In oil-rich Iraq, a few women buck norms, take rig site jobs

HOW MANY WOMEN ON THE RIGS IN ALBERTA

By SAMYA KULLAB

Ayat Rawthan, a petrochemical engineer, poses for a photo near an oil field outside Basra, Iraq, Tuesday, Feb. 5, 2021. Rawthan is among just a handful of women who have eschewed the dreary office jobs typically handed to female petrochemical engineers in Iraq. Instead, they chose to become trailblazers in the country’s oil industry, taking up the grueling work of drilling. (AP Photo/Nabil al-Jourani)

BASRA, Iraq (AP) — It’s nearly dawn and Zainab Amjad has been up all night working on an oil rig in southern Iraq. She lowers a sensor into the black depths of a well until sonar waves detect the presence of the crude that fuels her country’s economy.

Elsewhere in the oil-rich province of Basra, Ayat Rawthan is supervising the assembly of large drill pipes. These will bore into the Earth and send crucial data on rock formations to screens sitting a few meters (feet) away that she will decipher.

The women, both 24, are among just a handful who have eschewed the dreary office jobs typically handed to female petroleum engineers in Iraq. Instead, they chose to become trailblazers in the country’s oil industry, donning hard hats to take up the grueling work at rig sites.


They are part of a new generation of talented Iraqi women who are testing the limits imposed by their conservative communities. Their determination to find jobs in a historically male-dominated industry is a striking example of the way a burgeoning youth population finds itself increasingly at odds with deeply entrenched and conservative tribal traditions prevalent in Iraq’s southern oil heartland.

The hours Amjad and Rawthan spend in the oil fields are long and the weather unforgiving. Often they are asked what — as women — they are doing there.

“They tell me the field environment only men can withstand,” said Amjad, who spends six weeks at a time living at the rig site. “If I gave up, I’d prove them right.”

Iraq’s fortunes, both economic and political, tend to ebb and flow with oil markets. Oil sales make up 90% of state revenues — and the vast majority of the crude comes from the south. A price crash brings about an economic crisis; a boom stuffs state coffers. A healthy economy brings a measure of stability, while instability has often undermined the strength of the oil sector. Decades of wars, civil unrest and invasion have stalled production.

Following low oil prices dragged down by the coronavirus pandemic and international disputes, Iraq is showing signs of recovery, with January exports reaching 2.868 million barrels per day at $53 per barrel, according to Oil Ministry statistics.

To most Iraqis, the industry can be summed up by those figures, but Amjad and Rawthan have a more granular view. Every well presents a set of challenges; some required more pressure to pump, others were laden with poisonous gas. “Every field feels like going to a new country,” said Amjad.

Given the industry’s outsized importance to the economy, petrochemical programs in the country’s engineering schools are reserved for students with the highest marks. Both women were in the top 5% of their graduating class at Basra University in 2018.

In school they became awestruck by drilling. To them it was a new world, with it’s own language: “spudding” was to start drilling operations, a “Christmas tree” was the very top of a wellhead, and “dope” just meant grease.

Every work day plunges them deep into the mysterious affairs below the Earth’s crust, where they use tools to look at formations of minerals and mud, until the precious oil is found. “Like throwing a rock into water and studying the ripples,” explained Rawthan.



To work in the field, Amjad, the daughter of two doctors, knew she had to land a job with an international oil company — and to do that, she would have to stand out. State-run enterprises were a dead end; there, she would be relegated to office work.

“In my free time, on my vacations, days off I was booking trainings, signing up for any program I could,” said Amjad.

When China’s CPECC came to look for new hires, she was the obvious choice. Later, when Texas-based Schlumberger sought wireline engineers she jumped at the chance. The job requires her to determine how much oil is recoverable from a given well. She passed one difficult exam after another to get to the final interview.

Asked if she was certain she could do the job, she said: “Hire me, watch.”

In two months she traded her green hard hat for a shiny white one, signifying her status as supervisor, no longer a trainee — a month quicker than is typical.

Rawthan, too, knew she would have to work extra hard to succeed. Once, when her team had to perform a rare “sidetrack” — drilling another bore next to the original — she stayed awake all night.

“I didn’t sleep for 24 hours, I wanted to understand the whole process, all the tools, from beginning to end,” she said.

Rawthan also now works for Schlumberger, where she collects data from wells used to determine the drilling path later on. She wants to master drilling, and the company is a global leader in the service.

Relatives, friends and even teachers were discouraging: What about the hard physical work? The scorching Basra heat? Living at the rig site for months at a time? And the desert scorpions that roam the reservoirs at night?

“Many times my professors and peers laughed, ‘Sure, we’ll see you out there,’ telling me I wouldn’t be able to make it,” said Rawthan. “But this only pushed me harder.”

Their parents were supportive, though. Rawthan’s mother is a civil engineer and her father, the captain of an oil tanker who often spent months at sea.

“They understand why this is my passion,” she said. She hopes to help establish a union to bring like-minded Iraqi female engineers together. For now, none exists.

The work is not without danger. Protests outside oil fields led by angry local tribes and the unemployed can disrupt work and sometimes escalate into violence toward oil workers. Confronted every day by flare stacks that point to Iraq’s obvious oil wealth, others decry state corruption, poor service delivery and joblessness.

