UPDATE

California Wildfires Make A Run Toward A Giant Sequoia Grove

September 18, 2021
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Sequoia trees stand in Lost Grove along Generals Highway as the KNP Complex Fire burns about 15 miles away on Friday, in Sequoia National Park, Calif.

Noah Berger/AP

THREE RIVERS, Calif. — Two lightning-sparked wildfires in California merged and made a run to the edge of a grove of ancient sequoias, momentarily driving away firefighters as they try to protect the world's tallest tree by wrapping its base in protective foil.

A shift in the weather led to explosive growth on the fires in the Sequoia National Park in the Sierra Nevada on Friday, the National Park Service said, and the flames reached the westernmost tip of the Giant Forest, where it scorched a grouping of sequoias known as the "Four Guardsmen" that mark the entrance to the grove of 2,000 sequoias.

Firefighters wrapped the base of the General Sherman Tree, along with other trees in the Giant Forest, in a type of aluminum that can withstand high heat. It wasn't immediately known how the Four Guardsmen, which received the same treatment, fared, fire spokeswoman Katy Hooper said.

The General Sherman Tree is the largest in the world by volume, at 52,508 cubic feet (1,487 cubic meters), according to the National Park Service. It towers 275 feet (84 meters) high and has a circumference of 103 feet (31 meters) at ground level.
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A Single Fire Killed Thousands Of Sequoias. Scientists Are Racing To Save The Rest

The fires, known together as the KNP Complex, blackened 28 square miles (72 square kilometers) of forest land. Fire activity increased Friday afternoon when winds picked up and low-hanging smoke that had choked off air and limited the fire's growth in recent days lifted, Hooper said.

Firefighters who were wrapping the base of the sequoias in foil and sweeping leaves and needles from the forest floor around the trees had to flee from the danger, Hooper said. They went back Saturday when conditions improved to continue the work and start a strategic fire along Generals Highway to protect the Giant Forest grove, Hooper said.

The fires forced the evacuation of the park this week, and parts of Three Rivers, a foothill community of about 2,500 people outside the park's main entrance. Crews have been bulldozing a line between the fire and the community.

The National Weather Service issued a red flag warning through Sunday, saying gusts and lower humidity could create conditions for rapid wildfire spread.

However, fire officials weren't expecting the kinds of explosive wind-driven growth that in recent months turned Sierra Nevada blazes into monsters that devoured hundreds of homes.

Giant sequoias are adapted to fire, which can help them thrive by releasing seeds from their cones and creating clearings that allow young sequoias to grow. But the extraordinary intensity of fires — fueled by climate change — can overwhelm the trees.

"Once you get fire burning inside the tree, that will result in mortality," said Jon Wallace, the operations section chief for the KNP Complex.

The fires already have burned into several groves containing trees as tall as 200 feet (61 meters) feet tall and 2,000 years old.

To the south, the Windy Fire grew to 19 square miles (50 square kilometers) on the Tule River Indian Reservation and in Giant Sequoia National Monument, where it has burned into the Peyrone grove of sequoias and threatens others.

The fire also had reached Long Meadow Grove, where two decades ago then-President Clinton signed a proclamation establishing its Trail of 100 Giant Sequoias as a national monument.

Fire officials haven't yet been able to determine how much damage was done to the groves, which are in remote and hard-to-reach areas. They said crews were "doing everything they can" to protect the trail by removing needles, leaves and other fuels from around the base of the trees.

Last year, the Castle Fire killed an estimated 7,500 to 10,600 large sequoias, according to the National Park Service. That was an estimated 10% to 14% of all the sequoias in the world.

The current fires are eating through tinder-dry timber, grass and brush.

In far Northern California, an early season rain was a welcome sign for firefighters battling a cluster of wildfires ignited by lightning in the Klamath National Forest in late July. Fire officials say it won't extinguish the nearly 300-square-mile (772 square-kilometer) blaze, but will help crews reach their goal.

Light rain is expected in the coastal area north of San Francisco over the weekend. But forecasters say conditions are likely to dry out by early next week, prompting a fire weather watch that may lead to power shutoffs in Napa, Sonoma and Solano counties.

Historic drought tied to climate change is making wildfires harder to fight. It has killed millions of trees in California alone. Scientists say climate change has made the West much warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive.

More than 7,000 wildfires in California this year have damaged or destroyed more than 3,000 homes and other buildings and torched well over 3,000 square miles (7,770 square kilometers) of land, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

Hong Kong elite selects powerful new 'patriots only' committee

CHINA IS NOT COMMUNIST 

IT IS A NATIONALIST

ONE PARTY STATE-CAPITALISM

Issued on: 18/09/2021 -

Hong Kong's elites are set to choose a power committee that will elect the city's next leader Peter PARKS AFP/File

Hong Kong (AFP)

Hong Kong's political elite will select a powerful committee on Sunday which will choose the city's next leader and nearly half the legislature under a new "patriots only" system imposed by Beijing.

The financial hub has never been a democracy -- the source of years of protests -- but a small and vocal opposition was tolerated after the city's 1997 handover to authoritarian China.

Huge and often violent democracy rallies exploded two years ago and Beijing has responded with a crackdown and a new political system where only those deemed loyal are allowed to stand for office.

The first poll under that new system, dubbed "patriots rule Hong Kong", will take place on Sunday as members of the city's ruling classes choose a 1,500-seat Election Committee.

In December, that committee will appoint 40 of the city's 90 seats in the legislature -- 30 will be chosen by special interest groups and just 20 will be directly elected.

The following year, it will pick Hong Kong's next China-approved leader.

Beijing insists the new political system is more representative and will ensure "anti-China" elements are not allowed into office.

Critics say it leaves no room for the pro-democracy opposition and turns Hong Kong into a mirror of the authoritarian Communist Party-ruled mainland.

