Journalism has been criminalised': Zimbabwean reporter denied bail

Hopewell Chin’ono is in jail awaiting trial on charges he rejects of inciting violence

Hopewell Chin’ono at Harare magistrates courts on 22 July. The UN is concerned his arrest is part of a clampdown on human rights in Zimbabwe. Photograph: Aaron Ufumeli/EPA

Jason Burke Africa correspondent and Nyasha Chingono in Harare
Published on Fri 24 Jul 2020

A prominent investigative journalist in Zimbabwe has said the struggle against corruption in the country must continue as he was sent back to prison to await trial on charges of incitement of public violence.

Hopewell Chin’ono, an internationally respected reporter, recently published documents raising concerns that powerful individuals in Zimbabwe were profiting from multimillion-dollar deals for essential supplies to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

The 49-year-old was arrested earlier this week and has been held in police or prison cells since. Authorities accuse him of promoting planned protests against corruption in government on 31 July, which police say will turn violent.

Chin’ono denies the charges against him and could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted.

Hopwell Chin’ono gets out of a prison van as he arrives at Harare magistrates courts on Thursday. Photograph: Aaron Ufumeli/EPA

During a hearing on Friday in Harare, the capital, magistrates said they had denied Chin’ono bail as a preventative measure to stop the journalist reoffending before the planned rally.


Chin’ono, 49, will return to court on 7 August. Supporters are concerned that he will be exposed to Covid-19, which is spreading in Zimbabwe’s prisons.

“I’m OK, I’m fine … Basically, this means journalism has been criminalised. The struggle against corruption should continue. People should not stop, they should carry on,” Chin’ono said on leaving the court.

Lawyers for the journalist said they would appeal against the decision.

“We disagree with the magistrate ruling and his findings. He did not engage in particular with the evidence laid before him by the investigating officer who admitted there was nothing in the tweets that formed the basis of the charge to incite violence. We will be appealing against the ruling,” Doug Coltart, a member of Chin’ono’s legal counsel, told the Guardian.

During the cross-examination, the police’s lead investigating officer admitted that there was nothing in Chin’ono’s tweets that suggested incitement of public violence.

Earlier in the day, Jacob Ngarivhume, an opposition leader, also was denied bail for the same offence.

“The state fears that if he is released on bail, there is going to be demonstrations. The state alleges that he has incited the nation to demonstrate against corruption and they fear that if he is admitted to bail the demonstrations will continue on July 31,” his lawyer, Moses Nkomo, said.

The bail hearing had been repeatedly delayed after authorities announced a new lockdown to stem the rapid spread of Covid-19, forbidding all movement around Harare and any large meetings. Only essential workers and tasks are exempt.

The arrest of the two men prompted a strong reaction from human rights campaigners and western powers. The United Nations expressed concern that the Covid-19 pandemic was being used as a pretext to clamp down on fundamental human rights.

“Merely calling for a peaceful protest or participating in a peaceful protest are an exercise of recognised human rights,” it said.

The British embassy in Harare has repeatedly urged authorities to follow the rule of law and uphold media freedoms and freedom of speech.

Amnesty International said the arrests were “designed to intimidate and send a chilling message to journalists, whistleblowers and activists who draw attention to matters of public interest in Zimbabwe”.

It is unclear how much impact the response will have on Zimbabwe’s leaders, who are preoccupied by internal rivalries. The government has been criticised for failing to deal with corruption at a time when the country is in desperate need of an international bailout package to save its economy from collapse.

Zimbabwe is also facing a looming health crisis as Covid-19 cases – currently totalling 1,611 confirmed infections – increase. Nurses are on strike to demand better salaries, personal protective equipment and better working conditions.

As the economic situation has deteriorated there has been a surge in repression in recent months, and a series of abductions of government critics. Many detainees have been assaulted, humiliated or threatened and several have been told not to criticise the government.

Nick Mangwana, Zimbabwe’s secretary for information, said on Twitter on Monday that “no profession [is] above the law”.

“Journalists are not above the law. Lawyers are not above the law. Doctors and nurses are not above the law. Politicians and bankers are not above the law. Anyone suspected to have committed a crime should be subjected to due process,” he said.

It was not clear if the tweet was connected to the detention of Chin’ono and Ngarivhume or a reference to recent arrests for corruption in Zimbabwe.

The health minister, Obadiah Moyo, was charged last month in connection with the awarding of a $60m (£47m) contract to a company that allegedly sold Covid-19 supplies to the government at inflated prices.

Hungarian journalists resign en masse after claims of political interference

Firing of editor-in-chief at Hungary’s biggest independent news outlet sparks protest

Staff at index.hu prepare to walk out of the newsroom on Friday after submitting their resignations in the wake of the dismissal of the editor-in-chief Szabolcs Dull on Wednesday. Photograph: Bődey János/Index

Shaun Walker in Budapest
Published on Fri 24 Jul 2020

The editorial board and dozens of journalists at Hungary’s biggest independent news outlet have resigned, two days after its editor-in-chief was fired amid claims of political interference.

More than 70 of roughly 90 editorial staff at index.hu, including all the desk editors, walked out of the newsroom on Friday after submitting their resignations in the wake of Szabolcs Dull’s dismissal earlier this week.

“A red line was crossed,” said deputy editor Veronika Munk, of the decision to resign.

The departing journalists published an open letter on the outlet’s website in Hungarian and English. “The editorial board deemed that the conditions for independent operation are no longer in place and have initiated the termination of their employment,” it said.

Munk, who has worked for the outlet for 18 years since joining as an intern while still a student, said many journalists were in tears as they left the newsroom for the last time on Friday.

Index was considered the last major independent outlet in Hungary, which is ranked the second worst country in the EU for media freedom by Reporters Without Borders. During the past decade of rule by the far-right prime minister, Viktor Orbán, the media landscape has gradually contracted, as numerous outlets were bought out by pro-government figures or closed down.

Speaking on a visit to Portugal on Friday, Hungary’s foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, said claims that government interference was behind the turmoil at Index were “untrue accusations”, while the company’s chief executive László Bodolai has insisted that there is no external interference in the outlet’s editorial line.

