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Showing posts with label LINE 3. Show all posts
Showing posts with label LINE 3. Show all posts
Sunday, January 30, 2022
Biden: Stop letting the fossil fuel industry off the hook
Wednesday, November 3, 2021
RSN: FOCUS | Bill McKibben: "Manchin's Latest Hissy Fit" Threatens to Curb Biden Agenda at UN Climate Summit
02 November 21
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Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show in Glasgow at the United Nations climate summit. At the opening ceremony on Monday, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres urged world leaders to do more to address the climate emergency.
SECRETARY-GENERAL ANTÓNIO GUTERRES: The six years since the Paris Climate Agreement have been the six hottest years on record. Our addiction to fossil fuels is pushing humanity to the brink. We face a stark choice: Either we stop it, or it stops us. And it’s time to say, “Enough.” Enough of brutalizing biodiversity. Enough of killing ourselves with carbon. Enough of treating nature like a toilet. Enough of burning and drilling and mining our way deeper. We are digging our own graves.
AMY GOODMAN: Over 120 world leaders are attending a two-day World Leaders Summit as part of the climate summit. This is Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley.
PRIME MINISTER MIA MOTTLEY: Failure to provide the critical finance and that of loss and damage is measured, my friends, in lives and livelihoods in our communities. This is immoral, and it is unjust. If Glasgow is to deliver on the promises of Paris, it must close these three gaps. So I ask to you: What must we say to our people living on the frontline in the Caribbean, in Africa, in Latin America, in the Pacific, when both ambition and, regrettably, some of the needed faces at Glasgow are not present? What excuse should we give for the failure? In the words of that Caribbean icon Eddy Grant, “will they mourn us on the frontline?” When will we, as world leaders across the world, address the pressing issues that are truly causing our people angst and worry, whether it is climate or whether it is vaccines?
AMY GOODMAN: A number of countries have made new pledges to address the climate crisis. India has vowed to reduce its carbon emissions to net zero by 2070. Over a hundred leaders have agreed to end deforestation by 2030. And the United States is announcing a new plan today to reduce methane emissions. On Monday, President Biden addressed the U.N. climate summit.
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Climate change is already ravaging the world. We’ve heard from many speakers. It’s not hypothetical. It’s not a hypothetical threat. It’s destroying people’s lives and livelihoods, and doing it every single day. It’s costing our nations trillions of dollars. Record heat and drought are fueling more widespread and more intense wildfires in some places and crop failures in others. Record flooding and what used to be a once-in-a-century storms are now happening every few years. In the past few months, the United States has experienced all of this, and every region in the world can tell similar stories. And in an age where this pandemic has made so painfully clear that no nation can wall itself off from borderless threats, we know that none of us can escape the worse that’s yet to come if we fail to seize this moment.
AMY GOODMAN: On Monday, yes, President Biden addressed the U.N. climate summit. He later apologized for the United States pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement when President Trump was in office.
While Biden repeatedly vowed to address the climate crisis, his climate agenda was dealt a major setback back in Washington, D.C., when Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia criticized the slimmed-down $1.75 trillion Build Back Plan to address the climate crisis and to expand the nation’s social safety net. The plan will only pass the Senate if Manchin and Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema come around to support it. It was interesting Senator Manchin used Biden’s moment in Glasgow to hold his own news conference in Washington, D.C., to say, well, he’s weighing whether to support the Build Back Better Act.
To talk more about the U.N. climate summit and Biden’s climate agenda, we’re joined by two guests in Glasgow. Tom Goldtooth is executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, member of the Diné and Dakota Nations. He lives in Minnesota. Bill McKibben is an author, educator, environmentalist, co-founder of 350.org, his latest book, Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? He writes a weekly climate newsletter for The New Yorker.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! We’re going to begin with Bill McKibben. Both our guests are in Glasgow. Bill, if you can respond to President Biden yesterday, the speech, both what’s happening in Glasgow with the U.N. — with the world leaders, over 120 gathered — this is far different than any other time — and what’s happening back in Washington, D.C., with Senator Manchin trying to steal the headlines?
BILL McKIBBEN: Sure, Amy and Juan. What a pleasure to be with you. And it’s strange not to have you here, I’ve got to say.
Yesterday, the air went out of this conference, I think, pretty much right at the start. The hope was that Joe Biden was going to arrive with some legislative victories that would at least point us in the right direction. He doesn’t. He arrives having approved, more or less, Line 3 and with nothing to show on the other side so far.
You know, the Build Back Plan plan had already been stripped of its most important elements, the enforcement provisions under this clean energy pricing plan, and now it’s not even clear it’s going to pass. The half-trillion dollars in subsidies for renewable energy are being held up by Joe Manchin’s latest hissy fit. Mark my words: Every single delegate from every nation heard Manchin’s quote yesterday about how he wasn’t at all sure he was going to vote for this.
It makes it extremely difficult to proceed when the world’s carbon champion — the country that’s poured more carbon into the atmosphere by far than any other — won’t provide leadership. Yeah, it’s better than Trump pulling out, but I think that, you know, basically, it’s a good thing that people like Tom Goldtooth are here, because this summit is not going to solve our problem. We’re going to be back in the streets in a serious way.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Bill, I wanted to ask you, first of all, about the Manchin new roadblock once again, because Manchin is really, basically, a stand-in or a puppet for the fossil fuel industry. What does it tell us about the ability of these corporate powers to stymie the majority or democratic action just by being able to capture a few key senators? What does that tell us about the future of action in a — by democratic vote in Congress? And also, what do you make of Biden, on the one hand, making this strong statement in Glasgow, but just a couple of days earlier at the G20 summit, he was urging the industrialized nations to increase oil and gas production temporarily?
BILL McKIBBEN: So, Manchin is the perfect example of how Big Oil works. He’s taken more money than any other senator from the fossil fuel industry. And, you know, there was that sting videotape released a couple of weeks ago where Exxon’s chief lobbyist reported talking to him every week and calling him their “kingmaker.” There was a report yesterday that Manchin spent part of September huddled with all the leading coal barons at a golf resort someplace, where they played a Civil War-themed golf tournament in between speeches. That sounds like a good deal of fun, I’ve got to say.
AMY GOODMAN: Some have said, Bill, that Senator Manchin has to decide whether he wants to be a senator or a lobbyist or maybe a Republican.
BILL McKIBBEN: Clearly, our system allows you to do both at the same time, Amy, and that’s the problem. Look, credit to Biden for getting 48 senators on board with a serious, progressive commitment around climate and other things. And that’s because we’ve built movements, and that’s because Bernie showed that there was a real appetite for this. But 48 isn’t quite enough. And so, I think one way to say it is, movements have gotten big enough and strong enough to force the question, to call the question in Congress, but not quite big enough to carry the question.
That’s why I think, coming out of this COP, those of us from all sorts of places, including Third Act, this new group we’re doing with people over the age of 60, are going to be heavily focused on banks and the finance system. That’s where groups like Indigenous Environmental Network were working 15 years ago, trying to interrupt bank financing for — and we’re going to have to go back there, because there really is a sense here that the political system and the U.N. system are beginning to reach limits. They’re not moving fast enough. They’re not coming close to keeping up with the pace of the devastation.
And so, Greta pretty much captured it: There’s a lot of “blah blah blah.” There is. And some of it’s very noble and very powerful, and the people who are saying it are magnificent. But it’s not adding up to enough. And there’s a sense, as with Manchin, that we spend a lot of time talking to the cashier at the front of the store, when our problem’s with the guy in the back room counting the money. So, I know I’m coming out of Glasgow determined to be taking on the Chases and BlackRocks and whatever of the world just as hard as we can.
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Wednesday, October 13, 2021
RSN: FOCUS | People vs. Fossil Fuels: Winona LaDuke and Mass Protests Call on Biden to Stop Line 3 Pipeline
12 October 21
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In response to the completion of the contested Line 3 pipeline, which is now reportedly operational, thousands of Indigenous leaders and climate justice advocates are kicking off the “People vs. Fossil Fuels’’ mobilization, an Indigenous-led five-day action of civil disobedience at the White House to demand President Biden declare a climate emergency, divest from fossil fuels and launch a “just renewable energy revolution.” “This pipeline doesn’t respect treaty rights,” says Winona LaDuke, longtime Indigenous activist and founder of Honor the Earth, a platform to raise awareness of and money for Indigenous struggles for environmental justice. “They’re just trying to continue their egregious behavior. It’s so tragic that, on the one hand, the Biden administration is like, ’We’re going to have Indigenous Peoples’ Day, but we’re still going to smash you in northern Minnesota and smash the rest of the country.’” LaDuke faces criminal charges linked to her protest of pipelines in three different counties.
