'Primed for pain': New report shows Amazon workers injured more than twice industry average

Common Dreams

Amazon warehouse worker AFP/File

A new report out Tuesday accuses Amazon of having an "abysmal health and safety record" as a result of its obsession with production speed, pointing to worker injury rates that are far higher than those across the warehouse and shipping industry.

The analysis, Primed for Pain: Amazon's Epidemic of Workplace Injuries, was released by the Strategic Organizing Center (SOC), a collection of four labor unions, and comes amid sustained scrutiny over the company's mistreatment of workers amid soaring profits.

The report is based on data Amazon provided to the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and covers the four-year period 2017-2020.

"Every day is just go, go, go," said Safiyo Muhamed, a former worker at an Amazon fulfillment center in Shakopee, Minnesota for two and a half years who suffered a slipped disc in her back while lifting a heavy tote.

"Amazon wants you to work like a robot, like a machine," she said in a statement. "Every week they rank you, they monitor you through the computer. You have to be so fast. Humans aren't able to do it."

Muhamed's assessment is unsurprising given the report's assertion that "Amazon's obsession with speed in every part of its business has been a key element of its growth strategy."

"But the company's obsession with speed has come at a huge cost for Amazon's workforce," the report states.

Amazon's workforce grew from 208,764 workers in 2017 to 581,624 in 2020. There were injuries at 191 facilities in 2017, and at 658 facilities in 2020.

The data showed "substantially higher rates of workplace injuries" for Amazon workers compared to those in the same industry at other companies, the analysis found.


In 2017, Amazon had 11,883 recordable injuries—about 87% of which were injuries that made workers unable to perform their regular job functions (light duty) or forced them to miss work (lost time).

In 2020, there were 27,178 recordable injuries, 90% of which forced workers into light duty or lost time. That rate is more notable, the report said, because the coronavirus pandemic forced Amazon to make "massive operational changes" in 2020 that likely lessened speed.

While the warehouse industry is notoriously dangerous, the report says that Amazon's injury rate was still well above those of other warehouse employers.

"In all four years for which data are available, Amazon's rate of injuries per 100 warehouse workers is substantially higher than it is for non-Amazon employers in the general warehouse industry," the report states.

In 2020, for example, there were 6.5 injuries per 100 Amazon warehouse workers and just 4.0 injuries per 100 at all other warehouses.

What's more, the injuries suffered by Amazon workers are more severe. Singling out 2020 again, the report says there were 5.9 serious injuries per 100 Amazon workers—a rate that's about 80% higher than those of other warehousing industry employers.

The analysis also compared Amazon with retail e-commerce competitor Walmart. "In 2020, Amazon's overall warehouse injury rate (6.5/100 FTEs) was over twice that of Walmart (3.0), while Amazon's severe injury rate (2.6) was more than two-and-a-half times Walmart's."

SOS gathered further data from a February 2021 survey of 996 Amazon workers across 42 states. Forty-two percent of those queried said a workplace injury caused them to miss work, and roughly 80% of those attributed their injury to production pressure or speed.

Another finding from that survey: 52% said that since the pandemic broke out, Amazon has either terminated, disciplined, or threatened workers who don't keep up with the work pace.

"Workers' accounts of extreme production pressure in 2021 suggest that Amazon's reduced injury rates during Covid may not be sustained as the company returns to its previous practices," the report warns.

That wouldn't be unpredictable, according to the analysis.

"Amazon's abysmal health and safety record is not an accident," the report states. "Rather, it is the predictable outcome of a company that prioritizes speed, growth, and profits over the health and safety of its employees."

"Unfortunately," the publication continues, "this alarming rate of serious workplace injuries is likely to continue unless Amazon is forced by workers and others to take long-term meaningful action to make its workplaces safer."

Eric Frumin, SOC's director of health and safety, didn't mince words in his assessment of Amazon's duty to workers.

"By effectively ignoring the obvious consequences of their own decisions," said Frumin, "Amazon's leaders have failed in their legal, ethical, and moral responsibility to protect their own employees from serious hazards and the very real danger of career-threatening injuries."

Six US tech giants paid almost $100 billion less in taxes from 2011 to 2020 than reported: analysis

Common Dreams

Tim Cook (AFP)

Bolstering demands for a global minimum tax to rein in corporations' evasive tactics, a new analysis released Monday showed that a half dozen companies based in the United States paid almost $100 billion less in taxes over the past decade than stated in their annual reports.

