'It's time': Canadian women's soccer stars steadfast in pursuit of domestic league

John Molinaro

CBC SPORTS   

LONG READ

For Christine Sinclair, it was a day that was more than 21 years in the making.

Ever since debuting as a 16-year-old for the Canadian women's team in 2000, Sinclair aspired to lead her country to glory at the Olympics or the World Cup.

That dream was realized when teammate Julia Grosso's penalty kick sailed into the back of the net to seal Canada's victory over Sweden in the gold-medal match in Tokyo this summer. After winning back-to-back bronze medals, Sinclair had finally become an Olympic champion.

It was an amazing accomplishment for Canada's iconic captain, especially considering the path she took to ascend to the top of the medal podium.

Once a Canadian player makes her way through the youth ranks, she has no options to play professionally in her country, and must move abroad if she wants to pursue a professional career. Since 2013, Sinclair has played for the Portland Thorns of the U.S.-based National Women's Soccer League, which doesn't have any Canadian teams. Nearly half the members of the Olympic team played for European clubs. None of them earned a living at home.

Canada was ranked eighth in the world by FIFA ahead of the Tokyo Olympics, and rose to sixth after its gold medal win. But it is the only FIFA top 10-ranked country without a professional league.

Never one to make it all about herself or bask in self-adulation, Sinclair seized the moment in the immediate aftermath of Canada's victory over Sweden, using the platform granted her the opportunity to deliver her message as the entire country was watching.

"I hope we'll see some investment in the women's game. I think it's time Canada gets a professional league or some professional teams, and if a gold medal doesn't do that, nothing will. It's time for Canada to step up," Sinclair said in the post-match press conference.

More than 4.4 million viewers tuned into the Canada-Sweden match on CBC, making it the country's most-watched event of the Olympics.

Never before had the women's team garnered this level of attention. Several of Sinclair's teammates made the most of the opportunity and echoed her post-game sentiments, knowing full well that they had a captive audience who was eager to hear what they had to say after winning gold.

"We need to continue to push to have a professional league in Canada," goalkeeper Stephanie Labbé told The National's Ian Hanomansing. "The fact that we're Olympic champions and we don't have any professional teams in our home country is pretty unacceptable."

The complete lack of playing opportunities in Canada hits close to home for every member of the Canadian women's team, but especially Sinclair.

Except for a short stint with Vancouver Whitecaps FC, the 38-year-old native of Burnaby, B.C., has played the overwhelming majority of her professional career in the United States with FC Gold Pride, Western New York Flash and Portland Thorns of the NWSL after cutting her teeth at the NCAA level at the University of Portland.

Ever since Canada won the first of its back-to-back bronze Olympic medals in 2012, Sinclair has sought to inspire young girls across the country to become part of the next generation of players who will make up the Canadian national team.

"We're hoping that this platform will give us the opportunity to start that change and lead to Canadians who have the ability to make the difference to invest in women," Sinclair said upon her return home from Tokyo.

"The youngsters, the young little kids deserve to be able to go watch their heroes on a week-to-week basis, not just once every four years."

© Serena Morones/The Associated Press Christine Sinclair, seen playing for the Portland Thorns in May, hopes Canadian women's soccer's elevated platform following Olympic gold in Tokyo will further the conversation of a structured domestic league.

Retired midfielder Amy Walsh, who earned 102 caps for Canada from 1997 to 2009, feels a domestic league is long overdue in this country.

"We have to find a way to keep our players home, and keep the momentum going in terms of what's available to the grassroots players, both boys and girls," Walsh told CBC Sports. "That's how you grow interest in the game, and how you expand the player pool for the national team in the future."

While Sinclair and members of the current women's team have long advocated for a Canadian professional league, their tone has noticeably changed since bringing home the gold. Cognizant of their newfound leverage, the Canadian women have been more assertive in their messaging, and are no longer willing to passively hold out hope that things will soon change.

Katrina Galas, a women's sport strategy consultant at In Common Consulting, believes that's a good first step toward bringing a women's pro league to Canada.

"We need to change the narrative, whether it's through the media, through leadership, or through conversations, where it's evolving from what's deserved to what's possible," Galas said. "There's a lot of talk about the Canadian women's players deserving a league of their own, or that Canada deserves to have an NWSL club based on the success of our women's team. We're still in that space, and that's not the best value proposition to put out there.

"The narrative can't be about what's deserved, but rather what's possible based on the accomplishments of the women's team and the success they've had. Those things are very real and factual, so if the discussion is reframed and it becomes more about 'let's go get it' and less about 'we deserve it,' I think they can find more success in that."

Like Sinclair, Diana Matheson had to leave Canada to carve out a career as a pro soccer player. After playing at Princeton University, the diminutive midfielder went to Norway for a few years, and then turned out for the Washington Spirit and Utah Royals of the NWSL.

She retired earlier this year, calling time on a marvellous international career that saw her earn 206 career appearances for Canada (only Sinclair and Sophie Schmidt have more) and was highlighted by her winning goal in the bronze-medal game at the 2012 Olympics in London.

Although she is recognized as one of Canada's greatest players of all time, Matheson never had the chance to play professionally in her country.

"That part of my life story is not unique at all, and it is echoed by every single women's player in this country," Matheson said. "We've all had to go through it — after coming up through the youth ranks, we found out there's nothing there for us, and we had [to] go to school and play in the NCAA and then move on to play pro in Europe or the NWSL, and we only come back to Canada when we retire.

"But it shouldn't have to be that way. Let's build a Canadian league so that doesn't have to be the case anymore."

Laying groundwork for a domestic league

Since retiring, Matheson, a 37-year-old native of Oakville, Ont., has been pursuing an EMBA at Queen's University, and enrolled herself in the Executive Master for International Players program offered by UEFA, European soccer's governing body.

She's also been working closely with six other confidants, including former national team teammate Carmelina Moscato, to help bring a pro women's league to Canada.

On Dec. 9, Matheson and her working group met with Canada Soccer and tabled a proposal to work in partnership with the sport's governing body to help the advancement of the women's game in Canada.

"What we are working towards is creating a long-term plan for women's soccer in this country, and a long-term plan that builds towards a professional league," Matheson said. "Canada Soccer has done a good job supporting the women's team over the years, and now it's time to shift that focus on to the domestic game.

"It's not a question of whether a women's league could work. It can absolutely work. It's an exciting opportunity that we can build a league from scratch."

Matheson is hopeful that Canada Soccer will review her group's proposal and come back to them early next year and engage in more meaningful conversations to discuss working together, and then move things forward through 2022.

© Alex Goodlett/Getty Images Former national team midfielder Diana Matheson, who earned 206 career appearances for Canada, said the absence of a top domestic league has forced talented players to seek opportunities elsewhere.

Matheson's ultimate goal is to create a top-tier league that would attract members of the Canadian women's team, and serve as an alternative to the NWSL, although she admits it will take time for such a league to be a viable option for some of her former teammates to consider.

"We have to be realistic with where we are starting from and that it might take three to five years to be considered a top-tier league. Other leagues have been around a lot longer and built themselves up," she said. "But I'm confident we can get Canadian women's team players in from the beginning.

"There might be a point where players go to another league for more money or a bigger club in the world. So, are we going to get everybody? No. But I think we can certainly have national team talent in the league."

Launching a new professional sports league in Canada wouldn't be easy in the best of times, never mind when the country is still dealing with economic effects of the global pandemic. But such obstacles can be hurdled with the proper investment, something that Matheson firmly believes can happen if there is a plan and a commitment in place.

"There's so much data and research that's been done on women's professional soccer around the world, so we can use that data to inform what is going to be the governance and ownership model, and how to monetize the on-field product," Matheson said.

"The initial capital raise and the seed money to get this going for two or three years, I'm not concerned about it. I think we'll get investments and a few avenues there. The question around women's sport is year-over-year profitability. I think with a new league, we're talking about a five-to-seven or a seven-to-10-year horizon where you're making sure your clubs are independently financially stable."

