UK

Here’s every Tory who voted against stopping sewage dumping in rivers

The House of Lords amendment sought to prevent companies discharging raw sewage in rivers. It was rejected.

 by Henry Goodwin
2021-10-22 12:26



The Tories have rejected efforts to place a legal duty on water companies to reduce raw sewage discharges into rivers.

MPs debated the environment bill on Wednesday, after clean water campaigners urged them to back a key amendment on sewage that had been agreed in the House of Lords.

Raw sewage was discharged into waters more than 400,000 times in 2020, over a total of more than 3.1 million hours.

The bill will govern environmental policy, from rivers to air, after Britain’s departure from the EU. Campaign group Surfers Against Sewage had pushed for an amendment to tackle sewage pollution to be accepted by MPs.

But George Eustice, the environment secretary, recommended that MPs reject the proposal – and it was voted down on Wednesday night.

But Boris Johnson could face an embarrassing rebellion ahead of COP26, after many of his own MPs voted to stop water companies dumping raw sewage into rivers.

The amendment – which sought to “place a duty on water companies to ensure that untreated sewage is not discharged into rivers and other inland waters” – won support from 22 Conservative MPs including nine ex-ministers and six current select committee chairman.

Speaking ahead of the vote, Hugo Tagholm, of Surfers Against Sewage, said: “In this most important of environmental decades, it’s shocking that the government is recommending that MPs reject progressive and ambitious amendments that would protect water, air and nature.

“Why wouldn’t they want water companies to have a legal obligation not to pollute our rivers and ocean with sewage, for example?

“It beggars belief and hardly shows a commitment to be the greenest government ever. It’s time for more ambitious thinking and law that builds protected nature back into public ownership rather than leaving it to the ravages of shareholder interests.”

Despite some abstentions, 265 Conservative MPs voted down the Lords amendment. They were:

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE WHOLE LIST OF 265

Here's every Tory who voted against stopping sewage dumping in rivers (thelondoneconomic.com)

The 'open secret' behind Austria media graft scandal

Agence France-Presse
October 22, 2021

Sebastian Kurz resigned as Austrian chancellor this month after corruption claims eroded his image JOE KLAMAR AFP/File

The scandal erupted this month when prosecutors raided locations including the chancellory and the finance ministry.

They are currently probing allegations that Kurz's inner circle used public money to pay for polls skewed to boost his image.

Prosecutors also suspect that in return for running the surveys, and other fawning coverage of Kurz, a major tabloid received lucrative public adverts.

Kurz and all those under investigation deny any wrong-doing.

But the fact that government adverts are used as a means of influencing the press has long been an "open secret", says Yilmaz Gulum, a political journalist with public broadcaster ORF.

In the small EU member state of 8.9 million people, large swathes of the press have become reliant on public money as "their economic model of print media has been destabilised by the internet", says Fritz Hausjell, deputy head of the media and communications department at the University of Vienna.

Prosecutors are probing allegations the inner circle of fallen right-wing Chancellor Sebastian Kurz used public money to pay for polls skewed to boost his image and fawning press coverage JOE KLAMAR AFP

By far and away the largest source of public funds has been ad spending by regional and national government, which has grown to 220 million euros ($256 million) a year.

However, many official ads seem to have little informational content and are used instead to show beaming ministers or mayors wishing citizens a "Merry Christmas" or "sunny summer".

-'Buying goodwill'-


According to media expert Andy Kaltenbrunner from the University of Salzburg, the Oesterreich and Heute freesheet tabloids are the most dependent on government funds, accounting for 20-40 percent of their revenues.

Gulum says the way the ads are placed across the sector amounts to "market distortion" with tabloids receiving much higher sums than the broadsheets, some of which are more critical of the government.

Austrian national tabloids like Oesterreich may exert pressure on governments by going on the attack if they do not buy adverts JOE KLAMAR AFP

Former Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl said in May this year that when she took office in 2017 and made huge cuts to the ministry's ad budget "many were horrified".

The aim of ad spending was generally seen as "buying goodwill in press coverage," she explained to a parliamentary committee investigating corruption.

Huasjell points out that the system can be used to exercise influence in both directions.

Tabloids like Oesterreich can exert pressure on government by saying: "If you don't buy lots of ads, then we'll take you down or disregard you."

- 'A danger to democracy'-

Henrike Brandstoetter, an MP for the opposition liberal Neos party, says the upshot of the system is that "with some media (the audience) can't have confidence that what's written is always correct".

"That's endangering democracy," she says.

The advertising issue is one reason Austria has slid 10 places down the press freedom rankings compiled by the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) pressure group since 2015.

In its latest report on Austria, RSF said that despite the entry of the Greens into government -- "a party that claims to respect the highest press freedom standards" -- there has been little progress on "press financing reform".

The press is therefore likely to remain "dependent on state funding for some time", it added

.

Former Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl said that when she took office in 2017 and made huge cuts to the ministry's ad budget 'many were horrified' Yuri KADOBNOV AFP

Brandstoetter sees the solution lies in capping the amount the government spends on ads and instead upping the amount of direct public subsidy.


Advocates of this route say subsidies would be less liable to manipulation by the government of the day as they would be shared more equitably across the sector and on a more stable basis.
'Manipulating opinion'

The other aspect of the media landscape cast in a dubious light by the latest scandal is polling.


Kurz's aides are suspected of commissioning polls which were massaged in order to smooth his path to the chancellery.

Brandstoetter calls them a "manipulation of public opinion".

The polling company that carried them out was not a member of the polling industry association VdMI because it didn't meet the group's quality control standards.

These include a minimum of 800 respondents per survey and avoiding using online-only polls.

Christoph Hofinger of the SORA polling institute -- one of the country's most respected -- called for improvements in his field.

"When polls appear that aren't up to standard, they shouldn't be used in public debate," he said.

© 2021 AFP

NOT SO GREAT LAKE

Lake Superior is among the fastest-warming lakes on the planet. Climate change may be the culprit behind its algae blooms too

2021/10/22 03:14 (CDT)
© Chicago Tribune

Erin Hooley/Chicago Tribune/TNS

APOSTLE ISLANDS NATIONAL LAKESHORE, Wis. — The kayakers stood for a moment on the beach, marveling at the clear sweep of blue.

On a warm fall day along the south shore of one of the world’s largest freshwater lakes, the sun lolled toward the horizon, miles out from the peppered, coppered grains of sand anchoring the kayaks. Fresh off their first trip through the sea caves of the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, the twin sisters from Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, listed off Lake Superior’s “Caribbean blue” water and cold temperatures, its vastness.

“I would never have guessed it would have happened here,” said Jessie Rubenzer, with a glance toward the water.

Jenn Short echoed the thought: “I would never have guessed.”

“It’s all perfect beach,” Rubenzer said. And, said Short, “Perfect water.”

When it’s not green.

A bloom of blue-green algae, or cyanobacteria, appeared in Lake Superior about a decade ago, sending scientists in search of answers to why a worrisome problem was surfacing in a lake that holds a tenth of the earth’s surface freshwater.