The Chief Executive will be elected in a process critics say leaves no room for the pro-democracy opposition and turns Hong Kong into a mirror of the authoritarian Communist Party-ruled mainland 

Peter PARKS AFP/File

"Hong Kongers are completely cut off from electoral operations," Nathan Law, a prominent democracy leader who fled to Britain last year, told AFP.

"All election runners will become puppet showmen under Beijing's entire control... with no meaningful competition."

Ted Hui, a former lawmaker who moved to Australia, said Hong Kong's political system was now "a rubber-stamp game completely controlled by Beijing."

"It's more than a managed democracy. It's an autocracy trying to pretend to be civilised," Hui told AFP.

- 4,800 voters, 6,000 police -

Under the new system, all those standing for public office must be vetted for political loyalty and cleared of being a national security threat.

Back in 2016, some 233,000 Hong Kongers were allowed to select the Election Committee.

That figure has now been trimmed to around 4,800 -- the equivalent of 0.6 percent of Hong Kong's 7.5 million population. Police said 6,000 officers would be deployed to ensure there are no protests or disruptions.

The vast majority of seats in Sunday's vote are a one-horse race with just 364 contested. The rest will be installed ex-officio or chosen by special interest groups.

As a result, the committee will be even more stacked than previously with reliable pro-Beijing votes, including loyalist lawmakers and members of national bodies as well as representatives from business, professional and religious groups.

A crackdown by authorities has seen Hong Kong's civil service now required to swear an oath of loyalty Handout 

INFORMATION SERVICES DEPARTMENT/AFP

Local media have reported that people linked to the city's powerful business tycoon families will wield less power.

China promised Hong Kong would maintain key liberties and autonomy for 50 years after its handover.

But Beijing has begun tightening its grip on the city following the 2019 protests.

China's leaders were also stung by pro-democracy candidates winning a landslide the same year in district council elections -- the only public office positions in Hong Kong fully selected by universal suffrage.

On top of the new political system, China has also imposed a sweeping national security law that has criminalised much dissent.

Multiple opposition figures have been jailed, dozens of pro-democracy groups, including the city's most popular newspaper, have been shuttered and tens of thousands of Hong Kongers have left the city. Others have been disqualified for their political views.

© 2021 AFP

RIKERS

Ex-inmates decry worsening state of New York's 'hellhole' jail

Issued on: 19/09/2021 - 03:36Modified: 19/09/2021 - 03:34

Rikers is one of America's highest-profile prisons and has incarcerated celebrities from Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols, to rapper Tupac Shakur and former International Monetary Fund managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn

 JOHN MOORE GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File


New York (AFP)

It's held disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein, rapper Tupac Shakur and ex-IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn: New York's notorious Rikers Island prison is now under intense scrutiny over the deaths of at least nine inmates this year.

Officials who visited the high-profile jail this week, and former inmates spoken to by AFP, say conditions have worsened dramatically at the sprawling complex due to widespread staff shortages during the pandemic.

"It's the wild, wild West in there," said Johnny Perez, who was in and out of Rikers between 1996 and 2001 on robbery and gun possession charges.

Glenn Martin -- who spent three days in Rikers, where he was stabbed four times in an attack, after a shoplifting arrest as a 16-year-old in the late 1980s -- calls it a "hellhole."

"It's described as a gladiator school for a reason," the 49-year-old told AFP, listing another of Rikers' monikers: "torture island."

Marvin Mayfield, detained for a total of 22 months over two stretches in the 1980s and 2007 for burglary, said Rikers leaves "a stain on the soul of everyone" who goes there.

The jail, which opened in 1932 and also housed John Lennon killer Mark David Chapman and the Sex Pistols' Sid Vicious, has long had a reputation for being a hotbed of violence.

Incidents against inmates and guards have in part been blamed on its remote location in the East River between The Bronx and Queens boroughs.

But lawmakers and activists say the situation has spiraled out of control in recent months, with conditions becoming unsafe for both prisoners and officers.

A view of the entrance to Rikers Island penitentiary complex in 2011

 EMMANUEL DUNAND AFP

They say basic sanitary needs are not being met and rates of self-harm are rising.

"What I witnessed was a humanitarian crisis. A horror house of abuse and neglect," said New York State assemblywoman Emily Gallagher, who visited this week.

"There's garbage everywhere, rotting food with maggots, cockroaches, worms in the showers, human feces and piss," Gallagher tweeted, adding that broken limbs were not being treated.

New York City's department of corrections (DOC) says nine people have died at Rikers this year, up from seven last year and three in 2019. Local media has reported 10 deaths in 2021, at least five from suicide.

The DOC has been struggling with staffing for months; posts have been unattended with inmates left to fend for themselves.

- Closure plans -

Some 2,700 guards -- almost a third of the city's entire prison force -- are currently not working, some because of coronavirus which spread through US jails.

Prison officers unions say guards are overworked from triple shifts while others are recovering from the effects of Covid-19 and injuries inflicted by inmates.

They add that many are forced to stay away because conditions have become too dangerous, but officials say some are abusing an unlimited sick leave policy.

Mayor Bill de Blasio launched an emergency relief plan for Rikers this week, boosting staffing and implementing 30-day suspensions for officers who go AWOL.

Dominique Strauss Kahn, former Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) after being released on bail in New York City in 2011 before sexual assault charges against him were dropped MICHAEL NAGLE GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP

The proposal included emergency contracting to repair broken doors and clean facilities.

On Friday, Governor Kathy Hochul announced the immediate release of 191 inmates to help temper what she called a "volatile" situation.

The number of inmates at Rikers has fallen from around 20,000 in the 1990s to almost 6,000 today.

The vast majority are awaiting trial. They are also overwhelmingly from Black and Hispanic communities.

Perez has made return visits for advocacy work and says the jail has not improved since his release.

"It's ten times as worse," he told AFP.

In June, the DOC launched initiatives to increase staffing and safety and says it is making "every effort" to improve conditions.

Lawyers and criminologists have been calling for the prison's closure for years, citing its age and reputation for violence.

