Germany: Climate activists try to block roads to airports

The "Uprising of the Last Generation" group sought to block access to airports in Berlin, Frankfurt and Munich in protest of food waste in Germany.

Climate activists have used blockades and hunger strikes to raise awareness for their demands

Members of the group "Uprising of the Last Generation" on Wednesday protested by blocking access to Germany's three largest airports. 

The group has been calling on the German government to commit to more legal measures to end food waste, which it says contributes to both hunger and climate change. 

The climate activists protested in Frankfurt, Munich and Berlin. They said they wanted to disrupt cargo and passenger traffic at airports in those major cities. 

In Munich, eight activists glued their hands onto the pavement on Wednesday morning in a bid to block two roads leading to the airport. They were taken to a police station at around 9:30 a.m. local time (0830 UTC). 

Six activists holding banners that read, "Save food, save lives," blocked a road in Frankfurt.

Meanwhile, in Berlin, five activists glued their hands onto a road leading to the airport, diverting traffic. 

Jürgen Trittin of Germany's Green Party told Zeit newspaper that staging "civil disobedience" did not turn protesters into "criminals." He said he could understand those who've been protesting for weeks now.

The climate activists have been protesting in Berlin, Hamburg and other German cities for weeks. Their protests involve blockades and hunger strikes. 

Wildfires to increase up to 30% by 2050, experts warn

The intense, destructive fires that have dominated headlines in recent years are expected to become more frequent, even in places like the Arctic. Experts warn our response must shift toward planning and preparedness.


The Argentine government estimates recent fires have caused some $184 million (€162 million) in economic damage

Exhausted firefighters have been battling blazes in northern Argentina for weeks. Fueled by strong winds, little rain and dry conditions brought on by an unusually long drought, wildfires have already destroyed nearly 8,000 square kilometers (3,000 square miles) of forest, swamp and farmland, an area slightly smaller than the island of Puerto Rico.

"It never happened to us, we never lived something like this, we were really overcome," one resident, Jorge Ayala, told The Associated Press news agency over the weekend. But wildfires like this are expected to become more prevalent, and more destructive, in the coming years and decades.

Extreme fires — more frequent, intense and increasingly found in atypical areas like the Arctic — are projected to rise up to 14% by 2030 and 30% by mid-century, according to a new report by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and Norwegian environmental nonprofit GRID-Arendal.

By 2100, they say, fires could be as much as 50% more likely to occur. Even if we manage to significantly reduce emissions, the world is likely to see an increase in wildfires, the report said.

Researchers have increasingly linked these disasters to human-caused climate change, a fact underscored by the report, which links the growing severity of fires to a higher incidence of drought, rising temperatures and strong winds.

"At the same time, climate change is made worse by wildfires, mostly by ravaging sensitive and carbon-rich ecosystems like peatlands and rainforests," said the authors of the report. As these ecosystems are destroyed, they release stored CO2 emissions into the atmosphere, further contributing to global warming and reducing their potential to capture future emissions. "This turns landscapes into tinderboxes, making it harder to halt rising temperatures," they said.
Fires 'disproportionately affect world's poorest nations'

This dire prediction has already started to become a reality. The past few years have seen increasingly destructive fire seasons in places like North America, Brazil, parts of Europe, Siberia and Australia, which have devastated ecosystems and communities around the world.

That destruction — to crops and homes, human health and the natural environment — means wildfires "disproportionately affect the world's poorest nations," according to the report. The fallout can linger for years after fires have been extinguished, especially in parts of the world that lack the resources to rebuild and adapt to the changing environment.

Even regions previously unaffected by wildfires, including Siberia in the Arctic, are now at risk

"Fire impacts air, soil and water," said Glynis Humphrey of the University of Cape Town, who contributed to the report. "Fire interacts closely with the climate, in terms of carbon emissions and rainfall patterns, and it impacts human and ecosystem health. And it impacts people's jobs and the economic situation that people find themselves in."
Focus needs to be on planning and prevention, not response

And yet, experts warned, most global government spending when it comes to wildfires is devoted to fighting blazes after they break out, with less than 1% going to planning, prevention and preparedness. To confront this increasing risk and to lessen the impact of destructive fires, governments will need to "radically shift their investments."

"Current government responses to wildfires are often putting money in the wrong place," said Inger Andersen, executive director of UNEP. "We have to minimize the risk of extreme wildfires by being better prepared: invest more in fire risk reduction, work with local communities, and strengthen global commitment to fight climate change."

