Organizers of Jan. 6 Rally Are Promoting Doctors Who Push Fake COVID Cures

Crowds are gathered at the Madison Square Park and take streets during "Freedom Rally" to protest vaccination mandate against COVID-19 in New York City, on September 4, 2021.

TAYFUN COSKUN / ANADOLU AGENCY VIA GETTY IMAGES

BY Alex Kotch, 

The Center for Media and Democracy

PUBLISHED September 11, 2021

When the political arm of the far-right Council for National Policy met in May 2020, officials discussed doing damage control for then-President Donald Trump, whose reckless administration caused unnecessary deaths as Covid-19 swept the nation and devastated the economy.

As the Center for Media and Democracy first exposed, members of the sister group CNP Action shared plans to promote a group of pro-Trump doctors who would urge economies to reopen before meeting safety benchmarks proposed by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

The primary doctor to emerge from these plans was Simone Gold, an emergency medical specialist who leads the doctor group, America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLD), which has consistently spread misinformation about Covid, opposed vaccinations and mask use, and hawked unapproved Covid-19 drugs. Gold was arrested and charged with violent entry and disorderly conduct after she entered the U.S. Capitol during the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection.
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In May, Gold’s group asked a federal court in Alabama to block the emergency use authorization for the Covid vaccine in 12-to 15-year-olds, arguing that the vaccines are potentially more harmful than Covid-19, which has killed over 4.5 million people worldwide. Top GOP attorney Jim Bopp is AFLD’s director of litigation.

Another member, pediatrician and minister Stella Immanuel, has made outrageous statements, claiming that DNA from space aliens is used in medicine and that demons cause ailments such as fibroid tumors and cysts.

The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) obtained AFLD’s federal tax-exemption application and other related documents, which reveal that the Tea Party Patriots Foundation was the fiscal sponsor of the group behind AFLD, meaning that it accepts tax-deductible donations on behalf of the doctors’ group and helps it with accounting. A fiscal sponsor allows an organization that has not received its 501(c)(3) charitable tax status to accept tax-deductible donations.

According to the documents, the Arizona-based nonprofit behind AFLD, formerly known as the Free Speech Foundation and now called the Common Sense Foundation, anticipated a 2020 revenue of $400,000. Starting in 2021, the group forecast a budget of over $900,000, including $231,000 in compensation for officers and $50,000 for lobbying.

The application includes information about “membership.”

In exchange for a requested donation of $10, the Foundation will offer the public the opportunity to become “members” of the Foundation. Members receive early access to the Foundation’s white papers, pamphlets and similar materials informing them of the Foundation’s activities before such materials are released to the general public.

Aside from Gold, the foundation’s board consists of Trump fan Amy Orkin Landau and Claudia Kreitenberg, who “manages client relationships” for InDefend, a company run by Gold that makes software that helps medical professionals respond to audits.

In May, the nonprofit received its charitable tax status from the IRS. It is unclear if the Tea Party Patriots Foundation is still a donation conduit for the Common Sense Foundation.

The Tea Party Patriots is an extremist group founded in 2009 that helped organize the rally and march to the Capitol just before the violent insurrection. The organization has three arms: the 501(c)(3) foundation, the “social welfare” nonprofit Tea Party Patriots Action, and the Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund, a super PAC. In the 2020 election cycle, the super PAC spent over $1 million backing Trump.

The biggest donor to the super PAC that cycle by far was Richard Uihlein, the billionaire owner of shipping supply company Uline and a Tea Party financier since 2016. He and his wife, Liz, are GOP megadonors, and they were among the biggest contributors to groups that helped elect the members of Congress who voted to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. The biggest donor to the super PAC this year is Gore-Tex heir David Gore, who gave $150,000 and previously co-founded the libertarian Cascade Policy Institute, a member of the State Policy Network, a web of right-wing tax-exempt organizations.

Other known donors to the Tea Party Patriots Foundation include salsa billionaire Christopher Goldsbury, right-wing dark money vehicles DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund, the FreedomWorks Foundation, Helen Diller Family Foundation, and donor-advised funds including the Jewish Community Federation.

The Tea Party Patriots Foundation did not return CMD’s request for comment on AFLD’s money-making scheme.

Grifting Off of Fake COVID Cures

In late July 2020, the Tea Party Patriots hosted and funded an event with members of AFLD in front of the Capitol, where the doctors criticized business and school closings, social distancing, and mask wearing and claimed that malaria drug hydroxychloroquine could prevent and cure Covid-19. With a Trump retweet, a video of the event went viral, and right-wing media ran with it. The Food and Drug Administration has cautioned against using hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid-19.

Many members of AFLD have more recently added a deworming drug, ivermectin, into their arsenal. These doctors, right-wing politicians, and numerous media pundits have promoted the drug, which requires a prescription for use in humans, as a Covid-19 treatment. Another version meant for cows and horses is available at animal supply stores.

Unable to access the human version of ivermectin, desperate anti-vaxxers have snapped up supplies of the livestock version, despite warnings by its manufacturer and numerous U.S. and international government agencies against humans using the drug. Feed stores in numerous states have seen huge spikes in ivermectin sales, and ivermectin-related poison control calls in these states have dramatically increased.

One person who self-administered the drug was hospitalized in Mississippi. Others who acted on this misinformation may be experiencing gastrointestinal issues, bad medication interactions, and even neurological symptoms, but AFLD is doing pretty well.

As Time and NBC News reported, AFLD set up a website advertising medical consultations for $90. The site asks patients which treatment they prefer: “Ivermectin,” “Hydroxychloroquine” or “Not sure.”

Under the federal COVID-19 Consumer Protection Act from earlier this year, it is illegal to advertise that a product can prevent, treat, or cure COVID-19 “unless you possess competent and reliable scientific evidence substantiating that the claims are true.” The FDA says that no such study exists for ivermectin.