Between 2011 and 2020, Amazon, Facebook, Alphabet (the owner of Google), Netflix, Apple, and Microsoft—known as the "Silicon Six"—paid roughly $219 billion in income taxes, which amounts to just 3.6% of their more than $6 trillion in total revenue, according to the Fair Tax Foundation. Income tax is paid on profits, not total revenue, and researchers said these tech giants are adept at reducing their tax liabilities by shifting profits to offshore tax havens.

Had the "Silicon Six" paid the prevailing tax rates in the countries in which they operate, they would have given global tax authorities over $149 billion more than they did over the past decade, researchers said. Moreover, not only did these corporate behemoths fork over nearly $150 billion less than would be expected under a stronger international taxation regime, but they also inflated the value of the tax payments they did make

According to the Fair Tax Foundation, these six companies reported paying approximately $315 billion in income taxes between 2011 and 2020, which is 23.2% on nearly $1.4 trillion in profits. That's significantly higher than the 16.1% rate the companies actually paid over the past decade, however, resulting in a gap of more than $96 billion between tax figures cited in annual financial reports and real contributions to public revenues.

Paul Monaghan, chief executive of the United Kingdom-based nonprofit, said the study provided "solid evidence that substantive tax avoidance is still embedded within many large multinationals and nothing less than a root-and-branch reform of international tax rules will remedy the situation."

None of the six corporations "is an exemplar of responsible tax conduct," the report noted. "However, the degree of irresponsibility and the relative tax contribution made does vary. Amazon has paid just $5.9 billion in income taxes this decade, whilst Apple has paid $100.6 billion and Microsoft has paid $55.3 billion."

Source: Fair Tax Foundation

The Fair Tax Foundation identified Amazon and Facebook as the worst offenders, prompting responses from the two tech giants.

As The Guardian reported:
An Amazon spokesperson disputed the calculations as "extremely misleading."
"Amazon is primarily a retailer where profit margins are low, so comparisons to technology companies with operating profit margins of closer to 50% is not rational," the company said. "Governments write the tax laws and Amazon is doing the very thing they encourage companies to do—paying all taxes due while also investing many billions in creating jobs and infrastructure. Coupled with low margins, this investment will naturally result in a lower cash tax rate."

A Facebook spokesman said: "All companies pay tax on their profits, not revenues. Last year we paid $4.23 billion in corporate income taxes globally, and our average effective tax rate over the last 10 years was 20.71%, which is roughly in line with the OECD average."

In response to the corporations' complaints, the Fair Tax Foundation said that the majority of Amazon's profits in the last three years were derived not from retail but from cloud services, where profit margins are between 25-30%. The Fair Tax Foundation also noted that over the past decade, Facebook paid an income tax rate of just 12.7%, resulting in substantially lower contributions than would be expected according to prevailing corporate tax rates as well as the company's effective tax rate.

The Fair Tax Foundation's new analysis comes just weeks after Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Charles Rettig admitted that tax dodging is depriving the U.S. government of as much as $1 trillion or more per year.

Monaghan said that U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen's recent push for a global minimum tax on corporations "[lit] a fire beneath the multilateral discussions that have been slowly progressing under the auspices of the OECD."

According to Monaghan, the Biden administration's proposals for global tax reform "would see many of the incentives underpinning profit-shifting to tax havens removed, and would see the very largest multinationals taxed not just on where subsidiary profits are booked, but where real economic value is derived."

"This would have a seismic impact on the likes of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft (who have tax dodging hard-wired into their organizational structure), with billions of additional taxes paid across the world," Monaghan continued.

"We could be on the cusp of a once-in-a-generation moment," he added, "but world leaders at the forthcoming G7 and G20 world leader summits need to grasp the nettle, step up, and engage with the agenda much more positively—the benefit to public services across the world could be immense."

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

Many of the uber-rich pay next to no income tax, ProPublica claims


PAUL WISEMAN AND MACY GORDON, ASSOCIATED PRESS8 June 2021

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos paid no income tax in 2007 and 2011, while Tesla founder Elon Musk’s income tax bill was zero in 2018, according to a report from the non-profit investigative journalism organisation ProPublica.

Overall, the richest 25 Americans pay less in tax — an average of 15.8% of adjusted gross income — than many ordinary workers do, once you include taxes for Social Security and Medicare, ProPublica found.

Its findings are likely to heighten a national debate over the vast and widening inequality between the very wealthiest Americans and everyone else.

Elon Musk (Brian Lawless/PA)

An anonymous source delivered to ProPublica reams of Internal Revenue Service data on the country’s wealthiest people, including Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch and Mark Zuckerberg.

ProPublica compared the tax data it received with information available from other sources. It reported that “in every instance we were able to check — involving tax filings by more than 50 separate people — the details provided to ProPublica matched the information from other sources”.

