Big Farms Make Big Flu: Dispatches on Infectious Disease, Agribusiness, and the Nature of Science

by Rob Wallace

$20.40 – $89.00

https://monthlyreview.org/product/big_farms_make_big_flu/

Thanks to breakthroughs in production and food science, agribusiness has been able to devise new ways to grow more food and get it more places more quickly. There is no shortage of news items on the hundreds of thousands of hybrid poultry—each animal genetically identical to the next—packed together in megabarns, grown out in a matter of months, then slaughtered, processed, and shipped to the other side of the globe. Less well known are the deadly pathogens mutating in, and emerging out of, these specialized agro-environments. In fact, many of the most dangerous new diseases in humans can be traced back to such food systems, among them Campylobacter, Nipah virus, Q fever, hepatitis E, and a variety of novel influenza variants.

In Big Farms Make Big Flu, a collection of dispatches by turns harrowing and thought-provoking, Rob Wallace tracks the ways influenza and other pathogens emerge from an agriculture controlled by multinational corporations. With a precise and radical wit, Wallace juxtaposes ghastly phenomena such as attempts at producing featherless chickens with microbial time travel and neoliberal Ebola. Wallace also offers sensible alternatives to lethal agribusiness. Some, such as farming cooperatives, integrated pathogen management, and mixed crop-livestock systems, are already in practice off the agribusiness grid.

While many books cover facets of food or outbreaks, Wallace’s collection is the first to explore infectious disease, agriculture, economics, and the nature of science together. Big Farms Make Big Flu integrates the political economies of disease and science into a new understanding of infections.

In Big Farms Make Big Flu, Rob Wallace stands boldly on the shoulders of giants in clearly expressing the problems with our agroindustrial system that so many already see but far too few are willing to say. With mordant wit and a keen literary sensibility, Wallace follows the story of this dysfunctional—and dangerous—system wherever it may lead, without regard to petty concerns of discipline or the determined ignorance of the commentariat and mainstream research institutions. Big Farms Make Big Flu shows the power, possibility, and indeed, absolute necessity of political ecology, lest we not only fail to properly understand the world, but fail to change it.”

—M. Jahi Chappell, Ph.D., Senior Staff Scientist, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP)

These essays put you in the company of a delightful mind. Wallace is filled with curiosity, deep learning, and robust skepticism. In his company, you’ll learn about phylogeography, clades and imperial epizoology. He can also weave a mean story, with the kinds of big picture analysis that puts him alongside minds like Mike Davis’s. Who else can link the end of British colonial rule in China or the devaluation of the Thai Baht to the spread of bird flu? This collection is a bracing innoculant against the misinformation that will be spewed in the next epidemic by the private sector, government agencies and philanthropists. My copy is highlighted on almost every page. Yours will be too.

—Raj Patel, Research Professor, University of Texas at Austin, author, Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System

This collection of short, provocative essays challenges the reader to draw important connections between industrial farming practices, ecological degradation, and viral epidemiology. Wallace deftly links political analysis of biological and economic phenomena, demonstrating the importance of place, capital and power in discussions about disease outbreak dynamics.

—Adia Benton, Department of Anthropology, Program of African Studies, Northwestern University, author, HIV Exceptionalism: Development through Disease in Sierra Leone

If you’ve missed the wit and brilliance of Stephen Jay Gould, here’s consolation: holistic, radical science from the frontlines of the battle against emergent diseases. Using the wide-angle lens of political ecology, Rob Wallace demonstrates the central roles of the factory-farming and fast-food industries in the evolution of avian flu and other pandemics that threaten the entire planet. Bravo to MR Press for publishing this landmark collection of essays.

—Mike Davis, author, Monster at Our Door and Planet of Slums

Eye-opening and disturbing, Big Farms Make Big Flu calls into question the status quo of livestock farms. Chapters directly address both potential hazards, and prospective solutions that could prove more humane for both the farm animals and humanity as a whole. Extensive notes and an index round out this alarmist yet highly recommended scrutiny.

—Midwest Book Review

Noam Chomsky has repeatedly noted that telling the truth sometimes requires making outlandish statements, which then requires considerable intellectual effort to explain why the statement only seems outlandish when it is evidently the truth. Wallace knows his Chomsky. He has, in his own words become an “enemy of the state,” and repeatedly makes “outlandish” statements in his thoughtful and thought-provoking collection of essays in Big Farms Make Big Flu. For example, one that summarizes much of his thinking is “Big Food has entered a strategic alliance with influenza … agribusiness, backed by state power home and abroad, is now working as much with influenza as against it.” Outlandish to be sure. But convincingly true nevertheless…

—The Quarterly Review of Biology

Rob Wallace received a Ph.D. in biology at the CUNY Graduate Center, and did post-doctorate work at the University of California, Irvine, with Walter Fitch, a founder of molecular phylogeny. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he is both a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Global Studies, University of Minnesota, and a deli clerk at a local sandwich shop.

