Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

This Week in Fascism #45: Patriot Front Hides Behind Cops in DC, Former ‘Campus Reform’ Troll Outed as White Nationalist https://itsgoingdown.org/this-week-in-fascism-45-patriot-front-hides-behind-cops-in-dc-white-nationalist-outed-in-campus-reform/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

#ShutDownCanada: Injunction served and burnt at #Tyendinaga rail blockade as numbers grow [Videos] . #wetsuweten #wetsuwetenstrong #Unistoten #antireport - Read & watch here: https://enoughisenough14.org/2020/02/11/shutdowncanada-injunction-served-and-burnt-at-tyendinaga-rail-blockade-as-numbers-grow-videos/

Awwwww yeah!

Goodbye, Windows: Another Government Plans En-Masse Transition to Linux
https://news.softpedia.com/news/goodbye-windows-another-government-plans-en-masse-transition-to-linux-529150.shtml

A Brazilian judge has decided against prosecuting Glenn Greenwald for cybercrime 'for now' https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/482038-brazilian-judge-holds-off-on-indicting-american-journalist-glenn

War Is an Enormous Threat to the Climate Movement

The 2020s opened with dual crises.

In Australia, unprecedented bushfires tore across a total area the size of Virginia, killing at least 29 people and an estimated one billion animals, and destroying 2,000 homes. The news was flooded with images of thousands of people taking refuge on Australia’s southeastern coastline, the sun blocked by thick smoke, children wearing surgical masks, in a crisis whose severity is unambiguously tied to climate change.

On January 3, the Trump administration brought the United States to the brink of war when it assassinated Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the commander of Iran’s Quds Force and a ranking official of Iran. Iran responded by bombing a U.S. base in Iraq, and the world watched in horror to see what President Trump would do next. Though Trump has backed away from direct warfare for the moment, he vowed on January 8 to escalate already-devastating sanctions on Iran.

For those of us who went into the new year sober about the fact that this decade is our chance to stem climate change, the very real possibility of all-out war with Iran was a rude awakening to the fact that U.S. belligerence could ruin everything.

To win a Green New Deal with the teeth to keep fossil fuels in the ground and secure a just transition and job guarantee for all workers, it will take organizing and protest on an unprecedented scale.  U.S. wars, however, have historically been used to beat back and repress exactly the kind of left movements that we need to tackle the climate crisis. The supposed need to protect national unity and “security” during wartime has been used by the U.S. government to justify heightened surveillance and clampdown against those deemed disruptive—disproportionately targeting the Left. World War I was used to justify the passage of the Espionage Act, which criminalized speech deemed “disloyal” and was a bludgeon against anti-war movements, and was also used to prosecute and imprison hundreds of radical unionists. The Cold War, too, was used to justify a vicious campaign of political repression not only against people perceived to be communists, socialists and anarchists, but also against civil rights and black freedom organizers.

In the aftermath of September 11, the drumbeat for war in Afghanistan and then Iraq was used to justify a broad range of repressive measures targeting social movements. Democrats overwhelmingly voted for the PATRIOT Act, which gave law enforcement and intelligence agencies sweeping powers to search and surveil World Trade Organization protesters and environmental activists. In November of 2003, Miami Police Chief John Timoney launched a vicious crackdown on thousands of people who had gathered to protest the Free Trade Area of the Americas Summit: He was assisted by 40 law enforcement agencies, the FBI, and $8.5-million earmarked from Congress to pay for the Iraq War, and he had worked hard to convince residents of Miami that protesters were a public safety threat. A crowd of farmworkers, union members and activists concerned about “free trade” running roughshod over human and planetary wellbeing was attacked with tear gas, stun guns, rubber bullets and concussion grenades, as helicopters hovered continuously overhead.

As social movements are besieged, wars are used to justify more militarism across the globe. The United States emerged as the world’s preeminent military empire after World War II, and has since expanded its empire, now the largest in human history, with 800 bases spanning the globe. If history is any indicator, a U.S. war in Iran would almost certainly lead to a hike in overall military budgets. In fact, the United States has already used its aggression towards Iran to justify increasing the U.S. military presence in the Middle East by 20,000 troops since last spring.