The “People vs. Fossil Fuels” mobilization, led by the Indigenous Environmental Network, 350.org, Sunrise Movement, the Center for Biological Diversity and others, comes as Canadian pipeline company Enbridge has completed the construction of its contested Line 3 crude oil pipeline in northern Minnesota. The pipeline is reportedly now operational, violating the treaty rights of local Indigenous communities. Line 3 is set to carry over half a million barrels of tar sands oil every day from Alberta, Canada, through Minnesota to the tip of Lake Superior in Wisconsin, threatening sacred wild rice watersheds in Minnesota, local waters and lands, and doubling Minnesota’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Indigenous leaders and land and water defenders, who have been resisting Line 3 for years, often putting their own bodies on the line, vowed to continue the fight against the pipeline. Last week, a small group of water protectors confronted Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar at a fundraising event, where advocates say plates cost $1,000 a person, demanding her to take action against Line 3.
WATER PROTECTOR: We’re asking you to call on President Biden to stop Line 3. It has a higher carbon footprint than the entire state of Minnesota. And this climate crisis — I mean, you saw Hurricane Ida. You saw how many people died. And we just really need you to call on him and ask him to stop it.
AIDE: Excuse us.
SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR: Thank you. Yes, I know about the concern.
WATER PROTECTOR: Because you have so much power. You have so much power.
SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR: I’ve brought those concerns to him. Thank you.
WATER PROTECTOR: And as a young person, the climate crisis is a thing that really concerns me, and stopping Line 3. We can’t have climate justice without you stopping Line 3 and asking President Biden.
SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR: Thank you.
WATER PROTECTOR: I know that you don’t have a vote, and I know that you can’t vote in the Senate to stop Line 3. But President Biden has that power. And you have the power.
AMY GOODMAN: “You have the power.” More than 900 water protectors have been arrested over their resistance to Line 3, with some protesters facing felony charges as they were brutalized by police. Some water protectors also reported being denied medical care and being placed in solitary confinement after their arrests. Well, The Guardian newspaper revealed last week that Enbridge paid Minnesota police $2.4 million in reimbursements, all costs tied to the arrests and surveillance of hundreds of water protectors, including officer training, wages, overtime, meals, hotels and equipment for the local police, paid for by an international corporation.
For more, we’re joined in Ponsford, Minnesota, by Winona LaDuke, longtime Indigenous activist, who’s been organizing for years to block Enbridge Line 3. She lives and works on the White Earth Reservation in northern Minnesota, is executive director of Honor the Earth. Her piece for the Minneapolis Star Tribune is headlined “Line 3 opponents can savor this defeat.” Her latest book, To Be a Water Protector.
Winona, welcome back to Democracy Now! So, if you can talk about these latest revelations of this Canadian company paying the local police to arrest you all, and also what it means that Enbridge says Line 3 is operational?
WINONA LADUKE: [inaudible] Enbridge’s Line 3 is operational will say that they’ve been hurrying really fast because the federal court has yet to rule on whether Enbridge has any ability to move forward. There’s no federal environmental impact statement on this project, which is why we want Joe Biden to stop it. I mean, they stole 5 billion gallons of water, fracked 28 rivers out, and then they have this broken aquifer losing 100,000 gallons a day of water. They have no idea how to fix this stuff, since January. You know, it’s really horrible up here. So, you know, Enbridge has been trying to rush to get this online before the court will rule against them, because, generally, courts have not ruled in favor of pipelines. That’s the status that we have seen, you know, in the federal court ruling on the DAPL, where the federal court ordered them to close down. This is the same company. Enbridge was 28% of DAPL. And when the federal court ordered them to close down the pipe, they said no. When the state of Michigan ordered them to close down a pipe this last May, they said no. So they’re just trying to continue their egregious behavior.
It’s so tragic that, you know, on one hand, the Biden administration is like, “We are going to have Indigenous Peoples’ Day, but we’re still going to smash you in northern Minnesota and smash the rest of the country.” Same thing, you know, Klobuchar and Smith, the two Minnesota senators, shameful their lack of courage, not only for Indigenous people but for the planet, you know?
So Enbridge is trying to get that oil out. In the meantime, it’s a disaster up here. I’m still up here monitoring the line and monitoring what’s going on, because it’s crazy. And just to say, they don’t have Indigenous Peoples’ Day apparently in Becker County, because have a court date today. So, you know, no break for Indigenous people. You could still go to court. You know, it’s just insane up here.
AMY GOODMAN: So, how does your activism change now that it’s supposedly operational, the pipeline? And what exactly does it mean? For people who aren’t familiar with Line 3, talk about its course, from Canada through the United States, and why you’re so concerned about this particular pipeline.
WINONA LADUKE: OK. Well, first of all, the pipeline is 915,000 barrels a day of oil. That’s a lot of oil that’s going to move through it, if they get their way. And that oil, like, this is the last tar sands pipeline. Now, how we know this is the last tar sands pipeline is that our alma mater — remember, Amy, when we were at Harvard trying to get them to divest in South Africa? No, but they just are divesting in fossil fuels. Everybody is fleeing the tar sands. And it’s an industry that’s at its end. Like, Canada needs to quit trying to breathe life into the tar sands and breathe life into boarding schools and residential schools. They need to just stop being the criminals that they are.
You know, so, forcing them — they’re four years behind schedule, if they get to oil. And in that four years behind schedule, the industry is falling apart. There’s no new investment in tar sands infrastructure. And it’s the dirtiest oil in the world. Then add to that the fact that the company can’t even get insurance for its pipeline. Like, I’m just trying to understand what kind of fiscal responsibility exists in the state of Minnesota, that Enbridge divulged a couple of weeks ago that they can’t get insurance for their pipeline. And so, you have an accident, it’s going to be just like Bhopal and Union Carbide. These guys are going to pack up and go back to Canada. You know, I mean, it is a really horrific situation. And, you know, the impact of it is so wrong. You know, I mean, it’s not only the equivalent of 50 new coal-fired power plants, but right now our rivers are dry. They took 5 billion gallons of water from the north. Enbridge and the Walz administration are climate criminals.
And the Biden administration needs to stand up. You know, on one hand, I’m looking at Joe Biden, and I’m so grateful. Like, Bears Ears, that was the right thing to do, you know, to get back and to be the people that are supporting Indigenous people and Land Back. Let’s go, Joe. Let’s go. Let’s go, Joe. You know, 80 million acres of national parks stolen from Indian people, let’s start returning those, too, along with creating new national parks. We could just start returning land that was stolen. That would be a great step.
And then, actually, when you have Indigenous people in your administration, Joe, like Deb Haaland or maybe Jaime Pinkham at the Army Corps of Engineers, let them do their job, instead of having politics, oily politics, intervene. You know, I know that Deb Haaland does not support this pipeline. No sane person supports this pipeline. Only people who want to take oil money from Canadian multinationals support this pipeline. And I know that Jaime Pinkham, assistant in the Army Corps of Engineers, came up here, came up and visited, and saw what was going on and the disaster.
Our tribes have sued, you know, trying to stop this, sued in federal court. That federal court hearing is yet. And our tribes also have a tribal court hearing, where the federal courts have ordered Enbridge to come to our court, because we say that they’re climate criminals and they’re destroying the rights of wild rice. Actually, the state DNR has been ordered into tribal court.
You know, so, Joe, if you appoint Indian people, don’t just make them pretty Indian people that sit in your administration. Let them do their job. Indigenous thinking is what we need in the colonial administration. That’s when change happens.
AMY GOODMAN: As we wrap up, Winona, in August, you met with the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights defenders to share the police violence suffered by water protectors protesting the Line 3 construction site. And now we are learning just how much money the Canadian corporation gave to the local police to do the arrests, to do the training, etc. What happened with the U.N. rapporteur?
WINONA LADUKE: The U.N. rapporteur has asked the United States a bunch of questions and is expecting a response on what exactly the United States is planning to do to protect the human rights of Indigenous peoples, because this pipeline does not respect not only treaty rights, but, you know, when you get 900 people arrested and they’re brutalized with all kinds of — you know, I mean, it is torture. Some of what was done to these people is classified as it’s excessive force. So, the United Nations has called to task the United States on the Enbridge pipeline. And so, on Indigenous Peoples’ Day, that’s part of what we are saying, too, is it’s a time to account.
