Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Why Eric Garner Couldn’t Breathe

Update: On Aug. 19, 2019, the NYPD announced it had fired Daniel Pantaleo, the police officer who put Eric Garner in a chokehold.

When New York City police arrested and subdued Eric Garner, he fit a profile: an uncooperative black man committing a petty crime. But the profile that police should have recognized—and the one that Garner fit perfectly—was of someone vulnerable to a dangerous combination of banned law enforcement practices used routinely across the country with impunity, and sometimes fatal results.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, it was not the chokehold alone that killed Garner. And it was not solely Officer Daniel Pantaleo who was responsible for the homicide of the unarmed 43-year-old African-American man arrested for a “quality-of-life” offense under “broken windows policing” that encourages arrest for even the most trivial crimes—in Garner’s case, selling “loosies,” unpackaged cigarettes, on a Staten Island street.

The video of his death, which went viral and sparked protests, shows Pantaleo’s arm tightened around Garner’s neck. It also shows a cluster of officers, including Pantaleo, kneeling on Garner’s back and pressing his face, mouth and nose to the pavement as he lay facedown, hands cuffed behind him, pleading— at least 11 times—“I can’t breathe.”

The Office of the City Medical Examiner ruled Garner’s death a homicide, citing both “compression of neck (chokehold) [and] compression of chest and prone positioning during physical restraint by police.”

First, about the chokehold: According to his lawyer, Pantaleo told the official inquiry he “never exerted any pressure on the windpipe.”

His denial, even if true, is largely irrelevant. There are two main types of chokeholds, and during a struggle, one may easily slide into the other. Pressure to the windpipe—an air choke—directly cuts off the ability to breathe and can kill quickly. Pressure to the veins and arteries of the neck—a blood or carotid choke—stops blood flowing to and from the brain and cuts off its oxygen.

Both holds can kill, and that is why, back in 1993, the NYPD banned them. Chief John F. Timoney, then commander of the department’s Office of Management Analysis and Planning, said: “Basically, stay the hell away from the neck. That’s what [the policy] says.”

And then, Garner’s second cause of death: positional asphyxia caused by “compression of chest and prone positioning.” Even when used alone, extended prone restraint—placing a suspect facedown, hogtied or with hands cuffed behind—has caused untold in-custody deaths by suffocation and is therefore prohibited by many police departments, including the NYPD. But when officers also kneel or push on the restrained person’s back or neck, as they did with Garner, the danger of positional asphyxia escalates. And when the suspect has been pepper sprayed, is intoxicated or has medical conditions such as Garner’s—obesity, asthma and a weak heart—the danger skyrockets.

Dr. Michael Baden, former NYC chief medical examiner and later State Police chief forensic pathologist, who was hired by the Garner family to review the autopsy report, told the New York Times: “Obese people especially, lying face down, prone, are unable to breathe when enough pressure is put on their back. The pressure prevents the diaphragm from going up and down, and he can’t inhale and exhale.’’

The cell phone video shows that even after Pantaleo released the chokehold, and Garner was cuffed, hundreds of pounds of cop flesh pushed down on him. His struggle against that weight was evidence not of vitality and aggression, but rather of desperation to change position so that he could breathe.

“The natural reaction to oxygen deficiency occurs—the person struggles more violently,” a 1995 National Law Enforcement Technology Center bulletin warned. The struggle aggravates the asphyxia by increasing the heart rate and causing carbon dioxide to build up in the lungs.

Ill-trained or angry police who double down on restraint when a handcuffed captive thrashes are clearly violating procedure. “As soon as the suspect is handcuffed, get him off his stomach,” the NYPD’s Guidelines to Preventing Deaths in Custody state. “Turn him on his side or place him in a seated position. If he continues to struggle, do not sit on his back.”

The fact that Garner had medical conditions increasing his vulnerability to positional asphyxia was not readily knowable. But that he was obese and struggling to breathe—even after the chokehold that compromised him was released—was obvious. That, once handcuffed and down, he was not immediately turned over or allowed to sit up was both a violation of long-standing policy and, ultimately, homicidal.

And by failing to act after Garner became comatose, police further violated policy—and possibly the law. The NYPD patrol guide warns that officers are required to “intervene if the use of force against a subject clearly becomes excessive. Failure to do so may result in both criminal and civil liability.”

The FBI issues similar injunctions. To avoid in-custody injury or death, officers should “monitor subjects carefully for breathing difficulties/loss of consciousness. Be prepared to administer CPR. Obtain medical assistance immediately.”