Munk said the editorial staff had asked Bodolai to reinstate Dull in a number of meetings in recent days. “He repeatedly said no. He said it’s a personal decision but I don’t think it’s the real reason,” she said.

A pro-government businessman acquired a stake in Index’s holding company earlier this year, and a month ago the website sent out a warning to followers that its editorial independence was at risk. “Index is a mighty fortress that they want to blow up,” said Dull, in a farewell speech to the newsroom after his firing on Wednesday.

Having taken the difficult decision to leave their jobs in a global economic downturn and in Hungary’s bleak environment for independent media, the former Index journalists are already thinking about how they could reconstitute the project.

“We are starting to think about what can happen next. We don’t have a complete plan but we would like to stay together. We know it’s going to be really hard in this media environment in Hungary,” Munk said.

The situation at Index comes in the same week that Orbán was able to water down plans by a number of EU countries to link the future disbursal of EU funds to rule of law conditions, and drew criticism from some European politicians.

“I expressed big concerns about the situation in media in general in Hungary, and also specifically the situation in Index,” Věra Jourová, the vice president of the European Commission, said on Thursday.

A protest march in support of media freedom was planned for Friday evening in Budapest.

AOC represents the future of America: women who refuse to be silenced

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez elegantly eviscerated Republican congressman Ted Yoho on the House floor this week

Arwa Mahdawi Sat 25 Jul 2020


Bitches get things done

Hello? Police? I’d like to report a murder. On Thursday Republican congressman Ted Yoho was elegantly eviscerated by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the House floor. In just under 10 minutes, the New York congresswoman made Yoho look like the yahoo he is, and delivered a searing indictment of structural sexism. Do watch the full speech if you haven’t already – it’s a masterclass in responding to misogyny.

Some quick context: on Monday Yoho confronted AOC on the steps of the US Capitol, calling the congresswoman “disgusting” for talking about how poverty can drive crime. As the pair parted, Yoho called Ocasio-Cortez a “fucking bitch”.

Ocasio-Cortez delivers powerful speech after Republican's sexist remarks

While Yoho’s insults were overheard by a reporter, he insists he never made them. On Wednesday, Yoho told the House that he apologized for the abruptness of the conversation he’d had with his “colleague from New York” (he didn’t even give Ocasio-Cortez the courtesy of addressing her by name) but that the words attributed to him had been misconstrued. Yoho also noted that he has been “married for 45 years” and has two daughters so was “cognizant” of his language. As we all know, it is impossible for married men with daughters to be sexist. Just look at Harvey Weinstein and Brett Kavanaugh. Just look at Donald Trump!

Some media reports characterized Yoho’s sneering speech as an “apology”. It very clearly wasn’t: it was an assertion of power that followed a familiar pattern. First came the gaslighting, the insistence his behaviour had been “misconstrued.” Then came the self-righteous justification. “I cannot apologize for my passion,” he declared with a smirk on his face. The subtext to his little speech: What are you going to do?


As Ocasio-Cortez noted on Thursday, at first she wasn’t going to do anything. After wryly tweeting “b*tches get stuff done” on Tuesday, she was ready to be done with the situation. You get used to dehumanizing behaviour when you’re a woman, you get desensitized to it. You don’t report abuse or harassment because nobody is going to take you seriously. You ignore the guy shouting obscenities at you on the street because you’re afraid for your personal safety. You ignore sexist comments from a colleague because you’re worried about your professional security. This is one of the most insidious things about patriarchy – it takes the fight out of you. You let things go.

But, after Yoho’s non-apology, Ocasio-Cortez decided not to let this go. As she explained in her speech, she’s encountered language like Yoho’s a million times before. “[T]his is not new, and that is the problem. This issue is not about one incident. It is cultural. It is a culture … accepting of violence and violent language against women, and an entire structure of power that supports that.” She went on to criticize Yoho for using his daughters as a shield; “I am someone’s daughter too.”

It wasn’t just the content of Ocasio-Cortez’s speech that was powerful, it was the way she delivered it. There was a carefully controlled fury in her voice that every woman will be familiar with. “I cannot apologize for my passion,” Yoho declared; as a man he doesn’t have to. When Brett Kavanaugh threw a temper tantrum in front of the Senate judiciary committee, Donald Trump Jr praised his “tone.” Men like Kavanaugh and Yoho are not penalized for their “passion”; they’re not penalized for showing their emotion. Women are. Show too much emotion and you’re “hysterical”, you’re “crazy”, you’re a “nasty woman”. And so you learn to control your fury, to modulate your emotion. You learn to apologize for your passion.

But no matter how measured you are, no matter how reasonable, it’s never enough. A New York Times article about Ocasio-Cortez’s speech cynically noted the congresswoman “excels at using her detractors to amplify her own political brand”. Instead of analyzing the cultural norms that allow men like Yoho to belittle women with impunity, it cast Ocasio-Cortez as a disruptive opportunist. A woman standing up for her dignity is reduced to “brand-building”. The article is a perfect example of what Ocasio-Cortez was referring to when she talked about Yoho’s actions being supported by an “entire structure of power”.

That structure of power, it’s important to note, encompasses race and gender. The only thing that irritates men like Yoho more than an outspoken woman is an outspoken woman who also has the temerity not to be white. “I cannot apologize for my passion or for loving my God, my family and my country,” Yoho told the House. The subtext of that, of course, is that women like Ocasio-Cortez do not belong in “his” country. As Ocasio-Cortez pointed out in her speech, it’s a sentiment she hears a lot: “The president of the United States last year told me to go home to another country, with the implication that I don’t even belong in America.”

Guess what? Ocasio-Cortez isn’t going anywhere. She represents the future of America: women who refuse to be silenced, refuse to “know their place”, and refuse to apologize for their passion.

Play Video
2:26 Ocasio-Cortez speaks about 'culture of violence against women' after Republican's insults – video

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Made-for-TV fascism: how Trump’s ‘crime explosion’ ploy could backfire


Trump is facing a big election with an even bigger need for a political masterstroke – enter a surge of federal agents to fight supposed violence

Tom McCarthy
@TeeMcSee
THE GUARDIAN
Sat 25 Jul 2020
 

Donald Trump on the South Lawn of the White House on 25 June. Photograph: Drew Angerer/Getty Images


With an election looming and the polls looking bad, Donald Trump was in need of a quick political boost.