Timing is the key, and the time has never appeared to be better, what with Canada winning gold in Tokyo.

"Let's capitalize on this momentum and start to build something at home. … Let's build something for Canadians by Canadians, and let's build something for women by women," Matheson said.

Canadian NWSL team the 1st step?

Nick Bontis, elected president of Canada Soccer a year ago, has said women's pro soccer in Canada is one of his top priorities. But he has also said a Canadian NWSL team is the first step.

"I'm willing to say I'll work my butt off to get an NWSL team in Canada," he said after his election win.

Sinclair, for one, agrees that should be the short-term goal.

"It seems like the easy logical step," she said in August. "It just takes some wealthy individuals within Canada willing to invest in women's soccer … Companies do that on the men's side all the time and are willing to lose millions of dollars."

Given the organizational structures already in place with the league, it seems more likely that Canada would get an NWSL expansion franchise before its own domestic, top-tier division.

Walsh, Matheson and others advocating for Canada to have its own pro league concede that point. But they also argue that having an NWSL team in Canada is only the first step.

"That might make sense because the infrastructure is there with the NWSL. … An NWSL team would be great for Canada. It's not a terrible idea. But I also think we can do better," Walsh said.

Matheson argues that "it's not an either-or situation" with regards to the NWSL putting a team in Canada vs. the country having its own pro league.

"Having an NWSL team in Canada would be a great addition to the sporting landscape, but it can't be the beginning and the end of the conversation," she said. "An NWSL club is only going to affect 12 Canadian players and few coaches. For us to build a system across the country, that's the job of a domestic league. So, I see room for both.

Matheson acknowledges that patience will be required. A new professional league in Canada simply isn't going to appear overnight.

"It's going to take a few years because we don't quite have all the systems and structures in place to start a new league next year. And even if we did, we'd probably be in trouble in five years because we'd be rushing into it," she said. "Let's plan this correctly, and driven by data and research, let's build it so it lasts.

"Measure three times and cut once.

ALBERTA

Level playing field? Coal miners, environmentalists wrangle over hearing costs


The battle over a coal mine in Alberta's southern Rocky Mountains continues to rage six months after the Grassy Mountain project was denied, as the company and its opponents wrangle over who pays costs for the hearing that turned the proposal down.

Benga Mining, on the hook for the costs, wants them trimmed drastically and claims some groups owe the company money.

Environmental groups say their costs finance essential public debate and add Benga's aggressive response makes it harder for those who question the claims of resource companies.

"Benga's attempt to impugn the motives of ... public interest interveners is wholly inaccurate, unfair and sets (a) nasty and confrontational tone," says a letter from the Timberwolf Conservation Society to the Alberta Energy Regulator, which rules on which costs Benga must pay.

Alberta law allows citizens appearing before regulators to apply to have their costs reimbursed by project proponents. The law is intended to make those who benefit from development pay the expense of ensuring it's done right.

In June, the regulator denied Benga Mining's application for the Grassy Mountain mine in Alberta's Crowsnest Pass, a rare refusal later echoed by the federal government, which was also involved in the review. Benga has appealed that decision.

Four environmental groups, a municipality, a First Nation and an individual have applied for a total of $1.3 million to try to recoup the costs of expert testimony, legal advice and research, the regulator says.

But Benga has the right to question the claims and is doing so. In a letter from lawyer Martin Ignasiak, the company suggests that those groups weren't constructive.

"Benga views the (assessment) procedure, and the (regulator's) costs regime, as processes intended to compliment (sic) a system that promotes collaborative efforts and constructive input, rather than one that encourages persistent intervention in opposition to any form of development," it says.

Benga says the groups are well-funded and used the Grassy hearings to raise more money. It throws doubt on the billings of lawyers and the value of reports filed by biologists, hydrologists and other environmental scientists. It points out some groups also received federal participant funding.

It asks the regulator to reduce the a claim from Livingstone Landowners Group — a coalition of local ranchers and landowners — by 61 per cent, to $150,000. It says the application from Timberwolf Conservation Society should be reduced 91 per cent to $8,200. It wants a claim from the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society cut by 99 per cent, to $1,100.

Benga argues it shouldn't be charged for any of the Rural Municipality of Ranchlands' $185,000 claim. And its letter says, when advance funds granted to the Alberta Wilderness Association are taken into account, the group should pay the company back $2,300.

Ignasiak did not respond to a request for comment on his letter.

Normally, the regulator makes a decision on costs in about 90 days. Applicants in the Grassy Mountain hearing were still waiting after 250 days.

Delays make it harder for citizens to hire the expertise they need to study proposals, said Norma Dougall of the Livingstone landowners.

"The reimbursement program is designed to level the playing field, allowing small organizations like ours to participate in the hearing process vs. the large multinationals," she wrote in an email.

Other coal mine hearings are coming, she said.

"Our experts and lawyers need to get paid for their work and will be reluctant to engage with us again if they are not reimbursed."

Mike Sawyer, who appeared on behalf of Timberwolf, said delays and discounts on participant funding create an imbalance at public hearings.

"It creates a real disincentive for any professional to actually work for a member of the public because they know they're going to get screwed and they're going to have to wait for months before they get paid."

University of Calgary law professor Shaun Fluker, who has studied the regulator's history on cost awards, found that between 2004 and 2014 the Alberta Energy Regulator granted about 70 per cent of what was asked. Not all applicants were equal, he found.

"The amount that that cost claim was reduced by the regulator was significantly higher for folks I characterized as environmental scientists as opposed to an engineering report," he said.

Environmental scientists received about 60 per cent of what they asked for, Fluker found. Lawyers and engineers both got more than 80 per cent. Lawyers were the single largest expense, by far.

Alberta Energy Regulator spokeswoman Ottilie Coldbeck said in an email the Grassy Mountain hearings were unusually complex and it wasn't possible to meet the 90-day guideline.

"We do not know when a decision on the cost claims will be issued on the Benga Grassy Mountain hearing," she wrote.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 22, 2021

Bob Weber, The Canadian Press

Millionaire Manchin’s coal money behind his knifing of Build Back Better

December 21, 2021 

 BY JOHN WOJCIK

Coal baron: Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., killed the Build Back Bettter. | Andrew Harnik / AP

WASHINGTON—Joe Manchin has spewed reason after reason for killing President Biden’s signature Build Back Better plan on Fox News and elsewhere over the weekend, leaving out the real reason: Based on campaign contributions and on his personal millions of dollars in wealth, he is a creature of the dirty fossil fuel industry in the United States.

He has given, in the last two days, a host of other reasons behind his knifing of the bill.

Manchin says Democrats have refused to attach “work requirements” to social benefits in the bill. That explanation is particularly outrageous considering that the child tax credits in the current rescue package—which would be extended by the BBB bill—have allowed millions of women and men to return to work.

Melissa Parks, a resident in Chicago’s Wentworth Houses, has three children for each of whom she has been receiving $250, for a total of $750 each month since August. The money has allowed her to take care of her children and work full time since then for a local publishing company. The funds, under Biden’s recovery plan, would continue only if the BBB plan, now killed by Manchin, had passed. “I was able to buy clothing for the children to go back to school, she said, and to pay my rent and buy food. And then go to work full time.

“Now I simply will have not enough to pay rent and buy food. If I feed the children I have to go without. At best it will be packages of ramen noodles in my household.

Parks said she hasn’t fully figured out what to do but that she will try food banks at local churches.

Mancin cares nothing about people like Parks. What really bothers him about the bill is that it impacts his campaign contributors and his own personal wealth, is the section of the bill devoted to battling climate change. What Manchin really wants to kill the most is the bill’s provision to spend $555 billion to switch the country over to wind and solar power and away from fossil fuels, including and especially dirty coal.

