It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Tuesday, August 04, 2020
Expert on authoritarian regimes explains how Trump is creating a crisis to ‘cling to power’
This week, as the economy revealed that the U.S. GDP cratered, President Donald Trump teased putting a hold on the November election. While it is unclear if the president was attempting to distract from the economy in freefall or his falling poll numbers.
Historian and expert on authoritarian regimes, Professor Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, describing the key ways to spot authoritarianism
“Do we have any reason to believe that Mr. Trump would accept the outcome of the election?” asked the Yale professor. “The tweet of July 30th was a very clear statement, but he has literally, dozens of times before said he wouldn’t. There is nothing in his career that indicates he actually likes democracy. In this particular tweet, we have a dangerous mixture, where he’s talking about a problem he created himself, insofar as we do have problems with voting in the U.S. They have to do with things like African-Americans not being enfranchised, they have to do with the things of foreign intervention. And even the problems he mentioned, which is postal voting, which is good and of itself, that might be slowed down because of his own postmaster general. So, he’s talking about problems he caused himself, then claiming they’re an emergency, and using that as a reason to claim power himself. That’s a manufactured emergency and that is, in fact, a prime historical fascist tactic.”
He went on to explain that a fascist is someone who will often manufacture a crisis, blame it on the other side, and then use the crisis to his own benefit. In Trump’s case, vote-by-mail has become the enemy as Republicans continue to defund the post office and Republicans in several states were caught in absentee-voter crimes.
Snyder said that Trump has already manufactured his crisis and is now trying to create the solution that would best protect him and his power.
“Another element of this, which is worth paying attention to, is the way the tweet ends,” he continued. “People can console themselves by saying Mr. Trump can’t himself cancel the election. That’s true, but what he is doing, as of July 30th, is calling upon others to create a mess, so that the election won’t go through smoothly. That’s what the three question marks at the end mean. He can’t do it himself.”
As of the time Trump sent that tweet, Snyder said that anyone who continues to support Trump knows they are doing so in defiance of democratic values of America.
“As of July 30th, if you support Mr. Trump, if you’re planning on voting for Mr. Trump, if you contribute to the campaign, if you’re a delegate, you know perfectly well, this is a man who doesn’t believe he can win by the normal vote count,” said Snyder. “You know you are taking part now in a campaign which is no longer a democratic campaign, but which is something else. You know that his main task for you now is not to win an election. He’s basically conceded defeat already. His main task for you now is to find someone who can mess up the election so we can cling to power. I think that’s a big moral question where a lot of Americans should be thinking about the choices they’re about to make.”
August 3rd, 2020 at 8:06 PM A giant dead thing washed up on a UK beach and nobody can pinpoint exactly what kind of animal it was. Theories ranged from a cow to a whale to a mysterious “sea monster,” but researchers are still studying it. The best guess right now is that it was indeed some species of whale, but scientists can’t say exactly what kind. The sea is full of wondrous and unique creatures that come in all shapes and sizes. At some point, the mound of decaying body parts you see above was one of those creatures… but what exactly what is? Nobody seems to know, but there are plenty of theories floating around.
Images of the so-called “sea monster” have flooded social media after they were snapped by a beachgoer in the UK. In the original post by Ainsdale, the location where the creature was discovered, it’s described as having four flippers and measuring approximately 15 feet long. So… what is it?
Due to the animal’s advanced state of decomposition, it’s very difficult to determine exactly what it is. Early guesses ranged from a cow (?) to a whale, to a “sea monster,” but that was before the experts got a chance to take a look at it. As you can see in the images, there are very few identifiable body parts left. Large bones stick out in every direction and the creature has clearly been rotting away for some time.
Speaking with the Echo, Stephen Ayliffe, Senior Advisor at Natural England explained that while they can’t determine the species, experts believe that they know what type of animal it was:
“We can confirm that an animal in a poorly decomposed state has washed up on Ainsdale beach and whilst the identification of the animal is unconfirmed it appears to be a species of whale,” he told the Echo. “We are working with an animal removal company to have the animal’s remains removed from the beach as soon as possible.”
Okay, so it’s probably not a “sea monster” and was simply an unfortunate or ill whale that met its end and washed ashore. That’s a bummer for the poor whale but at least we don’t have to worry about monsters, right?