Using perfectly legal tax strategies, many of the uber-rich are able to shrink their federal tax bills to nothing or close to it.

A spokesman for financier George Soros, who has supported higher taxes on the rich, told ProPublica that the billionaire had lost money on his investments from 2016 to 2018 and so did not owe federal income tax for those years.

Mr Musk responded to ProPublica’s initial request for comment with a punctuation mark — “?” — and did not answer detailed follow-up questions.

The federal tax code is meant to be progressive — that is, the rich pay a steadily higher tax rate on their income as it rises. And ProPublica found, in fact, that people earning between two million and five million dollars a year paid an average of 27.5%, the highest of any group of taxpayers.

Above five million dollars in income, though, tax rates fell: The top .001% of taxpayers — 1,400 people who reported income above 69 million dollars — paid 23%. And the 25 very richest people paid still less.

The wealthy can reduce their tax bills through the use of charitable donations or by avoiding wage income (which can be taxed at up to 37%) and benefiting instead mainly from investment income (usually taxed at 20%).

President Joe Biden, in seeking revenue to finance his spending plans, has proposed higher taxes on the wealthy.

Mr Biden wants to raise the top tax rate to 39.6% for people earning 400,000 dollars a year or more in taxable income, estimated to be fewer than 2% of US households. The top tax rate that workers pay on salaries and wages now is 37%.

Mr Biden is proposing to nearly double the tax rate that high-earning Americans pay on profits from stocks and other investments. In addition, under his proposals, inherited capital gains would no longer be tax-free.

The president, whose proposals must be approved by Congress, would also raise taxes on corporations, which would affect wealthy investors who own corporate stocks.

ProPublica reported that the tax bills of the rich are especially low when compared with their soaring wealth — the value of their investment portfolios, real estate and other assets.

People do not have to pay tax on an increase in their wealth until they cash in and, say, sell their stock or home and realise the gains.

Using calculations by Forbes magazine, ProPublica noted that the wealth of the 25 richest Americans collectively jumped by 401 billion dollars from 2014 to 2018. They paid 13.6 billion dollars in federal income taxes over those years — equal to just 3.4% of the increase in their wealth.

Fox News Guest: ‘The Poor, the Minorities, the Disenfranchised… Aren’t Worth $15 an Hour’

By Michael Luciano

MEDIAITE

Jun 8th, 2021

During a panel appearance with Austan Goolsbee on Tuesday about whether to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, conservative economist Art Laffer said that some workers just aren’t worth that much.

Fox News anchor Sandra Smith suggested that raising the minimum wage might cause companies to automate some of the jobs currently done by humans. She noted that there are currently 9.3 million job openings in the U.S., which has sparked fears of a worker shortage.

Smith cited the recent foray of McDonald’s into testing voice-ordering technology at 10 of its Chicago restaurants, where only one-fifth of orders need to be taken by humans, according to CEO Chris Kempczinski. He said the automated order-takers have an accuracy rate of about 85%.

Art Laffer Says Most Poor and Minority Workers 'Aren't Worth $15 an Hour 

Laffer responded by scoffing at the idea every worker should be making at least $15 an hour.

Yeah, for those people, Sandra, who are coming into the labor force brand fresh –not old-timers who’ve been around for awhile – the poor, the minorities the disenfranchised, those with less education, young people who haven’t had the job experience. These people aren’t worth $15 an hour in most cases.

And so therefore when you have a $15 an hour minimum wage, they don’t get that first job, they don’t get requisite the skills to earn above the minimum wage. And after a few years they become unemployable. And after becoming unemployable, they become hostile, and that what you’ll find is happening is this technology has created an underclass of people who are really just bid out of the labor market and will remain out of the labor market for most of their lives. And this I think is just a tragedy. I love the technology but the technology is replacing the jobs for these people. And it’s a killer. It’s a killer for just the people who need the help the most.

Working 40 hours a week for a year for $15 an hour translates to an income of $31,200 before withholdings.

Watch via Fox News.

Art Laffer Says Most Poor and Minority Workers 'Aren't Worth $15 an Hour (mediaite.com)

Jane Fonda Condemns Biden for Failing to be ‘Bold’ on Climate Change: He’s Not Acting ‘Fast Enough’

By Leia Idliby

MEDIAITE 

Jun 8th, 2021, 

Just days after protesting a pipeline project in Minnesota, Jane Fonda joined CNN’s Brianna Keilar to address President Joe Biden’s climate policies.

Fonda joined thousands of people in northern Minnesota this weekend for the Treaty People Gathering, an event meant to protest the advancement of the Enbridge Line 3 replacement project.