His move confirms the fears of progressive congressional lawmakers that they would lose leverage if they approved the infrastructure bill before BBB. They were angry, but not surprised about Manchin’s announcement this past weekend. They point out that Manchin is the man who ran against President Obama’s climate change legislation in 2010 and got elected to the Senate on that platform.

Manchin pulled the typical Republican negotiating trick with the BBB plan. He forced the removal of parts of the bill that would impose penalties on electric utilities that continue to burn coal but, despite those concessions to him, killed the bill anyway.

Manchin has received more campaign money from oil, coal, and gas companies than any other member of the U.S. Senate. Democrats hoped that by substantially weakening penalties against those companies when they violate clean energy standards they could win Manchin’s support. He essentially told them where to go, however, as he announced his opposition to the bill despite those concessions.

Manchin’s talk that he was against penalties for fossil fuel companies but for incentives for clean energy turned out to be just another piece of what, from the beginning, has been bad faith negotiating on his part.

Other “moderate” Democrats who also opposed the bill but backed it in the House, figuring it would fail in the Senate anyway, are, of course, glad that Manchin is taking the beating that they too deserve. Nevertheless, the Biden administration and progressive lawmakers, under pressure from the mass movements in the country, are struggling to perhaps save certain pieces of the bill in smaller form.

Manchin reportedly met with Biden after the initial anger expressed by the White House, and some lawmakers are holding out hope that the $2 trillion bill could be further changed to meet Manchin’s demands.

So-called Democratic moderates are putting forward approaches that they actually preferred from the beginning, approaches far less sweeping than the BBB bill passed by the House and supported by the president. If a few of these elements end up becoming law, these moderates will no doubt try to claim credit for the popular ones when they face voters next year.

“At the start of these negotiations many months ago, we called for prioritizing doing a few things well for longer, and we believe that adopting such an approach could open a potential path forward for this legislation,” Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., the chair of the “moderate” New Democrat Coalition, said in a statement. “Failure is not an option.”

Despite having condemned Manchin for killing the bill, it is clear the White House would be happy to settle for compromises.

White House chief of staff Ron Klain tweeted DelBene’s statement with praise. Facing unanimous Republican opposition, Democrats need all 50 of their caucus members in the evenly split Senate to support the legislation, or it is certain to fail.

“Just as Senator Manchin reversed his position on Build Back Better this morning, we will continue to press him to see if he will reverse his position yet again, to honor his prior commitments and be true to his word,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said.

Despite all the speculation about compromises, it is clear that the bill is dead, at least for now.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said the chamber will vote “very early in the new year” on a changed bill, indicating that he has not totally given up on some type of “compromise.”

“We are going to vote on a revised version of the House-passed Build Back Better Act—and we will keep voting on it until we get something done,” he said.

Democrats see passage of something as critical to their chances in the 2022 midterms.

Millions have just received their last checks of up to $300 per child in tax credits. Unless BBB is passed, there will be no January child aid checks, causing catastrophic results for families that have survived because of those credits. The child tax credit checks have lifted millions of children out of poverty and have allowed mothers and fathers to return to work.

Manchin has been vocal about his reservations about a large social safety net bill throughout the negotiations, prompting House progressives to insist on paring it with the bipartisan infrastructure law. The two bills were unlinked last month after Biden and party leaders pushed to pass the transportation measure.

As the initial anger at Manchin wore off, numerous Democrats sought to take the optimistic view, grabbing on to his hint that he could be open to a restructured package even as he continues lying by saying his chief concerns are, not his personal wealth, but inflation and adding to the national debt.

Progressive anger erupts after Manchin kills Build Back Better

CONTRIBUTOR
John Wojcik is Editor-in-Chief of People's World. He joined the staff as Labor Editor in May 2007 after working as a union meat cutter in northern New Jersey. There, he served as a shop steward, as a member of a UFCW contract negotiating committee, and as an activist in the union's campaign to win public support for Wal-Mart workers. In the 1970s and '80s, he was a political action reporter for the Daily World, this newspaper's predecessor, and was active in electoral politics in Brooklyn, New York.

We are in the ‘Hunger Games’-era of American history

John Stoehr

RAW STORY
December 21, 2021

Joe Manchin on Facebook.

West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin said Sunday he opposes the president’s Build Back Better bill, the second of two infrastructure packages the Democrats have been negotiating for months. (The first one, focused on “traditional” infrastructure, was enacted last month.)



The news is moving fast. Negotiations appear to be ongoing. To get a better idea of what’s going on, I talked to Monique Judge. She was until recently the news editor for The Root. I asked Monique if Manchin’s surprise announcement made any sense, politically or practically.

Monique Judge: I think on some level, it was expected that Manchin would pull a stunt like this. When questioned about why he did it, his answers don't make sense. He said he was at his "wit's end" but when asked to elaborate, his responses trended on the "they know what they did" thing. NBC News asked if he felt there was still a place for him in the Democratic party. His response: “I would like to hope there are still Democrats who think like I do. I'm fiscally responsible and socially compassionate. Now, if there are no Democrats like that, then they’ll have to push me where they want me." LOL. Bye, Joe

JS: Rachel Bitecofer, the political scientist and data expert, told me this about Manchin’s opposition this morning: "It makes perfect sense to Manchin, who is the last Democrat serving in a realigning West Virginia, which broke for Donald Trump by 35 points in 2020. Manchin will need to win 20 points’ worth of Republican voters to hold his seat in 2024, in a presidential election cycle. That is pretty hard." Thoughts?

MJ: If that’s the case, Manchin is playing a very long game that may not yield the results he’s looking for. And then what? Siding with the GOP is one thing, but attempting to manipulate the people through political machinations would leave a sour taste in people's mouths. After the win, then what? You begin supporting Democratic legislation again? Even with that being a reason, it still is hard to make sense of it.


JS: In your view, does Manchin want a deal at all?

MJ: It's hard to say. It was reported that he went to Biden last week with an outline of his own, which the press secretary said mirrored a lot of the president's plan. If he went to the trouble to create that, you’d think he would follow through. If there are major parts he disagrees with, he could state those plainly and have an alternative solution. At the end of the day, the work still needed to get done. He didn't do that. This is some sort of weird power play. It's hard to say where he is going with it or if he wants to get the work done.

JS: Schumer vows to bring a vote to the Senate floor early next month. The idea is showing Manchin Republicans aren't going to show up the way Manchin says they will show up. If that doesn't work, should Democrats whittle down the BBB even more to satisfy him?

MJ: First of all, Congress needs to stop playing these petty-ass games of one upmanship. It's all ego. It’s not doing anything to help the millions suffering. Enough is enough already with that bullshit.

Second, absolutely not. The bill was already missing major parts that could help, including student loan debt relief – which a lot of people are still calling for. Whittling it down even more would render it almost useless as far as providing relief to Americans struggling and suffering.

JS: There’s an assumption that passing something, anything, is better than passing nothing. That presumes something else: that this legislation is a winner for the Democrats in next year’s midterms.

MJ: I don't know if this is a winner. If anything, I think it could make it harder for some Democrats, because their constituents will see them as not having fought hard enough for the right things. And I don't know if passing "something" is better than passing "nothing." What "something" doesn't help the people? Is that still a good thing?


READ: Watch: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez unloads on Joe Manchin for killing Build Back Better bill

JS: I'm not sure policy is going to reach swing voters the way some moderate Democrats say it's going to reach swing voters.

MJ: Republicans do whatever they can to sabotage Democratic stuff. They do anything to push their agendas. Democrats seem to want to simultaneously "play nice" and also wag their fingers at naughty Republicans. If Democrats played the game the same way, they could probably get some gains. The time for turning the other cheek is over. It only gets your ass kicked. There is no "fair" when lives are at stake.

JS: My thinking is that Biden needs to get more strident.

MJ: I would agree. He's the president after all. He needs to pull his presidential boxers up and start being more resolute with everyone, Democrats included. For Manchin’s part, he needs to do what he was elected to do: put the needs of the American people before his own.