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Sir John A. comes tumbling down—Alberta’s Jason Kenney wants to raise him back up again
Kenney is playing fast and loose with the past for his own political ends

Eric Strikwerda / September 3, 2020 CANADIAN DIMENSION

The statue of John A. Macdonald  was toppled during an anti-racism

 demonstration in Montreal on August 29. JAGGI SINGH TWITTER





Alberta Premier Jason Kenney is outraged. “A mob has torn down and defaced the statue of Sir John A. Macdonald in Montreal,” he Twitter-raged on August 29. “This vandalism of our history and heroes must stop.”

As most Canadians know by now, people in Montreal, following examples of similar popular take-downs of unpopular racist leaders from times past, forcibly pulled a statue of Canada’s first prime minister to the ground.

Responsible for “this kind of violence,” in Kenney’s estimation, are “those on the extreme left” and “roving bands of thugs.”

But Mr. Kenney appears ready to take matters further than mere condemnation of the take-down. “If the City of Montreal decides not to restore Wade’s statue of Macdonald to where it has stood for 125 years, we would be happy to receive it for installation on the grounds of Alberta’s legislature.”

The whole affair, of course, plays easily into Kenney’s lazy nationalism and western Conservative chauvinism, both borne of an imagined understanding of Canada’s history. For Kenney, it’s an open opportunity to “stick it” to a Quebec government opposed to the Alberta premier’s favoured pipelines, to defend Macdonald himself—whom he imagines was a true blue Canadian Conservative icon who might have found common cause with Conservatism, Kenney-style—and to position himself as a principled defender of law and order from “lefty socialists.”

At the same time, it’s a perplexing position for a self-described defender of western interests to take.




John A. was in fact no friend to the west.

Strangely, Jason Kenny appears set to champion the very architect of the historical west’s subservient position as little more than a colony of central Canada’s financial interests.

One of the key planks in Macdonald’s famous National Policy, rolled out in 1879, was a high tariff wall protecting central Canadian manufacturing interests. Naturally, the tariff was hated by western farmers, who complained that the policy forced them to buy what they needed on a protected market, while selling their produce on an unprotected one.

Another key plank in the so-called National Policy was the building of a transcontinental line, the famous Canadian Pacific Railway, that knit the fledgling nation together. This too was much hated by western farmers, who complained of unfair freight rates and monopoly pricing guaranteed by Macdonald’s government, and fattening the pocketbooks of CPR industrialists in central Canada.

The west’s entry into Confederation on Macdonald’s watch also specifically denied the region’s rights to its natural resources. The west was barred from profiting from sub-surface rights to any riches beneath the soil, which remained in federal hands until the Natural Resources Transfer Agreements in 1930.

Sir John A. also created a national police force—the forerunner of today’s RCMP—that essentially served as an agent of central Canada’s colonization of the west.

Many have long noted, quite appropriately, that John A. was a racist. But, some say, he was merely a product of his time. Everyone was racist in those days, right?

That’s not quite true either, however. Yes, a lot of privileged people were racists in late nineteenth century Canada (unfortunately, too many Canadians still are today). But John A. was well-known even in his own day as having racist views that were well outside the even then overtly racist norms.

Kenney approvingly quotes in his tweets the late journalist Richard Gwynn as saying ‘No Macdonald-No Confederation.’ This is a ridiculously simplistic view, (and betrays a fundamental misapprehension of Canadian history).

For one thing, Macdonald was a relative late-comer to the Confederation story; there were many people who were far more enthusiastic about the idea of a transcontinental union than was Macdonald.

What’s more, the reasons behind Confederation in 1867 (or the Transfer of the Great Northwest to Canada in 1870 for that matter) were complex, and simply cannot be reduced down to the actions of any one person.

In the end, Mr. Kenney seems to be explicitly claiming an icon who, through his government and his policies, deliberately made the west subservient to central Canadian financial interests.

Kenney is playing fast and loose with the past for his own political ends. Unfortunately for Alberta’s students, this is just the kind of celebratory and nonsensical history that the United Conservative Party’s curriculum review panel is preparing to start doling out in Alberta schools.

Eric Strikwerda teaches Canadian history at Athabasca University. He is the author of The Wages of Relief: Cities and the Unemployed in Prairie Canada, 1929-1939 (AU Press, 2013). At present he is working on a history of western Canada following Canada’s acquisition of the region in 1870.

Fragments of an anarchist in anthropology: The legacy of David Graeber

Graeber was among the most influential and innovative contemporary anthropologists and a committed activist

Jonah Olsen / September 6, 2020 CANADIAN DIMENSION


David Graeber, left, speaks at Maagdenhuis occupation, University of Amsterdam, 2015. To his left, political theorist Enzo Rossi. Photo by Guido van Nispen/Wikimedia Commons.


On September 2, David Graeber died in Venice, Italy. He was among the most influential and innovative contemporary anthropologists and a committed activist. His research ranged from the legacy of slavery in Madagascar to the financialization of capital and the global economic crisis.

Chief among his academic contributions are his anthropological approach to a theory of value and his incisive analysis of state bureaucracy. Although his work was deeply rooted in an anthropological lineage, it was above all informed by his commitment to an emancipatory politics of anarcho-communism. As he stated in his Twitter bio, he viewed “anarchism as something you do” rather than an identity. He was not an “anarchist anthropologist”—rather, he advocated for an “anarchist anthropology.” Raised by working-class intellectuals, Graeber always ensured that his work was both academically innovative and politically impactful.