This military empire, in turn, enables the same global bullying driving the climate crisis. The United States is the number-one per-capita emitter of greenhouse gases, while China is the overall highest emitter. Yet, its international domination ensures that the United States never has to pay meaningful reparations, or answer to those countries hardest hit, most of them in the Global South, and still scarred by their histories of colonialism and plunder.  And due to its position as the most powerful country in the world, the United States has also dominated the very institutions meant to intervene in global crises—in particular, the United Nations—meaning the United States will never have to answer for its staggering global wrongdoings, from pulling out of the Paris climate accords to waging war in Yemen. The United States wouldn't have the power that it has if not for its military strength, and if that strength were to diminish, so would its sway at the UN.

There are plenty of reasons for U.S. climate justice and anti-war movements to unite against common enemies. The same Democratic Party leadership that has failed to take robust action to curb climate change and gotten behind Trump’s climate-unfriendly U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement has also reliably rubber-stamped Trump’s massive military budgets and overwhelmingly voted to pass new sanctions on Iran, Russia and North Korea in 2017. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who last year famously scolded children who asked her to support the Green New Deal by telling them “I know what I’m doing,” also voted to authorize the Iraq War. And Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who has been prominently targeted by Sunrise Movement sit-ins, has supported disastrous U.S. interventions, from Afghanistan to Libya, and declined to meet with Yemeni peace campaigners. The imperialist arrogance that undergirds the bipartisan war consensus—that the U.S. has the right to impose its will on the world—also underlies the political consensus that the U.S. does not need to fulfill its own obligation to reduce the climate harm it is perpetrating across the planet.

Meanwhile, the same fossil fuel companies destroying the planet are donating to powerful think tanks pushing for war. The need for “energy security”—i.e. reliable access to energy sources—has become a popular oil industry buzzword. The notoriously hawkish American Enterprise Institute and Center for Strategic and International Studies receivesignificant funding from the fossil fuel industry. The Center for American Progress, which pushes militaristic policies in the Democratic Party, also receives funding from the natural gas distributor Pacific Gas and Energy Company. Together, these think tanks have played a role in pushing the U.S. into the kind of reckless brinkmanship towards Iran this decade opened with.

There are obviously other sizable militaries in the world other than the United States––As of 2018, China and Russia, for example, had military budgets roughly 38.5% and 9.4% of the U.S. military budget respectively. But there’s only one Americans can directly curb and one whose global reach fuels others to keep pace. For the sake of humanity’s future, permanent U.S. war footing cannot continue. If climate change is the cudgel, U.S. empire is the arm that wields it. Our only choice is to stop them both.

Yvonne Rall, Educator and Passionate Advocate of French, Dead at 84

            Yvonne Rall, a brilliant and demanding educator who left her mark on thousands of high school French students, died February 7th in Kettering, Ohio. The cause was complications from Alzheimer’s disease.             She was 84.             She was my mother.             A native of France who arrived in the United States at age 25 […]

Scientists warn humanity about worldwide insect decline

Insect declines and extinctions are accelerating in many parts of the world. With this comes the disappearance of irreplaceable services to humans, the consequences of which are unpredictable. A group of scientists from across the globe has united to warn humanity of such dangers.

Playing with the new, adaptive version of Clocks, which is really coming together.

Kudos to Allan Day and @snwh for the design, and @bilelmoussaoui and Zander Brown for making it happen!

The End of Privacy as We Know It?

An unregulated facial recognition app can probably tell the police your name, and help them find out where you live and who your friends are.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/10/podcasts/the-daily/facial-recognition-surveillance.html #privacy #security #purism

Jonathan Carter on the #Librem5 "The #Gnome apps are fast and responsive and just feel natural on this form factor. I’m looking forward again to having a pocket computer that can run Debian." - Random bits from FOSDEM 2020 https://jonathancarter.org/2020/02/07/random-bits-from-fosdem-2020/

Fires and floods: maps of Europe predict scale of climate catastrophe - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/10/fires-floods-maps-europe-climate-catastrophe and these are probably optimistic scenarios... #climatecrisis

Windows 10 Warning: Anger At Microsoft Rises With Serious New Failure
https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2020/02/09/windows-10-warning-serious-failure-provokes-questions-and-anger/#6ea063e734f4

When only people with large budgets or institutional connections can access and use research, it puts many others at a disadvantage.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/10/open-access-human-rights-issue

Nanoparticles produced from burning coal result in damage to mice lungs

Titanium oxide found in coal smog and ash can cause lung damage in mice after a single exposure, with long-term damage occurring in just six weeks.