And I just want to say that this isn’t just like our problem, because the Enbridge model — like, first of all, Canadian multinationals kill people in Third World countries. That’s what they do. You know, that is known. Seventy-five percent of the world’s mining corporations are Canadian, and all through Latin America there’s human rights violations. This is no different. This is a Canadian multinational and Indigenous people. And two years ago, we told Attorney General from Minnesota Keith Ellison that this was going to be a problem. You know, we have had no action. And instead what we have is our rights continue to be violated. And, you know, I’ve got charges in three counties, more probably coming soon. I mean, this is like —
AMY GOODMAN: What do you face?
WINONA LADUKE: And this is a national problem, because the Minnesota model is being considered nationally, that corporations should finance your police. And that is — you know, in any way you look at it, that’s definitely a violation of the public trust, to have corporations financed by the police. And the Minnesota —
AMY GOODMAN: What charges do you face, Winona?
WINONA LADUKE: I’ve got trespassing, obstruction. I think I’ve got some public safety, you know, causing public safety problems because cops could have been doing something else instead of monitoring people on the pipeline. A lot of trespassing charges — Aitkin, Hubbard, Wadena County. I’ve got charges in three counties so far.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, best of luck to you today in court, Winona LaDuke, longtime indigenous activist, executive director of Honor the Earth, speaking to us from northern Minnesota.
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Thursday, September 30, 2021
RSN: Michael Moore | You're Scared: A Million Americans Could Be Dead by Christmas.
30 September 21
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I love you. I won’t give up on you. I believe you meant well. But now you have to stop, surrender to the good that is still inside you. It’s not too late. Let me help. I have heard you. I have listened to your arguments. I ask now that you listen to my answers. Listen! You know me — I never do what I’m told. I know how much those in power lie to us. And I’ve lived my life rebelling against those lies.
My friends, I beseech you — let me answer your legitimate concerns about this vicious virus, this plague which has descended upon us, and these vaccines which have saved millions. I hear you. Hear me. Hear the truth. These 7 things I hear all the time:
1. “I don’t trust this vaccine. Its development was rushed and it didn’t go through the proper trials and testing. I’m not against medicine. I trust aspirin because it’s been around for over a hundred years. This vaccine hasn’t even existed for a year.”
THE TRUTH: Work on this vaccine began back in 2003 during the SARS virus outbreak. Scientists knew even before, in the 1980s, that coronaviruses were going to happen more often. So they got to work on inventing what would become a vaccine known as mRNA. This vaccine has been in development for at least 18 years! THIS IS NOT A NEW THING. When Covid-19 appeared in December of 2019, the scientists were ready and standing by with the vaccine elements. They knew something like this was coming. All they needed was the genetic structure of this particular virus. A brave Chinese doctor constructed its sequencing in his lab and, without the permission of his government, he then shared it with the world. It was all our coronavirus scientists needed to begin the trials of the vaccine they’d been working on for EIGHTEEN YEARS. Those trials began immediately and ran for nearly all of 2020. Because of the ways modern medicine and science have improved in this new century (did you know in the Covid vaccine you’re getting, there is NO speck of the Covid virus in it!) we were already equipped to bring Covid-19 to a halt. Except for one thing science couldn’t predict…
2. “I, and millions like me, do NOT trust the government.”
THE TRUTH: Ugh. On this one, you are right. You should NEVER trust this government, that government, any government. One of my favorite quotes from the legendary investigative reporter I. F. Stone is, “All governments are run by liars and nothing they say should be believed.” If you are Native American, you don’t need me or anyone else to tell you that. If you are African American — my God, again, the list of lies and deception and cruelty is endless. White people need to be taught in school about the Tuskegee experiments, about James Sims, the lauded “father of modern gynecology,” who performed brutal experimental surgeries without anesthesia on enslaved African women in the 1800s.
And on and on. White people, do not think less of any Black person (or any person of color) who is skeptical of this vaccine. They have a 400-year history of knowing that the last person they should automatically trust is Whitey. Dr. Whitey. Scientist Whitey. Whitey in a Lab Coat. Officer Whitey. CEO Whitey. Nightly News Anchor Whitey. President Whitey. In his Whitey House.
It is painful now to see how our racist legacy has manifested itself during this pandemic: Covid-19 has killed 102,000 Black Americans — 20% more than the rate at which white people die. The white supremacists must be loving this. I join with my fellow citizens who are Black in fighting this virus that seeks to kill them first.
3. “I don’t trust the pharmaceutical companies nor do I trust the entire for-profit health care industry. I’m not taking something they tell me to take.”
THE TRUTH: I trust them less than you do. I made a film about these bastards (“Sicko”). Greed runs in their veins. Because our political and corporate leaders have constructed a society that has enabled two-thirds of us to live an unhealthy life, their brethren, the devils in the health care industry, have made trillions from our illness, our disabilities, our infirmities. They need us sick so that we spend money on ways to stay alive. They DON’T want us cured because where’s the profit in that?
Yet in the case of Covid, they really don’t want so, so many of us so dead. Dead men and women don’t need a plethora of costly prescriptions. Dead men and women don’t shop at Walmart and they don’t order from Amazon. Other than the overpriced casket, there is not much profit that comes from death. In the case of the pandemic, they need the citizenry alive to do the backbreaking work for slave wages — and then spend every dime of those wages so all that loot makes it back into the pockets of the one-percent. There are now nearly 700,000 dead Americans who aren’t spending anything! Corporate America needs this disease to go away. Yes, the stock market has set records, and yes, the real estate market is bananas. But the rich have learned this is only good in the short term. They need Covid to stop killing us so they can be the ones to get back to killing us — but killing us their way — slowly — very, very, very slowly. Like 70 years slowly. Squeeze every last bit of work out of us before the arthritis sets in and our only contribution to making them wealthier is our weekly purchases of adult diapers and canned pineapple.
The way to beat the rich and stop their scam is not for us to refuse the shot and die before our time. We need to live long enough so that we can imagine their proverbial heads on the spikes that line the wall at the city’s limits. Take the shot. Both of them. Live to see the day.
4. “Trump’s inaction caused the spread of this disease — and then he tried to rush these vaccines through in order to help himself win the election. This is the ‘Trump Vaccine’ — I don’t want it in MY body!”
THE TRUTH: The top ten states with the highest rates of Covid death are all the ultra-red Trump states. That’s not how you win elections — by killing off your own voters. But he did it. Actually, the number of votes he barely lost Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin by - together, 44,000 - he helped kill more than that in those three states combined (52,000 deaths). No, the “Trump Vaccine“ was never his. Just like he didn’t “own the tallest building in NYC after 9/11,” nor was he ever “a billionaire.“ Get this vaccine, invented in part by a brilliant, persistent woman, Katalin Kariko, a scientist who was ignored for 20 years — she created this for us. Not Trump.
5. “So many people have died from the vaccine!”
TRUTH: No, they haven’t. To spread this lie is to be an accessory to murder. That’s not you. Right?
6. “My religion won’t let me take the vaccine.”
THE TRUTH: Yes it will. God — all gods — not only approve of the Covid vaccine, He is the one who made it! Remember your lessons: GOD CREATED EVERYTHING! That’s why it says “Creator” on his CV. Take God’s gift into your upper arm and praise Jesus. Because, if you walk around unvaccinated, you will kill people. And that carries with it an eternal sentence of hellfire and damnation. C’mon! Stop hiding behind “religion.” NOT A SINGLE RELIGION, NOT A SINGLE DENOMINATION IN THE WORLD SAYS THIS VACCINE IS A SIN! Get your shots so we can party in heaven on earth!
7. “I have a medical/health condition that my doctor says I shouldn’t get the vaccine.”
THE TRUTH: No, you don’t. We now know there is no medical condition that prevents you from getting the vaccine. Stop with the “I’ve got a note from my doctor” bullshit. Get the damn vaccine — or you risk the chance of REALLY needing a doctor. Calm down. Relax. We love you. I’ll take you to Walgreens myself and hold your hand for those three seconds. Let’s live. Let’s not kill. Let’s be part of a world we are now going to fix and save.
Together.
If everyone is vaccinated, this virus is toast. If we don’t get everyone vaccinated, this much I’ve learned:
We are only one or two variants away from the monster Covid variant. What is the “monster variant?” It’s the one that will have gotten so strong because the early variants were not stopped from everyone being vaccinated. Soon it will grow resistant to all vaccines until it is so strong it will simply exist everywhere, completely airborne, leaping from one human to the next unchecked, tens of millions of humans wiped off the face of the Earth. All because just enough of us, the righteous few, believed in their own anger and despair and were too afraid to protect themselves and each other.
A protester holds an anti-vaccination sign as supporters of President Trump rallied to reopen California in May. (photo: David McNew/Getty)
YouTube had a policy against Covid-19 vaccine misinformation, but the new ban includes content that falsely claims vaccines for other diseases are dangerous or ineffective.