The report calls on governments to divert two-thirds of funding to planning, prevention, preparedness and recovery. "It's integral that fire be in the same category as disaster management [for] floods and droughts," said Humphrey, speaking at a media briefing. "It's absolutely essential."
Reintroduction of Indigenous knowledge key

While some of that funding should go toward improved monitoring and analysis, to better understand how wildfires are evolving in a changing climate and what can be done to manage that, the authors also highlight the importance of Indigenous knowledge.

This can include the use of prescribed burns, or "good fires," to reduce fuel that can feed larger blazes. Other methods include creating fire breaks or using controlled blazes to establish mosaic landscapes, which inhibit the spread of wildfires, or promoting the growth of grass and plants that help ward off drought.

7 WAYS AFRICA IS ADAPTING TO CLIMATE CHANGE

Feeding frenzy

Locusts, boosted by drought, heavy rains and warm temperatures, have devastated crops in East Africa. Pesticides can help, though they're not exactly environmentally friendly. Scientists in Nairobi have experimented with fungi and other microbes to make safer poisons. They've also used the locusts' unique smell, which changes as they mature, to break up swarms and even drive them to cannibalism.

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"As countries develop and as economies develop and demographics change, a lot of those traditional practices either wither or change or reduce over time, or [are replaced by] alternative land practices," said Peter Moore, who worked as a fire management specialist at the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization.

In response to a DW question, Moore pointed out that Indigenous practices were starting to be recognized and implemented in Australia, Canada and the western US, with organizations such as the International Savanna Fire Management Initiative transplanting traditional Indigenous practices from Australia to places like Botswana.

He stressed that documentation, and having that knowledge made widely accessible, is key to convincing people of the value of these traditional practices — "being able to map [Indigenous] experience, being able to work with it and reintroduce it back into the landscape."

Edited by: Tamsin Walker

DW RECOMMENDS

Disasters around the world are more closely linked than we might think

Climate catastrophes, pandemics and other crises ultimately stem from the same root causes, a United Nations University report finds.

Climate change: Cost of weather disasters surged in 2021

The 10 most expensive weather disasters of 2021 caused more than $170 billion (€150 billion) in damages, UK charity Christian Aid has reported. That's up $20 billion on last year's figure.

Uganda: Author Kakwenza Rukirabashaija 'relieved' to be in Germany

Kakwenza Rukirabashaija said he had been delivered from "the mouth of the crocodile." He said he was tortured in prison for insulting Ugandan strongman Yoweri Museveni and his son on social media.

Rukirabashaija said that the first thing he would do in Germany was get medical

 attention related to being tortured in prison

Award-winning Ugandan author Kakwenza Rukirabashaija arrived in Germany on Wednesday, ending a months-long ordeal during which he reported being tortured in jail.

Rukirabashaija expressed being "relieved" to arrive in Germany and seek medical treatment. 

Although authorities had taken his passport, Rukirabashaija was able to slip out of Uganda by walking to neighboring Rwanda. He then entered a third, unnamed country before the UN refugee agency facilitated his travel to Europe.

"I'm being persecuted for being a thinker. Uganda hates thinkers, so I'm being punished," the 33-year-old novelist told DW.

He added that arriving in Germany made him "feel like I've escaped from the mouth of a crocodile, so I really feel safe."

What happened to Kakwenza Rukirabashaija?

Rukirabashaija rose to prominence for his 2020 book "The Greedy Barbarian", a satirical account of Ugandan leader Yoweri Museveni, who has been in power since 1986.

His first arrest came shortly after the book was published. Rukirabashaija said he was also brutally beaten during that stint in prison, but eventually he was released. 

In 2021, writers' association PEN gave him the Pinter International Writer of Courage Award.

His most recent arrest came in late December 2021. He was held for several weeks without charges, prompting an international outcry, particularly from the European Union and the United States.

In early January, Rukirabashaija was charged with "offensive communication" relating to social media posts insulting Museveni and his son Muhoozi Kainerugaba, who many believe is being groomed to take over for his father.

He was released on bail later in January and appeared on television to reveal painful-looking welts criss-crossing his back and scars on other parts of his body.

The writer said that Kainerugaba had been "in charge" of his torture in prison.