Size matters! What drives zoo attendance and how does footfall impact conservation?

Conserving species in the wild remains the gold standard but there is an increasing relevance and importance to the role played by the thousands of zoos and aquariums across the globe in supporting conservation in the wild. This study provides global evidence to suggest that zoos don't need to compromise their economic viability and entertainment value in order to have a significant value to conservation.

Treating wastewater with ozone could convert pharmaceuticals into toxic compounds

With water scarcity intensifying, wastewater treatment and reuse are gaining popularity. But some methods for killing microbes in wastewater create disinfection byproducts (DBPs) that could be harmful to human health. Now researchers have found that ozone treatment and subsequent chlorination can convert trace amounts of some pharmaceuticals in wastewater into DBPs called halonitromethanes.

Feeding bluebirds helps fend off parasites

If you feed the birds in your backyard, you may be doing more than just making sure they have a source of food: you may be helping baby birds give parasites the boot.

We’re glad to see the Attorney General reaching out to ICANN to learn what the impact of the sale of the .ORG registry would have on the nonprofit community. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/01/after-nonprofits-protest-icann-californias-attorney-general-steps-org-battle

Yes, Michael Bloomberg Is Definitely an Oligarch

In the wake of Tuesday night's Iowa caucus results debacle, one question has been on everybody's mind: Is Michael Bloomberg an oligarch?

The query was first raised by Bernie Sanders’ campaign co-chair Nina Turner, in the course of an interview by MSNBC host Chris Matthews. Her description of Bloomberg as an oligarch buying his way into the Democratic debates prompted a spirited defense of the media mogul from The Root’s political editor Jason Johnson. Johnson objected that “Oligarchy in our particular terminology makes you think of a rich person who got their money off of oil in Russia, who is taking advantage of a broken and dysfunctional system.”

This is a strange defense. Aside from the mention of Russia, a subject known to elicit unbalanced responses from liberal commentators, the description fits Michael Bloomberg pretty well. He is indeed very rich, and it can scarcely be denied that he is taking advantage of a broken and dysfunctional political system. Johnson implicitly acknowledged the latter, effectively arguing “hate the game, not the player.” But the problem with this argument is that Michael Bloomberg has long been fighting to preserve the rules of the game that have made him so obscenely wealthy. He’s been acting, in other words, like an oligarch.

Making Bloomberg

Bloomberg is famous for being something of a political chameleon. He was a Democrat for most of his life, became a Republican to run for mayor of New York in 2001, became an independent in 2007, and then became a Democrat again in 2018, apparently in response to President Trump. But throughout all of these changes, one thing has remained consistent: his devotion to the interests of the wealthy.

Bloomberg came into office in 2002 promising to run New York City like a business, and he delivered. He immediately offered city unions contracts with pay raises, but demanded concessions on pensions and healthcare, just as private sector companies have been demanding from unions for decades. At the next round of contract negotiations, when the costs of these concessions became clear to teachers’ union members and they demanded more, Bloomberg simply refused to bargain with them.

He also got rid of pesky democratic impediments to enacting his neoliberal agenda. He placed city schools under mayoral control, eliminating local school boards and implementing policy instead through the Panel on Education Policy, whose members he appointed. At the same time, Bloomberg’s administration expanded charter schools in the city, further putting education under private control. Like a good businessman, he accompanied this privatization blitz with a public relations campaign, expanding the Department of Education’s PR staff from 4 to 23.