JS: What could Biden say that would make you cheer?

MJ: He could say he wants to relieve student debt. He could say he wants to uplift the poorer classes. He could say he’s determined to dismantle the carceral system and come up with alternatives to reduce the disproportionate impact on communities of color. He could say he stands behind the federal decriminalization of cannabis.

JS: What’s your sense of hope for the future right now? One to 10?

MJ: It’s a three. We're doomed.

The climate is destroyed. Our economy is unbalanced. People can't afford basic needs. No one seems to want to do anything about it. We have billionaires spending their money going to the front porch of space (not actual space, mind you) instead of giving back to the communities that help keep their bloated businesses afloat. We have a global pandemic that doesn't seem to be going away soon. It has turned us all into one gigantic human science experiment. We are literally waiting to find out which petri dish we are on. Scary times.

JS: Do you have any hope that the Democrats will find courage?

MJ: Only with new blood. The old-timers who don't seem to want to retire are stifling progress, I think. Again, they want to play things "fair" and "by the rules" when we have now entered the Hunger Games-era of US history. The rules don't apply. We read the book. We saw the movie. But we didn’t think it could happen to us. Now here we are.

JS: Monique, many thanks for chatting with me today.

MJ: Thank you for asking me!

John Stoehr is a fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative; a contributing writer for the Washington Monthly; a contributing editor for Religion Dispatches; and senior editor at Alternet. Follow him @johnastoehr.

Mitch McConnell Tries to Lure Joe Manchin to GOP to Become Majority Leader Once More

BY DARRAGH ROCHE ON 12/22/21 

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said on Tuesday that Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) would be welcome in the Republican Party following his announcement that he's a "no" on the Build Back Better Act.

While criticizing the "vitriol" directed at Manchin by some in the Democratic Party, McConnell suggested the West Virginia senator could find a new home in the GOP.

McConnell's comments are significant at a time when Manchin is at odds with President Joe Biden and the Democrats and while the Senate is evenly divided between the parties.

The Kentucky Republican told Fox News' The Guy Benson Show on Tuesday that Manchin had done the country a "favor" by apparently killing the $1.75 trillion Build Back Better Act.

Manchin told Fox News Sunday that he was a "no" on the bill after months of negotiations and conflict between moderate and progressive Democrats.

Though a final vote hasn't taken place, without Manchin's support Build Back Better will likely fail to pass.

McConnell said he was "shocked at the vitriol" aimed at Manchin. The White House issued a strong statement about Manchin's Fox News appearance, suggesting he had gone back on his word.

"Basically it seemed to me that they were calling Senator Manchin a liar. I think that was not smart. This is a 50/50 Senate. It's going to be 50/50 for another year, and believe me, this is not how I would handle a disappointing vote like that," McConnell said.

"He doesn't fit well over there, but that is a decision ultimately that he has to make. We certainly welcome him to join us if he was so inclined," he said.

The Senate is currently made up of 50 Republicans, 48 Democrats and two independents who caucus with the Democrats. If Manchin were to change parties, it would alter the balance of power and give the GOP enough seats to make McConnell Senate Majority Leader again. He previously served in that position from January in 2015 to January in 2021.

McConnell isn't alone in calling on Manchin to switch parties, with at least four other GOP senators including Ted Cruz of Texas and Tom Cotton of Arkansas publicly discussing the possibility in recent comments.

While Manchin changing party would have huge national significance, the senator has long resisted suggestions that he should join the Republicans despite factors that appear to point in that direction.

He is considered a moderate or conservative Democrat and represents a state that has been solidly Republican in presidential elections since 2000. Nonetheless, in October he dismissed rumors that he was considering leaving the Democratic Party because of the price tag of the Build Back Better Act.

"It's bulls**t," Manchin told CNN's Manu Raju at the time. "I have no control of rumors."

Manchin also told CNN's Ali Zaslav that he had thought about becoming an independent who caucuses with Democrats, like Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), but he had never considered switching to the GOP.

On Monday, Manchin appeared to address his future in the Democratic Party.

"I would like to hope there are still Democrats who think like I do. I'm fiscally responsible and socially compassionate. Now, if there are no Democrats like that, then they'll have to push me where they want me," he said.

Republican attempts to lure Manchin to their side of the aisle may not succeed, but could still be a cause of concern for Democrats as they struggle to maintain a precarious majority and pass President Biden's agenda.

'Green light for extremists': Columnist argues Trump's GOP has mainstreamed anti-Semitism

Bob Brigham
December 22, 2021

Elizabeth Preza, AlterNet

Donald Trump's Republican Party tolerates anti-Semitism, but America doesn't have to go along with it, according to a new Daily Beast column.

"Why does America tolerate the GOP’s blatant anti-Semitism?" columnist Wajahat Ali asked. "I again asked this question after listening to former President Trump’s unabashed anti-Semitism on fully display during an interview with Israeli journalist Barak Ravid. Here, Trump invoked the hateful “dual loyalty” trope, saying, “I’ll tell you, the Evangelical Christians love Israel more than the Jews in this country,” and complaining that The New York Times hates Israel in the same breath that he said the newspaper is run by Jews."

Ali argued that GOP conspiracy theories are "just a lousy remake of the Elders of the Protocols of Zion."

READ: Ron DeSantis in hot seat after top aide pushes anti-Semitic conspiracy theory

"They’ve even updated the blood libel conspiracy for the modern era. The conservatives aligned with QAnon believe liberals are part of an international cabal of sex traffickers who bear the “mark of the beast,” and kidnap, molest and kill children," he explained. "And so these conspiracies persist and flourish, radicalizing the likes of Ashili Babbitt, who showed up at the US Capitol on Jan. 6 committed to unleashing 'the storm,' a QAnon codeword for violence, before being shot and killed by a Capitol police officer."

Ali explained how Republicans have a multi-part plan to avoid being labeled as anti-Semitic.

"Despite all this evidence of blatant antisemitism, Republicans nonetheless have been able to avoid being labeled antisemitic despite bathing in it nearly every day though a simple five-step plan: 1) Deny, 2) Project, 3) Deflect — those first three steps, by the way, are straight out of Roger Stone’s “rules” to “Admit nothing, deny everything, launch counterattack” — 4) Praise Israel, and 5) Attack Ilhan Omar," he wrote.

Ali warned the GOP's position will result in more violence.

"Everyone has moved on from Trump’s latest antisemitic outburst because the zone is indeed flooded with shit, but our communities can’t afford to brush it off, laugh, refer to it as a 'trip up,' or be complacent. These hateful words, mainstreamed, praised and promoted by our elected officials, are a green light for extremists to “stand back and stand by” as they prepare to unleash violence against fellow Americans," Ali wrote. "The GOP’s antisemitism is fuel for their fire, and silence and apathy makes people into complicit co-arsonists."

READ: Virginia GOP shredded for 'classic and blatant' anti-Semitism against Jewish Democratic incumbent

Read the full column.

BEHING PAYWALL

Stop calling the GOP fascists 'hypocrites': No one cares -- and they have no shame

Chauncey Devega, Salon
December 22, 2021

Fox News personalities Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson (Screenshot)

A healthy democracy, in America or anywhere else, must be based upon shared assumptions about empirical reality, facts and truth. Today's Republican Party and other "conservatives" reject such basic principles, norms and values.

Fascism, which lies at the core of contemporary Republican politics, is the mind-killer: It is anti-intellectual, anti-rational and anti-human. Fascism also seeks to annihilate the world as it actually exists and replace it with a fantasy world created by the fascist movement and its leader.

Too many liberals and progressives in this hour of darkness cling to the misguided belief that their core values about reason, democracy, human rights and civil rights are effectively universal, and so compelling that Republicans and others on the right must share them to a large degree. This collective narcissism may doom us all.