Since leaving Uganda, Rukirabashaija has stepped up his social media criticism of Kainerugaba, including calling him a "baby despot."

PEN's German branch said Rukirabashaija was "under the care of friends and PEN," adding that he would now be enrolled in its Writers-in-Exile program which provides grants to authors facing persecution in their home countries.

Asked if he would ever return to Uganda, the author told DW that "Uganda is my country, my motherland.. I think after getting medication and the doctor tells me I'm fit for returning, I'll go back to my country."

He added: "I am unstoppable. I'm not fine, but I'm unstoppable."

es/nm (AFP, KNA)

Renewed hope for jailed Saudi blogger Raif Badawi's release

As a possible release date approaches, the wife of the high profile Saudi Arabian writer argues that the issues he was sent to jail for highlighting 10 years ago are no longer such a taboo in the Gulf kingdom.

#FREEBADAWI #FREERAIF #FREERAIFBADAWI

Human rights groups like Amnesty International have highlighted Raif Badawi's cause

Hopes are high that Saudi writer Raif Badawi may be released from jail within the week.

Badawi has spent almost ten years behind bars for publishing a blog called Free Saudi Liberals. He was arrested in June 2012 and sentenced to a decade in prison in 2014, as well as a $266,000 fine and 1,000 lashes for "insulting Islam" because he had discussed the separation of religion and state in Saudi politics on his blog.

Badawi was sentenced using the Islamic — or hijri — calendar. By that calendar's reckoning, on Rajab 26 1443 he will have spent ten years in jail. This date translates to February 28.

Human rights group Amnesty International told German news agency dpa that they believed Badawi could be free by March 1. The group has campaigned for his release for years, along with other organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Reporters Without Borders.

Saudi Arabia's reforms

Badawi is one of Saudi Arabia's most high profile political prisoners. While imprisoned, Badawi, who turned 38 in January, has been awarded a number of international prizes, including the European Union's Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 2015 and the DW Freedom of Speech award the same year.

Badawi's wife, Ensaf Haidar, who now lives in Canada with the couple's three children, told DW she believes that, as Saudi Arabia has been opening up more, the time is right for her husband to be freed.

"Everything that Raif and I wished for the country [Saudi Arabia] is coming to fruition," she said. Saudi Arabia's royal rulers "are working for more openness," she added. "More freedom for women, access to non-religious studies for them, allowing them to drive and many other things."

In 2018, one of Saudi Arabia's reforms was lifting the ban on public movie theatres

Many of the more recent reforms in Saudi Arabia are part of the so-called Vision 2030, a wide-ranging set of socio-economic reforms first proposed in 2016 by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in an effort to make his country more modern, liberal, not to mention business and tourism friendly.

Other significant changes since 2016 have involved lifting a decades-long ban on cinemas as well as the ongoing, gradual relaxation of gender segregation rules. The role that the country's religious police play has also been reduced. One of the allegations Badawi faced was speaking ill of the religious police.

In 2020, as part of this liberalization, Saudi Arabia also abolished flogging as a punishment. Badawi was lashed publicly 50 times in 2015 outside a local mosque in Jeddah, but international pressure resulted in the suspension of the rest of that part of the sentence. The 2020 abolition saved him from having to endure the remaining 950 lashes.

Despite its efforts at modernization, Saudi Arabia still faces criticism, among other things for being a world leader in executions

'Seven days to go'

"Raif has never criticized the current government and was imprisoned for advocating the very same reforms that the current government has implemented," Brandon Silver, an international human rights lawyer and member of Badawi's legal team, pointed out.

"We trust that Saudi Arabia will honor the decisions of its own legal system," argued Silver, who also serves as director of policy and projects at the Montreal, Canada-based Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights. "It is not only the right thing to do, according to Saudi law and custom, but the smart thing to do, in order to shift international opinion."

Despite the recent reforms, Saudi Arabia continues to be criticized for its human rights record.

Haidar and her children, who sought asylum in Canada in 2013 and live in Quebec, have started a countdown on Twitter.

Badawi's children last saw their father when the eldest daughter, Najwa, was seven. She's now 18 and has spoken on behalf of her father at international events.

Badawi, however, remains unaware of the widespread support his case enjoys, Haidar explained. "He does not have internet access," she told DW. "He calls me when he can from the public phone booth of the prison. We have so little time, we talk about the children and about life."

