47,476, which would have enabled an additional 4 million workers to qualify for overtime pay.

Often these are workers given fancy titles like assistant night manager and paid $24,000 a year so that their fast-food restaurant bosses can require them to work 50, 60, even 70 hours a week for no extra pay at all.

For these families, the overtime pay would be extremely meaningful—in ways that are incomprehensible to families that can dish out $15,000 to $75,000 to cheat on the SAT.

Fast-food corporations, including CKE, owner of Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s, opposed the proposed overtime threshold increase. The CEO of CKE at the time, Andrew F. Puzder, worth $45 million, wrote an essay condemning the increase and explaining how millions of low-paid workers with fancy titles should love to work extra time without extra pay because it gave all of them the opportunity to work their way to the top like one guy at CKE did one time.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a lobby group for rich corporations, filed suit against the increase and scuttled it. So now it hasn’t increased in 15 years.

A new labor secretary last week offered a much stingier increase. Alexander Acosta proposed $35,308 as the threshold. Only about 1 million additional workers would benefit if the number were that low. And instead of automatic increases every three years, the Labor Department would consider whether to raise it only every four years, no guarantees.

This is not good policy for working people. It is, however, great policy for rich people, who, as a result, keep more of the profits produced by the labor of underpaid people.

It means continuing the cycle of 1 percent staying rich and 99 percent denied opportunity. And that means the wealthy can continue to bribe university officials to admit their unqualified scion.

There’s no reason to take heart from the fact that prosecutors stymied one specific college admission scam. It is illegal to pay an SAT proctor to alter test scores. It is not illegal, though, to buy a science lab for Harvard or a humanities building for Yale with the hope that the family name prominently engraved on the edifice will sway admission officers when they see the same moniker on an application.

It’s no shock college admissions are rigged for the rich. The whole economic system is rigged by the rich. Until working people change that, their opportunities and those of their children will continue to diminish.

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

North Korea Warns That Bolton and Pompeo Are Derailing Nuclear Talks

Two weeks after U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un cut short their second summit with no agreement or clear path forward, a top North Korean official said on Friday the “gangster-like” behavior of Trump’s hawkish top officials helped derail the denuclearization negotiations.

At a gathering of diplomats and foreign media in Pyongyang, North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui expressed disappointment that the summit ended without a deal and threatened to suspend talks. According to The Associated Press:

Choe, who attended the Feb. 27-28 talks in Hanoi, said Kim was puzzled by what she called the “eccentric” negotiation position of the U.S. She suggested that while Trump was more willing to talk, an atmosphere of hostility and mistrust was created by the uncompromising demands of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton. She said statements by senior Trump advisers since the summit have further worsened the climate.

“On our way back to the homeland, our chairman of the state affairs commission said, ‘For what reason do we have to make this train trip again?'” Choe told reporters. “I want to make it clear that the gangster-like stand of the U.S. will eventually put the situation in danger.”

President Moon: Call Chairman Kim. President Trump: Fire Bolton and Pompeo if you have to. Let’s get this process back on track. https://t.co/VP7SfzqBTs

— Tim Shorrock (@TimothyS) March 15, 2019

While Pompeo said Friday morning that the administration wishes to continue talks with North Korea, Choe’s comments fueled mounting concerns that Trump and Kim may not return to the negotiating table anytime soon and followed speculation immediately after the summit that Bolton played a key role in the breakdown.

We cannot claim that we were not warned if things turn south. https://t.co/MdXwkyMyBA

— Vipin Narang (@NarangVipin) March 15, 2019

After the breakdown, critics called the meeting—which was the second time Trump and Kim met face-to-face—a “missed opportunity” to end the decades-long Korean war and pave a path for peace on the peninsula. However, Trump and Kim were also praised for building trust and pursuing diplomacy rather than trading insults and threats, as they had done previously.

Trump claimed the talks ended in Hanoi because Kim wanted devastating economic sanctions “lifted in their entirety, but we couldn’t do that.” Earlier this month, Bolton said that if North Korea doesn’t shutter its nuclear program and everything associated with it, “they’re not going to get relief from the crushing economic sanctions that have been imposed on them and we’ll look at ramping those sanctions in fact.”

Choe claimed Friday that despite the way things ended in Hanoi, personal relations remain good between Trump and Kim. She also said the North Korean leader will soon “clarify his position” on whether to continue talks or restart missile launches and nuclear tests. In terms of sanctions, she pushed back against Trump’s explanation.

“I’m not sure why the U.S. came out with this different description,” Choe said. “We never asked for the removal of sanctions in their entirety.”

“This time we understood very clearly that the United States has a very different calculation to ours,” she added. “What is clear is that the U.S. has thrown away a golden opportunity this time.”

Duyeon Kim, a senior fellow at the Center for New American Security and columnist for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, responded to Choe’s remarks in a series of tweets. As Kim put it, “Choe is like the Bolton of NK during summitry; she talks tough time to time.” However, she concluded, there’s still hope for diplomacy, and key figures from both countries should focus on that.