Graeber’s most important scholarly contribution may be his theory of value which, though rooted in anthropological discourses, draws on sociology, linguistics, psychology, and economics. Synthesizing a Marxist understanding of commodities, alienation, and commodity fetishism with the theory of gift exchange and reciprocity of early twentieth-century anthropologist Marcel Mauss, he developed a theory applicable to both capitalist and non-capitalist societies.

Graeber applied this understanding of value in his 544-page bestselling book Debt: The First 5,000 Years*, in which he problematized the common presentation of economic history—that society evolved from a barter system to one with a set currency and eventually to a credit economy. He argued that, in fact, debt precedes currency; money is an abstract representation of debt. Graeber held that money emerged primarily to represent unpayable debts, such as ‘blood debts’ or ‘life debts,’ as he preferred to call them, which emerge when a life is taken and the only possible repayment is another life. In such situations, the bereaved could be forced to accept monetary compensation (often by the state). Graeber argued that such unpayable debts only come to appear payable when the debtor is forced to accept human life as measurable monetarily. He believed that today’s debt society is rooted in this history, with institutions such as the International Monetary Fund that can now enforce global debts.

Graeber also explored the strong association between debt and immorality. He identified three primary moral principles upon which economic relations could be founded. The first, ‘baseline communism,’ refers to the moral obligation to help others, often expressed in times of economic collapse. The second, ‘exchange,’ is the balancing structure governing our economic relations. The third is ‘hierarchy,’ which sets the rules of reciprocity. Equality assumes the obligation to reciprocate; hierarchy erases that rule.

Upon this foundation, Graeber developed his understanding of ‘interpretive labour,’ inspired by feminist Standpoint Theory. In situations of conflict, two parties with equal power must learn as much about one another as possible. But when one party has an overwhelming advantage, the imaginative work is left to be done by the disadvantaged group. For example, the poor are often left trying to understand those at the top in order to survive in a system that they do not control, while the wealthy are free to ignore the suffering of those at the bottom. Similarly, as a large and powerful institution backed by the threat of force, the bureaucratic state does not need to perform any interpretive labour to understand the people it governs in order to function effectively.



Graeber was troubled by the absence of a satisfactory left wing critique of bureaucracy, opening the door for right wing populism—which does provide a critique of ‘big government’—to take hold under the proposition that the market can replace bureaucracy. Bureaucracy, intended as a means to rationalize everything, has become in practice a way to ignore society’s needs and subtleties in favour of efficiency for the ruling class and the maintenance of the status quo.

In response, Graeber developed a framework for a strong left wing critique of bureaucracy and a case for direct democracy. Although he maintained a belief in the universality of ‘baseline communism,’ he observed how those living in capitalist societies have been convinced by the right that communism is an unachievable dream, leading to an acceptance of neoliberal bureaucracy as rational. However, he maintained hope, arguing for the fundamental creativity of the left, which by definition does not accept the world as it is, while the right is rooted in an ontology of violence. He believed that, through interpretive labour, the left could develop its plans for change.

Graeber observed, in a highly popular article in STRIKE! magazine, and later in an acclaimed book, the rise of what he called “bullshit jobs.” He noted that, in 1930, John Maynard Keynes had anticipated that by the end of the twentieth century, technology would have advanced enough that a 15-hour work week would be possible. Graeber believed that Keynes was right, but that this work reduction did not come into being because technology was used to extract more labour from workers. To do so, pointless jobs were created. Millions of people spend their lives locked in an irrational economy, working in jobs that even they recognize are unnecessary.

Fundamentally opposed to violence, Graeber advocated against traditional insurrectionary models for revolution and instead advocated for direct action, as an anarchist and long-time member of the Industrial Workers of the World.



His most praxis-oriented work, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology proposed that anthropologists are well-positioned for proposing anarchist solutions, given their experience analyzing the inner-workings of so-called ‘primitive societies.’ But they must become more politically vocal, envisioning and advocating alternative systems to capitalism.

Graeber lived out his principles, balancing his PhD work at the University of Chicago and professorial appointments at Yale, Goldsmiths, and the London School of Economics, with social activism. He was closely involved with the Global Justice Movement and was on the front lines of the 2001 protests against the neoliberal Summit of the Americas in Quebec City, later documented in his book Direct Action: An Ethnography.

He was a prominent organizer of the Occupy Wall Street movement and is credited with coining the phrase “We are the 99%.” In response to the growing power of debt through rising student loans and medical costs. Graeber questioned the morality of the obligation, suggesting that to stop paying one’s debts could be the beginning of building a revolution.

Through his praxis of anarchist anthropology, David Graeber demonstrated to radical academics of all disciplines how to engage in critical politics as much through activism as through research. Perhaps more importantly, the people he wrote about were also the people he wrote for. Most of his publications were intended to be accessible, offering a new radical politics to both academia’s left and the everyday working people with whom he always identified and alongside whom he always fought.