The blooms, which have cropped up in all the Great Lakes, can deplete oxygen and cut off light, harming organisms trapped underneath. They sometimes create toxins that threaten the health of fish, dogs and humans, and make their way into water intakes. How and why toxins accompany some blooms is still a bit of a mystery.

With their ephemeral nature — the handful of blooms that have occurred in Lake Superior have been mostly small and short-lived — samples and good data are limited.

Since the first reported Lake Superior bloom in 2012, no serious levels of toxins had been confirmed.

That changed last month with a bloom near Superior, Wisconsin, that left a beach’s water streaky green. A toxin more potent than cyanide was detected just beyond the level set for safe swimming by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Confirmation gave scientists pause. Another change.

Lake Superior is among the world’s fastest-warming freshwater bodies and has increasingly borne the force of what used to be considered once-in-a-lifetime storms. Weather extremes fueled by human-caused climate change may imperil a lake whose reputation rests on its unspoiled water.

Algae blooms are generally driven by temperature, sunlight, water conditions and nutrients — primarily phosphorus, which can come from farm fertilizer and manure that eventually wash into lakes.

But among the Great Lakes, Lake Superior is an anomaly.

Unlike Lake Erie and Green Bay in Lake Michigan — warmer, shallower and surrounded by sources of agricultural runoff — Lake Superior is cold, deep and nutrient poor. Blooms have appeared in northern Canadian waters, but most span a popular recreational stretch from Duluth to the Apostle Islands, where land cover is largely forest and woody wetlands; agriculture and urban detritus are minimal.

Climate change appears to be a primary actor.

“The data have convinced me that the changing climate system has pushed Lake Superior into a new state, one where we get these blue-green blooms,” said Robert Sterner, the director of the Large Lakes Observatory at the University of Minnesota Duluth. “One of the things that’s driving our work is if, in fact, we’re in the beginning of something that’s getting worse, we really owe it to the world to try to understand this circumstance as best we can.”

A group of Midwestern scientists can’t reverse decades of burned fossil fuels or a lack of political will.

What they can do is head back out into the water.

This summer, a boost in funding came from the Cooperative Science and Monitoring Initiative, an ongoing binational survey of the Great Lakes. All summer, scientists from local universities and state and federal agencies, assisted by real-time buoys and even an underwater glider named for the genus of the common loon, have been out on the lake and in the lab, collecting, filtering, testing — and hoping the water tells a story.

What scientists can learn from Lake Superior may benefit other lakes already struggling with algae blooms as climate change threatens to make things worse.

Hannah Ramage, monitoring coordinator with the Lake Superior National Estuarine Research Reserve, is used to keeping an eye out for a tinted surface when leaving the office. In September, she noticed the toxic bloom at Barker’s Island, where it looked like someone had dumped bright, green paint.

She also spotted some beachgoers with dogs who looked like they were headed toward the shore.

She offered a warning: “You might want to stay out of the water.”
‘Stacking the decks’

About 60 miles east of Barker’s Island, freshwater gurgled and spat between arched sandstone, eaten through and worn away along the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. Evergreens hung from bluffs’ edges. Slivers of light illuminated crevices just wide enough to fit a kayak.

The sea caves, the result of natural processes over hundreds of millions of years, are a good reason to visit Lake Superior. When the water by Meyers Beach is clear.

In 2018, Brenda Moraska Lafrancois, aquatic ecologist with the National Park Service, heard of an unusual sight along the lakeshore, which includes nearly two dozen islands and a 12-mile stretch around the Bayfield Peninsula.

Populations of blue-green algae, skilled at adapting to a range of conditions and able to float in the water, exploded.

That August bloom, lasting days, covered more than 50 miles from the Duluth area to the eastern Apostle Islands. Sediment plumes lingered for weeks.

If one of the world’s largest lakes is showing these kinds of unexpected changes, Lafrancois said, “that’s something that’s worth paying attention to.”

Larger blooms have occurred in years with above-average temperatures and heavy rains capable of carrying loads of nutrients to the lake. One giant storm walloping the highly erodible clay and sediment can contribute more than a typical month’s worth of phosphorus.

In June 2012, an unusually intense storm caused more than $100 million in damage and unloaded 10 inches of rain around Duluth. Roads washed out. A half-dozen communities declared a state of emergency. More than a dozen animals drowned at the Lake Superior Zoo — two lucky harbor seals who escaped were recovered from the street.

A few weeks later, a filmy, green stretch spanned more than 12 miles of Lake Superior from Cornucopia, Wisconsin, to Little Sand Bay, but soon dissipated.

Six years later, another historic storm hit. About a month and a half after that, so did a massive bloom.

“We don’t know at this stage what the future holds,” Lafrancois said. “The years we’ve seen the biggest blooms in the past, these are years that have major storm events and flooding. And they’re years with warm temperatures. And we know just based on climate change models and so forth that we’re kind of stacking the decks in favor of those types of conditions.

“So it seems likely that if those conditions are what we see more of, then blooms might be something that we see more of, too.”

Rising temperatures, diminishing ice cover and longer summer seasons don’t bode well for the rapidly warming lake. This summer, Lake Superior saw above average surface water temperatures, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data. Mid-October temperatures are the warmest on record since 1995, still hovering near 60 degrees.

The Great Lakes region overall has seen a nearly 10% increase in annual precipitation in the last century, and more regularly through intense storms, with that trend projected to continue.

Annual average air temperatures for Lake Superior areas including the Apostle Islands could increase by as much as 8 degrees by century’s end, and, according to an EPA-funded climate assessment for Lake Superior, a summer at Isle Royale National Park, north of the Apostle Islands, could feel more like a day at the beach in southern Wisconsin.

‘Long-lasting change’

Sterner, the Large Lakes director, has spent years trying to understand green water, and even longer learning about Lake Superior — from its depths to its edges.

Sterner said he worries about protecting Lake Superior as a cultural resource.

“I think about people who maybe planned all winter for a kayak trip, and they showed up, and they didn’t see what you saw. They saw murky green water that looks like melted crayon. Well, they didn’t plan all winter for that. "

“It’s what’s happening right here at the beach that matters,” Sterner said. “So I worry about that, because I love this place.”

On a terrace outside his Duluth office, where a sticker asks if you’ve “hugged a limnologist today,” Sterner said too much has happened since the 2012 bloom to write anything off as a one-off.

“The big worry, of course, is that we’re on the threshold of some really significant, long lasting change,” Sterner said. “Are we just on the verge of seeing something that will be more prevalent, more common, more regular — heaven forbid larger events?”

At this point, Sterner said, “I don’t think these are going away.”

Inside the lab, where beakers lined the walls and a freezer brimmed with water bottles yellowing from age, researcher Sandra Brovold talked above the din of pumps. She and graduate student Ayooluwateso Coker worked their way through samples from sites stretching toward the sea caves, preparing filters roughly the size of a poker chip to collect what’s in the water.

In the months ahead, researchers will be on the lookout for red flags — bumps in algae biomass, changes in toxins, nutrient spikes — especially following storms.