Seizing on television images of a procession of refugees out of Honduras, the president announced an imminent “invasion” of the United States by a “migrant caravan” and said he would deploy 15,000 military personnel to stop it. For weeks, Fox News blared “coverage” of the emergency.

Trump is unleashing authoritarianism on US cities – just in time for the election
Andrew Gawthorpe

Read more

That was in October 2018, and as a political strategy ahead of the midterm elections, the gambit utterly failed.

The Democrats flipped 40 seats in the House of Representatives the next month and racked up the largest popular vote margin in midterm elections history, on the highest turnout in 100 years. The “caravan” emergency was heard of no more.

Now two years later, Trump is facing an even bigger election, with an even bigger need for a political masterstroke if he is to win a second term in November.

Instead of deploying troops to the border to confront a made-up threat, Trump has announced “a surge of federal law enforcement into American communities” to fight a supposed cataclysm of violence born of a Democratic plot to undermine local police.

“To look at it from any standpoint, the effort to shut down policing in their own communities has led to a shocking explosion of shootings, killings, murders and heinous crimes of violence,” Trump said at the White House on Wednesday. “This bloodshed must end. This bloodshed will end.”

The deployment against anti-racism protesters is a ploy to burnish his strongman credentials, critics say – Trump is pursuing made-for-TV fascism, with the imposition of federal forces into US cities against the will of local authorities. As with 2018, the unmistakeable bogeyman is people of color, whom Trump portrays, with the help of conservative media, as again posing an existential threat to the country that only he can defend against.

 Federal agents fire teargas at protesters near the federal courthouse in Portland, Oregon, on 23 July. Photograph: Mike Logdson/RMV/Rex/Shutterstock


In some respects, the strategy has a long pedigree, going back to the 1968 “law and order” presidential campaigns of Richard Nixon and George Wallace, the Alabama segregationist. But there is a crucial difference between Trump’s foreign “invasion” charade of 2018 and his current domestic “crime explosion” ploy, analysts say.

Unlike the deployment of troops to a US border, the deployment of federal troops inside American cities threatens to fulfill its own fantasy, turning a dark and opportunistic fable spun by the White House into a daunting new reality in which violent clashes really do play out in the streets and unaccountable federal law enforcement officers really do round up and detain US citizens.

“What one has to ask is, how much is spectacle and how much is reality?” said Jason Stanley, a Yale philosophy professor and author of How Fascism Works. “Now, the spectacle should already worry us, because he did the spectacle in Lafayette Square,” Stanley said, referring to Trump’s violent clearance of peaceful protesters from a park near the White House in June.


What one has to ask is, how much is spectacle and how much is reality?Jason Stanley

“Then he did the spectacle in Portland. And when you allow too much spectacle, as it gets worse over time, people start to say, ‘This has been happening for awhile, what’s the big deal?’

“The spectacle normalizes, and then you can’t tell – say it’s November – you can’t tell if it’s still spectacle any more. It’s spectacle until someone gets hurt.”

Just how big of a spectacle the White House has planned for the run-up to the November elections is unknown.

In Portland, Oregon, unidentified federal officers have shot protesters and used unmarked vehicles to detain activists, and graffiti writers have been branded as “violent anarchists”. Trump plans to deploy troops from at least five federal agencies to Chicago and to Albuquerque, New Mexico, the justice department announced this week.

Multiple other cities including New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Seattle, Baltimore, Oakland and Milwaukee have been named for potential future deployments, despite the unambiguous objections of those cities’ mayors.

“Unilaterally deploying these paramilitary-type forces into our cities is wholly inconsistent with our system of democracy and our most basic values,” more than a dozen mayors of major US cities warned Trump in an open letter last week.

Play Video
1:57 Portland protests: why Trump has sent in federal agents – video report

Trump is correct that some US cities have seen increases in gun violence in recent months, but crime in the US is down overall in 2020, and Trump is virtually alone in seeing a heavy-handed federal response as palliative.

Criminal justice experts have tied upticks in violence to the ravages of the coronavirus pandemic, which has now killed about 145,000 Americans; historic unemployment; social unrest following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May; seasonal fluctuations and other factors.

In any case, phalanxes of heavily armed officers descending on largely peaceful protesters risks sparking violence and unraveling months of work to establish community dialogue about police violence and racial injustice, the mayors have warned.

Julia Azari, a professor of political science at Marquette University, noted that crime is not currently a top issue of concern for a majority of US voters and said that the Trump campaign was working on a tenuous strategy of a narrow win through the electoral college.

“This has really never been a majority-focused administration,” Azari said. “In some ways it’s been an administration focused on mobilizing a particular segment of the American electorate, which is sort of strategically located throughout the states that are important in the electoral college.

“It’s a very uphill strategy.  

”
Donald Trump speaks at a press briefing at the White House on 23 July. Photograph: Yuri Gripas/EPA

As a candidate, Trump can appear to be cornered. Polling indicates that Americans think Trump is wrong about the street protests, they disapprove of his performance as president overall by more than 55% on average, and they disapprove of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic specifically by a whopping 60%.


But Trump has been cornered in the past, as when he was supposed to lose in 2016. Then as now, Trump lashed out on race.

Talking about crime in big cities “can be dog whistles for racial divisions” to Trump supporters, especially in the midwest, who as a group are older, more white and more rural than the average US voter, Azari said.

But emphasizing chaos in the streets is a questionable strategy for an incumbent president, she said. “For most swing voters, the question comes down to, ‘Are things good, are things not good?’ And I don’t see this story as being a really compelling way to reframe the situation as like, ‘things are good’.”


For most swing voters, the question comes down to, ‘Are things good, are things not good?’Julia Azari

Even if Trump loses in November and is ushered off the national stage, his gestures in the direction of fascist politics – made-for-TV or not – will not be easy to erase, because Trump’s politics are merely a current expression of a 30-year Republican arc, said Stanley.