The new policy was crafted as the company began to see false claims about Covid-19 vaccines “spill over into misinformation about vaccines in general,” according to a company blog post.
“We’re now at a point where it’s more important than ever to expand the work we started with COVID-19 to other vaccines,” the company wrote.
YouTube already had a policy against Covid vaccine misinformation, but the new ban against broader vaccine misinformation includes content that falsely claims approved vaccines are dangerous or ineffective, including the false belief that vaccines cause autism or cancer.
YouTube’s move follows a similar ban in February from Facebook. Facebook’s uneven enforcement against prominent anti-vaccine activists and its failure to rein in vaccine misinformation since then highlights the challenges ahead for YouTube as it moves to enforce rules against the anti-vaccine community, known for its adeptness at circumventing content moderation.
Anti-vaccine creators have flourished on YouTube for over a decade, moving to the Google-owned platform after traditional media stopped promoting their messaging. Anti-vaccine content was so ubiquitous that vaccine advocacy organizations were forced off the platform years ago.
“It has been incredibly frustrating to try and share good, science-based information about vaccines on YouTube, only to have the algorithms then suggest anti-vaccine content to our viewers,” said Erica DeWald, communications director of Vaccinate Your Family, the nation’s largest nonprofit group dedicated to advocating for vaccines. “We’re hopeful this is a positive step toward ensuring people have access to real information about vaccines and will signal other social media companies to follow suit.”
Since early 2020, longtime anti-vaccine activists have been telegraphing their plans to weaponize fears about Covid and uncertainty about treatments and vaccines as a way to grow their own movement.
“Anti-vaccine activists have been very vocal about the fact that they saw Covid as an opportunity to undermine confidence in the childhood vaccine schedule,” said Renée DiResta, who leads research on anti-vaccine disinformation at the Stanford Internet Observatory. “Seeing YouTube take this action is reflective of the fact that it seems to be aware that that tactic and dynamic was beginning to take shape.”
“Now we’re on a precipice,” she said, noting that the approval for Covid vaccines for younger children — expected in the next few weeks — would unleash a fresh round of anti-vaccine videos and false claims about harms to children. “It is going to be an absolute nightmare. The plan from day one has always been to use those stories to undermine confidence in vaccines more generally.”
A YouTube spokesperson confirmed the new policy included the termination of the accounts of anti-vaccine influencers. Some smaller anti-vaccine channels were still live as of Wednesday morning.
Cynthia Ginyard holds a clipboard full of voter registration cards on her canvassing trail. Ginyard has been the chair of the Fort Bend county Democratic party since 2016. (photo: Reggie Mathalone/Guardian UK)
The political and demographic future of America will look like what Fort Bend county looks like now, demographers believe – but Republicans could halt that
It’s a scene that was hard to imagine when Aziz, a 52-year-old cook, moved to Houston more than two decades ago. Back then, he remembers, Highway 6 was just a single lane in each direction, and there was so little development that it seemed like a jungle. Now, the adjoining strip mall includes an Afghan restaurant, a Pakistani dessert spot where the line can stretch out the door. A corner of the parking lot is closed off for food trucks like Syed’s, serving kabobs, burgers, kati rolls and chicken wings.
The transformation is why the once-quiet suburban Fort Bend county, which includes Sugar Land, has become one of the most important places in America.
The political and demographic future of America will look like what Fort Bend county looks like now, demographers believe. The county is extremely diverse – about 32% of people are white, 25% are Hispanic or Latino, 21% are Asian and 21% are Black. And its population exploded over the last decade, growing by 40% to about 823,000 people. But this fall, Republicans could blunt the remarkable transformation happening in Fort Bend county, across Texas, and places around the US seeing similar changes.
After winning key state legislative races last year, Republicans have complete control in far more places than Democrats do over perhaps the most powerful weapon in American politics – the ability to redraw electoral districts. It’s an all-powerful scalpel that will allow Republicans to shore up their advantage simply by regrouping voters into certain districts, entrenching the voting power of white voters amid a quickly diversifying electorate. The technique of distorting district lines for partisan advantage is called gerrymandering.
In Fort Bend county, gerrymandering could be particularly brutal. Donald Trump won the 22nd congressional district, which includes Fort Bend county, by about one percentage point in 2020. Just by reconfiguring the lines, cutting out the most Democratic areas, Republicans could transform it into a district that Trump would have won by more than 20 points, said Dave Wasserman, a senior editor at the Cook Political Report, who closely studies redistricting.
“I think that’s likely. That’s pretty easy to do,” he said. “The march of Democrats in Fort Bend county is inexorable. Republicans know that to hold on to that seat, they’re going to have to make some more drastic changes this time.”
On Thursday, Texas Republicans unveiled a plan that essentially does just that. The draft map shifts the boundaries of the 22nd congressional district to annex Wharton and Matagorda counties, both of which overwhelmingly favored Trump in 2020. It carves out portions of Fort Bend and attaches them to already Democratic-leaning districts anchored in Houston. If the 2020 election were run under the new proposed boundaries, Trump would have carried the district by 16 points, according to Planscore, a tool that measures the partisan fairness of districts. Democrats would have just an 11% chance of carrying the district.
Each decade, Republicans have tweaked the boundaries of the 22nd congressional district, which includes much of Fort Bend, to keep it a Republican seat, he added. The 22nd congressional district was the fastest-growing in the country over the last decade, Wasserman said, and Republicans who redraw it will have to shed about 200,000 people from its boundaries to ensure that each district has roughly the same number of people.
“The story in Texas is very similar to the story across the United States. You’ve got urban areas that are increasingly disproportionately Democratic. And you’ve got rural areas that are disproportionately decreasing,” said Stephen Klineberg, a demographer at Rice University.
“You can’t prevent it. So redistricting becomes one of the major mechanisms by which the party that is in control of the senate, the house, and the governorship has really free rein now to redraw the districts to minimize the power of non-Anglos for the Republicans.”
Drive across Fort Bend and it has all of the hallmarks of an American suburb – big box stores along the highway and huge houses arranged along cul-de-sacs that peek over the brick walls of residential developments. But look closer and you can see the diversity. There are Asian, Indian and Pakistani grocery stores. Lights don’t just go up on houses at Christmastime, but also are vibrant on Chinese New Year, Diwali and Eid, said Amatullah Contractor, the deputy executive director of Emgage, a civic engagement organization for Muslim American communities.
Until recently, the county had been a longstanding and reliable Republican area, home to the congressional district once represented by Tom DeLay, the Republican who served as speaker of the House in the early 2000s. George W Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney all won the county when they ran for president.
But in 2016, Hillary Clinton flipped the county, which overwhelmingly voted for Romney just four years previously. Joe Biden handily won it in 2020. And in the 2018 Senate race, Beto O’Rourke won the county while Democrats won several of the county’s top offices. They elected KP George, a Democrat and Indian American, as the county judge, ousting a Republican incumbent who had been in office for nearly two decades. They also put the first Democratic district attorney to office in 26 years – the first Black person to hold the position. In 2020, the county elected its first Black sheriff since reconstruction.
“It’s a turning point,” said Mark Solano, a Democratic strategist who is running George’s re-election campaign.
Ninety-five per cent of the population growth in Texas over the last decade was driven by non-white people, a surge that means the state will add two more seats to its delegation in the US House, bring its total number of seats to 38. A decade ago, 58% of Texas’s congressional districts were majority white, but today just 35% of them are, according to the Cook Political Report. And seven of the eight congressional districts that are no longer majority white are currently represented by Republicans, the analysis noted.
“Greater Houston has changed enormously, especially to the west in places like Sugar Land. Booming east Asian, south Asian, and Hispanic populations have created a changed political landscape,” said Samuel Wang, the director of the Princeton Gerrymandering Project, which studies electoral maps across the country. “Redistricting could give voice to those communities, or keep them out of power for years to come.”
Republicans face a similar problem in the northern suburbs of Dallas. They will have to find a way to hold on to districts like the one currently represented by Van Taylor. A decade ago, Taylor’s district was 62% white, but today it’s just under half white, according to the Cook Political Report. The Asian population in the district has surged significantly, growing from 15% to about a quarter of the population.
Republicans know how advantageous extreme gerrymandering can be. In 2011, Republicans undertook an unprecedented effort to use the redistricting process to their advantage, redrawing district lines in such a way that virtually guaranteed re-election across the country. It helped them hold majorities in state legislatures and the US Congress for much of the decade.
