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2020 Just Gave Us the Tools to Talk About Climate Change |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=55703"><span class="small">Jacquelyn Chorush, The Hill</span></a>
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Sunday, 16 August 2020 08:17 |
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Chorush writes: "It has been a difficult several months for residents near the Italian town of Courmayeur. Not long ago, they were told that confining themselves to their homes was the only way to stay safe as government officials imposed a nationwide lockdown to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Now, some residents are being forced to evacuate those very same homes."
View from Entrèves: Courmayeur is in the north west of Italy, in the shadow of Mont Blanc, close to the French and Swiss borders and a 30-minute drive from chichi Chamonix. (photo: Karolina Wiercigroch)
2020 Just Gave Us the Tools to Talk About Climate Change
By Jacquelyn Chorush, The Hill
16 August 20
 t has been a difficult several months for residents near the Italian town of Courmayeur. Not long ago, they were told that confining themselves to their homes was the only way to stay safe as government officials imposed a nationwide lockdown to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
Now, some residents are being forced to evacuate those very same homes. This order comes as intense summer heat destabilizes 500,000 cubic meters of a melting glacier, which scientists fear will soon come careening down Mont Blanc.
If climate change news is not high on your radar, this may register to you as yet another tragic consequence of the climate crisis, but ultimately an isolated incident limited to a distant continent. By the time you exit the news article, the Planpincieux glacier and the residents of Val Ferret will have faded out of mind.
But remember: it was only a few months ago that a mysterious outbreak of viral pneumonia snowballed into a pandemic and crashed over Italy. At that point, many Americans dismissed the problem as far away, too. Then, by late May, the public outcry over the killing of George Floyd catalyzed an eruption of protests against police brutality.
The resulting deluge of news coverage confronted Americans day and night, sweeping the nation into long-overdue conversations about racism and social injustice. Ultimately, many of those less tuned into these conversations were pressured into taking a position through their social media pages, forcing them to examine the intricacies of systemic racism.
In the course of a few months, soundbites and slogans have given way to deeper conversations about how we, as individuals and as a nation, value human life. This is a big change for a country that normally relies on clichés and oversimplified narratives to frame its problems. Our passivity and short attention spans give rise to the distinctive “banality of evil” running rampant in American politics.
But waves of collective action this year, spurned on by a series of tragedies, appear to be undoing some of those bad habits. The sustained interest in understanding our problems and advocating for solutions suggests a shared sense of responsibility for the policies that shape our country.
We are ready to talk about climate change. The imminent collapse of the Planpincieux glacier is not an isolated incident. Less than one month ago, Canada lost 40 percent of its last fully intact Arctic ice shelf in just two days. These and other rapid changes are the result of rising Arctic temperatures, which are increasing at twice the rate of the rest of the world.
A new study supports a growing base of evidence predicting all sea ice will disappear by 2035. According to experts, one consequence will be a drastic rise in sea levels, permanently submerging the entire cities along the U.S. coastline and throughout the world.
So sure, driving an electric car is great and so is opting out of paper bank statements, but we must put those actions into perspective. Driving electric cars won’t make up for industries that continue to rely on fossil fuels. The trees spared don’t make up for the ones engulfed in record-breaking wildfires. Similarly, Arctic shipping lanes opened up by melting ice won't benefit the global economy if they are accompanied by sea level rise so dramatic that our coastal trading hubs cease to exist.
Addressing climate change cannot happen overnight; we need to implement policy changes at the national and international level. Those solutions will need to account for thousands of displaced workers, colossal infrastructure changes and research that has yet to be done. Companies won't take on the full extent of the inherent costs unless they receive a guarantee that it won't benefit their competitors.
These tragedies must be placed into their larger contexts and gain our full attention. Remember that clicks get coverage, our daily conversations set the national agenda, and pithy memes and infographics drive the point home.
We must talk about how our actions and inactions contribute to the larger problem of climate change, and how we can do better. And in the end, the U.S. must rejoin the Paris climate agreement and guarantee the enforcement of uniform environmental regulations.
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The Media Said Ilhan Omar Was Fighting for Her Political Life. She Won Easily. |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=50468"><span class="small">Luke Savage, Jacobin</span></a>
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Saturday, 15 August 2020 12:57 |
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Savage writes: "Despite media warnings of imminent danger, Ilhan Omar, one of Congress's most left-wing members, cruised to victory in her primary this week, defeating a well-funded primary challenger. It's another clear indication that the Left's electoral insurgency is here to stay."
