Son of top PLO official released after two years in Egyptian prison

Egyptian-Palestinian activist Ramy Shaath, an advocate for the Israel BDS movement, was released after Shaath agreed to renounce his Egyptian citizenship.

Egyptian-Palestinian political activist Ramy Shaath holds up the arm of his wife, Celine Lebrun-Shaath, as he arrives at Roissy Airport in Roissy, outside Paris, on Jan. 8, 2022, after being detained in Egypt for more than two years. - JULIEN DE ROSA/AFP via Getty Images

Daoud Kuttab
@daoudkuttab
January 12, 2022

After 900 days in an Egyptian jail waiting for a proper trial, Egyptian-Palestinian activist Ramy Nabil Shaath was released by Egyptian authorities on Jan. 8. Shaath was imprisoned in July 2019 along with other Egyptian activists. He is believed to have been jailed because of his activity as the Egyptian coordinator of the Boycott and Divestment Movement for Palestine (BDS). It was seen as a gesture done by the Egyptians to then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former US President Donald Trump. Shaath stayed in jail almost a year after both were no longer on the political map.

Shaath is the son of former Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath.

But Israeli Ambassador to Paris Aliza Bin Noun left little doubt that Israel was supportive of Shaath’s imprisonment because of his role with BDS. Bin Noun tweeted that the welcome by French authorities to Shaath contradicted French law against hatred to Jews and Israel and that Shaath’s support for BDS constitutes just that. “Boycott and incitement to hatred of Israel and Jews are prohibited by French law,” stated the tweet shortly after Shaath’s arrival in Paris.

French President Emmanuel Macron had publicly called for Shaath’s release during a press conference with Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Macron welcomed Shaath’s repatriation with his French wife, Cecile Le Brun. “I welcome the decision of the Egyptian authorities to release Ramy Shaath. I share the relief of his wife, Celine Le Brun, whom he finds in France, with whom we have not given up. Thank you to everyone who played a positive role in this happy outcome,” Macron said in a tweet in French.

The calls for the release of Shaath had received international support. More than 100,000 people signed an Amnesty International petition, and demonstrations in major world capitals called for his release. The official Palestinian news agency Wafa said in a short statement that the “Palestinian presidency thanks and expresses gratitude to the Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, and to the Arab Egyptian Republic for the response to the call by the President of Palestine Mahmoud Abbas to release the son of Nabil Shaath.”

A family statement celebrated his freedom and thanked “all the volunteers, the human rights organizations, public figures and thousands of citizens from the Arab region, diaspora and the world who advocated for his release. We are also grateful to the hundreds of lawmakers and government officials who publicly and privately championed Shaath’s case, particularly those who have done so steadfastly and against all odds in France, Europe and the United States.”

Ahmad Samih, an Egyptian activist living abroad, told Al-Monitor that Shaath represented the struggle of Palestinians and Egyptians. “In the same way that Ramy Shaath struggled against the Israeli occupation, his release from Egyptian jail paints a much larger picture of the struggle of both Egyptians and Palestinians who are victims of different types of occupation.”

Nisreen Haj Ahmad, director of Ahel, a Jordanian-based organization that trains leaders on organizing collective action, told Arab News that the concerted campaign by his wife and family attracted support from around the world. “It built power and used creative tactics. Resilience is the secret of this success.” Haj Ahmad, who is a friend of Shaath and Le Brun, said she hopes all political prisoners in Arab countries can gain their freedom. “The freedom of Ramy Shaath is evidence of the people's power and the importance of organizing despite difficult contexts.”

The BDS movement reflected this common struggle of Palestinians and Egyptians in their congratulatory statement for his release. “Our common struggle against Israeli settler colonialism and apartheid intersects with the struggles in the Arab region against despotic Arab regimes that act as tools of imperialism." The BDS statement also called on Egypt to remove Shaath’s name from any so-called terrorist lists. “We call on all international human rights institutions and relevant United Nations committees to intensify pressure on the Egyptian authorities to remove Shaath’s name, and anyone who has been arbitrarily added, from the so-called 'Terrorism List' and to release all political prisoners unconditionally."

Shaath’s release was possible only after his lawyers submitted documents on Jan. 1 confirming his approval to denounce his Egyptian citizenship. He had been charged, without any evidence, of supporting terrorism. Had he been convicted, he would have had all his properties confiscated by the Egyptian state. Egyptian law allows two years of pretrial detention. The condition of renouncing his citizenship was made after he was vindicated of all the charges against him by an Egyptian court.

Independent Egyptian website Mada Masr said that the controversial practice of forcing dual national citizens to denounce their Egyptian citizenship is based on a decree — known as Law 140 — issued by Sisi in November 2014 that allows the repatriation of foreign prisoners to their home countries, at the president’s discretion, to serve their time or be retried there. Mada Masr quoted legal scholars calling that law unconstitutional because it discriminates against Egyptian citizens.

Upon arriving at Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris, Shaath told waiting journalists that he will continue the struggle for a better Egypt and a free Palestine. “Our fight is not over, and we hope for a better Egypt … and a Free Palestine,” he said.

Shaath’s case exposed the unholy alliance that autocratic leaders in the Arab world have with Israel at the expense of the rights of their own citizens and at the expense, in Shaath’s case, of the issue of Palestine, which has overwhelming public support in Egypt and the Arab world.

'Whatever it takes to support': Coloradans plan to support King Soopers employees on strike

The signs are made and the plans are set. Come Wednesday morning, thousands of King Soopers employees in the Denver metro area are expected to walk off the job, and many Coloradans plan to support grocers during the strike.




By: CB Cotton
 Jan 12, 2022

DENVER — The signs are made and the plans are set.