Becoming Canadian

Should Badawi be released soon, his life in Saudi Arabia would be far from easy. The financial fine is still pending and he not only faces a media ban, but a ten-year travel ban as well. So he would not be able to leave the country to reunite with his wife and children.

To overcome this, attempts are ongoing to make Badawi a Canadian citizen, just like his wife and children. In January 2021, Canadian politicians supported a motion in the country's federal parliament asking that Badawi be granted citizenship.

Raif Badawi's wife, Ensaf Haidar, has been advocating for Canadian citizenship for her husband

Canada's laws allow its immigration minister discretion to grant citizenship in special circumstances "in order to remedy a particular situation and unusual distress."

But over a year later, there has been no further progress. Canadian media have reported that sources inside the federal government believe citizenship might actually make things worse for Badawi.

Not giving up

Relations between the two countries have been strained ever since Canada's former minister of foreign affairs, Chrystia Freeland, called for the release of Saudi political prisoners in 2018. That included Badawi and his sister, Samar, a women's rights activist who was arrested in 2018, as well as Badawi's brother-in-law, Waleed Abulkhair, who acted as his lawyer.

In January, a former Canadian ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Dennis Horak, told local newspaper The Globe and Mail, he believed the chances of Badawi being released on February 28 were only around 50%. And although citizenship would mean he could get more help from Canadian diplomats, experts have also noted that the Saudis don't recognize dual citizenship anyway.

Nonetheless, Haidar is not giving up. "We are still waiting," Haidar said of the possibility of Canadian citizenship. 

What would be better though, is if the Saudi government revoked the travel ban, she added. "We hope that he will receive a travel document allowing him to come to Canada as soon as he is released," she told DW. "I also hope that all the governments that have defended Raif — the European Union, Germany, Austria, the United States — will unite to supervise his release so that he can join us in Quebec. His friends, his children and I are looking forward to it."

Edited by: Lucy James

DW RECOMMENDS

A chronology of the global campaign to free Saudi blogger Raif Badawi

Saudi blogger Raif Badawi has been in prison for more than a year. For nearly just as long activists have organized campaigns in his name. Hashtags like #FreeRaif have soared on Twitter, but what has been the impact?  

From Badawi to Khashoggi: Freedom of speech in Saudi Arabia

The face of imprisoned blogger Raif Badawi is a symbol of Saudi Arabia's repression of free speech. His iconic image has now been joined by others who have been imprisoned — even murdered — for expressing their views.  

Saudi Arabia fights to rehabilitate its image after Khashoggi murder

Senior officials from the US and EU are visiting Saudi Arabia again, and business deals are being done. Human rights activists say the Saudis have literally gotten away with murder, as well as other abuses.  

Democracy in decline worldwide

For the first time since 2004, the Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI) has recorded more autocratic states than democracies around the world. Civil society activists often represent the last bastion of resistance.


Tunisia is one of the countries where protesters have taken to the streets

Autocracies such as Russia and China on the one hand; democracies like the USA or Germany on the other. Is that the great conflict of our time? "It's a tough fight," said Chancellor Olaf Scholz, describing the global political climate during his visit to Washington on February 7.

In an interview with CNN, Scholz was optimistic: he was adamant that democracy would win in the end. Because it is not just a Western idea, but deeply rooted in people. "I am absolutely sure that people all over the world would appreciate our way of life that we have with democracy, rule of law, individual freedom and market economy."
Freedoms restricted, separation of powers abolished

Democracy is, however, farther away from a worldwide triumph than it has been for a long time. For the first time since 2004, the Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI) has recorded more autocratic than democratic states. Of the 137 developing and transition countries examined, only 67 are still considered democracies. The number of autocracies has increased to 70.

"This is the worst political transformation result we have ever measured in the 15 years of our work," says Hauke ​​Hartmann, BTI project manager at the Bertelsmann Foundation. This is due to the fact that around the world there are fewer free and fair elections, less freedom of opinion and assembly, as well as increasing erosion of the separation of powers.

Watch video 04:21 Tunisia's democracy in crisis

This is the case in Tunisia — a country that was long considered the last beacon of hope for the democratization movements of the Arab Spring. Yet President Kais Saied has ruled by decree since he ousted parliament and government in July 2021 and suspended parts of the constitution. Most recently, Saied dissolved the Supreme Judicial Council, which is supposed to guarantee the independence of the judiciary in the country.