“He didn’t die because he stopped breathing on his own,” said his sister, Ellisha Flagg. “He died because someone took his breath away.”

And the EMTs who arrived on the scene made no effort to give it back. Faced with the limp, unconscious man, they were bizarrely passive, failing to apply an oxygen mask, to ensure  that Garner’s airway was clear or to assess his condition in any way beyond seeking a pulse.

Prone restraint and resulting positional asphyxia have been implicated in numerous in-custody deaths on the street and in prisons. And if police departments are unmoved by compassion, they might consider liability. Even though officers escape criminal charges, civil courts have levied millions of dollars in settlements.

In 2013, Ethan Saylor, who had Down syndrome, refused to leave a Maryland movie theater because he wanted to see the film again. Three off-duty sheriff’s deputies forcibly removed the 294-pound disabled man. “They placed him [facedown] on the ground,” his mother Patti testified before a Senate committee, “prone restraint, put handcuffs on, and my son died of asphyxiation on that floor of that movie theater for that $10 movie ticket.”

Police used prone restraint on: Jonny Gammage, a Pittsburgh man, at a traffic stop; Charles Dixon, an Altoona, Pennsylvania man, after a disturbance at a birthday party; Oral Brown, who was found wandering disoriented in Fort Lauderdale, Florida after his car crashed; and Tanisha Anderson, whom Cleveland police were taking for a mental-health evaluation after her parents reported she had disturbed the peace. All died from positional asphyxia in what amounts to institutionally protected homicide.

In 1999, Brian Drummond, who was unarmed and mentally ill, ended up inva permanent vegetative state after cops subdued him. “Although he had offered no resistance, Officer Brian McElhaney put his knees into Mr. Drummond’s back and placed the weight of his body on him. [Officer Christopher Ned] also put his knees and placed the weight of his body on him, except that he had one knee on Mr. Drummond’s neck,” the Drummond v. City of Anaheim trial transcript noted. Drummond “repeatedly told the officers that he could not breathe and that they were choking him.” One eyewitness testified, “The officers were laughing during the course of these events.”

The 9th Circuit Court concluded in 2003: “The compression asphyxia that resulted appears with unfortunate frequency in the reported decisions of the federal courts, and presumably occurs with even greater frequency on the street.”

More than a decade later, it seems little has changed. Acts of commission and omission by each of the many police who participated in or witnessed Garner’s arrest represent not only individual culpability, but a systemic failure of training or compliance.

It was “all the police [on the scene], not just one police officer, that would have caused the obstruction to breathing,” forensic expert Michael Baden told Fox News.

By blaming only the chokehold, Pantaleo’s fellow officers and much of the media threw one cop under a bus that carries a heavy cargo of ignorance, aggression, profiling, and needed reform. 

The NYPD officers who petulantly turned their backs on the mayor and held work slowdowns added to the impression that the force is out of control, and left the public justifiably wary of trusting police with their lives.

Materials that can revolutionize how light is harnessed for solar energy

Scientists have designed organic molecules capable of generating two excitons per photon of light, a process called singlet fission. The excitons can live for much longer than those generated from their inorganic counterparts, which leads to an amplification of electricity generated per photon that is absorbed by a solar cell.

Heat shield just 10 atoms thick to protect electronic devices

Atomically thin materials could create heat-shields for cell phones or laptops that would protect people and temperature-sensitive components and make future electronic gadgets even more compact.

Twitter Helped Chinese Government Promote Disinformation on Repression of Muslims

Promoted tweets from a state-run news outlet distort the position of Uighurs in the western province of Xinjiang.

The post Twitter Helped Chinese Government Promote Disinformation on Repression of Muslims appeared first on The Intercept.

Don’t Tax Carbon—Just Stop Digging It Up

For alternate perspectives on this issue, see "The Government Should Write Everyone a Check—Paid for by a Carbon Tax" by Owen Poindexter and "Some Economists Say Carbon Taxes Are a Silver Bullet. The Reality Is More Complicated." by Kate Aronoff.

Owen argues that a carbon tax and dividend could cut carbon emissions while contributing to the general welfare, but the model is deeply flawed. Indeed, any carbon tax—whether the revenue is redistributed as dividend or not—would be both ineffective and regressive. We should shift our energies toward climate solutions that eliminate fossil fuels altogether.