Many members of the media class obsessively complain and protest — in a mixture of performative shock and sincere disbelief — that Republicans are "hypocrites" who have "double standards" and constantly tell lies. This is also a willful decision to avoid the truth.

To cite a recent example, it is now publicly known that on Jan. 6, Fox News personalities, including Brian Kilmeade, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, texted White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, pleading with him to persuade Donald Trump to stop his followers from attacking the Capitol. Yet within hours or days, these propagandists were telling their viewers that Trump's attack force actually comprised "leftist radicals" — members of antifa, "Black Lives Matter or similar groups. Or, alternatively, that the Capitol attackers were genuine patriots and heroes — or simply "tourists."

On cue, Democrats and the mainstream commentariat lambasted Fox News for its supposed hypocrisy and for allegedly insulting its audience. And of course, once this news hit the headlines, the Fox hosts involved changed their stories, blatantly lying about what their texts to Meadows had said. Hannity, Ingraham and Kilmeade pledged their loyalty once again to Donald Trump — out of fear, shared by all members of his cult following, that he might order them purged for disloyalty.

RELATED: Text-gate fallout: Hannity, Ingraham and Don Jr. unveiled as whiny MAGA wimps!

This is all part of a much larger and very tedious pattern, in which many liberals and Democrats express amazement that Republican political leaders and propagandists say one thing in private and something opposite in public. There also continues to be considerable consternation and awe at the power of Trump's Big Lie and his followers' unwavering dedication to it.

Even after decades, many people still seem stunned by the Republican Party and the broader right's unwavering hostility toward science and expertise, their cultlike behavior and rejection of reality, their willingness to embrace conspiracy theories and religious extremism, their deepening attraction to fascism and authoritarianism and a range of related antisocial behavior.

These habitual complaints about Republican hypocrisy function as a script or narrative frame that dominates much mainstream American political commentary. The indictment has lost almost all its power, except among a small niche audience of those who have convinced themselves that "democratic norms" still apply to the Republicans. When the average American is told that the Republicans are hypocrites, the common (and largely understandable) response is: "So what?" To make that accusation against politicians is the equivalent of observing that water is in fact wet.

But for those in the chattering class who wield such words it has the imagined power of a religious invocation: God's judgment is called down to punish the "hypocrite" who has transgressed against the democratic order and its supposed commitment to truth and facts. In the world of realpolitik — and a country under siege by a fascist movement — such holy words have lost their power. If there is a deity who cares about such things, that deity abandoned the American people a long time ago.

But there is another more basic explanation for why Democrats and others committed to reason, truth and democracy continue to believe they can find common ground with Republicans. That explanation is rooted in fear.

Today's Republican Party and conservative movement has shown itself to be sociopathic and sadistic. It evinces no belief in a moral code or set of values that could be leveraged to create feelings of shame or embarrassment. Winning and keeping political power is all that matters; domination and control are the sole raison d'être.

Most people who identify with the Democratic Party, and most Americans overall, are terrified of that fact and continue to deny it, believing — or pretending to believe — that Republicans will return to the realm of "normal" politics sooner or later.

In a conversation with Salon earlier this year, Dr. Justin Frank, a physician and psychoanalyst who is the author of "Donald Trump on the Couch," explained the roots of such reasoning:
Most people do not want to believe that a person could be as destructive and evil as Donald Trump. That fact changes their worldview and their fantasies about life having a happy ending. The fantasy is that we are all protected, we are all going to be safe, which is a very childlike way of thinking. This is why many people do not want to acknowledge what Trump really is: They do not want to face the fact that Donald Trump, in my opinion, has shown himself to be a psychopath.

Similarly Dr. John Gartner, a former professor at the Johns Hopkins medical school and a contributor to the bestseller "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President," offered this context in an interview earlier this year:

In a way, we as a society have been so protected and privileged, and lived such a life of peace and sanity, that we don't believe that the dystopian science fiction that we are living today in America is actually happening. There's a certain default option of normality. Nobody wants to give up that default assumption that we are still living in a world of facts and sanity.

White America does not have either the historic memory or contemporary experience that comes from living under that kind of power, or struggling against it. For many people, therefore, the default impulse is to deny or ignore the existential danger embodied by American fascism, or simply hide from it in terror.

RELATED: Dr. John Gartner on America after Trump: "Dystopian science fiction is actually happening"

Fascism is viewed by many Americans — mostly but not entirely meaning white Americans — as something that occurs "over there" as opposed to arising here at home. Black Americans, of course, had a dramatically different historical experience, surviving and defeating domestic fascism in the form of chattel slavery and then the regime of Jim and Jana Crow white supremacy.

Many heirs to the Black Freedom Struggle are not especially surprised by the ascent of American neofascism in the Age of Trump. Moreover, Black Americans and other marginalized groups are uniquely "gifted" in terms of their ability to comprehend such evil and ultimately to outlast and defeat it. Others would be wise to learn from them.

What should those who are genuinely committed to saving American democracy do in this moment of escalating crisis? Most important of all, they must not abandon their core values. That amounts to surrender. Liberals, progressives and other pro-democracy forces must instead embrace a new maturity by confronting the political battlefield (and the larger world) as it exists, not as they wish it to be.

Over the last few years, I have come to this conclusion: What many Democrats, liberals and progressives of a certain type —comfortable, middle-class and predominantly white — want from the Republicans and conservatives is an apology. They seem to expect a rueful admission that fascism was not supposed to "happen here," and an expression of regret that the democratic bargain has been broken and betrayed.

In this fantasy, first comes the collective schadenfreude and satisfaction of seeing both the leaders and followers of the Republican Party admit they were wrong. Second comes an expression of repentance and a kind of conversion experience, in which Republicans and their followers come back to reason and fully commit themselves to "normal" social and political behavior.

In reality, no such apology will be forthcoming, nor will there be any ritual penitence. Republicans and their allies are dedicated to their cause. They believe themselves to be just and noble, and moreover to be righteous victims of oppression who are on the correct side of history. They will never admit defeat. They will never repent. To an increasing degree, they are willing to die or kill for their cause.

Do Democrats and their allies want to be "right" on questions of principle and to keep on complaining in sanctimonious terms about hypocrisy and lies and the violation of so-called norms and institutions? Or do they want to win power and keep it, and by doing so save the unfinished experiment of American democracy from descending into fascism? The answer to that question will help to shape the future of American democracy.

 

U.S. military-industrial complex sees war as shortcut to profits

Source

People's Daily Online

Editor

Wang Xinjuan

Time

2021-12-22 

By Zhong Sheng

Over the years, U.S. military expenditure has continuously hit record highs while the country's fiscal deficit worsened, behind which lies the strong influence of the country's military-industrial complex.

Throughout the U.S. history, its military-industrial complex, a mighty interest group, has repeatedly manipulated the country's political decision-making and seen wars as a shortcut to profits, prompting the U.S. government to cause one catastrophe after another in the world.

War is big business for the U.S., as Peter Kuznick, a history professor at the American University in the U.S., put it sharply.

To create inelastic demand for arms trade, the U.S. military-industrial complex has been bent on pushing U.S. foreign policy toward wars and conflicts.

“The U.S., driven by political-corporate greed, robbed Afghanistan of stability and tranquility for two decades,” said an article published on the website of Pakistan Observer.

In the Afghan war where loss is reckoned in lives, the only winner is the U.S. military-industrial complex, the article pointed out.

“The decisions to start and sustain wars are thus shaped by people with vested interests in extending the war as long as possible,” the article continued.

The five biggest U.S. defense contractors—Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman—acquired as much as $2.02 trillion from the U.S. government’s funding for the war in Afghanistan, according to the Security Policy Reform Institute, an independent think tank in the U.S.

The fact that U.S. top weapon companies grabbed huge profits from the war in Afghanistan mirrors the age-old special existence of the military-industrial complex in the U.S.