“It’s the very beginning. They’re very minimal,” Brovold said, about the blooms. “But if you look at how the climate is changing and how things are happening, I’m sorry, but it’s only going to get worse.”

Coker, who grew up in Chicago, knew blooms were a problem in Lake Erie. Now she studies how storms and sediment connect to Lake Superior’s blooms.

“I was pretty shocked when I learned that Lake Superior has blooms,” Coker said. “Then I think I was less surprised and more like, OK, this is happening now.”

Along with the influx of nutrients from storms, scientists think the algae cells needed to fuel a bloom may arrive from upland streams and coastal harbor areas that feed into the lake. They’ve also been collecting samples from inland and urban rivers.

About a half-dozen reports of small Lake Superior blooms came in throughout the 2021 season, which was warm but dry. Only a couple of blooms, at most, were reported in the two years prior.

“My science hat hopes for more blooms to happen so that I can measure them and try to figure out what’s going on. Without a bloom I can’t do that,” Sterner said. “My citizen hat and my human-being hat — I’m always glad when there isn’t a bloom, because who wants them?”

And making the public aware of algae blooms is still a challenge.

A couple visiting the Apostle Islands from Seattle said they were familiar with blooms, but wouldn’t suspect them in the surprisingly clear water. Another doe-eyed pair celebrating an anniversary hadn’t heard of them at all. Even a kayaking guide, who could maneuver through the sea caves’ tightest gaps, seemed unaware.

But, Sterner said, people still talk about what happened in Toledo.

Lake Superior’s occasional blooms are paltry compared to western Lake Erie, where blooms have occurred for decades, can cover hundreds of miles and have become increasingly toxic. In 2014, residents were warned to avoid their tap water for three days because of a toxic bloom.

“It took that to really penetrate peoples’ consciousness: No, you can’t turn your water on,” Sterner said. “OK, now people know.”
‘A conundrum’

Just a short drive from the Barker’s Island swimming beach, a bald eagle flew near the Enger Park lookout, where you can survey the St. Louis River as it feeds into Lake Superior. The river is still an area of concern due to lingering industrial pollution.

Days after the toxic bloom at Barker’s Island was reported, the beach was empty. Paw prints lined the shore. A sign warning of blue-green algae blooms with a happy-looking pup on its corner was posted on a nearby pole. Dogs, more likely to drink the tainted water, have died after exposure.

Blooms can contain different cyanobacteria species, which may fuel or hinder growth. And there are different genetic lines — or strains.

“Within one species you can have strains that have the genes for toxin production and you can have species that do not have those genes for toxin production,” said Gina LaLiberte, the harmful algal bloom coordinator with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. “The really important thing that scientists are trying to figure out is, what are the conditions that lead to toxin production?”

The open water blooms have been dominated by the species dolichospermum, which is more regularly found in lower nutrient waters.

The calm water at Barker’s Island beach, protected from the open lake, is different from what’s happening near the sea caves. The bloom was different, too. The one at Barker’s Island included two species not seen in the open water blooms and the toxin microcystin.

Low exposure to cyanotoxins may lead to rashes, or diarrhea. Microcystin can cause liver damage.

Cody Sheik, an assistant professor with the Large Lakes Observatory at the University of Minnesota Duluth, studies the ecology of Great Lakes microorganisms. “We know so very little about the function of microorganisms,” he said. “And that’s because most of them we can’t cultivate in the lab.”

But researchers are studying DNA from water samples and comparing organisms.

“And you can look and see what sort of functional genes are present on the genome that would give them the ability to say, make a toxin, or maybe use nitrogen or use phosphorus in a different way,” Sheik said.

Treating the blooms “all as bad guys” is a great approach from a managerial standpoint, Sheik said. And researchers are broadening the scope of potential toxins that may be associated with the blooms.

But research has shown there can be toxic and nontoxic versions blooming throughout the year, sometimes even coexisting in the same bloom. The huge 2018 bloom lacked microcystin toxin production genes, Sheik found.

“So it’s really a conundrum,” Sheik said.

While most of the blooms that have occurred in Lake Superior have appeared on the west side of the Bayfield Peninsula, concerns are growing on the eastern side.

The town of Ashland gets its drinking water from Lake Superior, through the Chequamegon Bay. Communities have started to question what they would do if a bloom appeared.

The bay is relatively shallow, isolated and more likely to be an urban runoff dumping ground where phosphorus might collect than Lake Superior at large.

“It seems like if you’re going to see an algal bloom in Lake Superior, the Chequamegon Bay is where it would happen,” said Matt Hudson, associate director of the Mary Griggs Burke Center for Freshwater Innovation at Northland College. “That’s not the case. So we’re asking why.”

Hudson and water resource specialist Reane Loisell have spent the summer replicating experiments by Sterner’s team to see what might be different east of the sea caves. Maybe a different cyanobacteria species, or a lack of upstream sources.

On board a small boat, they paused near the mouth of the outflowing Sioux River, where clear water turned cloudy — remnants of the week’s earlier storm.

“There hasn’t been a 500 or 1,000-year precipitation event in three years,” Hudson said. “I say that tongue and cheek, for sure. The expectation is that we’re going to see more of that moving ahead, unfortunately. But the jury’s still out here on what the actual drivers of the blooms are, and whether or not we can do something about it.”

Hudson inserted a probe into the water to check metrics including algae pigments. Lake water pumped through a filter that would be later used for DNA sequencing.

All “pieces of information,” Hudson said, “that will hopefully help us solve the puzzle.”

———

  

Graduate student Teso Cocker tests and catalogues water samples from in and around Lake Superior at the University of Minnesota Duluth Thursday, Sept. 23, 2021, in Duluth, Minnesota. - Erin Hooley/Chicago Tribune/TNS

  

Scientist Sandy Brovold tests and catalogues water samples from in and around Lake Superior at the University of Minnesota Duluth Thursday, Sept. 23, 2021, in Duluth, Minnesota. - Erin Hooley/Chicago Tribune/TNS

Kayakers paddle on Lake Superior, as seen from Meyers Beach Thursday, Sept. 23, 2021, in Bayfield, Wisconsin. - Erin Hooley/Chicago Tribune/TNS

Madosin Barningham kayaks through the Bayfield Peninsula Sea Caves in the Apostle Islands Maritime Cliffs State Natural Area, photographed by kayak Wednesday, Sept. 22, 2021, in Bayfield, Wisconsin. - Erin Hooley/Chicago Tribune/TNS

Kayakers paddle on Lake Superior, as seen from Meyers Beach, on Thursday, Sept. 23, 2021, in Bayfield, Wisconsin. - Erin Hooley/Chicago Tribune/TNS

Erin Hooley/Chicago Tribune/TNS

The Netflix Employee Who Was Fired And Accused Of Leaking Data Said They “Didn't Want To Be The Face” Of The Dave Chappelle Controversy

“I would love to talk to Dave Chappelle. I think he would think it would be hilarious that the only person who got fired over all this is a Black person.”