Republicans are once again poised to dominate the process, but there are even fewer protections in place than in the past. In 2019, the supreme court said for the first time that there were no federal limits on how far politicians could go to draw districts to their benefit. And for the first time since 1965, states with a history of voting discrimination won’t have to get their district approved by the federal government before they go into effect to ensure they don’t discriminate against minority voters. That could make a huge difference in Texas, where the state has drawn districts that violate the Voting Rights Act in every decade since the law was enacted.
Republicans will have to make a series of choices about which districts they want to shore up and which they will leave competitive. Each time they move a line, it has a ripple effect on what districts look like elsewhere in the state. The problem for Republicans is that they are running out of Republican voters to group into districts, said Mustafa Tameez, a Democratic strategist in the state.
“Republicans in the past were able to take an exurban population and the suburban population build a district. They were able to take an urban population, connect it to a large Republican suburb, and were able to create a district,” he said. “At the end of the day, you can draw in Republican precincts, but you have to have Republican precincts. And you’re running out of that.”
Wayne Thompson, a Republican who was an elected constable in Fort Bend county until last year, praised the new Democratic county leadership and said his party missed opportunities to reach out to new voters.
“We were behind the curve in reaching out,” said Thompson, also a former GOP precinct chair. “I think the party as a whole did not reach out to people maybe that talked different than we did and looked a little different than we did. I don’t think that’s a prejudice thing. I think that’s just a severe error.”
The Republican party of Fort Bend county did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
When it comes to congressional districts, one possibility, Tameez said, is that Republicans may try to cram the new Democratic voters in Fort Bend county into already heavily Democratic congressional districts anchored in Houston, a gerrymandering technique called “packing”. Republicans could then get creative in drawing lines to group all of the remaining Republican areas into a GOP district. Republicans embraced such an approach in their proposal for the 22nd district released on Monday.
“ It’s kind of upsetting because that means that rural Fort Bend county gets lumped in with a little bit of some of the more populous centers here and we lose out on a possible real contender for elected office or congressional seat,” said Nabila Mansoor, a local organizer. “The Asian vote is so strong here. But we really need to see elected officials that actually look like us and actually represent us.”
The invisible threat looms over people like Cynthia Ginyard, the chair of the Fort Bend county Democratic party since 2016. She doesn’t hold back her enthusiasm about how the county is changing (all of her emails arrived written in all capital letters). A few times each month, she leads a canvass of her neighborhood, knocking on doors to sign up new voters. She uses an app that analyzes public records to flag households where there are suspected unregistered voters. Each household appears as a green dot. When she went out one evening in early September, the area around her house was a sea of green.
Dressed in a white sweatband and cutoff T-shirt that says “voter registration” and “I can help” on the back, she stopped anyone she saw just to check to see if they were registered to vote. (“I’ve got my T-shirt on so they know I’m not the bogeyman,” she said.)
House prices are soaring in Fort Bend county, she said, and there are so many people moving into neighborhoods, many of whom don’t know they need to register. Over two hours of canvassing one evening in late September, Ginyard got to about a dozen houses where there were suspected unregistered voters. Among the people who came to the door were two south Asian people, two Hispanic people and one Asian person. She wound up registering just two people to vote.
But Ginyard is relentless when it comes to voter registration, and since becoming the party chair, she’s made efforts to make the party more inclusive, showing up at religious celebrations and other cultural events to engage voters. “People ask me what’s my magic secret and I say ‘open my arms’,” Ginyard said as she bounded up the doorway of one house. “When I have functions and I have meetings, and everyone in the room is Black, I’ve got a problem. Because that is not Fort Bend,” she said.
Gerrymandering would undo the work Ginyard and others have done to bring so many new voters into the fold, Mansoor said.
“We keep getting pushed to say ‘register as many people to vote’. And so Cynthia and me and all these other folks in Fort Bend county, we do and our voter turnout does increase. And we get more Asians, and we get more Muslims, we get more everyone that we’re targeting, we get all of those communities to come out. And then we still don’t win. And it’s disheartening, and it’s demoralizing.”
She pointed to two recent losses that particularly stung. In 2020, Democrats lost a race for a local state house district that includes Fort Bend, losing by about three percentage points. In both 2018 and 2020, Democrats also lost a race for the 22nd congressional district, which also includes Fort Bend. “We should have won that seat and yet we were not able to win that seat,” she said.
Mansoor said that if Republicans are able to get away with gerrymandering Fort Bend, it would send a troubling message to other places where minority voters are becoming a growing political force.
“We have to get it right here in Fort Bend county because we are kind of what the country is gonna look like later,” she said. “ If we can get it right here, it feels like it bodes well for the rest of the country.”
Lebanese police push back anti-government protesters on the anniversary of the 2020 port of Beirut explosion, in Beirut on Aug. 4, 2021. (photo: Marcus Yam/LA Times)
A new report details how police, paramilitaries, and vigilantes seized on the Covid-19 pandemic to abuse rights and repress dissent.
For several weeks, tens of thousands of people gathered in downtown Beirut and across the country, where they were met with violence by police, the military, and security forces. The uprising led to the resignation of Prime Minister Saad Hariri, but the protests continued, and tents set up by activists in the city’s iconic Martyrs’ Square turned into makeshift homes, a mark of the Lebanese people’s lasting disillusion with their leadership.
Then came the coronavirus pandemic. In March 2020, a new government imposed a strict lockdown and dispatched police and Lebanon’s often abusive internal security forces to enforce restrictions. Armed officers cleared the Martyrs’ Square encampment.
“These tents were a form of symbolically and physically reclaiming public spaces,” Karim Merhej, a Lebanese writer and fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, told The Intercept. “This was a way of destroying whatever vestiges were left of the uprising. They used the coronavirus, the lockdowns, to basically put an end to it.”
Lebanon was one of dozens of countries around the world where governments seized on the pandemic as an opportunity to impose harsh restrictions, repress dissent, and unleash police and other security forces on citizens under the guise of public health policy. The pandemic brought an abrupt escalation of state-sanctioned violence and a dearth of accountability in countries with authoritarian governments, histories of police abuse, and eroding civil rights, a new report published this week by the International Center for Transitional Justice concludes.
“It soon became evident that the COVID-19 pandemic is far more than a global health crisis — it has also become a human rights crisis,” wrote the group, which works in countries emerging from conflict and repressive regimes. “States have deployed security forces, some of which have been involved in widespread violations of human rights, including torture, killings, and intimidation of people who are perceived as failing to comply with their instructions.”
The report, which focuses on pandemic-related policing in Colombia, Uganda, Kenya, and Lebanon, follows another report published by Amnesty International last year, which documented instances of police and other law enforcement authorities committing human rights abuses under the guise of pandemic-related enforcement in at least 60 countries. Human Rights Watch and other rights groups have also issued several reports on pandemic-related human rights abuses, including torture, in multiple countries. ICTJ, which works to build up accountability in the countries where it operates, particularly focused on the institutional failures that led to pandemic-related abuses, noting in the report that “because of a prevailing culture of impunity in those countries, there were no safeguards to control the use of extraordinary measures and prevent the commission of gross violations of human rights.”
Both national and international laws allow governments to temporarily suspend certain rights in the context of an emergency. But the ICTJ report stresses that the goal of those restrictions should be the collective good and that the measures imposed should be proportionate and applied in a nondiscriminatory manner. Instead, the report concluded, in all four countries, “regular police and paramilitary forces have increased their powers, which they have abused extensively, as a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Mohamed Suma, the report’s main author, told The Intercept that political leadership in those and other countries treated the pandemic as “a great opportunity, a great way to amass power.”
Those who bore the brunt of the resulting abuses were often the poorest, including people working in the informal economy and those for whom strict lockdown measures could mean going without food or water. States often dispatched police and security forces to brutally enforce restrictions while failing to provide social safety nets to those most in need of them, Suma stressed.
“What Covid did was to expose the vulnerabilities of those people and put them in the hands of people that claim to be working to secure the common interest,” he added. “The essence of the emergency measures is not to repress, it’s not to be draconian, it’s not to amass power so that you can repress citizens. It’s to protect the people.”
Police, Paramilitaries, and Vigilantes
By late March 2020, Kenya had recorded just 50 confirmed cases of Covid-19, according to the ICTJ report, and officials imposed a strict lockdown and overnight curfew to keep the virus at bay. Within two months, however, at least 15 people were killed in connection to the measures, including an 18-year-old boy who was beaten to death by police and a 13-year-old who was hit by a stray bullet as officers enforced a stay-at-home order in the capital, Nairobi.
Across the country, police enforcing the lockdown were accused of “shootings, harassment, assaults, robbery, inhumane treatment, and sexual assault.”