That is just one example of many that Hartmann mentioned in an interview with DW. "Turkey has lost the most in the last ten years under President [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan, who actually started out as a beacon of hope," he says. "The separation of powers and participation are so limited there that two years ago we had to classify Turkey as an autocracy. Unfortunately, this assessment hasn't changed since."
The main drivers of autocracies: political and economic elites

It is a worrying trend that many democracies which had previously been well-established have now slipped into the category of "defective democracies," the study's authors note. For example, through the ethno-nationalist course of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in India and the right-wing authoritarian governments of President Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and President Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines.

"For me, these are the democracies that ten years ago we classified as consolidating, as stable, and which now have major defects in their political processes. In Europe, we know the examples of Poland and Hungary as thwarting EU principles of the rule of law."

Watch video  04:26'The era of appeasing autocrats should be over'

What does Hartmann see as strengthening autocratic systems and eroding democratic norms? The main drivers are political and economic elites who want to protect their clientelist and corrupt system, he says. "In the majority of the 137 countries we examined, we are dealing with a political system based on pseudo-participation and an economic system that distorts competition and prevents economic and social participation."

This can be observed particularly frequently in Central America, where politics is often undermined by mafia structures. In sub-Saharan Africa, this manifests through individuals securing political sinecures and exploiting the weak institutionalization of political processes.

The wave of populists

People whose daily lives are threatened by poverty, hunger and social exclusion and do not see any improvement through democratic processes have often been blinded by populist alternatives. This is the case not only in the countries examined, but also in long-established democracies such as the USA, which the BTI does not take into account. The index does not examine countries that were members of the OECD before 1989 and were therefore always considered to be democratic and market-economy consolidated.

"Since the election and the enduring popularity of Donald Trump, as well as the irresponsibility of the English elite, everyone has probably lost some illusions about the strength of our own democracies," says Hartmann. In addition to the marginalization of individual population groups, he sees simple majority voting as a problem, which often leads to two-party competition: "It seems to me to be a fuse for polarization, which we can probably observe best in the USA."

Watch video26:00 Putin and Xi against the West: Democracy under pressure?

Repression in the shadow of the pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic has also brought further restrictions on political and civil rights in many countries. In most cases, these were moderate, limited to a certain time period and, as far as democracies are concerned, were also legitimized by parliament, says Hartmann. "But we do find exceptions in populist regimes with authoritarian traits, such as the Philippines or Hungary, or in autocracies including Azerbaijan, Cambodia or Venezuela, which have used the pandemic as an excuse to push the repression even further." In advanced autocracies such as China, the extent of digital surveillance has increased massively.

Despite the worldwide trend towards more autocracy, Hartmann also continues to believe that most people long for freedom and co-determination. One hopeful sign is that there has been no decline in the global average for civic engagement. "Take the courageous stand up for free elections in Belarus, civil society solidarity in Lebanon, the fight against military dominance in Sudan or the protest against the coup in Myanmar. These people don't just go to any demonstration, they risk their lives for a better society at stake." They are heroes, he says — the last and the toughest bastion in the global struggle against autocracy.

This article was originally written in German.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse Wants You to Know Why SCOTUS Is FUBAR

The right’s capture of the Supreme Court is the result of what he calls “the Scheme.”


DAVID SMITH Bio
Mother Jones

FEBRUARY 22, 2022

Sen. Whitehouse during the October 2020 confirmation hearings for Trump Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett.

Greg Nash/Zuma Press

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The US Senate is not a crowded, rambunctious place like Britain’s House of Commons or other more lively legislative bodies around the world. Members are accustomed to speaking among row after row of empty desks, unheckled by absent colleagues. This has not deterred Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) from stepping into the arena to champion urgent causes.

For almost nine years, the Democrat took to the Senate floor every week the chamber was in session to demand that attention be paid to the climate crisis. He retired the “Time to Wake Up” series last year after 279 speeches only to revive it again this year.

But now he has another alarm to sound: “The Scheme” is a series about the plot by rightwing donor interests to capture the Supreme Court and achieve through the institution’s power what they cannot through other branches of government.

For each speech, Whitehouse, whose desk is on the back row, rises to his feet beside a mounted sign with the words “The scheme” superimposed on an image of the court’s exterior. He expounds on the decades-long roots of the master plan, how it was watered by “dark money,” and how it bore full fruit when President Donald Trump installed a six-justice right-wing majority on the court.