Come Wednesday morning, thousands of King Soopers employees in the Denver metro area are expected to walk off the job, and many Coloradans plan to support grocers during the strike.

"I'll have my signs, we'll be honking horns, whatever it takes to support these folks," Frank Brown said

Brown, a Denver resident and former flight attendant, said after delving into details of failed negotiations between King Soopers and the union, he knew he wanted to support employees.

"We experienced much the same thing, almost identical to what these folks are going through as far as the negotiations," he said of his experience as a flight attendant.

United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 7 has maintained the grocery chain failed to make an offer with livable wages, tools for on-the-job safety and better healthcare.

On Monday, King Soopers made similar claims, filing unfair labor practice charges against UFCW Local 7 for "refusing to bargain in good faith."

In a show of back-and-forth, the union has denied allegations against them, too, moving forward with a strike set to begin at 5 a.m. on Wednesday. The union said 8,400 employees across 77 stores will picket.

RELATED: MAP: These are the King Soopers stores that could be affected by the worker's strike beginning Wednesday

"It'll be at our local King Soopers just down the street here, and I bought hand warmers, toe warmers. I bought coffee," Brown said.

The union has set the stage for a strike that could last three weeks.

"They are the essential workers. They've been there throughout the pandemic," Brown said. "These folks went to the store to work, some of them got sick and some of them died."

King Soopers has categorically denied all of the allegations made by the union and unionized employees. In an interview with Denver7 on Monday, Joe Kelley, president of King Soopers, said the strike would "create havoc."

RELATED: After months of talk with King Soopers reps, UFCW Local 7 announces start of official strike

On Tuesday, the grocery chain said they provided their "last, best and final offer" to UFCW Local 7. The union said the final offer made by King Soopers was worse than previous ones.

The president of UCFW Local 7, Kim Cordova, has said all offers from King Soopers have been concessionary.

"When you give them a raise, and then you ask for concessions throughout the rest of the contract, like a higher cost of health insurance or you cap their sick time — that one got me — I mean, these folks have been sick," Brown said emphatically. "Being subjected to COVID, I've lost family members and my partner has lost family members. Yeah, I have a problem with that."

For Brown, the matter is personal. His mother died due to COVID-19.

"Her and five of her friends all passed away from it a week before the vaccine came out," he said through tears.

King Soopers has said they've used ample precautions to protect employees. Brown said he'll be listening to employees who say otherwise

Kristi Noem Still Doesn’t Understand How COVID and Vaccines Work

‘IRRESPONSIBLE’

OPINION
Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty

The reckless South Dakota governor wants to “recognize natural immunity” from COVID. She’s not only wrong—she’s also encouraging hesitant folks not to get vaccinated.

Michael Daly
Special Correspondent
Updated Jan. 12, 2022

Halfway into robotically reading her hour-long State of the State speech off teleprompters, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem promised “to protect the people’s right to a medical or religious exemption from COVID vaccines.”

She then raised her hand with the index finger extended to emphasize some particular idiocy.

“We will also recognize natural immunity,” she said.

The majority of the state legislators applauded, indicating they are not only Republicans but also foolish enough to endorse her fiction that people who have had COVID-19 do not need to be vaccinated.

A leading research bioinformatician at the Yale School of Public Health terms such thinking “irresponsible.”

“Contracting COVID once does not make you immune over the long term and certainly does not make you immune to new variants,” Jeffrey Townsend told The Daily Beast on Tuesday.

Townsend is the author of a study published by The Lancet Microbe in October 2021 whose conclusion he summarized in a Yale News write-up.

“Reinfection can reasonably happen in three months or less,” he was quoted saying. “Therefore, those who have been naturally infected should get vaccinated. Previous infection alone can offer very little long-term protection against subsequent infections.”

The surge of the Omicron variant has been affirming that principle as people are getting COVID for a second or even a third time. Noem is not just wrong but reprehensibly reckless.

“The issue with that declaration is that there’s going to be many people who are not going to be protected against new infections, whether or not they’re new variants,” Townsend said. “Having such a declaration is not properly understanding the dynamics in this pandemic.”

He added that the present COVID situation “is as serious as it has ever been.”

“We’re going to have more people in the hospital with Omicron now than from other variants,” he said. “It’s already crazy and it’s getting worse.”

And as has been repeatedly noted by The Daily Beast, there is a possibility that a variant can arise that is as contagious as Omicron and as deadly as Delta.


The Next Big COVID Variant Could Be a Triple Whammy Disaster
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“And the possibility of that variant increases with people getting infected more,” Townsend said. “The more people there are, the more different variants form and some of them, some very small fraction of them, are going to become new variants that are immunoevasive.”

One variant of the very small fraction of infections can become a surge if it can evade the body’s defense.

“And the immunoevasion will occur regardless of whether it’s vaccine or natural immunity,” Townsend added.

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In other words, people who refuse to get vaccinated and give the virus more opportunities to mutate are endangering all of us, even those responsible enough to get the jab.

And in that lies ultimate fallacy in Noem’s disingenuous insistence that she is not anti-vaccine, merely pro freedom.

“Governor Noem has repeatedly encouraged South Dakotans to get vaccinated against COVID-19, but she has consistently reiterated that this should be a choice,” her spokesman, Ian Frazer, told The Daily Beast on Tuesday.

But when Noem suggests that having had COVID makes the vaccine unnecessary, she is in truth encouraging hesitant folks not to get the jab.

And her resistance to a mandate is part of an image she is constructing of a cowboy-hatted, horse-riding, flag-waving champion of freedom who has led South Dakota to economic triumph amid the pandemic

“The strongest economy in America,” Noem has boasted again and again.