A view of buildings at the Rikers Island penitentiary complex taken in 2011 

EMMANUEL DUNAND AFP

It is due to close by 2026 under a $8.7-billion proposal by de Blasio to replace it with four smaller facilities.

But he leaves office at the end of this year. Neither Perez, Martin nor Mayfield, all now justice reform campaigners, are confident it will shut. But they say it must.

"It's a cancer. It can't be fixed. It needs to be removed and cut out," said Mayfield, 59.

© 2021 AFP

Rising rents spark Berlin housing seizure referendum

Issued on: 19/09/2021 -

"Yes! Expropriate." 

Berliners have become increasingly frustrated with rising housing costs 

PAUL ZINKEN AFP

Berlin (AFP)

In her apartment in suburban Berlin, Regina Lehmann despairs at the letter from her landlord, a big real estate group: the rent is going up.

Effective November 1, the increase of 12.34 euros ($14.54) on her monthly rent of 623.44 euros will be "difficult" to finance with her only income a disability pension, Lehmann tells AFP.

Almost 700 of her neighbours in the popular Berlin neighbourhood of Spandau will suffer the same fate, boosting their rent by up to eight percent.

Increases like these are at the root of a popular initiative to "expropriate" real estate companies such as Adler, which owns Lehmann's flat, that will culminate in a local referendum on September 26, the same day as national and municipal elections.

Residents in the capital have become increasingly frustrated with rising housing costs, as the city's attractiveness to outsiders has grown in recent years.

And beyond Berlin, the cost of housing has become a hot topic on the campaign trail in the contest to succeed Angela Merkel as chancellor.

Back in Lehmann's living room, surrounded by pictures of her family, Lehmann says she simply "won't pay" the rise.

"I think, if we pay, after a while they'll just increase the rent again," she says.

- 364,000 signatures -

Rent campaigners secured the referendum in Berlin after collecting 346,000 signatures in support of their proposition -- well above the number needed.

They are pushing to "expropriate" homes from real estate companies with more than 3,000 properties.

The result of the poll will not be binding, but advocates hope to force city government to respond to soaring rents, with the cost of housing going up by 85 percent between 2007 and 2019.

The rise has been painful for residents in the capital where 80 percent of people are renters, and 19.3 percent of people live under the country's poverty line, compared to 15.9 percent in the country as a whole.

Campaigners lay the blame at the door of major real estate groups, such as Adler, which owns 20,000 properties in Berlin.

In Lehmann's Spandau district, activists argue Adler's attempt to hike rents is illegal, exceeding a legal reference index linked to the average rent in each area.

The property group, in response, describes an "improved environment" around the lodgings that gives it grounds to charge more.

Supporters of expropriation have upped the tempo of their campaign in recent weeks to win over undecided voters, hanging posters and organising demonstrations across the city.

Many Berliners experienced rent increases after the German constitutional court struck down a rent cap which had been introduced by the city earlier this year, and a poll by the Tagesspiegel daily showed 47 percent of residents supported the radical proposal put forward in the referendum.

"We have to fight for our rights," says Catia Santos, 41, who recently attended a rent protest with her partner.

"Recently my rent has gone up by 100 euros, even though I am not earning any more than before."

- Political clash -

On Friday, just over a week before the vote, the city of Berlin announced the purchase of 14,750 residential properties for 2.4 billion euros from German real estate giants Deutsche Wohnen and Vonovia, a deal forged under pressure to find an answer to rising rents.

Forcibly taking ownership of privately owned accommodation has largely been rejected by national and local politicians in favour of plans to speed up the building of new homes.

"The best protection for renters is and always will be having enough places to live in," Armin Laschet, the conservative candidate to succeed Merkel as chancellor, told a real estate conference in Berlin in June.

The social-democrat favourite in the local Berlin elections, Franziska Giffey, also declared her opposition to the proposal, saying it could "damage" the city's reputation.

But her party's candidate to be chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has called for a "rent moratorium" to stabilise prices.

Only the far-left Die Linke and some individual Green candidates have come out in favour of expropriation, with some even displaying the rent campaigners' logo on their election materials.

© 2021 AFP

The cancer of money in our politics gives a 'thumbs-up' for corporations to kill more of America

Thom Hartmann
September 18, 2021

Facebook.

Want to know who owns your member of Congress? Just look at how they vote.

For example, this week Representatives Kurt Schrader (D-OR), Scott Peters (D-CA), Kathleen Rice (D-NY) and, on another committee, Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.) all voted with 100% of their Republican colleagues to kill the ability of Medicare to negotiate drug prices.

To put this into context, the VA and every insurance company and hospital group in America negotiates prescription drug prices. Only Medicare is forced to pay around $60 billion a year more than they should. Which echoes as higher retail drug prices through our entire healthcare system.

And this time it isn't just about pharmaceuticals. As Rep. Schrader's hometown newspaper, The Oregonian, noted in their headline: "Rep. Kurt Schrader of Oregon Helps Kill Drug Pricing Bill, Endangering Biden Infrastructure Plan."

It's a safe bet that none of them did it because they were representing the interest of the people in their districts who helped put them in office. A national poll published just last week found:

An 87% majority of voters over age 65 favor allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices... Among Democratic seniors, 89% are in favor, as are 87% of Republican seniors and 81% of independent seniors.

Instead, these Democrats are enthusiastically and publicly representing the interest of the pharmaceutical industry, which, Senator Bernie Sanders notes, "[H]as spent over $4.5 billion on lobbying and campaign contributions over the past 20 years and has hired some 1,200 lobbyists to get Congress to do its bidding."

Americans pay an average of $1500 a year more for prescription drugs than citizens of any other nation. But the crisis isn't just the rip-off that's making Big Pharma executives rich: it's quite literally killing us.

Dr. Nicky J. Mehtani, a resident physician at Johns Hopkins Hospital, writes about the pain of having to tell a family that their mother and grandmother has died when the most likely reason was because her patient couldn't afford the heart medication she'd been prescribed.