In an interview with the Guardian, Whitehouse, 66, explains why he has no faith in Trump’s three appointees—Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett—and acknowledges the embarrassment that Democrats were “sleeping sentries” as the threat unfolded.

Fueled by dark money, Whitehouse argues, special interests groom young judges, promote them in advertising campaigns, and then try to influence them via legal briefs.

But first, does it bother him that he is not playing to a full house, perhaps shouting into the void? “One gets used to it in the Senate,” he says phlegmatically, sitting in a meeting room at his Capitol Hill office adorned with framed photos of lighthouses and starry skies from Rhode Island, the tiny state that he represents.

“Actually the last time I went out, a little troop of people who I didn’t recognize came out of the Republican cloakroom and went and sat on the staff bench on the other side and watched and then, when I was done, they trooped back off. I don’t think I have a fan club, but somebody wanted to get a report.”

The thread running through Whitehouse’s spoken essays is that the current 6-3 conservative majority on the court is no accident but the product of special interests and dark money—hundreds of millions of dollars in anonymous hidden spending.

Whitehouse chose his title carefully. “It implies that this is not random,” he says. “This is not just, ‘Oh, we’re conservatives, and so we’re going to appoint conservative thinking judges,’ which is the veneer. They would like to maintain this is just conservatives being conservatives.”

He suggests that the model of “agency capture,” when an administrative agency is co-opted to serve the interests of a minor constituency, was applied to the supreme court. “Once you’re over that threshold of indecency, it actually turned out to be a pretty easy target. The other construct to bear in mind is covert operations, because essentially what’s happened is that a bunch of fossil fuel billionaires have run a massive covert operation in and against their own country. And that’s a scheme.”

The senator has delivered 12 of the speeches so far. The first, last May, was entitled “The Powell Memo.” It focused on Lewis Powell, a corporate lawyer from Virginia in the 1950s and 1960s, a period of political turbulence that rattled America’s corporate elite. The US Chamber of Commerce commissioned from Powell a strategic plan for reasserting corporate authority over the political domain.

One section of Powell’s secret report, called “Neglected Opportunity in the Courts,” described “exploiting judicial action” as an “area of vast opportunity.” He added that “with an activist-minded Supreme Court, the judiciary may be the most important instrument for social, economic, and political change.” The report was dated August 1971; two months later, Republican President Richard Nixon nominated Powell to the Supreme Court.“Samuel Alito…has proven himself on the court as being a faithful workhorse for that dark money corporate right-wing crew.””

Whitehouse comments: “Having given the US Chamber of Commerce that warning and laid out that strategy, he then went on to the court and in three very significant decisions created a role for corporations in American politics that had never existed and was clearly not something that the founding fathers thought about or would have approved. Since then it’s gotten worse, but he teed it up in those earlier decisions and set the Republican justices of the court on that pathway.”

Another key player in the story is the Federalist Society, founded in 1982 by law students who wanted to challenge what they perceived as the dominant liberal ideology. Its co-chairman and former executive vice-president is Leonard Leo, who also advised Trump on judicial selection.

The Federalist Society “first showed its fangs” in 2005, Whitehouse says, when President George W. Bush chose Harriet Miers for the supreme court. “The Federalist Society came forward to defeat the nomination of an extremely talented lawyer by a Republican president because she was not, to quote what was said at the time, ‘one of us.'”

“It was at that point that the grip of this little donor elite and Leo, its Federalist Society operative, really took hold. Justice Samuel Alito was the product of that and he has proven himself on the court as being a faithful workhorse for that dark money corporate right-wing crew.”

There was no better example than 2010 and the Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling in Citizens United v Federal Elec­tion Commis­sion, which allowed wealthy donors, corpor­a­tions and special interest groups to spend unlim­ited cash on elec­tions. Since then an estimated $6 billion in dark money, often from nonprofits that are not required to disclose their donors, has poured into political campaigns.

“They’ve got to try to keep the veneer. The instant that Roberts admits, ‘Okay, this is a captured court’…then they kind of blow themselves up.”

The Kryptonite to the scheme is transparency because it would enable the public to follow the money. So donors depend on the court to preserve their anonymity. The senator highlights last year’s case of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, front group of the wealthy Koch brothers that successfully sued to prevent access to donor information.