This is hardly the first time a sea creature has washed ashore, leaving passersby to guess what it was before it died and decomposed. The “sea monster” theory tends to be a popular one. When you see a massive blob of body parts on the beach it’s easy to let your mind wander, I suppose.
In any case, it would appear that the experts have a pretty good handle on what they’re looking at, even if they can’t say for certain what family of whales this unfortunate specimen came from. Or maybe it’s a monster. Maybe.
Tags: sea monster, UK Mike Wehner has reported on technology and video games for the past decade, covering breaking news and trends in VR, wearables, smartphones, and future tech. Most recently, Mike served as Tech Editor at The Daily Dot, and has been featured in USA Today, Time.com, and countless other web and print outlets. His love of reporting is second only to his gaming addiction.
ROYAL ONTARIO MUSEUM (ROM) 76 million year old dinosaur cancer could change modern treatment
There are late diagnoses and there are long overdue diagnoses, and figuring out a dinosaur that died 76 million years ago had aggressive cancer probably falls into the latter category. New research used modern diagnostics on very old bones, to figure out that a long-dead Centrosaurus apertus had the first identified case of dinosaur cancer.
A horned dinosaur with large hooks that extend from the backs of their frills, Centrosaurus closely resemble the far better-known Triceratops. Herbivores, they lived in sizable groups and could grow to up to 18 feet in length. Examples of fossil remains for the species were first discovered decades ago, but it’s only now that the unexpected medical condition was identified. Researchers from the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) and McMaster University found evidence of an osteosarcoma – an aggressive, malignant bone cancer – for the first time in a dinosaur, in the fibula or lower leg bone.
The bone itself was first found in 1989, at the so-called Dinosaur Park in Alberta, Canada. At the time, however, its malformed end was believed to be the result of a fracture that had healed poorly over time. By 2017, though, its unusual shape was spotted by researchers, who used modern medical techniques from pathology, radiology, orthopaedic surgery, and palaeopathology to evaluate the bone from the perspective of how similar it was to a human patient with the cancer. “After carefully examining, documenting, and casting the bone, the team performed high-resolution computed tomography (CT) scans,” the ROM explains. “They then thin-sectioned the fossil bone and examined it under a microscope to assess it at the bone-cellular level. Powerful three-dimensional CT reconstruction tools were used to visualize the progression of the cancer through the bone. Using this rigorous process, the investigators reached a diagnosis of osteosarcoma.”
Though the cancer could well have spread to other parts of the dinosaur, what’s surprising is that it’s not believed to be the cause of its death. Instead, the fossil remains were discovered as part of a huge bonebed, believed to be caused when a large herd of Centrosaurus were caught and killed in a flood.
That the dinosaur managed to last that long is a sign, paleontologists suggest, of the value of a herd lifestyle. “The cancer would have had crippling effects on the individual and made it very vulnerable to the formidable tyrannosaur predators of the time,” Dr. David Evans of the ROM explains. “The fact that this plant-eating dinosaur lived in a large, protective herd may have allowed it to survive longer than it normally would have with such a devastating disease.”
While the diagnosis may have come far, far too late for dinosaur cancer treatment to be an option, that’s not to say it’s of no value for modern osteosarcoma patients. By joining the dots between species that lived tens of million years ago, with humans today, researchers hope to better understand the genetics of cancer and how they evolve. That could lead to development of new treatment regimens.
Japanese astronomers to discover a new galaxy with extremely low oxygen Shane McGlaun - Aug 2, 2020,
Astronomers have made an exciting discovery using the Japanese Subaru Telescope. Scientists have discovered a new galaxy that has extremely low levels of oxygen present. According to the researchers, the galaxy has only 1.6% of the oxygen content of our galaxy.
The extremely low concentrations of oxygen present within the galaxy suggest that most of the stars in the galaxy formed recently, at least on a galactic scale. Finding galaxies in the early stage of formation using wide-field data is very difficult because the data contains up to 40 million objects.
The researchers developed a new machine learning method to help find galaxies from the vast amount of data. The computer was repeatedly taught to learn the galaxy colors from theoretical models and only select those galaxies in the early stage of formation, which is indicated by low oxygen. The name of the newly discovered galaxy is HSC J1631+4426.
