Q&A: What’s happening at the US Postal Service, and why?
By NICHOLAS RICCARDI

FILE - In this March 31, 2020, file photo United States Post Office delivery trucks are reflected in the side mirror of a vehicle as postal delivers set off on their daily rounds in Arvada, Colo. The U.S. Postal Service is warning states that it cannot guarantee all ballots cast by mail for the November election will arrive in time to be counted, even if mailed by state deadlines. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File)

The U.S. Postal Service is warning states it cannot guarantee that all ballots cast by mail for the Nov. 3 election will arrive in time to be counted, even if ballots are mailed by state deadlines. That’s raising the possibility that millions of voters could be disenfranchised.

It’s the latest chaotic and confusing development involving the agency, which has found itself in the middle of a high-stakes election year debate over who gets to vote in America, and how. Those questions are particularly potent in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, which has led many Americans to consider voting by mail instead of heading to in-person polling places.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends mail ballots as a way to vote without risking exposure to the virus at the polls. But President Donald Trump has baselessly excoriated mail ballots as fraudulent, worried that an increase could cost him the election. Democrats have been more likely than Republicans to vote by mail in primary contests held so far this year.

Some questions and answers about what’s going on with the post office and the upcoming election:

WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE POST OFFICE?

The Post Office has lost money for years, though advocates note it’s a government service rather than a profit-maximizing business.

In June, Louis DeJoy, a Republican donor and logistics company executive, took over as the new postmaster general and Trump tasked him with trying to make the Postal Service more profitable. Doing so would also squeeze businesses such as Amazon. Its chief executive, Jeff Bezos, has come under criticism from Trump because of the coverage the president has received from The Washington Post, which Bezos owns.

DeJoy cut overtime, late delivery trips and other expenses that ensure mail arrives at its destination on time. The result has been a national slowdown of mail.

The Postal Service is hoping for a $10 billion infusion from Congress to continue operating, but talks between Democrats and Republicans over a broad pandemic relief package that could have included that money have broken down.

On Thursday, Trump frankly acknowledged that he’s starving the postal service of that money to make it harder to process an expected surge of mail-in ballots. Trump on Saturday attempted to re-calibrate his position. He said that he supports more funding for the postal service but refuses to capitulate to other parts of the Democrats’ relief package—including funding for cash-strapped states.

WHY DOES THIS MATTER IN AN ELECTION YEAR?

Mail-in ballots have exploded in popularity since the pandemic spread in mid-March, at the peak of primary season. Some states have seen the demand for mail voting increase fivefold or more during the primaries. Election officials are bracing for the possibility that half of all voters — or even more — will cast ballots by mail in November.

Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah and Washington state have universal mail voting, and California, Nevada and Vermont are starting universal mail voting in November. But the rest have little experience with such a volume of ballots cast through the mail.

Timely mail is key to voting by mail. In states without universal mail-in voting, applications for mail ballots are generally sent out to voters by mail. They’re returned, again, by mail. Then the actual ballots are sent to voters by mail, and returned, again, by mail, usually by Election Day.

Late last month, Thomas J. Marshall, the post office’s general counsel and executive vice president, sent states a letter warning that many of them have deadlines too tight to meet in this new world of slower mail.

Pennsylvania, for example, allows voters to request a mail ballot by Oct. 27. Marshall warned that voters there should put already completed ballots in the mail by that date to ensure they arrive by Nov. 3.

This has been a potential problem since the Obama administration, when the post office relaxed standards for when mail had to arrive. But it’s particularly acute when the volume of mail ballots is expected to explode in states such as Pennsylvania, which only approved an expansion of mail voting late last year. It’s also acute when the president has said openly he wants to limit votes by his rivals by keeping them from voting by mail.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

It’s unclear. The first question is whether there will be a coronavirus relief bill that could help fund the post office. Republicans and Democrats are far apart on the measure and Congress has gone home for a few weeks.

If there’s no resolution of the coronavirus aid, the matter is sure to come up during negotiations in September to continue to fund the federal government. The government will shut down if Trump doesn’t sign a funding bill by Sept. 30.

States can also act to change their mail balloting deadlines. That’s what Pennsylvania did this past week, with the state asking a court to move the deadline for receiving mail ballots back to three days after the Nov. 3 vote, provided the ballots were placed in the mail before polls close on Election Day.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and some other Democratic lawmakers are also seeking a review of DeJoy’s policy changes. In response to the letter, spokeswoman Agapi Doulaveris of the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General said the office is “conducting a body of work to address the concerns raised.” She declined to elaborate.

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Associated Press writer Anthony Izaguirre in Charleston, West Virginia, contributed to this report.

Trump Didn’t Invent State Violence Against Protesters — But He’s Escalating It

Federal police face off with protesters in front of the Mark O. Hatfield federal courthouse in downtown Portland as the city experiences another night of unrest on July 27, 2020, in Portland, Oregon.SPENCER PLATT / GETTY IMAGES
BY Sasha Abramsky, Truthout  August 15, 2020

Over the past month, a series of investigative reports have detailed the extraordinary way in which the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has come to see journalists and political protesters as domestic enemies. At least two journalists covering the Portland protests were, apparently, targeted by DHS officers, who wrote “intelligence reports” on their activities, and compiled on them the sorts of dossiers more frequently used against overseas terrorists.

    POLICE BRUTALITY BUSTER KEATON 1919

Meanwhile, Customs and Border Protection-operated Predator drones, and helicopters and planes operated by an array of other agencies, have been used to spy on Black Lives Matter protesters in Minneapolis and other cities in the wake of the police murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade and others. And, this past week, The Nation magazine reported that the Trump administration was using DHS’s Tactical Terrorism Response Teams to monitor anti-fascist activists, as well as a left-wing podcast host, for supposedly coordinating with foreign governments to attack the United States. Once U.S. citizens are designated as agents of foreign powers, the legal doors are opened to warrantless spying on their actions.

In response, many writers have expressed shock and horror at such “un-American” activities being unleashed by those in positions of power. But, while they surely merit both shock and horror, they shouldn’t merit surprise. Trump’s latest methods, while certainly crude and dangerous, are actually as American as apple pie.

BUSTER KEATON 1919



We have a tendency to whitewash our own past, to assign, with hindsight, a nobility of intent that doesn’t truly reflect the goals and the practices of past holders of power. In fact, there is a long and ugly history of U.S. government security agencies labeling any and all dissenters as terrorists.

To take just a few examples: In the fearful days following September 11, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies monitored antiwar groups, human rights organizations and other progressive, nonviolent entities. The ACLU reported on the “Orwellian scope” of the FBI’s domestic surveillance program in this post-9/11 environment.

And, of course, using legal memos written by Department of Justice attorney John Yoo as cover, the Bush administration embraced a wholesale torture program against suspected terrorists that utilized waterboarding, attack dogs, sexual humiliation, beatings, mock executions and other methods banned by the Geneva Conventions. (Yoo has, this summer, reentered the national conversation by providing Trump with legal advice on how he can use the Supreme Court’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals ruling as a rationale to craft a series of broad-brush executive orders that, in the areas of immigration, health care and even financial responses to the COVID crisis, would allow Trump to basically rule by diktat).Pick pretty much any time of social upheaval in the United States and one encounters a stunning, almost automatic, resort to state violence.