In truth, South Dakota ranked 45th in GDP for the third quarter of 2021 as reported by the Board of Economic Analysis of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

That illusion seems to be part of her effort to be on the Republican ticket in the next presidential election. The Trumpian types have sought to minimize the pandemic from the start, and Noem has embraced immunity as a magical solution to the pandemic.

Back in May, she announced at a tourism event that South Dakota was about to achieve herd immunity.

“We’re very, very close, and I would expect that most people in the state feel comfortable conducting normal day to day life activities. We’ve got distribution levels that are very good and outstanding across the country… We’ve got people who had the virus and have recovered from it, and a lot of folks have the antibodies.”

By “distribution levels,” Noem apparently meant positivity rate. It was then down to 14 percent in South Dakota. It has spiked above 33 percent with the arrival of Omicron. Those who tested positive on Thursday included the 14-year-old son of a Sioux Falls businesswoman.

When your kid’s sick as hell and you can’t get a bottle of cough syrup because Walgreens shut down, I wouldn’t call that freedom.

The teen had just returned to school following the holidays. The mask policy there is in keeping with Noem’s no-mandate philosophy.

“None of the kids wear masks at school,” reported the businesswoman, who asked that her name not be used.

She said her son’s oxygen level had dropped to 92 percent when it should be 98 or higher. He was coughing so hard on Monday night that his mother dashed out to a Walgreens on 41st Street. She arrived only to find it had closed early due to a pandemic-related shortage.

“When your kid’s sick as hell and you can’t get a bottle of cough syrup because Walgreens shut down, I wouldn’t call that freedom,” she told The Daily Beast.


Michael Daly
Special Correspondent
@MichaelDalynycmichael.daly@thedailybeast.com

COP26: lest we forget

Simon Pirani

 

| 12th January 2022 | 

The Author

COP26 is long forgotten but the legacy of oil exploitation will last for ever.

No sooner had politicians signed the Glasgow Climate Pact in November, than the US government paved the way for new oil and gas output, by selling $191 million of new drilling licences.

ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Shell and 29 other companies bid at an auction for blocks in the Gulf of Mexico, in an area twice the size of Florida.

This article first appeared at the Chartist magazine.

The sale came after the Joe Biden administration’s moratorium on new drilling was overturned in the courts. Earthjustice said the sale was a “climate bombshell”: if all that production goes ahead, an extra 600 million tonnes of carbon dioxide goes into the atmosphere.

Heating

On the plus side, the UK’s biggest new oil project, Cambo, suffered a blow, as Shell pulled out, after forceful mobilisation by climate campaigners. Siccar Point Energy, which owns 70 percent of the project, then said it is pausing work.

Cambo could still go ahead, though, and if it does, that will be thanks in part to the UK’s lavish tax breaks for North Sea producers. Siccar Point says the project is “not forecasted to pay taxes for many years”.

The company-friendly tax regime means that in 2020 the treasury collected a paltry £255 million from oil and gas producers, while handing rebates of £39 million to BP and £110 million to Shell. 

These tax breaks are just one part of a multi-billion-dollar mountain of subsidies for fossil fuel producers from rich countries’ governments.

And those subsidies form the background to COP26’s failure to tackle global heating, and to the decisions made there, which Climate Action Tracker estimates will lead to 2.1-2.7 degrees of warming, far above the 1.5 degree target.  

Blaze

Some politicians claimed the talks were successful, because the Glasgow Climate Pact mentioned the transition away from fossil fuels, which no international agreement has done before. But what a mention.

 

The actual words are that the conference “calls upon [all countries] to “accelerat[e] efforts towards the phasedown of unabated coal power and phase-out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies”.

That passage had started the week as “accelerate the phasing-out of coal and subsidies for fossil fuels”, but was watered down.  

The media focused on India, whose environment minister urged the coal “phasedown” instead of “phase-out”. But far more significant were (i) the phrase “unabated coal power”, which opens the door to the false solution of carbon capture and storage (that will supposedly “abate” carbon dioxide emissions), and (ii) the reference to “inefficient fossil fuel subsidies”.

The idea of “inefficient” is a get-out for the world’s richest nations, in the G20 group – who promised in 2009, in a blaze of publicity, to phase out all fossil fuel subsidies, and at the last count (2017-19) were paying $584 billion per year of them. And they will themselves decide which billions, if any, are “inefficient”.

Atmosphere

The G7 nations, the richest of all, poured $189 billion into coal, oil and gas between January 2020 and March 2021 in their pandemic response packages – outstripping clean energy investments of $147 billion.

These subsidies are a better measure of politicians’ intentions than their words. Other factors to keep in mind are:

■ The insistence by rich country governments, the UK included, on supporting domestic oil production that will ensure that the 1.5 degree target is breached.

■ The support governments give to oil companies greenwashing their investment strategies, by welcoming their representatives to Glasgow – while clean energy’s share of oil and gas companies’ capital investment is 1%, with analysts hoping it will rise to 4%.  

■ The promotion of gas as a solution to climate change, rather than a problem. Increases in gas consumption are incompatible with the 1.5 degree target – but coal-dependent countries in Asia are considering switching to gas. And that makes the big western-owned oil and gas companies happy. The Global Methane Pledge, launched with a fanfare in Glasgow, will underperform, Climate Action Tracker says.

■ The whole idea of “net zero” – that economies can keep pumping greenhouse gases from fossil fuel use into the atmosphere, since they can be removed later – is music to oil companies’ ears.

Movement

Scientists, under political pressure, started including greenhouse gas removal guesstimates in their climate models in the 1990s, to make the politicians’ numbers add up. It meant governments could claim targets were being met. This falsehood has taken on a life of its own, producing a huge illusion factory about carbon removal techniques that will probably never work at scale.