Rep. Ilhan Omar. (photo: Mandel Ngan/Getty Images)
The Media Said Ilhan Omar Was Fighting for Her Political Life. She Won Easily.
By Luke Savage, Jacobin
15 August 20
Despite media warnings of imminent danger, Ilhan Omar, one of Congress’s most left-wing members, cruised to victory in her primary this week, defeating a well-funded primary challenger. It's another clear indication that the Left’s electoral insurgency is here to stay.
 his summer, three of the House’s most left-wing members — Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) — all faced primary challenges. Tlaib’s seat is in Michigan, Omar’s in Minnesota, and AOC’s in New York, but every contest yielded an identical pattern: corporate interests and big donors lined up to fund a challenger and the incumbent won easily.
In June, AOC bested former CNBC anchor Michelle Caruso-Cabrera with nearly 75 percent of the vote. Few seemed to expect a loss, but the margin of victory was still notable (easily surpassing the congresswoman’s 2018 margin against then-incumbent Joe Crowley).
Earlier this month Tlaib did much the same, handily beating Detroit city council president Brenda Jones by more than 30 points. Here, the result completely defied the running media narrative, which said Tlaib was “fighting for her political life.” Last night, Ilhan Omar did the same.
Despite a slew of powerful endorsements ranging from Bernie Sanders to Nancy Pelosi, Omar’s race was repeatedly framed by the media as a close contest: “Ilhan Omar’s career on the line in tough primary,” read Politico’s headline on election day; “Representative Omar faces a tough re-election fight in Minnesota,” read the New York Times; “US Rep Ilhan Omar readies for tough primary challenge” (Al Jazeera); “Tlaib, Omar face insurgent primary challengers: Can ‘Squad’ survive?” (Fox News); “Is Ilhan Omar one and done? Why she could lose the August primary” (David Schultz, the Hill).
In fairness, challenger Antone Melton-Meaux’s campaign was incredibly well-financed. Thanks to huge donations from financial interests and Israel lobby groups, he enjoyed a nearly two-to-one advantage in cash on hand during the final leg of the race. On election night, however, all the money and media bluster came to nothing, Omar garnering more than 57 percent of the vote and beating Melton-Meaux by nearly 20 points — an improvement on her 2018 result of 48 percent. If there’s a lesson in all this, beyond the obvious fact that media narratives are often wrong, it’s that the kinds of politicians who are called “controversial” tend to be vastly more popular than the label implies. Omar, Tlaib, and AOC have much in common as members of the same congressional cohort and as political allies. But, most importantly, all share a hostility to institutional power and an insurgent style certain to rub corporate interests the wrong way.
This, in turn, made the primary challenges against each of them similar in tone, with special interests sinking mountains of cash into their campaign coffers. As the abysmal results of these efforts suggest, what is called “controversial” is often incredibly popular — and what big donors detest is often exactly what real people like.
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The Movement to Defund Police Has Won Historic Victories Across the US. What's Next? |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=41599"><span class="small">Sam Levin, Guardian UK</span></a>
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Saturday, 15 August 2020 12:57 |
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Levin writes: "A dozen local governments have moved to reduce their police budgets by more than $1.4 billion, marking a significant shift in American politics."
A protest march in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and other groups, 30 July 2020, in New York. (photo: John Minchillo/AP)
The Movement to Defund Police Has Won Historic Victories Across the US. What's Next?
By Sam Levin, Guardian UK
15 August 20
A dozen local governments have moved to reduce their police budgets by more than $1.4bn, marking a significant shift in American politics
n the days after the killing of George Floyd, an extraordinary wave of mass protests erupted across the US, with demonstrators setting fire to police buildings and cars, shutting down freeways and bridges and storming city halls and neighborhoods.
Amid familiar chants of Black Lives Matter, a new slogan emerged: “Defund the police.”
In Minneapolis where Floyd was killed, those cries had swift and dramatic impact, with councilmembers making a historic pledge on 7 June to entirely dismantle the troubled local police department, declaring at an emotional rally their “commitment is to end policing as we know it”.
That was just the start. In the past two months, a dozen municipal governments voted in favor of proposals that they say will reduce their local law enforcement budgets by a total of more than $1.4bn, including in major US cities such as New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Philadelphia.