In the 1990s, as the U.S. consolidated its post-Cold War dominance, groups protesting the World Trade Organization (WTO) were met with the full might of the state. In 1999, anti-WTO protesters were gassed, clubbed and arrested en masse in Seattle. Afterward, the FBI and local law enforcement agencies set up Joint Terrorism Task Forces to monitor left-wing protesters.

But it’s not only in the recent past that the state has resorted to violence and high-tech monitoring in its efforts to squash protest. Pick pretty much any time of social upheaval in the United States and one encounters a stunning, almost automatic, resort to state violence.

One need only think of COINTELPRO in the late 1960s, in which an array of state agencies were sicced on the anti-Vietnam War movement. Or the way the FBI and local police departments in Chicago and elsewhere worked to sabotage the Black Panthers and to kill off its leaders. Or, slightly earlier, the FBI efforts to slime Martin Luther King Jr. Or, in the 1950s, McCarthyism’s marshalling of the full might of the federal government and of Congress to attack communists, civil rights groups, and an array of political progressives.

I remember, as a child visiting my grandparents in Los Angeles in the 1970s and 1980s, talking with older men and women in their social circle who, a generation earlier, had had their careers as musicians and Hollywood artists destroyed by anti-communist witch-hunters. Their fury, their sense of betrayal, remained incandescent. I remember one man in particular, Sam Albert, a debonair musician with a Clark Gable mustache, who had been hauled before the House Un-American Activities Committee to be interrogated about his political beliefs, and had then been drummed out of his job. More than 30 years later, deep into his old age, he was still unable to talk about McCarthy without yelling in fury.

Going back further, during the heyday of trade union organizing, in the early decades of the 20th century, the police, squads of Pinkerton detectives, and even federal troops often served as virtual private militias protecting the interests of big business. On occasion, sheriffs’ officers would beat and even kill farmworkers who tried to organize in California and elsewhere — including sharecroppers in the Deep South — during the 1930s. On other occasions, police, sheriffs and National Guard forces were deployed to counter striking miners, railway workers and others, oftentimes with lethal consequences.Condemning Trump’s hideous embrace of state-sanctioned violence, intimidation and spying techniques against protesters and journalists alike as somehow “un-American” obscures more than it reveals.

During the Red Scares that followed the Russian Revolution, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer authorized raids that netted hundreds of so-called Reds, many of whom were, with no due process, unceremoniously deported to the Soviet Union. A little over a decade later, during the Great Depression, tens of thousands of starving World War I veterans and their families mobilized for a huge march on (and occupation of parts of) Washington, D.C., to demand the federal government pay them promised bonuses for their military service in Europe. At President Hoover’s behest, they were met by massive military force — battalions of soldiers, some of them in tanks, sweeping the streets and ultimately burning down the encampments of the so-called Bonus Army.

In the 19th century, the Texas Rangers served largely as a paramilitary force for unleashing racist violence in the contested borderlands between a newly enlarged U.S. and a newly shrunken Mexico. And, of course, many police forces are the institutional descendants of posses formed to track down and kidnap people escaping slavery.

As Trump veers ever closer to authoritarian, dictatorial rule, it’s important not only to point to the uniquely demagogic and tyrannical qualities of Trumpism — of which there are many — but also to look for the ways in which there is continuity on display. Condemning Trump’s hideous embrace of state-sanctioned violence, intimidation and spying techniques against protesters and journalists alike as somehow “un-American” obscures more than it reveals.

When, for example, the Trumpified DHS hacks into journalists’ social media or ferrets around their private financial records, or looks for ways to label Black Lives Matter protesters as terrorists, it is following in the footsteps of Hoover’s FBI in the 1960s or Palmer’s goon squads in the post-World War I years.

When the Trump era ends, as surely it one day will, there must be a national reckoning. The scale of Trump’s malfeasance, and the ramping up of quasi-military law enforcement activities that are — and have always been — inimical to democracy will have to be publicly confronted. Without such a reckoning, there will be no way to lance the political boil that Trump represents.

What these last months have laid bare isn’t that Trump’s national security agenda is anomalous; but, rather, that the system of control embodied by DHS, by Customs and Border Protection, by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the various other agencies, has evolved to the point where it now primarily serves to aid and abet authoritarianism. These ugly times have provided us a warning: that the military-industrial state, the national security infrastructure that Dwight D. Eisenhower warned about 60 years ago, is now in full bloom. Trump didn’t cause that bloom to come out of nowhere; rather, his presidency is, at least in part, the end consequence, the coming to a head, of decades of fetishization of state-sanctioned violence and brutality.

Unless we now embark upon a fundamental reckoning with these forces that have been allowed to fester and then to grow largely unchecked within the U.S. body politic over the decades (and, indeed, over the centuries), the very threads of democracy will, at ever-greater speed, come unraveled.

Trump Rolls Back Methane Rule as Bankrupt Permian Drillers Ignore Venting Flares

Fugitive methane emissions vent from unlit flare in the Permian Basin on March 6, 2020.COURTESY: SHARON WILSON / EARTHWORKS

BY Candice Bernd, Truthout  August 14, 2020

On Thursday, the Trump administration rolled back Obama-era rules designed to rein in fugitive methane emissions, a powerful greenhouse gas routinely emitted from leaking oil and gas infrastructure — commonly from unlit flares that, when ignited, are designed to burn off methane as carbon.

Methane emissions, which have 80 times the heat-trapping power of carbon dioxide over 20 years, are so damaging to the planet that even though there is 225 times less methane in the atmosphere than carbon, methane disproportionately contributes about a quarter of all the human-caused planetary warming.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) new rules rescind 2016 Obama administration limits on industry emissions of methane and prevent future regulation at sites built before 2015. They also weaken remaining requirements for oil and gas companies to locate and fix venting flares and wells.

The rollback is the latest move in a larger effort to exploit the pandemic to weaken environmental safeguards. That effort has targeted a number of other critical environmental rules, including relaxing controls on releases of pollution from coal-fired plants, tailpipes and industrial soot. Last month, the administration gutted the nation’s landmark conservation law, the National Environmental Policy Act, to expedite permitting processes for federal infrastructure projects like pipelines and power plants.

The new methane rules worsen an already grim situation in one of the world’s largest regional climate emissions bombs in West Texas and southeast New Mexico’s sprawling Permian Shale Basin. After dipping below negative for the first time in April, oil prices have rebounded to around $40 a barrel — still below what most drillers need to break even.

As oil and gas extraction and demand continue to drag, emissions in the Permian are still amassing critical levels as cash-strapped and bankrupt drillers take advantage of unprecedented bailouts, bond buyback schemes, subsidies, tax breaks and regulatory “relief” to enrich executives and cut even more corners, abandoning unprofitable wells altogether or refusing to fix venting tanks or broken flares.