During World War II, a structural connection between the giant war machine of the U.S. and the country’s economic system was forged and a huge interest group composed of the U.S. military, military industrial enterprises, politicians, and scientific research institutions took shape.

“This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the Federal government,” warned former U.S. President Dwight David Eisenhower in his farewell speech delivered in 1961.

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex,” Eisenhower added.

However, in the following decades, the influence of the military-industrial complex hasn’t been curbed, but penetrated deeply into the decision-making process of the U.S.

General Dynamics got off to a good start this year; although the world becomes more and more dangerous for mankind, the company has seen a good sign of stable demands, said Phebe Novakovic, chairman of General Dynamics, in April. Her remarks revealed that the U.S. military-industrial complex is actually composed of a bunch of vultures.

It is no secret that U.S. military industry companies spend large sums of money on lobbying U.S. politicians, donating money to their election campaigns and funding the so-called policy experts to ensure policies are in their favor.

Representatives from military industry companies have also frequently taken advantage of the “revolving door” to hold a position in key decision-making departments.

Statistics suggest that more than 4,000 military-industrial complex lobbies are active in today’s U.S. political arena.

The military-industrial complex can not only make sure that its own interests are not affected by changes of government, but can often prevent government from making decisions that may shrink its slice of the cake, even if these decisions are in line with the public interest.

The U.S. government has unrestrainedly provided resources for arms dealers, sacrificing investment in its public goods and increasing the risks of wars, which has done itself and others no good, commented Erica Fein, the Senior Washington Director of American anti-war coalition Win Without War.

To ensure strong demands for arms trade, the U.S. military-industrial complex has continuously incited the government to create imaginary enemies, never hesitating to arouse people’s fear and stirring up trouble.

The U.S. is searching for enemies around the world under the guise of safeguarding national security and promoting democracy and freedom, of which one of the drivers is the interests of the military-industrial complex, as American observers noted.

If it had not been the Russians, the U.S. would have devised some other rivals to replace them as a justification for its military aggression, George Kennan, who formulated the U.S. containment policy toward the Soviet Union, said in a speech in his later years.

Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has successively launched the Kosovo War, the War in Afghanistan, the Iraq War, and many other wars, in which American arms dealers have made a great fortune.

For a long time, the U.S. military-industrial complex has repeatedly packaged wars as a proper option for U.S. foreign policy in a bid to pursue its own benefit, which has caused endless pain for people in other countries and led to turmoil and unrest in the world.

Such consequences make people around the world couldn’t help but wonder: What the U.S. has done to shoulder the international responsibilities it has kept talking about? How has it safeguarded the human rights it always spouts off about? Where is the so-called democracy that it couldn’t stop boasting about?

(Zhong Sheng is a pen name often used by People’s Daily to express its views on foreign policy and international affairs.)

 

Celebrations in Damascus and Aleppo on UNESCO’s inscription of Qudud al-Halabiya on World Heritage list- Video

16 December، 2021

Celebrations in Damascus and Aleppo on UNESCO’s inscription of Qudud al-Halabiya on World Heritage list

The Qudūd Ḥalabīya literally “musical measures of Aleppo” are traditional Syrian songs combining lyrics in Classical Arabic based on the poetry of Al-Andalus.

 

Nature-Based Solutions Should Play Increased Role in Tackling Climate Change

Working with nature and enhancing the role of ecosystems can help reduce the impacts of climate change and increase climate change resilience according to a European Environment Agency (EEA) report.

December 22, 2021 by European Environmental Agency 

Climate change, biodiversity loss and degradation of ecosystems are linked and all have devastating consequences for our economic and social stability, health and well-being. Working with nature is increasingly recognised as an efficient way to tackle these growing challenges, according the new EEA report ‘Nature-based solutions in Europe: Policy, knowledge and practice for climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction.

The EEA report provides up-to-date information for policymakers on the how to apply nature-based solutions for climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction and at the same time making use of multiple societal benefits that these solutions can bring. Drawing on selected examples across Europe, the report shows how impacts of extreme weather and climate-related events are already tackled in this way. It also assesses global and European policies and how nature-based solutions are increasingly being integrated in the efforts to shift towards sustainable development.

The EU’s 2030 biodiversity strategy, a key pillar of the European Green Deal, includes a nature restoration plan that can boost the uptake of nature-based solutions. Nature-based solutions are also highlighted in the EU strategy on adaptation to climate change that was recently adopted by the European Commission.

How nature can protect us

Many countries are already restoring nature in river valleys and uplands to reduce downstream flooding risks. In coastal regions, natural vegetation helps to stabilise coastlines, while re-forestation is increasingly used for storing carbon. Nature is also brought back into cities by greening urban spaces or reopening old canals or rivers, which increases resilience to heatwaves and brings additional health and wellbeing benefits. Despite their increasing prominence, nature-based solutions could be mainstreamed further, the report notes.

Other key findings of the report

• An EU-wide mapping of existing and potential nature-based solutions can help to identify priority areas for enhancing ecosystem services and addressing climate change and biodiversity loss concerns.

• Agreed standards, quantitative targets, measurable indicators and evaluation tools for nature-based solutions at EU level can help to assess progress, effectiveness and multiple benefits.

• As nature-based solutions depend on healthy ecosystems, which are themselves vulnerable to climate change, their potential for climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction may decline in the future.

• Stakeholder involvement, dialogue and co-design of tools and measures are key to increase awareness, to resolve potential stakeholders’ conflicts and to create social acceptance and demand for nature-based solutions.

• Further implementation of nature-based solutions to climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction in Europe requires development of technical standards, increased knowledge of potential trade-offs, collaborative governance, capacity building and sufficient funding.

 

Mark Zuckerberg Is TNR’s 2021 Scoundrel of the Year

The nitwit founder of Facebook has created the worst, most damaging website in the world. And we’re just supposed to accept it.

CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES
Mark Zuckerberg

LONG READ


David Roth/December 22, 2021


It does not augur well when a culture’s richest and most powerful men begin musing in public about whether a better life might await them on some otherworld colony. If you’ve spent all or even some of this last year living here on earth, it’s easy enough to understand the temptation, but when the lords of this particular realm are indulging these fantasies—think of Elon Musk’s aspiration to build a city on Mars over which he might preside like a more epic and meme-forward version of Total Recall’s Cohaagen—it gives the impression that they are more or less done with this used-up planet and everyone on it. Imagine Watchmen’s Dr. Manhattan in high isolation on the moon, a god grown tired of his rude and ravening and hungry lessers, except now he’s also really into NFTs and tax avoidance. It’s all ominous, almost poignantly oafish, and sociopathic in the deeply corny ways that we have come to expect from our superclass of tech billionaires. But there is an even worse escape than all of this.

In October, Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg announced that his company would not just be changing its name to Meta—I will continue to call it Facebook here, as I assume will everyone else—but broadening its ambitions to encompass becoming a virtual reality community in which people might work, play, spend, and live. “I believe the metaverse is the next chapter for the internet,” Zuckerberg said in announcing this news. “And it’s the next chapter for our company, too.”

To a certain extent this is just how Silicon Valley’s apex-predator types talk about things now. Because the Web3 fripperies that intrigue them—think of the speculative-unto-grifty froth at the confluence of cryptocurrencies and NFTs and virtual reality and other such ostensibly decentralized, ostensibly liberative online aspirations—are intriguing to them, they believe that those fripperies must therefore be the future of something or other. And, to a certain extent, the outsize power and wealth afforded them by their success in this version of the internet guarantees that they’re at least a little bit right, if only because anything with that much influence and raw money behind it is unlikely to go away simply because normal people do not find it very appealing. In matters like this a little bit of brute force, when exerted by a class of sufficiently forceful brutes, can go a very long way.
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But it is worth mentioning that the metaverse as Mark Zuckerberg envisions it is just not a very appealing idea, and only partially because it is Zuckerberg himself explaining it. The concept that Zuckerberg laid out in a protracted and pyrotechnically cringy presentation seems so thoroughly innocent of any idea of what people actually want to do in their nonvirtual lives, let alone in their virtual ones. “This is the Facebook ‘metaverse,’” Max Read wrote in his newsletter. “Using goggles made by Facebook subsidiary Oculus, you enter the Facebook-hosted V.R. metaverse, where you can meet your friends at a V.R. bar, play V.R. board games, go to V.R. meetings for your V.R. job, get summoned into a V.R. conference room to get V.R. furloughed by your V.R. boss and a V.R. human-resources representative.” To be fair, Zuckerberg makes clear in his presentation that metaverse users will also be able to look like a cartoon bear while doing all of these things, if they so choose.