While the site claims that the $90 payment is “pending” until the consultation is complete, customers identified by Time said they’d been charged for consultations that didn’t happen. Hundreds more said that after paying the fee, AFLD didn’t deliver the desired prescription, and others said that the digital pharmacies that AFLD connected them to quoted very high prices of up to $700 for ivermectin, which is not a costly drug.

“They’re the 21st century, digital version of snake-oil salesmen,” Irwin Redlener, a physician who directs the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, told Time. “And in the case of ivermectin, it’s extremely dangerous.”
More Connections to the Far-Right Political Movement

Gold is on the “National Leadership Council” of the Save Our Country coalition, a collection of far-right individuals associated with the Council for National Policy, the Heritage Foundation, FreedomWorks, and the Tea Party Patriots, among other groups. Save Our Country was active last year when governors shut down their states’ economies because of Covid-19.

Additional Save Our Country council members and “steering committee” members include activist Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, American Legislative Exchange Council CEO Lisa Nelson, American Conservative Union Chair Matt Schlapp, and Frank Gaffney, founder of the anti-Muslim hate group the Center for Security Policy, as well as doctors Clare Gray and William Grace.

The Council for National Policy, which dreamed up America’s Frontline Doctors, is a coalition that author Anne Nelson describes as bringing together “the manpower and media of the Christian right with the finances of Western plutocrats and the strategy of right-wing Republican political operatives.”

At an August 2020 Council for National Policy meeting, Gold joined Tea Party Patriots Action’s Honorary Chairman Jenny Beth Martin, Teryn Clarke, M.D., Dan Erickson, D.O., and James Todaro, M.D. for a panel titled, “Protecting the Doctor-Patient Relationship During COVID.”

Gold has also spewed misinformation alongside Beth Martin at Freedom Rallies, on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show, at a Turning Point USA conference, and on the “ReAwaken America Tour.” Gold and AFLD have more recently been speaking at anti-vaccine events in Los Angeles and other cities.
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Alex Kotch  is an investigative reporter with the Center for Media and Democracy. A Ph.D. and campaign finance expert, he helped launch the money-in-politics website Sludge. He and his former colleagues at International Business Times won a “Best in Business” award from the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing for their coverage of the 2017 Republican tax legislation. Alex’s work has been published by more than two dozen media outlets including Truthout, The American Prospect, The Nation and Vice. Read more about Alex at his personal website.

The Far Right Calls Biden a “Tyrant” Over Vaccine Rules Most Americans Back

Steve Lucy, the parent of three children, during an anti-mask rally outside the Orange County Department of Education in Costa Mesa, California, on Monday, May 17, 2021.

JEFF GRITCHEN / MEDIANEWS GROUP / ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER VIA GETTY IMAGES

BY Chris Walker, Truthout

PUBLISHED September 10, 2021

President Joe Biden announced on Thursday a number of new strategies to address the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, including vaccine requirements for companies with more than 100 employees, resulting in right-wing media and conservative lawmakers making outlandish and hyperbolic statements in response.

Biden’s “COVID-19 Action Plan” includes the proposal of a new rule for businesses that employ more than 100 workers, which would be regulated through the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Those workers would have to make a decision: either get fully vaccinated for protection against COVID-19, or submit to weekly testing.

In addition to this new rule (which will affect around 80 million workers), the Biden White House will also require 17 million health care workers across the U.S. to get vaccinated if their employer receives funds from Medicare or Medicaid. Federal workers within the executive branch of government will also have to be vaccinated, without an opt-out testing option.

“If we can come together as a country and use those tools, if we raise our vaccination rate, protect ourselves and others with masking, expanded testing, and identify people who are infected, we can and we will turn the tide on COVID-19,” Biden said in a Thursday evening speech outlining his plan.

A number of conservatives expressed anger at the new rules on workplace vaccinations, with many of them callings for workers and companies to defy them. Some of those voices used chilling language that implied that more direct (and possibly violent) action against the government might be justified, a worrisome prospect given that a far right protest is planned to happen at the nation’s Capitol later this month.

Fox News, for example, reacted to Biden’s announcement by using alarming terminology on live television, showcasing banners and chyrons that described Biden as “an authoritarian” leader. One such banner also said that “Biden declare[d] war on millions of Americans.”

One commentator on the network called him a “tyrant,” while another said he was a “rotting bag of oatmeal.”

Right-wing websites also took part in the Biden-bashing. Breitbart described him as a “full totalitarian,” while Gateway Pundit called the new rules “tyrannical.” The Federalist called the moves “fascist.”

Notably, some of these organizations actually have vaccine rules in place that mirror what the Biden administration is hoping to implement. Fox News, for example, required its employees to submit their vaccine information earlier this summer, and regularly tests its staff for coronavirus regardless of vaccine status.

Republican politicians also used hyperbole in attacking Biden’s plans. Many of these attacks neglected to mention that employers and workers at large companies would have the option to opt out of vaccines with regular testing.

“Many of us were warning people that the Biden Administration was going to consider COVID mandates, and here we are,” Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-South Carolina) tweeted.

“This isn’t about science. It’s about a desperate politician abusing power to appease his radical base,” opined Rep. Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana).

While their criticisms of Biden are forceful, both lawmakers’ home states are facing incredible difficulties with the virus. Louisiana’s vaccination rate, at 43 percent, is the seventh-worst in the nation, and its average daily death toll presently ranks it as third-worst. In South Carolina, things are not much better: Its vaccination rate is just 44 percent, and its COVID death toll is the fourth-worst in the country.

Members of the far right House Freedom Caucus put out a statement decrying the vaccine rules as “invasive and unAmerican,” and an “attempt by the Biden Regime to expand its control over Americans’ daily lives.” And RNC chair Ronna McDaniel vowed that the party itself would sue the White House over any vaccine mandates, again using language that neglected to point out that the new rules offered an opt-out choice for workers that didn’t want to get vaccinated.