False carbon capture “solutions” were promoted in Glasgow, along with carbon trading schemes under which nations can buy credits, allowing others to pollute, in order to “meet” (ha ha) their own targets. Glasgow audiences also heard inflated claims for hydrogen, another technofix beloved of oil companies.

The UK government stands out as a promoter of these false solutions. Carbon capture and hydrogen, along with electric vehicle manufacture – the decarbonisation effect of which is constantly exaggerated – play major parts in its Net Zero Strategy.

In response, the labour movement should embrace genuinely low-carbon technologies that can achieve zero carbon – not “net zero”, but real zero – in a way that serves people, not fossil fuel companies.

This Author

Dr Simon Pirani is an energy researcher and historian. His most recent book is Burning Up: A Global History of Fossil Fuel Consumption (Pluto 2018). He blogs at People and Nature and tweets as @SimonPirani1.This article first appeared at the Chartist magazine.

Can We Cut the Crap on “Unconstrained Globalized Capitalism”?

The idea that global capitalism in the last four decades has been in any sense “unconstrained” is frankly so laughable that no serious newspaper or magazine should ever print anything making such an absurd claim.

January 12, 2022 by Center for Economic and Policy Research 1 Comment


By Dean Baker

I get why the Right likes to make it seem that the huge upward redistribution of the last four decades was just the result of the market working its magic, but why do so many liberals feel the need to play along? We got yet another example of this bizarre behavior in a column by Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, which tells us:

“But the far-right surge [e.g., Donald Trump] also worked in tandem with the pandemic’s challenges to bring to a close the era of austerity and unconstrained globalized capitalism. The way opened for a new wave of government activism.”

The idea that global capitalism in the last four decades has been in any sense “unconstrained” is frankly so laughable that no serious newspaper or magazine should ever print anything making such an absurd claim. In this period, the importance of government-granted patent and copyright monopolies has exploded. They may redistribute more than $1 trillion annually from the rest of us to those in a position to benefit from these monopolies. That comes to almost $8,000 a year for every family in the country. It is close to half of all pre-tax corporate profits. It’s hard to believe that anyone who has been alive and awake over this period could have missed the importance of this massive government intervention in the economy.

Similarly, the push for free trade has been very one-sided. While our trade negotiators worked hard to eliminate barriers to trade in manufactured goods, thereby pushing down the wages of workers in the manufacturing sector and workers without college degrees more generally, they did almost nothing to eliminate the protectionist barriers that allow our doctors and dentists to earn roughly twice as much as their counterparts in other wealthy countries. This transfers roughly $100 billion annually, or $700 per family, from the rest of us to doctors earning an average of $300k a year and dentists earning an average of more than $200k.

I totally understand why the beneficiaries of this upward redistribution would want to pretend it is just the natural working of the market, but why the hell would people who claim to be opposed to it, like Dionne, go along with this farce? And perhaps even worse, why do media outlets with pretenses of being serious print it?

This post was previously published on climatenewsnetwork.net and under a Creative Commons license CC BY-ND 4.0.

Dr. Anthony Fauci Reveals Why He Called GOP Senator A ‘Moron’ On Hot Mic

The nation’s top infectious diseases expert slammed Republican Sen. Roger Marshall’s "stunning" line of inquiry.


Lee Moran
01/12/2022 


Dr. Anthony Fauci on Tuesday night explained to MSNBC’s Chris Hayes why he muttered “what a moron” on a hot mic following an exasperating Senate health committee hearing exchange with Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.).

Marshall had quizzed Fauci on his investments and demanded disclosure. Fauci pointed out the information is actually public in his financial statement. “What a moron. Jesus Christ,” Fauci was heard saying afterward.

Hayes suggested Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, was a “little frustrated with that line of inquiry” from Marshall.

“It just is an example, again, he was implying, if you listen to the entire dialogue, that in my position responsible for drug trials and having so-called inside knowledge of what drug works and what drug doesn’t work, that maybe I was making investments sort of like ahead of the game here,” Fauci explained.

“He was totally implying that, and he made the statement that we can’t get your financial statement,” he continued. “It was stunning to me that a United States senator doesn’t realize that my financial statement is public knowledge. It was just like, ‘Where have you been?’”


Watch the video here:

 

Unease, Protests as Yet Another US Nuclear Sub Arrives in Arctic Norway

12 hours ago

© US Navy

Igor Kuznetsov

All materials

According to the protesters, the port calls by US nuclear submarines endanger the inhabitants and the local environment, draw Norway into a superpower conflict and make the city of Tromsø, Western Europe's largest above the Arctic circle, a military target.

On Tuesday, 11 December, the nuclear submarine USS Washington arrived in Tromsø in northern Norway, sparking strong reactions and protests.

The US submarine is armed with cruise missiles and tasked with patrolling the northern waters, where Russian submarines sail out of the Northern fleet's bases at the Kola Bay and the Barents Sea.

According to protesters who gathered outside the guarded gates of the Tønsnes harbour outside of Tromsø, the port calls make Norway a piece in a dangerous game between superpowers.

Håkon Elvenes of the organisation “No to nuclear-powered warships” believes that US nuclear submarines should not be allowed to dock in Norway, and is concerned about the symbolic effect of them being invited into Norwegian waters.

“This represents a dangerous mix of military and civilian purposes. It is a mixture that may be in conflict with international law, and which hasn't been assessed well enough by the Norwegian authorities,” Elvenes argued to national broadcaster NRK. “There is always a risk that something can happen to any nuclear reactor, we have plenty of examples of that. And if something happens first, the consequences will be great,” he added.