Researchers also noted how rare it is to find galaxies in such an early stage of formation. The galaxy is one of 27 galaxies selected by the computer’s AI for follow-up observations that could be galaxies in the early formation stage. HSC J1631+4426 is about 430 million light-years away in the Hercules constellation.
Other details about the galaxy include that it is very small at 0.8 million solar masses, which is only about 1/100000 of the Milky Way Galaxy. It’s 1.6% oxygen abundance makes it the lowest recorded value ever. There is no indication given at this time of how old the galaxy might be, but galactic timescales are enormous compared to a human lifetime.
With big rallies cancelled, young climate activists are adapting election tactics
For young climate activists in the US, staying home because of the pandemic does not mean staying silent, with plans gathering pace across the country to make their voices heard in November’s elections.
It has been nearly a year since an estimated 6 million people across the world joined the youth-led global climate strikes on 20 September.
In the US, students from Los Angeles to Washington DC skipped school to voice their frustration over the slow response to the climate crisis by elected leaders, and Greta Thunberg told a cheering crowd in New York City “this is only the beginning”.
But in the 10 months since the historic protests, the Covid-19 pandemic has ravaged the US, making meeting and organizing in-person hazardous. Climate strikes, including a major three-day mass protest that was planned for Earth Day 2020 in April, have been cancelled. Politicians who get elected this cycle have to be the ones that are really caring about our futuresRose Strauss, 20
But networks of youth climate activists have been regrouping, with a new focus on election campaigning with phone banks, social media and friend-to-friend organizing, according to interviews with organizers.
The stakes could not be higher for young people, according to Aracely Jimenez-Hudis, 23, the deputy communications director of the Sunrise Movement, a leading youth advocacy group on the climate.
“We are a generation that was really born into crises,” said Jimenez-Hudis. “We don’t have some golden age that we can look back on and feel that there is any kind of resonance with a call to normalcy because our normal has always been endless wars, has always been police brutality.”
Youth voter turnout during the 2016 elections was disappointing with just 46% of eligible voters aged 18 to 29 going out to vote, compared to 70% of the oldest voters, 70 and over.
Then in the wake of Donald Trump’s election, youth movements began building campaigns and gaining visibility, with climate change growing as a key issue, driven in part by the burgeoning Sunrise Movement, which was founded in 2017.
In preparation for the 2018 midterm elections, the Sunrise Movement began training young activists to canvass for candidates who were proponents of renewable energy and publicly confront incumbents who take money from the fossil fuel industry. When the 2018 midterms came around, 20% more young Americans ages 18 to 29 went out to vote compared to the last midterms in 2014, and Democrats won the House.
The group has more recently been pushing Democratic leaders to embrace the Green New Deal, a bold carbon-neutral plan for the economy championed by progressive Democrats including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hold a news conference to introduce Green New Deal legislation in Washington DC. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Backing the policy was initially seen as too radical by many Democrats but it has now been embraced more widely by members of the party. Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, recently unveiled a climate and jobs plan that mirrors some of the aggressiveness of the Green New Deal, though some activists believe he is not tough enough on fossil fuel industries.
With the pandemic, Jimenez-Hudis said, the Sunrise Movement has shifted its electoral strategy to focus entirely on phone banking and friend-to-friend organizing – encouraging people to talk to their friends and relatives directly about the candidates they support.
“We still have lots of work to do to make sure that we get the right Democrats on the ballot, the right Green New Deal champions on the ballot for the election in November just up and down the ticket,” Jimenez-Hudis said.
The organization credits its phone banking volunteers for helping Jamaal Bowman, a former teacher who ousted a longtime congressman in New York, win his election and for tightening the race of Charles Booker, a Democrat in Kentucky who was hoping to run against the Republican senator Mitch McConnell. Aligning racial justice and climate fights
In the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in May, the Sunrise Movement has also made efforts to streamline its focus toward racism and police brutality, encouraging members to attend protests and speak out about the intersection of racial justice and climate activism. The organization recently started its #WideAwake campaign, encouraging local activists to protest outside the homes of elected officials. On Juneteenth, a local Sunrise chapter coordinated such a protest outside the home of Senator McConnell, demanding justice for Breonna Taylor, who was shot and killed in her home by police in Louisville, Kentucky.