In spite of these exaggerated and omission-prone attacks against Biden’s plan, most Americans appear to be open to the proposed rules. Polling from Gallup last month found support for requiring proof of vaccination in a number of realms within American life, including going to an office or worksite.

Sixty-one percent of Americans in that poll said vaccine proof should be required for air travel, and 58 percent said it should be required for large-crowd events. Fifty-six percent of Americans in the Gallup survey also said workers should be vaccinated before they return to their in-person jobs.

Chris Walker is a news writer at Truthout, and is based out of Madison, Wisconsin. Focusing on both national and local topics since the early 2000s, he has produced thousands of articles analyzing the issues of the day and their impact on the American people.

10,000 Workers at John Deere Are Days Away From a Strike Vote

John Deere factory tour and testing in Augusta, Georgia, as seen on January 27, 2021.

CHARLES & HUDSON / FLICKR

BY Jonah Furman, Labor Notes

PUBLISHED September 9, 2021

Ten thousand production and warehouse workers for the farm equipment manufacturer John Deere will take a strike authorization vote September 12 across nine Auto Workers (UAW) locals in Iowa, Illinois, and Kansas.

Strike authorizations at bargaining time are not unusual for John Deere workers, and they haven’t struck in 35 years, but there are reasons to watch this round of negotiations closely.

The last contract in 2015 passed very narrowly, by fewer than 200 votes out of 10,000 eligible voters, who traded rising health care costs for a small pay bump.

The largest Deere local, Waterloo Local 838, rejected that contract 2 to 1; Ottumwa Local 74 also turned it down. Hundreds of laid-off workers were allowed to vote on it, though — and with a hefty $3,500 ratification bonus, many of them, unsure they’d have a job to return to either way, took the deal.

This time around, UAW leaders plan to present Deere’s first offer along with the strike authorization ballot — a step forward from 2015, when workers voting on a strike authorization got no details about what was being offered.

The pandemic makes it an interesting time to bargain a new contract for John Deere. In many ways workers are in a strong position.

For one thing, the company is struggling to find enough workers to hire. Josh Saunders, committeeman for Local 865 at the Harvester Works in East Moline, Illinois, attributes that to low starting wages and frequent layoffs with weak recall rights. “Before, this was the job to have in the Quad Cities,” he said. “Now they have trouble finding people.”
“Deere Cannot Face a Long Strike”

The seasonal timing also gives UAW the edge, according to Chris Laursen of Local 74 in Ottumwa, Iowa. “Negotiations wrap up in September, and farmers buy farm equipment after harvest,” he said. “They get paid, and that’s when they’re looking to buy more balers, harvesters, things like that. Deere cannot face a long strike.”

Parts supply shortages induced by Covid have created problems at the Harvester Works. Production workers get paid based on a complicated piece rate formula called the “Continuous Improvement Pay Plan” (CIPP, pronounced “kip”). Essentially, management sets a rate for production and workers get paid bonuses according to whether or not their group hits that rate.

According to the contract, the rates are set aside during “planned disruptions” such as when a new product is being introduced or the plant undergoes retooling. But despite the current parts shortages, workers are getting penalized for not hitting their rates — an impossible task. The CIPP issues are so bad at Harvester that Saunders says, “This year, we’re going to write more grievances than since the ’80s.”

None of these supply issues have hurt Deere’s bottom line much, though. The company just reported $1.6 billion in profits for the latest quarter — compared to half that for the same quarter in 2020.

So far 2021 is the company’s most profitable year yet, beating a record set in 2013. Deere has used those profits to hike dividends by 17 percent. Bill Gates owns nearly a billion dollars in Deere shares. There’s money to spend.

The minimum starting wage at John Deere is $15.14 an hour.

“Everybody’s Sick of Deere”

Deere workers have operated under a two-tier retirement benefit since 1997, earlier than most other UAW units. Pre-1997 hires earn higher pensions and have stronger post-retirement health care coverage, while post-’97 hires have seen out-of-pocket health care costs rise as their plan covers less.

Health care looms large in the current negotiations. Deere remains one of the few agricultural implements companies where workers pay no premiums; other UAW shops like Caterpillar have gone to an 80/20 health care premiums scheme. (Defending premium-free health care was the central issue in the recent Steelworkers strike at Allegheny Technologies; the strikers succeeded.)

Laursen thinks anger at how the 2015 ratification was handled — workers got only a couple hours to review the union’s summary of contract “highlights” before voting — and members’ frustration over the UAW corruption scandals make a strike more likely.

“The membership is really divided politically,” he said. “It depends on what flavor of corporate media you’re watching. I will tell you, the one commonality that we all share is everybody’s sick of Deere and sick of the [UAW] International and ready to stick it to them.”

This story was originally published at Labor Notes.

#ENDDRONEWARFARE
Investigations Find No Proof of Bombs in Car Targeted by US Drone in Afghanistan

Relatives and neighbors of the Ahmadi family gathered around the incinerated husk of a vehicle targeted and hit earlier Sunday afternoon by a U.S. drone strike, in Kabul, Afghanistan, on August 30, 2021

MARCUS YAM / LOS ANGELES TIMES

BY Kenny Stancil, 

Common Dreams

PUBLISHED September 12, 2021

The last known missile launched by the U.S. during its 20-year war in Afghanistan — the August 29 drone attack in a Kabul neighborhood that killed 10 civilians — was described by Gen. Mark Milley as a “righteous strike” that targeted a parked vehicle suspected of holding explosives, along with the driver and another man suspected of having militant ties.

A pair of investigations published Friday, however, revealed that — contrary to the Pentagon’s claims — there were no bombs in the car, the men accused of “suspicious” behavior were engaged in peaceful activities related to the driver’s job, and there were eight additional defenseless victims in the vicinity of the sedan destroyed by a missile fired after several hours of surveillance.

The New York Times obtained exclusive security camera footage and interviewed more than a dozen of the driver’s co-workers and family members. The newspaper reported:

Military officials said they did not know the identity of the car’s driver when the drone fired, but deemed him suspicious because of how they interpreted his activities that day, saying that he possibly visited an ISIS safe house and, at one point, loaded what they thought could be explosives into the car.