The loss of Graeber is both enormous and devastating. Honouring his memory means maintaining a belief that we are able to change the world and that it rests on all of us, in our research and our action, to bring the revolution to life.

Jonah Durrant Olsen is a doctoral student at the University of Toronto living in Stockholm, Sweden.

 

Trump Lied, 190,000 - A 9/11 Attack Every Day For 2 Months - Died

by

Abby Zimet, Further columnist COMMONDREAMS

Mass COVID graves outside New York City. Photo by Lucas Jackson/Reuters. Front photo of bodies in New York. AP photo

So there are tapes. The new book by Bob Woodward confirms what we all surmised but couldn't prove - the thug whose campaign strategy was mass reckless homicide knew COVID was deadly, but for months repeatedly, willfully lied, denied, deflected, prattled "hoax," "under control," “totally harmless,” "will go away," and played golf as hundreds of thousands unnecessarily died, alone and frightened and struggling for breath. "I wanted to always play it down,” Trump told Woodward in March. "I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.” From social media to the guy who's spent weeks hysterically ranting about mobs of anarchists burning down suburbs: "Take your didn't-want-anyone-to-panic and shove it up your ass." He knew. He got multiple warnings this was a “once-in-a-lifetime health emergency,” the "biggest national security threat" of his so-called presidency, another influenza pandemic of 1918 in the making. "There was a duty to warn," wrote Woodward - who's culpable for sitting on proof in the name of making a buck. Still, because Trump's an unfit, inept, ignorant sociopath, he did nothing but lie and stall and gaslight. It was, says Carl Bernstein, "one of the great presidential felonies of all time." And right behind him are all the loathsome sycophants who've kept their mouths shut and carried his vile water: Mattis, Tillerson, McConnell, Press Barbie Kayleigh McEnany, who on Wednesday declared straight-faced Trump "never downplayed" the virus and “never lied to the American public.” These people are monsters. May they all rot in prison.

"He let us get sick and die, because he thought it was better for him." - CNN's Chris Cuomo

“The President never downplayed the virus.” -Kayleigh McEnany

“I wanted to always play it down.” -President Donald Trump

pic.twitter.com/fjRfcsdonv

— Ken Jeong (@kenjeong) September 9, 2020

 

 

Warning of More Pandemics to Come, Public Health Experts Urge Collective Examination of What it Means to Live in 'Harmony with Nature'

To mitigate risk, governments and communities must work together to rebuild "the infrastructures of human existence." 

by

Lisa Newcomb, staff writer COMMONDREAMS

0 Comments

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, testifies before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington DC on June 30, 2020. (Photo: Kevin Dietsch/AFP via Getty Images)

As the world continues to adjust to life amidst Covid-19, Dr. Anthony Fauci, a top infectious disease expert in the United States, recently pointed to human activity and a disregard of living in harmony nature with as a major accelerator of pandemics—part of a global chorus elevating such concerns.

"Covid-19 is among the most vivid wake-up calls in over a century," Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) wrote with medical epidemiologist David Morens, in a paper published last month in the scientific journal Cell. "It should force us to begin to think in earnest and collectively about living in more thoughtful and creative harmony with nature, even as we plan for nature's inevitable, and always unexpected, surprises."

Public health experts and naturalists called attention to the report, which notes that while disease development and spread is nothing new, "we now live in a human-dominated world in which our increasingly extreme alterations of the environment induce increasingly extreme backlashes from nature."

Must-read paper by Fauci & Morens in Cell. Living in a pandemic era makes us think in earnest & collectively about living in more thoughtful & creative harmony with nature.” #SARSCoV2 is a perfect virus: novel to humans, pathogenic & highly transmissible https://t.co/JRCKcLKj5a

— Lawrence Gostin (@LawrenceGostin) September 4, 2020

Scientist and researcher Jane Goodall, who has called the Covid-19 pandemic a "wake-up call" for humanity, agrees with Fauci and Morens' sentiment. In an essay for Vogue this week, Goodall wrote that a more environmentally-friendly global economy could help mitigate future outbreaks.

"Covid-19 is a direct result of our disrespect for the environment and animals," she said. "Zoonotic diseases have been getting more frequent, and it's not just a result of the wild animal markets in Asia and bushmeat markets in Africa, but the factory farms in Europe and America too."

Fauci and Morens note that scientific and technological advances remain important, but that they alone will not safeguard humanity from future pandemic-level diseases. They wrote:

Science will surely bring us many life-saving drugs, vaccines, and diagnostics; however, there is no reason to think that these alone can overcome the threat of ever more frequent and deadly emergences of infectious diseases. Evidence suggests that SARS, MERS, and Covid-19 are only the latest examples of a deadly barrage of coming coronavirus and other emergences.

The Covid-19 pandemic is yet another reminder, added to the rapidly growing archive of historical reminders, that in a human-dominated world, in which our human activities represent aggressive, damaging, and unbalanced interactions with nature, we will increasingly provoke new disease emergences. We remain at risk for the foreseeable future.