“There has been a long buildup before Trump,” Stanley said. “A core to authoritarianism – whether fascism or communism – is the one-party state. And Republicans for years before Trump, all the way back to [former House speaker] Newt Gingrich, who I blame all of this on, have been acting like their political opponents are traitors and not legitimate opponents.”

Stanley praised Joe Biden, Trump’s 2020 rival, for pursuing multi-party politics.

“What Biden’s doing is very impressive in that he is constantly – at first I criticized it – he is constantly talking about a return to a multi-party system, where we are going to prize the fact that we have different viewpoints, and that’s the core of our democracy.

“This idea that you can have people who differ and are Republicans or Democrats, and can have different views and can come together, is a repudiation of the Newt Gingrich-led attempt to undermine democracy and place Republicans in power by declaring the opposition party illegitimate.”

'Nobody’s ever seen anything like this': how coronavirus turned the US election upside down

Donald Trump gestures towards a map of coronavirus cases during a briefing at the White House on Thursday. Photograph: Drew Angerer/Getty Images


With almost 100 days to go till election day, the virus has changed the issues, the way the fight is fought – and quite possibly the outcome




David Smith in Washington
Published Sat 25 Jul 2020 

Mar-a-Lago was the place to see and be seen for guests who paid thousands of dollars for the privilege on New Year’s Eve. Diamonds and furs abounded on the red carpet. When Donald Trump arrived at his estate in Palm Beach, Florida, in high spirits and a tuxedo, he declared: “We’re going to have a great year, I predict.”

But earlier that day, a Chinese government website had identified a “pneumonia of unknown cause” in the area surrounding a seafood market in Wuhan. When midnight struck and 2020 dawned, no one could have guessed how this microscopic pathogen would turn the world upside down, infecting 15 million people, killing 625,000, crippling economies and wiping out landmark events such as the Olympic Games.


America is no exception. The coronavirus pandemic has upended the presidential election, which, on Sunday, will be just one hundred days away. It has changed the issues, the way the fight is fought and quite possibly the outcome. The nation’s biggest economic crisis for 75 years, and worst public health crisis for a century, is an asteroid strike that has rewritten the rules of politics and left historians grasping for election year comparisons.

“There is probably nothing the same as coronavirus,” said Thomas Schwartz, a history professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. “Obviously, you have issues that stir the public up: 1968 would have been Vietnam and the disturbances that had taken place in the cities. But nothing quite as universal and affecting such a wide band of Americans as the coronavirus. That is really new.”

Soon after that New Year’s Eve celebration at Mar-a-Lago, Trump would be acquitted by Republicans at his Senate impeachment trial and triumphantly brandish the next day’s Washington Post front page at the White House. In his own mind, at least, he was riding a strong economy on his way to re-election, while Democrats struggled to tally results in their Iowa caucuses or settle on a unifying presidential nominee.

Trump in February, in defiant mood following his acquittal in his Senate impeachment trial. Photograph: Joshua Roberts/Reuters


But the virus was on the move. On 22 January, Trump claimed that it “is totally under control” and is “going to be just fine”. On 2 February, he insisted he had stopped its spread by restricting travel from China. On 27 February, he said at the White House: “One day – it’s like a miracle – it will disappear.” And so it went on in what critics now say was a historic feat of denial and failure in leadership.

Covid-19 swept through New York, killing thousands of people. Trump declared himself a “wartime president” and held daily briefings in April but then reportedly “got bored” and switched emphasis to reviving the economy – seen as crucial to his re-election chances. Yet while the infection and death tolls ticked up, his approval ratings ticked down.

Now it seems the old maxim of “It’s the economy, stupid” will be replaced by “It’s the virus, stupid” as the defining issue for voters, not least because the suffering and death have a direct impact on the economy itself: Americans have filed 52.7m unemployment claims over the past four months.

Another famous campaign question, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”, now seems purely rhetorical. The Trump campaign has been forced to abandon the slogan “Keep America great” in favour of “Make America great again, again”.

Schwartz added: “When Trump had the economy going gangbusters he had a stronger argument on his behalf that, despite his disruptiveness and unpleasantness, people were doing OK and things seemed to be moving ahead. But look at the polling on whether the country’s going in a good direction or a bad direction and, boy, did that spike with the bad direction since March.”

Trump was arguably an unusually lucky president for his first three years, not having to face the type of major crisis that confronted many of his predecessors, enabling him to persist as a gadfly reality TV star tweeting about celebrities instead of reading national security briefs. With the eruption of the virus, that luck ran out spectacularly.

America now has 4m infections and more than 140,000 deaths, the highest tallies in the world. Cases have doubled in the past six weeks even as curves flatten in Europe.

The president continues to defend his response, pointing to travel restrictions he imposed, 50m tests conducted – more than any other country – and mass distribution of ventilators. “We’re all in this together,” he said on Wednesday. “And as Americans, we’re going to get this complete. We’re going to do it properly. We’ve been doing it properly. Sections of the country come up that we didn’t anticipate – for instance, Florida, Texas, et cetera – but we’re working with very talented people, very brilliant people, and it’s all going to work out, and it is working out.”
The pandemic was a moment when Trump could have proved his doubters wrong. He did not rise to the challenge


But his niece Mary Trump, author of a new family memoir, said his handling of the pandemic has been “criminal”. She added: “It was avoidable, it was preventable and even if we hadn’t gotten a hold of it right away, the statistics are pretty clear. Two weeks earlier, what, 90% of deaths could have been avoided? And they haven’t been, simply because he refused to wear a mask because doing so would have admitted that he was wrong about something, and that is something he cannot do.”

The pandemic was a moment when Trump could have surprised the world and proved his doubters wrong. He did not rise to the challenge in the eyes of those critics. He failed to devise a national strategy on testing, rarely spoke of the victims, refused to wear a mask until recently and undermined top public health experts such as Dr Anthony Fauci.

Leon Panetta, a former defence secretary and CIA director, said: “If you operate on the basic premise that crisis defines leadership, then you’d have to say that this crisis has also defined the failure of leadership. That has without question impacted on politics in this country.