Recent months have helped some young climate activists see that the same systemic changes needed to address climate change are in line with the ones that will bring racial justice, escalating the need for elected officials who will bring those changes.
A man holds a sign at a protest in Brooklyn. Some climate activists believe the changes needed to address climate change are in line with the ones that will bring racial justice. Photograph: Erik McGregor/LightRocket/Getty Images
Rose Strauss, 20, a former organizer with the Sunrise Movement, said her time with the organization helped her understand the gravity of the 2020 election. She dropped out of college so she could dedicate all her time to the election and canvass for Senator Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire.
Once it became clear that Sanders was not going to win the nomination, Strauss and a few fellow activists began to dedicate their efforts to starting a new initiative called the Down Ballot Disruption Project. The program, held entirely over Zoom, aims to teach young people how to canvass for candidates in their local elections and how to build a community around their activism, especially on social media.
Young people can “change this election in massive ways. The only arena right now, because we can’t go and canvass outside, is social media. That’s where we know how to do stuff,” Strauss said. “We really need to make sure that the politicians who get elected this cycle are going to be the ones that are really caring about our futures.”
For activists with Zero Hour, the climate justice organization that coordinated a youth climate march in Washington DC in summer 2018, the focus for the 2020 election is less on getting individual candidates elected but broadly teaching young activists how to encourage their communities to get out to vote and educate them about the Green New Deal.
The organization, along with the National Children’s Campaign, launched the #Vote4OurFuture campaign in July, targeting youth activists in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania and Grand Rapids and Detroit in Michigan, two swing states. The campaign was originally scheduled to be a bus tour in March, but coronavirus forced the organizations to change course. Now, the campaign is all about hosting virtual events like roundtables and webinars focusing on what the Green New Deal could look like in specific communities.
While climate advocacy during the pandemic has largely been on video chats and social media, young activists are eager to get back on the streets. Fridays for Future, the global organization founded by Greta Thunberg, plans on holding a global climate strike on 25 September. Local chapters are working on what the protest will look like in their areas to accommodate local Covid-19 conditions.
Spencer Berg, 17, an organizer with Fridays for Future NYC, said organizers are still working out the logistics of what the protest will look like, but the overall message of the demonstration will be to advocate for a “green recovery” and ensure that New York City continues to uphold its commitments to fighting climate change.
While the pandemic has left devastation across the city and in many other places in the US, activists are hopeful that coronavirus can provide parallels to climate change and show how a single crisis can affect everyone.
Coronavirus has “inspired a lot of people because it has shown us that the government can act quickly and efficiently to quell a crisis”, Berg said. “That’s what this is: it’s a climate crisis. A lot of politicians say we can’t afford to do that, we don’t have enough time for this, but coronavirus showed us that we can have complete systematic change if we need to.”
It's time for America to reassert climate leadership. It starts with voting Michael Mann
Individual efforts are important, but we need collective action and systemic change. And we can only get that at the ballot
Jane Fonda at a protest calling attention to the climate crisis in Washington in January. ‘Your vote will reverberate for years.’ Photograph: Joshua Roberts/Reuters
In a world with so many problems, it’s easy to feel helpless. And particularly right now in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, quite alone. But even as we practice social distancing, we have an opportunity to work together to solve the greatest problem that humanity faces. No, I’m not talking about coronavirus. I’m talking about climate change. I’m bewildered that Trump would imperil America by abandoning the Paris agreement Ban Ki-moon
As a climate scientist, I’m often asked what people can do about climate change, a problem so pervasive and impactful that literally all the rest of humanity’s problems play out upon its landscape. But there is no one specific answer, no magic bullet. Everyone has something different to contribute. And that’s the challenge. We must each find what we’re passionate about, capable of and good at. And we must all find our voice.
For some, that means organizing and attending local protests to put pressure on politicians, or participating in clean-up efforts that require nothing more than some gloves and trash bags. For others, it means supporting environmental organizations. It can mean working with businesses to reduce pollution or researching new technologies. Artists, celebrities and opinion leaders can use their platforms to educate, motivate and elevate others to join the cause. And we can change our lifestyle to lower our individual carbon footprint – eating less meat or going electric.
