MORE THAN CANADA HAS

Illinois expunges nearly 500,000 cannabis-related records


The expungements were four years ahead of schedule.

File Photo by Gary C. Caskey/UPI | License Photo

Jan. 2 (UPI) -- Illinois started off the new year with nearly half a million less cannabis-related arrests on record.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced in a series of Twitter posts on Thursday the state had expunged "nearly 500,000 low-level cannabis related records."

"Today, I also pardoned 9,219 low-level cannabis conviction records, for a total of 20,000 since the signing of Illinois' recreation cannabis legislation, the most equity centric in the nation," he added in another post.

The governor originally projected a four-year timetable to start expunging records after 2019 legislation legalizing recreational cannabis use became effective at the start of last year.

RELATED Man freed after nation's longest prison time for nonviolent cannabis crimes

Pritzker tweeted in a post that the half a million expungements were "four years ahead of schedule."

"We reached this milestone one year into what will be an ongoing effort to correct historic wrongdoings fueled by the war on drugs," he said in the post.

"We will never be able to fully remedy the depth of the damage in communities of color, who have disproportionately shouldered this burden," he tweeted in another post Thursday. "But we can govern with the courage to admit the mistakes of our past -- and the decency to set a better path forward."

RELATED Study: Two-thirds of young e-cig users quit or cut back early in pandemic

Though the process has been completed at the state level, county clerks were still processing records, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

Illinois State Police have conducted the automatic expungement process four years ahead of a Jan. 1, 2025, statutory deadline, but most of the state's 102 counties still have to complete the process. So far, only DuPage, Kane, Knox, McHenry, McLean, Peoria, Rock Island, Will and Winnebego counties have completed expungements at the local level. The rest have until Jan. 1, 2025, to finish the process.

Illinois is the 11th state to legalize cannabis for adult recreational use.

RELATED Vaping cannabis can modestly impair driving up to 4 hours later

upi.com/7064686

2021 to stay soggy for southeastern US after a sopping 2020

By Mary Gilbert, Accuweather.com


U.S. Coast Guard Air Station Clearwater, Fla., conducts an overflight to survey the damage following Hurricane Laura near Orange, Texas, on August 27, 2020. Laura became a Category 4 before making landfall. It was a soggy year for much of the southeastern U.S.,

 Photo by PO3 Paige Hause/U.S. Coast Guard/UPI | License Photo

As the world flips the calendar to 2021, many residents may take time to reflect on the year now solidly in the rear-view mirror. The year 2020 was for many, but one thing is for sure: many heavy rain events took aim at the southeastern United States.

In a soggy year for much of the southeastern U.S., some of the most prolific events came as a result of tropical activity.

The 2020 Atlantic Ocean hurricane season was certainly record breaking. An unprecedented 30 named tropical systems roared to life in the basin, a record shattering 12 of which made landfall on U.S. soil. Several of these land-falling tropical systems adopted a storm track that brought a deluge of rainfall to the southeastern quarter of the country. Delta and Zeta were two notable examples of this phenomenon.

Due in part to these tropical strikes and a culmination of many potent non-tropical storms throughout the year, many locations from eastern Texas through the Southeast and up into the mid-Atlantic experienced above-average rainfall totals in 2020.


RELATED Barrage of storms to aim for West Coast through early January

The year 2020 was the third-wettest year of the past 10 years for Atlanta, with only 2018 and 2015 recording more rainfall. In 2020, the observing station at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport recorded a total of 66.99 inches of rainfall, which was nearly 17.50 inches above the yearly average for the site. Similarly, 2020 was the second-wettest year of the past 10 years for Charlotte, North Carolina.

While 2020 was an abnormally wet year for many across the southeastern quarter of the U.S., that trend appears unlikely to change for the first month of 2021.

As an expansive storm system overspread much of the eastern half of the country to ring in the new year, heavy rain and strong thunderstorms rocked portions of the Southeast. While a general 1-3 inches of rain soaked areas from eastern Alabama to western North Carolina on Friday, at least one confirmed tornado spun up in Georgia. Rain and storms continued for portions of the southeastern U.S. on Saturday.

As a result of this storm, many locations across the southeastern U.S. have already received between 20% and 50% of the typical rainfall amount for the entire month of January. As of Sunday, Atlanta stands at 29% of its average rainfall for the month, while Augusta, Ga., stands at 50%.

Many of these locations are on pace to exceed typical precipitation levels for the month of January. One such location, Columbia, S.C., takes this idea to the extreme. In the first two days of 2021, the city has already recorded 2.53 inches of rainfall, or 71% of its average rainfall for the entire month of January, with several weeks to go.

Forecasters say that the atmospheric pattern is such that rounds of wet weather are likely to target the southeastern portion of the country throughout the month of January.

RELATED NASA approves two new missions to study space weather

"A strong area of high pressure over eastern Canada and Greenland, known as a 'blocking high' and weakening polar vortex can begin to influence the pattern late this week," AccuWeather Senior and Lead Long-Range Meteorologist Paul Pastelok explained. "This will continue to force a very active southern storm track.

"The South and Southeast will deal with more stormy weather and lower-than-normal temperatures, which could last through the rest of January," Pastelok said.

Ship with 265 migrants rescued off Libya finds safe harbor in Sicily

Proactiva Open Arms founder Oscar Camps, shown in Madridon

'December 15, said his vessel rescued 265 migrants

from Libya over the weekend. 