Nature historian and broadcaster David Attenborough, in a BBC documentary set to air September 13, also issued a warning that protecting the planet and wildlife is essential to preserving the human race.

"This is about more than losing wonders of nature," Attenborough says "Extinction: The Facts," the new documentary. "The consequences of these losses for us as a species are far-reaching and profound."

Robert Watson, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity Ecosystem Services, who is also featured in the BBC piece, told Sunday People, "We need to recognize that the way we're interacting with nature is increasing the probability of those sorts of pandemics in the future. Wet markets for example, where we've got animals and humans together, and animals that don't normally interact with each other."

Watson continued, "We have to realize how we're exposing ourselves to this and the more we destroy nature, the more we are exposed."

Fauci and Morens noted substantial changes to our way of life are necessary in order to prevent future global pandemics:

Living in greater harmony with nature will require changes in human behavior as well as other radical changes that may take decades to achieve: rebuilding the infrastructures of human existence, from cities to homes to workplaces, to water and sewer systems, to recreational and gatherings venues.

In such a transformation we will need to prioritize changes in those human behaviors that constitute risks for the emergence of infectious diseases. Chief among them are reducing crowding at home, work, and in public places as well as minimizing environmental perturbations such as deforestation, intense urbanization, and intensive animal farming. Equally important are ending global poverty, improving sanitation and hygiene, and reducing unsafe exposure to animals, so that humans and potential human pathogens have limited opportunities for contact.

It is a useful 'thought experiment' to note that until recent decades and centuries, many deadly pandemic diseases either did not exist or were not significant problems. Cholera, for example, was not known in the West until the late 1700s and became pandemic only because of human crowding and international travel, which allowed new access of the bacteria in regional Asian ecosystems to the unsanitary water and sewer systems that characterized cities throughout the Western world. This realization leads us to suspect that some, and probably very many, of the living improvements achieved over recent centuries come at a high cost that we pay in deadly disease emergences.

In an opinion for STAT, co-authored with Joel G. Breman, senior scientific adviser of the Fogarty International Center of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, Morens wrote Wednesday: "Strengthening basic public health measures, including hygiene and sanitation in all countries, can also make us more secure. Emerging viruses should not find ready pathways to facilitate their spread. A stronger global public health infrastructure is also needed to respond quickly and efficiently to emerging viruses and other pathogens."

Morens and Breman continued, "It may seem strange to compare threats posed by human interactions with winged mammals that sleep upside down in caves to that of a terrorist group or a nuclear-armed nation. But scientific evidence—and our collective daily experience coping with Covid-19—tells us that pandemics may equal or surpass these dangers. It is time to significantly elevate our response to them so it is equal to the peril they present."

Whistleblower Alleges DHS Told Him To Stop Reporting On Russia Threat

September 9, 2020
Heard on All Things Considered NPR
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Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, speaks at DHS headquarters on Wednesday. A DHS official has filed a formal whistleblower complaint alleging that Wolf told him to stop reporting on Russian threats to the November election. DHS says the allegation is false.Susan Walsh/AP

A Department of Homeland Security official said in a whistleblower complaint that the head of DHS told him to stop reporting on the Russian threat to the U.S. election because it "made President Trump look bad."

The White House and DHS denied the allegations. However, the president's Democratic critics say the accusations are the latest sign that the Trump administration is attempting to politicize the intelligence community and downplay Russian attempts to interfere in this year's election, as Moscow did in 2016.

The DHS official, Brian Murphy, made the accusation in a formal whistleblower complaint filed Tuesday with the inspector general of Homeland Security.

Murphy ran the Office of Intelligence and Analysis at DHS until the end of July, when he was demoted to a lesser management job.

Murphy now says the acting secretary of DHS, Chad Wolf, told him twice — once in May and again in July — to withhold reporting on potential Russian threats to the election because it cast the president in a bad light. Murphy says he was also told emphasize potential threats from China and Iran.


Murphy says Wolf told him these instructions came from White House National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien.

White House, DHS denials

"We flatly deny that there is any truth to the merits of Mr. Murphy's claim," said DHS spokesperson Alexei Woltornist. The Homeland Security chief "is focused on thwarting election interference from any foreign powers and attacks from any extremist group."

The White House said that O'Brien "has never sought to dictate the intelligence community's focus on threats to the integrity of our elections or on any other topic."

In the 22-page complaint, Murphy says there were multiple meetings this summer about downplaying the domestic threat posed by white supremacists, and focusing more on militant leftist movements like Antifa.

According to the document, Wolf and his deputy, Ken Cuccinelli, told Murphy to "modify intelligence assessments to ensure they matched up with the public comments by President Trump."

Murphy says he declined to do so. In a statement, Murphy's lawyer Mark Zaid said his client "followed proper lawful whistleblower rules in reporting serious allegations of misconduct against DHS leadership."

Trump has repeatedly challenged U.S. intelligence conclusions that Russia interfered on his behalf in the 2016 election.

The intelligence community said in a formal statement last month, and in multiple briefings with journalists, that Russia is again trying to influence the election, and favors Trump's re-election.

The intelligence community also cites China and Iran, but considers them much lesser threats.