The country’s law enforcement apparatus has a long history of abuse and human rights violations. While efforts to reform it have been underway in recent years, the pandemic exposed the fragility of such initiatives and underscored the lack of accountability mechanisms and the inadequate vetting and training authorities have put in place, the ICTJ report noted.
But Kenya is hardly alone. Virtually everywhere there were abuses, the pandemic exacerbated preexisting dynamics, providing officials with an “excuse” to act with excessive force and impunity, human rights advocates have repeatedly warned. In some countries, paramilitary and other noninstitutional forces, including in some cases citizen vigilantes, were tasked with or took on the role of enforcers.
In Uganda, the enforcement of Covid-19 regulations became the prerogative of the Local Defence Units, a government-sanctioned paramilitary group initially established in 2018 as a community-based crime-fighting force. The initiative was modeled after a similar one in the 1990s, by which men were recruited from villages across the country with a mandate restricted to the areas they came from. The new iteration of the units, by contrast, operates across the country and under the control of the national army, the Uganda People’s Defence Forces. It mostly attracts young, and often poorly trained, men in search of economic opportunity and who can be deployed anywhere in Uganda. Soon after they were established, the LDUs began to operate as a de facto militia for Uganda’s ruling party, the National Resistance Movement, tasked with protecting the interests of the regime more than the public safety of the country’s citizens. Unit members have faced accusations of abuse, most recently in connection to their role during the pandemic.
As Ugandan authorities imposed strict measures last year, including a dusk-to-dawn curfew and the closure of most market stalls, the LDUs were dispatched to enforce the rules, which they did violently and with impunity. By the summer of 2020, the LDUs had killed 12 people in connection to the pandemic measures, the ICTJ report notes — three times the Covid-19 death toll in the country at the time.
The enforcement was intransigent, Sarah Kihika Kasande, ICTJ’s head of office in Uganda, told The Intercept. For instance, authorities imposed a prohibition on motorcycle taxis, which left people who needed to reach hospitals, including pregnant women, stranded. “Whenever they would be on the road, attempting to access services, the LDUs would immediately mete out violence, before even first inquiring whether there were special circumstances that compelled the individuals to be out,” Kasande said. LDUs whipped and shot at street food vendors and others to whom the restrictions left no means of survival. On at least one occasion, Kasande noted, they beat nurses and other medical staff who were trying to get to their jobs.
But the violence was not only illogical — it was also “opportunistic,” Kasande added. “It was about instilling terror and fear in the population.”
A public outcry over the conduct of the LDUs during the first wave of the pandemic prompted the government to temporarily recall them and impose more training — but yielded no official admission of the abuses for which they had been responsible. As Uganda prepared for a general election in January, the units enforced pandemic restrictions along political lines: Supporters of the opposition were not allowed to gather, and several were arrested for violating pandemic-related restrictions, while supporters of the ruling party held large rallies. An estimated 4,000 people attended the swearing-in ceremony for sixth-term President Yoweri Museveni, even as coronavirus cases were on the rise in the country and despite his own government’s official restrictions.
“We saw this approach that clearly indicated that the government saw the pandemic as an opportunity to grab more power,” said Kasande. “The pandemic was a gift to authoritarians, giving them an opportunity to grab power and an excuse to further suppress dissent.”
Permanent Emergency
Paramilitaries also played a key role in the enforcement of coronavirus restrictions in Colombia, which, like Lebanon, was roiled by mass protests in the months leading up to the pandemic. In late 2019, hundreds of thousands of Colombians took to the streets amid a declining economy and high unemployment, a stalled peace process, and a slate of pro-elite policies pursued by the government of President Iván Duque Márquez.
Authorities responded to the protests with violence, much of it carried out by the country’s anti-riot squad, the ESMAD, a unit formed as part of a U.S. military assistance program known as Plan Colombia. Then came the pandemic and a severe set of restrictions that economically strangled the more than 42 percent of Colombians living in poverty. To a government facing mass criticism, the measures came as a boon.
“Duque tried to use the excuse of the pandemic to put forward a lot of legislative proposals he wasn’t able to get through because of the protests earlier, using the excuse that a whole bunch of checks and balances didn’t have to happen because of the pandemic,” Gimena Sánchez-Garzoli, director for the Andes region at the Washington D.C.-based group Advocacy for Human Rights in the Americas, told The Intercept.
Among those was a controversial tax hike proposal that sent tens of thousands of Colombians back to the streets in April 2020 for a national strike called by the country’s largest labor unions. “At that point it just exploded, people didn’t care about the pandemic,” said Sánchez-Garzoli. “And that’s when you had these mass demonstrations, and then ESMAD and the police started killing people.”
That wave of protests lasted for nearly two months and was met with even greater brutality than the earlier one. According to the ICTJ report, security forces were responsible for at least 44 murders and 4,687 instances of violence in that time period, with many more deaths reported. At least 168 people disappeared in the course of the protests, at least five of whom were later found dead.
In response to the violence, neighborhood-based groups began to organize to defend their areas from police. Meanwhile, armed groups in several regions across the country were imposing curfews and lockdowns, shutting down movement between different areas, and using WhatsApp and social media to inform local residents of their extrajudicial rules.
In the port city of Tumaco, armed groups banned residents from fishing, which many relied on for sustenance. In other provinces, armed groups torched the motorcycles of people who defied the group’s self-declared authority. Members of armed groups in parts of the country where national authority is weakest killed several people, including at least one community leader who was murdered in the Putumayo region after calling on official authorities to address the unofficial restrictions imposed by paramilitary groups.
While the pandemic is far from over, particularly in countries where vaccines are not widely available, human rights advocates have already warned about the long-term impact of pandemic-related power grabbing and abuses.
In Kenya, where a general election is scheduled for next year, the memory of recent post-election violence and police conduct during the pandemic has led to renewed calls for police accountability mechanisms. In Uganda, despite widespread abuses by LDUs and questions about their training, the military announced plans last month to recruit 10,000 new members. In Lebanon, after a deadly blast at the Beirut port last summer and subsequent shortages of fuel, electricity, food, and medicine, protests have erupted again — though at a smaller scale than the pre-pandemic uprising.
Through it all, crisis features like the country’s military being dispatched to quell protests and distribute humanitarian aid have become more permanent.
“The military has definitely become more involved in several activities where it shouldn’t be involved in the first place. … The way I see it, the military, and not just the military, but the whole security apparatus, are going to become much more violent, much more brutal,” said Merhej. “To put it bluntly, the oligarchy, the political class, the banks, and the security establishment — and they are all intertwined — they’ve won, honestly. They have crushed the uprising, and they have thrown us all into poverty.”
Sen. Patrick Leahy questions Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh during the second day of his confirmation hearing on Sept. 5 in Washington. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty)
Lawmakers say it is 'long past time to make a decisive shift away from lethal force policies'
In a letter sent to the president on Monday, Senators Dick Durbin and Patrick Leahy said that it "is long past time to make a decisive shift away from lethal force policies and legal interpretations that erode fundamental human rights and America's moral standing, perpetuate endless conflict, and routinely cause tragedies".
"As your administration rightfully seeks to end the endless wars of the last two decades and restore American leadership on human rights, it should take immediate steps to end war-based lethal force policies outside of armed conflict," the lawmakers wrote.
The letter specifically asks the administration to provide an outline on how it will shift away from war-based lethal force policies, an assessment on the civilian toll of the past two decades of these policies, and provide transparency in the investigation of the 29 August Kabul drone strike that killed 10 Afghan civilians.
The senators wrote that they want an answer to their questions by 12 October.
The Pentagon admitted to killing the civilians last week, after initially marketing its drone strike as a successful operation - deeming it a "righteous strike" that targeted fighters from the Islamic State (IS) group.
Earlier this year, the Biden administration temporarily ended the use of drone strikes outside of war zones where American forces are operating, and has been reportedly working on creating a new policy on such strikes.
According to The New York Times, the interim guidance says the "military and the CIA must now obtain White House permission to attack terrorism suspects in poorly governed places where there are scant American ground troops, like Somalia and Yemen".
Biden has, however, repeatedly touted Washington's ability to continue the fight against terrorism in countries like Afghanistan, even without the presence of troops on the ground.
A National Security Council (NSC) spokesperson told Middle East Eye that the administration's review of its use of force is currently ongoing, and "it would be premature to anticipate specific recommendations that will result from this NSC-led interagency process".
"We will continue to examine the legal and policy frameworks governing these matters," the spokesperson said, adding that the review will seek to ensure transparency measures and steps to prevent civilian deaths and injuries.