Elvenes's organisation received support from the Young Reds, the youth wing of the Reds Party. Its leader Alberta Tennøe Bekkhus argued that that NATO has pursued aggressive rhetoric and a provocative policy against Russia, and that Norway is to blame for welcoming large military forces from the US. By facilitating port calls by nuclear US submarines, Norway is stirring the superpower conflict further, she argued.

“It is absolutely right to criticise Russia for a lot of what it does, but we think it is beside the point to only talk about Russia, when the West and Norway also have been involved in creating this conflict,” Bekkhus told NRK.

Therefore, the Young Reds argue that a new agreement between the US and Norway on the military use of Norwegian soil is completely wrong.

“Now you will actually introduce permanent areas that can be used for this. It will only make Norway more insecure,” Bekkhus argued.

Bekkhus referred to the Supplementary Defence Cooperation Agreement (SDCA), which facilitates further defence ties with the US. The agreement complements existing bilateral agreements with the US and NATO and allows for the creation of so-called “agreed areas” at Norwegian military bases to be used jointly by Norwegian, US and allied forces. It is furthermore possible for the US to set up its own infrastructure on the bases, which are paid for by the US, with American usage rights, but will be owned by Norway.

“The fact that we invite American forces in the way we do makes us more insecure. It contributes to unnecessary provocations and further conflict,” Bekkrus mused. “The way NATO is doing now, I believe it makes the world more insecure. This puts Norway in a more dangerous situation,” she concluded.

Last year, a visit by a fellow US sub sparked similar reactions and protests as it transpired that the Tromsø municipality lacked the expertise or equipment to handle a possible accident with radioactive leakage, which could lead to a deadly public health crisis as well as environmental pollution.

'I Fear That Our City Will Become a Bomb Target': US Sub Greeted With Protests in Norway

11 May 2021, 05:06 GMT

Reds Party leader Bjørnar Moxnes argued that the Defence Ministry had underestimated and downplayed the consequences of an accident and stressed that Tromsø will become a major military target.

With a population of above 71,000, the city of Tromsø is Western Europe's largest above the Arctic Circle.

Russia's Foreign Ministry condemned the last port call that happened in May 2021 and suggested that the civil port in the immediate vicinity of the Russian border was becoming “the next NATO outpost”.

Biden Calls Capitol Riot An Attempted 'Coup'

TEHRAN (FNA)- President Joe Biden on Tuesday described the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol by a mob of Donald Trump supporters as an attempted “coup".

“The violent mob of January 6, 2021, empowered and encouraged by a defeated former president, sought to win through violence what he had lost at the ballot box,” Biden said during a speech in Atlanta pushing for the passage of voting rights legislation, The Hill reported.

“To impose the will of the mob, to overturn free and fair election, and for the first time, the first time in American history, to stop the peaceful transfer of power. They failed, they failed, but democracy’s victory was not certain nor is democracy’s future,” he added.

“That’s why we’re here today: to stand against the forces in America that value power over principle, forces that attempted a coup, a coup against the legally expressed will of the American people by sowing doubt, inventing charges of fraud and seeking to steal the 2020 election from the people,” he continued, noting, “They want chaos to reign. We want the people to rule.”

The speech came on the heels of Biden’s forceful address marking the one-year anniversary of the January 6 attack last week. Tuesday’s speech appears to be the first instance of the president using the word “coup” to describe the attack, which he called an “armed insurrection” last week.

Others like Fiona Hill, a former Trump White House national security official who testified during his first impeachment, have similarly accused Trump and his allies of trying to stage a “coup", or a violent overthrow of government.

Biden on Tuesday argued for passing the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to counteract restrictive voting laws being imposed by GOP-controlled legislatures across the country. He endorsed changes to the legislative filibuster in order to pass the bills.

The speech was the latest instance of Biden employing fiery rhetoric to push back against Trump, who he referred to repeatedly as the “defeated former president”, and his role in the January 6 riot.

The House Committee investigating the capitol attack issued three new subpoenas Tuesday targeting those who assisted in planning Trump’s rally ahead of the riot, including a White House official who helped draft his speech that day.

The committee issued a subpoena to Ross Worthington, a White House adviser and speechwriter, along with Andy Surabian and Arthur Schwartz, Republican strategists the committee said were involved in rally planning.

The subpoenas say each of the men was in touch with a wide array of those in Trump’s orbit, including his son Donald Trump Jr., his girlfriend and White House adviser Kimberly Guilfoyle, rally organizer Caroline Wren, and others at the White House. Each was also said to have been in touch with Katrina Pierson, the Trump campaign spokeswoman, and Taylor Budowich, Trump’s spokesman.

“The Select Committee is seeking information from individuals who were involved with the rally at the Ellipse. Protests on that day escalated into an attack on our democracy. Protestors became rioters who carried out a violent attempt to derail the peaceful transfer of power. We have reason to believe the individuals we’ve subpoenaed today have relevant information,” Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) announced in a statement.

The committee has already subpoenaed Pierson, Budowich and Wren.

Surabian and Schwartz both served as advisers to Trump, Jr., a sign the committee is edging closer to the Trump family – a group Thompson said would not be off limits.

Surabian also briefly served in the White House as strategist Steve Bannon’s deputy, but left shortly after his boss did.

Subpoenas to the two advisers note their involvement in discussions over appearance fees for speakers and media coverage of the rally. They were also reportedly involved in discussions over concerns of having right-wing provocateurs Alex Jones and Ali Alexander, both who have been subpoenaed by the committee, speak at the rally.

Worthington's subpoena focuses largely on his role in helping draft Trump’s speech, noting that it forwarded false claims that the election was stolen.

An attorney for Surabian stated he was already working for a super PAC in support of Republican Senate candidates in Georgia by the time the rally took place.