But the women are willing to take on these hardships. Amjad barely has time to even consider them: It was 11 p.m., and she was needed back at work.

“Drilling never stops,” she said.

Rights groups target sponsors 

like Airbnb for Beijing Games

By STEPHEN WADE February 25, 2021


1 of 6

FILE - In this Monday, Dec. 3, 2018, file photo, people line up at the Artux City Vocational Skills Education Training Service Center at the Kunshan Industrial Park in Artux in western China's Xinjiang region. A small core of international lawyers and activists are prodding leading Olympic sponsors to acknowledge China's widely reported human-rights abuses against Muslim Uyghurs, Tibetans and other minorities.(AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File)

In one corner are the 15 leading Olympic sponsors, many household names like Airbnb, Coca-Cola, Visa, Toyota, Samsung and General Electric. Together they pay at least $1 billion to the International Olympic Committee, and in the next four-year Olympic cycle the payments could reach $2 billion.

They are tied together by Beijing’s 2022 Winter Olympics, which opens in just under a year. Sponsors want the Olympic connection, but they risk damaging their brand because of reported human-rights abuses against Muslim Uyghurs, Tibetans and other minorities in China.

In the other corner is a small core of international lawyers and activists. They have branded these the “Genocide Games” and are pressuring sponsors, the IOC and world sports federations to investigate.

Thousands of Olympic athletes are caught in the middle. For most, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance for fame and a medal. But they’re on their own. Those who speak out may be banned by Olympic bodies, dropped by sponsors, and threatened by the Chinese state.

“It’s not fair that these huge institutions who can speak out are going to leave it to the individual athletes to do this,” Blair McDougall, campaign director for the British-based Stop Uyghur Genocide, told The Associated Press. “The governing bodies could speak out, the sponsors, the IOC.”

Instead, there is silence.

“Once again athletes are being used as pawns,” said Rob Koehler, director general of Global Athlete, an advocacy group for Olympic athletes.

Human-rights groups have initially targeted Airbnb and CEO Brian Chesky. The World Uyghur Congress and other advocates for Uyghurs and Tibetans have previously called for moving the games, or some type of boycott.

“Airbnb describe themselves as a company that talks of having an ethos,” McDougall said. “So far they have ignored us.”

To grab attention, campaigners have designed a mock-ad linking Airbnb to the internment camps and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Although sponsors account for about 18% of the IOC’s income, 73% comes from selling broadcast rights. The American network NBC accounts for about half of the broadcast income.

This will be Beijing’s second Olympics in 14 years, following the 2008 Summer Games that were supposed to improve human rights in China. These Olympics landed in China after several European bidders withdrew over costs and public opposition. The IOC was left with two choices: Beijing or Almaty, Kazakhstan. Beijing won in a narrow 44-40 vote.

“Our direct request of the sponsors is simple,” McDougall said. “Meet with the Uyghurs and people who have survived the network of camps so that you are not complicit in the use of the games in silencing the issue; in being used as a propaganda tool to distract from what’s happening.”

AP contacted the three Japan-based sponsors. Toyota’s reply was typical in regard to the internment of Uyghurs in northwestern China. Panasonic did not immediately respond, and Bridgestone sent a form letter from the IOC.

“As for the recent situation in Xinjiang, we are not in the position to comment on it,” Toyota said in a statement.

McDougall contacted the World Curling Federation, which initially responded by blocking him on social media. He said they have since lifted the block “but have gone silent.”

“They’ll be getting pressure not to be the ones who break the dam of silence,” McDougall said.

London-based human-rights lawyer Michael Polak filed a complaint with the IOC ethics commission over Beijing’s “breaches of the Olympic charter.” Instead of responding to his brief, the commission referred him to a statement from IOC President Thomas Bach.

The charter in Principle 6 under “Olympism,” prohibits discrimination “of any kind, such as race, color, sex, sexual orientation, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.”

Polak plans to follow up with Ban Ki-moon, the former United Nations secretary general and the chairman of the IOC ethics commission. The commission itself is not independent of the IOC, but Polak believes it should be.

The IOC has often repeated its position: it simply runs a sports events and “has neither the mandate nor the capability to change the laws or the political system of a sovereign country.”

IOC spokesman Mark Adams declined an Associated Press request to make Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr. available for an interview with a journalist and a human-rights lawyer. Samaranch leads IOC preparations for Beijing. In a recent interview with China’s state-run Xinhua news agency, he called progress for the games “truly remarkable.” Bach called the preparations “almost a miracle.” Neither has commented in public about the camps or the abuses, or used the word “Uyghurs.”

Samaranch is the son for former IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch. He also helps to run the Samaranch Foundation in China. The foundation says its purpose is to promote “Olympism.” One program listed on its website is dedicated to “safe driving and healthy sports” in Xinjiang, the region where internment camps are located.

Polak said it’s impossible for the IOC to guarantee that elements used in the games — souvenirs, technology to time races, or clothing — were not produced by Uyghur “forced labor.”