Our efforts as individuals are important. But alone they cannot solve this problem. We need collective action and systemic change. We need policies to incentive the decarbonization of our society. That requires politicians willing to support climate-friendly policies. And the only way we get them is by voting.
Voting is a moment of activism that can have a years-long impact. Just look at the Trump administration. Slim minorities in a handful of states by just over a quarter of eligible voters resulted in a president, Donald Trump, who threatens our entire planet. Trump stocked his administration with polluters and lobbyists who took the regulatory reins off their pals in the oil and gas industry. His administration has slowly but steadily dismantled a half century of environmental progress.
In the space of a few years Trump has erased America’s leadership and moral standing. His threat to withdraw from the Paris agreement (which he can’t actually make good on if he loses the upcoming election), has provided an excuse for other major emitters such as China to ease off in their own decarbonization efforts. The result has been a surge of fossil fuel pollution that will remain in the global atmosphere for thousands of years, impacting everyone on Earth.
Yet there is reason for cautious optimism that we can still right this ship. Because no sooner than Trump was elected were others organizing to mitigate the damage he has done. For example, in response to his decision that he would pull the US out of the Paris agreement, climate action became a priority from the ground up. A coalition quickly formed between mayors and governors both red and blue, CEOs, university presidents and faith leaders of all types to tell the world that they remained dedicated to the climate fight.
Since then, they’ve demonstrated exactly how powerful we can be when we work together for a common goal. This coalition represents nearly 70% of US GDP and over half of our emissions and alone is on track to cut US emissions by 25% by 2030. If cities, states, businesses and all other non-federal institutions made maximum effort to curtail their emissions the US could reach a nearly 40% reduction by 2030. So what can you do to advance action on climate change?
Well, you can look for local organizations that may need help. You can join, or donate to, any number of worthy local or national charities that speak to the combination of what you love to do and what you want to protect.
And you can vote. On climate. From president to police commissioner.
Your vote will reverberate for years, as the efforts that have grown in the dark shade of the Trump administration are poised to bloom with a President Joe Biden, a climate-friendly Congress and state and local politicians who favor climate action. Strong majorities of voters want action on climate to be part of recovery efforts that grow our economy. Across the country, youth activists have lit a beacon of moral clarity that demands action in response to science.
In Congress, House Democrats just released their report on the climate crisis, and are ready to turn it into action, while the Biden campaign has just released a robust new climate platform that, if enacted, would put us on solid footing to win the climate fight. Though it may not be perfect, it’s the strongest climate call ever put forward by a Democratic party nominee for president, and will quite literally mean a world of difference compared to the Trump agenda. The US withdrawal from the Paris climate accord is a racist act Read more
Within two decades we could decarbonize our power sector and create 25m clean energy jobs. Through a wartime-scale mobilization to rid our economy of carbon, we can address the unemployment crisis we currently face and put our country on the path to generate good, durable and clean jobs. It’s a classic win-win scenario.
Despite the environmental hostility of the current Washington power brokers, local leaders have laid the groundwork for success. All we need now is for the federal government to do its job, and serve as a powerful centralized force to protect us.
And all that takes is a vote. In November.
Michael E Mann is distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Pennsylvania State University. He is author of the upcoming book The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet, due out in January (Public Affairs Books)
Rising temperatures will cause more deaths than all infectious diseases – study
Poorer, hotter parts of the world will struggle to adapt to unbearable conditions, research finds
A woman drinks as children cool off in a public fountain in Milan, Italy, on 31 July. 2020 is set to be hottest or second hottest on record, in line with the longer-term trend of rising temperatures. Photograph: Luca Bruno/AP
The growing but largely unrecognized death toll from rising global temperatures will come close to eclipsing the current number of deaths from all the infectious diseases combined if planet-heating emissions are not constrained, a major new study has found. Killer heat: US racial injustices will worsen as climate crisis escalates Read more
Rising temperatures are set to cause particular devastation in poorer, hotter parts of the world that will struggle to adapt to unbearable conditions that will kill increasing numbers of people, the research has found.
The economic loss from the climate crisis, as well as the cost of adaptation, will be felt around the world, including in wealthy countries.