VIDEO Jane Fonda Condemns Joe Biden's Climate Change Reforms (mediaite.com)

“You have been incredibly outspoken on this issue of this pipeline project,” Keilar said to the activist on Tuesday’s New Day. “It’s a project that former President [Donald] Trump had approved during his last days in office, but still President Biden, the Biden administration, has remained silent on this issue, despite what is his clear position on climate.”

Fonda called for the Biden administration to ask the Army Corps of Engineers to halt construction on the pipeline, adding that Enbridge’s permit should be re-examined, as “it was rushed through.”

Fonda noted that a sufficient study on the pipeline’s environmental impact was never conducted, later explaining the negative impacts Enbridge’s project will have on the environment:

It’s bringing very destructive tar sands under 200 bodies of pristine water, but look at the big picture — we are barreling toward a true catastrophe, an existential catastrophe, which is the climate crisis. Climate scientists are universally telling us we have to cut our emissions in half and we can have absolutely no new development of fossil fuels. No new mining. No new fracking. No new drilling if we’re going to achieve this. We have to keep warming it 1.5 degrees celsius. No higher than that. We can’t even burn what we already develop, much less new, so this pipeline is threatening what science is saying. It’s threatening the climate crisis. This is going to affect everybody. Not just the tribal nations whose sovereign rights are being broken here in Minnesota but the whole world. We cannot afford this.

Fonda went on to praise Biden for stopping the Keystone XL Pipeline and putting an end to the drilling of arctic national wildlife, yet called on him to “raise a ruckus” regarding the Line 3 replacement project.

“Clearly you’re happy with some things, but how do you think that he is doing, and is it enough to make progressives like yourself feel that he is delivering for what you voted him in for?” Keilar asked Fonda of Biden.

“Well, it’s nice to be hopeful again, and it’s much better to push a moderate than to fight a fascist, right?” Fonda cracked. “We’re very, very grateful for what he’s been doing. He’s done a lot of very good things. But not enough. Not bold enough. And not fast enough. We’re up against time. The scientists say we have less than nine years to cut our emissions in half. Line 3 is going in the absolute opposite direction, and the news every day is telling us, emissions are going up, not down. So we have to put our bodies on the line and do whatever we can to get our administration to call a halt to these permits.”

World Oceans Day: The Caribbean Sea faces dual threat of climate change and overfishing

 

World Oceans Day: The Caribbean Sea faces dual threat of climate change and overfishing

The matters stressing out the Caribbean Sea are all connected

Written byEmma Lewis

Posted 8 June 2021 18:18 GMT 

Cleaning a fish at Old Harbour Bay, St. Catherine, Jamaica. Photo by Emma Lewis, used with permission.

Oceans cover approximately 71 percent of the earth’s surface, and contain 97 per cent of its water, so how is our “blue planet””—and specifically, the Caribbean Sea—faring? Is the blue economy, touted as a sustainable solution to the region’s concerns, little more than a catchphrase, or the Caribbean’s last hope?

The theme of World Oceans Day 2021 is “Life and Livelihoods.” Although the Caribbean Sea, with an area of just over one million square miles, represents only around one percent of the global ocean area, it is a critical resource for its people, just about 70 percent of whom live in coastal areas. Certainly, the Caribbean depends in some way on the sea and its coastlines for a living.

The region’s marine environment faces a long list of challenges, including pollution of all kinds: plastics and other forms of trash, as well as abandoned fishing gear and the runoff of pesticides and other chemicals used in agriculture, much of which is unregulated. Drastic changes to island coastlines to accommodate tourism developments, including hotels, marinas and cruise ship ports, have resulted in the removal of vital mangroves and other coastal habitats and impacted coral reefs and seagrass beds. Prospecting and drilling for oil is another growing concern for some Caribbean territories.

Another issue, not to be discounted, is the poaching and hunting of important marine and coastal species, including endangered sea turtles and marine mammals. The United Nations Caribbean Environment Programme (UN/CEP), headquartered in Kingston, Jamaica, will be focusing on this for one month beginning on World Oceans Day in order to raise awareness of the region's mammals, including whales, sharks, and the endangered West Indian manatee:

The UN agency is currently wrapping up its focus on yet another challenge, sargassum seaweed, which has afflicted some of the Caribbean's loveliest beaches—and its tourism trade—in recent years.

As the region marks World Oceans Day, however, two pressing and seemingly intractable issues stand out: the impacts of the climate crisis, and overfishing, including illegal and unregulated fishing by both local and overseas fishers. These concerns, among others, will be the focus of discussions throughout the day on June 8, as they are certainly not unique to the region.