"He had nothing at all to do with the events that took place at the Capital that day, zero involvement in organizing the rally that preceded it and was off the payroll of the Trump campaign as of November 15, 2020," attorney Daniel Bean noted.

"Mr. Surabian is a close friend to Donald Trump Jr. and is running a Super PAC that opposes the reelection of one of the members of the committee. Accordingly, we believe this is nothing more than harassment of the Committee’s political opponents and is un-American to the core," Bean added.

GOD SAVE THE CAPITOL
How a Cold War Spiritual Arms Race Led to 

the Jan. 6 Plot to Overthrow the Government

A man holds a Bible as Trump supporters gather outside the Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. Courtesy of AP Images.


by TERRY SHOEMAKER | JANUARY 5, 2022

“I am here by special divine appearance, a living soul,” Pauline Bauer stated in federal court this summer while standing trial for crimes including violent entry. “I do not stand under the law. Under Genesis 1, God gave man dominion over the law.”

Bauer and some of her fellow Jan. 6, 2021 rioters have testified that they were divinely inspired to participate in insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. They carried crosses and religiously themed posters and participated in a prayer on the Senate floor. Testifying to a congressional committee a few weeks after Bauer’s court appearance, District of Columbia police officer Daniel Hodges, who sustained wounds to the skull and attempts to gouge his eyes out, described seeing the Christian flag directly in front of him as an insurrectionist beat him with his own baton. Other signs read, “Jesus is my savior, Trump is my president” and “Jesus is king.”

The blending of Christian symbols with national imagery is not a new phenomenon in the United States. Some of the earliest European colonizers maintained that the formation of the U.S. was a divinely ordained set of events. But the type of white Christian nationalism witnessed on Jan. 6 is also a product of the Cold War.

In the 1950s, relations between the United States and the USSR dissolved into an arms race nursed by fears that World War II was just a prelude to a more cataclysmic war. Some evangelical leaders converted the political threat of communism into the detrimental religious threat to the very soul of the nation. Billy Graham, the late traveling evangelist and preacher, called on all Americans to engage in a “born again” experience in hopes of not just saving their personal souls for the afterlife but providing the United States spiritual warriors against the godless communists. In Graham’s theologizing of Cold War realpolitik, America was divinely good while the USSR was satanically evil. In one early sermon at his “Los Angeles Crusade,” Graham told his listeners: “Communism is a religion that is inspired, directed, and motivated by the Devil himself, who has declared war against Almighty God.”

From the white evangelical perspective, the divine protection from communism afforded to the United States required evangelicals’ ongoing religious and political labor. White evangelicals prayed for the nation within their homes and churches and galvanized their membership base. Billy Graham, by then pronounced the “preacher to the presidents,” met publicly and privately with each president starting in 1950 with Harry Truman.

As America was experiencing a post-war manufacturing boom, white evangelicals were manufacturing born-again souls. New evangelical denominations emerged in the religious marketplace along with mass publications, seminaries, and mission organizations, which yielded thousands of new converts. And while many children were under their desks practicing for a possible nuclear holocaust, white evangelicals were placing their faith in the divine as a security measure against the evil communist enemy.
In a convoluted way, the Jan. 6 insurrection was an attack on communism, or at least what white evangelicals understand as communism within their country.

A spiritual arms race for political superiority developed within the collective theology of white evangelicals. Within this construction, the war against communism and the atheist Soviet “Evil Empire” could only be won if the U.S. was a godly Christian nation. In 1954, the federal government revised the Pledge of Allegiance to this end—now, the United States was “one nation, under God.” Fearful of a nuclear holocaust, white evangelicals, as well as many other Americans, took solace in the fact that the U.S. had established itself as a god-protected nation.

Even though white evangelicals saw their interests manifest, there loomed below the surface a suspicion that godless conspirators would undermine their efforts. Developments in the political and social spheres affirmed this suspicion. The first crack in the godly shield emerged in 1962, when the Supreme Court banned public prayer in schools. The chaos and upheaval of the civil rights era solidified evangelical fears that the U.S. was straying from the divine purpose upon which it had been founded. They grew to despise the direction that liberalism and equity measures took the country.

In their fear and loathing, white evangelicals needed to blame someone, something, or a group of people for the ways in which the United States failed to align with their vision. After the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1980s, white evangelicals turned their attentions to a list of internal threats—including liberals, secular humanists, LGBTQ people, the poor and disenfranchised, activist Hollywood actors and sports stars, the ACLU, and pro-choicers. The shorthand for these enemies remained “Commies.”

But even if the enemy has the same moniker, today’s white evangelicals are skeptical of the American government’s ability to properly filter out internal threats. In previous decades, white evangelicals relied heavily on government officials, like then Senator Joseph McCarthy, to do their bidding. Today, many white evangelicals think that elected officials are part of a covert attempt to instate eventual persecution of white evangelicals. One poll found that a majority of white evangelicals believe that Donald Trump was working against a “deep state” network attempting to undermine his policies.

Paranoia in white evangelicalism has festered in recent decades. The number of those affiliating with white evangelicalism is shrinking. Prayer has not been reinstated in public schools, abortion remains legal, and evolution endures as a standard scientific explanation. This suspicion of the American government and fellow citizens creates a collective marginalization complex—white evangelicals think that they are under attack. This means some of them are willing to take matters into their own hands with spiritual and physical measures.