In a high-emissions scenario where little is done to curb planet-heating gases, global mortality rates will be raised by 73 deaths per 100,000 people by the end of the century. This nearly matches the current death toll from all infectious diseases, including tuberculosis, HIV/Aids, malaria, dengue and yellow fever.
The research used an enormous global dataset of death and temperature records to see how they are related, gathering not only direct causes such as heatstroke but also less obvious links such as a surge in heart attacks during a heatwave.
“A lot of older people die due to indirect heat affects,” said Amir Jina, an environmental economist at the University of Chicago and a co-author of the study, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. “It’s eerily similar to Covid – vulnerable people are those who have pre-existing or underlying conditions. If you have a heart problem and are hammered for days by the heat, you are going to be pushed towards collapse.”
Poorer societies that occupy the hottest areas of the world are set to suffer worst. As already baking temperatures climb further this century, countries such as Ghana, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sudan face an additional 200 or more deaths per 100,000 people. Colder, richer countries such as Norway and Canada, meanwhile, will see a drop in deaths as fewer and fewer people perish due to extreme cold.
“You see the really bad impacts at the tropics,” said Jina. “There’s not one single worldwide condition, there’s a lot of different changes with poorer people much more affected with limited ability to adapt. The richer countries, even if they have increases in mortality, can pay more to adapt to it. It’s really the people who have done the least to cause climate change who are suffering from it.”
Huge heatwaves have roiled the US, Europe, Australia, India, the Arctic and elsewhere in recent years, while 2020 is set to be hottest or second hottest on record, in line with the longer-term trend of rising temperatures. The deaths resulting from this heat are sometimes plain enough to generate attention, such as the fact that 1,500 people who died in France from the hot temperatures during summer last year.
Within richer countries, places already used to the heat will have an adaptation head start on areas only now starting to experience scorching conditions. “A really hot day in Seattle is more damaging than a really hot day in Houston because air conditioning and other measures are less widespread there,” said Bob Kopp, a co-author and climate scientist at Rutgers University.
“It’s not going to be free for Seattle to get the resilience Houston has. Obviously in poorer countries the situation is much worse. Climate change is a public health issue and an equality issue.”
The economic cost of these deaths is set to be severe, costing the world 3.2% of global economic output by the end of the century if emissions are not tamed. Each ton of planet-warming carbon dioxide emitted will cost $36.60 in damage in this high-emissions world, the researchers calculated.
This worst-case scenario would involve emissions continue to grow without restraint, causing the average global temperature increase to surpass 3C by 2100. The world has heated up by about 1C, on average, since the dawn of mass industrialization, an increase scientists say is fueling increasingly severe heatwaves, wildfires, storms and floods.
A more moderate path, where emissions are rapidly cut, will see temperature-related deaths less than a third of the more severe scenario, the researchers found. The economic costs will be significantly lower, too.
“It’s plausible that we could have the worst-case scenario and that would involve drastic measures such as lots of people migrating,” said Jina. “Much like when Covid overwhelms a healthcare system, it’s hard to tell what will happen when climate change will put systems under pressure like that. We need to understand the risk and invest to mitigate that risk, before we really start to notice the impacts.”
Play Video 'You can't do that': Trump argues with reporter over Covid-19 death figures – video
Donald Trump visibly floundered in an interview when pressed on a range of issues, including the number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the US, his claims that mail-in voting is fraudulent, and his inaction over the “Russian bounty” scandal.
The US president also repeatedly cast doubt on the cause of death of Jeffrey Epstein, and said of Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite who has pleaded not guilty to allegedly participating in the sex-trafficking of girls by Epstein, that he wished her well.
In the interview, broadcast on HBO on Monday and conducted by Axios’s national political correspondent, Jonathan Swan, Trump again asserted that his administration is doing an “incredible job” responding to the coronavirus.
Claiming that the pandemic was unique, Trump said: “This has never happened before. 1917, but it was totally different, it was a flu in that case. If you watch the fake news on television, they don’t even talk about it, but there are 188 other countries right now that are suffering. Some, proportionately, far greater than we are.”