After a series of devastating hurricanes in recent years—most recently, 2019's deadly Hurricane Dorian—the Caribbean has established itself as being exceedingly vulnerable to climate change. Its creeping impact on the marine environment is showing itself in various ways, including the extreme degradation of Caribbean coral reefs, which support over 60 species of corals and 1,500 species of fish, and on which much of the region's tourism industry through leisure activities. The drastic decline, due to higher sea surface temperatures and ocean acidification, makes the corals more fragile. Both coral reefs and mangroves, which act as protective barriers and breeding grounds for ocean life, have been damaged by an increased number of high-intensity storms. According to a 2020 National Environment and Planning Agency of Jamaica report, none of the island's coral reefs are in good shape, with 36 percent rated as being in critical condition.

Etoile Pinder, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Project Coordinator of the Hurricane Recovery Project in the Bahamas, in Green Turtle Cay, Abaco, with members of Friends of the Environment and IDEA Relief as they clear marine debris left by Hurricane Dorian. Photo courtesy the UNDP Bahamas Hurricane Recovery Project office, used with permission.

Local non-governmental organisations are seeking to redress the balance. In Jamaica, several community-based groups are painstakingly restoring corals using various “gardening” methods, and replanting their cultivated young corals on dead reefs. In Grenada, a “biorock” material is also being used to restore corals. The results of such innovative endeavours remain to be seen.

Meanwhile, Sustainable Grenadines (SusGren), a trans-boundary non-governmental organisation (NGO) focusing on the coastal and marine environment and sustainable livelihoods for the people in the Grenadines (located between Grenada and St. Vincent and the Grenadines), has embarked on a sea moss cultivation project. One of its major undertakings was the restoration of Ashton Lagoon, a failed marina project that is now a successful eco-tourism coastal attraction.

The matters stressing out the Caribbean Sea are all connected. The Caribbean is one of the world's most over-fished regions. Over-exploitation of the sea's resources, in particular, the global issue of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, both within the region and from overseas fishing interests, in turn affects Caribbean coral reefs and, by extension, the lives and livelihoods of local fishing communities.

On World Oceans Day, at a webinar hosted by the Earth Journalism Network, regional experts will discuss the issue of fisheries subsidies, and whether ongoing treaty talks at the World Trade Organization (WTO) will make a difference.

Quite apart from the efforts of NGOs, which are often supported by grant funding from multilateral organisations, it is now up to regional governments to work closely with its citizenry to protect the sea and all the creatures that live in it. Some are doing better than others: Belize, for example, has expanded its Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) to protect its vibrant coral reefs.

Ratification and accession to key international agreements such as the SPAW Protocol, which countries like Jamaica have not ratified, and the Cartagena Convention on Biodiversity would also help provide training, technical assistance, grant funding and encourage the establishment of more MPAs.

Political will and action, informed and guided by local scientists such as climate change scholar Professor Michael Taylor and marine biologist Professor Mona Webber at the University of the West Indies, would help propel Caribbean leaders towards a workable and urgently needed plan to protect the sea. On a daily basis, strict enforcement of environmental regulations and greater vigilance against illegal fishing in and around coastal waters needs to be stepped up.

The beautiful, turquoise waters of the Caribbean, which have given so much of their bounty to its people and their economies, deserve nothing less.

'No evidence whatsoever': Left refutes right-wing candidate's election fraud claims -- in Peru

Common Dreams
June 08, 2021

Keiko Fujimori (AFP)

Progressives pushed back forcefully on Tuesday against right-wing Peruvian presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori's allegations of fraud in Sunday's election, saying there has been no evidence so support such claims.

"There is a clear intention to boycott the popular will," Fujimori asserted at a press conference Monday at which she pointed without evidence to "irregularities" and "signs of fraud."

"Through a tragic pandemic, a dizzying media campaign, and a severe economic crisis, the Peruvian people have mobilized to exercise their right to popular sovereignty. Our obligation now is to defend it." —Progressive International

The allegations of fraud from Keiko Fujimori, a former dictator's daughter, came as voting results showed leftist rival Pedro Castillo with a narrow lead.

A tally of about 95% of the votes showed Castillo with 50.3% of the vote compared to Fujimori's 49.7%.

Fujimori, whom Bloomberg described as a "market favorite," is the daughter of the nation's former dictator, ex-President Alberto Fujimori, currently serving a 25-year sentence in prison for his role in civilian massacres and graft. Keiko Fujimori has said she would pardon her father if elected.

According to The Associated Press:

Voters across Peru, where voting is mandatory, headed to the polls throughout Sunday under a set schedule meant to minimize long lines. No disturbances were reported at voting sites, which even opened in San Miguel del Ene, a remote village in a cocaine-producing area where two weeks ago a massacre ended with 16 people dead.
Pre-election polls indicated the candidates were virtually tied heading into the runoff. In the first round of voting, featuring 18 candidates, neither received more than 20% support and both were strongly opposed by sectors of Peruvian society.