“Because the supply chain is so muddy in China, it’s very likely that when an athlete crosses the finishing line, it will be the same technology that China uses to track Uyghurs,” Polak said.

Canada’s House of Commons on Monday voted 266-0 in a non-binding referendum that China is committing genocide against more than 1 million Uyghurs and called for the IOC to move the Olympics from Beijing. The Dutch parliament passed a similar motion on Thursday saying the treatment amounted to genocide.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said he believes genocide is being committed against the Uyghurs.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian responded to Blinken: “The most important thing should be repeated three times: China has no genocide; China has no genocide; China has no genocide, period.”

Polak pointed out that the United Nations Genocide Convention spells out much of the behavior taking place in China.

“Internationally there is no dispute that crimes against humanity are taking place,” Polak said. “Whether it amounts to genocide, there are some arguments. Although most people seem to now accept it does reach the stage of genocide. That’s in regard to preventing births and also separating children from families.”

Polak said having the games might inadvertently benefit the Uyghurs. Television coverage will highlight the rights abuse, and athletes speaking out could be critical. Athletes are pushing for that right with changes to the IOC’s Rule 50.

“In some ways, the Olympics going ahead is almost better for the cause in terms of the world’s attention on what’s happening to the Uyghur people,” he said. “And not just the Uyghur people, but suppressed Christians, Tibetans and others.”

___

Associated Press writer Yuri Kageyama in Tokyo contributed to this report.

__

Native American nominee’s grilling raises questions on bias

“She did not lose her cool, That’s because she had to put up with this crap for 60 years. This was not a new experience for her.”

By FELICIA FONSECA and MATTHEW BROWN

February 26, 2021



FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — When Wyoming U.S. Sen. John Barrasso snapped at Deb Haaland during her confirmation hearing, many in Indian Country were incensed.

The exchange, coupled with descriptions of the Interior secretary nominee as “radical” — by other white, male Republicans — left some feeling Haaland is being treated differently because she is a Native American woman.

“If it was any other person, they would not be subjected to being held accountable for their ethnicity,” said Cheryl Andrews-Maltais, chairwoman of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head Aquinnah in Massachusetts.

At Wednesday’s hearing, Barrasso wanted assurance that Haaland would follow the law when it comes to imperiled species. Before the congresswoman finished her response, Barrasso shouted, “I’m talking about the law!”

Barrasso, former chairman of Senate Indian Affairs Committee, later said his uncharacteristic reaction was a sign of frustration over Haaland dodging questions.

“My constituents deserve straight answers from the potential secretary about the law,” he said in a statement. “They got very few of those.”

Among Haaland supporters across the nation who tuned in virtually, it was infuriating.

“It was horrible. It was disrespectful,” said Rebecca Ortega of Santa Clara Pueblo in Haaland’s home state of New Mexico. “I just feel like if it would have been a white man or a white woman, he would never have yelled like that.”

The Interior Department has broad oversight of energy development, along with tribal affairs, and some Republican senators have labeled Haaland “radical” over her calls to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and address climate change. They said that could hurt rural America and major oil and gas-producing states. Lounaisia Sen. John Kennedy after two days of hearings called Haaland a “neo-socialist, left-of-Lenin whack job.”

Andrews-Maltais saw “radical” as a code for “you’re an Indian.”

Cheryl Andrews-Maltais in 2010.

 (AP Photo/Josh Reynolds, File)

But Republican Sen. Steve Daines of Montana said it’s not about race. Daines frequently uses the term to describe Democrats and their policies, including President Joe Biden and former Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, whom Daines defeated in November.

“As much as I would love to see a Native American be on the president’s Cabinet, I have concerns about her record. ... To say otherwise is outrageous and offensive,” he told The Associated Press.

Civil rights activists say Haaland’s treatment fits a pattern of minority nominees encountering more political resistance than white counterparts.

The confirmation of Neera Tanden, who would be the first Indian American to head the Office of Management and Budget, was thrown into doubt when it lost support from Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia. He cited her controversial tweets attacking members of both parties.

Critics also have targeted Vanita Gupta, an Indian American and Biden’s pick to be associate attorney general, and California Attorney General Xavier Becerra as Health and Human Services secretary. Conservatives launched campaigns calling Gupta “dangerous” and questioning Becerra’s qualifications.

Democrats pushed back against Haaland’s treatment and questioned if attempts to block her nomination are motivated by something other than her record. Former U.S. Sens. and cousins Tom Udall of New Mexico and Mark Udall of Colorado said Haaland “should be afforded the same respect and deference” as other nominees.

The hearing itself, in which Haaland was grilled on oil and gas development, national parks and tribes, represented a cultural clash in how the Democrat and many Indigenous people view the world — everything is intertwined and must exist in balance, preserving the environment for generations to come.

That was seen in Haaland’s response when asked about her motivation to be Interior secretary. She recalled a story about Navajo Code Talkers in World War II who prioritized coming up with a word in their native language for “Mother Earth.”

“It’s difficult to not feel obligated to protect this land, and I feel that every Indigenous person in this country understands that,” she said.