"[I]n this patient's case, there was no truer underlying cause of death than the blatant unaffordability of her prescription medications," writes Dr. Mehtani.

This is an everyday story all across America. Last year 2.3 million seniors (and 15.5 million people under 65) couldn't afford to pay for doctor-prescribed medication. One in four Americans say they "have difficulty" paying for pharmaceuticals, and one-in-eight "ration" their own pills.

Dr. Mehtani notes that the patient who died in her hospital had a prescription for the heart medications she needed.

"But upon arrival to her pharmacy," Dr. Mehtani writes, "she learned that, despite being insured, one of her heart medications would cost over $200 per month. Though she had $200 in her bank account, she also had eight grandchildren to care for and feed. She figured she could skip a few days of medication and fill the prescription two days later, when she was due to receive her Social Security check.

"But two days without these expensive medications was enough to cause her to have a second heart attack — one that would ultimately take her life and drastically change those of her eight grandchildren, some of whom would later enter the foster care system."

Meanwhile, members of Congress rake in the Big Pharma cash, laughing all the way to the bank as people in their districts cut pills in half and die.

It's easy to dismiss Reps Schrader, Peters, Rice and Murphy as corrupt sellouts and, certainly in this case, the label fits. And it's frankly surprising that they were the only ones who publicly sold out their constituents' grandparents: Big Pharma is throwing money around Congress and on TV ads like a kid with a Super Soaker at the beach.

You've probably by now seen the dueling TV ads from AARP and the pharmaceutical lobby about negotiating Medicare drug prices; the industry is trying to provide cover for the members of Congress who said, "How high?" when the big drug companies said, "Jump!"

But the cancer of money in our politics is much deeper than these four corrupted Democrats (and 100% of the Republicans), and it goes back to a corrupted and sold-out US Supreme Court.

In their 5-4 split 2010 Citizens United decision, they concluded not only that corporations are persons and thus able to exercise their Constitutional right to "free speech" by owning pet politicians but that, because corporations don't have mouths, the form of speech they (and the morbidly rich) can use is money.

That's right: that stuff you have in your pocket is "free speech."

At the time there were five Republican appointees on the Court and four Democratic appointees. Justice John Paul Stevens, a Democratic appointee, wrote the main dissent, noting:

"The fact that corporations are different from human beings might seem to need no elaboration, except that the majority opinion almost completely elides it… corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires. … They are not themselves members of 'We the People' by whom and for whom our Constitution was established."


Writing as if he were seeing the "swamp" the Roberts Court's decision left us with today, he added:

"Politicians who fear that a certain corporation can make or break their reelection chances may be cowed into silence about that corporation. On a variety of levels, unregulated corporate electioneering might diminish the ability of citizens to 'hold officials accountable to the people,' and disserve the goal of a public debate that is 'uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.'"


Our problem isn't just a few corrupt, for-sale Democrats; it's pervasive across our political system and mostly because five conservatives on the US Supreme Court chose to corrupt the system to benefit that corporations and billionaires who helped put them on the Court in the first place.

It's why our politics are more polarized than ever before in living memory; corporations and rightwing billionaires are pouring money down the throats of increasingly radicalized Republicans and a few sellout Democrats across the country.
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As I document at length in my book The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America, until we overturn these corrupt Court decisions and get money out of politics, every effort to save lives and move this nation forward will face often-insurmountable resistance.

Covid-stricken Alabama had more deaths than births last year, a first in its recorded history.

“Our state literally shrunk in 2020." There were 64,714 total deaths in the state last year, compared to 57,641 births, Dr. Harris said.

A nurse tending to a Covid-19 patient in the intensive care unit at East Alabama Medical Center in Opelika, Ala., last December.

Credit...Julie Bennett/Associated Press

By Eduardo Medina
Sept. 18, 2021

For the first time in Alabama’s known history, the state had more deaths than births in 2020 — a grim milestone that underscores the pandemic’s calamitous toll.

“Our state literally shrunk in 2020,” Dr. Scott Harris, Alabama’s state health officer, said at a news conference on Friday. There were 64,714 total deaths in the state last year, compared to 57,641 births, Dr. Harris said.

Such a gap had never been recorded, not even during World War I, World War II and the flu pandemic of 1918, Dr. Harris said. Going back to the earliest available records, in 1900, “We’ve never had a time when deaths exceeded births,” he said.

Nationally, the birthrate declined for the sixth straight year in 2020, and some experts say the pandemic may be accelerating that trend. A study from the University of New Hampshire found that half of the 50 U.S. states had more deaths than births in 2020, compared with only five states with more deaths than births in 2019.

In Alabama last year, 7,182 deaths were officially attributed to Covid, according to data from the Alabama Department of Public Health.

On Wednesday, in a town hall discussion with Al.com, Alabama’s largest digital news site, Dr. Harris dismissed arguments that Covid deaths were being misrepresented.

“We get skeptical people who go, ‘Oh well, those were just older people who were going to die anyway, and you’re just attributing their deaths to Covid,’” he said. “That is not the case.”

Alabama has recently averaged about 60 deaths a day, according to a New York Times database, and only 41 percent of the state’s eligible population is fully vaccinated.


Alabama Coronavirus Map and Case Count

See the latest charts and maps of coronavirus cases, deaths, hospitalizations and vaccinations in Alabama.


Alabama’s rate of full vaccination is on a par with Idaho’s, tied as the third-lowest rate in the country. The two that rank lower are Wyoming and West Virginia.

Alabama’s governor, Kay Ivey, has urged the people of her state to get Covid vaccinations, but like many other Republicans, she objected when President Biden recently announced vaccine mandates, calling them “outrageous” and “overreaching.”