For starters, actually existing carbon taxes from Canada to the Netherlands have, at best, reduced carbon emissions only modestly. Look at British Columbia: In 2008, the Canadian province implemented a carbon tax with revenues returned through dividends and income tax rate reductions. While the province’s emissions declined in the program’s first year, they rose again in subsequent years.

The environmental group Food and Water Watch (FWW) indicates that the type of emissions subject to the tax actually increased in British Columbia between 2011 and 2014, while untaxed emissions went down. As a result, FWW concluded, “It appears that the British Columbia carbon tax has had no beneficial long-term impact on greenhouse gas emissions.” The report speculates that a lack of adequate public transit (meaning individuals rely on cars regardless of the increased price of gas) and the promise of a dividend and lower taxes (which meant people and businesses didn’t mind paying slightly higher energy prices) contributed to the policy’s failure.

But the problems run deeper. Market-based approaches such as a carbon tax are accepted by the fossil fuel industry because they do not actually threaten the ongoing and continuous extraction of oil and gas. In a statement on the 2015 United Nations climate talks in Paris, ExxonMobil endorsed a carbon tax as “the best option” to address climate change while “let[ting] the market drive the selection of solutions.” But the market by itself cannot set in motion a process of reducing carbon emissions toward zero, nor address the larger structural inequalities that are becoming ever more apparent.

According to Basav Sen, climate justice project director at the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Policy Studies, “A price on carbon is like a sales tax—it doesn’t make polluters pay for greenhouse gas pollution. It makes end users pay.” By contrast, he says, “A regulator solution that phases out fossil fuel extraction and use can be designed to penalize those who are responsible for the problem, not everyone else.” This direction is where we need to go.

Owen argues that the financial burden of a carbon tax could be outweighed by a dividend, while others propose that carbon tax revenues should be used to implement climate solutions in frontline communities. But, as Sen points out (and Owen concedes), if a carbon tax were actually effective, revenues would decline as emissions decrease. The tax itself is not a reliable source of funds for either idea.

There is no evidence that the fossil fuel industry, with its powerful lobby in Washington, would permit a carbon tax to be set high enough to actually compensate for the vast harm the industry has done (and continues to do) across the globe, especially in communities near the sites of extraction.

The belief that a tax-driven process is possible distracts from the more complex and deep-reaching political changes necessary to drastically cut carbon emissions, such as regulating against the extraction and use of fossil fuels and seeking the best and most inclusive ways of transitioning toward a regenerative economy—one that doesn’t leave vulnerable people and communities behind. For instance, governments worldwide provide an estimated $775 billion to $1 trillion annually in subsidies to fossil fuel corporations (not including the social costs that get shifted onto the poor by climate and health impacts and such externalities as military interventions). It can be argued that the fossil fuel industry would not be viable if it were forced to adhere to a strict business model without subsidies and tax breaks.

Ending subsidies would be a start. But a carbon tax is not the answer.

For alternate perspectives on this issue, see "The Government Should Write Everyone a Check—Paid for by a Carbon Tax" by Owen Poindexter and "Some Economists Say Carbon Taxes Are a Silver Bullet. The Reality Is More Complicated." by Kate Aronoff.

Oil Lobbyist Touts Success in Effort to Criminalize Pipeline Protests, Leaked Recording Shows

In leaked audio obtained by The Intercept, AFPM conceded its behind-the-scenes role in crafting state laws to criminalize oil and gas pipeline protests.

The post Oil Lobbyist Touts Success in Effort to Criminalize Pipeline Protests, Leaked Recording Shows appeared first on The Intercept.

A Cycle of Renewal, Broken: How Big Tech and Big Media Abuse Copyright Law to Slay Competition

As long we've had electronic mass media, audiences and creators have benefited from periods of technological upheaval that force old gatekeepers to compete with brash newcomers with new ideas about what constitutes acceptable culture and art. Those newcomers eventually became gatekeepers themselves, who then faced their own crop of revolutionaries. But today, the cycle is broken: as media, telecoms, and tech have all grown concentrated, the markets have become winner-take-all clashes among titans who seek to dominate our culture, our discourse and our communications.

How did the cycle end? Can we bring it back? To understand the answers to these questions, we need to consider how the cycle worked — back when it was still working.