Rep. Haaland testifies before a Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources hearing on her nomination to be secretary of the Interior. (Leigh Vogel/Pool via AP, File)

That broader historical context is missing from Republican talking points against Haaland that instead simplify the debate to a battle between industry and environmentalists, said Dina Gilio-Whitaker, a lecturer in American Indian studies at California State University, San Marcos.

“There’s obviously a really huge conversation about how the land came to be the United States to begin with,” she said. “That’s the elephant in the living room nobody wants to talk about.”

Andrew Werk Jr., president of the Assiniboine and Gros Ventre Tribes on Montana’s Fort Belknap Reservation, said Republicans’ brusque treatment of Haaland was unfair to her and to Americans.

But he doesn’t see any racial bias in Daines’ actions for dismissing Haaland as a “radical,” only hardened partisanship.

“For all the reasons Sen. Daines opposes her, those are all the reasons we support her in Fort Belknap,” Werk said. “Our land is our identity, and as tribes we want to be good stewards and protect that.”

Sen. Daines speaks during Rep. Haaland's confirmation hearing. 

(Sarah Silbiger/Pool Photo via AP, File)

Despite Republican opposition, Haaland has enough Democratic support to become the first Native American to lead the Interior Department. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee is expected to vote on the nomination next week before the full Senate chimes in.

Haaland, 60, weaved childhood memories, experiences on public land and tribes’ rights into her answers during the hearing. She talked about carrying buckets of water for her grandmother down a dusty road at Laguna Pueblo, where she’s from, careful not to spill a drop because she recognized its importance. She talked about harvesting an oryx, a type of antelope, that fed her family for a year, about her support for protecting grizzly bears indefinitely and her ancestors’ sacrifices.

Frank White Clay, chairman of the Crow Tribe, which gets much of its revenue from a coal mine on its southeastern Montana reservation, said Republicans have “legitimate concerns about natural resources.” But he urged them to consider the historic nature of Haaland’s nomination.

“A Native woman up for confirmation — her issues are Indian Country issues,” White Clay said.

Haaland pledged to carry out Biden’s agenda, sidestepping specifics on what she would do if confirmed. While the vagueness rattled Republicans, her backers said it showed she’s a consensus-builder.

“She did not lose her cool,” said Kalyn Free, who is Choctaw and supports Haaland. “To me, that’s not an indicator of her performance. ... That’s because she had to put up with this crap for 60 years. This was not a new experience for her.”

___

Associated Press writer Matthew Daly in Washington contributed to this report.

How Deb Haaland's confirmation bid became a 'proxy fight' over fossil fuels

Oliver Milman and Nina Lakhani 

THE GUARDIAN 

Partway through the sometimes contentious confirmation hearing for Deb Haaland as US secretary of the interior last week came an acknowledgement of the two powerful forces, with very different attitudes to the climate crisis, that have squared off over the nomination.

© Photograph: Reuters Deb Haaland at a Senate hearing on her confirmation as interior secretary.

“I almost feel like your nomination is a proxy fight over the future of fossil fuels,” Maria Cantwell, a Democrat from Washington, told Haaland during the Senate hearing.

Haaland, a strong advocate for climate action who is seeking to be the first Indigenous American confirmed as a cabinet secretary, was careful to not wade directly into this fray herself, assuring the senators that fossil fuels would be around for “years to come” and that she intended to be someone who will “serve all Americans, not just my one district in New Mexico”.

But the battle lines between the fossil fuel industry and the activists and environmentalists opposed to it have been starkly drawn in the fight for Haaland’s nomination.

John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican who has received nearly $1.2m from oil and gas companies and their employees in his time in the Senate, said he was “troubled by many of [Haaland’s] radical views” and scolded her over a tweet in which she said Republicans didn’t believe in science. Senator Steve Daines, a Montana Republican, said he was “deeply concerned” over Haaland’s “radical” support for Joe Biden’s pausing of oil and gas drilling on public land, neglecting to mention his campaign had taken $288,500 from these industries in just the past five years.

Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican who has over his Senate career accepted nearly $1.7m from oil and gas interests, pointedly asked Haaland: “Will your administration be guided by a prejudice against fossil fuel, or will it be guided by science?” while Utah’s Mike Lee, who blamed protections placed on Bears Ears, an area of the state important to Native Americans, for “impoverishing” locals, has taken in $366,000 from oil and gas during his Senate tenure.

Related: Republicans criticizing Haaland's nomination have ties to fossil fuels

This staunch opposition will probably not sink Haaland’s nomination given Republicans are the minority in the Senate and Joe Manchin, a conservative swing Democrat from the coal heartland of West Virginia, has said he will vote to confirm her after getting sufficient assurances that fossil fuels won’t be immediately jettisoned in order to tackle the unfolding climate crisis.



But the feud over Haaland’s nomination highlights the enormous political challenge of rapidly shifting the US away from oil, coal and gas towards cleaner forms of energy to avert ever more disastrous heatwaves, flooding, wildfires, societal unrest and other maladies. Republicans have signaled they will fiercely enforce a status quo whereby fossil fuel extraction across vast swaths of public land, including areas sacred to Native Americans, remains unhindered.

Opposing them is a broad coalition of environmental, youth and indigenous rights groups, along with the progressive wing of the Democratic party, who see Haaland’s historic ascent as a pivotal moment to confront longstanding environmental, economic, racial and social inequities.