According to the data from the Railroad Commission of Texas, which regulates oil and gas, extraction in the state dropped 13 percent in May 2020 compared to June 2019, while the total volume of gas flared fell about 82 percent during the same timeframe. The problem, though, isn’t the region’s reduced overall extraction and flaring; it’s unignited flares left to blast methane into the atmosphere.“Picture the worst thing you can think of, and that’s how the Permian was before the crash. Then multiply that by 10.”

In June, environmental watchdog Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) flew specially equipped helicopters above hundreds of Permian drilling sites as part of its Permian Methane Analysis Project, or PermianMAP. Researchers found that more than one in 10 flares in the Permian Basin could be unlit or malfunctioning, accounting for a majority of the 300,000 tons of methane vented from the region every year. The amount of vented methane is three times the annual total the EPA reports.

Claus Zehner of the European Space Agency told The New York Times that Permian methane concentrations measured in March and April suggest a substantial overall increase, despite the region’s decreasing rates of extraction. Now, the Trump administration’s lifting of methane rules is set to amplify those emissions even more — by 370,000 tons through 2025, according to the federal government’s own calculations.

Reeling after more than 100,000 job losses since February, the industry was already enjoying the suspension of some federal and state inspections. Even before the lifting of federal methane rules, the Permian Basin had long been a Wild West for down-and-out drillers, whose incentive to spend money on hunting down and fixing gushing flares was laughable before the crash and has now been all but abandoned.
Wild West Texas

Sharon Wilson, a senior field advocate for the Oil and Gas Accountability Project at the environmental watchdog Earthworks has seen just how much methane is spewing into the air since the onset of the pandemic and subsequent oil crash. Wilson is a certified optical gas imaging thermographer and has extensively documented such pollution over the years by using specialized cameras to record methane pollution normally invisible to the naked eye.

The Oil and Gas Accountability Project has conducted more than 1,000 field investigations revealing the industry and state regulators’ negligence and malfeasance in facilitating massive levels of methane emissions. Additional research published this year confirms what both EDF and Earthworks have found, suggesting methane pollution in the Permian is about 60 percent higher than other shale plays in the nation.

Wilson visited the region in early March and described the situation as dire. “Picture the worst thing you can think of, and that’s how the Permian was before the crash. Then multiply that by 10,” Wilson told Truthout. “It’s hard to comprehend in the face of rapidly accelerating climate change, that this could be going on anywhere. The amount of methane coming out of most of these unlit flares is unimaginable.”“It’s hard to comprehend in the face of rapidly accelerating climate change, that this could be going on anywhere.”

Wilson noticed an uptick in venting from unlit flares, storage tanks and compressor vent pipes even before the crash. EDF’s surveys have shown, respectively, that 11 and 12 percent of at least 312 active flares measured in the region had issues that could cause abnormally high methane emissions.

“It looks like what [producers] started doing when the price of gas plummeted — it cost them more to transport it in a pipeline to market than what they can get for it, so it looks like they just started dumping it into the air,” Wilson said. “We’ve got just a horrible mess out there.”

Wilson says she has made hundreds of complaints to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) over the years documenting venting with thermal imaging, and several since the onset of the price collapse. Even if a driller manages to fix a malfunctioning flare, she says, it doesn’t always stay fixed.

“A month later, [the flare] can be just how it was. So the TCEQ is turning their head. They’re looking the other way,” she says. Leasing laws also complicate matters: Many companies may be unable to shut off flaring rigs or stop extracting even when its uneconomical to do so because they are bound by leases.

Wilson has made several complaints to TCEQ regarding oil and gas firm MDC Energy’s venting at a particular site she says has been blasting methane since November, when the company first filed for bankruptcy. TCEQ’s website shows it has issued six violations against MDC related to harmful emissions at the site.

TCEQ spokesperson Brian McGovern told Truthout that the agency’s Midland Region has received 14 complaints related to sites operated by MDC. The agency has completed three investigations addressing seven of the complaints and is in the process of investigating the other seven.

The agency doesn’t directly regulate methane as an air pollutant in any case, he says, except as required through specific federal programs, such as the Prevention of Significant Deterioration program. Trump’s rollback does not affect that program.“We’ve got just a horrible mess out there.”

Still, the administration’s rollback highlights a serious flaw in the way flaring was monitored in the first place: State and federal regulators often rely on drillers themselves to monitor and report on their own flares. Now, under federal law, broke and bankrupt drillers won’t even have to. Worse, without TCEQ flagging a violation, there’s no way to ensure companies spend a portion of their court-appointed budget on fixing problems.

More than 50 oil and gas companies have filed for bankruptcy since oil prices crashed in March. Smaller drillers were already filing for Chapter 11 even before the crash. Raul Rodriguez, who is superintendent for MDC Texas Energy, told Truthout in May that a bankruptcy judge establishes the company’s budget every 13 weeks. “Some work has been postponed or pushed back, depending on our budget,” Rodriguez said at the time.

When asked how the company’s budget constraints impact its ability to tamp down methane emissions, Rodriguez simply said, “I can’t talk about that.” Still, he insisted, the company is trying to do everything by the book. “It’s a work in progress. With the coronavirus and the drop in oil prices, it’s a double-edged sword for us.”

The company’s top lender, French investment bank Natixis, later alleged in bankruptcy court that in the months before the MDC filed for bankruptcy, it paid its chief executive $8.5 million in consulting fees. Other Permian drillers have acted similarly, asking bankruptcy judges to authorize millions in bonuses to executives. Many that have lost billions for shareholders are still rewarding CEOs with lavish pay packages.“With the coronavirus and the drop in oil prices, it’s a double-edged sword for us.”

With billions in CARES Act tax breaks and loans in hand, large oil and gas companies are gambling on a recovery fueled by automation and increased consolidation as large producers engulf cheap assets. The industry is looking to technological fixes not only to address methane emissions but also to speed extraction, hoping new innovations will make for leaner operations.

In May, the Railroad Commission convened a task force of industry insiders wielding new innovations to provide recommendations for combating flaring. During a meeting on August 4, commissioners approved a number of the task force’s recommended changes to state rule that oversees flaring, including providing incentives for companies to deploy new technologies to reduce the practice.

Environmental groups say the commission must do more than simply rely on companies voluntarily reduce their own flaring, especially now that federal requirements for companies to install equipment and technologies to detect methane leaks has been shredded.
Plugging the Permian

A Democratic sweep in November may be the only way to undo Trump’s methane regulatory rollbacks. If Democrats control the Senate, they could reverse the rule changes in the first 60 legislative days under a Senate procedure known as the Congressional Review Act.

While Biden has refused to endorse a Green New Deal, he has championed several far-reaching Sanders-Biden unity task force recommendations on climate. His $2 trillion climate plan includes putting people to work plugging thousands of abandoned oil and gas wells but does not include a national fracking ban.“We need strong federal rules to protect the rest of the world from Texas.”

Climate activists, who are working to pressure Biden to more aggressively target the industry are increasingly hopeful given this week’s announcement that Sen. Kamala Harris will be joining the presidential ticket. Harris endorsed both a Green New Deal and a fracking ban, and has said she would seek to end the Senate’s filibuster rules to pass a Green New Deal.

“The next president and states individually will need to double down with drastic measures to protect the public and climate,” Wilson says. “We need strong federal rules to protect the rest of the world from Texas.”