How Things Used to Work

In 1950, a television salesman named Robert Tarlton put together a consortium of TV merchants in the town of Lansford, Pennsylvania to erect an antenna tall enough to pull down signals from Philadelphia, about 90 miles to the southeast. The antenna connected to a web of cables that the consortium strung up and down the streets of Lansford, bringing big-city TV to their customers — and making TV ownership for Lansfordites far more attractive. Though hobbyists had been jury-rigging their own "community antenna television" networks since 1948, no one had ever tried to go into business with such an operation. The first commercial cable TV company was born.

The rise of cable over the following years kicked off decades of political controversy over whether the cable operators should be allowed to stay in business, seeing as they were retransmitting broadcast signals without payment or permission and collecting money for the service. Broadcasters took a dim view of people using their signals without permission, which is a little rich, given that the broadcasting industry itself owed its existence to the ability to play sound recordings over the air without permission or payment.

The FCC brokered a series of compromises in the years that followed, coming up with complex rules governing which signals a cable operator could retransmit, which ones they must retransmit, and how much all this would cost. The end result was a second way to get TV, one that made peace with—and grew alongside—broadcasters, eventually coming to dominate how we get cable TV in our homes.

By 1976, cable and broadcasters joined forces to fight a new technology: home video recorders, starting with Sony's Betamax recorders. In the eyes of the cable operators, broadcasters, and movie studios, these were as illegitimate as the playing of records over the air had been, or as retransmitting those broadcasts over cable had been. Lawsuits over the VCR continued for the next eight years. In 1984, the Supreme Court finally weighed in, legalizing the VCR, and finding that new technologies were not illegal under copyright law if they were "capable of substantial noninfringing uses."

It's hard to imagine how controversial the VCR was in its day. MPAA president Jack Valenti made history by attending a congressional hearing where he thundered ,"I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the woman home alone."

Despite that unequivocal condemnation, home recording is so normal today that your cable operator likely offers to bundle a digital recorder with your subscription. Just as the record companies made peace with broadcasters, and broadcasters made peace with cable, cable has made its peace with home recording.

It's easy to imagine that this is the general cycle of technology: a new technology comes along and rudely shoulders its way into the marketplace, pouring the old wine of the old guard into its shiny new bottles. The old guard insist that these brash newcomers are mere criminals, and demand justice.

The public flocks to the new technology, and, before you know it, the old guard and the newcomers are toasting one another at banquets and getting ready to sue the next vulgarian who has the temerity to enter their market and pour their old wine into even newer bottles.

That's how it used to work, but the cycle has been interrupted.

The Cycle is Broken

In 1998, Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, whose Section 1201 bans bypassing a "technical measure" that “controls access” to copyrighted works. The statute does not make an exemption for people who need to bypass a copyright lock to do something legal, so traditional acts of "adversarial interoperability" (making a new thing that plugs into an old thing without asking for permission) can be headed off before they even get started. Once a company adds a digital lock to its products, it can scare away other companies that want to give it the broadcasters vs records/cable vs broadcasters/VCRs vs cable treatment. These challengers will have to overcome their fear that "trafficking” in a “circumvention device" could trigger DMCA 1201's civil damages or even criminal penalties—$500,000 and 5 years in prison...for a first offense.

When companies like Sony made the first analog TV recorders, they focused on what their customer wanted, not what the winners of last year's technological battle thought was proper. That's how we got VCRs that could record off the air or cable (so you could record any show, even major Hollywood movies getting their first broadcast airing) and that allowed recordings made on one VCR to be played on another recorder (so you could bring that movie over to a friend's house to watch with a bowl of popcorn).

Today's digital video products are different. Cable TV, satellite TV, DVDs/HD DVDs/Blu-Ray, and streaming services all use digital locks that scramble their videos. This allows them to threaten any would-be adversarial interoperators with legal reprisals under DMCA 1201, should they have the temerity to make a user-focused recorder for their products. That stifles a lot of common-sense ideas: for example, a recorder that works on all the programs your cable delivers (even pay-per-views and blockbusters); a recorder that lets you store the Christmas videos that Netflix and Amazon Prime take out of rotation at Christmastime so that you have to pay an upcharge to watch them when they're most relevant; or a recorder that lets you record a video and take it over to a friend's house or transfer it to an archival drive so you can be sure you can watch it ten years (or even ten minutes from now.

Since the first record players, every generation of entertainment technology has been overtaken by a new generation—a generation that allowed new artists to find new audiences, a new generation that overturned the biases and preconceptions of the executives that controlled the industry and allowed for new modes of expression and new ideas.