“Grassroots advocacy and Native civic engagement and not campaign contributions from extractive industries should be the major factor in the direction of the Department of the Interior,” said Judith LeBlanc, executive director of Native Organizers Alliance, which as been part of an effort in which tens of thousands of letters have been sent by Indigenous Americans to senators calling for Haaland’s confirmation.

She added: “It goes without saying the importance of this moment to Indigenous peoples everywhere. For an Indigenous woman to step into this role means real change is in the making. It reflects a reckoning with the long history of systemic racism.”

A Laguna Pueblo member, Haaland has become a progressive champion through her advocacy for tribal communities as well as for the Green New Deal, an ambitious plan to eliminate US greenhouse gas emissions – a quarter of which are currently generated on public lands.

“For us, her confirmation means progress towards environmental, racial and economic justice,” said Ellen Sciales, spokesperson for the Sunrise Movement, a youth justice organization.

But while Haaland may take part in protests such as the one over the Dakota Access pipeline that threatens the land and water of the Standing Rock tribe, her supporters point out she has enough bipartisan bona fides to lead a department with 70,000 members of staff that manages around a fifth of the American landmass.

“A unique thing about Deb is her track record during the partisan Trump era,” said Jade Begay, a member of the Tesuque Pueblo and Navajo Nation and the climate justice campaign director of the NDN Collective.

“She’s a skilled politician who knows how to work across party lines, and a lot of interior [department] policies are about relationships between communities who don’t see eye to eye, like the fossil fuel industry and environmentalists. We need someone who is a skilled bridge maker and that’s who Deb Haaland is.”

© Provided by The Guardian Haaland with Don Young of Alaska before the hearing. Photograph: Reuters

Even Don Young, a Republican US representative known for his embrace of the fossil fuel industry who said at the hearing that “you have to be on pot” to think oil and gas are going to be phased out, said he backed Haaland’s nomination after working productively with her.

“She has worked with me. She has crossed the aisle, and as a member of this administration, I know she will do a good job,” the Alaskan lawmaker said. “Respectfully, I want you to listen to her. Understand that there’s a broad picture.”

The struggle over Haaland’s nomination, and the obstacles she faces once confirmed, may well illustrate the overall climate challenge in miniature. Will the US pull off the trick of speedily switching to renewables while bringing along those workers who risk being left behind, or will it remain umbilically attached to extractive industries that blight the climate, water supplies and people’s health?

Climate activists hope Haaland will help deliver the former. “She understands the science behind climate change, and the urgent need to shift our priorities,” said Sharon Buccino, director of lands for the National Resource Defense Council. “Her opponents are stuck in the past – we need to look to energy sources other than oil and gas to deliver a secure and prosperous energy future.”

Michigan Republicans want to make it illegal

 to prioritize low-income or minority areas for vaccines: report

Matthew Chapman RAW STORY
February 24, 2021

YouTube/screen grab

On Wednesday, Dave Boucher of the Detroit Free Press reported that Republicans in the Michigan state Senate are advancing an amendment that would bar the state from using a "social vulnerability index" to prioritize distribution of COVID-19 vaccine doses — meaning that it would be illegal to prioritize areas based on race, socioeconomic status, or a number of other factors.

State Sen. Jim Runestad justified the bill by complaining that under the state rules, a 20-year-old with "minority status and you don't speak English that well" would get a vaccine ahead of a 65-year-old. This is false, as 20-year-olds are not yet eligible for vaccines in Michigan.

The amendment ultimately passed the Appropriations Committee, although it still needs approval by the broader legislature.

The issue of how to prioritize vaccines has varied from state to state. In Texas, Dallas County was forced to end a program prioritizing vaccine delivery for high-risk communities of color after the state health officials threatened to cut off their doses altogether.

U.S. communities are heavily segregated by race, and Black and Latino workers account for 43 percent of workers deemed essential in the pandemic, which has raised the urgency among many officials to ensure their communities have adequate vaccine supply.

GOP lawmaker's husband linked to Three Percenter pickup parked outside Capitol during insurrection

Travis Gettys
February 26, 2021

Facebook

A pickup truck bearing a Three Percenter militia sticker that was parked outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 has been traced to the husband of a Hitler-quoting Republican lawmaker.

Rep. Mary Miller (R-IL) gained infamy two days after she was sworn in -- and one day before the deadly riot -- by saying Adolf Hitler "was right on one thing," and the militia-endorsing pickup was linked to her husband by the @capitolhunters Twitter account that's crowd-sourcing efforts to identify participants in the insurrection, reported The Daily Beast.

"Army friend gave me decal. Thought it was a cool decal. Took it off because of negative pub," said Chris Miller, the congresswoman's husband and himself a member of the Illinois House of Representatives, in an email statement to The Beast.

Chris Miller insists he was never a member of the loosely organized anti-government militia, and claims he "didn't know anything about 3% till fake news started this fake story and read about them."

The state lawmaker's pickup was photographed outside the Capitol, which is inaccessible to regular vehicle traffic, raised questions about who it belonged to and how it got there.