Beyond simply reversing the rollbacks and strengthening regulations, calls are growing to nationalize an industry that has been a debt-ridden financial house of cards for more than a decade, as has happened in the U.S. during other national crises. In fact, despite the technological improvements the sector has heralded over the last decade, few drillers have ever been able to turn a profit — even when prices were above $50 a barrel.

Now, nationalization and a managed decline of extraction along a science-based timeline is not only the best way to keep the shale bubble from bursting any further; it’s the best way to keep the methane bubble from bursting the climate.“The oil and gas industry is in its death throes and this would be a perfect time for renewables to take over.”

At the state level, the crash provides an opportunity to expand the state’s renewable energy sector — something a majority of Texas Republicans have supported in the past. Their passage of Senate Bill 20 in 2005 vastly transformed the state’s wind energy sector into a force that now provides nearly a fifth of the state’s power.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, Texas could produce more electricity from wind than any other state in the country. Combined with its growing solar industry, a Green New Deal in Texas could make the state a national leader while providing a just transition to thousands of oil and gas workers facing layoffs now or in the future as the industry automates.

“I think the oil and gas industry is in its death throes and this would be a perfect time for renewables to take over,” Wilson says. “But everything is chaotic, and we need it to be more managed.”

Trump Seeks to Trash Endangered Species Act by Redefining “Habitat”

A couple of endangered Kemps ridley turtles make their way to the ocean at West Dennis Beach in Dennis, Massachusetts, on July 1, 

2020.DAVID L. RYAN / THE BOSTON GLOBE VIA GETTY IMAGES

BY Emerson Urry, EnviroNews August 15, 2020

In what prominent conservation group WildEarth Guardians (Guardians) is calling “death by a thousand cuts,” the Trump Administration is at it again, with another proposed change that would weaken the overwhelmingly popular Endangered Species Act (ESA/the Act). This go-round features an attempt to define the word habitat — literally — in an effort to affect what can be classified as critical habitat. If successful, the effort is one that Guardians, and the Center for Biological Diversity (the Center), say would make it harder to protect imperiled flora and fauna in “degraded areas.” Guardians told EnviroNews it is currently “assessing [its litigative] options.”

Living at a URL address that bares the words, “proposed definition of habitat,” the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) — an ancillary arm of the Department of the Interior (DOI), alongside the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) — an underlying subsidiary of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) run by the U.S. Department of Commerce (USDC), released the proposed rule on July 30, 2020. The amendment would revamp what is ultimately meant by critical habitat by defining the word habitat for the first time — a move environmentalists say would have grave consequences for critters and plant-life in distress.

“Clearly, this administration does not care what the American people want; they only care about enriching their cronies in extractive industries,” Taylor Jones, Endangered Species Advocate with Guardians, told EnviroNews in an online interview. “This is part of a long pattern of environmental rollbacks aimed at plundering public lands and resources for private gains.”

The title of the document is: Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Regulations for Listing Endangered and Threatened Species and Designating Critical Habitat. Published first on the USFWS website, the two agencies explain the definition as if this is a simple semantic upgrade, mandated by a court ruling, writing, “The Supreme Court recently held that an area must logically be ‘habitat’ in order for that area to meet the narrower category of ‘critical habitat’ as defined in the Act, regardless of whether that area is occupied or unoccupied.” But opponents of the linguistic tweaks, say a more sinister plot is at play.

The proposal’s summary reads:

We, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) (collectively referred to as the “Services” or “we”), propose to add a definition of “habitat” to our regulations that implement Section 4 of the Endangered Species Act of 1973, as amended (Act).

On page four of the document, the proposed “Definition of Habitat” reads thusly:


We propose to add the following definition of the term “habitat” to § 424.02:

The physical places that individuals of a species depend upon to carry out one or more life processes. Habitat includes areas with existing attributes that have the capacity to support individuals of the species.

In addition, we have provided, and solicit comment on, an alternative definition of “habitat” as follows:

The physical places that individuals of a species use to carry out one or more life processes. Habitat includes areas where individuals of the species do not presently exist but have the capacity to support such individuals, only where the necessary attributes to support the species presently exist.

At first glance, the wording may not seem overly significant, but Noah Greenwald, Endangered Species Director with the Center for Biological Diversity, warns the language will have a “big impact.” “By inserting the phrase ‘existing attributes,’” Greenwald explained to EnviroNews in an exclusive interview, “the definition requires that an area be able to presently support a species for it to be designated as ‘critical habitat.’”

This means that if an area, vital for the survival of a species, has been trashed by industrial plunder or gobbled up by rural sprawl to the point where it can’t sustain a wildlife community, it can be disqualified from being included under the Act. “This is problematic because oftentimes habitat needs to be restored before it can support a species, but [it frequently] needs protection [first] for this to happen,” Greenwald asserted.

The alternate definition offered up for comment by the agencies carries the same issue, if not more blatantly than the primary definition with the wording: “only where the necessary attributes to support the species presently exist.” But with this phrase, and the “existing attributes” text in the primary definition, wildlife advocates say it would be difficult, if not impossible to include, restore and manage countless key areas that should be reclaimed and made suitable for wildlife again.

“The implementation of ‘critical habitat’ designation has already been weakened by [other] rule changes [during the Trump Administration.] This change further limits what can be defined as ‘habitat,’ hamstringing efforts to restore degraded habitat where species once lived but no longer can,” Jones continued to EnviroNews.

And Greenwald says the potential effect of this wording change isn’t simply theoretical; he says it’s likely it will be tested very soon. “One example is areas of young, logged forest within currently designated habitat for the northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina),” Greenwald continued. “Based on a settlement with the timber industry, we’re expecting a revised designation for the owl any day, so we may see the impact of this proposed rule shortly.”

A 30-day public comment period was opened from the day the document was published online in the Federal Register on Aug 5. Leaders from environmental groups are encouraging members of the public to weigh in with a message for these government agencies: leave the ESA alone. Readers may visit the public comment page directly at this link: https://www.regulations.gov/docket?D=FWS-HQ-ES-2020-0047. But please, read on first.

Tiny Frogs, Massive Court Ruling

The litigation that led to the recently proposed definition surrounds the critically endangered dusky gopher frog (Lithobates sevosus) — an increasingly rare creature in the southern U.S. In that Nov. 2018 case, Weyerhaeuser CO. v. United States Fish and Wildlife Service, a major setback was handed down to the imperiled creature, also known as the Mississippi gopher frog, when the Supreme Court punted the issue back to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, after that court upheld a ruling from the District Court designating specific private lands as critical habitat for the creature.

In 2012, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (ICUN) ranked the frog as “one of the top 100 most endangered species in the world.” All remaining specimens survive in one intermittent pond in Mississippi. Recognizing the species is in grave danger of extinction, the USFWS designated an ephemeral pond in Louisiana as critical habitat for the dusky gopher frog. It has to live in intermittent water sources to avoid fish eating its eggs and young. The bumpy-looking amphibian once lived in this Louisiana pond, but hasn’t been seen there since the 1960s.

The land owner and Weyerhaeuser Company, a logging enterprise, sued. They lost both at the district and appeals court levels under conservative judges. But those rulings weren’t good enough for the country’s highest court.