Photo by Fernando Alvarado/EPA-EFE

Jan. 4 (UPI) -- A Proactiva Open Arms ship carrying 265 migrants picked up from the Mediterranean Sea has found safe harbor at Porto Empedocle in Sicily, the non-governmental organization said Monday.

The organization said the migrants, mostly from Eritrea, were rescued by the Spanish-flagged Open Arms vessel. The group, which also included migrants from Sudan, Syria and Egypt, fled Libya aboard a wooden boat in the Mediterranean Sea and was found Saturday about 110 miles north of the Libyan coast.

Open Arms said Monday it was waiting for further instructions as the ship sailed toward the island.

The vessel already had rescued 157 migrants from rough seas when it picked up another 96 Saturday outside the Libyan search zone. Open Arms founder Oscar Camps shared a video showing deteriorating weather conditions during the rescue.

Diluvia y las condiciones en cubierta se deterioran rápidamente por el mal tiempo. Esta misma situación en una patera seria una muerte segura. Después de las negativas de Malta para permitirnos desembarcar, Italia nos acaba de confirmar un puerto seguro: Porto Empedocle, Sicilia. pic.twitter.com/i4m6SGNWh0— Oscar Camps (@campsoscar) January 3, 2021

"This same situation on a boat would be certain death," Camps said. "After Malta's refusals to allow us to disembark, Italy has just confirmed a safe port for us."

On Sunday, the International Organization for Migration said that 79 migrants were rescued off the Libyan coast and another eight were missing. Those rescued included 13 women and seven children.

Libya has been a popular departure point for migrants escaping war and terrorist violence in the region after nearly a decade of chaos following the death of the country's strongman, Moammar Gadhafi, in 2011.

Workplace messaging app Slack hit by outage on 1st business day of 2021

JAN. 4, 2021 


The logo for Slack hung outside of the New York Stock Exchange to celebrate its initial public offering on June 20, 2019. File photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo


Jan. 4 (UPI) -- The popular messaging app Slack, heavily used by remote workers, was hit with a service outage Monday as employees reported to work for the first time in 2021.

"Customers may have trouble loading channels or connecting to Slack at this time," the app's managers wrote in a message to users 10:15 a.m. EST.


The app was down for more than two hours during the first major workday of the year, but by 12:30 p.m., service to at least some users had been restored.

"While the issue is largely still ongoing, we believe some customers may see improvement in connecting to Slack after a refresh (CTRL/CMD + R)," the company wrote on its service status page.

RELATED Salesforce acquires work chat app Slack for $27B

The Downdector website fielded 15,000 reports of Slack going offline at 10 a.m.

The messaging app, made by San Francisco-based Slack Technologies Inc., has emerged as an important workplace tool during the COVID-19 pandemic as millions of employees are forced to work from home.

The company was purchased last year by Salesforce.com Inc. for nearly $28 billion. Since then, its stock has jumped by 80% due to the upsurge in work-from-home tools.

RELATED Messaging platform Slack buys directory firm Rimeto

Its outage produced bemused comments from social media users, some of whom seemed anxious to extend the holiday weekend.

"If Slack is down for 15 minutes, the workday is canceled. I don't make the rules," wrote Twitter user Chris Albon.

"Slack being down on the morning we all return to work feels like 2021 promising it will be a bit kinder to us all," tweeted Jarett Wieselman.

THIRD WORLD USA

20 states boost minimum wage, some by just pennies

JAN. 1, 2021 

Restaurant workers often are among those who receive the minimum wage. 

Photo by Jim Ruymen/UPI | License Photo


Jan. 1 (UPI) -- With the start of the new year, 20 states have raised their minimum wage -- by as much as $1.50 per hour and as little as 8 cents.

For some workers, the increases will help their families whose bread earners have been hard-hit by the coronavirus and are trying to make ends meet. For others, miniscule increases won't make much of a dent.

"We have lots of low-wage, service workers who are working through the COVID crisis, many of whom are in jobs with a greater risk of transmission," Ken Jacobs, chair of the Center for Labor Research and Education at the University of California-Berkeley told CNN.

"This will be a very welcome boost for them. As well, a lot of families are struggling right now in this crisis," Jacobs said.

NOT ONE STATE RAISE IT TO $15

The biggest minimum wage jump comes in New Mexico, which raised the required salary by $1.50, to $10.50. The tiniest increase comes in Minnesota, where workers will gain an additional 8 cents an hour, to $10.08.

Among states with big increases are Arkansas (up $1 to $11), California (up $1 to $14), Illinois (up $1 to $11) and New Jersey (up $1 to $12).

Among those with small increases are Alaska (up $15 cents to $10.34), Arizona (up 15 cents to $12.15), Florida (up 9 cents to $8.65), Maine (up 15 cents to $12.15), Montana (up 10 cents to $8.75), Ohio (up 10 cents to $8.80), South Dakota (up 15 cents to $9.45) and Washington (up 19 cents to $13.69).

Other states providing increases are Colorado (32 cents to $12.32), Maryland (75 cents to $11.75), Massachusetts (75 cents to $13.50), New York (70 cents to $12.50) and Vermont (79 cents to $11.75).

New York city, however, has a $15-per-hour minimum wage, and certain suburban areas are higher than the $12.50, as well.