Not surprisingly, the court’s reputation for independence has taken hit after hit and Senate nomination hearings have become partisan gunfights. In 2019 Chief Justice John Roberts felt compelled to push back: “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges, or Clinton judges. What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.”

“Piffle,” says Whitehouse. “They’ve got to try to keep the veneer. The instant that Roberts admits, ‘Okay, this is a captured court, we’re here to do dirty deeds for the big donors that got us on to the court,’ then they kind of blow themselves up.”

“So they’re not going to do that. Keeping a veneer that we’re all actually very serious judges here and this is all on the up and up is important to the success of the scheme.”

He adds: “The difference is the evidence of their behavior. There are things that are inexplicable in a legitimate court.”

Anonymous donors gave tens of millions of dollars to the Judicial Crisis Network, a rightwing advocacy organization, to fund advertising campaigns supporting Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, or Barrett for the Supreme Court. Whitehouse does not believe they are impartial justices.

Whitehouse predicts that court will “nibble away” at Roe v Wade, the 1973 decision enshrining a woman’s right to an abortion. “There are some things that it’s not worth doing all at once and creating a big political blowback,” he says, comparing it to rulings on Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law. “If my theory is correct, they have an eye to the political winds and don’t want to step out too far if they don’t have to. As long as they are continuing to feed the anti-choice base, step-by-step is fine.”“The more Mitch can lower the temperature and have everybody think that the Supreme Court is just normal—nothing to see here, folks—that’s in his interest.”

A similar pragmatism may play out when it comes to filling the vacancy left by Stephen Breyer, a liberal justice who last month announced his retirement. Whitehouse, who does not have a preferred candidate, says: “If you’ve captured the court already and you’ve got 6-3 and it’s doing what your big donors want, you don’t want to create a ruckus, you don’t want lots of controversy. It’s going to be 6-3 before; it’s going to be 6-3 after.

“The more Mitch can lower the temperature and have everybody think that the Supreme Court is just normal—nothing to see here, folks—that’s in his interest. The more that the red meat attack is not against the candidate but against Democrat dark money, the more you have success in the propaganda wars to fool the public about what you actually did.”

Democrats have been criticized for being complacent as Republicans unspooled their 50-year campaign to capture the courts. Whitehouse agrees. “It’s way late. It’s really embarrassing how we let this dark money crowd steal a march on us.”

He observes: “From a political perspective it never mattered as much to the Democratic base as it did to the Republican base because we did not have the history of Roe v. Wade, Brown v. Board of Education [desegregating public schools], decisions that provoked massive cultural objections on the far right.”

“So they got highly motivated and we did not, but then once we saw this machinery begin to go in operation to capture the court, we never bothered to call it out either. It’s not just that our base didn’t care as much. It’s that we were sleeping sentries.”

Whitehouse is planning at least three or four more speeches about The Scheme. As with his climate series, he hopes that the message will get through: It is time to wake up.

“I hope there’ll be a more general understanding that what’s going on at the court has a lot less to do with conservatism than it has to do with capture and, with any luck, it might cause a bit of an epiphany with some of the judges that they don’t want to be associated with what they’re actually associated with. And the American public will see it for what it is and give us in politics more opportunities to administer a repair.”

America's trucker convoy struggles to reach goal of shutting down the DC Beltway

Sarah K. Burris
February 23, 2022


Americans who supported the Canada trucker protest in Ottawa have decided to create a convoy of their own, but it isn't quite working out as they'd hoped.

Earlier this morning, one Scranton trucker, Bob Bolus, desperately waited for others who promised they'd join him. No one came. Then he found out he had two flat tires. Finally, once the tires were changed he did a "parade" with his truck in downtown Scranton. Once he took off for Washington he was able to collect at least 7 others to join with the convoy to the Capitol.

Bolus is well known to the Scranton community. He has run for mayor frequently, even as a write-in candidate.

He's was also charged with insurance fraud.

Meanwhile, in the western United States, it became clear that those leaving California for Washington weren't going to arrive for the movement Wednesday. In fact, they estimate that it will take them a week to get to DC, which means that they'll also miss protests of the State of the Union address.

Over 1,000 vehicles met at Adelanto Stadium for the California convoy. Most of them aren't staying with the convoy all the way across the U.S. As Reuters reported, even the leading live-streamer plans to stop in Arizona.

The low numbers could be a problem if the intent is to lockdown the Beltway, which is 64 miles long.