Today, as markets concentrate—cable, telecoms, movie studios, and tech platforms—the competition is shifting from the short-lived drive to produce the best TV possible to a long-term strategy of figuring out how to use a few successful shows to sell bundles of mediocre ones.

In a world where the cycle that led to the rise of cable and streaming was still in effect, you could record your favorite shows before they were locked behind a rival's paywalls. You could search all the streaming services' catalogs from a single interface and figure out how to make your dollar go farther by automatically assembling a mix of one-off payments and subscriptions. You could stream the videos your home devices received to your phone while you were on the road...and more.

And just as last year's pirates — the broadcasters, the cable operators, the VCR makers — became this year's admirals, the companies that got their start by making new services that centered your satisfaction instead of the goodwill of the entrenched industries would someday grow to be tomorrow's Goliaths, facing a new army of Davids.

Fatalistic explanations for the unchecked rise of today's monopolized markets—things like network effects and first-mover advantage—are not the whole story. They are not unstoppable forces of nature. The cycle of concentration and renewal in media-tech shows us that, whatever role the forces of first-mover advantage and network effects are playing in market concentration, they are abetted by some badly written and oft-abused legal rules.

DMCA 1201 let companies declare certain kinds of competition illegal: adversarial interoperability, one of the most historically tried-and-true methods for challenging dominant companies, can be made into a crime simply by designing products so that connecting to them requires you to bypass a copyright lock. Since DMCA 1201 bans this "circumvention," it also bans any competition that requires circumvention.

That's why we're challenging DMCA 1201 in court: we don't think that companies should be able to make up their own laws, because inevitably, these turn into "Felony Contempt of Business Model."

DMCA 1201 is just one of the laws and policies that have created the thicket that would-be adversarial interoperators run up against when they seek to upend the established hierarchy: software patents, overreaching license agreements, and theories of tortious interference with contractual relations are all so broadly worded and interpreted that they can be used to intimidate would-be competitors no matter how exciting their products are and no matter how big the market for them would be.

The Darts release video for “Breakup Makeup”

Arizona’s The Darts have released a video for “Breakup Makeup”, the opening track from their recent Alternative Tentacles album I Like You But Not Like That, which came out back in May. Have a watch below.

The post The Darts release video for “Breakup Makeup” appeared first on Dying Scene.

Fireside Chat

Are Antifa terrorists? Come warm yourselves by the fire and discuss.

Bernie Sanders Just Promised to Cut the Nation’s Prison Population in Half

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) unveiled his plan to reform the criminal justice system on Sunday, with proposals to cut the country’s incarcerated population in half, ban private prisons, legalize marijuana, and end mandatory minimum sentencing, solitary confinement, and the federal death penalty. “America’s prisons are hotbeds of human rights violations, torture, sexual assault, and wrongful […]

NOFX release new single “Fish In A Gun Barrel” (proceeds going to Moms Demand Action)

Ahead of the band’s upcoming album, NOFX have released a brand new single titled “Fish In A Gun Barrel.” In an intro to the song Fat Mike explains that the song was written in 2016 but the band held off on releasing it due to it hitting a little too close to home so soon after […]

The post NOFX release new single “Fish In A Gun Barrel” (proceeds going to Moms Demand Action) appeared first on Dying Scene.

Federal Lands Are Becoming Tribal Lands Again

This story was originally published by High Country News and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.  The smell of scorched soil and burnt wood filled the air. Michael Rondeau, CEO of the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians, looked over the damage, clad in forest-green pants and a lemon-yellow jacket […]

Why am I the only thinking this is a bad idea?! Why are people seeing this in a positive light?

https://news.softpedia.com/news/google-to-allow-fingerprint-authentication-instead-of-password-on-some-services-527025.shtml

The Impossible Decisions Palestinians Are Forced to Make

In a defiant statement released the morning of August 16, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) declared that she would not travel to Israel under “oppressive conditions meant to humiliate me.” Her remarks came after a turbulent 24 hours that began Thursday when President Trump took the unprecedented step of calling on Israel to bar Tlaib and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.)—the only two Muslim women in Congress—from entry.

The two had been planning an alternative to the annual right-wing AIPAC-sponsored trip for congresspeople, which typically occurs during the first August recess. Tlaib and Omar intended to lead a delegation aimed at humanizing Palestinians, examining issues like poverty and education, and probing Israel’s child detention policies. Tlaib—who is Palestinian-American and a democratic socialist—was also going to visit family members, including her 90-year-old grandmother.