Online sleuths found a remarkably similar truck with the same Illinois license plate number carrying Mary Miller and Trump-Pence campaign banners in a July 2020 photo, and her Facebook page posted another photo showing what appears to be the same pickup with the same campaign banners.

The Millers have posted other photos of the same type of Ford pickup with stickers promoting other pro-gun groups, and the couple has prominently featured the truck in social media posts and campaign materials.

The license plate seen in photos from the Capitol riot shows it's a design that appears to be reserved for Illinois politicians -- such as Chris Miller, who took office in 2019.

As US mourns 500,000 lives lost, report shows billionaires added $1.3 trillion to their fortunes during pandemic

Jake Johnson, Common Dreams
February 24, 2021

PARASITE

FILE PHOTO - Amazon President, Chairman and CEO Jeff Bezos speaks at the Business Insider's "Ignition Future of Digital" conference in New York, U.S. on December 2, 2014. REUTERS/Mike Segar/File Photo


As the United States this week mourned the devastating milestone of 500,000 lives lost to the coronavirus, a report out Wednesday shows that the nation's billionaires have seen their collective wealth grow by $1.3 trillion since the deadly pandemic began last year.

According to the new analysis by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF), America's 664 billionaires now have a combined net worth of $4.2 trillion—a figure that stands in staggering contrast to the economic pain being felt by countless families across the U.S. as joblessness, uninsurance, and hunger remain sky-high.

"Taxing those who have experienced windfall wealth gains to pay for Covid relief and recovery is a matter of equity and justice."

—Chuck Collins, Institute for Policy Studies

"It is unseemly that billionaires have experienced such gains as we mark a half a million lives lost and millions more who have lost their health, wealth and jobs," Chuck Collins, director of the Program on Inequality at IPS, said in a statement. "Taxing those who have experienced windfall wealth gains to pay for Covid relief and recovery is a matter of equity and justice."

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos—the richest man in the world—and SpaceX founder Elon Musk saw their wealth grow by $76.3 billion and $158 billion respectively between March 18, 2020 and February 19, 2021—bigger gains than any other U.S. billionaire. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, saw his net worth jump by $41 billion during that period.

"Even as congressional Republicans try to nickel-and-dime suffering Americans by opposing President Biden's American Rescue Plan, including its $1,400 relief checks, American billionaires have reaped $1.3 trillion in pandemic profits," said ATF executive director Frank Clemente. "The need for the kind of fair-share tax program Biden ran and won on becomes clearer every day, as billionaire wealth balloons while working-family hopes deflate."

The U.S., which has the highest coronavirus death toll in the world, reached 500,000 lives lost to Covid-19 on Monday. "About one in 670 Americans has died of Covid-19, which has become a leading cause of death in the country, along with heart disease and cancer, and has driven down life expectancy more sharply than in decades," the New York Times noted.

While declining cases and an improving vaccine rollout have prompted some optimism, the grim milestone and still-rising death toll served as urgent reminders of how much work remains to be done to bring the catastrophic pandemic under control.

"We are still at about 100,000 cases a day. We are still at around 1,500 to 3,500 deaths per day. The cases are more than two-and-a-half-fold times what we saw over the summer," Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told NBC earlier this month. "It's encouraging to see these trends coming down, but they're coming down from an extraordinarily high place."

Furious conservatives lose their minds over gender-neutral Mr. Potato Head and demand Republicans secede

Sarah K. Burris
February 25, 2021


Photo: Wally Gobetz/Flickr


Hasbro announced this week that it's giving Mr. Potato Head a 21st Century upgrade with a whole potato family, including a gender-neutral potato.

The news prompted a meltdown among conservative culture warriors who have issues with anything gender-neutral. Potatoes don't have a gender.

YouTube conspiracy theorist Mark Dice replied to an Associated Press report about it saying, "It's time for Republican states to secede."

It prompted questions about the next steps in secession and whether Republican states would mandate checkpoints to ensure no gender-neutral potatoes were brought into their country or whether no modern potato heads would be sold in the Republican states.

Others, like Piers Morgan, took issue with Hasbro continuing their toy business amid the pandemic.

The reality to the Potato Head story is far less controversial, Politico's Chris Suellentrop noted with the statement from Hasbro.

"Looking ahead to 2021, Hasbro is making sure all feel welcome in the Potato Head world by officially dropping the 'Mr.' from the Mr Potato Head brand name. The new branding and logo bring a fresh look with a whimsical color palette and will introduce new product, including Create Your Own Potato Head Family, to appeal to the modern consumer.

"The Create Your Own Potato Head Family, launching this Fall, is a celebration of the many faces of families, allowing kids to imagine and create their own Potato Head family with 2 large potato bodies, 1 small potato body, and 42 accessories, their potato family can have up to 2 parents, and a baby."

See the full statement below:

Mr. Poato Head will not undergo gender 

reassignment surgery he never had genitals,

 because he is a potato.