“It’s pretty clear that there are a hell of a lot of constituencies out there that feel that he’s failed to lead with this issue. There’s a sense that in many ways he’s basically said, ‘You’re on your own in terms of dealing with this’. He at one point said he doesn’t take responsibility for what’s happening with this virus and I think that sent a real message to the country that the president’s gone awol on the country at a time of crisis.”

Such is the backlash that multiple opinion polls show the Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden leading Trump by double digits, and ahead in the battleground states that will decide the electoral college. The president’s best hope now might be an “October surprise” in the form of a coronavirus vaccine. There is no clearer example of how everything has changed than Texas, which no Democrat has won since 1976. On Wednesday, a record 197 deaths from Covid-19 were reported while a Quinnipiac poll showed Biden leading Trump 45% to 44%.

Filemon Vela, a Democratic congressman from southern Texas, said: “Since the beginning of the pandemic, President Trump and our own governor, Greg Abbott, have made tactical decisions that are now resulting in the killing of Texans en masse. Any rational thinking Texan would be crazy if they voted for Donald Trump, given the way that the state is being ravaged by the virus.

“Across the state, ICUs are full. Back in my home town, patients that should be in the ICU are having to wait in emergency rooms. Patients who can’t get into emergency rooms are having to wait in ambulances for hours outside the hospital. It is a catastrophic situation and I believe that, when November comes around, the people of Texas are going to remember it.”

A protest in support of Black Lives Matter in New York in June. Trump seized on the protest by attempting to stoke ‘culture war’ divisions. Photograph: Bryan R Smith/AFP/Getty Images


Against the implacable foe of the virus, Trump has repeatedly sought to divert and distract. He seized on the Black Lives Matter protests against the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis not with healing and compassion but by attempting to stoke “culture war” divisions over crime and Confederate statues. Still, the pandemic persisted.

Bill Galston, a former policy adviser to President Bill Clinton, said: “If the election becomes a referendum on the president’s handling of the pandemic, he cannot win. It’s as simple as that and so, barring some miraculously favourable developments in the next hundred days, he has no choice but to change the subject as best as he can.”

The pandemic has not only transmogrified the substance of the election but also the style. Democrats were fortunate to get most their primaries out of the way and mostly unite behind a nominee before the storm hit. Other rituals of the election year calendar – campaign rallies, convention speeches, presidential debates – will be unrecognisable.

So far, the altered landscape appears to be hurting Trump and helping Biden. In 2016, the Republican thrived on rambunctious rallies where crowds chanted “Build the wall!” and, referring to his opponent Hillary Clinton, “Lock her up!” The theatre seemingly gave him a blood transfusion of political energy while building a cult of personality for crowds, often in long-neglected small towns, who then fanned out to spread the word.

Last month, however, a Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, drew a disappointingly small crowd amid virus fears, and another in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, was cancelled. No more have been announced. The president has also been forced to call off Republican national convention events next month in Jacksonville, Florida, where he had been planning to make a splashy acceptance speech before a cheering crowd.

Democrats will also hold a delayed and pared-down convention in Milwaukee in August, with much of it migrating online. Biden, who at 77 would be the oldest president ever elected, has been able to lie low in his basement in Wilmington, Delaware, spared from the punishment of constant campaigning and awkward encounters that could invite his notorious gaffes. Instead the pandemic plays to his perceived strengths of empathy, experience and stability.

Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington, added: “Nobody’s ever seen anything like this and nobody knows what the net effect is going to be. I don’t know to what extent the raucous Trump rallies of 2016 were instrumental to his success but what we do know is that’s not a strategy that can be repeated in 2020.”

But there may be no greater demonstration of the pandemic’s reach than polling day itself, due to take place on 3 November amid health fears, a surge of mail-in voting and a prolonged count that Trump might seek to discredit and exploit.

This week more than 30 advocacy groups and grassroots organisations joined Protect the Results, a project to mobilise millions of people should Trump “contest the election results, refuse to concede after losing, or claim victory before all the votes are counted”.


Trump is using federal agents as his 'goon squad', says Ice's ex-acting head
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Panetta, a former White House chief of staff, has heard similar talk from friends. “On conferences and Zoom calls and emails I’m getting concern that this is not a president who has ever shown a tendency to operate with a degree of class in accepting defeat and so there’s a sense that he will resist the results of the election if it’s close,” he said.

“I guess the hope for a lot of people I’ve talked to is that the election results are so clear that it makes it very difficult for the president to even pretend that somehow the vote was wrong.”

2020 ELECTION
Trump's convention cancellation is costing GOP donors millions
Of the $38 million raised by the host committee for Charlotte, North Carolina, most has been spent, according to Republicans familiar with the finances.

President Donald Trump waves upon arrival to Bedminster, New Jersey, on July 24, 2020.Nicholas Kamm / AFP - Getty Images

July 24, 2020,
By Kristen Welker, Carol E. Lee, Shannon Pettypiece and Monica Alba


WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s whipsaw decisions to first move the Republican National Convention’s in-person main events, then to cancel them are costing GOP donors millions of dollars, according to multiple Republicans familiar with the finances.

Of the $38 million raised by the host committee for the convention’s original location — Charlotte, North Carolina — the majority has been spent, the Republican officials said. The host committee in Jacksonville, Florida, where Trump had moved the convention, raised an additional $6 million, but GOP officials said much of that money remains.

Now, the president’s team is searching not only for a new stage from which he can deliver a speech accepting his party’s nomination for a second term, but also a way to appease Republicans who have nothing to show for their donations.

VIDEO

Republican officials scramble to reschedule convention after Trump cancels

JULY 24, 202

Republican officials are uncertain what, if any, of the money will get reimbursed to donors. One plan under consideration is to ask the donors to allow their contributions to be reallocated for other events, they said.

“Costs have been incurred,” Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry said Friday on MSNBC’s “Meet the Press Daily,” adding that no taxpayer dollars had been spent on the convention and that “the host committee and the donors understand” about any money that’s been lost.