Krystie Lee YandoliBuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on October 20, 2021,

Frederic J. Brown / AFP via Getty Images

When former Netflix employee B. Pagels-Minor got involved in the behind-the-scenes activism in response to Dave Chappelle’s The Closer, they never intended to become the focal point of the widespread conversation sparked by the stand-up special. But since they've been fired, accused of leaking internal numbers about the show to the media, people are no longer just criticizing Chappelle’s anti-trans rhetoric — they’re also finding fault in Netflix’s decision to let go Pagels-Minor, a Black trans employee who is pregnant.

“I didn't want to be the face of this,” Pagels-Minor told BuzzFeed News. “I don't want this to be about me. I want this to be about the commonality of, if we spend time learning and educating ourselves about others, then we're better. I think that's the real thing.”

Chappelle’s latest stand-up comedy special, which was released on Oct. 5, has been widely criticized for including anti-trans jokes and for attacking the LGBTQ community. Netflix employees have been outspoken with their disappointment in The Closer, as well as the company’s responses, culminating in a walkout Wednesday in protest.

Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos doubled down on his stance that the streaming service would not be removing the comedy special, saying in a leaked memo that Chappelle “is one of the most popular stand-up comedians today, and we have a long standing deal with him.”

He added, “Several of you have also asked where we draw the line on hate. We don’t allow titles at Netflix that are designed to incite hate or violence, and we don’t believe The Closer crosses that line. I recognize, however, that distinguishing between commentary and harm is hard, especially with stand-up comedy which exists to push boundaries.”

Representatives for Chappelle did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Last week, three employees were suspended for attending a director-level meeting that they weren’t invited to (including trans software engineer Terra Field, who has been vocal about Chappelle’s special on Twitter), then shortly reinstated. In response to recent events, trans Netflix employees and allies held a walkout on Wednesday and presented Sarandos with “a list of firm asks” and demands.




BuzzFeed News

Tensions ran high at the in-person rally outside of Netflix’s Hollywood office building as employees and activists gathered in opposition of a small group of people who identified as TERF and free speech supporters.

Media personality and activist Ashlee Marie Preston, who organized the rally, addressed the crowd, saying, “We’re up against the emergence of a hate economy and there is this manipulation of algorithmic science that distorts the way that we perceive ourselves and others.”

Diana, a Netflix employee who preferred not to use their last name for fear of retaliation, said it wasn’t an easy decision to walk out of work, especially considering there’s some tension with colleagues who disagree with the action. But Diana said they felt a responsibility as a Netflix employee to show up in hopes to reach the company’s leadership.

“I think our leadership mistook how seriously this content has an impact on people,” Diana said. “They’re just talking about making money and making sure we entertain the world and not perhaps thinking about how there are human feelings and lives involved in this and there’s a true impact.”

In response to the walkout, a Netflix spokesperson said the company values its “trans colleagues and allies” and understands “the deep hurt that’s been caused.”

“We respect the decision of any employee who chooses to walk out, and recognize we have much more work to do both within Netflix and in our content,” they added.

Pagels-Minor was originally at the helm of planning Wednesday’s walkout before they were fired on Oct. 15, less than a month before they were set to take parental leave. They were recruited to the company and hired in March 2020 as a data product manager, and prior to being let go from the company they had recently joined the gaming team. Back in June 2020, Pagels-Minor said they were having conversations about Chappelle’s Sticks & Stones Netflix special, which premiered in 2019, with Sarandos and other content leaders. That’s when they said they were inspired to run for Global Lead positions in both trans and Black employee resources groups, which aim to foster communities internally and advocate for Black and trans individuals in the workplace.


Courtesy B. Pagels-Minor
Former Netflix employee B. Pagels-Minor.

“I was just like, 'I think I could help us actually communicate and translate and make this a more effective conversation,'” Pagels-Minor said. “The ask has never been specifically ‘Take down these specials’ because that's not really how we work. It's always been ‘How can we create content that shows the full human experience, including trans people?’”

A spokesperson for Netflix told BuzzFeed News that Pagels-Minor’s allegations “are not supported by the facts.”

“This employee admitted sharing confidential information externally from their Netflix email on several occasions. Also, they were the only employee to access detailed, sensitive data on four titles that later appeared in the press,” the spokesperson added. “They claim only to have shared this information in an internal document, and that another employee must have leaked it. However, that document was missing data for one title and so cannot have been the source for the leak. In addition to having no explanation for this discrepancy, the employee then wiped their devices, making any further investigation impossible.”

But Laurie M. Burgess, Pagels-Minor's legal representative, told BuzzFeed News that the former Netflix employee never admitted to leaking information to the press because they did not do so. Burgess also said Pagels-Minor is considering taking legal action against Netflix but is hopeful for the outcome of today's protest.

According to Pagels-Minor, they felt empowered to take on leadership roles in both employee resources groups because of the “phenomenal” experience they had working on the product team, where they felt consistently supported by managers and supervisors.

“The product side of the business has been leaps and bounds ahead of the rest of the company in a lot of ways in their thought process. I would tell people who worked in content all the time, ‘I kind of feel bad for you because you don't have the same experience as I do at Netflix,’” they said. “I was so comfortable in my role and in knowing that as long as I did a good job, I would be safe at Netflix. And, of course, now that ended up not being true, but hey, I was naive.”


BuzzFeed News
Counterprotesters at Wednesday's rally.

Sarandos apologized to Netflix employees in an email Tuesday night, saying, "I have had time to reflect on our conversations over the last week and I wanted to make clear that I screwed up in how I have engaged with you — sending emails that lacked humanity and were overly simplistic about the real world impact of stories."

He wrote, “I should have first acknowledged the pain and harm that our trans colleagues experience — and also that storytelling has an impact that can be both positive and negative. I am deeply committed to more people seeing their lives being reflected on screen and to creating an even better workplace. We’ve made progress and we have a lot more to do. Artistic freedom is crucial to the creative process and because art is designed to stir emotions, these two values — inclusion and creative expression — can sometimes interact in ways that are very painful: that is the complexity of our work. Netflix is a learning company, and I will keep learning from the many conversations that I am having with colleagues across the company."

Before the special was released, Pagels-Minor said, a colleague who is a part of inclusion and diversity at Netflix sent them an email saying The Closer “might be offensive to some people” and they “might want to prepare” for the probable backlash.

“I was just like, ‘Okay, is it anything different than usual?' And they were like, ‘Not really, it's just like his typical stuff,’” Pagels-Minor said. “If I had known that there were going to be references to TERFs or to misgendering people, I would have reacted very differently.”

Pagels-Minor didn’t watch The Closer, but after reading the full transcript, they said it was clear that the special was “overwhelmingly very unacceptable.”

Their initial reaction to The Closer was criticism that Chappelle didn’t include or mention people of color when discussing the trans community, thinking to themselves, “Oh, so there's no Black trans people?”