Regional election observers did not report any voting irregularities, as the Guardian noted.

In a statement Tuesday, the Progressive International strongly rejected Fujimori's fraud accusations and urged "patience and vigilance as the final results are counted—especially in the face of fresh attempts to undermine the legitimacy of the democratic process."

"The delegation of the Progressive International has seen no evidence of systemic fraud in the course of the 2021 Peruvian presidential elections. Neither statistical models analyzing results in real time nor our time physical monitoring of this process have revealed any evidence of fraud," the group said.

The impacts of false accusations of election fraud are clear and dangerous, the Progressive International added. The group pointed to examples including U.S. President Donald Trump catalyzing the "revanchist attack on the U.S. Capitol in order to 'stop the steal'" and the 2019 U.S.-backed coup in Bolivia that ousted the democratically elected government of Evo Morales following unsubstantiated allegations of election fraud.

"Through a tragic pandemic, a dizzying media campaign, and a severe economic crisis, the Peruvian people have mobilized to exercise their right to popular sovereignty. Our obligation now is to defend it," the Progressive International said.

David Adler, General Coordinator of the Progressive International, added in a tweet Tuesday that as "Castillo's lead has grown, this grim prediction has come to pass: Keiko Fujimori is now making accusations of 'systematic fraud'—and bringing large parts of the mainstream press with her."

"Our team is clear," Adler wrote. "There is no evidence *whatsoever* to support Keiko's claim."

And, should Castillo emerge victorious, it would be historic, write CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin and Latin American policy expert Leonardo Flores.

His win would "be remarkable not only because he is a leftist teacher who is the son of illiterate peasants and his campaign was grossly outspent by Fujimori, but there was a relentless propaganda attack against him that touched on historical fears of Peru's middle class and elites," Benjamin and Flores wrote.

A Castillo victory would also "represent a huge blow to U.S. interests in the region and an important step towards reactivating Latin American integration. He has promised to withdraw Peru from the Lima Group, an ad hoc committee of countries dedicated to regime change in Venezuela," the pair wrote.

Marjorie Taylor Greene slams virus research:

'I don't believe in evolution, I believe in God'

David Edwards

June 08, 2021

Real America's Voice/screen grab

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) on Tuesday disputed the science behind virus research because she does not believe in evolution.

Greene made the remarks while speaking to Steve Bannon on Real America's Voice, where she argued that Dr. Anthony Fauci should be criminally charged over the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Georgia Republican said that she opposed so-called "gain of function" research on viruses.

"That's a bioweapon," she charged. "So we need to be very clear about what was the intent of COVID-19 and these viruses that they experiment with like some sort of Dr. Frankenstein experiment."

"I don't buy it because I don't believe in evolution," the congresswoman said. "I don't believe in that type of so-called science. I don't believe in evolution. I believe in God."

Greene added: "These viruses were not making people sick until they created them and made them into weaponized viruses to be able to attach to our cells and make us sick. This has caused so many people to die all over the world."

Watch the video below from Real America's Voice.

This is why Donald Trump makes no attempt to hide his insurrectionist plots

Amanda Marcotte, Salon

June 08, 2021

Donald Trump speaks at a rally. Image via screengrab.

On Tuesday morning, a new Senate report revealed even more of what is increasingly obvious: The January 6 Capitol insurrection was both surprisingly predictable and yet widely ignored by the people who had the power to stop it.

This article was originally published at Salon

"The U.S. Capitol Police had specific intelligence that supporters of President Donald Trump planned to mount an armed invasion of the Capitol at least two weeks before the Jan. 6 riot," the Washington Post reports, "but a series of omissions and miscommunications kept that information from reaching front-line officers targeted by the violence."

The report itself is incredibly bureaucratic and, being bipartisan, overly delicate with the fragile feelings of Republicans who continue to support Trump despite his overt incitement of the insurrection. But the most important and remarkable aspect of the report is how it lays out that Capitol intelligence officials downplayed the threat of violence, even though, to quote the report author Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., "The attack was, quite frankly, planned in plain sight."

Intelligence officers had a huge amount of information about a planned attack because the insurrectionists were openly talking about it online and in great detail. But despite this, intelligence officials deemed the likelihood of an attack as "remote" and "improbable," choosing instead to ignore right-wing militia types openly sharing maps and strategies for storming the building. There are a lot of theories as to why Capitol intelligence simply didn't take the insurrectionists seriously, but it really may be as simple as this: Hiding in plain sight works — at least when it comes to white conservatives with terroristic inclinations.