Times reporting has identified the driver as Zemari Ahmadi, a longtime worker for a U.S. aid group. The evidence suggests that his travels that day actually involved transporting colleagues to and from work. And an analysis of video feeds showed that what the military may have seen was Mr. Ahmadi and a colleague loading canisters of water into his trunk to bring home to his family.

Ahmadi, who started working for California-based Nutrition and Education International (NEI) in 2006, was one of thousands of Afghans who had applied for U.S. resettlement. On the day he and nine members of his family were killed by the U.S. military, the 43-year-old used his 1996 Toyota Corrola to run work errands, witnesses said.

“The people who rode with Mr. Ahmadi that day said that what the military interpreted as a series of suspicious moves was simply a normal day at work,” the Times noted. The newspaper continued:

After stopping to pick up breakfast, Mr. Ahmadi and his two passengers arrived at NEI’s office, where security camera footage obtained by the Times recorded their arrival at 9:35 a.m. Later that morning Mr. Ahmadi drove some co-workers to a Taliban-occupied police station downtown, where they said they requested permission to distribute food to refugees in a nearby park. Mr. Ahmadi and his three passengers returned to the office around 2 p.m.

As seen on camera footage, Mr. Ahmadi came out a half-hour later with a hose that was streaming water. With the help of a guard, he filled several empty plastic containers. According to his co-workers, water deliveries had stopped in his neighborhood after the collapse of the government and Mr. Ahmadi had been bringing home water from the office.

A couple of hours later, when “Ahmadi pulled into the courtyard of his home — which officials said was different than the alleged ISIS safe house — the tactical commander made the decision to strike his vehicle, launching a Hellfire missile at around 4:50 p.m.,” the Times reported. “Although the target was now inside a densely populated residential area, the drone operator quickly scanned and saw only a single adult male greeting the vehicle, and therefore assessed with ‘reasonable certainty’ that no women, children or noncombatants would be killed.”

The Washington Post, which also examined the U.S. military’s deadly attack, reported that the missile took about 30 seconds to reach Ahmadi’s vehicle. The newspaper added:

In that time, three children approached the car just before it was destroyed, according to a senior U.S. military official speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing military investigation. The children were killed, the official said, and families of the victims said another seven people also died in the strike, including the driver and the second man.

According to U.S. Central Command, the strike produced “significant secondary explosions from the vehicle,” which “indicated the presence of a substantial amount of explosive material.” “We are confident we successfully hit the target,” said a military spokesperson, who claimed the attack had eliminated “an imminent ISIS-K threat to Hamad Karzai International Airport.”

The Post “provided imagery of the damage caused by the strike and U.S. military assessments of the operation to experts, including a physicist and former bomb technicians, and spoke to the nonprofit that employed the driver targeted in the operation.”

“Taken together,” the newspaper wrote, “their assessments suggest there is no evidence the car contained explosives; two experts said evidence pointed to an ignition of fuel tank vapors as the potential cause of the second blast.”

The Times‘ analysis also “found no evidence of a second, more powerful explosion.”

In response to the new reports, Jason Paladino, an investigative reporter at the Project on Government Oversight, tweeted that “the Pentagon has some serious explaining to do.”

“Consider,” Paladino added, “how many strikes go unexamined by Western media.”

Last week, Airwars, a military watchdog that monitors and seeks to reduce civilian harm in violent conflict zones, released a report showing that airstrikes conducted by the U.S. have killed between 22,000 and 48,000 civilians during the so-called “War on Terror” pursued in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Launched in the wake of a deadly ISIS-K attack on Kabul’s international airport, the August 29 drone strike came just one day before U.S. troops withdrew from Afghanistan following two decades of devastating war. The U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and ensuing 20 years of military occupation caused more than 240,000 deaths, displaced nearly six million Afghans, and cost U.S. taxpayers over $2.3 trillion and counting, according to the Costs of War project at Brown University.

Despite officials’ claims that the drone assassination program is highly precise and targeted at militants, U.S. strikes have killed hundreds of Afghan civilians in recent years. According to documents leaked by former Air Force intelligence analyst Daniel Hale — who was sentenced to nearly four years in prison in July — nearly 90% of the people killed during one five-month period of a U.S. drone operation in Afghanistan were not the intended targets.

Following the August 29 attack that killed 10 more innocent people, the Council on American-Isamic Relations demanded that the Biden administration immediately impose a “moratorium on drone warfare.”

“It’s Not Just a Loss of Electricity” — Ida Left People Houseless and Jobless

A collapsed home in New Orleans on September 10, 2021.

MIKE LUDWIG / TRUTHOUT
BYMike Ludwig, 

Truthout

PUBLISHED September 10, 2021



NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA—Residents and advocates were already bracing for a wave of hardship and home evictions across an economically vulnerable region when Hurricane Ida slammed into southeastern Louisiana last week, destroying homes and businesses and displacing tens of thousands of people during a COVID surge. The storm left entire communities without power and clean water for over a week and countless workers without a paycheck as rent came due and federal pandemic supports dissipated.

For Louisianans in Hurricane Ida’s path, the last-minute decision to evacuate their homes or shelter in place for the deadly storm was only the beginning. After the storm passed came days of sweltering heat without power, the scramble to put tarps on leaking roofs, the days of waiting for the phone and internet service needed to apply for federal disaster relief that many still have not received. For those who evacuated, the costs of living on the road piled up alongside the anxiety of deciding when to return to disrupted lives and damaged homes.

Facing an intensifying housing crisis, a coalition led by a tenants’ union in New Orleans is now demanding direct cash assistance for struggling renters and a new moratorium on evictions until all of the federal relief for those who fell behind on rent during the pandemic is distributed. As Congress debates the $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill, climate justice groups across the Gulf South are calling for bold investments in green infrastructure, renewable energy and the people living in front line areas to prepare for future storms that are only growing more frequent and powerful with a warming planet.