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp keeps mentioning failed AIDS vaccine mandates — but there is no AIDS vaccine

AND THERE WERE NO MANDATES UNDER REAGAN

Brett Bachman, Salon
September 18, 2021

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (Facebook)

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, keeps mentioning the failed campaign to vaccinate Americans against the AIDS virus as an example of the pitfalls of healthcare mandates.

Except the AIDS vaccine doesn't exist. And there sure wasn't a failed campaign to mandate it.

He made the comments most recently on an episode of the right-wing commentator Erick Erickson's podcast, emphasizing that as a result of his knowledge of the nonexistent AIDS vaccine, he believes that education is a more effective tool than mandates.

"That is basically how the AIDS vaccine worked. People wouldn't take it early on because it was mandated, they started educating people and now it is doing a lot of good out there," Kemp told Erickson. "Same scenario, different year that we are dealing with right now."

A fact check from Atlanta TV station 11 Alive rated Kemp's claims "false" — and noted that the governor has made similar comments about AIDS vaccines at least two other times over the past year.

When reached for comment by the station, Kemp's office said he meant to mention the human papillomavirus, or HPV, vaccine. But even this statement raises eyebrows — the HPV vaccine is also mandated in a number of states to attend public schools (among other inoculations), a campaign that has been largely effective in getting school-age children vaccinated, 11 Alive reported.

The governor has been a vocal opponent of recent public health efforts to tamp down on the spread of COVID-19. Kemp has repeatedly said that he will never sign off on mask or vaccine mandates while in office, drawing the criticism of public health experts.

In fact, the state's public health commissioner, Dr. Kathleen Toomey, even had her lawyer write up a formal letter last year stating that she thought the governor's plans to reopen live entertainment venues was a bad idea, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. It ultimately did not stop Kemp from doing so.

"It's one thing to say you're following the science; it's another thing to shoehorn the science into what you want it to be," Amber Schmidtke, a public health researcher who taught at Mercer University's medical school in Macon, Georgia, told the paper. "A lot of people were hurt, and a lot of people died when they didn't need to."

Kemp acknowledged the difficulty of his decisions in a press conference during the brouhaha, saying: "We had to make some very tough choices during extraordinary times, and there is no playbook for this."

"Looking back one year, every day is a reminder of the things that we went through, the tough decisions that we made."

He's also been a supporter of former President Donald Trump — but earned a very public bout of anger from the ex-commander-in-chief when he resisted Trump's attempts to overturn Georgia's 2020 election results.

Since then, however, Kemp has pushed voting laws that not only restrict access to the ballot for many Georgians but also allow state officials to stage hostile takeovers of local election boards — raising concerns about Republican efforts to subvert future elections.

Architect of Texas abortion ban takes aim at LGBTQ+ rights while urging reversal of Roe v Wade
Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams
September 18, 2021

Gay rights advocates celebrate outside the Supreme Court in 2015 after judges ruled in favor of same-sex marriage: new rulings on sexual minorities' rights in the workplace may face a rockier passage GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP / ALEX WONG


Advocates for reproductive freedom and LGTBQ+ equality on Saturday pointed to a legal brief filed in a U.S. Supreme Court case that could soon overturn Roe v. Wade as a crucial example of the broader goals of those fighting to end abortion rights across the United States.

"It's never just been about fetuses. It's about controlling sex," tweeted Muhlenberg College assistant professor Jacqueline Antonovich, a historian of health and medicine.

Both Antonovich and Elie Mystal, The Nation's justice correspondent, responded to a portion of the brief flagged by New York University School of Law professor Melissa Murray that challenges previous rulings from the country's highest court on not only abortion but also LGBTQ+ rights.

"Of course" the so-called "right to life" movement is also coming after cases that established key LGBTQ+ protections, said Mystal, "because it's never about 'life' and always about 'Christian fundamentalism.'"

The amicus brief (pdf) that Murray highlighted—co-authored by the architect of a new abortion ban in Texas—urges reversing Roe, the landmark 1973 ruling that affirmed the constitutional right to pre-viability abortions, and the related 1992 case Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

The brief also takes aim at Lawrence v. Texas, a 2003 case that overturned homophobic state sodomy laws, and the 2015 equal marriage case Obergefell v. Hodges, suggesting that the court should not "hesitate to write an opinion that leaves those decisions hanging by a thread. Lawrence and Obergefell, while far less hazardous to human life, are just as lawless as Roe."

Zack Ford of the progressive group Alliance for Justice said Saturday that "this is hardly surprising. Conservatives know they've got the Supreme Court in the palm of their hands and they'll ask for anything and everything, including the return of sodomy laws. Remember, ALL anti-LGBTQ and anti-choice views stem from the same desire to control bodies."

The alarm over the brief—submitted for Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, a case about a Mississippi abortion ban that the high court is set to hear this term—came exactly one year after the death of liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

In the wake of Ginsburg's death, then-President Donald Trump nominated and the GOP-controlled U.S. Senate swiftly confirmed Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Trump's third appointee to the court—creating a supermajority of six right-wing justices.

The high court's majority sparked concerns about how justices will rule in the Mississippi case by letting a contested Texas law take effect earlier this month. Just one piece of a historic GOP assault on reproductive rights this year, Texas' Senate Bill 8 not only bans abortion at six weeks but also empowers anti-choice vigilantes to enforce it—which, as the U.S. Justice Department explained in its lawsuit challenging the measure, is an "unprecedented scheme" intended to make it harder to strike down in court.

The legal mind behind S.B. 8, Jonathan Mitchell, "has spent the last seven years honing a largely below-the-radar strategy of writing laws deliberately devised to make it much more difficult for the judicial system—particularly the Supreme Court—to thwart them," according to The New York Times.

A former Texas solicitor general and clerk to the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Mitchell also co-authored the legal brief attacking Lawrence and Obergefell. His brief for the group Texas Right to Life—just one of several anti-choice filings submitted to the high court in late July—also states that "women can 'control their reproductive lives' without access to abortion; they can do so by refraining from sexual intercourse.'"