(IT WAS 1918 -1919, BUT TO TRUMP IT REMAINS 1917
HE GETS CONFUSED WITH THE WWI MOVIE, AND THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION)
Swan pressed the president on which countries were doing worse. Trump brandished several pieces of paper with graphs and charts on them that he referred to as he attempted to suggest the US figures compared well internationally.
“Right here, United States is lowest in numerous categories. We’re lower than the world. Lower than Europe.”
“In what?” asks Swan. As it becomes apparent that Trump is talking about the number of deaths as a proportion of cases, Swan says said: “Oh, you’re doing death as a proportion of cases. I’m talking about death as a proportion of population. That’s where the US is really bad. Much worse than Germany, South Korea.”
Trump then says: “You can’t do that.”
According to figures from the Johns Hopkins University, the US has had over 4.7m confirmed Covid-19 cases, with 155,471 deaths. The US accounts for more than a quarter of all global confirmed infections.
In another section of the interview, Trump repeats his false assertion that the reason the US has a significantly higher number of cases is because it tests more than anyone else, saying: “You know, there are those that say you can test too much. You do know that.”
Asked who says that, Trump replies: “Oh, just read the manuals. Read the books.”
Trump also appears, without evidence, to assert that children are receiving positive Covid-19 test results for having a runny nose – which is not generally listed among the symptoms of coronavirus, which are a high temperature and a new continuous cough.
“You test, some kid has even just a little runny nose, it’s a case. And then you report many cases,” Trump says.
The president attempts to shift blame for the outbreaks of coronavirus on to state governors, saying: “We have done a great job. We’ve got the governors everything they needed. They didn’t do their job – many of them didn’t, some of them did.”
Why Trump cannot delay the election – plus the truth about mail-in voting
Read more
Trump was also asked about his previous baseless assertion that due to mail-in voting, the forthcoming US election would be “the most inaccurate and fraudulent election in history”.
In the interview, Trump says: “So we have a new phenomena, it’s called mail-in voting.” Swan then clarifies that mail-in voting has existed since the US civil war.
Further attempting to cast doubt on the process, Trump says: “So they’re going to send tens of millions of ballots to California, all over the place. Who’s going to get them? Somebody got a ballot for a dog. Somebody got a ballot for something else. You got millions of ballots going. Nobody even knows where they’re going.”
On Maxwell and Epstein, the president appeared to cast doubt on the official account of the cause of Epstein’s death, which has been a repeated source of conspiracy theories.
Of Maxwell, Trump says “Her friend or boyfriend Epstein was either killed or committed suicide in jail. She’s now in jail. Yeah, I wish her well.” Trump goes on twice more to say of Epstein: “Was it suicide or was he killed?”
In another part of the interview, he dismissed again as “fake news” intelligence reports that Russia had been offering bounties to the Taliban for attacks on US forces in Afghanistan. Asked specifically by Swan whether he had ever discussed the issue with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, Trump confirms he has never mentioned it to him.
When Swan asks Trump about Russia supplying weapons to the Taliban, the president asserts: “I have heard that, but it has never reached my desk.”
UPDATED
Furloughed workers three times as likely to default on a payment
Consumer group finds 6% have missed loan or credit card payment in sign of impact of coronavirus
Furloughed workers are three times more likely than other employees to have defaulted on a payment last month, in a sign of the economic distress caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
As the UK government started unwinding the furlough operation that has paid millions of workers 80% of their salary, a survey by Which? has found that those still relying on the scheme are starting to feel the financial heat.
The consumer group found that 13% of those furloughed, put on enforced leave or reduced hours due to the coronavirus crisis, have defaulted on at least one payment, compared with 4% of those still working as normal.
Between 3 million and 5 million workers are still thought to be having all or some of their wages paid through the Treasury-backed scheme. Which? said 6% of workers on the scheme reported that they has missed a loan or credit card payment in the previous four weeks.
Of those with a mortgage or renting, 5% had already defaulted on a housing payment – twice the default rate for the normally working population. Some respondents will have defaulted on more than one payment type in the last month, it said.
If the survey is representative, it would mean that as many as 500,000 workers missed a payment.
At the start of the crisis, the Financial Conduct Authority ordered the banks and other loan providers to offer mortgage payment holidays as well as similar assistance for credit cards, personal loans, car finance, payday loans, overdrafts and insurance premiums.