“Climate disaster planning and recovery must be more equitable and it has to be more sustainable, and climate solutions must come from the front lines,” said Colette Pichon Battle, executive director of the Gulf Coast Center for Law & Policy, during a call with reporters on Thursday.

Activists on the ground fear public concern for the disaster-struck region is already waning, leaving people in a state hit hard by the COVID pandemic vulnerable to widespread hunger and houselessness. National attention quickly moved to the East Coast as Ida dumped heavy rains and caused widespread flooding in New York and New Jersey that left dozens of people dead.

Madeline Peters, an organizer with the New Orleans Renters Rights Assembly, the tenants’ union demanding a new pause of evictions, said southeastern Louisiana was already facing a crisis of housing and economic insecurity before the storm hit.

“Now that we’ve had a pandemic, now that we’ve had a storm, everybody is behind,” Peters said in an interview after the tenants’ union met on Wednesday. “It’s not just a loss of electricity, it’s a loss of work that further destabilizes households and people.”

In the lower-lying and coastal parishes that took the brunt of the storm, the recovery could take years, according to August Creppel, principal chief of the United Houma Nation. At least 11,000 of the Houma tribe’s 19,000 members living across the five parishes hit hardest by the storm have been affected. Creppel, a firefighter who worked day and night over the past two weeks providing disaster relief, said the United Houma Nation has spent decades fighting for federal tribal recognition and the enhanced support and disaster relief that comes with it.“It’s not just a loss of electricity, it’s a loss of work that further destabilizes households and people.”

“Some of our people have half of a house, some have no house to go home to,” Creppel told reporters on Thursday. “This is not a quick fix. What we are dealing with is for years.”

Back in New Orleans, organizers fear a wave of evictions will erupt after an order from the state’s Democratic governor pausing legal proceeding expires on September 24, further displacing people who survived the storm or attempt to return after evacuating.

Many people in the Crescent City and across southeast Louisiana work low-wage jobs in the service, tourism and retail industries and could be without work or a paycheck for weeks. Louisiana cut off pandemic unemployment benefits in late July, and the Supreme Court struck down an already weak federal moratorium on evictions just days before the storm. Less than 14 percent of the $248 million in federal emergency assistance for home renters in Louisiana has been distributed so far, compared to 67 percent in Texas and 100 percent in New York, according to the National Low-Income Housing Coalition.

On Thursday, the New Orleans Renters Rights Assembly released a list of demands calling on the city to keep its eviction court closed until all of the federal rental assistance is distributed, and at least until the end of year. The tenants’ union said an additional $500 million in rental assistance is needed across the state. Last summer, protesters blocked and shut down the city’s eviction court after local and state moratoriums on evictions expired, an action that made national headlines and put pressure on federal policymakers to implement a national eviction moratorium.

Activists say the rental assistance program, which is administered by the state in rural areas and by city officials in New Orleans, is in need of an overhaul. Instead of requiring renters to produce onerous amounts of documentation and making relief payments to landlords, housing justice activists in New Orleans and beyond say people who fell behind on rent during pandemic lockdowns should receive assistance in cash, a model that has already proven successful in other communities. The tenants’ union says the city must also provide a dedicated, multilingual staff to help people with disabilities apply for rental assistance and disaster relief.

“We need the government to focus on aid and follow through in a way that is not just reactionary but sustainable,” Peters said.

Members of Step Up Louisiana, a group that fights for racial and economic justice, give out hot meals and bottled water in New Orleans on September 9, 2021.

MIKE LUDWIG / TRUTHOUT

The tenants’ union is also demanding the “right to return” for all residents displaced by the storm, including renters who live in damaged homes. Even if legal evictions are temporarily halted, organizers fear landlords will neglect badly needed repairs, forcing people to either live in uninhabitable homes or go someplace else. Louisiana has few legal protections for renters, who can receive an eviction notice after withholding rent for any reason, even if that reason is a giant hole in the roof. “Invisible evictions” that were never challenged in court were common in New Orleans and across the country when the federal eviction moratorium was in place.

Echoing multiple climate justice groups, the tenants’ union is also demanding a quick transition to renewable energy for a region that has long been dominated by the fossil fuel industry. At least 350 oil spills were reported in southeast Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico after Ida, according to reports. The days spent without electricity in the hot sun prompted more urgent calls for solar energy, an obvious solution for maintaining power for residents during a natural disaster. If more homes and businesses had solar panels connected to community microgrids and power banks, thousands of people could have kept refrigerators and air conditioners running, which can save lives during heat waves and other climate disasters.

Jennifer Crosslin, a regional organizer with Southern Communities for a Green New Deal, said policy makers should take their cues from Gulf South communities such as New Orleans. There is a long tradition of collective disaster response in the Gulf South, where activists and have spent years forging connections through organizing and mutual aid. These coalitions are now coalescing around the Green New Deal, a framework for building climate resilience and renewable energy that is necessary for survival in the era of climate disasters.Louisiana has few legal protections for renters, who can receive an eviction notice after withholding rent for any reason, even if that reason is a giant hole in the roof.

“Let the people who are rooted in place — and love in abundance — lead this nation to the kind of transformation we know we need, for our sake and for all of ours,” Crosslin said told reporters on Thursday.

New Orleans residents are still clearing debris and repairing damaged homes after most of the city spent over a week without power. Many households emptied their refrigerators during the power outage, and the smell of garbage hangs in the summer air. In the Seventh Ward, a working-class neighborhood about a mile from the French Quarter, cars lined up on Thursday to receive water bottles and a hot meal from volunteers with Step Up Louisiana, a group that fights for economic and racial justice. Standing over a grill full of barbecued chicken, Ben Zucker, the group’s co-director, said hundreds of people show up each day.

“The pandemic was the first hit, and now this,” Zucker told Truthout. “People are already hungry. We see this after every storm.”

Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) relief has not reached many Louisiana residents, while others have received payments of $500 to $1,000 for damaged homes and other costs. This reporter attempted to file a claim online three times last week, but the FEMA website crashed each time before finally working on Tuesday, more than a week after the storm. Others spent hours waiting to file a claim over the phone. Disaster “food stamps” meant to replace spoiled food have yet to be approved for those who are not already enrolled in the state’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

Kisha Edwards, a member of Step Up Louisiana’s political committee, said the response from FEMA has been slow, and members of her community are still waiting for relief. Their applications for FEMA funds are pending, and Edwards doesn’t understand why. As she packaged hot meals to be given away, Edwards explained that volunteering after a storm is part of life in Louisiana.

“I’m here to give back, because this is what we do,” Edwards said.

Mike Ludwig is a staff reporter at Truthout based in New Orleans. He is also the writer and host of “Climate Front Lines,” a podcast about the people, places and ecosystems on the front lines of the climate crisis. Follow him on Twitter: @ludwig_mike.

Trump Razed the Resettlement Infrastructure That Afghan Refugees 

Now Need

Refugees from Afghanistan wait to board a bus after arriving and being processed at Dulles International Airport in Dulles, Virginia, on August 23, 2021.

ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

BYSasha Abramsky, Truthout

PUBLISHEDSeptember 12, 2021



President Joe Biden’s chaotic exit from Afghanistan has fueled a significant slide in his approval ratings in polls, with barely 4 in 10 respondents viewing the president favorably. The Afghan debacle has been defined in the public eye both by the chaotic scenes at the Kabul airport and by cascading intelligence failures. Over 20 years, the country spent untold billions of dollars on intelligence gathering in Afghanistan, and yet at the most crucial of moments, the powers-that-be still couldn’t quite get their heads around how corrupt and hollowed-out the Afghan government under Ashraf Ghani was. They didn’t realize how it was failing to pay or feed its soldiers, and how its leaders were, apparently, just waiting for an opportunity to head off into gilded exile with the fruits of their corruption sustaining them. Yet, amid all the horrors of the past month, the airlift of more than 100,000 Afghans stands out as at least a partial corrective.

Many Americans from across much of the political spectrum have rallied to help the tens of thousands of Afghans who have been, and will be, arriving in the U.S. in the wake of the Taliban takeover. In both blue and red counties, huge numbers of volunteers are pouring time and resources into assisting these individuals who are, in many instances, arriving in their new homes with no money and almost no possessions. Now, the Biden administration is asking Congress for $6.5 billion in emergency funds to help resettle the Afghan refugees.

And yet, the Trumpist echo chamber has been pushing more virulent anti-immigrant, anti-refugee rhetoric in recent days, and consequently, GOP support for refugee resettlement has eroded. The odious Fox News demagogue Tucker Carlson decided to use the human tragedy of mass displacement to his political advantage, railing against refugees he accused of invading the U.S., and warning they would dilute and pollute American culture. “The idea that you can move people from one completely different country — with a completely different culture and language and religion and history on the other side of the globe — into our country in large numbers, and everything will be just fine, is insane,” Carlson told his audience in mid-August. Laura Ingraham told her viewers that the refugees were “unvetted” and thus posed a mortal threat to the U.S.

Donald Trump himself has waffled on the issue — at one moment this past month seeming to endorse a resettlement program for Afghans who had helped the U.S. over the two decade-long war, at other moments riffing about unvetted refugees and telling his audience that he would always put “America First.” Meanwhile, his fanatical henchman, Stephen Miller, who was the chief architect behind the web of anti-immigrant regulations and actions that defined the Trump presidency, was quick to accuse those supporting significant levels of refugee resettlement in the U.S. of having a “political” agenda. He has also urged countries bordering Afghanistan to accept all Afghan refugees, while suggesting that the U.S. should massively restrict entry. Presumably, Miller fears that a “political agenda” by pro-refugee advocates is part of some nefarious plot to flood the electorate in coming years with newly minted refugees who will become citizens, then turn around and tilt the political scales against nativist Republicans.

Of course, the use of a “political agenda” around immigration was actually perfected during the Trump years, when the full and mighty force of the U.S. government was turned against one vulnerable immigrant group after another.

When it came to refugees, Trump’s team spared no effort to make an already oppressive system infinitely worse. The efforts to ban migrants from many Muslim-majority countries, which began within days of Trump’s taking office, locked out most refugees from Syria and Yemen, despite both of those countries being afflicted by brutal civil wars. The overall refugee cap was lowered from 110,000 per year to 15,000 during the Trump years. Even that didn’t tell the full horror of the story — as during the last two years of the Trump presidency, that cap was never met and in reality, far fewer refugees were admitted.

As the refugee cap was lowered, the dollars that flowed to the country’s nine major refugee resettlement agencies were eviscerated, resulting in offices being shuttered and expert resettlement workers laid off around the U.S. By mid-2019, more than 50 resettlement offices had closed and another 41 had suspended operations.

It took decades to build the U.S.’s refugee resettlement infrastructure, but it took barely four years for Trump and his acolytes to shred it.

Today, the resettlement infrastructure faces a huge challenge: how to provide services and resources to incoming Afghan refugees during a period in which many resettlement experts have lost their jobs and had to shut down their offices.

Biden’s request for billions of dollars in targeted assistance to help refugees will go a long way, but the bigger challenge remains: how can resettlement offices that have been shuttered reopen and rehire all their experts at speed? Furthermore, how can this infrastructure be reinvigorated not just to deal with the current crisis, but as part of a long-term strategy to reopen the country to refugees once again? Even in more immigrant-welcoming times than these, U.S. refugee resettlement policies were still profoundly shaped by both geopolitics and racist sentiment. Today, Biden’s challenge is not just to resurrect the pre-Trumpian refugee settlement system, but also to reimagine it and enlarge it to meet the growing needs of a 21st century riven by war and environmental displacement.