As John Herrman noted in The New York Times, the reason to be skeptical about this endeavor is not that people don’t want to do some or all of the stuff that Zuckerberg talks about in strained tones of wonder and whimsy. Whether in terms of speculating on cryptocurrencies or gaming with a V.R. headset or just clocking into a virtual workplace, people are absolutely already doing all those things, albeit sometimes more happily than others. It is not even the question of why anyone would entrust the design and implementation of the future to Facebook, which has made the world infinitely dumber, uglier, and worse in a number of obvious and inescapable ways, and is a miserable website to use to boot. That is a really good question, though, if only because it is just extremely difficult to imagine someone choosing to work and live inside the website that convinced their grandparents that the germ theory of disease was a hoax. But what really rankles is that it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that this vision of the future is extractive, joyless, and dull; that the smug cretins who got rich off the platforms that this new decentralized movement is supposedly leaving behind are also leading the supposed successor movement doesn’t matter either. This push to transcend the world that Facebook has befouled and create a new, virtual one can be read in a sense as a response to the 10,000-page Facebook Papers leak, which demonstrated both the extent to which Zuckerberg’s own criminal indifference and Facebook’s inability to police its own sprawl have made the site a malignant metastatic force in countries around the world. Again, it doesn’t matter.


There are many things to abhor about Mark Zuckerberg and his works, but the fundamental mediocrity of it all is what feels both most egregious and most of this moment.

This is the taunt implicit in everything Zuckerberg does at this point in his reign. Here is a man who got unconscionably rich off the worst website that has ever existed, a website that has broken brains on a scale previously unimaginable in human history, and here is his stupendously wack vision for the future—and everyone is just going to have to deal with it. There are many things to abhor about Mark Zuckerberg and his works, but the fundamental mediocrity of it all—the lack of vision, the absence of any moral sense or shame, the inability and unwillingness not just to fix but even reckon with the dangerous and ungovernable thing he’s made—is what feels both most egregious and most of this moment. It is embarrassing and not a little enraging to realize that you are subject to the whims of an amoral and incurious capitalist posing as a visionary optimist. It is especially humiliating when the all-bestriding and inevitable figure in question is such a dim, dull nullity.

It seems important to mention that Facebook is not just a bad website, but a company that has shown itself willing to do the wrong thing whenever and wherever given a choice. Facebook was not the first and is not the only company to tell wild lies to advance its own ends, but few companies have done it bigger or suffered less for it. Facebook also did not invent a politics grounded in unreasoning spite and toddler-grade oppositional defiance and relentless resentful signaling; Americans did that all on their own, with some crucial late help from one family of reactionary Australian media types. But Facebook did create an algorithm that valued that style of grievance above all others, which pulled users along behind in turn. In the United States, the culture wanders, hunted and lost, through the virtual and nonvirtual wreckage those decisions made, without even the armor afforded by a V.R. bear costume. Abroad, where Facebook has been criminally indifferent at best and actively complicit at worst in abetting the spread of dangerous medical misinformation and genocidal rhetoric, the damage has been infinitely worse.

Americans represent only about 10 percent of Facebook’s users, but nearly 85 percent of the efforts that the company has put toward stemming the spread of misinformation has been focused on the U.S. In early December, NBC News’ Brandy Zadrozny reported that the specious pseudo-documentary Plandemic, which Facebook more or less succeeded in banning in the U.S. after it spread widely on the platform in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, was not only still easy to find on Facebook in Romania, but had been viewed on the platform more than 800,000 times in a country that, with a 40 percent vaccination rate, significantly lags behind the rest of Europe. Massive class action lawsuits filed against Facebook in California and the United Kingdom in December on behalf of Rohingya refugees living in the U.S. and the rest of the world, respectively, claimed that Facebook’s presence in Myanmar after 2011 was a “substantial cause, and perpetuation of, the eventual Rohingya genocide” that began in that country in 2013, and which Facebook effectively ignored despite multiple warnings from inside and outside of the company.

“In the face of this knowledge, and possessing the tools to stop it, it simply kept marching forward,” the California complaint reads. “The undeniable reality is that Facebook’s growth, fueled by hate, division, and misinformation, has left hundreds of thousands of devastated Rohingya lives in its wake.” It is all bad, but the common denominator is that Facebook, which is obsessed with its own internal data and metrics, always knew what was happening and why and always blithely didn’t care. Despite the ongoing human rights crisis in Myanmar and the attendant international outcry, Facebook didn’t even hire content moderators fluent in local languages until 2018.

Facebook, as a company that is hyperfixated on growth and its own bespoke engagement standards, makes the decisions it makes because those decisions make important numbers go up. When it allows Vietnam’s government to censor dissidents on the site, it is because doing business in Vietnam makes revenues go up. When it permits incitation-oriented hate speech to exist on the site, whether in relatively minor markets like Myanmar or enormous ones like India, it is because it has noticed that keeping readers enraged also keeps them engaged, and because that engagement (Facebook’s current internal term of art for this, coined by Zuckerberg himself, is the suitably dystopian “meaningful social interaction”) is what the company values. When Facebook gooses its algorithm such that it favors and promotes that kind of speech, it is for the same reason. These are all profoundly vile, but none could remotely be described as a mistake. Every one of them is a choice, and the person who makes the choices at Facebook is Mark Zuckerberg.

So when Zuckerberg tells weird lies about all this in front of the U.S. Senate—when he claims that 94 percent of hate speech was scrubbed from the site before anyone ever saw it, for instance, despite internal metrics that show only 5 percent was removed at all—it is because he believes he can get away with it. There is no one who could meaningfully tell him no, both because he owns 58 percent of the company’s voting shares and is also the chairman of its board, but also because Facebook is organized such that he effectively has the final say on every decision the company makes; no other company this size invests so much formal or informal power in one person. It’s a terrible thing to say about someone, but Mark Zuckerberg really is Facebook. It shows.

The most fundamental problem with Facebook is that it does not have, and never really has had, any idea how to do any of this. It certainly has no real sense of how to be the kind of unimaginably vast global institution—the site claims 3.51 billion monthly users—that it very quickly became, and is in fact absolutely terrible at every aspect of being that site beyond the crucial Making Money Doing It element. All those monthly users interacting with all the ads that choke Facebook’s timeline and clutter its margins and blunder unbidden into every available space generate a lot of money for the company. This presumably helps soothe the realization that the core product itself is both absolutely loathsome and widely loathed—confusing and unpleasant to use, governed by an algorithm that seems to have been designed to make the experience of being on the site as unpleasant as possible, and increasingly the province of the shut-ins, kooks, quacks, grifters, and the dreaded Gun Uncle. Facebook has been pretty much exactly that bad for many years, in fact. It is, in every sense, the website that exists at the exact midpoint of Everyone Can Share Anything With Anyone and “doing the logistical and marketing scutwork for genocidaires and authoritarians and local sociopaths.” It’s awful.