Most of us, including intelligence officials, reasonably expect that people engaging in a criminal conspiracy prefer to do so in secret. (Cue the scene from "The Wire" of Stringer Bell dressing down an underling for "taking notes on a criminal f--king conspiracy!") But it appears that scheming right in the open was more effective for the Capitol insurrectionists precisely because it cut across the "common sense" expectation. All the guns and maps talk was easy for intelligence officials to write off as mere fantasy play-acting, instead of a serious plan.

And really, is it any surprise that the Capitol insurrectionists pulled off the "hiding in plain sight" strategy? They were only following the lead of the chief instigator of the insurrection, Trump himself. For years, Trump successfully demonstrated that the best way to get away with crimes is to commit them loudly. From the "grab 'em by the pussy" tape to the flagrant public bribe-taking to giving Russian conspiracists instructions on camera to witness tampering on Twitter, Trump realized that being bold about crimes and corruption keeps people from taking it seriously.

The reason it worked is simple: Trump didn't bother to hide his corruption. That lulled people into believing it couldn't really be that bad. It was easy for Trump apologists to write it off as "jokes" or otherwise no big deal, because if it was serious, then he would take pains to hide it, right? It was only when Trump did take measures to hide his behavior — in the attempt to blackmail the Ukrainian president into falsifying evidence for a smear of Joe Biden — that his malfeasance finally got the attention it deserved. And it was all because that particular scandal fit our pre-existing notion that if it's really a crime, the criminals try to hide what they're doing.

Trump used this "hiding in plain sight" strategy to organize and incite the January 6 insurrection.

In the days after the Capitol was stormed, the Just Security blog put together a comprehensive timeline of Trump's year of incitement and what was remarkable is how open Trump was about what he was doing. He repeatedly heaped praise on right-wing militias that used threats of violence against public officials and Biden campaign staff. He started in early on the Big Lie, insisting for months ahead of the election that the only way he could lose is if it were stolen. He even used a presidential debate stage to issue instructions to the Proud Boys, telling them to be on "stand by" before he gave them the time and place for the storming in an infamous tweet reading, "Big protest in DC on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!"

The extremely public nature of Trump's incitement, however, perversely gave congressional Republicans the cover they needed to claim he didn't do the thing he obviously did. Repeatedly, Republicans insisted that Trump was merely speaking metaphorically and not literally with all his "fight" and "take back" language. That Trump didn't hide or show shame aided this nonsense excuse, because it really is just that hard to believe that someone would be so bold and public about a criminal conspiracy. And because Trump left the detailed work of the insurrection to the people who organized it online — basically, crowdsourcing an insurrection — it allows Republicans to pretend that he wasn't the ringleader.

Many Stringer Bell jokes were made about how Trump and his cronies do their crimes right out in the public view and how supposedly foolish this was. But really, was it?

Most of Trump's cronies are walking around free. Trump openly and flagrantly attempted a coup, and he's not only not in jail for it, but he's still the de facto head of the Republican Party. Whenever anyone points out that he's a literal seditionist, Republicans just shrug and pretend all of that violence and insurrection talk was just jokes and fantasies. Because of the politics of tip-toeing around Republican feelings, the Senate report focuses on "better planning, training and intelligence gathering," according to the Washington Post, and "its contents steer clear of offering any assessment or conclusion about Trump's responsibility for the riot." That is unfortunate because while intelligence failures were a problem, the real reason the Capitol riot happened is because Trump was empowered by the GOP and right-wing media to spread his lies and incite violence without consequence. And that problem hasn't been addressed in any meaningful way at all. If anything, it's just gotten worse. Trump has been using the media to disseminate yet another date for his followers to take action — sometime in August — just as he targeted January 6. And he used a platform offered to him by the Republican party, a big speech at a North Carolina event, to continue stoking insurrections by claiming that Joe Biden's electoral win was the "crime of the century."

Putting more cops around the Capitol Building doesn't address this larger issue. If there is more violence, it's unlikely to target the Capitol, in no small part because Trump's followers understand that it's likely to be more secure than it was January 6.

No, the real issue here is the "hiding in plain sight" problem.

Trump and his cronies have figured out how to use media and social media as a tool to crowdsource ideas or a fascistic takeover of the U.S. government. They throw out conspiracy theories and let the MAGAheads figure out the details for themselves about how to make it happen. It's inefficient, sure. Many of the schemes that the red hats tease out online fail to manifest in person. Still, it allows Trump to keep his hands relatively clean because he gets to pretend he's just spitballing instead of giving instructions. It's on other people to work out the details, from the Republicans passing state laws to make it easier to steal elections to the red hats who have now been given a new date to fixate on as a possible next target. As long as people's heads remain in the sand about what Trump is doing, the threat of more violence remains active.