“To me, the supposition that Dave Chappelle was making was LGBTQ+ people, who he seems to think are all white, get what they want and Black people don't get what they want, and I was just like, wait one second. I am a Black trans person. I definitely don't get what I want,” Pagels-Minor said. “I can't go to certain places or areas. There are literally Reddit and 4chan channels where Black people come together to talk about how much they hate Black trans people. I think that Dave Chappelle would be very curious about the fact that his special completely forgot about a whole slew of people who are in danger every day.”


Rodin Eckenroth / Getty Images
Activist Blossom C. Brown and rally organizer Ashlee Marie Preston at the walkout on Wednesday.

According to Pagels-Minor, members of the trans employee resource group started to organize and brainstorm how to reach Netflix leadership in a way they weren’t able to in the past. Originally, they proposed a “trans day of rest,” but the larger group voted in favor of a walkout. Pagels-Minor said that members were also not happy with Sarandos’s emails in response to feedback about the special and that they’re “terrified for Ted [Sarandos] to be the sole CEO of Netflix” based on his internal and external response to the Chappelle controversy.

Pagels-Minor said they were questioned last Thursday about the leaks to the press in a meeting with their manager, an HR representative, and a senior legal representative. They said they told everyone in the meeting they were collecting data about different shows because they were “putting together a memo to prove logically in a data-driven way that if you were to invest in other types of content, you might actually have a better payoff than you do with the Chappelle specials.”

When Pagels-Minor was told it looked suspicious that they were the one who primarily accessed this information, they responded, “I've been sharing this information widely. There are open documents that I created that I shared widely. Anyone could have looked at this information and leaked this information.”

Pagels-Minor didn’t anticipate getting fired from their job at Netflix, saying they were “heartbroken” to be let go from a company they admire, somewhere they had expected to work for years to come and where they “expected to be a part of the solution.”

“I was surprised that I didn't have an opportunity to be a part of an investigation so that I could potentially defend myself,” they said. “I really do fundamentally think that Netflix has the ability to be the media company that tells stories that haven’t been told before. Netflix is uniquely suited to actually do all that because of the core values around how they choose content. Netflix operates around good values, they're good principles, and they're just choosing not to apply them equally.”

But despite everything that’s happened, Pagels-Minor also said it’s “not a bad thing” to get into “good trouble.”

“Ultimately, all I ever cared about was creating a better world, and at some point this conversation has moved forward. If Netflix invests in more content, if others are inspired to learn more about transgender individuals and denounce TERF ideology, then I'm kind of OK with it,” they said. “Because then I created more love, harmony, and respect in the world, and that's what's most important. I am good at my job, so I know I'm going to find another job, but what I can't do is sit by the wayside and let harm come to people who shouldn't be harmed.”

Netflix did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the investigation.

When asked whether they would ever be interested in having a conversation with Chappelle himself, Pagels-Minor said they’re open to the idea.

“I would love to talk to Dave Chappelle,” they said. “I think he would think it would be hilarious that the only person who got fired over all this is a Black person.”

Guilt, grief and anxiety as young people fear for climate's future
2021/10/22 
© Reuters


By Natalie Thomas, Barbara Lewis and Jonathan Shenfield

LONDON (Reuters) - Overwhelmed, sad, guilty are some of the emotions young people say they feel when they think of climate change and their concerns world leaders will fail to tackle it.

Broadly referred to as climate anxiety, research has stacked up to measure its prevalence ahead of the U.N. talks in Glasgow, which begin at the end of the month to thrash out how to put the 2015 Paris Agreement on curbing climate change into effect.

One of the biggest studies to date, funded by Avaaz, an online campaign network, and led by Britain's University of Bath, surveyed 10,000 young people aged 16-25 years in 10 countries. It published its results in September.

It found around three quarters of those surveyed considered the future frightening, while a lack of action by governments and industry left 45% experiencing climate anxiety and distress that affected their daily lives and functioning.

Elouise Mayall, an ecology student at Britain's University of East Anglia and member of the UK Youth Climate Coalition, told Reuters she had felt guilty and overwhelmed.

"What I'd be left with is maybe the sense of shame, like, 'how dare you still want lovely things when the world is ending and you don't even know if you're going to have a safe world to grow old in'."

She spoke of conflicting emotions.

"You might have sadness, there might be fear, there might be a kind of overwhelm," she said. "And maybe even sometimes a quite like wild optimism."

Caroline Hickman, a psychotherapist and lecturer at the University of Bath and one of the co-authors of the research published in September, is working to help young people manage climate-related emotions.

"They're growing up with the grief and the fear and the anxiety about the future," she told Reuters.

"SENSE OF MEANING"

London-based psychiatrist Alastair Santhouse sees climate change, as well as COVID-19, as potentially adding to the burden, especially for those pre-disposed to anxiety.

For now, climate anxiety alone does not normally require psychiatric help. Painful as it is, it can be positive, provided it does not get out of control.

"Some anxiety about climate change is motivating. It's just a question of how much anxiety is motivating and how much is unacceptable," said Santhouse, author of a book that tackles how health services struggle to cope with complex mental issues.

"The worry is that as climate change sets in, there will be a more clear cut mental health impact," he added.

Among some of the world's communities that are already the most vulnerable, extreme weather events can also cause problems such as post traumatic stress disorder.

Leading climate campaigner Greta Thunberg, 18, has experienced severe climate anxiety.

"It's a quite natural response, because, as you see, as the world is today, that no one seems to care about what's happening, I think it's only human to feel that way," she said.

For now, however, she is hopeful because she is doing everything she possibly can.

"When you take action, you also get a sense of meaning that something is happening. If you want to get rid of that anxiety, you can take action against it," she said.

(Reporting by Barbara Lewis; Editing by Alison Williams)

Trump's social media platform looks like a high-tech version of 'Trump Steaks': report

John Wright
October 21, 2021

Trump steaks and a Trump bobblehead/Screenshots

Former president Donald Trump's new social media venture appears designed to make him money without taking much risk — by effectively selling his name to someone so they can slap it on a product while he avoids responsibility, according to a new report from the Washington Post.

"Trump began his career in the high-risk, high-reward business of buying and selling New York real estate. But, after he achieved TV fame on 'The Apprentice,' he entered another line of business with far less risk: selling his name to people who wanted to slap it on their products," the Post's David Fahrenthold and Jonathan O'Connell report. "In the heyday of that merchandising business, Trump was paid to lend his name to apartment buildings, eyeglasses, cologne, mattresses, vodka, steaks, coffee, chandeliers, suits — even a brand of urine test. Many of these products failed, but that was not Trump's problem."

The story notes that the former president's own company, the Trump Organization, is facing "unprecedented challenges" in the form of mounting losses, the indictment of chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, and investigations into its financial practices in at least three states. But Trump's social media venture unveiled Wednesday, through the publicly traded Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), could allow him to "enter the tech sector without much risk" and generate revenue "with little work or overhead."

Michael D'Antonio, who has written biographies of Trump, told the Post: "Avoiding being responsible, in any ultimate sense, is a constant in his strategy. If you think of him always looking for ways to try businesses without being truly responsible — combined with his sense that he can do anything — then this is kind of natural."