The defunding votes included proposals to remove police as responders for “non-criminal” calls, homeless services, traffic enforcement, mental health emergencies, substance abuse, public transit and other areas of social service that advocates have long argued do not merit armed law enforcement responses.
School officials in Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Denver, Oakland, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle and Philadelphia also followed Minneapolis’ lead, voting to reduce police presence in schools or completely end contracts with local law enforcement agencies.
The cuts mark a significant reversal in American politics, where police budgets have for decades consistently expanded, with governments hiring more officers to respond to all sorts of social challenges, passing laws that criminalize poverty and building larger jails and prisons. The shift is a testament to this year’s sustained protests and the long-term work of Black Lives Matter groups.
The fine print of some of the defunding proposals adopted so far, however, has yielded mixed reactions from activists, including criticisms that the changes are only cosmetic reforms meant to appease protesters, and that the scale of the divestment so far has been minuscule relative to activist proposals.
The movement has also sparked aggressive backlash from some police chiefs and unions, including high-profile resignations, reports of organized “sick-outs” by officers to protest the changes, and unsubstantiated and false claims linking defunding votes to a rise in crime.
“It’s a huge and substantial shift,” said Chris Harris, a community organizer in Austin, Texas, where the city council voted this week to cut $150m from the police budget. “But it needs to just be a first step. This is still a far cry from community demands.”
‘A pivotal point’
The protests for Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other recent victims of police killings have brought mainstream attention to the notion that the systemic racism and militarization that runs through police departments in the US can’t be fixed by minor policy changes.
This idea is not new. As the US has become an international leader in incarceration and killings by police in the last half century, activist groups have organized in response, fed up with the extreme power of these systems and the devastation they cause. Abolitionist groups have long argued that reforms to law enforcement training and policy have been inadequate, and that the best way to reduce law enforcement violence, limit police departments’ reach and minimize harm is to take away funding.
As the cost of policing in America has tripled to $115bn in four decades, local groups across the country protested annual budget hikes at council and commission meetings, arguing funds should go to programs and services that support the health and safety of neighborhoods. For the most part, those activists have had little success until now.
“This is a pivot point,” said Alex Vitale, a Brooklyn College sociology professor and scholar on defunding and abolition. The moment has “put the brakes on the idea that there’s never enough police, and that itself is a huge victory that will pay off with additional dividends in the coming years”.
When Minneapolis lawmakers vowed to disband the police department, supporters acknowledged that the transformation would not happen overnight. But a series of bureaucratic obstacles and political opposition has already posed major challenges to the execution.
The council proposed rewriting the city’s charter to replace police with a new public safety department, but that would require a ballot measure, which a commission recently blocked. And there have been tensions between local community activists who support defunding and other groups that are skeptical of the idea. It’s unclear how the effort will advance next, though some councilmembers have suggested that they would not be abolishing the department but rather dramatically shrinking its mission and power.
In cities that have agreed to some amount of police defunding, the trend is “looking to diminish the unnecessary interactions between police and community members”, said Sarah Johnson, the executive director of Local Progress, a racial justice group that has been tracking defunding and divestment efforts and has catalogued two dozen jurisdictions that have adopted or considered some kind of cut.
“But the call to reimagine public safety implicates hundreds of decisions in each of these cities,” she added. “It’s not going to be answered in any single policy.”
‘We don’t want superficial reforms’
In New York City, home to the largest police department in the country, mayor Bill de Blasio promised to cut $1bn from the NYPD following viral footage and accounts of police brutality against demonstrators. With his new budget, de Blasio argued, he was meeting activists’ demands.
But advocates and other city leaders have criticized de Blasio’s plan as pushing “fake cuts”, arguing that in practice he was reshuffling funds, presenting misleading or false information and relying on “manipulated math”.
The mayor, for example, claimed to cut $300m from police overtime, but an independent budget watchdog noted that police consistently exceed their allotted overtime spending. The mayor also said a $42m cut would come from police reassigning some officers to do increased ticketing enforcement, which would raise revenue in fines. Joo-Hyun Kang, the director of Communities United for Police Reform, said it was false to present new revenue as a cut, and that this change would lead to more harm for communities who are ticketed.
“The fact that the mayor and council felt like they had to make a billion dollar cut and publicly present it that way is historic,” said Kang. “But they didn’t do it. And it’s not going to have an impact. We see this as a very very long road.”