But in response to Trump’s demand, Israel agreed Thursday to deny the lawmakers entry. Following criticism, however, Israel walked back this decision, saying Tlaib would be given “humanitarian” permission to visit her grandmother, but only on the condition that she agreed not to, in her words, “promote boycotts against Israel” during her trip. This isn’t confined to Tlaib: Israel systematically denies entry based on people’s political positions, passing a law in 2017 denying entry to proponents of the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement

At first, Tlaib agreed to these conditions. But she reversed course and announced Friday morning she will not go, declaring, “The Israeli government used my love and desire to see my grandmother to silence me and made my ability to do so contingent upon my signing a letter—reflecting just how undemocratic and afraid they are of the truth my trip would reveal about what is happening in the State of Israel and to Palestinians living under occupation with United States support.”

In These Times spoke with Yousef Munayyer, a Palestinian-American writer and activist, and the executive director of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, about the significance of Tlaib’s statement, and what it reveals about widespread injustices against Palestinians perpetrated far from public scrutiny. “People are getting a tiny window into the reality,” he says. “The reality is so much worse than what people have been exposed to in witnessing what Tlaib has had to wrestle with.”

Sarah Lazare: First, can I get your gut response to Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s statement today that she will not go to Israel "under these oppressive conditions meant to humiliate me"?

Yousef Munayyer: As a Palestinian, I think that what I felt is a feeling that many Palestinians have: the feeling of being heard and being seen. For a brief moment, others saw some of the really torturous decisions Palestinians are forced to make on a daily basis about things everyone else takes for granted. Rep. Rashida Tlaib wanted to go on this trip, to carry out her obligations as a member of Congress, and along with Rep. Omar, inform herself of the ways in which U.S. policy is impacting Palestinians on the ground. She also wanted to visit her homeland, the homeland of her family, and visit family members. Just to do so, she was forced to make a commitment to not be who she really is—to give up a part of herself, part of her rights, and commit to silence.

As I was watching this take place, and reading her statement, the only thing I could think about is how many Palestinians have had to make these calculations on a daily basis in so many different ways. It affects Palestinians inside of Palestine and out. Tlaib is from Detroit, and her family is from Palestine. Just to exercise her right to spend time with her family, she had to give up part of her humanity. Palestinians inside and outside of Palestine are always wrestling with these kinds of tradeoffs.

Palestinians are often faced with very difficult questions: Do I subject myself to interrogation at a checkpoint if it means I’ll be able to make it to a hospital appointment to get cancer treatment? Do I post on social media about what I think about the situation if it might mean never being able to see my family again? Do I stand back as Israeli soldiers detain my 5-year-old child if it means pushing back will leave them an orphan? These are the kinds of decisions Palestinians have to wrestle with every day. You’re asked to compromise parts of your humanity to have access to other parts.

What was so powerful about Tlaib’s decision, as difficult as I’m sure it was, is that it allowed the American public for the first time to have a little window into the daily realities of Palestinians and the way they face these torturous questions as full human beings. I think that’s why the Israelis are so concerned about her. She is forcing people to think about Palestinians as full human beings for the first time in spaces like Congress, where that has always been taboo and a nonstarter. The unfortunate reality is that that is revolutionary.

When you are living outside of Palestine, and your family is there, you have to take into calculation things most people will never have to think about. You have to think about whether the things you say or the positions you take or the arguments you make with people in a completely different country can have repercussions for your family thousands of miles away. Those are real things people in diaspora communities wrestle with all the time. When you’re living in a situation where you don’t have freedom or self-determination and you are extremely vulnerable, that becomes an added vulnerability. It’s a very heavy burden people in the diaspora have.

Sarah: Can you talk about the Democratic establishment’s response to the events over the last few days? It’s seemed to me that many of the statements from Democratic centrists have been tepid, superficially criticizing Netanyahu’s decision, but going out of their way to reaffirm their overall support for Israel. Nancy Pelosi’s statement on August 15 that “Israel’s denial of entry to Congresswomen Tlaib and Omar is a sign of weakness, and beneath the dignity of the great State of Israel” seems to be an example of this.