"We are committed to consulting with Congress in a bipartisan way on these issues."
Calls for transparency, accountability
Durbin, who holds the second-highest position in Senate Democratic leadership, and Leahy, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, added that in circumstances where civilians are killed as a result of US actions, the government needs to "ensure appropriate transparency, accountability, and redress".
"These failures fuel resentment toward the United States and boost terrorist recruitment, undermining the central goal of counterterrorism over both the short and long-term," they wrote.
"It is firmly in our nation’s interest to reduce the number of civilian casualties we cause and respond to civilian harm wherever it happens through rigorous investigations, public acknowledgement, and amends, including through condolence payments."
The US has been making condolence payments to civilians killed in both Iraq and Afghanistan over the past two decades, however, there are few public records of these payments.
Leahy has worked on this issue for years and made several attempts to create a permanent set of parameters and a dedicated source of funding for these payments. Last year, the Pentagon's budget approved by Congress included $3m for these payments, but a senate aid for Leahy's office said that this money is not being adequately given to civilians.
"The letter indicates his ongoing frustration and concern that the legislation has not been adequately implemented by the Department," the aid told MEE.
"He has also, each year, included funds in the State, Foreign Operations Appropriations Act for assistance for innocent victims of US military operations, including in Afghanistan and Iraq."
In June, 113 activist organisations demanded the Biden administration end "unlawful" drone strikes and the use of other lethal force outside of traditional combat zones, arguing it was both "a human rights and racial justice imperative".
Companies knowingly keep toxic baby products on the market, according to a new congressional report. (photo: iStock)
"Today's report reveals that companies not only under-report the high levels of toxic content in their baby food, but also knowingly keep toxic products on the market," said Democratic Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, chair of the House Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy, which conducted the investigation.
Several baby food manufacturers CNN contacted disagree with the subcommittee's assessment, and all say they are committed to working closely with the US Food and Drug Administration to address the issue.
Arsenic and other heavy metals are natural elements found in soil, water and air. Rice, which is a common ingredient in baby cereal, is grown submersed in water and is especially good at absorbing inorganic arsenic, the most toxic form.
Exposure to heavy metals in baby food became a growing concern for parents after Healthy Babies Bright Futures, a coalition of advocates committed to reducing babies' exposures to neurotoxic chemicals, tested 168 baby foods from major manufacturers in the US.
The testing found 95% of sampled baby foods contained lead, 73% contained arsenic, 75% contained cadmium and 32% contained mercury. One fourth of the baby foods contained all four heavy metals. The results mimicked a previous study by the US Food and Drug Administration that found one or more of the same metals in 33 of 39 types of baby food tested.
"Even in trace amounts, these contaminants can alter the developing brain and erode a child's IQ," said Jane Houlihan, research director for Healthy Babies Bright Futures.
"The impacts add up with each meal or snack a baby eats — especially when the levels are as high as Healthy Babies Bright Futures' research and the subcommittee's new report show."
Earlier investigation
In an earlier investigation released in February, the subcommittee looked at internal testing documents from four major baby food manufacturers: Gerber; Beech-Nut Nutrition; Nurture, Inc., which sells Happy Baby products; and Hain Celestial Group, Inc., which sells Earth's Best Organic baby food.
The documents showed some products contained levels of lead, mercury, cadmium and inorganic arsenic were far above limits set for bottled water by the FDA and the US Environmental Protection Agency. Ground water can easily absorb heavy metals from the soil, and old lead pipes leak, so drinking water is a key exposure to heavy metals.
Inorganic arsenic, lead, cadmium and mercury are in the World Health Organization's top 10 chemicals of concern for infants and children.
Of the four companies, the subcommittee found only Nurture tested the final product -- the actual food babies would eat -- after all ingredients had been added. The rest of the companies tested some, but not all ingredients, the investigation found.
That's a significant concern, the report said, because each ingredient may have levels of toxins that fall under the cutoff for safety -- but when added together, they may exceed government standards.
There is no safe level of lead for children, according to the EPA and US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While there are no specific limits set for infant foods, the EPA and FDA set an upper limit of 2 parts per billion of inorganic mercury in drinking water, and 5 parts per billion for cadmium.
In 2016 the FDA introduced a standard of 100 parts per billion for inorganic arsenic in infant rice cereal, finalizing that guidance in August 2020. But that level is too high to protect babies' brains, critics said, especially considering the agency had already set the limit for bottled water at 10 parts per billion (ppb).
"FDA set the limit at 100 ppb because it was focused on the level of inorganic arsenic that would cause cancer. It disregarded the risk of neurological damage, which happens at a much lower level," the report stated.
A maximum level of inorganic arsenic in baby food should be set at 10 parts per billion, the report said, "with a 15 ppb limit for infant cereal, as proposed in the Baby Food Safety Act."
An FDA spokesperson told CNN that the agency continues to make "steady progress towards developing action levels for lead in foods and evaluating the science to establish reference levels for arsenic and cadmium."
"We look forward to providing additional updates on our efforts as new data, information, progress updates and additional material are made available."
Investigation continues
In May, the state of Alaska conducted a FDA-funded analysis of Beech-Nut's and Gerber's infant rice cereals and found "multiple samples" contained more inorganic arsenic than the "FDA's 100 parts per billion (ppb) limit," the report stated.
In early June, Beech-Nut Nutrition issued a voluntary recall of two infant rice cereals with product codes 103470XXXX and 093470XXXX. The company also announced that it was exiting the infant rice cereal market.
"Beech-Nut is concerned about the ability to consistently obtain rice flour well-below the FDA guidance level and Beech-Nut specifications for naturally occurring inorganic arsenic," the FDA said in the recall announcement.
However, the subcommittee criticized Beech-Nut in the new report, saying the manufacturer had not gone far enough to protect the public.
"Beech-Nut only recalled two of its six products that tested over the limit," the House subcommittee stated.
Beech-Nut Nutrition told CNN that "the assertion that Beech-Nut's rice cereal recall was too narrow is incorrect" because it proactively withdrew all of its rice cereal products from supermarket shelves.
"Beech-Nut has taken a leadership role and is the first and only national brand to commit to being a fully rice-free brand across its full product portfolio," the company said.
The subcommittee report was also critical of Gerber.
"Gerber was even worse (than Beech-Nut) —it had two products test over the 100 ppb limit and took no action to tell the public or get them off the shelves," the subcommittee stated.
A Gerber spokesperson told CNN that the FDA had retested the samples, and was unable to confirm the result by Alaska, adding that the FDA "confirmed to Gerber that no action was needed."
"While the Subcommittee report notes proposed limits on specific heavy metals, those are based on proposed standards from the Baby Food Safety Act, which are not current law or regulation. All Gerber foods have and continue to meet all applicable guidelines and limits set by the FDA, the governing body for safety regulations in the food industry," the spokesperson said.
Additional companies investigated
In their original report released in February, the House subcommittee said three companies had failed to fully cooperate with the investigation. Those baby food manufacturer's are:
- Sprout Organic Foods, now owned by Canadian cannabis company Neptune Wellness Solutions
- Campbell Soup Company, which in March sold Plum Organics to Sun-Maid Growers of California
- Walmart, which manufactures Parent's Choice baby food.
Since February, those companies have cooperated to "varying degrees," the new report said. Internal company documents provided by Sprout, Campbell and Walmart show similar failures to test or monitor their baby food products, investigators found.
Samples of Plum Organics baby foods tested between 2017 and 2019 contained levels of toxic heavy metals that greatly exceeded safety limits, the investigators reported.
"Plum's finished products contain up to 225 ppb inorganic arsenic. The majority of Plum's baby foods also contain over 5 ppb lead, and nearly 40% exceed 5 ppb cadmium," the subcommittee noted.
A Campbell spokesperson told CNN that despite selling the Plum Organics brand, they will continue to cooperate with the "subcommittee throughout this process" and will continue "support the FDA's efforts in setting clear and specific science-based federal standards."
Sun-Maid Growers of California told CNN in an email that it will "thoroughly examine the updated report from the Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy and continue to work with the subcommittee -- as well as the industry at large -- to address these matters."
In 2018, Walmart "abandoned" a standard in place since 2013 that set an internal inorganic arsenic limit of 23 parts per billion for the baby food it sells, the report said, "quadrupling it" to allow up to 100 parts per billion.
"Walmart offered no justification for its extreme course reversal on protecting babies' neurological development," the report stated.