You can see other conservative anger below:

The conservative outrage quickly drew mockery from the left, which you can see in tweets below:

 

Republicans scramble to blame green energy as Texas freeze leaves their social Darwinist ideology in tatters

Robert Reich

February 26, 2021

Gov. Greg Abbott prays with event organizer Evelyn Davison at the 66th annual Texas State Prayer Breakfast in Austin on May 1, 2017. Davison has organized the event for the last 43 years. (Bob Daemmrich for The Texas Tribune)

Texas's prevailing social Darwinism was expressed most succinctly last week by the mayor of Colorado City, who accused his constituents – trapped in near sub-zero temperatures and complaining about lack of heat, electricity, and drinkable water – of being the "lazy" products of a "socialist government," adding "I'm sick and tired of people looking for a damn handout!" and predicting "only the strong will survive and the weak will perish."

Texas has the third-highest number of billionaires in America, most of them oil tycoons. Its laissez-faire state energy market delivered a bonanza to oil and gas producers that managed to keep production going during the freeze. It was "like hitting the jackpot," boasted president of Comstock Resources on an earnings call. Jerry Jones, billionaire owner of the Dallas Cowboys, holds a majority of Comstock's shares.

But most other Texans were marooned. Some did perish.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the flow of electric power, exempted affluent downtowns from outages – leaving the thriving parts of Austin, Dallas, and Houston brightly lit while pushing less affluent precincts into the dark and cold.

Like the poor across America and much of the world, poor Texans are getting hammered by climate change. Many inhabit substandard homes, lacking proper insulation. The very poor occupy trailers or tents, or camp out in their cars. Lower-income communities also are located close to refineries and other industrial sites that release added pollutants when they shut or restart.

In Texas, for-profit energy companies have no incentive to prepare for extreme weather or maintain spare capacity. Even when they're able to handle surges in demand, prices go through the roof and poorer households are hit hard. That's what's happened in the wake of the deep freeze. If they can't pay, they're cut off.

Rich Texans take spikes in energy prices in their stride. If the electric grid goes down, private generators kick in. In a pinch – as last week – they check into hotels or leave town. As millions of his constituents remained without power and heat, Senator Ted Cruz flew to Cancun, Mexico for a family vacation. Their Houston home was "FREEZING," as his wife put it.

Climate change and income are together splitting Americans by class more profoundly than Americans are split by politics. Yet the white working class has been seduced by conservative Republicans and Trump cultists, of which Texas has an abundance, into believing that what's good for Black and Latino people is bad for them, and that whites are, or should be, on the winning side of the social Darwinian contest.

White grievance helps keep Republicans in power, protecting their rich patrons from a majority that might otherwise join together to demand what they need – such heat and drinking water.

Lower-income Texans, white as well as Black and Latino, are taking it on the chin in many other ways. Texas is one of the few states that hasn't expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, leaving the share of Texans without health insurance twice the national average, the largest uninsured population of any state. Texas has double the national average of children in poverty and a higher rate of unemployment than the nation's average.

And although Texans have suffered multiple natural disasters stemming from climate change, Texas Republicans are dead set against a Green New Deal that would help reduce the horrific impacts.

Last Wednesday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott went on Fox News to proclaim, absurdly, that what happened to his state "shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States." Abbott blamed the power failure on the fact that "wind and solar got shut down."

Rubbish. The loss of power from frozen coal-fired and natural gas plants was six times larger than the dent caused by frozen wind turbines. Texans froze because deregulation and a profit-driven free market created an electric grid utterly unprepared for climate change.

In Texas, tycoons are the only winners from climate change. Everyone else is losing badly. Adapting to extreme weather is necessary but it's no substitute for cutting emissions, which Texas is loath to do. Not even the Lone Star State should protect the freedom to freeze.

This article was originally published at RobertReich.org

Conservatives are the new 'good Germans' -- enabling and defending Trump's crimes

Chauncey Devega, Salon
February 26, 2021

President Donald J. Trump greets U.S. Sen. Ted

 Cruzduring a rally at the Toyota Center in Houston

 on Oct. 22, 2018.

 Marjorie Kamys Cotera for The Texas Tribune

Let me pose a riddle of sorts.

Donald Trump is a force of political, human, moral and economic destruction. He is the leader of an American neofascist and white supremacist movement. Today's Republican Party has fully become an extension of his political cult and crime family.

Trump incited a lethal attack on the Capitol as part of a larger plot to overthrow American democracy. Although Trump was defeated by Joe Biden at the polls, he actually received 10 million more votes than he did in 2016. This is a historic level of support, only surpassed by the 81 million votes Biden received in the same election. Biden may be president of the United States now, but Donald Trump is now positioning himself as a shadow president.

Moreover, public opinion polls show that Trump himself is more popular than the Republican Party as a whole. White right-wing evangelicals worship Trump like he is a god. Sen. Mitt Romney has warned that Trump will likely win the 2024 Republican nomination if he chooses to run a second time.

Contrary to the media narrative that there is a "civil war" within the Republican Party, a new public opinion poll from Gallup shows that 40 percent of Republicans want the post-Trump Republican Party to become "more conservative," while 34 percent want it to "stay the same" and only 24 percent want the GOP to become "more moderate."

TrumpWorld endures. It has shown itself, at least for now, to be indomitable.

Hence, the riddle: What then does "conservative" really mean for today's Republicans?