Gwenda Blair, who wrote a biography of Trump, his father and his grandfather, added: "There's nothing surprising. The only surprising thing would be if he actually put his own money into it. He's always an other-people's-money people guy."

The story notes that this week's launch of TMTG's social media platform, called Truth Social, was "less than impressive." The platform was defaced by pranksters, with a video of a pig defecating supposedly posted by "donaldjtrump."

And there are other potential signs of problems: The CEO of TMTG is listed as Patrick Orlando, whose office address corresponds to a WeWork co-working space in Miami, and the CFO is Luis Orleans-Braganza, who claims to be a member of the defunct Brazilian royal family.

"Trump has previously run one publicly traded company, which included many of his Atlantic City casinos and was called Trump Entertainment Resorts," the Post notes. "The company operated for roughly two decades, starting in 1995. For Trump's investors, it was a disaster: The company lost more than $1 billion, its stock price nosedived, and it filed for bankruptcy three times, in 2004, 2009 and 2014. ... But Trump himself did well: The struggling company paid him more than $44 million in salary, bonuses and other compensation."

Trump blasted for 'chilling' new ​rant: 'This statement is an act of war against America'

David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement
October 21, 2021

Donald Trump (AFP)

Donald Trump, the twice-impeached former president, on Thursday issued what is being called a "chilling" statement on the election and the insurrection he incited.

"The insurrection took place on November 3, Election Day. January 6 was the Protest!" Trump said in a statement released Thursday afternoon.

Former Republican Congressman Joe Walsh simply and clearly calls it an "act of war."


U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) during debate on the House floor has "repeatedly" been "calling on Republicans to denounce the Trump statement," according to reporter Jamie Dupree.

"All my colleagues were elected on November 3," McGovern said. "If you believe that Election Day was an insurrection, then your election results are illegitimate."

McGovern is not the only one to blast the Trump statement:

Some journalists are also slamming the former president's latest remarks.

S.V. Dáte, the White House correspondent at HuffPost weighed in, saying, "Donald Trump tried to overthrow American democracy after he lost his election by 7 million votes, but nearly a year later, he's still lying. About all of it."

Washington Post national political reporter Felicia Sonmez called it a "chilling statement … that makes clear his stance on peaceful democracy vs. violent insurrection."

Washington Post White House bureau chief Ashley Parker pointed to the statement and said: "In which Trump's shamelessness continues to be his political super power."

ProPublica Senior Reporter Peter Elkind says: "This is the position of the widely embraced leader of the GOP. Republicans all behind that?"

A former president of the United States who took an oath to uphold the US Constitution: "The insurrection took plac… https://t.co/4sPD6X1hXM— Priscilla Huff (@Priscilla Huff) 1634835937.0

SPAC THE MONKEY
Trump Takes Advantage of Wall Street Fad to Bankroll New Venture

A merger with a so-called blank check company is poised to give the former president access to hundreds of millions of dollars.

Donald J. Trump’s new company, Trump Media and Technology Group, reached a deal to merge with a special purpose acquisition company that has raised nearly $300 million.

Credit...Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

By David Enrich, Matthew Goldstein and Shane Goldmacher
Oct. 21, 2021

After decades of bankruptcies, loan defaults, business disputes and commercial failures — not to mention a polarizing presidency that ended with a violent mob storming the Capitol — Donald J. Trump was shunned by much of corporate America.

Now, thanks to one of Wall Street’s hottest fads, the former president has managed to sidestep that tarnished reputation and gain access to hundreds of millions of dollars to launch a social media company.

Riding to his rescue: SPACs.

Special purpose acquisition companies are the reverse of initial public offerings. Sometimes called blank-check companies, SPACs go public first and raise money from investors with the goal of finding a private company to merge with. Those investors have no clue about what that merger partner will turn out to be.

Which led some of the prominent investors in a SPAC called Digital World Acquisition — including the hedge funds D.E. Shaw and Saba Capital — to the surprising realization that they were financially backing Mr. Trump’s latest company.

Mr. Trump’s new company, Trump Media and Technology Group — incorporated in Delaware in February with little fanfare, and with no revenue or tested business plan — reached a deal to merge with Digital World on Wednesday.

Digital World, which was set up shortly after Mr. Trump lost the 2020 election, last month raised nearly $300 million, largely from big investors. Assuming the merger is consummated, that money will soon be bankrolling the Trump media venture, which plans early next year to offer a Twitter-like social media app.

Shares of the newly merged company soared on Thursday, rising more than 300 percent to close at $45.50 a share and partly reflecting expectations that the former president’s media company could be very profitable.

Daily business updates The latest coverage of business, markets and the economy, sent by email each weekday. Get it sent to your inbox.

SPACs have long had a dubious reputation because they give struggling or untested companies that would otherwise not find backers a pathway to the public markets. But in recent years, these lightly regulated entities have become all the rage because with interest rates remaining low, investors are eager for new places to put their money to work. In the past two years alone, such companies have raised $190 billion from investors.

But even by Wall Street’s frothy standards, the swiftness with which Digital World reached a deal with Mr. Trump — which many in the former president’s inner circle didn’t know about — was remarkable.

Most blank-check companies take about 17 months to find a target and complete a deal after going public. Digital World gave itself a year, but found its target within a month of going public.

“That is an extraordinary time period,” said Usha Rodrigues, who teaches corporate law at the University of Georgia School of Law and has written about SPACs. “It is far outside the norm.”

Digital World’s founder and chief executive is Patrick Orlando, who previously worked for Deutsche Bank and other Wall Street firms. More recently, Mr. Orlando, who is based in Miami and knew Mr. Trump before the deal, according to one of Mr. Orlando’s colleagues, has launched three other blank-check companies. While they have raised money from investors, not one has completed a deal. A plan to merge one of the SPACs, Yunhong International, with Giga Energy recently fell apart.

When Digital World went public on the Nasdaq stock exchange last month, it didn’t have the assistance of a brand-name investment bank. Instead, it turned to a small firm that until recently was called Kingswood Capital Markets.

This summer, Kingswood changed its name to E.F. Hutton, adopting one of Wall Street’s most storied brands, presumably in a bid to improve its marketing cachet. (The original E.F. Hutton was famous for the advertising slogan “When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen.”) Joseph Rallo, E.F. Hutton’s chief executive, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

With the help of bankers at the newly renamed E.F. Hutton, Mr. Orlando and Digital World lined up 11 hedge funds and other institutional investors to serve as so-called anchor investors. They agreed to buy substantial slugs of shares in Digital World’s public stock offering on Sept. 8.

As is standard in “blank check” deals, the investors in some cases ponied up as much as $30 million without much guidance as to how Digital World would spend their money, officials at several of the hedge funds said. All they knew was what Digital World said in its securities filing — that it was looking to invest in “middle-market emerging growth technology-focused companies.” It didn’t give any hint that it was hoping to merge with a social-media company or to work with the former president.


Vik Mittal, chief investment officer with Meteora Capital, one of the anchor investors, said the firm wasn’t aware of an imminent deal with Mr. Trump’s media company when it committed money to Mr. Orlando’s SPAC.