“The landowners urge that their land cannot be critical habitat because it is not habitat, which they contend refers only to areas where the frog could currently survive,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote on behalf of the Court.

And the Supreme Court came down 8-0 on the issue (Justice Brett Kavanaugh had not yet been confirmed), instructing the lower court to reexamine how it evaluated “costs and benefits” when designating critical habitat on private land. After acknowledging, “The dusky gopher frog once lived throughout coastal Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, in the longleaf pine forests that used to cover the southeast… But more than 98% of those forests have been removed to make way for urban development, agriculture, and timber plantations,” Roberts wrote this:


Our analysis starts with the phrase “critical habitat.” According to the ordinary understanding of how adjectives work, “critical habitat” must also be “habitat.” Adjectives modify nouns — they pick out a subset of a category that possesses a certain quality. It follows that “critical habitat” is the subset of “habitat” that is “critical” to the conservation of an endangered species. Of course, “[s]tatutory language cannot be construed in a vacuum,” and so we must also consider “critical habitat” in its statutory context.

Roberts continued:

Only the “habitat” of the endangered species is eligible for designation as critical habitat. Even if an area otherwise meets the statutory definition of unoccupied critical habitat because the Secretary finds the area essential for the conservation of the species, Section 4(a)(3)(A)(i) does not authorize the Secretary to designate the area as critical habitat unless it is also habitat for the species.

The Center for Biological Diversity contends that the statutory definition of critical habitat is complete in itself and does not require any independent inquiry into the meaning of the term “habitat,” which the statute leaves undefined. Brief for Intervenor-Respondents 43–49. But the statutory definition of “critical habitat” tells us what makes habitat “critical,” not what makes it “habitat.”

The ruling handed a defeat to the defendant, the USFWS, and the frog — a unique species that has no way to speak up for itself — a unique species limited to around 100 adult specimens, in an intermittent water source, in the historically red state of Mississippi.
“Death by a Thousand Cuts”

This certainly isn’t the first time the ESA has taken a blow in recent years; the Act has suffered several “cuts” inflicted under the Trump Administration and the legislature — and Governors have had the ESA in their sights too. Since Donald Trump first took the helm, one assault after another has been hurled at the ESA. In the first two years of Trump’s presidency, he had both a Republican House and Senate, whereafter several volleys of attacks were waged against the Act — a successful cornerstone of U.S. legislation — and a law that polls have shown nearly 80 percent of Americans support.

Only a month into Trump’s presidency, an article by EnviroNews Nature titled, Republicans Lick Chops While Revving up to Dismantle the Endangered Species Act, examined an eyebrow-raising hearing in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW) called, “Oversight: Modernization of the Endangered Species Act,” wherein multiple “upgrades” were proposed — many of which aimed at delisting species already protected under the Act more quickly.

And it wasn’t only the legislature that was going after the ESA in Trump’s first two years, it was at least 20 governors as well. Only days after the EPW committee meeting, 300 NGOs and environmental groups signed a unified letter demanding the Western Governors’ Association (WGA) “maintain the statutory integrity” of the Act throughout the West — this, after the WGA’s 2016 Resolution called for amendments to the ESA.

A few months later, Senator John Barrasso (R) of Wyoming chaired another meeting in the EWP Committee called, “Conservation, Consultation and Capacity: State Views on the Need to Modernize the Endangered Species Act,” where multiple tweaks, changes and additions were proposed, including turning more management power over to state governments. Barrasso has been one of the leading forces in the legislature trying to “modernize” the act. The Center has established a webpage that tracks his voting record and reports, “Sen. Barrasso has voted against the Endangered Species Act 13 times since 2011 and has sponsored/cosponsored at least nine anti-ESA bills since 2015 (the page has not been updated since July 27, 2017).” In the February hearing, Barrasso said, “[the ESA] is not working today.” The Center counters by pointing out, “The ESA has been more than 99 percent effective at saving species under its protection from extinction and has put hundreds more on the road to recovery.”

More recently, the Trump Administration levied three new rules targeting Sections 4 and 7 of the ESA respectively. The changes redefine “environmental baseline,” exclude critical habitat designations for species threatened by climate change, and for the first time, allow economic considerations to be factored into listing decisions — something expressly forbidden by Congress in 1982 to protect against political meddling in the process. Guardians wrote this in response to the new Trump Admin rules:


In August of 2019, the Trump Administration finalized three regulatory rollbacks that drastically weaken the Endangered Species Act nationwide, setting back the recovery of virtually every endangered and threatened species and making it considerably harder for species to gain protections in the first place.
The Battle to Protect the Endangered Species Act Continues

In yet another environmental mega-suit, a large team of conservation NGOs have teamed up to sue the Trump Administration for its 2019 rule changes. The plaintiffs include: WildEarth Guardians, the Center for Biological Diversity, Earthjustice, the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), National Parks Conservation Association, Defenders of Wildlife and The Humane Society of the United States.

The lawsuit, filed by Earthjustice on behalf of all the other plaintiffs, contends, “Taken together, this package of regulatory changes undermines the fundamental purpose of the ESA ‘to provide a means whereby the ecosystems upon which endangered species and threatened species depend may be conserved, [and] to provide a program for the conservation of such endangered species and threatened species.’” In a joint press release, the groups refer to the amendments as the “Trump-Bernhardt Extinction Plan.”

WildEarth Guardians and the Center for Biological Diversity are no newcomers when it comes to fighting for the ESA — or for individual species in danger of extinction. In fact, the two NGOs, together in a joint lawsuit, gained the ordered protection of some 800 species under the Act in 2011 following a decade-long behemoth battle with the federal government. The victory represents what is arguably the most significant endangered species ruling ever handed down by the courts. Both organizations boast over a 90 percent success rate when suing the federal government in endangered species cases.

And it’s not only NGOs that are fighting tooth and nail to protect the integrity of the ESA — there are some legislators that have a hand in the fight as well. In Sept. 2019, Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-NM) introduced the Protect America’s Wildlife and Fish in Need of Conservation Act, or “PAW and FIN” for short. That bill seeks to fight back against the same rollbacks as last year’s Earthjustice lawsuit. The bill has been stalled in the House, but environmental groups are “looking for more Senate support,” Jones concluded to EnviroNews.

Belarus President: Russia Willing to Help Counter Protests

President Alexander Lukashenko says Russian leader Vladimir Putin has agreed to provide protest-engulfed Belarus with security assistance if the country requests it.

By Associated Press, Wire Service Content Aug. 15, 2020,



BY YURAS KARMANU

MINSK, Belarus (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin has agreed to provide protest-engulfed Belarus with security assistance to counter protests if the country requests it, the president of Belarus declared Saturday after more people took to the streets demanding that he resign.

President Alexander Lukashenko made the comment on Saturday evening, several hours after a phone call with Putin and after protesters again demanded that he resign after 26 years in power. Thousands of demonstrators rallied Saturday at the spot in the capital of Minsk where a protester died this week in clashes with police. Some stripped off their shirts to display deep bruises they said came from being beaten by police.