De Blasio’s spokeswoman did not respond to inquiries about the criticisms, but emailed past statements from the mayor defending his NYPD spending, arguing that the overtime reduction is a “goal”, that his new budget “struck the right balance”, and that the city is making a “huge reinvestment in communities”.
In Los Angeles, mayor Eric Garcetti announced he would be decreasing the LAPD budget by $150m and “reinvesting in Black communities”. But that figure, activists have noted, came out of a proposed increase, so did not reflect much of a tangible shift in spending. The overall police budget is $2bn.
“It’s nothing compared to what the full budget is. It’s classic bullshit,” said Albert Corado, a community organizer whose sister, Melyda, was killed by LAPD in 2018 while she was working inside a Trader Joe’s. “We’ve been out here for months and all we get are these really watered down superficial reforms.”
Corado criticized the LAPD’s continued emphasis on “community policing”, which is meant to improve relationships between police and Black neighborhoods, but can lead to more armed officers working in communities that already suffer from high rates of contacts with police: “Just because this is the best version of the worst thing doesn’t mean we have to keep it going. We can’t let people keep dying.”
Garcetti recently said his expansion of community policing was a “dramatic step” in support of “a model that is about co-owning public safety”.
Activists have pushed for cuts that directly eliminate the size of the force and have said they are closely monitoring to ensure the funds are not reinvested into programs that simply replicate police. In Portland, Oregon, where nightly protests have continued since May, the council voted to remove $15m from police. The cuts are aimed at eliminating numerous specialty units accused of targeting people of color and removing armed officers from schools and public transit. Some city leaders scoffed at community groups’ demands for a $50m cut.
But Anna So, a Portland organizer with the abolitionist group Critical Resistance, said the activists’ proposal was not radical given that the budget had increased by roughly $50m in just four years. She argued the militarized show of force by local and federal law enforcement at the Portland protests provided another example of an outsized and harmful police response. So said: “It also shows how hard they are resisting the calls to defund and how much they see it as a challenge to the need for them to actually exist.”
In most cities, the pushback from police unions, which have long opposed reforms, has escalated, with leaders making unsubstantiated threats that any cuts would lead to longer 911 wait times and a rise in crime, and lobbying intense and sometimes personal attacks on the mayors and lawmakers approving the defund measures. Some cities, meanwhile, have rejected calls for defunding and pushed sizable police budget increases, including Phoenix, Houston, San Diego and San Antonio.
While the initial concessions to community demands are not likely to radically transform policing across the US instantaneously, the process has set the groundwork for substantial changes moving forward, said Vitale, the professor.
Even in many cities that have entirely opposed defunding movements , the conversation appears to have shifted. “Politicians are having to grapple with this idea that they can’t just be moderate anymore,” said Jamaar Williams, a member of the Black Lives Matter chapter in Phoenix, where police recently received a $24m increase, despite a deadly record and repeated brutality scandals. “The time is forcing them to say, do you respect the lives of normal working people or are you going to protect the status quo? You can’t get away with platitudes anymore.”
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3 Winners of the UAE Accord With Israel, One Loser (Palestinians), and One Shrug (Iran) |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=51519"><span class="small">Juan Cole, Informed Comment</span></a>
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Saturday, 15 August 2020 12:57 |
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Cole writes: "Trump's announcement Thursday that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) would recognize Israel was presented by the White House as a diplomatic achievement."
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (photo: EPA)
3 Winners of the UAE Accord With Israel, One Loser (Palestinians), and One Shrug (Iran)
By Juan Cole, Informed Comment
15 August 20
rump’s announcement Thursday that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) would recognize Israel was presented by the White House as a diplomatic achievement. The problem is that it achieved nothing, at least with regard to the Israeli-Palestinian issue. The step was, however, politically and economically expedient for the signing parties. The Emirates is a union of seven Gulf sheikhdoms, though oil-rich Abu Dhabi is their de facto leader. The population is 9.6 million, but only about a million of those are citizens, with the rest being guest workers who can be rotated out of the country at will. The citizen population is like that of Rhode Island. The UAE gross domestic product, driven by oil in Abu Dhabi and by finance and tourism in Dubai, is $405 billion, slightly higher than Israel’s $387 billion.