Five years ago, I reported a story for Sacramento Magazine on local efforts that went into resettling Afghans in Sacramento and its environs. Many of the people being resettled had Special Immigrant Visas — visas reserved for those who had helped Americans during the conflict in some way, such as translation skills or military assistance. Others were refugees from Iran, Iraq, and elsewhere. I followed one family from the time they exited the airplane to their placement in a new apartment. Along the way, they needed assistance navigating everything from enrollment in health care programs to finding nearby supermarkets. Many of the refugees needed classes in English as a second language (ESL), children needed to be enrolled in schools and adults needed help lining up paid employment. This required a strong collaborative effort from local volunteers and also from the professional staff at the resettlement agencies.

What will the experience of this current wave of Afghan refugees be like? Given the damage done to refugee resettlement agencies since Trump’s election in 2016, who will help them navigate complex bureaucracies today? Who will be there if they need help filling in paperwork or finding an affordable apartment to rent? Who will be there to provide translation services, or to find suitable jobs for the new arrivals?

It’s not enough to just admit refugees during an acute crisis when the eyes of the world are upon the U.S. If proper services are to be provided for admitted refugees, it is vital to pour adequate resources into funding the country’s once-robust network of refugee resettlement agencies. And since funding for these agencies is tied to the number of refugees admitted each year under the annual presidential finding on the issue, the best way to get more funds flowing is for the president to raise the refugee admissions cap and then actually ensure that the full number of permitted refugees make it into the U.S.

In April, Biden attracted political heat for backtracking on a campaign promise to raise the refugee cap from 15,000 up to 62,500. A month later, facing a torrent of criticism from progressives, the president back-pedaled again and announced that the cap would, indeed, increase to 62,500. Yet the reality on the ground doesn’t meet this promise: So far this year, the refugee cap has been raised to 62,500. Yet, excluding the recent Afghan arrivals, only a small fraction of those 62,500 have actually been admitted into the country. Until those numbers improve significantly, the U.S. won’t be able to fully restore the resettlement programs so wantonly vandalized during Trump’s reign of horrors — let alone improve upon them.

Evangelical Christians cautioned against 'either-or' stance on Israel-Palestine

Julian Mann 13 September 2021 |

(Photo: Unsplash/Cole Keister)

Evangelical Christians should not take an 'either-or' stance on support for Israel or the Palestinians, American-Israeli bestselling author Joel Rosenberg warned at the 9/11 and New Middle East Conference in New York over the weekend.

Mr Rosenberg was being interviewed by Mitch Glaser, president of Chosen People Ministries, co-organiser of the conference, on its second day on Saturday, held to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the terror attacks on the World Trade Center.

An Israeli citizen, Joel Rosenberg is a founder member of the other Jewish Christian organisation behind the conference, the Alliance for the Peace of Jerusalem.

The New York Times best-selling author of The Last Jihad said: "God is not an either-or God. He doesn't love one side to the exclusion of the other. He is a both-and God.

"Too much of evangelicalism has split into camps. They are either pro-Israel and therefore they feel they don't even need to talk about Palestinians or their language or their tone is hostile."

In the other camp, he said, some evangelicals "can be hostile to Israel. They consider Israel an apartheid state or colonialist, imperialist".

The right way forward for evangelicals, he said, is to "love the Palestinian people and want dignity and the protection of their human rights and their religious freedom without wanting the destruction of the State of Israel".

He denied that Israel is an apartheid state.

"Arabs serve on our Supreme Court. They serve as judges, as police officers, as the heads of our banks. They can form political parties, they can vote, we have members of the Knesset who are Arabs. That is not apartheid," he said.

Mr Rosenberg called on the Church to "take the lead in loving Israel and her neighbours and not thinking that it is a zero-sum game".

"That is not the way Jesus played it. That is not what he teaches us," he said.

A Saudi Arabian convert to Christianity from Islam also addressed the conference. Coming to the US as a graduate student, he was influenced by a Christian family who befriended him. In the US, he attended church for the first time in his life in May 2001 and went regularly.

The Sunday after September 11th, he was afraid to go to church "because I was so worried that people would be upset with me given that 15 out of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi".

But he went to the church and heard a transformative message from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew's Gospel. He became a Christian two months later.

He said "my own feelings towards the Jews that I used to hate with a passion growing up as a Muslim" were transformed because he realised the central place of the chosen people of God, Israel, in the Bible's unfolding story of salvation for all people.

"My attitude towards the Jews has changed," he said. "I am so thankful to be able to call the Messianic Jews my brothers and sisters in Christ."

Esther Allen, senior director of communications at the Alliance for the Peace of Jerusalem, told the conference about a study the group did of American evangelical views on Israel in 2017. The report found that "there were a growing number of evangelicals, particularly those among the younger generation, who did not have a concern for or a biblical conviction of God's role for Israel".

"As a rising generation seeks to care for the oppressed, many see the only victims as Palestinians. Many of us don't know our history and as we read our Bibles for ourselves we dangerously apply promises only to ourselves, forsaking God's larger story and losing God's heart and plans for Israel and the Jewish people," she said.

Other speakers on the second day included Dr Michael Rydelnik, Professor of Jewish Studies and Bible at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago and Dr Darrell Bock, host of Dallas Theological Seminary's Table Podcasts.

Environment threats 'greatest challenge to human rights': UN

Issued on: 13/09/2021 - 

Recent months have unleashed "extreme and murderous climate events" like the wildfires in California, the UN rights chief said 

JOSH EDELSON AFP/File

Geneva (AFP)

The UN rights chief warned Monday that environmental threats were worsening conflicts worldwide and would soon constitute the biggest challenge to human rights.

Michelle Bachelet said climate change, pollution and nature loss were already severely impacting rights across the board and said countries were consistently failing to take the necessary action to curb the damage.