Many of Trump’s allies were surprised by his abrupt announcement on Thursday that he was canceling the convention in Jacksonville, where organizers were preparing for a three-day event with several thousand people capped with a keynote address from the president.

Convention organizers had continued to push donors for additional contributions up until the announcement was made. Trump said it wasn’t safe to hold the event with cases of the coronavirus surging in Florida.

Republicans have publicly expressed support for Trump’s decision, but some GOP donors are upset he opted not to go forward with an in-person convention.

“This is the cancel culture run wild,” said one top Republican donor.

“I am livid and profoundly disappointed at the convention being canceled,” the donor said. “It should be further scaled down.”

The Republican National Committee announced two years ago that it would host the 2020 convention in Charlotte. Trump pulled the plug on much of that last month because North Carolina’s governor wanted organizers to implement safety precautions such as social distancing on convention floor, and he chose Jacksonville as the replacement location.
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CORONAVIRUSTrump cancels in-person Republican convention in Jacksonville, Florida

The convention host committees are separate entities from the RNC. When asked for comment, the RNC pointed to a Thursday tweet from GOP Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel saying the president’s “number one priority in this decision was the safety of the people of Jacksonville, the convention attendees, and all of the American people.”

The president’s team is scrambling to reimagine his convention, which is scheduled to be at the end of August, as a virtual one. One of the challenges dogging Republican planners is how they will be able to deliver the same pomp and pageantry of the 2016 convention, which the president relishes.

Trump’s decision to cancel Jacksonville came after discussions with his political advisers, who made the case that proceeding with the convention would be politically detrimental as the event would be overshadowed by the increasingly grim developments on the pandemic in Florida, a must-win battleground state for the president.

"He has decided he's losing, and he wants to win,” one of the president’s political advisers said. “No more complicated than that.”

Also looming large in the discussions leading up to the cancellation, officials said, were fresh memories of Trump’s campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which was overshadowed by underwhelming crowds and multiple staffers and Secret Service agents testing positive for the coronavirus.

Trump’s reversal on the convention is part of a broader attempt over the past week to revive his political standing with Americans who have shown in polls they have little confidence in his handling of the pandemic.

Allies of the president are unsure if his new approach will last, given, as one of them said, changes in the Trump’s tone are “always just temporary."

In Charlotte, a dramatically scaled-down number of GOP delegates will attend a meeting to nominate Trump. But otherwise, officials said, events will not be held there. Some delegates who already made travel arrangements are likely to lose money as well.

America 'staring down the barrel of martial law', Oregon senator warns

Ron Wyden says Portland tactics threaten democracy
Senator Jeff Merkley deplores ‘military-style assault’

Former Ice head: Trump is using agents as his ‘goon squad’


David Smith and Daniel Strauss in Washington

Sat 25 Jul 2020 07.00 BSTLast modified on Sat 25 Jul 2020 19.25 BST

America is “staring down the barrel of martial law” as it approaches the presidential election, a US senator from Oregon has warned as Donald Trump cracks down on protests in Portland, the state’s biggest city.

This is what happens when the war on terror is turned inward, on America
Hamilton Nolan
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In interviews with the Guardian, Democrat Ron Wyden said the federal government’s authoritarian tactics in Portland and other cities posed an “enormous” threat to democracy, while his fellow senator Jeff Merkley described it as “an all-out assault in military-style fashion”.

In the early hours of Saturday, thousands of protesters gathered again outside the federal courthouse in the city, shooting fireworks at the building as teargas, dispensed by US agents, lingered above. Protesters and agents used leaf blowers to try to redirect the gas. At around 2.30am, agents marched down the street, clearing protesters with gas at close range. They also extinguished a fire outside the courthouse.

The independent watchdogs for the US justice and homeland security departments said on Thursday they were launching investigations into the use of force by federal agents, including instances of unidentified officers in camouflage gear snatching demonstrators off the streets and spiriting them away in unmarked vehicles.

But Trump this week announced a “surge” of federal law enforcement to Chicago and Albuquerque, in addition to a contingent already in Kansas City. The move fuelled critics’ suspicions that the president was stressing a “law and order” campaign theme at the expense of civil liberties.

Wyden said in a statement: “The violent tactics deployed by Donald Trump and his paramilitary forces against peaceful protesters are those of a fascist regime, not a democratic nation.”
Speaking by phone, he said: “Unless America draws a line in the sand right now, I think we could be staring down the barrel of martial law in the middle of a presidential election.”


Military control of government was last imposed in the US in 1941, after the attack on Pearl Harbor. In current circumstances it would entail “trashing the constitution and trashing people’s individual rights”, Wyden warned.

The senator recalled a conversation with a legal adviser for the head of national intelligence.

“I asked him again and again what was the constitutional justification for what the Trump administration is doing in my home town and he completely ducked the questions and several times said, ‘Well, I just want to extend my best wishes to your constituents.’

“After I heard him say it several times, I said my constituents don’t want your best wishes. They want to know when you’re going to stop trashing their constitutional rights.”

The White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, began a briefing on Friday with a selectively edited video depicting protests, flames, graffiti and chaos in Portland.

“The Trump administration will not stand by and allow anarchy in our streets,” she said. “Law and order will prevail.”

Trump has falsely accused his election rival, Joe Biden, of pledging to “defund the police” so violent crime will flourish. Democrats condemn Trump for a made-for-TV attempt to distract both from Black Lives Matter protests and his mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic, now killing more than 1,000 Americans a day.

“I wish the president would fight the coronavirus half as hard as he attacks my home town,” Wyden said. “I think he’s setting up an us-against-them kind of strategy. He’s trying to create his narrative that my constituents, who are peaceful protesters, are basically anarchists, sympathisers of anarchists and, as he does so often, just fabricate it.
Federal police under the orders of Donald Trump launch teargas after a demonstration in Portland, Oregon, on Thursday. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images


“Trump knows that his [coronavirus] strategy has been an unmitigated disaster. The coronavirus is spiking in various places and he’s trying to play to rightwing media and play to his base and see if he can kind of create a narrative that gives him some traction.”