As The Guardian reports, the brief adds that "one can imagine a scenario in which a woman has chosen to engage in unprotected (or insufficiently protected) sexual intercourse on the assumption that an abortion will be available to her later. But when this court announces the overruling of Roe, that individual can simply change their behavior in response to the court's decision if she no longer wants to take the risk of an unwanted pregnancy."

While the Biden administration is taking on S.B. 8 in court and on Friday announced another series of actions intended to assist abortion seekers and providers in Texas, both the new ban and mounting concerns about the Mississippi case have provoked calls for the Democrat-controlled Congress to immediately expand the U.S. Supreme Court and codifying Roe.

Although congressional progressives in April introduced the Judiciary Act of 2021 (H.R. 2584/S. 1141), which would add four more justices to the Supreme Court, the measure has not advanced and its low co-sponsor numbers suggest that will not change during this session.

As for lawmakers reaffirming abortion rights nationwide, the U.S. House is set to vote on the Women's Health Protection Act (H.R. 3755/S. 1975) later this month. However, unless the evenly divided Senate abolishes the filibuster, it is unlikely to reach President Joe Biden.

New discoveries chip away at myths about Viking shipbuilding

History News Network
September 18, 2021

The "Viking," a replica of the recently excavated Gokstad ship is displayed at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Recent archaeology has deepened understanding of other ship designs made for coastal sailing and frequent portaging.

In the midst of World War II, with the Nazis extolling their Viking heritage, the Swedish writer Frans G. Bengtsson began writing "a story that people could enjoy reading, like The Three Musketeers or the Odyssey."

Bengtsson had made his literary reputation with the biography of an 18th-century king. But for this story he tried a new genre, the historical novel, and a new period of time. His Vikings are common men, smart, witty, and open-minded. "When encountering a Jew who allies with the Vikings and leads them to treasure beyond their dreams, they are duly grateful," notes one critic. "Bengtsson in effect throws the Viking heritage back in the Nazis' face."

His effect on that Viking heritage, however, was not benign. His story, Rode Orm, is one of the most-read and most-loved books in Swedish, and has been translated into over twenty languages; in English it's The Long Ships.

Part of the story takes place on the East Way, which the red-haired Orm travels in a lapstrake ship with 24 pairs of oars. Based on the Oseberg ship's 15 pairs of oars or the Gokstad ship's 16, such a mighty vessel would stretch nearly 100 feet long and weigh 16 to 18 tons, empty. To cross the many portages between the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea, Red Orm's "cheerful crew" threw great logs in front of the prow and hauled the boat along these rollers "in exchange for swigs of 'dragging beer,'" Bengtsson wrote.

This, say experimental archaeologists, is "unproven," "improbable," and—after several tries with replica ships—"not possible."

But Bengtsson's fiction burned itself into popular memory. Early scholars were convinced, too: A drawing of dozens of men attempting to roll a mighty ship on loose logs illustrates the eastern voyages in the classic compendium The Viking from 1966.

"Seldom has anything been surrounded by so much myth and fantasy" as the Viking ship, notes Gunilla Larsson whose 2007 Ph.D. thesis, Ship and Society: Maritime Ideology in Late Iron Age Sweden, has completely changed our understanding of the Vikings' eastern voyages.

Like the myth of the Viking housewife with her keys, the myth of the mighty Viking ship is so common it's taken to be true. But the facts do not back it up.

In the 1990s, archaeologists attempted several times to take replica Viking ships between rivers or across isthmuses using the log-rolling method. They failed. They scaled down their ships. They still failed. Their ships were a half to a third the length of Red Orm's mighty ship. They weighed only one to two tons, not 16 tons. Yet they could not be cheerfully hauled by their crews, no matter how much beer was provided. The task was inefficient even when horses—or wheels or winches or wagons—were added.

We think bigger is better, but it's not.

The beautiful Oseberg ship with its spiral prow and the sleek Gokstad ship, praised as an "ideal form" and "a poem carved in wood," have been considered the classic Viking ships from the time they were first unearthed. Images of these Norwegian ships grace uncountable books on Viking Age history, uncountable museum exhibitions, uncountable souvenirs in Scandinavian gift shops.

But a third ship of equal importance for understanding the Viking Age was discovered in 1898, after Gokstad (1880) and before Oseberg (1903), by a Swedish farmer digging a ditch to dry out a boggy meadow. He axed through the wreck and laid his drain pipes. The landowner, a bit of an antiquarian, decided to rescue the boat and pulled the pieces of old wood out of the ground. His collection founded a local museum, but the boat pieces lay ignored in the attic—unmarked, unnumbered, with no drawings to say how they had lain in the earth when found—until 1980, when a radiocarbon survey of the museum's contents dated them to the 11th century. Their great age was confirmed by tree-ring data, which found the wood for the boat had been cut before 1070.

In the 1990s, archaeologist Gunilla Larsson took on the task of puzzling the pieces back into a boat. She had bits of much of the hull: of the keel, the stem and stern and five wide strakes, even some of the wooden rail attached to the gunwale. She had most of the frames, one bite, and two knees. About 2 feet in the middle of the boat was missing: where the ditch went through. The iron rivets had rusted away, but the rivet holes in the wood were easy to see and, since the distance between them varied, the parts could only go together one way. The wood itself had been flattened by time, but it was still sturdy enough to be soaked in hot water and bent into shape—the same technique the original boatbuilder had used.

When she had solved this 3D jigsaw puzzle, she engaged the National Maritime Museum in Stockholm to help her mount the pieces on an iron frame; the Viks Boat went on display in 1996. Then she created a replica, Talja, and tested it by sailing, rowing, and portaging around Lake Malaren. Talja glided up shallow streams, its pliable planks bending and sliding over rocks. With only the power of its crew, it was easily portaged from one watershed to the next, from Lake Malaren to Lake Vanern in the west, itself draining into the Kattegat.