"The interlinked crises of pollution, climate change and biodiversity act as threat multipliers, amplifying conflicts, tensions and structural inequalities, and forcing people into increasingly vulnerable situations," Bachelet told the opening of the 48th session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

"As these environmental threats intensify, they will constitute the single greatest challenge to human rights of our era."

The former Chilean president said the threats were already "directly and severely impacting a broad range of rights, including the rights to adequate food, water, education, housing, health, development, and even life itself".

She said environmental damage usually hurt the poorest people and nations the most, as they often have the least capacity to respond.

Bachelet said recent months have unleashed "extreme and murderous climate events", citing the fires in Siberia and California, and floods in China, Germany and Turkey.

She also said drought was potentially forcing millions of people into misery, hunger and displacement.

- 'Set the bar higher' -

Bachelet said that addressing the environmental crisis was "a humanitarian imperative, a human rights imperative, a peace-building imperative and a development imperative. It is also doable."

She said spending to revive economies in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic could be focused on environmentally-friendly projects, but "this is a shift that unfortunately is not being consistently and robustly undertaken".

She also said that countries had "consistently failed to fund and implement" commitments made under the Paris climate accords.

"We must set the bar higher -- indeed, our common future depends on it," the UN rights chief said.

Bachelet said that at the 12-day COP26 climate talks in Glasgow, set to begin on October 31, her office would push for more ambitious, rights-based commitments.

Bachelet said that in many regions, environmental human rights defenders were threatened, harassed and killed, often with complete impunity.

She said economic shifts triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic had apparently prompted increased exploitation of mineral resources, forests and land, with indigenous peoples particularly at risk.

"In Brazil, I am alarmed by recent attacks against members of the Yanomami and Munduruku peoples by illegal miners in the Amazon," she said.

- No progress on Xinjiang visit -

In her opening global update, Bachelet touched on the human rights situations in several countries, including Chad, the Central African Republic, Haiti, India, Mali and Tunisia.

On China, she said no progress had been made in her years-long efforts to seek "meaningful access" to Xinjiang.

"In the meantime, my office is finalising its assessment of the available information on allegations of serious human rights violations in that region, with a view to making it public," she said.

Rights groups believe at least one million Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim minorities have been incarcerated in camps in the northwestern region, where China is also accused of forcibly sterilising women and imposing forced labour.

Beijing has strongly denied the allegations and says training programs, work schemes and better education have helped stamp out extremism in the region.

THE REAL 

Masters of Cuban Rum have a new Facebook profile

NOT BACARDI

 

Havana, Sep 12 (Prensa Latina) The Cuba Ron S.A Corporation presented a new profile on Facebook dedicated to the Cuban Rum Masters Movement, a space to share the knowledge of the creators of Cuban spirits.

The launch on that social network coincided with the first anniversary of the death of First Cuban Rum Master Jose Pablo Navarro Campa, and it is part of the communication campaign that accompanies the Knowledge of the Masters of Light Rum candidacy to join the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, made up by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

This movement is considered the main architect of the design and creation of Cuban spirits, with a permanent work in safeguarding the tradition, history and identity that these men and women carry out for many years.

According to a press release from Cuba Ron S.A, the candidacy of the Knowledge of the Masters of Light Rum to join the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity began in 2016, after the status of Cultural Heritage of the Nation had been reached.

The Cuban Rum Masters Movement is made up of nine prestigious professionals and five applicants.

1. Types of rum and cocktail ideas | Havana Club

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   HAVANA CLUB SESSIONS VOL. 1. In June 2019, Krisy, Darrell Cole, K1D and Saskia travelled to Cuba with Havana Club, the authentic Cuban rum brand, heading into the …

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Study explains the role of eye contact in effective conversation

Making (and breaking) eye contact makes the conversation more engaging.

BY PRANJAL MEHAR
SEPTEMBER 12, 2021

Image: Pixabay


What makes a good conversation? A new study suggests an answer: making and breaking conversation.

The study by Dartmouth College reports that while making conversation, eye contact occurs during moments of ‘shared attention’ with their pupils dilating in synchrony as a result.


Previously, it was believed that eye contact creates synchrony, but this new study suggests it’s not that simple. Eye contact occurs when we are already in sync, and if anything, eye contact seems to help break that synchrony.

Eye contact may usefully disrupt synchrony momentarily to allow for a new thought or idea.

Scientists brought pairs of students in the lab to study the relationship between eye contact and pupillary synchrony in a meaningful conversation.

Cartoon of how a single instance of eye contact coincides with pupillary synchrony. Prior to eye contact, pupillary synchrony increases until it peaks at eye contact onset. As eye contact is maintained, synchrony declines until its trough when eye contact is broken. Credit: Sophie Wohltjen.

The students were asked to wear eye-tracking glasses and sitting across from each other. Each pair were asked to have a conversation for 10 minutes, which was audio and video recorded.

After the conversation was over, the two participants were separated into different rooms. They were asked to watch the conversation they just had and continuously rate how engaged they were.

Scientists showed how pupillary synchrony increases and decreases around instances of eye contact. They found that people make eye contact as pupillary synchrony is at its peak. Pupillary synchrony then immediately decreases, only recovering again once eye contact is broken. The data also demonstrated a correlation between instances of eye contact and higher levels of engagement during the conversation.

Lead author Sophie Wohltjen, a graduate student in psychological and brain sciences at Dartmouth, said, “Eye contact is immersive and powerful. When two people are having a conversation, eye contact signals that shared attention is high—that they are in peak synchrony with one another. As eye contact persists, that synchrony then decreases. We think this is also good because too much synchrony can make a conversation stale. An engaging conversation requires, at times, being on the same page and, at times, saying something new. Eye contact seems to be one way we create a shared space while also allowing space for new ideas.”

“Conversation is a creative act in which people build a shared story from independent voices. Moments of eye contact seem to signal when we have achieved shared understanding and need to contribute our independent voice.”

Journal Reference:
Sophie Wohltjen et al., Eye contact marks the rise and fall of shared attention in conversation, PNAS (2021). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2106645118