The most benign and generous understanding of "conservative," in the traditional context of American politics, is drawn (however loosely) from the 18th-century Anglo-Irish philosopher and statesman Edmund Burke. It signifies an aversion to change, or perhaps even a belief that change, when necessary, should be gradual. "Conservative," at least in that conventional context, denotes a respect for stability, tradition and existing societal norms and institutions.

Donald Trump, his movement and its allies have almost no relationship to that tradition, and overwhelmingly reject such values. In the Age of Trump, American democracy is under assault by neofascism, white supremacy, authoritarianism, gangster capitalism and other antisocial values and beliefs.

Trump and his Republican Party and their followers have no respect for the rule of law, and have consistently sought to undermine it.

Basic and common understandings of truth and consensus reality have been discarded or ignored by Trump and his movement in favor of the Big Lie — and the innumerable small lies that sustain it. Contrary to widely-held folk theories of democracy, which presume a shared commitment to consensus politics, Trump and his movement have now normalized right-wing terrorism and political violence directed against liberals, progressives, nonwhites, Jews, Muslims and others deemed to be "the enemy."

Public opinion polls and other research show that Republican and Trump voters embrace such values and beliefs, and now believe that political violence (on the order of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack) may be necessary as a way of protecting their power and privilege in American society.

At Vox, Zack Beauchamp echoes these concerns:

From top to bottom, the [Republican] party has stoked the embers of extremism. They have worked to convince their supporters that Democrats are monsters, they have to delegitimize the mainstream press and replace it with fact-free alternatives, and they have embraced extremist politicians and commentators who have condoned violence in the name of putting down the Democratic "threat."
This is not just a question of "that's how we got Trump" (though this is in fact how we got Trump). It's that the party leadership has knowingly and willfully created an entire segment of the electorate that is prone to violent and dangerous conspiratorial thinking.

The version of conservatism that Trump and his voters and followers have embraced is "conservative" politics as destruction. Its goal is to return the United States to a mythic (and largely imaginary) past of complete white — and male and "Christian" — dominance over every area of American life.

Such a plan is made possible through a radical, extremist right-wing politics in which "conservatism" and an appeal to "traditional values" are used to mask or camouflage an assault on multiracial democracy and a more cosmopolitan, inclusive, democratic and humane American society.

There are many examples of this rhetorical strategy and its relationship to right-wing power.

For several decades, the Republican Party has targeted the Democrats as being "radical" and "too liberal," as veering into "socialism" and being "out of touch" with "everyday Americans." In reality, the Republican Party has deployed a strategy of asymmetrical polarization, in which it has consistently dragged the Democrats farther and farther to the right.

The mainstream news media has largely been cowed into enabling the Republicans' turn to extremism, for fear of being slurred as "too liberal" and "biased" — thus the defensive compulsion towards "both-sides-ism" and a bogus "neutrality," rather than objective truth-telling and a spirited and resolute defense of American democracy.

The outcome of asymmetrical politics and other forms of right-wing polarization is a Republican Party that looks more like a European neofascist political party than a traditional center-right party that supports democracy. The resulting "middle ground" thus artificially created exists between the two parties in a space far to the right of most Americans' policy preferences.

The recent weather disaster in Texas is another example of how the Republican Party's turn to right-wing extremism and its anti-human and anti-life policies have been normalized under the cover of "freedom" and "conservative" economic policies. In practice, these allow the "free market" to decide what is supposedly best for American society, on the pretext of maximizing individual freedom and "liberty."

Naomi Klein recently explored this at the New York Times:
Blame right-wing panic. For decades, the Republicans have met every disaster with a credo I have described as "the shock doctrine." When disaster strikes, people are frightened and dislocated. They focus on handling the emergencies of daily life, like boiling snow for drinking water. They have less time to engage in politics and a reduced capacity to protect their rights. They often regress, deferring to strong and decisive leaders — think of New York's ill-fated love affairs with then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani after the 9/11 attacks and Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Large-scale shocks — natural disasters, economic collapse, terrorist attacks — become ideal moments to smuggle in unpopular free-market policies that tend to enrich elites at everyone else's expense. Crucially, the shock doctrine is not about solving underlying drivers of crises: It's about exploiting those crises to ram through your wish list even if it exacerbates the crisis.

Ultimately, when today's Republicans and their voters and other followers say that they want the party to become "more conservative," what is really being communicated is a desire for "friendly fascism." This is in no way a rejection of Trumpism — indeed, most Republican elected officials, as well as "traditional" Republican voters, supported (and continue to support) almost all of Trump's policies. Rather, this desire to become "more conservative" represents a yearning for a more polite, less crude leader to complete Trump's resurrection of a new American apartheid where "those people" know their proper place and stay in it.

Today's Republicans love Donald Trump and his policies. Most of them, however, do not want the shame, stink, blood and filth of his neofascist project on their hands. Like the "good Germans" of the Nazi era, Republicans want to believe that they are good and decent people who can hide behind fictions of plausible deniability for the evils committed by their leader. Calling themselves "conservatives" is an effort to shield themselves from responsibility and complicity. Will this subterfuge succeed? The American people and the world will found out soon.