Some states are not permitted by law to increase the minimum wage under certain conditions. for example, Michigan, a state law requires that the annual unemployment average fall below 8.5%. Unemployment there stood at 10.2 percent through 12 months of 2020, making it impossible to bring the average below the mandated minimum.

The federal minimum wage remains at $7.25 per hour, and 20 states -- most in the South and West --have a minimum either equal to or below that amount.

The minimum wage increases this year "are an indication that people understand how much the $7.25 federal minimum wage keeps people in poverty," Holly Sklar, chief executive officer of Business for a Fair Minimum Wage, told CBS News.

RELATED Workers call for hazard pay, sick days ahead of holiday shopping season

RELATED Relief for unemployed in U.S. could be crucial for health, study says

Low-wage workers in 20 states will see a pay raise on New Year's Day

BY AIMEE PICCHI 

UPDATED ON: DECEMBER 31, 2020 / MONEYWATCH/CBS

Workers in 20 states will get a pay hike on January 1 when the minimum wage increases, thanks to cost-of-living adjustments and other scheduled increases. Later in the year, another four states and Washington, D.C. will raise their baseline pay, which means that low-wage workers in almost half the nation could see higher pay next year. 


The pay hikes come as the federal minimum wage, which hasn't seen an increase for more than 11 years, remains mired at $7.25 an hour — the longest span the baseline wage has gone without an increase since it began in 1938. At the same time, workers across the nation are struggling amid an economic recession caused by the coronavirus pandemic, which continues to spread unabated.

A higher minimum wage could help those workers regain their financial footing, especially so-called essential workers such as grocery clerks and home health aides, whose jobs have helped keep the economy humming during the crisis yet whose earnings are among the lowest. Critics claim higher minimum wages can hurt the labor market by depressing job creation — yet recent economic research hasn't found support for that claim. Instead, advocates say a higher minimum wage helps the economy by putting more money in the pockets of workers who tend to spend it on local businesses and and services.


The wage hikes in 2021 "are an indication that people understand how much the $7.25 federal minimum wage keeps people in poverty," said Holly Sklar, the CEO of Business for a Fair Minimum Wage, a network of business owners and organizations that advocates for a higher minimum wage. 

Sklar added, "Consumer spending drives our economy, and boosting the minimum wage is a powerful way to boost the economy."

$600 is also 83 hours working min wage full-time. Try surviving on that.

The $7.25 min wage hasn't grown since 2009. Cost of living since then is up 21%.

In 1980, the minimum wage equaled $10.37 in today's dollars.

It's not hard to stimulate the economy. Pay people more.— Dan Price (@DanPriceSeattle) December 24, 2020

Some businesses say higher wages pay off long-term by decreasing turnover and creating higher satisfaction on the job. 

"The direct costs of turnover are obvious — recruitment, interviewing, training," Kelly Vlahakis-Hanks, the CEO of ECOS, which makes ecological cleaning products, told CBS MoneyWatch. "The indirect costs are less obvious, but they're significant, and I think highly underestimated."

After her company boosted its starting wage to $17 an hour in 2014, its voluntary turnover decreased 50% from 3% to 1.5%, she noted. "We have employees who have been with our company 20, even 30 years," Vlahakis-Hanks added.

Lost buying power

Since the last federal minimum wage hike — to $7.25 an hour, starting July 24, 2009 — the cost of living has increased more than 20%, while the price of essentials such as housing and health care have increased even faster. That's created financial pain for many low-paid workers, who increasingly are paying a bigger share of their earnings toward housing and other expenses. 

About half of all renters are "cost burdened," meaning they pay more than 30% of their income toward housing, according to Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies. After paying their rent, people who earn less than $15,000 a year have about $410 left each month for food, transportation, health care and other essentials, the study noted.

The minimum wage "came into being to help us recover from the Great Depression," Sklar noted. "It has a dual purpose: mitigating poverty for workers and boosting consumer spending." 

Which states are raising the minimum wage in 2021?

Michigan is expected to keep its minimum wage at $9.65 on January 1, according to the National Federation of Independent Businesses, a trade group. That's because of a law that prohibits wage increases if the state's annual unemployment rate for the preceding calendar year is higher than 8.5%. 

Through October, the jobless rate in the state has averaged 10.2%, which means it's unlikely to drop below 8.5% before the end of the year, the trade group noted. Michigan otherwise would have increased its minimum wage to $9.87. 

Below are the names and new pay rates of states boosting their minimum wage in 2021:
Alaska, to $10.34 an hour on January 1
Arizona, to $12.15 an hour on January 1
Arkansas, to $11 an hour on January 1
California, to $14 on January 1
Colorado, to $12.32 on January 1

Connecticut, to $13 on August 1

Florida, to $8.65 on January 1

Illinois, to $11 on January 1
Maine, to $12.15
Maryland, to $11.75 on January 1 
Massachusetts, to $13.50 on January 1
Minnesota, to $10.08 for employers with an annual gross revenue of at least $500,000 and $8.21 for employers with less than $500,000, on January 1

Missouri, to $10.30 on January 1
Montana, to $8.75 on January 1
Nevada, to either $8.75 or $9.75 on July 1, with the higher rate effective for employers who don't provide health insurance to workers
New Jersey, to $12 on January 1
New Mexico, to $10.50 on January 1
New York State, to $12.50 on December 31, 2020, while Long Island and Westchester will increase to $14 on December 31, 2020
Ohio, to $8.80 on January 1

Oregon, to $12 on July 1, although it will increase to $13.25 for the Portland region and to $11.50 in non-urban counties
South Dakota, to $9.45 on January 1
Vermont, to $11.75 on January 1
Virginia, to $9.50 on May 1
Washington state, to $13.69 on January 1
Washington, D.C. will increase its $15 per-hour minimum wage in July to adjust for the change in the cost of living for the previous 12 months

First published on December 30, 2020 / 3:45 PM

© 2020 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY

U.S. foreign military sales broke records in 2020, 

and may grow more in 2021


Experts say deals for Lockheed Martin's F-35, pictured, are a primary cause of significant increases to foreign military sales by the U.S. government this year, and pending deals -- including one for $23 billion -- suggest sales could increase even more in 2021. 