Walmart's senior director of national media relations, Randy Hargrove, told CNN that the company had "always required that our suppliers' products meet the guidelines established by the FDA. Our specifications have always been aligned with or below the FDA requirements for naturally occurring elements and the FDA noted in April that its testing shows that children 'are not at an immediate health risk to exposure.' "
In the April release cited by Walmart, the FDA also noted that research has shown "reducing exposure to toxic elements is important to minimizing any potential long-term effects on the developing brains of infants and children."
Finally, investigators found Sprout's testing practices "to be the most reckless among baby food manufacturers," the report stated, because it only requires yearly testing for toxic metals and fails to test their finished products.
Sprout has not responded to a CNN request for comment on the new report. But on its website, Sprout says that it is ready to make any changes to our "sourcing or processing systems that may be advised by the FDA,USDA, or other relevant regulatory bodies. Sprout will always comply with regulatory guidance and continue to monitor developments closely."
Role of manufacturers and FDA
In both reports, the subcommittee recommended the baby food industry voluntarily test the final product to be sold and address the problem of toxic metals in baby food by phasing out ingredients that are high in toxic heavy metals.
"Based on my Subcommittee's findings, I'm urgently calling on the baby food industry to immediately end harmful practices and conduct finished-product testing," Krishnamoorthi said in the statement.
In addition, the subcommittee is urging the FDA to move faster in its efforts to establish specific regulations and mandate testing of final baby food products, not just ingredients.
In March, the FDA told baby food manufacturers they must consider toxic chemicals when they test their baby food for potential hazards, but the agency was criticized for not quickly setting concrete rules to remove toxic heavy metals from all baby foods.
"We have been working closely with FDA on regulations, and this report highlights the need for the agency to accelerate its proposed timeline for publishing them," Krishnamoorthi said.
However, there are potential downsides to moving too quickly on regulations, the FDA said.
"While we understand that people may want rapid changes, it is crucial that measures to limit toxic elements in foods do not have unintended consequences—like limiting access to foods that have significant nutritional benefits by making them unavailable or unaffordable for many families," a spokesperson told CNN.
Actions for parents
Parents can act as well, experts say, by pushing their representatives to support the proposed Baby Food Safety Act or by refusing to purchase baby foods from manufacturers who do not comply with the safety recommendations.
Parents can also try to avoid foods, such as rice, that typically absorb more heavy metals from the soil. The 2019 investigation by Healthy Babies Bright Futures found cereal and rice-based snacks like puffs had the highest arsenic levels.
When rice is served, Healthy Babies' Houlihan suggests cooking the rice in two steps:
- Boil 1 cup of rice with 4 cups water for 5 minutes
- Pour into a colander and discard the water
- Cook drained rice with 2 cups fresh water over low to medium heat, covered, until cooked.
Using this method "can remove up to 70 percent of the arsenic while still preserving some of the nutrients," Houlihan said.
The group's investigation also found carrots and sweet potatoes to be among those most contaminated with lead and cadmium. But don't eliminate carrots and sweet potatoes entirely, Healthy Babies's Houlihan advised, because they are full of vitamin A and other key nutrients.
Instead, "serve a variety of fruits and vegetables, instead of serving the same thing every day. This avoids accidentally concentrating any particular contaminant in a child's diet," Houlihan advised.
The Healthy Babies analysis found parents can reduce their baby's risk of exposure to lead and cadmium by 73% by taking these steps.
When carrots, sweet potatoes and other root vegetables are served, be sure to peel them to remove heavy metals on the surface, she said, adding that "organic and homemade baby foods also contain heavy metals, so the steps above apply to those foods as well."
The Minnesota portion of Enbridge Line 3 is "substantially" done and will go into service on Oct. 1. (photo: Richard Tsong-Taatarii/Star Tribune)
The $3 billion pipeline, dogged by protests over fossil fuels, took nine months to build.
The $3 billion-plus pipeline is a replacement for the 50-year-old Line 3, which is corroding and operating at half capacity.
Construction of the $3 billion-plus Minnesota portion of the pipeline — one of the largest projects in the state in recent history — began last December after a six-year battle before state regulators.
"From day one, this project has been about modernizing our system and improving safety and reliability for the benefit of communities, the environment and our customers," Enbridge CEO Al Monaco said Wednesday in a news release. "Line 3 was developed and executed with the most state-of-the-art approach to design, construction and environmental management."
The pipeline also restores full flow of oil to 760,000 barrels a day, boosting earnings for the Calgary, Alberta-based Enbridge.
Hundreds have been arrested along the pipeline route as regular protests occurred during the construction. Environmental groups and Ojibwe tribes fought the pipeline before the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission and in multiple lawsuits, arguing it would open a new region of Minnesota lakes, rivers and wetlands to degradation from oil spills, as well as exacerbate climate change.
"This is not the outcome we hoped for, but the fight to stop Line 3 has always been a fight for climate justice and a future free from fossil fuels, and that fight will not stop just because Enbridge has succeeded in building this pipeline," Margaret Levin, director of the Sierra Club North Star Chapter, said in a statement.
The pipeline runs partly on a new route, veering off from Enbridge's current corridor that contains six oil pipelines running across Minnesota to the company's terminal in Superior, Wis., at the Clearbrook station.
The Public Utilities Commission (PUC) approved the new Line 3 in early 2020, saying it was needed for safety reasons and to meet regional oil demand. The Minnesota Department of Commerce, acting for consumers, argued that a new Line 3 was not needed because fossil fuel demand is expected to fall over the coming years, although Enbridge has said all along its forecasts show it is needed.
"If we're investing in something there's no demand for, [investors] are not going to be too happy," said Mike Fernandez, Enbridge's chief communications officer. "There's long been an established demand."
The Minnesota portion of Line 3 is the last link of the 1,097-mile transnational pipeline to be finished. It starts in Edmonton, Alberta, and crosses small portions of North Dakota and Wisconsin. It will carry a particularly thick crude from Alberta's tar sands, also known as oil sands.
Line 3 has employed more than 5,000 workers in total along the pipeline's 340-mile route across the state. The project had strong support from labor unions as a result.
"We are proud to have completed construction of a replacement pipeline that will reduce spill risks and shipments of crude oil by rail," Dan Olson, head of the Duluth-based local of the Laborers Union, said in a statement.
"Water protectors," as Line 3 protesters call themselves, have been a constant presence along the pipeline route in recent months, staging acts of civil disobedience like chaining themselves to pipeline equipment.
Honor the Earth, a Minnesota-based Indigenous environmental group, estimates about 900 people have been arrested.
"Line 3 is a crime against the environment and Indigenous rights, waters and lands, and it marks the end of the tar sands era — but not the end of the resistance to it," Winona LaDuke, executive director of Honor the Earth, said Wednesday. "I personally want to recognize the many Water Protectors over the years who came from Native communities, from Minnesota cities and from around the country to put their lives on hold to bear witness to the dangerous environmental folly that is Line 3."
Enbridge so far has spent $2.9 million reimbursing local police costs along the construction route, according to the PUC.
The payments were mandated by the commission — and flow through a PUC escrow account — to avoid large bills for counties and cities in policing pipeline protests. But they have been criticized by anti-pipeline groups that say Enbridge has been using local police as a security force. The company and law enforcement reject such allegations.
Enbridge had set a fourth-quarter completion date for Line 3, and it looks like the company is ahead of schedule by switching on the pipeline Friday. The flow of oil will be slowly ramped up, Fernandez said.
However, the construction project has run into several issues, the most serious of which is an aquifer breach near Clearbrook.
As a result of that breach, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources earlier this month ordered Enbridge to pay $3.32 million for failing to follow environmental laws during construction.
While working near Clearbrook, Enbridge dug too deeply into the ground and pierced an artesian aquifer. The incident, which happened in January but was not discovered by the DNR until June, has led to a 24-million-gallon groundwater leak, endangering a nearby wetland.
Enbridge failed to report the breach as it should have, the DNR has said. The DNR called the company's actions a "clear violation of state law" and sent the matter to the Clearwater County Attorney for possible criminal prosecution.
During the summer, Enbridge also had 28 spills of drilling mudduring construction, creating at least 10,000 gallons of muck, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) confirmed in August in response to DFL lawmakers who demanded an accounting of the spills.
The MPCA said it is investigating those spills.
Pipeline opponents have fought various regulatory permits for Line 3 in state and local courts this year. But only one case remains pending, a suit in federal court against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for its water and wetlands permit for Line 3's construction.
Pipeline opponents had hoped that President Joe Biden's administration would essentially revoke the Corps' permit. Instead, the federal government doubled down on support for the permit.
The old 282-mile Line 3 will be "decommissioned" in the coming months, meaning it will be cleaned and monitored and largely left in place. Landowners were given the option to have the pipeline removed from their property at Enbridge's expense.
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