The Portland deployment, Operation Diligent Valor, involves 114 officers from homeland security and the US Marshals Service, according to court documents. Local officials say their heavy-handed approach, including teargas and flash grenades, has merely enflamed demonstrations against police brutality and racial injustice. The justice department-led Operation Legend involves more than 200 agents each in Kansas City and Chicago as well as 35 in Albuquerque. It is targeted at violent crime.

Lori Lightfoot, the mayor of Chicago, has vowed to resist the federal intervention.


It’s very clear what the president is trying to do is incite violence and then display that violence in campaign adsSenator Jeff Merkley

“We’re not going to allow the unconstitutional, state-sanctioned lawlessness we saw brought to Portland here in Chicago,” she said on Thursday.

Merkley offered words of advice.

“I would say that you probably don’t believe that these federal forces will attack protesters if the protesters are peaceful and you will be wrong because that’s exactly what they’re doing in Portland,” he told the Guardian.

“This is an all-out assault in military-style fashion on a peaceful-style protest. The way to handle graffiti is put up a fence or come out and ask people to stop doing it, not to attack a peaceful protest but that’s exactly what happened. It’s very clear what the president is trying to do is incite violence and then display that violence in campaign ads. And I say this because that’s exactly what he’s doing right now. This is not some theory.”

The senator added: “This is just an absolute assault on people’s civil rights to speak and to assemble.”

Merkley argued that with past targets such as Islamic State and undocumented migrants losing their potency, Trump has settled on African Americans in inner cities to be his latest scapegoats.

“I think it’s also important to note the president we’ve always known has this intense authoritarian streak,” he said. “He loved and had so much affection for the leader of North Korea, Putin in Russia. Just admiration for some of the tactics in the Philippines with Duterte and Erdoğan in Turkey, by the crown prince in Saudi Arabia.”

On Friday the United Nations warned against the use of excessive force against demonstrators and media.

“Peaceful demonstrations that have been taking place in cities in the US, such as Portland, really must be able to continue,” UN human rights office spokeswoman Elizabeth Throssell told reporters. 

Play Video
1:57 Portland protests: why Trump has sent in federal agents – video report

Play Video
1:37 Portland protesters counter teargas with leaf blowers in standoff with federal troops – video

Colorado COVID-19 outbreak traced to Bible conference that defied health orders: report

July 25, 2020
By Matthew Chapman


THIS IS ALSO WHAT HAPPENED IN THE FIRST WAVE IN SOUTH KOREA, IT ALL CAME FROM ONE CHURCH.
On Saturday, The Friendly Atheist reported that Colorado authorities have traced 22 cases of COVID-19 to a Summer Family Bible conference held by Andrew Wommack, a preacher who has openly defied state public health restrictions on church gatherings.

“I have respectfully refused to comply with the artificial limit on the number of people who can attend,” wrote Wommack in a Facebook post. “We are firmly in the ‘crosshairs’ of our liberal state government. Liberty Counsel has agreed to represent us, and we are fighting back. I believe it is not only our constitutional right but our duty to stop this extreme overreach of government that allows people to riot and pillage but not assemble to worship the Lord.”

Subsequently, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment traced an outbreak of COVID-19 to that event, “with seven staff members and fifteen attendees testing positive.”

As a result, Wommack has canceled his upcoming in-person “healing conference” and will be live streaming the event for his parishioners instead

“I know it seems ironic that I’d be canceling a healing conference due to a sickness outbreak,” said Wommack in a statement. “If it was just me, I believe that if I touch someone, they’ll catch my healing instead of me catching their sickness. But since the Covid-19 cases in this community have risen lately, I have to consider the safety and well-being of everyone involved. I know that God wants to heal Covid, just like every other disease, and he can do that no matter where you are!”

You can read more here.

That’s an illegal order': veterans challenge Trump's officers in Portland

Two veterans asked federal agents if they understood their oath to defend the constitution and why they weren’t honoring their oath of office

Hallie Golden Sat 25 Jul 2020 

 

Federal agents shoot teargas and pepper balls at protesters near the federal courthouse in Portland, Oregon, on 23 July. Photograph: Mike Logdson/RMV/REX/Shutterstock

The Black Lives Matter protest in Portland looked to be winding down last Saturday night when US marine corps veteran Duston Obermeyer noticed a phalanx of federal officers emerge from the federal courthouse.

They shot teargas at the crowd and pushed a protester to the ground with such force that, Obermeyer said, she slid 6ft across the pavement.


Chad Wolf: who is the Trump official leading the crackdown in Portland?

The 42-year-old had driven about 40 minutes from his home in the Molalla area for his first protest after hearing the many recent reports of federal personnel in tactical gear emerging from unmarked cars with automatic weapons to pick up protesters. His plan was to observe first-hand what was happening.

But in that moment, he said, he realized he couldn’t stand by and simply watch.

In a Pokémon hat and Superman T-shirt, and with a cotton mask protecting his face, the 6ft 4in, 275lb man walked up to the officers and asked whether they understood their oath to defend the constitution.
Laura Cranehill(@LauraCranehill)

This is #CaptainPortland @Tazerface16 getting attacked by FEDS but from a different angle, and who I believe is your fellow USNA alumni Duston Obermeyer getting attacked beside you #wallofvets #portlandprotest pic.twitter.com/kJWr2122ZmJuly 23, 2020

“They are not supposed to be coming and attacking protesters,” Obermeyer told the Guardian. “They didn’t even give any warning, there was no ‘hey you need to move’, ‘hey back up’. There was basically them walking out and assaulting a protester just to prove that they could.”

Just a few feet away, Obermeyer was aware of another man, US navy veteran Chris David, asking virtually the same question.

 

Duston Obermeyer. Photograph: Duston Obermeyer

Despite both being graduates of the naval academy, David is 11 years older and thus the pair had never met. But after more than 50 consecutive days of anti-racism and anti-police brutality protests in Portland, following the killing of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis, and the recent deployment of militarized federal agents by Donald Trump, both veterans had decided simultaneously now was the time to start asking questions.

“I’m not a big believer in coincidence,” said Obermeyer. “I believe that we both have similar feelings because we come from similar places and we truly believe in the constitution as it’s currently written and as it’s taught in grade school. And this is a violation of constitutional rights.”