Mr. Orlando negotiated the deal with Mr. Trump, with whom he had a relationship. “I’m the C.E.O. of the SPAC, and the conversations were generally at the highest levels,” Mr. Orlando said in a brief interview on Thursday. He declined to comment on the details of the agreement or how it came together. “Everybody worked really hard, 24 hours a day,” he said.

Patrick Orlando

Credit...Hector Fallas

Mr. Trump, for his part, kept much of his inner circle in the dark. His plans had not come up on his political team’s weekly calls, according to participants.

Trump Media and Technology Group, whose website lists Mr. Trump’s private club, Mar-a-Lago, as its mailing address, has grand ambitions. A slide presentation on the company’s website envisions it competing not only with Twitter and Facebook, but also against companies like Netflix, Disney and CNN. In the “long-term opportunity” category, the company lists Google and Amazon as potential rivals.

Mr. Trump’s yet-to-be-launched app is called Truth Social. Within hours of its announcement, hackers claimed to have created fake accounts on an unreleased test version in the name of Mr. Trump and others.

Some Republican groups immediately sought to use the announcement of the social media site for fund-raising purposes. The Republican National Committee, for instance, sent a “BREAKING NEWS” email on Thursday asking supporters if they would join the site.

The hedge funds that invested in Digital World appear to have profited at least on paper, given the stock’s steep rise on Thursday.

One of Digital World’s major investors was Saba Capital, a $3.5 billion hedge fund run by Boaz Weinstein. Mr. Weinstein said on Thursday that after learning of the Trump deal, his firm sold much of its stake in Digital World in the early morning, notching a small profit before the shares soared higher. Mr. Weinstein’s wife, Tali Farhadian Weinstein, recently ran unsuccessfully for Manhattan district attorney as a Democrat.

“Many investors are grappling with hard questions about how to incorporate their values into their work,” Mr. Weinstein said in a statement. “For us, this was not a close call.”


Lauren Hirsch, Jeremy W. Peters, Nicole Perlroth and Andrew Ross Sorkin contributed reporting.

David Enrich is the business investigations editor. He is the author of “Dark Towers,” about Deutsche Bank and Donald Trump. @davidenrich • Facebook

Matthew Goldstein covers Wall Street and white collar crime and housing issues. @mattgoldstein26

Shane Goldmacher is a national political reporter and was previously the chief political correspondent for the Metro desk. Before joining The Times, he worked at Politico, where he covered national Republican politics and the 2016 presidential campaign. @ShaneGoldmacher

A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 22, 2021, Section B, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Wall St. Fad Helps Trump In Financing New Venture. 

Billionaires who killed the GOP are now turning it into an anti-American insurgency -- along the lines of the Confederacy

Thom Hartmann
October 21, 2021

Fox News/screen grab

Congressman Steve Scalise, the #2 Republican in the House of Representatives and the guy who ran for office from Louisiana as "David Duke without the baggage," has announced he's whipping Republican votes to block a criminal contempt referral to the DOJ from the Jan 6 Select Committee against Steve Bannon.

My father's Republican Party is now the modern-day Confederacy, and Republicans' defense of Steve Bannon defying subpoenas this week pretty much proves it. If it keeps moving in the same direction, our American republic may soon be fully transformed into a racist, strongman oligarchy.

The racist and big-money poisons began to take over the Republican Party in the 1950s and 1960s after the Supreme Court ordered an end to school segregation with Brown v Board, and LBJ and the Democrats embraced the Civil Rights, Voting Rights and Medicare Acts.

In aggregate, Johnson's Great Society offended both the nation's billionaire oligarchs, who saw Medicare and other programs as "socialism," and the white racists who were horrified that they'd now have to share schools, hospitals and polling places with African Americans and other minorities.

Those white racists, particularly in the South where the majority of America's Black people lived, fled the Democratic Party and flocked instead to the GOP. Richard Nixon saw this as the key to his presidential victory in 1968, openly inviting racists in with his "Southern Strategy."

Thus began the transformation of the party founded by Abraham Lincoln.

At the same time, the Libertarian and Objectivist movements found common cause with the anti-communist movement led by the John Birch Society that saw every effort to help working class or poor Americas as a step towards full-blown Soviet-style socialism. They all marched into the GOP.

"The mob," as Ayn Rand used to call us American voters, couldn't be trusted any longer to determine who held power in America, these early leaders of the GOP determined, so they worked out ways to get around a multiracial and politically active populace.

The leading conservative light of the era, William F. Buckley, wrote for his National Review magazine an article titled Why The South Must Prevail:

"The South does not want to deprive the Negro of a vote for the sake of depriving him of the vote," Buckley wrote. "In some parts of the South, the White community merely intends to prevail — that is all. It means to prevail on any issue on which there is corporate disagreement between Negro and White. The White community will take whatever measures are necessary to make certain that it has its way."

His article was grounded in a discussion of the jury system, but he couldn't help veering off-course (or on-course):

"The central question that emerges … is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically?

"The sobering answer is Yes - the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race. It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the median cultural superiority of White over Negro: but it is a fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists."

It's exactly the philosophy that today animates the new voting laws put into place over the past six months in Florida, Georgia, Texas and multiple other states.

Racists and big money seized the GOP, and the GOP then drained 40 years of wealth from the Middle Class.

The merger of racism and big money reached its first peak in 1980 with the election of Ronald Reagan, who openly ran on "states' rights" and the argument that government was the cause, not the solution, to the nation's problems. Just leave everything to the morbidly rich and their magical "free market" and America, Saint Ronnie promised us, would become a paradise. At least for white people.

But it didn't work out that way for white people or anybody else; instead, the top 1 percent of Americans succeeded in grabbing well over $10 trillion from the middle class over the next forty years and have now largely ringfenced their wealth with bought-off Republicans declaring they'll never, ever vote to raise taxes on the morbidly rich.

And the billionaires and racists who seized the GOP are now turning it into something not seen in a major American political party since the Civil War. It's become an anti-American insurgency, along the lines of the Confederacy.

Many of the same wealthy individuals and corporations that brought Reagan to power continue to pour billions into the GOP, an effort that in 2016 brought authoritarian Donald Trump to the White House and threatens to do so again in 3 years.

But this isn't even the GOP of Reagan's time: today's GOP has now transformed itself into a full-blown anti-democratic neofascist party.

It's no longer the business-loving white-middle-class GOP of the 20th century: it's now the party of Nazis and the Klan, although they've turned in their cartoonish swastikas and white robes for red caps and camo.

Which is presenting the "funder class" in the GOP with a stark decision.

Are their tax cuts and deregulation of pollution so important to them that they'll continue to fund a neofascist party in order to keep them?

Early signs are not good.

Billionaire-owned rightwing radio and TV are rewriting the history of January 6th and continue spreading Trump's Big Lie about the 2020 election. Rightwing think tanks and billionaire-founded and -funded Astroturf activist groups continue their mischaracterizations and outright lies about President Biden's agenda.

Social media sites continue to use algorithms that drive increasingly extremist views and have become organizing platforms for lies, racism and "political" actions like intimidating school boards and election officials.

They've been so successful that the majority of Republican voters no longer trust our electoral system and are willing to have Republican-controlled legislatures decide how elections came out rather than voters.

While a small but vocal and credible group of former Republicans — from politicians like Jeff Flake and George W. Bush, to GOP operatives like Steve Schmidt and Rick Wilson, to media figures like Jennifer Rubin and Joe Scarborough — are speaking out and doing so in terms often far more blunt than even Democratic politicians, the oligarchs who own the Party aren't listening.

The Republican base, meanwhile, is completely in thrall to Trump and he's showing every sign of running and possibly taking over the country using the 12th Amendment trick I was warning of more than a year ago, this time running John Eastman's scheme in 2024.

And if not Trump, there's no shortage of ambitious fascist-leaning Republican politicians in the mold of Rick Scott, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott who are more than willing to stand-in for him with the same strategy.

The stage is thus set now for the final, irrevocable transformation of Eisenhower's Party — and American democracy. The turning point will be the 2022 election if Republicans can retake the House and Senate.

Nineteen states have already changed thirty-three voting laws to accommodate Trump's and John Eastman's 6-point-plan to ignore the popular vote and throw the electoral college vote into the House of Representatives to put a Republican loser of the 2024 election into the White House.

This will work if Justice Sam Alito and his rightwing extremist friends on the Supreme Court give the scheme their stamp of approval; Trump lawyer Sydney Powell said this week Alito was prepared to do just that.

It's decision time.

Numerous corporations said that they'd stop funding the so-called "treason caucus" of 140+ Republicans who voted to decertify the 2020 election after the January 6th attempted assassination of the Vice President and the Speaker of the House.

Almost all of those corporations, as Judd Legum and David Sirota regularly document at popular.info and DailyPoster.com, have gone back on that pledge.

Eisenhower's GOP no longer exists: it's been replaced by an authoritarian shell that's home to open racists and billionaire oligarchs who don't want their businesses regulated or taxed. They're willing to end democracy in America to get what they want.

German industrialist Fritz Thyssen famously backed Hitler and lived to regret it, penning an awkward but portentous autobiography titled I Paid Hitler.

Will today's rightwing billionaires and the CEOs of our largest corporations one day be writing similar books?

Or, if Trump prevails, will American democracy be so totally wiped out that no future publisher would dare sell such a book?

CANADA SHOULD DO SO TOO

Barbados elects first president, replacing UK Queen as head of state

Barbados has elected its first-ever president to replace Britain's Queen Elizabeth as head of state, in a decisive step toward shedding the Caribbean island's colonial past.

© Stillwell/WPA Pool/Getty Images Sandra Mason after she was made a Dame Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George, at Buckingham Palace on March 23, 2018 in London.

Sandra Mason was elected late on Wednesday by a two-thirds vote of a joint session of the country's House of Assembly and Senate. In a statement, the government called her appointment a milestone on its "road to republic."

A former British colony that gained independence in 1966, the nation of just under 300,000 had long maintained ties with the United Kingdom's monarchy.

But many Barbadians have long agitated to remove the Queen's status -- and with it, the lingering symbolic presence of imperialism over its governance. Multiple leaders this century have proposed that the country become a republic.

That will finally happen on November 30, the country's 55th anniversary of independence from Britain, when Mason will be sworn in.

A former jurist who has been governor-general of the island since 2018, Mason was also the first woman to serve on the Barbados Court of Appeals.

Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley called the election of a president "a seminal moment" in the country's journey.

"We have just elected from among us a woman who is uniquely and passionately Barbadian, does not pretend to be anything else (and) reflects the values of who we are," Mottley said after Mason's election.

Several countries dropped the Queen as head of state in the years after they gained independence, with Mauritius the last to do so, in 1992. That makes Barbados the first country in nearly three decades to drop the monarch.

The Queen is still head of state in more than a dozen other countries that were formerly under British rule, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Jamaica.

Wazim Mowla of the Atlantic Council think tank told Reuters the election could benefit Barbados both at home and abroad.

The move makes Barbados, a small developing country, a more legitimate player in global politics, Mowla said, but could also serve as a "unifying and nationalistic move" that may benefit its current leadership at home.

"Other Caribbean leaders and their citizens will likely praise the move, but I don't expect others to follow suit," Mowla added. "This move will always be considered only if it is in the best interest of each country."

Mottley said the country's decision to become a republic was not a condemnation of its British past.

"We look forward to continuing the relationship with the British monarch," she said.

DOING YOUR PRIVATEER FREE MARKET ANCESTORS PROUD 

ONLY IN CANADA YOU  SAY 
Supreme Court of Canada sides with injured woman in snow-clearing squabble

OTTAWA — A woman will get another chance to sue for damages over a leg injury she suffered while climbing through snow piled by a city's plow, the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Taryn Joy Marchi alleged the City of Nelson, B.C., created a hazard when it cleared snow from downtown streets after a storm in early January 2015.

The removal effort left snow piles at the edge of the street along the sidewalk early in the morning of Jan. 5.

Late in the afternoon of Jan. 6, Marchi — then a 28-year-old nurse — parked in an angled spot on the street and, wearing running shoes with a good tread, tried to cross a snow pile to get on to the sidewalk.

Her right foot dropped through the snow and she fell forward, seriously injuring her leg.

Marchi contended the city should have left openings in the snowbank to allow safe passage to the sidewalk.

She pointed to the neighbouring municipalities of Castlegar, Rossland and Penticton in arguing there were preferable ways to clear the streets so as to ensure safe access for pedestrians.

However, the trial judge dismissed her case, saying the city was immune from liability because it made legitimate policy decisions about snow clearing based on the availability of personnel and resources.


Video: Mayor reacts to Supreme Court ruling on snow removal (cbc.ca)

In any event, the judge concluded, Marchi assumed the risk of crossing the snow pile and was "the author of her own misfortune."

The B.C. Court of Appeal overturned the decision and ordered a new trial, saying the judge erred in addressing the city's duty of care and the question of Marchi's negligence.

The ruling prompted the City of Nelson to seek a hearing in the Supreme Court.

In a written submission to the high court, the city said its actions amount to "a clear example of a core policy decision" that should be immune from liability.

In her filing with the court, Marchi said city employees made a number of operational decisions that fell below the expected standard of care of a municipality — decisions not required by the written policy.

In its 7-0 ruling Thursday, the Supreme Court said a fresh trial should take place because the city has not proved that its decision on how to clear the snow was "a core policy decision" immune from liability.

While there is no suggestion the city made an irrational or "bad faith decision," the city’s core policy defence fails and it owed Ms. Marchi a duty of care, justices Sheilah Martin and Andromache Karakatsanis wrote on behalf of the court.

"The regular principles of negligence law apply in determining whether the City breached the duty of care and, if so, whether it should be liable for Ms. Marchi’s damages."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 21, 2021.

Jim Bronskill, The Canadian Press