File Photo by Julie M. Shea/U.S. Air National Guard

Jan. 1 (UPI) -- The United States approved a record number of foreign military sales in 2020, by its own accounting and that of arms industry observers.

According to R. Clarke Cooper, assistant secretary of the State Department's Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, the State Department approved $17.08 billion in foreign military sales in fiscal year 2020 -- a 2.8% increase over fiscal 2019.

And the three-year rolling average -- which officials say is a truer reflection of trends -- is even higher, having risen to $54 billion.

The Defense Security Cooperation Agency released those figures at the beginning of December, covering deals for weapons, aircraft and other systems made by companies including Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman, among others.

RELATED State Department approves possible $4.2B in weapons sales to Kuwait

But close observers of the arms trade say the data from the federal government are not complete, and the numbers should be even higher.

William Hartung, director of the arms and security program at the Center for International Policy, wrote that the DSCA's report, published for decades but not released publicly since 2017, contained several crucial omissions.

"It kind of hides more than it discloses," Hartung told UPI. "It's almost ... I'm not going to say it's useless, but it's of very minimal utility."

RELATED State Department approves $128.1M aircraft sale to Kazakhstan

Notably, the DSCA's report doesn't separate foreign military sales from domestic sales. Also, in terms of foreign military sales, the report primarily measures approvals, not actual sales, Hartung said.

But both numbers were notably high this year.

"In terms of notifications to Congress of big deals, the numbers this year were huge compared to past years. I tallied up $129 billion in offers. It was the biggest year in new offers. It's much larger than other years of the Trump administration," Hartung said.

"It's a huge number in terms of new offers that will again play out. It sort of sets up the U.S. to be the dominant supplier, which we are already, but the margins are larger," he said.

The only year to exceed that was 2010, when the DSCA notified Congress of $123 billion in big arms sales, Hartung said.

Jeff Abramson, a senior fellow at the Arms Control Association, said his organization's tracker showed foreign military sales this calendar year are the highest they've been in this century.

So what brought the numbers up?

"The big difference in fiscal year 2020 was that there was $27 billion in fighter plane sales to Japan -- including $23 billion for the F-35, which is an ongoing program," Hartung said.

"So those two big deals skewed the figures a bit, accounting for almost the full difference in congressional foreign military sales notifications from fiscal year 2019 to fiscal year 2020."

Hartung noted that Japan had started an F-35 program before President Donald Trump took office, so the increase can't be attributed to the Trump administration's policies.

"It's part of the ongoing flow of arms deals that transcend administrations," Hartung said.

And from that perspective, fiscal year 2021 actually could be a bigger year for foreign military sales than 2020 -- due to a $23 billion package to sell F-35s, drones and bombs to the United Arab Emirates.

Some members of Congress have threatened to block that deal, and it's far from the only controversial sale the State Department has approved under the current administration.

Sales or arms transfers to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the Philippines and Hungary -- some of which were approved in the last week of the year -- have also raised questions due to human rights issues in those countries.

And sales to Taiwan also worry observers due to the United States' increasingly strained relationship with China, which has threatened to retaliate over deals approved this fall.

"There's sort of a range of countries that raise alarms for those of us worried about how they might be used in terms of human rights," Abramson told UPI.

"Writ large, this administration has been horrendous for any advocates for a more responsible and sane approach to the arms trade."

And while Trump's support for some of these governments may be ideological, there's really one consistent throughline to the Trump administration's policy in terms of foreign military sales, Abramson said.

"This president seems to think that selling as many arms as possible is a success," he said.

Abramson said he is cautiously optimistic about the incoming Biden administration's arms trade policy.

He noted that re-entering the Arms Trade Treaty is a plank in the Democratic Party Platform and said there's reason to think President-elect Biden's administration will "take restraint and responsibility much more seriously."

But he also suspects the trend from this administration of Congress taking action on arms trade issues -- historically rare -- will continue.

"Even if the Democrats end up capturing the Senate, I think we'll see much more congressional action because it's a Trump administration approach," Abramson said.

CONGRESS CAN VOTE FOR IMPEACHMENT (AGAIN)

2 House Democrats seek FBI probe into Trump after leaked call over election

President Donald Trump returns early on Marine One from their Florida vacation, on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, D.C. on December 31. Photo by Ken Cedeno/UPI | License Photo

Jan. 4 (UPI) -- Two House Democrats called for a criminal investigation Monday into President Donald Trump after leaked call to Georgia officials allegedly soliciting election fraud.

Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., and Rep. Kathleen Rice, D-N.Y., wrote to FBI Director Christopher Wray to request the probe after Trump was heard on the call leaked to the public Sunday asking Georgia's Secretary of State to "find" votes to overturn the presidential election results in the state.