Russia threatens to leave International Space Station program over US sanctions: reports


By Elizabeth Howell about 7 hours ago

The International Space Station. (Image credit: NASA)

Russia's space chief is threatening to leave the International Space Station (ISS) program in 2025 unless the United States lifts sanctions against the Russian space sector.

"If the sanctions … remain and are not lifted in the near future, the issue of Russia's withdrawal from the ISS will be the responsibility of the American partners," Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Rogozin said during a Russian parliament hearing on Monday (June 7), according to NBC News.

"Either we work together, in which case the sanctions are lifted immediately, or we will not work together and we will deploy our own station," Rogozin added. Russia is about to launch a new docking module to the ISS this summer that could serve as the hub of an independent complex.

Related: The International Space Station: Inside and out (infographic)

Rogozin also claimed that Russia cannot launch some satellites because the U.S. sanctions forbid his country from importing some microchips required for the Russian program, Reuters reported. (There is also a global shortage of microchips associated with manufacturing shutdowns amid the coronavirus pandemic.)

"We have more than enough rockets but nothing to launch them with," Rogozin said, according to Reuters. "We have spacecraft that are nearly assembled, but they lack one specific microchip set that we have no way of purchasing because of the sanctions."

In 2014, Rogozin famously remarked that NASA should use trampolines instead of Russian Soyuz spacecraft to get astronauts to the ISS. The comments came after the United States and other Western countries imposed sanctions on Russian officials — including Rogozin himself — related to Russian military actions in Crimea. (After NASA's space shuttle fleet was grounded in 2011, the Soyuz was the only orbital astronaut taxi available. That situation changed last year, however, when SpaceX began flying crews to and from the ISS.)

Other recent sanctions came in the wake of what U.S. officials described as Russian-led cyberattacks and election interference — a claim Russia has denied, Reuters noted. In December, the administration of President Donald Trump alleged that Russian space entities TsNIIMash (the Central Research Institute of Machine Building) and the Rocket and Space Center Progress have ties to the nation's military, NBC reported. Such a designation means that U.S. companies need to acquire licenses before selling to these organizations.

These entities were among dozens that came under scrutiny from the U.S. Department of Commerce during Trump's tenure, in both Russia and China. Fresh tensions came after new U.S. President Joe Biden called his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin a "killer" earlier this year, according to Reuters, while imposing more sanctions on Russia.

Rogozin had an "introductory phone call" with new NASA Administrator Bill Nelson on Friday (June 4), NASA said that same day in a statement, framing the conversation as a "productive discussion about continued cooperation between NASA and Roscosmos." The statement, quoting Nelson, also said that NASA is "committed to continuing that very effective ISS partnership."

Yet a statement by Roscosmos on Friday said that the sanctions and a lack of official information about the future of the ISS are "substantially hindering the cooperation" between Russia and the U.S. in the space realm, which extends back to 1975's Apollo-Soyuz Test Project mission. The current ISS agreement is set to end in 2024, although numerous partners are negotiating an extension until at least 2028.

Russia indicated that it needs more assurances to move forward after 2024. "This is about the sanctions introduced by the American administration against the enterprises of the Russian space industry, as well as the absence of any official information in Roscosmos from the U.S. partners on the plans to further control and operate the ISS," Roscosmos said in Friday's statement.

Related: Building the International Space Station (photos)

Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin speaks virtually at the 71st International Astronautical Congress on Oct. 12, 2020. (Image credit: International Astronautical Federation/YouTube )

Both NASA and Roscosmos said they do plan to continue discussions, including face-to-face. Nelson is expected to come to Russia soon, and negotiations will be ongoing with the Europeans until "end of June 2021," Roscosmos said.

One opportunity for discussion is the Global Space Exploration Conference, which will be held in St. Petersburg from June 14 to June 18. That meeting is co-hosted by Roscosmos and the International Astronautical Federation.

The Americans and the Russians have been the major partners in the ISS program since the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, when the space station agreement was modified to bring in Russian participation — in part due to international concerns about where Russian space engineers would go amid the collapse of the Soviet Union. Getting ready for ISS long-duration missions was also one of the reasons NASA offered to ferry Americans to the Soviet-Russian Mir space station in the 1990s.

At the time that Russia was invited to join the ISS project, Europe, Japan and Canada had been working on another NASA-led program called Space Station Freedom. Freedom never got off the ground due to complex technical, funding and policy problems during its development.

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.