David, who came dressed in a Naval Academy sweatshirt and Navy wrestling hat, told the Guardian he believes they both came out that day because of their time at the naval academy, which instills “a deep level of integrity” in graduates. But also, he said, for perhaps an even simpler reason.


“We have the ability to see what is right and what is wrong. And what we both saw was wrong and we wanted to go out there and talk to those officers.”

Obermeyer also asked the officers whether they understand what an illegal order is, referencing the fact that military officers are required by law to disobey illegal or unconstitutional orders.

“Assaulting an unarmed protester who is exercising their first amendment rights is illegal, that’s an illegal order,” he said.

That’s when teargas was fired on the two men. When that didn’t deter them, Obermeyer said an officer tried to hit him with a baton, but he caught it and quickly pushed him back. Another officer repeatedly beat David with a baton, breaking his hand in two places, an injury that will require surgery on Monday. He was also sprayed in the face with a white chemical irritant that he said “felt like flaming gasoline.”
Zane Sparling(@PDXzane)

Federal police strike protester with baton, use pepper spray and tear gas outside courthouse in Portland pic.twitter.com/VX2xTVaaYqJuly 19, 2020

Obermeyer recalls an officer sticking an automatic weapon in his face, while another shot him at point-blank range with an orange chemical irritant.

After serving in the marine corps for over a decade, including as an officer, Obermeyer has experienced being gassed many times. In this case, he wasn’t sure what they had used because, he said: “I’ve never felt worse than I did that night after being sprayed in the face.”

His eyes and nose almost immediately closed up, and he started having a difficult time breathing. His clothes were drenched, and he said it felt like his skin was on fire. Others in the crowd guided him a block away and helped him flush out his eyes. It took him three days to recover.

Oregon’s governor, Kate Brown, and Portland’s mayor, Ted Wheeler, have repeatedly denounced the presence of agents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the US Marshals Service and the border patrol.

Oregon’s attorney general, Ellen Rosenblum, filed a lawsuit Friday in federal court against DHS, the Marshals Service, Customs and Border Protection and the Federal Protection Service, alleging their behavior violated state citizens’ right to peacefully protest.

Play Video
1:57 Portland protests: why Trump has sent in federal agents – video report

Meanwhile, inspired by the events last Saturday, “Wall of Vets” groups have formed in Portland and at least five other cities across the country, similar to the walls of moms and dads, who stand in lines to protect the protesters.


Trump is using federal agents as his 'goon squad', says Ice's ex-acting head

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The DHS said in a statement Wednesday that federal law enforcement officers are working “diligently and honorably to enforce federal law by defending federal property and the lives of their fellow officers” as “violent anarchists continue to riot on the streets of Portland”. The DHS and Portland police did not respond to a request for comment.

David said the officers’ response Saturday night to a largely peaceful crowd was completely disproportionate. But he said, it was also clear that they were not trained for this type of situation.

“They have no tactical cohesion to what they’re doing,” he said. “Duston and I are vets. We can tell what’s going on with these guys. There was no sort of command. They were running around and they were scared.”

As he watches the protests continue to balloon, Obermeyer believes the federal officers are actually “creating the situation that they are saying they have to be there for”.

“There are more protesters as we move forward,” he said. “Things should be kind of winding down at this point and they’re not because federal officers are there antagonizing and creating the situation not dealing with it.”

Scientists ‘Crack’ Mystery of What Split Earth’s Outer Shell and Began Motion of the Continents

© Photo : United States Geological Survey
TECH

Evolving from the concept of continental drift, which proposed that Earth’s continents began as one supercontinent, only to drift apart over billions of years, plate tectonics built on the idea to suggest that seven large plates and eight smaller plates were responsible for this process. The question is: how were these plates created?


Chinese and US researchers from the Dalian University of Technology, the China University of Geosciences, the University of Hong Kong, Hampton University and Northeastern University believe they may have ‘cracked’ the billions of years’ old mystery of how Earth’s shell split into 15 tectonic plates which have governed the movement of the continents ever since.
In a paper entitled ‘Breaking Earth’s Shell Into a Global Plate Network’, recently published in an issue of the peer-reviewed Nature Communications journal, scientists posited, using complex mathematical simulations and 3D spherical shell models, that our planet’s once uniform shell may have heated up again after solidifying and cooling, with immense thermal pressures causing it to expand and ultimately – crack.

Assuming a planetary radius of 6,371 km, researchers calculated that the lithosphere, Earth’s solid outer shell, could withstand only about 1 km worth of expansion before fracturing began.

The idea that Earth probably formed with a solid shell is itself a relatively new one, with researchers from the University of Maryland, Curtin University and the Geological Survey of Western Australia seeking to confirm that this was the case in a 2017 paper which examined rocks as old as 3.5 billion years old collected from Western Australia’s East Pilbara Terrane.



FELIPE DANA
Pangaea Riddle: How Ancient Supermassive Continent Broke Apart Shaping Today’s EarthWhat’s unique about the Chinese-American collaborative study’s approach is their theory about how exactly the Earth’s outer shell cooled and warmed again sufficiently enough to crack. “The answer lies in consideration of major heat-loss mechanisms that could have occurred during Earth’s early periods,” Dr. Alexander Webb, study coauthor and researcher at the University of Hong Kong’s Department of Earth and Planetary Science, said in a press release.


Specifically, the researchers posit that during Earth’s earliest period, volcanic advection was responsible for carrying hot material from the Earth’s fiery core to the surface. Over time, molten rock coming to the planet’s surface would cool and sink, with part of the heat lost to space, subsequently cooling the lithosphere, and, over time, trapping convective heat in the core, causing it to expand and – voila – ultimately cracking the shell into multiple plates.

© PHOTO : TWITTER / @YULSAROSLITSKA
Eruption of a volcano

The scientists now plan to use their tools and models for further studies of Earth, as well as other planets and moons in the solar system. “Together,” the researchers stressed, “these studies chip away at one of Earth and planetary science’s greatest remaining mysteries: how and why did Earth go from a molten ball to our plate tectonic planet?”