More than that, it could only be awful. Facebook, which talks about itself as The Sharing Place but is driven by the incentives of the cheesy surveillance and value-neutral click-chasing and overwhelming economic leverage and relentlessly cynical avarice that make it profitable, could never and would never become anything but this, and could never and would never care about any of the damage it does. It will respond to a certain level of opprobrium or shame, albeit in qualified ways and at the last possible moment; if there were any sense that the regulatory or governmental arms of the U.S. government might be able or just willing to hold it to account, Facebook might theoretically respond to that. What that has looked like, for years, is Zuckerberg putting on a neat suit and sitting in front of various plump Senate grandees who take turns asking him to help them unlock their phones and accusing him of being very unfair to Diamond and Silk. The senators change, but Zuckerberg and his answers stay the same.


It is fraudulent and irresponsible and quite probably criminal in ways that reflect its co-founder and ruling lord, but what Facebook most has in common with Zuckerberg is that it sucks.

It is fraudulent and irresponsible and quite probably criminal in ways that reflect its co-founder and ruling lord, but what Facebook most has in common with Zuckerberg is that it sucks—not just in the sense that it is lame and bad. Even if you leave aside its authentic crimes against humanity, Facebook is still a machine built to turn lonely elderly relatives into blood and soil fascists; a haunted satellite that intermittently farts out the dispiriting opinions of random former high school classmates; a relentlessly tweaked, irredeemably borked newsfeed that shoves variously viral idiocies and advertisements at users with the horny and unlovable insistence of a frotteur moving through a crowded subway car.

The funny part is that Facebook isn’t even good at being that. Sure, the numbers go up, but the people that Facebook and Zuckerberg are trying to court with their metaverse initiative—younger people in general, but primarily the elusive creator who has little use for Facebook’s towering and overbearing uncoolness—know what Facebook is. They know that Zuckerberg’s metaverse is just a mall-shaped prison through which all of humanity would wander while being pelted with advertisements, slurs, and dumb, garish lies. In a nation functioning as poorly and unaccountably as ours, even petty and fraudulent titans like Zuckerberg can come to seem permanent; it is part of the citizenry’s broader terms of service that every now and then the accumulated consequences of their failures simply come rushing downhill at us like an unpleasantly fragrant mudslide. From that vantage point, after all this, it is impossible to perceive Mark Zuckerberg’s invitation to join him in a second universe as anything but a taunt. Look what he’s done to this one.

David Roth is a co-founder and co-owner of Defector Media.

Omicron Has Arrived. Many Prisons and Jails Are Not Ready.

Experts fear “another potential tinderbox scenario” akin to the early days of the pandemic.

An incarcerated person received a COVID-19 vaccination at the Bolivar County Regional Correctional Facility in Cleveland, Miss., in April. 

SPENCER PLATT/GETTY IMAGES

By BETH SCHWARTZAPFEL and KERI BLAKINGER

In the Philadelphia jail, the number of COVID-19 cases has tripled in the last two months. In Chicago’s lockup, infections have increased 11-fold in the same period. And in New York, city jails are struggling with a mushrooming 13-fold increase in less than a month.

From local lockups in California to prisons in Wisconsin to jails in Pennsylvania, COVID-19 is once again surging behind bars, posing a renewed threat to a high-risk population with spotty access to healthcare and little ability to distance.

At this point it’s unclear whether the surge in infections is due to the highly contagious omicron variant. Still, as caseloads across the country skyrocket and omicron becomes the dominant variant, experts worry the coronavirus is once again poised to sweep through jails and prisons. As in the world outside prison bars, many incarcerated people are struggling with pandemic fatigue. They’re also facing uncertain access to booster shots, widespread vaccine hesitancy and pandemic-driven staffing shortfalls that have created even harsher conditions.

As with previous iterations of the virus, everything about prisons and jails makes them a setup to magnify the harms of omicron. “The overcrowding. The poor sanitary conditions. The lack of access to health care,” said Monik Jimenez, an epidemiologist at Harvard’s School of Public Health. “Masking is only going to do so much when you have people on top of you.”

Though scientists warn that the new variant is far more contagious than previous ones, a half dozen prisoners who spoke with The Marshall Project for this story said they hadn’t noticed any widespread concern about it at this point and that prison officials had given them little information.

“They're not telling us anything about omicron or anything else for that matter,” wrote Rachel Padgett, a federal prisoner in Florida. Many pandemic-weary prisoners said they were less concerned about catching the virus than about being locked down because of it, once again facing months confined to their cells and bunks with no way to call home, see their families or go outside.

“That’s the only part people are worried about these days — taking away our rec,” said a man incarcerated in a federal prison in Mississippi who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation from prison officials.

For some, it’s hard to get worried again considering how bad things got in some prisons before. John J. Lennon recalled the end of last year when the virus seemed particularly relentless, making the people incarcerated with him in upstate New York fearful and anxious. All that’s changed. “There is no sense of urgency about it,” he said.

“I haven’t seen watery eyes coming off the phones anymore. There aren’t ambulances coming in and out,” said Lennon, a journalist who is a contributing writer to the Marshall Project and Esquire. “There was a time when that’s what I saw every day.”

Though some early reports suggested that omicron may cause less severe disease, there are also indications that the new variant is better able to evade vaccines – which means that access to booster shots is even more important. But there is little good public information about how widely boosters are available to incarcerated people or how widespread booster uptake is among correctional staff, many of whom resisted vaccination in the first place.

Though officials in more than half a dozen prison systems – including New York, Texas and Arkansas – said they’d offered booster shots to prisoners, not all were able to specify how many received them so far. In Nebraska, inspector general Doug Koebernick said prisoners have only been offered access to the Johnson & Johnson booster shot, which early research suggests is the least effective against the new variant.

The CDC recently said the 2-dose Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are preferred over the Johnson & Johnson. Homer Venters, a former New York City jail medical director and correctional healthcare consultant, said that makes the coming months “a lot trickier for the people who are trying to engage with people behind bars and promote vaccination, which is crucial to prevent omicron.”

Aside from the lack of data about booster availability, many states that routinely released real-time data about infections and vaccinations in the first year of the pandemic are now releasing information monthly or not at all, said Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein, an associate professor and co-founder of the COVID Prison Project at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. “We basically know nothing, and it’s really disheartening in that we have less and less data every day,” she said.

Even so, the ripple effects of the mutating virus could soon become clear.

“If the slope of the curve with omicron is as steep as we fear it is, we may have some really devastating staff shortages,” said Venters, who has been performing court-ordered COVID-19 prison inspections since the beginning of the pandemic. “With large numbers of staff unavailable to work very quickly, you can’t actually do any of the jobs of running the facilities.” Venters said to expect large scale lockdowns or “very serious security consequences.”

For several prison systems, the dwindling number of guards has already been a problem. In Texas, longstanding staff shortages exacerbated by the pandemic have created unsafe conditions for prisoners and workers alike. For the first time in recent memory, the Texas agency that runs state prisons is down more than 7,200 officers, leaving several facilities at less than half-staff and relying on overtime. Jeff Ormsby, executive director for the state’s biggest union representing corrections employees, said officers are “more likely to die from a car wreck going home from a 24-hour shift than to die from omicron.”

Meanwhile, populations of people in prison and jail have crept back toward pre-pandemic levels in many places, after early efforts to keep as many people out of jail as possible and to release people from prisons en masse as a tactic to stem the spread of coronavirus. By the middle of last year, the number of people in jails nationwide was down by roughly one-quarter — its lowest point in more than two decades. And, from 2019 to 2020, the number of new prisoners admitted to state and federal prisons went down by 40%.

Now, courthouses are slogging through the backlog of cases that accumulated while they were closed, leading to many new people entering the system. Systems set up to process plea bargains have returned to business as usual. And new spikes in certain violent crimes — and public fears of violence — have put pressure on city leaders across the country to call for additional policing.

So with omicron poised to sweep through the nation’s lockups, they are increasingly crowded — a dangerous setup for the virus’s spread, said Jaimie Meyer, an epidemiologist and infectious disease doctor at Yale medical school. “We’re looking at another potential tinderbox scenario.”

Staff writers Weihua Li and Katie Park contributed to this story.