Yousef: It is very clear the Democratic leadership feels they were betrayed and thrown under the bus by the Israeli government. Demoratic leaders knew these trips are annual events. AIPAC always takes annual events. They knew there were members of Congress expressing really pointed criticism of the U.S.- Israel relationship, and of the impact of groups like AIPAC. They were coming into this summer knowing this moment was going to potentially be a flashpoint. They have been for the past several months goaded into one catastrophe after another by right-wing forces—whether it’s Republicans in Congress, the president of the U.S., or other mouthpieces on the right that are not necessarily in government—to take action and isolate and marginalize their own caucus members for not carrying the orthodoxy on U.S. policy towards Israel. What they were hoping to do in this moment is to try to paper over what has become an undeniable partisan divide that is no longer just discernible in public opinion polling but also beginning to manifest itself in votes and actions and words of members of Congress.

What the Democratic Party leadership really wanted to have happen was for these trips to project bipartisan support for Israel. To make that happen, they needed assurances from the Israeli government, which they got, that Tlaib and Omar would not be denied entry on the later delegation, a scenario which would be a political nightmare. They got those assurances before they went, and they went on the basis this was not going to blow up on their face. 

They did the whole AIPAC shuffle: took pictures with Israeli military and applauded Netanyahu. Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) was even asked by the Israeli media whether he agreed with Beto O’Rourke’s characterizations of Netanyahu as racist, and he said, ‘I don’t think he’s a racist. Period. No.’ They did all of this to try to project bipartisanship, and as soon as they got back to the U.S. they got double crossed. And the entire story became about the exact issue they wanted to pretend didn’t exist. You saw the response yesterday from Democrats saying this was wrong. The big takeaway message, which has been said over and over during the years—the Israelis have put all of their eggs in the basket of Republicans and white evangelicals. The Democratic leadership has to wrestle with what that means.

Sarah: But it seems that, in issuing criticisms, many Democrats at the same time were trying to prove their fealty to Israel. For example, Joe Biden tweeted on August 15, “I have always been a stalwart supporter of Israel—a vital partner that shares our democratic values. No democracy should deny entry to visitors based on the content of their ideas—even ideas they strongly object to.”

Yousef: That is true. There is a degree of muscle memory in how people fashion language. But I think the bigger picture is more important. I think people are going to remember from this moment that a taboo was broken during this period. People took a stand they would never have taken. There is evidence of a continuing shift.

Sarah: What else do you think will be remembered about this moment? What does Rashida Tlaib’s refusal to travel to Israel under humiliating terms—even if it means not seeing her family—reveal to the broader public about the geopolitics at work?

Yousef: It’s important to contextualize this in the wave of right-wing nationalist politics on the rise in a number of places in the globe. Israel is a central component along with the forces that brought us Trump and forces that are in support of ethnic nationalism and anti-immigration in Europe, as well as right-wing forces in Brazil. Here in the U.S., the president has used racism and xenophobia and all forms of bigotry to pursue political power and a broader nationalist project. Donald Trump is not an everyday racist. He is a white supremacist demagogue who is using racism to pursue a broad nationalist project that is dangerous as hell. He’s instrumentalized Israel as part of this. Israel has willingly gone along, in part because their worldview reflects the ethno-nationalist idea that is part of what Trump wants to do.

Sarah: Do you think the U.S. public is being exposed to the reality of Israel’s occupation and apartheid policies?

Yousef: People are getting a tiny window into the reality. The reality is so much worse than what people have been exposed to in witnessing what Tlaib has had to wrestle with. It is much worse than that. Now they’re able to see it through the prism of an American elected official who happens to be Palestinian American.

Sarah: Can you say more about the realities people aren’t seeing?

Yousef: It’s such a huge topic to discuss. Palestinians experience this across the globe and in different ways. Palestinians are living under military occupation in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip, where they are ruled by a military system that governs key choices in their life, and they have no say whatsoever in how that can be determined. Inside of Israel, you have Palestinian citizens of Israel living as second-class citizens in places where the government has passed into law the idea that Jewish citizens are superior—in the totality of the land, including the West Bank and Gaza. You have Palestinians living in the diaspora and in refugee camps who have never been able to return to their homes, never been allowed to return to their families, some living in a state of precariousness that in some instances is worse than what Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza face.

Tlaib’s gut-wrenching decisions gave a tiny glimpse into the vast matrix into policies that are imposing these kinds of tradeoffs on Palestinians every day of their lives.

The Government Should Write Everyone a Check—Paid for by a Carbon Tax

For decades, we have been told that fighting climate change will hurt the economy. But there is an elegant policy idea that fights climate change and poverty at the same time: A carbon dividend, which would impose a steadily rising carbon tax and return the revenue to the public as universal and equal cash payments. This would be a tremendous force in reducing carbon emissions while providing a substantial increase in purchasing power to the least well-off people at little to no cost to the national budget. We can and should take other dramatic steps against climate change, but we can start with one policy that provides an incredible bang for its buck.