Throughout his administration, Bloomberg was also a vocal defender of the interests of the rich. In classic trickle-down fashion, he argued that helping the poor was best accomplished by helping the rich. Want to address poverty? “Attract more very fortunate people. They’re the ones who pay the bills,” he said in 2013. When the 2008 financial crisis hit, Bloomberg ran interference for the banks, repeating right-wing lies that blamed fair housing laws for the mortgage meltdown. When Occupy Wall Street put inequality into the national spotlight, Bloomberg dismissed the protests, arguing that the country had been “overspending” and social services should be cut. And though he’s singing a different tune now, in 2012 he was a dogged opponent of raising the minimum wage.

It would be bad enough if Bloomberg were just a New York problem. However, because of his vast wealth, Bloomberg has secured a role as a player on the national stage, backing politicians and causes that protect the wealth of the billionaire class. He supported George W. Bush for reelection in 2004, after Bush passed massive tax cuts for the rich. He donated money to the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and backed a host of ultra-conservative politicians, ranging from religious zealot Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) to racist loudmouth Rep. Peter King (R-NY). Though he donated to Democrats as well, up until the 2018 midterms, Bloomberg’s super PAC Independence USA spent more money funding the campaigns of Republicans than Democrats.

Oligarchy in action

Now, Bloomberg is running for the Democratic nomination for president. As with the rest of his political career, he’s running entirely on the support of his personal wealth. So far, he’s spent more $300 million of his personal fortune on his campaign. And following the Iowa caucus debacle, Bloomberg announced he would be doubling his ad spending.

What’s more, Bloomberg has been able to use his obscene wealth to shift the institutional field to his favor. He has picked up a number of endorsements from prominent mayors in whose cities he spent philanthropic money such as Michael Tubbs of Stockton, California and Greg Fischer of Louisville, Kentucky. Other endorsements have come through mayors who received training in Bloomberg’s Harvard City Leadership Initiative.

Even more outrageously, the Democratic National Committee recently eliminated the donor number requirement from the Nevada debate, allowing Bloomberg on the stage even as other candidates were eliminated by the DNC’s strict debate rules. Bloomberg’s money just doesn’t buy him a campaign—it buys his campaign the ability to change the rules.

Michael Bloomberg is, therefore, a perfect example of a “rich person...taking advantage of a broken and dysfunctional political system.” It’s worth remembering that in other countries, Bloomberg wouldn’t be able to throw his wealth around like this. In Canada, for example, candidates and parties are bound to maximum spending limits, scaled to the population of the electoral district in which they’re competing. Not so in the United States, and Bloomberg has taken full advantage.

For his entire career in politics, Michael Bloomberg has backed policies and politicians that protect his fortune. In doing so, he has acted exactly as an oligarch does. The term “oligarch” dates back to ancient Greece. There, Aristotle used it to describe a government which the rich control in their own interests. This has been Bloomberg’s approach to government throughout his career. It’s the game he plays, and anyone who wants to change it will learn very quickly that he is not on their team.

Trump Says Covering All Immigrants Would Bankrupt Our Healthcare System. That’s a Lie.

During his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Trump put Medicare for All in the crosshairs. Single-payer healthcare will “bankrupt our nation by providing free taxpayer-funded healthcare to millions of illegal aliens,” he seethed, “forcing taxpayers to subsidize free care for anyone in the world who unlawfully crosses our borders.” Like so many of the other claims in Trump’s speech, this one was demonstrably false. If anything, the evidence suggests that immigrants actually subsidize healthcare systems—and it is time for advocates to push back. 

For proponents, the case for single-payer is fundamentally a moral one: Healthcare should be a right, and everybody should be covered. This argument, however, is up against the rancorous rhetoric of the demagogic Right, which is not only advancing dehumanizing narratives of exclusion, but also bolstering those narratives with factual inaccuracies. According to one CNN poll, some 59% of the American public is opposed to providing public coverage to the undocumented. Changing this opinion means overturning the right-wing narrative. To do so, we have to make the case that Trump’s claim—that including all U.S. residents in a single-payer system will bankrupt it—is wrong.  