1. What Trump got out of the announcement:
a. It will please the Israel lobbies and he hopes it will help him in Florida, which has a large Jewish-American population, many of them retirees. This voting bloc has soured on Trump because of his poor handling of the coronavirus pandemic, inasmuch as they are a high risk population. In other words, they know he is trying to get them killed. In general, Trump is way down in Florida, with Biden polling at 51% in high quality polls in which Trump comes in as low as 38% and no higher than 46%. The UAE is a small country with a citizen population of only about a million people (and another 8 million guest workers), and despite its high-tech weapons purchases, has never posed a military danger to Israel. In fact, Abu Dhabi has had many friendly behind-the-scenes dealings with Israel. So this treaty is more a recognition of reality than a real breakthrough, and it is unclear that Trump will get much of a bump from it.
b. It cements an American-backed anti-Iran axis consisting of the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Israel. Trump has erected an international trade and financial embargo on Iran, but is opposed in this by China, Russia and the European Union. The Saudi-UAE-Bahrain axis offers basing for US military forces as well as for electronic surveillance, and the addition of Israel increases all those capabilities.
2. What the UAE gets out of the agreement: Abu Dhabi will now be adopted by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), an umbrella for thousands of pro-Israel organizations, which is the most effective lobby in Congress. It may qualify for higher level military technology transfers as a result. Markets may also open to it. After Hurricane Katrina, Dubai Ports suggested that it could rebuild and take over the port of New Orleans, but faced public backlash. Its image will now be substantially burnished. The price of Trump’s economic pincer on Iran is that some UAE tankers have suffered mysterious fires likely as a result of Iranian sabotage. The Emirates already benefit from a US security umbrella, but that protection is now even stronger. The Emirates will likely be read in to US and Israeli intelligence on Iran if it hasn’t already been.
3. What Israel gets out of the agreement: The Arab League boycott of Israel was never effective, and it has been a long time since any Arab country posed a credible conventional military threat to Israel. Egypt has had a peace treaty since 1978, and Jordan since 1994. Still, Arab non-recognition was a way of pressuring Israel to cease colonizing the West Bank, and the UAE has just reduced that pressure.The UAE is a major petroleum and finance center, and offers, as Forbes notes, opportunities for Israeli investment and business partnerships that could be very lucrative. Gaining an avowed ally against Iran in the region is also a strategic benefit.
4. What the Palestinians get out of the agreement: Nothing. Netanyahu’s annexation plans had already been scotched by Jared Kushner and by his own partner in the national unity government, Benny Gantz. He practically speaking gave up nothing. The Palestinians remain under Israeli military occupation. Israel continues to steal Palestinian land and water and to divert these resources to Israeli settlers, which it actively sends in as squatters. Palestinians are routinely attacked by these armed settlers, including just this week. Palestine recalled its ambassador from Abu Dhabi and a Fateh spokesman, Abbas Zaki, denounced the treaty as “a losing bet” and an act of “subordination to the enemies of the Arab nation.”
5. What it means for Iran: Very little. The Emirates play both sides against the middle, and it is alleged that Dubai banks have been major launderers of money and conduits for Iranian economic enterprises, as a way of avoiding US sanctions. That is unlikely to change, though it may have to be hidden even better. Despite their US-provided F-16 fighter jets and other fancy equipment the Emirates are too small and vulnerable to pose a military threat to Iran. Some 5,000 US troops are already stationed in the UAE. Diplomatically, the anti-Iran axis has been strengthened, since it is now out in the open. But given the crushing economic burden that Trump has placed on Iran, and given China’s new interest in adopting Iran as part of its One Belt, One Road project, Gulf diplomacy doesn’t amount to much. Iran is developing ports on the Arabian Sea, beyond the Straits of Hormuz, to export oil and other goods, making the Gulf less salient to Tehran. With regard to regional public opinion, Iran benefits from being viewed as one of the few remaining strong supporters of the Palestinians. That reputation is only increased as Arab states defect to the US and Israel. One reason Saudi Arabia did not immediately join the Emirates in this step is that, unlike the other Sunni Gulf monarchies, it has a substantial citizen population of over 20 million, and many (not all) strongly support the Palestinians.
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ou’ve heard the joke about the boy who kills his parents, then pleads for mercy from the court on the grounds that he’s an orphan. That’s essentially what President Trump is doing — except the victim is the U.S. Postal Service. The Post 