It was the seventh consecutive day of large protests against the results of the Aug. 9 presidential election in which election officials said Lukashenko won a sixth term in office in a landslide. Opposition supporters believe the figures have been manipulated.

Luksahenko did not specify what sort of assistance Russia would be willing to provide. But he said “When it comes to the military component, we have an agreement with the Russian Federation” in the framework of the countries’ union agreement."

“These are the moments that fit this agreement,” he added.

Despite harsh police crackdowns against the protesters, including the detention of some 7,000 people, the demonstrations have swelled into the largest and most sustained anti-government movement since Lukashenko took power in 1994.

Earlier, the 65-year-old Lukashenko on Saturday rejected suggestions that foreign mediators become involved in trying to resolve the country’s political crisis.

He discussed the situation in a call Saturday with Putin, the first publicly known direct contact between the two leaders since the election. A Kremlin statement said Putin and Lukashenko both expressed hope for a quick resolution to the tensions.

“It is important that these problems are not used by destructive forces aimed at causing injury to the cooperation of the two countries in the framework of the union state,” the Kremlin said.

Russia and Belarus reached an agreement in 1997 about closer ties between the neighboring ex-Soviet countries in a union that stopped short of a full merger, although that has collided with recent disputes between the countries and Lukashenko's suspicions that Putin's government wants to absorb Belarus.

Later, in a meeting with Defense Ministry officials, Lukashenko declared “Listen — we have a normal country, founded on a constitution. We don't need any foreign government, any sort of mediators.” He appeared to be referring to an offer from the leaders of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to become involved.

Lukashenko's main election opponent, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, fled to Lithuania the day after the election, knowing that several previous presidential challengers have been jailed for years on charges that supporters say were trumped up.

A funeral was held Saturday for Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester who died Monday in the capital of Minsk under disputed circumstances. Belarusian police said he died when an explosive device he intended to throw at police blew up in his hand.

But his partner, Elena German, told The Associated Press that when she saw his body in a morgue on Friday, his hands showed no damage and he had a perforation in his chest that she believes is a bullet wound.

About 5,000 demonstrators gathered Saturday in the area where Taraikovsky died. They laid a mass of flowers in tribute, piling into a mound about 1.5 meters (5 feet) tall, as passing cars blared their horns.

“It's awful to live in a country where you can be killed at a peaceful protest. I will leave, if power isn't changed,” said 30-year-old demonstrator Artem Kushner.

Protests about political situation in Belarus were also held in the Czech Republic and in front of the Belarusian Embassy in Moscow.

The brutal suppression of protests in Belarus has drawn harsh criticism in the West. European Union foreign ministers said Friday that they rejected the election results in Belarus and began drawing up a list of officials in Belarus who could face sanctions over their role in the crackdown.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Saturday that he was glad to see that some protesters in Belarus had been freed but that it was not enough. He also said the presidential election in Belarus fell short of democratic standards.

“We've said the elections themselves (in Belarus) weren't free. I've spent the last days consulting with our European partners,” he said Saturday at a news conference in Warsaw with his Polish counterpart.

“Our common objective is to support the Belarusian people. These people are demanding the same things that every human being wants,” Pompeo said. “We urged the leadership to broaden the circle to engage with civil society.”

—-

Jim Heintz in Moscow and Matthew Lee in Warsaw contributed contributed to this story.

Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. 

BELARUS UPDATED VIDEOS

Belarus protests: Striking workers walk off the job | DW news
•Aug 15, 2020
The European Union is set to impose sanctions on Belarusian officials involved in the brutal crackdown on peaceful protests. Demonstrations calling for new elections have been met with police violence and mass arrests. Some five thousand protesters are still in custody. President Alexander Lukashenko has vowed to cling to power, despite mounting calls for him to go.

Belarus election: 'Widespread torture' inflicted on jailed protesters - BBC News

Detainees have emerged from a notorious detention centre in Belarus giving horrific details of attacks and beatings during days in custody since Sunday's widely disputed election. Amid mounting reports of police brutality, Amnesty International said it indicated "widespread torture". As EU foreign ministers prepared to meet to consider new sanctions, Belarus promised to free the 6,700 detainees. Belarus is seeing a sixth day of protests since its presidential vote. Alexander Lukashenko was declared the victor by election authorities, but supporters of the main opposition figure, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, insist she won. The EU and US have condemned the election as neither free nor fair.

Belarus protests: Drone footage shows scale of anti-government demonstrations

https://globalnews.ca/video/7277730/belarus-protests-drone-footage-shows-scale-of-anti-government-demonstrations/

Drone footage shows the scale of the demonstrations in Belarus on Friday. People gathered in the streets to protest President Alexander Lukashenko winning a sixth term on Sunday, leaving many in the Eastern European country skeptical the election was fair.

NEW YORK TIME VIDEO WORKERS STRIKE IN BELARUS
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/14/world/europe/Belarus-strike-Aleksandr-Lukashenko.html''

NOW PLAYING

Belarus releases detainees in bid to quell protests

Belarus opposition leader urges new protests

Women protesters in Belarus: 'We can change the country for the better'

EU: Belarus presidential election 'neither free nor fair'

Second night of clashes in Belarus

EU rejects Belarus election result | Belarus protests | World News
The protests in Belarus have entered their sixth day. For the first time in the last 5 days, the protests were majorly peaceful. Watch report.

FAIR AND BALANCED VIEW FROM THE STATE PRESS

Lukashenko about street riots: Give us a chance to restore order

READ ALTERNATIVE FACTS

MINSK, 14 August (BelTA) – Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko has held a conference with members of the Security Council, BelTA has learned.

The head of state said: “Once again you and I have to return to the matter of the state of affairs in the capital city – Minsk – not even in Belarus. I can't say there is some catastrophe or the situation is too intense, but there are plenty of problems and issues that need to be addressed. Today we absolutely clearly see what is going on. We see the parties involved. As we said, people from abroad are masterminds and organizers of all that's happening. People with a criminal past, a decent criminal past at that, march in the front ranks. And then there are our people – kids and not kids anymore.”

“Today I cannot complain about anyone specifically. I can't. Because you can see how the situation is unfolding. The only thing I would like to ask the minister and other people: we are Slavs after all, if a person falls and stays down, don't beat him or her. A certain brake must be in place,” Aleksandr Lukashenko stressed. “Then again, as a military man I can understand that when you spend all your life in the barracks together with someone (a 20-year-old riot police officer is someone's kid), when you've lived next to each other for two years already… And when someone strikes from behind (totally unmanly) these kids, these police officers… And the guy's backbone breaks, he will stay disabled for his entire life.”

“Can you tell me how the mother of this kid will live? Yes, bruises are bad. But bruises will pass while the police officer will never walk again. So many legs and extremities have been broken! Nearly about 100 people have been injured!” Aleksandr Lukashenko stressed.

“Do riot police officers or regular police officers want that? They've been calmly training, living in their barracks. But they went out to protect them [citizens] while they backstab police. They came at traffic police officers with knives, shivs… It was premeditated! You and I understand who does it,” the president said.