"The president of the United States, in an approximately one-hour long phone call, threatened and berated Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find 11,780 votes to overturn the president's defeat in the state," the letter read.

"Mr. Trump also made a number of other statements soliciting election fraud, such as telling Mr. Raffensperger: 'And there's nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you've recalculated.'"

During the leaked phone call with Raffensperger, a Republican, and his office's general counsel, Ryan Germany, obtained by The Washington Post and NBC News, Trump called for Raffensperger to overturn the election results, citing unfounded claims of fraud, or face potential legal and political consequences.

Trump also suggested Raffensperger's failure to adhere to his demands would hurt the chances of Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler in the runoff election against Democratic challengers Tuesday that will determine the balance of the Senate.

Raffensperger told Trump that the data his election challenge was based on "is wrong" and Germany told Trump repeatedly that voting machines had not been tampered with.

"The evidence of election fraud by Mr. Trump is now in broad daylight," Lieu and Rice wrote in the letter to Wray, citing U.S. and Georgia codes prohibiting criminal solicitation to commit election fraud and refusing to count accurate votes.

President-Elect Joe Biden was certified as the winner of the election in the state following a statewide recount and audit of the election, resulting in 16 electoral votes for Biden, with 306 votes overall, surpassing the 270 needed to win, compared to Trump's 232.

Congress will meet Wednesday to formally count the electoral votes.

upi.com/7065269

What I Learned by Reading Hundreds of COVID-19 Research Studies

I’ve scanned the latest science almost every day for nine months. Three themes kept coming up.

Brian Owens 29 Dec 2020 | Hakai Magazine
2020 was a huge year for science and research. Photo by Darryl Dyck, the Canadian Press.


For the better part of the past year, I have spent almost every day reviewing the latest scientific papers on the COVID-19 pandemic — everything from the nitty gritty science of virology, immunology and epidemiology, to studies of how the pandemic is affecting our societies and mental health — and summarizing the most interesting and important ones for this column. It’s been a lot to take in and I’ve learned a great deal, but through it all a few common themes and ideas keep coming up. Here are the three biggest things that I’ve learned from almost nine months of reporting on pandemic science.

First, big world-spanning disasters like pandemics strip away the Band-Aids and reveal a society’s weaknesses. In Canada, and other wealthy countries, the biggest weaknesses are the economic and racial fault lines running through our society, and how we treat our elderly.

COVID-19 hit poor people, Indigenous communities and racialized communities especially hard, both in terms of health and economic effects. While most of the data comes from the United States, there is evidence in Canada as well that people of colour are more susceptible to the virus — and at higher risk of complications and death — than white people. Following physical distancing rules was often more difficult, for example, because many people of colour worked in jobs considered essential, such as those in health care, sanitation, delivery services, and grocery stores. Plus, years of economic deprivation and systemic racism have left some people with more underlying health conditions that put them at higher risk of COVID-19.

Likewise, the pandemic revealed just how insufficient our society’s way of dealing with the elderly is, with inadequate investment in nursing homes leaving these facilities unable or unprepared to deal with a deadly infectious disease. Even the measures we adopted to protect them, cutting off most contact with the outside world, left residents more vulnerable to mental health problems such as loneliness and depression. If we are going to “build back better,” our highest priorities must include dealing with poverty, racism and ageism.

Second, it became obvious just how much science can accomplish when given the motivation and support to deal with big existential problems. The virus was first identified in China about one year ago, and already people are starting to receive one of several new vaccines that appear to be even more effective than some of the most optimistic predictions from last spring. This was never a sure thing; there has never been a successful vaccine against a coronavirus — such as SARS or MERS — and some doubted whether it would be possible for this one. But major investments of time, money and effort from scientists, drug companies and governments resulted in the fastest vaccine development project in history, one that will undoubtedly save countless lives.

And it’s not just vaccines. Scientists have also developed drugs to treat the disease, they hacked together ventilators and other vital equipment when there was a shortage early on and they created a wide array of ever faster, cheaper and more accurate tests. Most of the tests, however, are not yet available in Canada and other countries, but will be soon. Let’s remember just how resourceful and creative we can be when we work together, as we move from the pandemic to dealing with that other existential threat we face, and which has not gone away: climate change.

Finally, while science can do great things, it’s fallible. Whenever we ask questions of science, the answers we get back are always partial, and sometimes wrong. We have seen this over and over again during the pandemic, as new information overtakes the old, or once promising avenues of investigation turn out to be dead ends. Early on, with little information about how the virus spread, public health officials emphasized disinfecting surfaces and discouraged mask-wearing, in part to conserve limited supplies of protective equipment for health-care workers. But as we learned more, that advice changed — we now know that airborne transmission is much more important than transmission from surfaces, and masks are one of the most effective protective measures we can take, alongside hand-washing and physical distancing.

Similarly, in the early days of the pandemic, doctors tried any kind of treatment they could think of to save patients, but some ideas that showed early promise were ineffective. The hype around the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine quickly died away — despite the efforts of a committed band of boosters including Donald Trump — when more rigorous testing showed it didn’t work. Even remdesivir, the Ebola drug that has become a frontline therapy for COVID-19, is on shaky ground, with the World Health Organization recently recommending against its use.

Some of the confusion is ongoing, with scientists still investigating and debating exactly how the virus jumped from animals to people, how it is mutating and evolving, and how long natural or vaccine-induced immunity will last. The answers to some of these questions may only come long after the pandemic is firmly in the past, or not at all. While most people think of science as something that provides solid answers, the pandemic has reminded us that it is a messy process, and the answers it gives are always just a provisional explanation based on the best information we have so far.

Although it may feel like we are rounding a corner as the first doses of vaccines go out, there is still much to learn about the virus and how it is affecting our bodies and our society. In 2021, I will continue to keep track of all the latest developments, and share them with you to try and help demystify the science around this disease.

Brian Owens is a freelance science writer and editor based in St. Stephen, New Brunswick. His work has appeared in Hakai Magazine, Nature, New Scientist, the Canadian Medical Association Journal and the Lancet.

Bill Gates’s Foundation Is Leading a Green Counterrevolution in Africa

BYJAN URHAHN

TRANSLATION BYLOREN BALHORN 

JACOBIN

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation promised Africa a “Green Revolution” to fight hunger and poverty. It hasn't worked — but it has upped corporate agriculture’s profits. Local farmers are being left empty-handed, and hunger is rising.
Bill and Melinda Gates. (Wikimedia Commons)

Over the last five years, the number of people around the world suffering from hunger has been on the rise. Against this backdrop, a decades-old debate continues to rage, asking which agricultural approaches can provide everyone with sufficient healthy food.

One simplistic answer comes from governments in the Global North (and so, too, some in the Global South). They claim that international agribusiness could end global hunger if only it had the means to do so, boosting agricultural productivity through the use of pesticides, hybrid seeds, and other external inputs.

But many social movements, experts, and NGOs disagree. They insist that hunger isn’t a problem of production — rather, it’s rooted in the unequal distribution of power resources and control over agricultural inputs such as land and seeds.

Agribusiness’s narrative nevertheless continues to be influential. It determines policy much more than the demands put forward by small farmers and their advocates ever do. Governments in the Global South, especially in Africa, are regularly pressured to modify their agricultural sectors with new laws or projects that favor international agribusiness. And in Africa, there’s a particularly prominent initiative driving corporate agriculture’s agenda — Bill Gates’s Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).

Corporate Agriculture Against Global Hunger

AGRA was established in 2006 by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. Deploying high-yield commercial seeds, synthetic fertilizers, and pesticides as its main weapons, the program is meant to help Africa unleash its own Green Revolution in agriculture to fight hunger and poverty. At least, that’s the promise.

Upon its foundation, AGRA set out to double the agricultural yields and incomes of thirty million smallholder households, thereby halving both hunger and poverty in twenty African countries by 2020. To achieve this, the “alliance” funds various projects and lobbies African governments to implement structural changes that would set the stage for its “Green Revolution.” Since its foundation, AGRA has received contributions of about $1 billion, mainly from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Large grants have also come from the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and other countries.

From these donations, AGRA has awarded grants of more than $500 million across the continent. African governments support AGRA’s goals with public funds through so-called farm input subsidy programs (FISPs), with which farmers are expected to purchase the seeds — mostly hybrid — and synthetic fertilizers promoted by AGRA. The state subsidies for small farms provide an incentive to introduce the bundle of farming technologies AGRA counts as part of its Green Revolution. FISPs have been introduced on a significant scale in ten of AGRA’s thirteen “focus countries” including Ethiopia, Kenya, Mali, Rwanda, Zambia, and Tanzania.

But fourteen years after AGRA was founded, it’s safe to say that the initiative has failed to meet its goals. Rather than combat hunger and poverty, hunger has actually increased by 30 percent in the AGRA focus countries — meaning that thirty million more people are suffering from it than when AGRA started. By 2018, agricultural yields in the focus countries had increased by only 18 percent, as opposed to the 100 percent AGRA promised. In the period before AGRA, yields in these countries had grown by 17 percent. The increases in yields with and without AGRA were therefore almost identical.
Winners and Losers

AGRA’s results are devastating for small-scale farmers. Most AGRA projects primarily entail selling them expensive inputs such as hybrid seeds and synthetic fertilizers via agrochemical companies. These inputs are extremely costly and thus drastically increase farmers’ risk of falling into indebtedness. Examples from Tanzania show that small-scale farmers have not been able to repay seed and fertilizer debts directly after the harvest, even forcing some to sell their livestock.

The AGRA formula — “doubled yields equal doubled incomes” — simply does not pan out in practice. In the AGRA model, any short-term increases in yield have to be bought at great expense with seeds, fertilizer, and often pesticides — an arrangement that only boosts the incomes of seed and fertilizer companies.

Moreover, freedom of choice is restricted: in AGRA projects in Kenya, small-scale farmers are not allowed to decide for themselves which corn seed they plant and which fertilizers and pesticides they use on their fields. The managers of AGRA projects assume that participating agrochemical companies make the best decisions for the farmers. AGRA’s focus is on a few food crops such as corn or soy, causing traditional nutrient-rich foods to be neglected and even displaced.

Statistics for the thirteen AGRA focus countries show that production of cereals has fallen by 21 percent since the initiative was launched. A yield decline of 7 percent was recorded for root and tuber crops. All in all, AGRA reduces the diversity in farmers’ fields and thus also the variety of seeds being used. This development in turn makes agriculture even more vulnerable to the consequences of the climate crisis.