Called to testify

Adam Schiff, the California Democrat who heads the House Intelligence Committee, says the complaint "outlines grave and disturbing allegations that senior White House and Department of Homeland Security officials improperly sought to politicize, manipulate, and censor intelligence in order to benefit President Trump politically."

He said Murphy has been called to testify before the committee on Sept. 21.

Under different circumstances, Murphy came under public criticism back in July.

The Washington Post reported that Murphy's office at DHS was compiling "intelligence reports" on journalists covering the protests in Portland, Ore., and what they were saying on social media.

At the end of July, Murphy was removed from his intelligence post and demoted. At that time, there was no indication that any of those developments were related to the accusations Murphy is making now.

 

Thousands left homeless as Moria camp on Greek island of Lesbos destroyed in fire

Refugees and migrants run as fire burns in the Moria refugee camp on the 

northeastern Aegean island of Lesbos, Greece

MORNINGSTAR UK

A MASSIVE fire has destroyed most of Moria camp on Lesbos, forcing thousands of refugees to sleep on the streets without shelter, water or food.

Greek authorities imposed a state of emergency following a meeting this morning and approved plans to evacuate around 400 unaccompanied children to the mainland.

Reports suggest that the fire was caused by a number of smaller blazes around the perimeter of Europe’s largest refugee camp which rapidly spread due to strong winds.

Thousands fleeing the fire were prevented from reaching Lesbos’s main city of Mytilini by riot police.

Workers from non-govermment organisations (NGOs) told the Morning Star that police had initially prevented volunteers from giving water, food and blankets to the stranded refugees.

“It’s absolutely terrifying what’s going on right now,” said Refocus Media Labs co-founder Douglas Herman. “[The police] are not allowing NGOs to provide blankets or food or water or anything.

“We don’t know if they’re going to transport these people to the football stadium here, to the port, but they can’t go back into this place that’s been destroyed.”

Local NGO Stand by Me Lesbos claimed that some locals attacked refugees and tried to stop them from passing through a nearby village.

The cause of the fire has not yet been confirmed, however one of the blazes is said to have started after a group of refugees confronted police at the camp’s Covid-19 quarantine area.

The group allegedly believed that the Greek authorities had been lying about positive cases of Covid-19 in the camp in order to impose further restrictions.

Officers are said to have fired tear gas at the group who responded by lighting a fire to mitigate the effects of the gas.

Moria was put into total lockdown last week after authorities recorded the first positive cases of Covid-19. There have since been 35 confirmed cases.

A few days later Greece’s Minister of Migration confirmed plans to turn Moria into a closed controlled camp, signing a contract with a construction firm to start preparatory work.

It follows six months of partial lockdown at the camp, with restrictions continually extended since April, despite Covid-19 measures being lifted across the rest of the country.

Mr Hurman said that refugees trapped in Moria had been “absolutely fed up” with the situation.

At midday on Wednesday NGOs were still blocked from giving aid despite temperatures soaring to 30 degrees, while three special units of riot police landed on the island from Athens.

Legal Centre Lesvos said that the government’s immediate dispatch of security forces before offering aid "continues their policy of framing migrants as a question of public order and prioritising their securitisation as opposed to the provision of urgent assistance."

“This fire is a visceral manifestation of European policies, which have for years tolerated the containment of migrants in dangerous, overcrowded and insecure conditions,” said Amelia Cooper of the legal NGO group.

“Residents of Moria camp, and migrants in hotspots across Europe, are in situations of manufactured and state-sanctioned vulnerability. This fire was not an accident, it was an inevitability.”

Fires Gut Europe's Largest Migrant Camp On The Greek Island Of Lesbos

September 9, 2020

JOANNA KAKISSIS   

Children walk through the Moria migrant camp on the Greek island of Lesbos after the camp was gutted by fire.Angelos Tzortzinis/AFP via Getty Images

Several swift fires gutted Europe's largest refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos, sending 12,000 asylum-seekers scrambling for emergency shelter.

The camp, named Moria, after a nearby village tucked into olive groves, was already notorious because of its horrific conditions, which included severe overcrowding, poor sanitation and lack of soap and water taps. Asylum-seekers at the camp often lined up for hours for food that was often spoiled.

A state of emergency has been declared on the island. No deaths have been attributed to the fire but some people experienced breathing problems because of smoke inhalation.

It's unclear what sparked the fires but Migration Minister Notis Mitarachi told reporters that they "began with asylum seekers" after at least 35 COVID-19 cases were confirmed at the camp. He said some asylum-seekers who tested positive for the virus did not want to be quarantined.

In a televised address, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said that he understands the "difficult conditions" at the camp but that there's no excuse "for the violent reactions to strict health protocols and checks due to COVID."


Asylum-seekers who fled Moria camp told NPR that while there was some resistance to quarantine, "we would not set fire to our own homes," said Omid Alizadah, a 30-year-old pharmacist from Afghanistan who lived in a tent with his wife and four-year-old son. "We would not endanger our own lives and the lives of our children."

Alizadah leads the Moria Corona Awareness Team, a refugee-led group that educates camp residents about how to best protect against COVID-19. He and his family pitched their tent in an overflow area at an olive grove next to the camp, which was designed for fewer than 3,000 people but now holds more than 12,000.

The family fled as soon as the first fires broke out on Tuesday night and didn't returned because police blocked off access. A neighbor told him that his tent was largely spared. He's now sheltering with relatives.

"I would like to think that the Greek government will put us somewhere human after this, but I don't know," he said. "If the only option for me is to go back to a tent surrounded by burnt trees, I will go. I don't have a choice."

Amelia Cooper of the Lesbos Legal Center, which assists refugees with asylum issues, told NPR that many of the center's clients — including several unaccompanied minors — ended up spending the night outside — along the road or in a nearby forest. She said they had no access to food, water or hygiene facilities.

"There's also lack of information about the response, about what comes next," she said. "The overwhelming sentiment that has been shared with us is that this was inevitable, that the residents are subjected to a slow death every day, and that this fire was far from a surprise."

Ra'ed Alabed, a 45-year-old Syrian, is now sheltering with friends along with his daughter, son-in-law and four-month-old granddaughter. The fires destroyed their tents.

"We don't know what will happen to us," Alabed said. "We are hoping that the European people will show some humanity and help us. We are not animals."

Alabed runs the Moria White Helmets, a group of independent volunteers in the camp that specialize in safety issues. He helped his neighbors escape during the fire.

Cooper of the Lesbos Legal Center said Moria camp did not have a fire evacuation plan.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen tweeted that she is "deeply sorrowed" by the fires at the refugee camp and is sending a vice president, Margaritis Schinas, to Greece as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson says Brussels will pay for the transfer of 400 unaccompanied minors to shelter in mainland Greece. EU member-states have agreed to eventually take in those minors. Johansson says the EU will also pay for a ship to house refugees displaced by the fire.

Moria camp has been the European Union's main refugee camp since 2015, when more than 850,000 asylum-seekers — most of them from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan — crossed the sea from Turkey to the Greek islands in the Aegean Sea. Some 300,000 have arrived even after EU borders closed and Brussels partnered with Turkey to keep migrants from crossing. As the EU closed its doors to migrants, those who crossed got stuck in camps like Moria, which sometimes held more than 21,000 people — more than seven times its capacity.

"There is no place in the world worse than Moria camp," says Omid Alizadah, the Afghan pharmacist who fled the camp during the fire. "It is the worst place I have seen in my entire life. Anyone who comes out alive from Moria camp is a hero."

Fire 'destroys' Europe's largest migrant camp on Lesbos
By Elinda Labropoulou, Chris Liakos, Stephanie Halasz and Tamara Qiblawi, CNN
September 9, 2020

Athens, Greece (CNN)Europe's largest migrant camp, Moria, has been "completely destroyed" after massive fires broke out early Wednesday at the overcrowded site on Greece's Lesbos island, according to an eyewitness.
Firefighters are trying to contain the fire at the refugee camp, home to an estimated 13,000 people, more than six times its maximum capacity of 2,200 people. More than 4,000 children, including 407 unaccompanied minors, live in the camp, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency.
There are no reports of injuries so far, and authorities have said they are still assessing the scope of the damage. George Moutafis, a photographer on the ground, told Greek TV channel Mega that the camp has been "completely destroyed."


Migrants walk in the burnt camp of Moria on the island of Lesbos on Wednesday after a major fire broke out.


Refugees and migrants with their children gather on a bridge on Wednesday after the fire at the Moria refugee camp.
"The Moria camp no longer exists. The camp has been completely destroyed. The containers and tents have been completely destroyed. The fires are now out. Many migrants and refugees are now back at the camp and looking for their belongings," Moutafis said. Charity and activist groups on the ground also say that the fire has destroyed large swathes of the camp.
The cause of the fire remains unknown, according to Greek authorities. The camp is under lockdown after 35 people tested positive for Covid-19 earlier this week. Local media suggested the fires may have been started deliberately.
Migrants on the ground also report that the fires were started by refugee protesters when a demonstration erupted over lockdown measures.
"Last night some people living in the camp were angry about the quarantine. They started a small fire. So police came and there was tear gas. And then the fire grew and we had to run," said a camp resident, who declined to disclose his full name for security reasons.

"All the camp is burned. There is nothing there. I am standing out on the street, near the camp, there are many people here. There is also police but they don't tell us where to go," said the resident. "We have no food or water. They say 'wait here.' It is very hot today and there are women and babies."
Congolese camp resident Paul Kadima Muzangueno told CNN that a group of minors "started the fire."
"They started fires everywhere," said Muzangueno. "Everything deteriorated quickly. The police did not contain the situation."
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has held an emergency meeting over the fires. In an interview with the state public broadcaster, Government Spokesman Stelio Petsas said a state of emergency was being declared on the island and that Moria's inhabitants would be banned from leaving the island over coronavirus concerns.


A family sleeps at a parking space, following the fire at the Moria camp.


Migrants stand outside the Moria camp on the island of Lesbos as a major fire ravages the site.
Petsias said reports of arson and other potential causes were being investigated.
"In the evening, the anger and despair of the refugees who have been interned at Moria erupted," the German charity group Mission Lifeline said in a statement.
"First there was a dispute at the Covid19 station in the camp which spread to the entire area during the night. Security forces used tear gas," the statement said. "A large part of the dwellings burned down. The homeless people fled into the surrounding olive groves."
Axel Steier, Co-founder of Mission Life, said he warned that the situation would "escalate" over the camp's poor conditions, calling the lockdown measures "the final straw."
"The people in Moria are exposed to extreme psychological stress. The lockdown of the camp has now been the final straw," said Steier. "The refugees in Moria are not treated as humans.
"Among other things, we asked the (German) federal government again and again to evacuate all people from the Greek camps. But hardly anything has happened," Steier added.
The Moria encampment extends out of the main UN camp into olive groves where thousands live in makeshift wooden huts they built out of wooden pellets and tarpaulin, hammered down with nails. The inhabitants say they wait for hours to use a bathroom, and sometimes spend an entire day queuing for food.
When CNN reported from the camp in March, a rank odor filled the air, the river was strewn in garbage and camp dwellers staged protests at the island's main port on a nearly daily basis demanding transport to the Greek mainland.


A German charity group at the scene said a protest had earlier erupted at the camp over lockdown measures.


Refugees and migrants leave as a fire burns at the Moria refugee camp.
On Wednesday, migrant residents of Moria described being in a state of limbo, waiting for instructions from authorities among their charred belongings. "We have been told nothing. No one has shown up," said Muzangueno. "We are here and we are waiting."
In a statement Wednesday, the United Nations refugee agency says they have deployed staff to the ground and offered assistance to Greek authorities.
"UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, deplores the fire that largely destroyed Moria's Registration and Identification Center (RIC) last night and thanks to the local authorities, including the fire department and emergency services that helped to contain the fire and assisted the people," the statement said.
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas has called the fire that ravaged Moria a "humanitarian catastrophe."
"What is happening in Moria is a humanitarian catastrophe," tweeted Maas. "As quickly as possible, we have to clarify with the EU commission and other EU countries willing to help, how we can support Greece. This includes the distribution of those fleeing amongst those in the EU willing to accept them."

WILD WEATHER USA

In 48 Hours, Colorado's Wild Weather Sets Records For Both Heat And Snow

September 8, 2020


MICHAEL ELIZABETH SAKAS


FROM



yesterday vs. today pic.twitter.com/0RuOBtQEvG— Luke Runyon (@LukeRunyon) September 8, 2020

Some Colorado residents woke up to something that felt crazy after sweltering through the Labor Day weekend: snow.

This roller coaster forecast was "truly something that I've never seen," says assistant state climatologist Becky Bolinger.

In Fort Collins, the Colorado Climate Center at Colorado State University measured 0.3 inches of snow Tuesday morning, tweeting "the earliest accumulating snow ever observed in over 130 years of records!"

That followed Sunday's high of 99 degrees, the highest temperature ever observed so late in September. The National Weather Service says Fort Collins hit 100 degrees on Saturday.

In Denver, it has been 20 years since it has snowed in September for much of the Front Range. The earliest snow on record for Denver is Sept. 3, 1961.

Bolinger said it's an open question how much will stick, given how warm the ground may be just 24 hours after the state hit highs in the 90s.

"It's an incredibly notable event," she says. But there's one thing that's making her sad — the possible loss of her tomatoes.

Denver reached 101 degrees on Saturday, making it the latest triple-digit day on record and helping to set a new monthly record high.


Bolinger says climate change is making extreme heat the new normal for Colorado. She says researchers are studying whether the climate is playing a role in these dramatic temperature shifts.


It's not often you'll see a short-term weather story that looks like this from one day to the next. Saving for posterity...@NWSBoulder #cowx #WeatherWhiplash pic.twitter.com/6lsZrCpD8j— ColoClimateCenter (@ColoradoClimate) September 6, 2020

Meteorologists will be checking to see whether any place in Colorado officially beats the national record for the shortest gap between a 100-degree day and measurable snow.

It had been five days in Rapid City, S.D., in 2000, says Alaska-based climatologist Brian Brettschneider, who notes that he studied only records kept at major weather stations.

Brettschneider says there are a number of cases where it can be 80 degrees one day and snow the next. But Denver's forecast caught his eye when he saw the highs above 90.

"Once you start ticking that temperature up and you're talking about it in the 90s and snowing shortly thereafter, then the number of instances drops dramatically," Brettschneider says.

Denver saw snow Tuesday morning, which then changed to a mix of snow and rain, but forecasters say snow could still accumulate later Tuesday evening.

Big temperature swings in Colorado aren't uncommon generally, but they are for September.

The moisture and cool temperatures could help dampen wildfires still burning around the state, like the Cameron Peak fire north of Rocky Mountain National Park, which has grown amid unrelenting heat and drought.

The National Weather Service warns that the abrupt change in temperature "will have a significant impact on outdoor animals." Before the snow hit, it advised ranchers to provide protection for their cattle.

From NPR