In an exchange with a person claiming to be from Montana fought with a person talking about the time for praying is over. "GET OFF YOUR ASS AND FIGHT!!???" the person said. Bragging about building ARs and posting photos of a gun cabinet, the "Montana Patriot" said that they were heading to DC to "fight."

Utah has many cars as part of their convoy, though claims of a "thousand" vehicles appears exaggerated. While there might be "six miles" of the convoy, there are quite a few large spaces between each vehicle.

"The People’s Convoy will abide by agreements with local authorities, and terminate in the vicinity of the DC area, but will NOT be going into DC proper," they said in a press release, according to WJLA news.

Washington, DC has laws about the constant movement of traffic. As the Capitol city, Washington has many areas with heavy security perimeters around them. The narrow neighborhood streets and constant battles for parking means the city isn't a friendly place for anyone stopping on the streets. In fact, DC DOT regulates "through truck travel" the website says. "Few streets in the District of Columbia are completely restricted to trucks. Except for a few locations near sensitive federal structures, a truck restriction means that the street is closed to through truck traffic, but open to trucks making local deliveries."

The laws also say, "no trucks are permitted on the Roosevelt Bridge entering/exiting Washington DC and Virginia." they also say, "trucks are prohibited on I-66 east of I-495."

While both Maryland and Virginia have Republican governors, blocking highways in their states isn't likely to go over well. The Beltway is the route typically taken for Pentagon workers, NSA staff, CIA staff, Andrews Air Force Base, and others.

One trucker linked the orbit of Pluto to their overall goals of the convoy. It was supposed to be about protesting vaccine mandates, which have been struck down by the Supreme Court. Given the lighter Omiceron variant more and more cities have begun to eliminate most mandates.

As the news and videos of the small convoys spread, they've become the butt of the joke for those living in the DMV metro area.


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US Truck convoy backers tied to Capitol riot — including MAGA lawyer who called for hangings on Jan. 5: report

John Wright
February 23, 2022

Shutterstock.

A new report claims that groups who are backing the so-called "Freedom Convoy" that was scheduled to leave from California on Wednesday include a political action committee that has focused on defending Florida GOP Congressman Matt Gaetz, as well as a group led by former Trump administration national security adviser Michael Flynn.

"Though it was billed as a grass-roots, nonpartisan event intended to oppose government Covid-19 mandates, a trucker demonstration that left California for Washington, D.C., on Wednesday appeared to be tightly aligned with far-right organizations and activists," the New York Times reports. "Many of those behind the demonstration, which was planned as an American version of last month’s chaotic Canadian protest, have connections to the violent attack on the Capitol in January 2021, or supported the lie that fraud in the 2020 presidential election was to blame for Donald J. Trump’s loss."

About 40 truckers reportedly gathered for the kickoff of the convoy Adelanto, Calif., on Wednesday.

"A flag-strewn send-off rally that resembled a Make America Great Again event drew about a hundred more vehicles," the NYT reports. "Unlike in Ottawa, where a recent weekslong protest shut down parts of Canada’s capital, the activity near Barstow, Calif., on Wednesday seemed highly staged, with memorabilia stands and food trucks."

Last month, the Great American Patriot Project PAC, which focused on defending Gaetz amid allegations that he sex-trafficked a minor, issued a call for people to support the convoy.

"Darrel Courtney, the chief executive of the Adelanto Stadium and Event Center, said he received a call last Tuesday from Leigh Dundas, an Orange County lawyer and Republican activist, who wanted to rent the parking lot," the NYT reports. "Ms. Dundas, a lawyer for an anti-vaccine group whose leader was charged with entering the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, Ms. Dundas was videotaped the day before the riot rallying pro-Trump crowds with calls to kill any “alleged Americans” who might have helped undermine the 2020 elections."

Dundas told a crowd in DC on Jan. 5, “We would be well within our rights to take any alleged American who acted in a turncoat fashion and sold us out and committed treason — we would be well within our right to take them out back and shoot them or hang them."

Other organizations supporting the convoy include those led by anti-vaxx leader Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Flynn.

"That latter group, the America Project, has combined its attempts to challenge Covid-19 policies with the relentless promotion of pro-Trump election conspiracy theories," the NYT reports. "The group is run by Patrick Byrne, the former chief executive of Overstock.com who, with General Flynn, was central in a bizarre plot to persuade the former president to use the military to seize voting machines in a bid to stay in power."