The FCA measures are set to wind up at the end of October, which is also the day the furlough scheme is halted.
The fear is that workers whose jobs have been completely underwritten by it will be axed as employers realise that they must start contributing.
Since last Saturday, companies had to start paying national insurance and pension contributions for furloughed staff, as part of its phased removal. So far the scheme has cost the taxpayer more than £31bn.
Richard Piggin, the head of campaigns at Which?, said: “Despite extensive action being taken by the government and the banking industry, it’s very worrying that people currently on the furlough scheme have reported experiencing much higher levels of financial difficulty than those who are working as normal.
“With just a couple of months until the scheme comes to an end, there is real concern that this gap could widen even further. The Financial Conduct Authority will also have to ensure consumers are provided with the help they need if they are in financial difficulty.”
Last week, the biggest banks warned that their profits would be hit as customers failed to pay back loans. Lloyds, the UK’s biggest bank, was putting aside £2.4bn for bad debts, saying the economic impact of the Covid-19 lockdown was “much larger than expected”.
The Resolution Foundation thinktank has said that up to half of all workers in the hard-hit hospitality and leisure sectors were likely still to be on furlough, raising concerns about the impact of across-the-board increases to employer contributions.
Extending the furlough scheme would cost little – and benefit the whole of the UK
Keeping the lifeline until June 2021 would cost £10bn. But it would also save a million jobs and help growth, our research shows
• Garry Young is deputy director of the National Institute for Economic and Social Research
‘It’s frustrating that the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, plans to close the furlough scheme in October, long before most people believe the effect of the pandemic will be over.’ Photograph: Tolga Akmen/AFP/Getty Images
Published onTue 4 Aug 2020
The government’s furlough scheme – known formally as the coronavirus job retention scheme – has been an undoubted success. It has kept unemployment down despite a deep contraction of around a quarter in what the economy produces. It has directly helped protect 9.5m jobs and been a lifeline for those employees who would otherwise have suffered a loss of income and worried about their future.
The furlough scheme has not been cheap and has contributed to the dramatic rise in government borrowing. But it has undoubtedly saved the economy from far greater damage. Which makes it so frustrating that the chancellor plans to close it in October, long before most people believe the effect of the pandemic will be over.
The number furloughed will fall over the next few months as the economy starts to return to normal in many sectors. Employers are already recalling workers: according to an ONS survey, the proportion of employees on furlough fell from 32% at its peak to 18% in the first half of July. We estimate that between 5 and 6 million people are still on furlough leave. Between 1 and 1.5 million people are likely to be made unemployed when the furlough scheme ends in October, according to our modelling.
Unemployment can obviously be devastating on a personal level but it also has lasting economic consequences. Those who are out of work may become “disengaged” from the labour market. They may lose skills they had in work and fail to gain new ones. Relationships between employers and employees that have been built up, in some cases over decades, may be lost and never replaced, with adverse consequences for the economy as a whole.
That doesn’t mean the government should pay people to stay off work indefinitely – but it does mean looking at what can be done to preserve viable jobs until the pandemic is over.
Of course, keeping the furlough scheme going comes at a cost, but it also has benefits. After all, that is why the government introduced it in the first place. So what would happen if the government extended the scheme until the middle of next year, when a vaccine may be available? The direct cost would be the cost to the government of paying the wages of those who remained furloughed. But this would be offset by the income tax and national insurance contributions paid on the wages of those remaining on furlough – and savings on unemployment benefits that would not need to be paid. That would mean that the net cost of extending the furlough scheme would be around £10bn.
Not only would unemployment be lower next year – around 2 million instead of more than 3 million – we estimate it would remain lower at least until 2024, benefiting the private sector throughout the recovery as people have more money and more confidence about their futures. This would help economic growth and, according to our estimates, actually leave public sector debt slightly lower as a share of GDP than if the scheme were to be closed in October.
Without an extension, unemployment is likely to near 10%. For some parts of the UK, especially in the south and east of England, jobless numbers could be higher than they were during the global financial crisis, or the early-1990s recession.
Rishi Sunak has said that the furlough scheme should be a “bridge” through the pandemic. By withdrawing furlough support prematurely, he risks building a bridge that does not reach the other side. Finishing the job would cost little and benefit all of us.