A second Viks Boat replica, Fornkare, was built in 2012 and taken on the Vikings' East Way from Lake Malaren to Novgorod the first year, then south, by rivers and lakes, some 250 miles through Russia the second year. Concludes Fornkare's builder and captain, Lennart Widerberg, "The vessel proved itself capable of traveling this ancient route" from Birka to Byzantium.

The Viks Boat is 31 feet long—longer than two earlier replicas that failed the East Way portage test—and about 7 feet wide, comfortable for a crew of 8 to 10. Its replicas passed the portage test for two reasons. First, they were built, like the original, with strakes that were radially split, not sawn. The resulting board is easy to bend and hard to break—at less than half an inch thick. The resulting boat is equally seaworthy at almost half the weight of the same size boat built with the same lapstrake technique, but using sawn boards. Empty, the Viks Boat replicas weigh only half a ton—about as much as a horse.

The second reason the Viks Boat replicas proved adequate for the East Way was that archaeologists had set aside Frans Bengtsson's fantastical log-rolling technique for crossing from stream to stream.

By studying the ways the Sami had portaged their dugout canoes through the waterways of Sweden and Finland throughout history, the archaeologists began to see signs of similar portage-ways around Lake Malaren. They built some themselves and had teams race replica ships through an obstacle course of portage types: smooth grassy paths, log-lined roads or ditches (with the logs aligned in the direction of travel), and bogs layered with branches. A team of two adults and seven 17-year-olds finished a winding, half-mile course with Talja in an hour. When the portage was straight over 4-inch-thick logs sunk into the mud so they didn't shift, the boat raced at 150 feet a minute.

The beauty of the Gokstad ship, its poetic quality, comes from its curves, the hull swelling out from the gunwale then tightly back in, making a distinctive V-shape down to the deep, straight keel. These concave curves improve the ship's sailing ability at sea. But the keel cuts too deep to float a shallow, stony stream like those that connect the Baltic to the Black Sea.

Over a portage, even the minimal keel of the Viks Boat replicas needed to be protected with an easily replaceable covering of birch, as had been found on the original. The Old Norse name for this false keel was drag. To "set a drag under someone's pride" was to encourage arrogance.

Historians and archaeologists of the Viking Age have long benefited from an ideological false keel. With the Viks Boat taking its rightful place as an exemplar of the Viking ship, it's time to knock off that damaged drag and replace it. Says Larsson, "We should get used to a completely different picture of the Scandinavian traveling eastward in the Viking Age, one that is far from the traditional image of the male Viking warrior in the prow of a big warship."

Nancy Marie Brown is the author of The Real Valkyrie: The Hidden History of Viking Warrior Women.

Many faith leaders say no to endorsing vaccine exemptions
By PETER SMITH

 - In this Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021 file photo, His Eminence Archbishop Elpidophoros, Primate of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America throws a cross into Spring Bayou during the 115th year of the annual Epiphany celebration in Tarpon Springs, Fla. Leaders of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America said Thursday, Sept. 16, 2021, that while some people may have medical conditions for not receiving the vaccine, “there is no exemption in the Orthodox Church for Her faithful from any vaccination for religious reasons.” Greek Orthodox Archbishop Elpidophoros added: “No clergy are to issue such religious exemption letters,” and any such letter “is not valid.” 

(Douglas R. Clifford/Tampa Bay Times via AP)


As significant numbers of Americans seek religious exemptions from COVID-19 vaccine mandates, many faith leaders are saying: Not with our endorsement.

Leaders of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America said Thursday that while some people may have medical reasons for not receiving the vaccine, “there is no exemption in the Orthodox Church for Her faithful from any vaccination for religious reasons.”

The Holy Eparchial Synod of the nationwide archdiocese, representing the largest share of Eastern Orthodox people in the United States, urged members to “pay heed to competent medical authorities, and to avoid the false narratives utterly unfounded in science.”

“No clergy are to issue such religious exemption letters,” Greek Orthodox Archbishop Elpidophoros said, and any such letter “is not valid.”

Similarly, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America issued a recent statement encouraging vaccine use and saying that “there is no evident basis for religious exemption” in its own or the wider Lutheran tradition.

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York laid out its own stance during the summer, saying that any priest issuing an exemption letter would be “acting in contradiction” to statements from Pope Francis that receiving the vaccine is morally acceptable and responsible.

Both the Vatican and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops have said Catholics can receive the vaccines in good conscience given the lack of alternatives and the goal of alleviating suffering — even while objecting to research with even a remote connection to abortion.

A number of dioceses have adopted policies similar to New York’s, and bishops in El Paso, Texas, and Lexington, Kentucky, have mandated vaccines for employees.

But other Catholic jurisdictions are more accommodating of exemptions. The Colorado Catholic Conference, the policy arm of the state’s bishops, has posted online a template for a letter that priests can sign saying an individual parishioner may draw on Catholic values to object to the vaccines. South Dakota’s bishops have also taken that stance.

At issue for many Catholics and other abortion opponents is that the most widely used COVID-19 vaccines were tested on fetal cell lines developed over decades in laboratories, though the vaccines themselves do not contain any such material.

The issue is becoming more heated as public- and private-sector employers increasingly impose mandates.

In this Saturday, July 11, 2020 file photo, mourners attend the blessing of ashes of Mexicans who died from COVID-19 during a payer a service at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York, before they were repatriated to Mexico. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York issued a statement in the summer of 2021, saying that any priest issuing an exemption letter would be “acting in contradiction” to statements from Pope Francis that receiving the vaccine is morally acceptable and responsible. (AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez)

A clerical letter wouldn’t necessarily be needed for someone to be granted an exemption — federal law requires employers make reasonable accommodations for “sincerely held” religious beliefs — though a clergy endorsement could help bolster a person’s claim.

The Rev. Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Dallas, a Southern Baptist megachurch, said he and his staff “are neither offering nor encouraging members to seek religious exemptions from the vaccine mandates.”