Lobbying for Corporate Interests

AGRA’s current strategy describes “policy and advocacy” as its first field of activity. Its primary goal is to actively promote policies that open the door to high-yield seeds, synthetic fertilizers, and other Green Revolution inputs. This prevents support for alternative approaches such as agroecology.

AGRA funded the establishment of a fertilizer and agribusiness lobby known as the African Fertilizer and Agribusiness Partnership (AFAP) to the tune of $25 million. It represents the interests of the fertilizer industry vis-à-vis African governments and donor organizations. In Ghana, Mozambique, and Tanzania, for example, AFAP wants to increase fertilizer use by 100 percent. AFAP’s partners include Louis Dreyfus Company, one of the world’s largest grain traders, and International Raw Materials (IRM), a major US fertilizer distributor. The links between AGRA and AFAP are also close: the president of AGRA is also a member of AFAP’s board of directors.

High on AGRA’s political agenda has always been the suppression of local farmers’ seed — and the reconfiguration of national and regional regulations to suit commercial seed companies. Together with the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO), AGRA has coordinated and supported seed policy reforms in several countries such as Burkina Faso, Ghana, Nigeria, and Tanzania.

Such changes have brought African countries into the 1991 Convention of the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants, known as “UPOV 91.” It guarantees breeders’ rights to new seed varieties and establishes intellectual property rights over seeds. The result: a framework was created to privatize plant genetic resources and thus generate profits.

AGRA also signed a formal memorandum of understanding with the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in 2017. Here, too, seed legislation is to be adapted to UPOV 91. Yet the criteria for UPOV admission are often beyond the reach of small-scale producers. Seed that does not meet the so-called DUS criteria for seeds’ Distinctness (D), Uniformity (U), and Stability (S) cannot be protected by the UPOV system, and nor can it be included in the variety registers required by ECOWAS. This means that these seeds cannot be traded on formal markets. The effect is to restrict farmers’ right to store, exchange, and sell the seed they save from cultivating their own farms. At the same time, these rules strengthen corporate seed. In the worst case, farmers’ own seeds are criminalized — despite the fact that they remain the main source of seed across Africa.

Forget AGRA, We Need Agroecology

This hasn’t been without resistance. African movements such as the Coalition for the Protection of African Genetic Heritage (COPAGEN) and many others have opposed AGRA from the outset, arguing that AGRA and other Green Revolution initiatives neglect the needs and rights of the small-scale producers who produce most of our food worldwide.

Agricultural movements across Africa are calling for a phasing out of AGRA in favor of greater support for agroecology, an agricultural practice originating in the Global South and pursued by millions of farmers around the world.

Agroecology is both a sound science as well as a social movement that stands up for the rights of farmers and rejects a purely capitalist approach to agriculture. Agroecology offers small-scale farmers the kind of innovation they need: an agriculture that makes conscious use of nature and natural processes to promote the kinds of soil-building practices that become impossible when Green Revolution technologies are used.


These practices are characterized, for example, by the cultivation of several food crops in the same field. Compost, manure, mulch, legumes, and organic fertilizers — instead of synthetic fertilizers based on fossil fuels — are used to fertilize the fields. Ecological pest control reduces the use of pesticides. Researchers work with farmers to improve their farm seeds rather than replace them with commercial hybrid seeds that have to be repurchased every year and also force them to treat the plants in their fields with synthetic fertilizers to achieve sufficient yields.

But corporate power is putting up enormous resistance to any and all alternatives to AGRA. The interests and spheres of influence of the agribusinesses that profit from the status quo are huge. Alternatives that strengthen agroecology and farmers’ rights, reduce the use of pesticides or synthetic fertilizers, or promote farm seeds come into direct conflict with the interests of capital. Too often, governments in the Global North see themselves as representatives or ambassadors of “their” corporations. Nevertheless, the alternatives to AGRA are there — now is the time to fight for their realizatio


This article draws on a recent study of Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)’s record in Africa, “False Promises.”

Senate Democrats Could Have Defied Mitch McConnell on $2,000 Checks. They Chose Not to

BYDAVID SIROTA ANDREW PEREZ JACOBIN

Democrats and Beltway pundits helped Mitch McConnell undermine Bernie Sanders’s push for direct aid to millions of Americans facing eviction, starvation, and bankruptcy through $2,000 checks. Even for a party that is constantly disappointing, Democrats’ complete capitulation to McConnell and austerity ideology was shockingly pathetic.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer speaks at a press conference

 in Washington, DC in December. (Tasos Katopodis / Getty Images)

It was always a possibility that Democrats would get too scared to halt a major Pentagon bill in order to help millions of Americans get $2,000 survival checks — in fact, as we wrote earlier this week, it was very likely that they would back down the moment any bad-faith critic so much as waved a flag and said “support the troops.”

And capitulation became even more likely when Clinton-era Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, corporate Democratic pundits, and billionaire-owned elite media outlets began parroting a series of eerily similar let-them-eat-cake talking points against the survival checks — which McConnell promptly used to bludgeon proponents of the bipartisan initiative.

But even appreciating all of this — and also knowing that many Democratic leaders still cling to an outdated austerity ideology — the sheer scale of Wednesday’s Democratic surrender was truly a sight to behold. And it probably ended the chance for more immediate aid to millions of Americans facing eviction, starvation, and bankruptcy.

The day began with Sen. Bernie Sanders following through on his promise to deny unanimous consent for the Senate to advance a $740 billion defense authorization bill, until Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell allows an up-or-down vote on legislation that would send $2,000 survival checks to individuals making less than $75,000 and couples making less than $150,000.