A fundamental fact about financing healthcare for immigrants is that they are, compared to the native-born population, relatively young, and therefore healthy. As a result, immigrants tend to use comparatively less healthcare (indeed, too little) relative to those born in the United States. At the same time, they still pay into the system—even undocumented immigrants. Precise numbers are hard to come by, but as Paul Van De Water of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has noted, undocumented immigrants were estimated to have contributed a net $12 billion into the Social Security system via payroll taxes back in 2007. Something similar plays out in healthcare. As two important studies led by my colleague Dr. Leah Zallman at Cambridge Health Alliance and Harvard Medical School make clear, in healthcare, immigrants subsidize the U.S.-born.

In a 2013 study published in Health Affairs, Zallman and colleagues examined how much immigrants pay into the Medicare trust fund, relative to how much Medicare spends on their healthcare. They found that while immigrants paid some $33 billion in Medicare taxes in 2009, they only used $19 billion in health services—in other words, they subsidized the trust fund to the tune of nearly $14 billion. In a second study, also published in Health Affairs, researchers turned to private insurance, and a similar picture emerged. Premium contributions from immigrants (including the undocumented) exceeded plans’ outlays on immigrants’ healthcare. In contrast, U.S.-born enrollees contributed less than what they used in care—a deficit of about $163 per native-born person.

Including immigrants in an insurance system, in other words, makes it more actuarially sound. “mmigrants subsidize US natives in the private health insurance market,” the researchers concluded, “just as they are propping up the Medicare Trust Funds.”

Evidence from abroad—in particular, Spain—similarly strengthens the economic case for covering everyone. Spain’s universal system dates back to the 1980s, but as health researcher Helena Legido-Quigley of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine described with colleagues in Lancet Public Health, the nation passed a law in 2011 that “gave an explicit right to free health care for all people living in Spain, both Spanish and migrant, irrespective of their legal status, making Spain one of the most migrant-friendly health systems in Europe.” Still, it hasn’t been straightforward path. In 2012, a newly elected conservative government reversed this expansion. They were met, however, with a wave of resistance, including civil disobedience. Some 1,300 doctors and nurses pledged to defy the law and treat immigrants regardless of documentation status, as the British Medical Journal reported. After elections in 2018, the new left-wing government of Pedro Sanchez restored coverage to all. 

In 2018 (the latest year of data available from the OECD), Spain spent some $3,323 per capita on healthcare—compared to more than $10,000 in the United States. It seems unlikely that the the 2019 figures will change that overall picture much. As such, the policy of extending universal healthcare to immigrants has not bankrupted Spain’s system.

Legido-Quigley and colleagues, writing in the British Medical Journal last year, cite other evidence of cost-savings from European nations, including a study in German that found that a policy of limiting healthcare access for asylum seekers and refugees actually led to larger healthcare costs down the road.  

Europe, needless to say, faces the same sorts of right-wing populist forces that we contend with in the United States. Recent conservative governments in the United Kingdom, for instance, have taken steps to restrict access to the National Health Service to migrants. Achieving true universal coverage will be no easier here than abroad. But we should see the impediments as political—not economic. 

For advocates of Medicare for All, the moral case for universal healthcare will always be paramount.  Realizing it, however, requires changing millions of minds and moving millions of voters in the face of an earsplitting barrage of xenophobic bombast from President Trump and his right-wing backers. The enormity of that challenge requires that every relevant argument and data point be drawn upon to make our case. Fortunately, when it comes to the economics of full universal Medicare for All, the facts are with us. 

For advocates of Medicare for All, the moral case for universal healthcare will always be paramount. Even if the above realities were not true, we should still include immigrants in universal coverage, on the basis that healthcare is a human right and no one should be left to die because they can’t afford to go to the doctor, regardless of national origin. However, the claim that immigrants would bankrupt the system is an empirical one that can be disproven, and factual inaccuracies should not be allowed to stand, especially when they are used amplify xenophobic bombast from President Trump and his right-wing backers. The fact that a Medicare for All system that includes immigrants would be economically sound is one of the many data points we can use to make the case to millions of people that it is our moral imperative to build a Medicare for All system that includes everyone.