“There is no credible religious argument against the vaccines,” he said via email. “Christians who are troubled by the use of a fetal cell line for the testing of the vaccines would also have to abstain from the use of Tylenol, Pepto Bismol, Ibuprofen, and other products that used the same cell line if they are sincere in their objection.”

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does not provide religious exemptions for vaccines for members, according to church spokesman Eric Hawkins. Leaders of the Utah-based faith have made pleas for members to get vaccinated even as doctrine acknowledges it’s up to individual choice.

The church’s Brigham Young University has asked students to report their vaccination status but is not requiring vaccinations, and the church is also requiring U.S. missionaries serving in foreign countries to be vaccinated.

Some other religious groups, such as the Orthodox Union, an umbrella organization for Orthodox Judaism, and the United Methodist Church, have encouraged people to get vaccines but have not issued policy statements on exemptions.

The Fiqh Council of North America, made up of Islamic scholars, has advised Muslims to receive the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines and to debunk “baseless rumors and myths” about them.

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Associated Press writers Brady McCombs in Salt Lake City and David Crary in New York contributed to this report.

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support from the Lilly Endowment through The Conversation U.S. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

There's a big problem with religious exemptions from vaccines

Terry H. Schwadron, DC Report
September 18, 2021

Republican and vaccine skeptic Todd Engle in front of his home in Martinsburg, West Virginia, on March 18, 2021; he is one of many Republicans around the country who voice concerns about the vaccine(AFP)

The anti-vaxx protest government mandates is in full swing, fueled, and amped by non-stop support from right-leaning commentators and celebrities, various evangelical ministers and what look to be lawsuits by the basketful.

Curiously, the goals of protest seem aimed both at allowing for individual "choice" over mandates, and, well, mandating that the executive orders themselves be declared unconstitutional. Choice for me, no choice for Joe Biden.

Despite thousands of covid-positive tests and 10 departmental death, some 3,000 Los Angeles Police Department employees are planning to seek exemptions from getting the covid vaccine, and a group of police has filed a federal lawsuit against the city's vaccine and mandates, The Los Angeles Times reports. That is being echoed by police groups in San Diego, Chicago and New York in public service jobs, private businesses and even hospitals, says The Washington Post.

The message: I'd rather quit than be told what to do about covid, a political mindset.

There are still some who argue on medical grounds, disabilities, or over misinformation about vaccine safety, but the tool of choice emerging seems to be a claim of religious incongruity.

Though there are variations in the mandates, claiming religious belief can exempt individuals from most mandates. The question is what does that mean?

Religion, The New Legal Battlefield

As CBS News has explored, claims for earnest religious exemption "is new territory for many employers navigating the issue, given how risky a proposition it is to allow unvaccinated employees to mingle with, and possibly infect, colleagues in the workplace."

The big question here: What makes for a vaccine waiver based on religion. In effect, it has become the emerging legal battlefield.

None of the major religions oppose vaccines. Pope Francis has blessed the vaccines, calling getting vaccinated as "an act of love" for one's neighbors. Leaders of all religions in this country and internationally have pleaded for vaccinations in this country and internationally. The Rev. Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Dallas, an ardent Trump supporter, told the Associated Press this week that that "there is no credible religious argument" against receiving the COVID-19 vaccine and that he is not offering nor encouraging religious exemptions.

Still, some local congregational leaders have done the opposite, decrying vaccines along with mandates. The Freedom Church in Charlotte, N.C. declared "It is despicable for a business or government agency to force someone to take a vaccine that is unproven, dangerous and not fully tested." Of course, the FDA has reviewed extensive testing and approved the vaccine as safe.

Some have asserted that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine burdens their personal believes because somewhere in its development the company used fetal cell lines developed from aborted fetuses – though that is not true for the far more widely used Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.

In Tulsa, Sheridan Church pastor Jackson Lahmeyer, who also owns an real estate investment business, is offering his signature on religious exemption forms from covid vaccines to anyone donating even a dollar to his church for online membership, according to The Washington Post. Experts on religious freedom claims say that most people do not necessarily need a letter from clergy for a religious exemption, but Lahmeyer, who opposes both vaccines and mandates, says it is a way for him to bring the issue to the fore.

In Northern California, the pastor of a megachurch hands out religious exemption. A Texas-based evangelist offers exemption letters to anyone — for a suggested "donation" starting at $25.

No Standards

So, now cities, states, the federal government, and businesses with more than 100 employees are being told to mandate vaccines. Under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, they must offer exemptions to individuals with either a disability or "sincerely held" religious belief that prevents them from getting the vaccine.

But we don't know what that means. Declaring oneself a conscientious objector to war, for example, required a whole lot more backup than saying it's what I believe.

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett without explanation recently struck down an attempt by students at the Indiana University to bypass a vaccine mandate on religious grounds.

Yet, it seems that the legal claim here is that an individual's "sincerely held" religious belief is enough to qualify for waiver. So, now we are to believe that 3,000 LAPD officers all hold the same religious belief?

By contrast, requests for exemption based on medical grounds usually come with a doctor's statement, in this case perhaps showing a known allergy to vaccine components. With belief, this is unclear. An employer must engage in a two-sided dialogue to determine if the worker's request can be met, but then what?

Interviews with experts indicate that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has not given the guidance on how to determine what a sincerely held religious belief is. Employers generally do not push back against employees to claim religious beliefs to skip work on a holy day, for example.

Covid is changing the rules, including the rules of protest. Simply saying, "I believe in God, I can't get vaccinated," won't fly either, one labor lawyer told CBS. United Airlines recently denied several employees' requests for religious exemptions from the airline's vaccine mandate, saying the employees will be placed on unpaid leave.

This waiver for religion makes it is unclear just how hard or soft Biden's requirement for companies is in reality. The government has precedent in ordering vaccines, but has placed enforcement in the hands of OSHA, the industrial safety arm of the Labor Department, rather than departments more directly responsible for health.