Sanders’s move forced McConnell to ask the Senate to pass a formal motion to proceed on the defense bill, which would let Republicans move forward on the Pentagon priority without a vote on the $2,000 checks. The motion created the moment in which Democrats could have stood their ground and cornered the GOP leader.

Instead, as Republicans saber rattled about the need to pass the defense bill, forty-one Democrats obediently voted with McConnell, allowing him to move the defense bill forward without a vote on the checks. That included “yes” votes from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Vice President–elect Kamala Harris, the lead sponsor on a bill to give Americans monthly $2,000 checks during the pandemic. One day before her vote to help McConnell, Harris had called on the Republican leader to hold a vote on her legislation.

Only six members of the Senate Democratic Caucus mustered the courage to vote against McConnell’s maneuver — Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Chris Van Hollen, Jeff Merkley, Ed Markey, and Ron Wyden. Democratic senators in fact provided the majority of the votes for the measure that lets the defense bill proceed without a vote on the $2,000 checks.

It was called a motion to proceed, but it really was a motion demanding Democrats concede — and they instantly obliged.

It Didn’t Have to Go This Way

Had most Senate Democrats voted against that motion, they might have had a chance to deny McConnell and stall the process — after all, five Republicans also voted against the measure, including Missouri’s Josh Hawley, who has pushed the survival checks with Sanders.

Republican president Donald Trump has called for Congress to pass the $2,000 checks, but Georgia’s Republican senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue — who only this week started pretending they support the direct aid — were nowhere to be found. They skipped the vote, effectively refusing to use their power to deliver relief to the roughly two-thirds of Georgia households who would benefit from the checks.

To be sure, there may still be some opportunities for procedural delays in the final days of the Senate session.

It is also theoretically possible that the fluid dynamics of the closely contested Georgia Senate races — where the Democratic candidates are campaigning for the $2,000 checks — may compel McConnell to relent and allow a vote on the direct aid, if he suddenly feels it is necessary to hold onto his job as majority leader.

So yes, Sanders’s pledge to lock the gates and prevent the Senate from going home for the New Year’s holiday is valuable, in the sense that playing for time holds out the chance for unforeseen events to shift the dynamics.

But unless there is some game-changing event after Wednesday, McConnell was almost certainly correct when he said the $2,000 checks initiative now has “no realistic path to quickly pass the Senate.”

And McConnell may feel even less pressure to approve bigger direct payments in the future without a Republican president publicly demanding them.
Liberal Economists and Pundits Gave McConnell His Talking Points

McConnell’s crusade to stop direct aid was abetted not only by Senate Democrats’ surrender, but also by media elites who loyally represent the party’s corporate wing and who began promoting canned talking points to undermine the direct aid.

First came a barrage of attacks on the $2,000 checks initiative from Summers, a former hedge fund executive who as President Barack Obama’s national economic director stymied the push for more stimulus after the 2008 financial crisis.

Then the New York Times’ Paul Krugman pretended the wildly popular initiative is “divisive” and said “the economics aren’t very good.” Timesman Tom Friedman, who married into a real estate empire, called the idea “crazy” and fretted that checks might go to “people who don’t need the help.” The minions of billionaire Michael Bloomberg joined in with a house editorial demanding Congress block the checks.

Meanwhile, only weeks after the Washington Post news page told the harrowing tales of rising poverty and starvation in America, the paper’s editorial board argued against stimulus by insisting that “the economy has healed significantly.”

The Post — which is owned by the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos — argued against the $2,000 checks by saying it is unjust that some rich people might in theory end up benefiting from the proposal (this, from the editorial board that still vociferously defends the 2008 Wall Street bailout that financed bonuses for wealthy bank executives who destroyed the global economy). The Post also borrowed spin from Summers, arguing that people probably won’t use the money because “restaurants are closed and air travel limited.”

This isn’t even close to true: Indoor dining was recently shut down in New York City and DC, but restaurants are fully open in most states, and an unfortunate number of people are still flying.

All of this noise was quickly weaponized by McConnell, who in a Senate floor speech directly cited Summers and the Post as justification to stop the $2,000 checks to the two-thirds of households in his own state who would benefit.

“The liberal economist Larry Summers, President Clinton’s Treasury Secretary and President Obama’s NEC director says, ‘There’s no good economic argument for universal $2,000 checks at this moment.’” McConnell said, adding: “Even the liberal Washington Post today is laughing at the political left demanding more huge giveaways with no relationship to actual need.”

Then he concluded by parroting the pundits, declaring: “The Senate is not going to be bullied into rushing out more borrowed money into the hands of Democrats’ rich friends who don’t need the help.” McConnell is worth an estimated $34 million.

McConnell’s absurd attempt to pretend he doesn’t want to help the rich was boosted by Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn, who also cited the Post editorial and then insisted the legislation to give $2,000 checks to individuals making less than $75,000 “is about helping millionaires and billionaires.”

Neither McConnell nor Cornyn even attempted to substantiate their allegations — but they didn’t have to. Democrats were already in the process of folding, and corporate media was more than happy to run interference.

In the end, millions of Americans struggling to survive will likely be left with just a one-time $600 check, as eighty US senators rubber stamp a bloated defense bill to show they support the troops — and then tell the poor to eat a roll call vote.

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