Aleksandr Lukashenko once again addressed parents of teenagers and young people. “It is the fourth time I am telling the parents to look where their kids are. I understand that some kids can be unruly at this age – 16-17 years (I know it very well), particularly boys. You can contact us and we will help. We will talk to them, find a suitable activity for these kids after all. Why do things have to go that far for us to start fixing these issues?”

Aleksandr Lukashenko addressed his fellow Belarusians: “Don't you go to the streets these days! You have to understand that you and our kids are used as cannon fodder! People from Poland, Holland, Ukraine, from Russia across the open border, Navalny's people, and so on and so forth have come to Belarus. An aggression against the country has been launched,” the president said.

“Can you tell me how a military man should react? What am I to do in this situation? Do you want me to sit and wait until Minsk is upside down? We will not be able to stabilize things then. This is why it is necessary to stop, take the head in hands and calm down. And give us a chance to restore order and sort out those, who have come here,” the head of state concluded.

https://eng.belta.by/president/view/lukashenko-about-street-riots-give-us-a-chance-to-restore-order-132590-2020/

Minister: 11 vehicle attacks on police over three days



MINSK, 14 August (BelTA) - Eleven vehicle-ramming attacks were made on law enforcement officers for the past three days, Belarus' Internal Affairs Minister Yuri Karayev said on the air of the ONT TV channel on 13 August, BelTA has learned.

“For the past three days 11 vehicle-ramming attacks were made on law enforcement officers and soldiers of the interior troops. This is, in fact, attempted murder,” the minister said.

In his view, such acts were carried out to escalate the violence in order to breed hatred.

Yuri Karayev informed that more than 50 police officers were injured. Of these, 10 were hit by cars. “Other injuries were burns from pyrotechnics, twisted joints. These are serious injuries. These guys, the soldiers of the internal troops also have parents. The riot policemen also have parents, children, wives. What is it like for them?” he asked a question.

The minister also spoke out against bullying of law enforcement officers and their families, including on the internet.

14 AUGUST 2020, 

Belarus' interior minister speaks against any violence against journalist

An archive photo

MINSK, 14 August (BelTA) – Belarus' Minister of Internal Affairs Yuri Karayev has said that he has always been against any forms of violence against journalists. He made this statement as he appeared on the ONT TV channel, BelTA has learned.

“I have always spoken against any forms of violence against journalists. I support civilized coverage of events. Journalists are doing a great job, they are courageously reporting from the thick of events. Naturally, it is very important for you to get to the bottom of it and assess the developments as objectively and completely as possible. However, it does not mean that you should get in between and find yourselves in the cross hairs,” Yuri Karayev said.

“Please, do not be so carefree. I strongly ask you not to take the bear by the tooth,” the minister said.

At the same time he noted that when a firecracker, a makeshift knife, a stone or a paving block is flying towards a policeman who should take some action in response, his first thought in not about how to avoid hitting a person with a camera.

According to Yuri Karayev, he ordered to release journalists as a matter of priority.

Trade unions call to stop violence, come to peaceful dialogue for Belarus' future


MINSK, 14 August (BelTA) – The Federation of Trade Unions of Belarus (FTUB) calls on everyone to stop violence and come to a peaceful dialogue for the future of Belarus, the FTUB says in its statement, BelTA has learned.

“The people who go out and gather at the factories and plants are concerned with the rising tensions and the situation with safety on the streets of our cities. The Federation of Trade Unions receives numerous appeals from labor collectives to call on everyone to stop the violence, not to provoke conflicts, to preserve peace in our country. Today, people want their children, relatives and colleagues who have been detained to be released as soon as possible. We are talking about those who found themselves in places where street rallies were held and did not violate public order. We share these calls and insist that the law enforcement agencies release these people as soon as possible and conduct an open and objective investigation in each case,” said the FTUB.

The Federation of Trade Unions of Belarus will provide any necessary assistance, be it legal, psychological and financial to those in a difficult situation. “We urge everyone to stop the violence and come to a peaceful dialogue for the sake of the future of each of us and our Belarus,” the statement reads.


Internal Affairs Ministry: Measures taken to protect law and order in Belarus



MINSK, 13 August (BelTA) - The Ministry of Internal Affairs continues to take the necessary measures, within its competence, to protect law and order and to ensure public safety in the country, official representative of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Olga Chemodanova said in her Telegram channel, BelTA has learned.

Yesterday, various Internet resources posted calls to block street traffic. In Minsk there were attempts to block traffic in Independence Avenue near the TsUM department store, in the Malinovka and Serebryanka neighborhoods, in Surganova Street and other places. This caused interruptions in the work of public transport.

About 700 people have been detained for participation in the riots. The protests in the country have lost steam but the level of aggression against law enforcement officers remains high. A total of 103 law enforcement officers were injured as a result of illegal actions of citizens on 9-13 August, 28 of them were hospitalized. Vehicle-ramming attacks on traffic policemen were repeated in Minsk and in Baranovichi yesterday. Law enforcement officers used weapons to stop the perpetrators. The riot police detained two young men, aged 18 and 19, who were making Molotov cocktails in Minsk.

MPs, civil society discuss situation in Belarus



MINSK, 14 August (BelTA) - The parliament hosted a meeting of members of five standing commissions, representatives of the Belarusian Helsinki Committee, the International Federation of Human Rights, the Belarusian Union of Journalists and the Belarusian Association of Journalists. The participants to the meeting discussed the situation in Belarus and possible ways to resolve it, BelTA has learned.

“This is not a protocol meeting,” Gennady Davydko, Chairman of the Standing Commission on Human Rights, National Relations and Media of the House of Representatives, stressed at the beginning of the meeting. “This is a meeting of concerned people who love their homeland, who want to see peace and accord in the society," he said.

“An inflow of information is enormous. Everyone has their own point of view. But we, the participants of the meeting, are united, I think, by one idea - peace,” the MP stressed. "We need to have a candid discussion and, most importantly, we need to put forward solutions.”

“We are united by the desire to normalize the situation, to keep the country independent and sovereign,” Gennady Davydko said.

Chairman of the Belarusian Helsinki Committee Oleg Gulak told the MPs how the situation is seen by human rights organizations. He thanked for the opportunity to discuss the situation and lamented that such opportunities were few before. “Now many perceive the whole situation differently. Because of this, different conclusions are made," he said.

Responding to journalists' questions, the chairman of the Belarusian Helsinki Committee stressed that it is very important to create conditions for dialogue. Among the first steps to be taken, according to him, is the release of all those who have been detained. “People should see that their children, relatives are being released," said Oleg Gulak.

“My main appeal is for everyone to stay peaceful, to keep things peaceful, and to avoid violence,” he concluded.


Opinion: An active color revolution forestalled peaceful protests 

(COLOUR SUCH AS THE ORANGE REVOLUTION IN THE UKRAINE AKA MAIDAN)

An archive photo13 AUGUST 2020

MINSK, 13 August (BelTA) – An active color revolution has stolen a march on peaceful protests, independent military expert Aleksandr Pavlovsky told the ONT TV channel on 12 August, BelTA has learned.

“I believe that an active color revolution has got in before peaceful protests. It had started before the election was over. People were already out behaving aggressively. It is obvious that there is a program, there are puppet masters who had planned and arranged everything before the election,” Aleksandr Pavlovsky said.