Several states as well as the U.S. House and Senate have active or recent carbon dividend bills, and they provide a good template. The federal bills call for a fee on fossil fuel companies for the use, sale or transfer of fossil fuels. The toll, in the bills, would start at $15 per metric ton of carbon and rise $10 a year indefinitely. The U.S. would also impose a border adjustment tax on any imports from countries with lower (or no) carbon taxes, so as not to advantage imports or incentivize companies to relocate. Corporations, particularly those that extract fossil fuels, would presumably pass the cost of these taxes on to processors and other middlemen, and eventually consumers, raising the price of energy and energy-intensive goods. On the surface this looks bad for consumers—but what are the upsides?

Simply put: A higher carbon price shifts consumer, company and investor behavior toward environmentally friendly practices. Solar panels would make more economic sense for consumers and unnecessary driving and flying would make less. Large corporations, from Amazon to Starbucks, would be incentivized to operate on cleaner energy. Investors would look toward new forms of energy generation and efficient materials. An analysis by Regional Economic Models Inc. (REMI) estimates this type of legislation would lower carbon emissions to 50% of 1990 levels within 20 years, nearly putting the U.S. on pace to meet the Paris Climate Accord target. The corresponding reduction in air pollution would prevent 230,000 premature deaths over that time.

Significant increases in the price of energy could push many consumers to the breaking point, but there is a simple and powerful solution to this policy issue.

REMI found that a universal dividend could reach $300 a month within a decade, virtually ensuring every low-and middle-income person—other than those employed in a few select sectors, namely oil and coal—would end up with the same or more in their bank accounts despite the tax. Purchasing power should also steadily increase, especially at the lower income quintiles, from the dividend and a projected two million additional jobs. A dramatic reduction in fossil fuel extraction would decrease the amount of the dividend, but this would be a good problem to have—and could be addressed by additional revenue sources (e.g., a wealth tax) for the dividend.

The fact that a dividend reaches everyone differentiates it from other green economic initiatives like a stand-alone green jobs program. If we instead directed the new carbon fee revenue to public works and clean energy subsidies, then those working-class people who are not employed in clean energy or connected sectors, many of whom are already barely staying above water, would see prices rise with limited offsetting assistance. We should still pursue such projects—paid for through the general fund—but they are no replacement for a dividend that reaches everyone. Indeed, a revenue-neutral carbon dividend is not mutually exclusive with other progressive priorities, and can be symbiotic with a Green New Deal.

As the carbon fee rises, the dividend total will as well, and could rise from a few hundred dollars for a family of four to a few thousand dollars annually. For everyone, this will at least help offset the increased cost of travel and various goods. For the working class, this money could become a significant form of assistance. Cash dividends have been shown to improve healthcare metrics, school attendance, peace of mind and other prosocial factors, and have no significant effect on employment or substance use. As a universal program, a carbon dividend would include those who often miss out on other benefit programs, such as unemployed people and those who don’t file taxes.

Oil CEOs, airline executives and others who live off the ability to pollute for free may not like a carbon fee and dividend, but the rest of us would enjoy a progressively healthier environment with a little extra spending money.

For alternate perspectives on a carbon tax, check back to InTheseTimes.com on Monday.

Trauma Counselors Were Pressured To Divulge Confidential Information About Facebook Moderators, Internal Letter Claims

Thousands of Facebook workers have viewed the letter on an internal message board.

The post Trauma Counselors Were Pressured To Divulge Confidential Information About Facebook Moderators, Internal Letter Claims appeared first on The Intercept.

#Maths and #technology specialists need #HippocraticOath, says academic | #Science | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/aug/16/mathematicians-need-doctor-style-hippocratic-oath-says-academic-hannah-fry

For Years, Reporters Questioned the Terror Prosecution of Hamad Hayat. Now He’s Been Freed.

The case against Hamad Hayat was “absurd on its face” and representative of the government’s abusive post-9/11 counterterrorism prosecutions.

The post For Years, Reporters Questioned the Terror Prosecution of Hamad Hayat. Now He’s Been Freed. appeared first on The Intercept.

Prescribed Burn

To prevent increasingly massive wildfires we need to rethink our approach to forest management.

The Untold Benefits of Climate Change

An optimistic look at our dying planet.