In a convoluted way, the Jan. 6 insurrection was an attack on communism, or at least what white evangelicals understand as communism within their country: an evil so persistent that they needed to defend the nation and themselves. “QAnon shaman” Jacob Chansley articulated this on the Senate floor, when he loudly thanked his god for “allow[ing] us to send a message to all the tyrants, the Communists, and the globalists, that this is our nation, not theirs, that we will not allow the America, the American way of the United States of America, to go down.” For insurrectionists like Chansley and Bauer, our current federal government is godless, moving toward communism, and, thus, un-American. While Chansley has been sentenced to a 41-month prison term, he echoes a call to arms against the sentencing of America to damnation. These religious rioters seek a national conversion, even if it requires the use of spiritual and physical force. What remains to be determined since the insurrection is what needs saving—the church or the state.

TERRY SHOEMAKERis a lecturer in religious studies at Arizona State University. His research focuses on those leaving evangelicalism in the United States today. He resides in Phoenix with his wife, daughter, and two puppies.

PRIMARY EDITOR: TALIB JABBAR | SECONDARY EDITOR: SARAH ROTHBARD

ESSAY
CALIFORNIA NEEDS AN AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION
From the Ojai Valley, I Can See the State’s Post-Carbon Future—And It Looks Like the Ancient Past


Orange orchard in Ojai Valley. Image by Stephanie Pincetl.

by STEPHANIE PINCETL | JANUARY 12, 2022

The Ojai Valley in Ventura County is a magical place. Consider its elements: the sweet and intoxicating smell of California citrus blossoms in the spring, the open space preserved by orchards, the seasonal creeks that run free through the cultivated lands, the surrounding chaparral covered hills and mountains.

But the Ojai Valley is also a place in peril. That’s because the water source that keeps this inland Ventura hamlet thriving is nearly dry.

Lake Casitas reservoir was built in the late 1950s when decades of plentiful rain hid the true nature of California’s arid climate. Back then, the official projections for water-resources potential were pretty optimistic. Today, that story has changed dramatically, and any other approach to water supplies seems beyond our conventional ways of water management.

I came to the Ojai Valley with my husband about 15 years ago, when the disruptions to the climate regime still seemed distant. But two consecutive deep droughts have brought water uncertainty front and center.

It’s this fear of water shortages that is dominating conversations and creating antagonisms: farmers versus city dwellers, farmers against farmers, water officials vs. everybody. We all know that the snowpack in the mountains is dwindling, so if we run out of water and average temperatures continue to climb, what then?

I am a professor at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability with several decades of research on California land use, water, energy and the question of sustainability and climate change. I’ve done research with biologists, hydrologists, engineers, climate scientists and public health experts looking at environment and sustainability, environmental justice, policy and politics, and conducted a great deal of quantitative research on water resources. I am also a native Californian, in love with the state.

Thinking about the state’s future and its magnificent resources and agricultural productivity, the fact that much of agriculture today is intertwined with dependence on hydrocarbons—from fertilizers, fumigants and pesticides to diesel and plastics—poses a predicament. These don’t just override the natural conditions, but damage them, seriously. This means that continuing to grow crops and rear livestock using highly consumptive 20th-century methods in a leaner, dryer 21st century will compound ecological crises and implode the agricultural sector. It’s inescapable that in order for California agriculture to survive, and even flourish, with less water and fewer hydrocarbons, we need nothing short of a revolutionary re-envisioning of the future without carbon.

The politics of this change will be enormously contentious, difficult, and protracted. But consider the alternative: The path of agriculture today is toward extinction. A changing climate is here, and water is not something that can be manufactured. With more dry years, and more groundwater extraction, the path toward groundwater depletion is clear. That’s why though what I propose below may seem fanciful and impossible, I offer them as thought pieces, as sketches of a possible future that provides livelihoods and sustenance, a future that the current trajectory cannot deliver.

Before globalization, which is dependent on being able to rapidly ship products anywhere across the world using fossil fuels, people ate far more seasonally. It was unimaginable to eat bell peppers in the wintertime in northern climates, for example. But now, the global south grows crops for the global north to ensure foodstuffs are available all year round. Reduce or eliminate fossil fuels, and a new agriculture will have to emerge for a post-hydrocarbon fuel world that will rely on local and regional resources. People will eat more seasonally and will eat fewer high-energy dense foods, such as meat. Different regions across the U.S. and the world will return to growing what can be grown in those places, supplemented by hot houses heated with compost (for example) in cold regions, or eat mostly tropical crops in tropical regions.

This means California will no longer be a large exporter of food, domestically or, especially, internationally. California agriculture will be primarily destined for Californians. Food will be more expensive and perhaps our diets will be more limited, but that does not mean there necessarily will be less to eat. Rather, we will simply not be able to source the world for our food, often to the detriment of growers here, in Mexico, South America, Africa and elsewhere.

One of the most challenging issues, fundamental to the type of transition described above, will be the question of corporate large-scale land holdings, and the price of land. With dramatically less water available, and the shift away from hydrocarbon agriculture, land prices may plummet on their own. But it may also be that big farms will break up, as they will no longer be viable without water and without the ability to cultivate lands using large-scale, fossil fuel intensive machinery.

Corporate owners might be compensated, but at the pre-water development land costs, and perhaps subtracting the cost of land and water remediation necessary because of the extensive chemical contamination. (Under the Newlands Reclamation Act of 1902, which authorized federal water projects, farmers were to sell acreage above 160 acres, or 320 for married couples, at pre-water prices, or pay for the full cost of their share of the project. They never did, and under President Reagan that law was overturned, handing over to large-scale corporate agriculture the investment of the American taxpayer in water delivery systems.) If the return on investment for corporate growers declines, they will exit. And since water will be scarce and fuel for commuting non-existent, turning farmland into housing subdivisions will not be an option.
It’s inescapable that in order for California agriculture to survive, and even flourish, with less water and fewer hydrocarbons, we need nothing short of a revolutionary re-envisioning of the future without carbon.

A new agroecological agriculture will, however, create many new jobs. Though lands that were brought into production by the sheer application of fossil energy will go out of production, and the footprint of agriculture in the state will shrink, many more people will work the land. This has the potential to allow us to adopt more sustainable farming practices, modeled on historical examples of regions with climates such as ours, like the Eastern Mediterranean region where water systems were managed by experts adept at passive water systems, where and when the resource was available.

Peasant farmers grew crops based on knowledge about seeds and traditional practices passed from generation to generation and developed over many centuries. Each skill- and knowledge-base was specific to place—to the soils, flora and fauna, climate, slopes, light, and seasons. Practicing small-scale intensive agriculture, growing a diversity of crops, and applying organic inputs to increase or maintain soil fertility, these land artisans were decision makers responsible for feeding their families and others in the community.

We have such land artisans today, although their skills and knowledge are rarely appreciated. They anchor small towns. They create local economies and connected communities. And they have been advocating for such work for decades.

Back in 1996, the international peasants’ movement came together during the Food and Agriculture Organization World Food Summit in Rome to lay the foundation for a 21st-century approach via a policy framework. The coalition, comprised of working-class farmers—known globally as peasants—and Indigenous communities around the world, pointed to the urgent need for an organized, international response to the crisis facing agriculture. They advocated for practices based on agroecology—agriculture that respects local ecologies and fosters wholesome and productive interactions between plants, animals, and humans in order to keep ecosystems healthy and grow food for humans.

The agriculture movement they have built is based on the understanding of the mutual benefits that accrue when farming and livestock rearing practices respect the long-term need for ecosystem functions to endure. Around the world, organizations like the National Family Farm Coalition in the U.S., the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance, Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa, and Nyéléni Europe and Central Asia Food Sovereignty Network are leading this campaign, which calls for food sovereignty, participation in agricultural policy, and land reform so that workers can retain their land. In addition to farming itself, this movement encompasses occupations including composting, raising beneficial insects, bee keeping, building and maintaining small-scale irrigation systems, manufacturing and maintaining new electric-powered agricultural machinery and processing equipment, food processing, weaving, the making of rope and twine, technical assistance, and local commerce such as distribution, retail, and social services.

Vibrant, modest, local economies will eventually thrive as a result of this agriculture. But none of it will be possible without a politics for a new future, a politics of reclaiming California for the common good, a politics that posits a positive future against an apocalyptic one. It is difficult to construct alternatives within the dominant system, but change does occur, the past is not the present, nor is it destined to be the future.

Take worker cooperatives, for example, which have been growing rapidly, by a net of 35.7 percent since 2013; such cooperatives have an average pay ratio, between the highest and lowest paid workers of 2:1, in contrast to the average pay ratio in the corporate world of 303:1. Current labor trends—including people seeming to prefer to stay home than work for poor wages—also represents a possible shift in thinking about commitment to the current system, which may lead to the kind of transformation that enables other shifts.

All we have to do is look to the Central Valley, which produces a quarter of the nation’s food, including 40 percent of the nation’s fruits, nuts and other table products, for the problems California will face if we continue to follow the path we’re headed down now. There, small towns are shrinking or have disappeared. The workers who live near the fields are served by archipelagos of franchise restaurants, gas stations, and chain hotels. Highway 99 rumbles through these towns, often below grade, both destroying the urban fabric and by-passing it, causing the Valley to reek of pollution from heavy truck traffic and diesel-burning locomotives in addition to the tractors and irrigation pumps whose toxic mix of pesticides and herbicides are contaminating the water or the air.

This story of poverty and ill-health will become the story of our state unless we develop a different ethics of practice, one where modesty, and living within our means is the foundation of a better and wholesome future where life of all kinds thrives. It is a pathway along which it will be possible to repair the rift between humans and nature and reconnect humans with the rest of life, upon which we so ineluctably depend. The driving force of this new ethics is about loving place.

I see glimpses of this other future in the Ojai Valley. Ojai is a transliteration of the Chumash word A’hwai or “moon,” and vestigial ancient oaks that the Chumash lived with still dot the orchards and town. For those who choose to live here, learning to farm within the limits of this small place will ensure the viability of the town and the surrounding agricultural land.

This means learning about place. It means learning about its groundwater resources—how to reinfiltrate stormwater effectively when it does rain (and it will, buckets), and then applying it carefully through up to date and well-maintained drip systems, and ensuring there is enough mulch to maintain soil moisture and build soil fertility. And it means planting locally appropriate plants in gardens, refraining from building individual swimming pools, being thoughtful and aware of limited water resources, and treating it as precious and life-giving.

The idea of living with limits needs to reach the Valley. In response to our changing climate, rather than bring in more water, despite the obvious fact that water from elsewhere does not exist and/or has been long promised to others ahead in the hopeful queue, the Valley should invest in proven and reliable groundwater resources that do exist here and can be managed for long-term sustainable yield. This does not represent hardship; it represents recognition of place and living in that place, fully.

Similarly, a new path for California may seem revolutionary in its vision as it will mean dissolving current systems, reappropriating land through expropriation for the benefit of the many, and insisting on mutualism and collaboration for new social organizations. But it’s a vision that can be possible if we decide this is the future we want, and resolve to follow a new ethic, one of mutual respect, one of compassion, and one that is aimed toward nurturing life.

STEPHANIE PINCETLis a professor at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and founding director of the California Center for Sustainable Communities at UCLA.

This essay is part of a project supported by The California Wellness Foundation exploring health equity in California’s rural communities.

PRIMARY EDITOR: JOE MATTHEWS | SECONDARY EDITOR: JACKIE MANSKY