In his words, a color revolution is usually followed by a civil war and later an intervention. “We see that some representatives of western states (Poland) and America came forward with their offers to broker talks, though we did not ask them about it. There are people from Russia, Ukraine, Poland and other states who came here to take part in street actions. All this is done to have an impact on our country. However, we have a normal society that has its own opinion, culture, stance; we can find a solution to peacefully resolve protests,” the expert believes.

Director of the Center for Strategic and Foreign Policy Studies Denis Bukonkin shares this view. “A peaceful protest is the right enshrined in the Constitution of Belarus. However, building barricades, throwing bottles into public authorities, provoking clashes – this is not a peaceful protest, but a marginalized approach to showing disagreement. It is obvious that these people have the necessary experience judging by how fast they managed to build barricades and find pyrotechnical devices. This is certainly a non-peaceful protest,” the expert concluded.

Belarus braces for fresh protests as pressure grows on Lukashenko

https://eng.belta.by/all-rubric-news/viewSuzet/presidential-elections-in-belarus-48/

Opposition leaders call for weekend of protests; prime ministers of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania call for new polls.

3 hours ago AUGUST 15, 2020

Protesters are demanding President Lukashenko step down and call for fresh elections [Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters]


Thousands are gathering in the capital, Minsk, as Belarus gears up for a weekend of new demonstrations with pressure growing on longtime leader Alexander Lukashenko.

With the opposition gaining momentum after days of protests over last Sunday's disputed presidential vote, Lukashenko's main election challenger Svetlana Tikhanovskaya has called on supporters to rally this weekend again.

Al Jazeera's Step Vaessen, reporting from Minsk, said protesters have started gathering near the Pushkinskaya metro station to honour Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester who died there on Monday and whose funeral was being held.

"Thousands have gathered here in the last hour. They held a minute's silence. People are here on the streets for the seventh day in a row to not just protest police violence but also the election results," she said.

"They are asking for President Lukashenko to step down. They are also asking for fresh elections to be held. So far, the government has not responded to any of their requests."


Thousands are chanting: "Sve-ta! Sve-ta!" (Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya). pic.twitter.com/oArqFBwNGS— Franak Viačorka (@franakviacorka) August 15, 2020

A "March for Freedom" is planned in central Minsk on Sunday, a week after the contested election that 65-year-old Lukashenko claims to have won with 80 percent of the vote.

Tikhanovskaya, a 37-year-old political novice who ran after other opposition candidates, including her husband, were jailed, accuses Lukashenko of rigging the vote and has demanded he step down so new elections can be held.

On Tuesday, she left the country for neighbouring Lithuania, with her allies saying she came under official pressure.

On Friday, she re-emerged with the call for a weekend of "peaceful mass gatherings" in cities across the country.


Belarus election challenger Tikhanovskaya flees to Lithuania (03:01)


She is also demanding authorities be held to account for a police crackdown on post-election protests that saw more than 6,700 people arrested.

Hundreds have been injured after police used rubber bullets, stun grenades and, in at least one case, live rounds to disperse the crowds.

Officials have confirmed two deaths in the unrest, including Taraikovsky who they say died when an explosive device went off in his hand during a protest, and another man who died in custody after being arrested in the southeastern city of Gomel.

On Friday, authorities began releasing hundreds of those arrested and many emerged from detention with horrific accounts of beatings and torture.

Amnesty International condemned "a campaign of widespread torture and other ill-treatment by the Belarusian authorities who are intent on crushing peaceful protests by any means".

In some of the biggest demonstrations yet, thousands marched in Minsk on Friday to denounce the police violence and demand Lukashenko step down.

Women greet a soldier guarding the Belarusian government building in a show of friendliness, in Minsk, Belarus [Sergei Grits/AP]

In euphoric scenes on Independence Square in Minsk, protesters hugged and kissed young interior ministry troops guarding a government building and put flowers in their anti-riot shields.

Unlike the scenes of violent detentions days earlier, police stood by quietly.
'We will not give up the country to anyone'

On Saturday, prime ministers of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania called on Belarus to conduct new "free and fair" elections.

A new vote should be held "in a transparent way with the participation of international observers", the leaders said in a joint statement after meeting in Estonia.

The Kremlin said on Saturday that President Vladimir Putin and Lukashenko agreed in a phone call that the "problems" in Belarus would be swiftly resolved.

"Both sides expressed confidence that all the problems that have arisen will be resolved soon," the Kremlin said in a statement after Lukashenko said he needed to contact Moscow over the growing protests against his rule.

Lukashenko rejected on Saturday offers of foreign mediation, telling defence chiefs he would not give up power.

"We will not give up the country to anyone," state news agency Belta quoted Lukashenko as saying at a meeting at the defence ministry.

"We don't need any foreign governments, any intermediaries," he said.


Thousands form 'lines of solidarity' with protesters in Belarus

Thousands of Belarusians take to the streets of Minsk for a fifth consecutive day of protests against an election.
13 Aug 2020

Large groups of people formed long 'lines of solidarity' in several areas of Minsk [Marina Serebryakova/Anadolu]

Thousands of people have taken to the streets of the capital of Belarus for a fifth consecutive day of protests against an election they say was rigged to extend the rule of the country's longtime leader Alexander Lukashenko.

Large groups of people formed long "lines of solidarity" in several areas of Minsk on Thursday to demonstrate against a crackdown on rallies that followed the vote.

More than 100 women carrying flowers and portraits of their loved ones arrested during protests gathered in the southwestern part of the city, where police had shot rubber bullets at people chanting and clapping on balconies the night before.

"Belarusians have seen the villainous face of this government. I argued with my husband and voted for Lukashenko. And this is what I got in the end - I can't find my relatives in prisons," said Valentina Chailytko, 49, whose husband and son were arrested during protests on Sunday. Chailytko still cannot find any information about their whereabouts.

Thousands of people have rallied all across Belarus since Sunday, demanding a recount of the ballot that gave Lukashenko a landslide victory with 80 percent of the vote, and his top opposition challenger only 10 percent.

Police moved aggressively to break up the protests with batons, stun grenades, tear gas and rubber bullets. One protester died on Monday in Minsk, and many were injured.

Belarus protests: UN human rights chief condemns crackdown (2:34)

Radio Liberty in Belarus reported that one more man died in a hospital in the city of Gomel, southeastern Belarus, after being arrested by police.
The US, the EU reaction

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the 27-nation bloc would review its relations with Belarus and consider "measures against those responsible for the observed violence, unjustified arrests and falsification of election results".

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the election in Belarus was not "free and fair" and urged the government to refrain from violence against peaceful protesters.

Lukashenko derided the political opposition as "sheep" manipulated by foreign masters and promised to continue taking a tough position on protests.

"The core of these so-called protesters are people with a criminal past and [those who are] currently unemployed," the Belta news agency quoted Lukashenko as saying at a meeting with security officials on Wednesday.

About 6,000 people have been arrested this week, according to the Belarusian interior ministry.

Belarus's Investigative Committee launched a criminal probe into mass rioting - a charge that implies lengthy prison terms.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES