The Pandemic Must End Our Complacency

With an economic downturn as severe as the Great Depression and political conditionssimilar to those in the run-up to World War I, an international system built on globalization now hangs in the balance. The world desperately needs effective collective leadership – and not just to contain COVID-19. 

Phil Roeder/Getty Images

June18, 2020

BERTRAND BADRÉ, YVES TIBERGHIEN

PARIS – A sudden shock upends routine decision-making and forces leaders to take urgent action. A combination of mistrust, misperception, and fear dissolves the bonds that sustain modern civilization.

The year is 1914, when Europe spent its summer mobilizing for war. But the description could just as well apply to the summer of 2020. The worst pandemic since the 1918-20 influenza outbreak is rapidly morphing into a systemic crisis of globalization, potentially setting the stage for the most dangerous geopolitical confrontation since the end of the Cold War.

In the space of just weeks, the COVID-19 pandemic has shut down one-third of the global economy and triggered the largest economic shock since the Great Depression. Looking ahead, the most important factor that will shape how this crisis evolves is collective leadership. But that crucial component remains absent. With the United States and China at each other’s throats, global leadership will have to emerge from somewhere other than Washington, DC, or Beijing.


Moreover, to pave the way for renewed international cooperation, three myths need to be debunked. The first is that COVID-19 qualifies as an unexpected “black swan” event for which no one could have prepared. In fact, public-health advocates like Bill Gates and epidemiologists such as Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota have been sounding the alarm for years about the systemic risks posed by coronaviruses and influenza, as have leading intelligence agencies.

The sheer depth of the current crisis is the product of our collective failure to think in non-linear terms or to heed scientists’ clear warnings. Worse, COVID-19 is probably just a dress rehearsal for the disasters that await us as a result of climate change – especially after we pass the warming threshold of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, starting in the early 2030s.

The second myth is that COVID-19 has discredited globalization. To be sure, international air travel did spread the coronavirus around the world much faster than older travel methods would have. Yet globalization has also furnished us with the information, medicine, technology, and multilateral institutions needed to defeat not just viruses, but all other collective threats, too.

Because there is now a global scientific community linked through information and communication technologies, the genome of the novel coronavirus was sequenced and made publicly available by January 12, within two weeks of China’s report of a cluster of cases. And now, researchers around the world are sharing their findings in pursuit of a vaccine. Never before have so many people across so many countries collaborated on the same project.


The third myth is that our current policy tools and institutional arrangements can see us through the crisis. In fact, international organizations can mobilize only a fraction of the resources required to contain the virus and its economic fallout. Unless we change how institutions like the World Health Organization operate and do more to leverage the resources of private actors, our expectations will not be met.

The COVID-19 pandemic has come at a critical moment, accelerating a deeper crisis of international cooperation. Resolving both will require significant innovation, and a massive cooperative effort to achieve a stable equilibrium between economic growth and social wellbeing. This will not be easy. Not only must we change our institutions and broader economic systems, but we also must change ourselves.

The agenda we need includes five parts. First, we need to work toward more inclusive leadership at the global level. Given the current difficulties in the US-China relationship, the rest of the G20 must come together to generate new ideas for addressing the crisis in the global trading system, the intensifying zero-sum competition over technology, and the collapse of trust in multilateral frameworks. The European Union, the United Kingdom, Japan, Canada, Indonesia, India, South Korea, and Brazil, in particular, must play a bigger role in filling the leadership vacuum.

Second, we need new multilevel leadership coalitions comprising civil-society organizations, the private sector, think tanks, and others. When the usual top-down leadership is not forthcoming, others must rise to the occasion.

Third, we need to ensure a smooth process of developing and distributing a COVID-19 vaccine. G20 member states must build on their previous pledges to work with the relevant international organizations and willing private-sector partners in creating a platform for delivering a vaccine fast and equitably. This is an unprecedented challenge that demands an unprecedented coalition.

Fourth, we need more firepower to address the looming financial crisis in emerging and developing economies. The International Monetary Fund should immediately issue a new tranche of its Special Drawing Rights, and the Paris Club of sovereign creditors, coordinating closely with China, must address debtor countries’ increasingly unsustainable debt levels.

Finally, the international community must start building the coalitions needed to ensure success at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference, and at the UN climate conference (COP26) next year. The world desperately needs more engagement on climate and environmental issues, not least to sever the link between habitat loss and zoonotic-disease outbreaks.

The historian Margaret MacMillan concludes her analysis of the world’s march to war in 1914 with a crucial message: “[I]f we want to point fingers from the twenty-first century, we can accuse those who took Europe into war of two things. First, a failure of imagination in not seeing how destructive such a conflict would be, and second, their lack of courage to stand up to those who said there was no choice left but to go to war. There are always choices.”

The costs of inaction today have already been staggering. Rather than simply accepting the collapse of the multilateral system, we must start imagining the new mechanisms of solidarity that this crisis demands.

BERTRAND BADRÉ
Bertrand Badré, a former Managing Director of the World Bank, is CEO of Blue like an Orange Sustainable Capital and the author of Can Finance Save the World?


YVES TIBERGHIEN
Yves Tiberghien, co-chair of the Vision 20 Initiative, is Professor of Political Science and Director Emeritus of the Institute of Asian Research at the University of British Columbia.

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The COVID Class War

Jun 30, 2020   YANIS VAROUFAKIS


The European Union's proposed recovery fund to counter the pandemic's economic fallout seems destined to leave the majority in every member state worse off. Finance will again be protected, if badly, while workers are left to foot the bill through new rounds of austerity.


ATHENS – The euro crisis that erupted a decade ago has long been portrayed as a clash between Europe’s frugal North and profligate South. In fact, at its heart was a fierce class war that left Europe, including its capitalists, much weakened relative to the United States and China. Worse still, the European Union’s response to the pandemic, including the EU recovery fund currently under deliberation, is bound to intensify this class war, and deal another blow to Europe’s socioeconomic model.

If we have learned anything in recent decades, it is the pointlessness of focusing on any country’s economy in isolation. Once upon a time, when money moved between countries mostly to finance trade, and most consumption spending benefited domestic producers, the strengths and weaknesses of a national economy could be separately assessed. Not anymore. Today, the weaknesses of, say, China and Germany are intertwined with those of countries like the US and Greece.

The unshackling of finance in the early 1980s, following the elimination of capital controls left over from the Bretton Woods system, enabled enormous trade imbalances to be funded by rivers of money created privately via financial engineering. As the US shifted from a trade surplus to a massive deficit, its hegemony grew. Its imports maintain global demand and are financed by the inflows of foreigners’ profits that pour into Wall Street.

This strange recycling process is managed by the world’s de facto central bank, the US Federal Reserve. And maintaining such an impressive creation – a permanently imbalanced global system – necessitates the constant intensification of class war in deficit and surplus countries alike.

Deficit countries are all alike in one important sense: whether powerful like the US, or weak like Greece, they are condemned to generate debt bubbles as their workers helplessly watch industrial areas morph into rustbelts. Once the bubbles burst, workers in the Midwest or the Peloponnese face debt bondage and plummeting living standards.

Although surplus countries, too, are characterized by class warfare against workers, they differ significantly from one another. Consider China and Germany. Both feature large trade surpluses with the US and the rest of Europe. Both repress their workers’ income and wealth. The main difference between them is that China maintains huge levels of investment through a domestic credit bubble, while Germany’s corporations invest much less and rely on credit bubbles in the rest of the eurozone.

The euro crisis was never a clash between the Germans and the Greeks (shorthand for the fabled North-South clash). Instead, it stemmed from an intensification of class war within Germany and within Greece at the hands of an oligarchy-without-frontiers living off financial flows.




For example, when the Greek state went bankrupt in 2010, the austerity imposed on most of the Greek population did wonders to restrict investment in Greece. But it did the same in Germany, indirectly repressing German wages at a time when the European Central Bank’s money-printing was sending share prices (and German directors’ bonuses) through the roof.

Class warfare is arguably more brutal in China and the US than it is in Europe. But Europe’s lack of a political union ensures that its class war verges on being pointless, even from the capitalists’ perspective.

Evidence that German capitalists squandered the wealth extracted from the EU’s working classes is not hard to find. The euro crisis caused a massive 7% devaluation of the surpluses that the German private sector had accumulated from 1999 onwards, because capital owners had no alternative but to lend these trillions to foreigners whose subsequent distress led to large losses.

This is not only a German problem. It is a condition afflicting the EU’s other surplus countries as well. The German newspaper Handelsblatt recently revealed a notable reversal. Whereas in 2007, EU corporations earned around €100 billion ($113 billion) more than their US counterparts, in 2019 the situation was inverted.

Moreover, this is an accelerating trend. In 2019, corporate earnings rose 50% faster in the US than in Europe. And US corporate earnings are expected to suffer less from the pandemic-induced recession, falling 20% in 2020, compared to 33% in Europe.

The gist of Europe’s conundrum is that, while it is a surplus economy, its fragmentation ensures that the income losses of German and Greek workers do not even become sustainable profits for Europe’s capitalists. In short, behind the narrative of northern frugality lurks the specter of wasted exploitation.

Reports that COVID-19 caused the EU to raise its game are grossly exaggerated. The quiet death of European debt mutualization guarantees that the gigantic increase in national budget deficits will be followed by equally sizeable austerity in every country. In other words, the class war that has already eroded most people’s incomes will intensify. “But what about the proposed €750 billion recovery fund?” one might ask. “Is the agreement to issue common debt not a breakthrough?”

Yes and no. Common debt instruments are a necessary but insufficient condition for ameliorating the intensified class war. To play a progressive role, common debt must fund the weaker households and firms across the common economic area: in Germany as well as in Greece. And it must do so automatically, without reliance on the kindness of the local oligarchs. It must operate like an automated recycling mechanism that shifts surpluses to those in deficit within every town, region, and state. In the US, for example, food stamps and social security payments support the weak in California and in Missouri, while shifting net resources from California to Missouri – and all without any involvement by state governors or local bureaucrats.

By contrast, the EU recovery fund’s fixed allocation to member states will turn them against one another, as the fixed sum to be given to, say, Italy or Greece is portrayed as a tax on Germany’s working class. Moreover, the idea is to transfer the funds to national governments, effectively entrusting the local oligarchy with the task of distributing them.1

Strengthening the solidarity of Europe’s oligarchs is not a good strategy for empowering Europe’s majority. Quite the contrary. Any “recovery” based on such a formula will short-change almost all Europeans and push the majority into deeper despair.

YANIS VAROUFAKIS a former finance minister of Greece, is leader of the MeRA25 party and Professor of Economics at the University of Athens.

The Main Street Manifesto

NOURIEL ROUBINI

Jun 24, 2020 

The historic protests sweeping America were long overdue, not just as a response to racism and police violence, but also as a revolt against entrenched plutocracy. With a growing number of Americans falling into unemployment and economic insecurity, while major corporations take bailouts and slash labor costs, something had to give.

NEW YORK – The mass protests following the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer are about systemic racism and police brutality in the United States, but also so much more. Those who have taken to the streets in more than 100 American cities are channeling a broader critique of President Donald Trump and what he represents. A vast underclass of increasingly indebted, socially immobile Americans – African-Americans, Latinos, and, increasingly, whites – is revolting against a system that has failed it.

This phenomenon is not limited to the US, of course. In 2019 alone, massive demonstrations rocked Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, France, Hong Kong, India, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Malaysia, and Pakistan, among other countries. Though these episodes each had different triggers, they all reflected resentment over economic malaise, corruption, and a lack of economic opportunities.4

The same factors help to explain populist and authoritarian leaders’ growing electoral support in recent years. After the 2008 financial crisis, many firms sought to boost profits by cutting costs, starting with labor. Instead of hiring workers in formal employment contracts with good wages and benefits, companies adopted a model based on part-time, hourly, gig, freelance, and contract work, creating what the economist Guy Standing calls a “precariat.” Within this group, he explains, “internal divisions have led to the villainization of migrants and other vulnerable groups, and some are susceptible to the dangers of political extremism.”

The precariat is the contemporary version of Karl Marx’s proletariat: a new class of alienated, insecure workers who are ripe for radicalization and mobilization against the plutocracy (or what Marx called the bourgeoisie). This class is growing once again, now that highly leveraged corporations are responding to the COVID-19 crisis as they did after 2008: taking bailouts and hitting their earnings targets by slashing labor costs.

One segment of the precariat comprises younger, less-educated white religious conservatives in small towns and semi-rural areas who voted for Trump in 2016. They hoped that he would actually do something about the economic “carnage” that he described in his inaugural address. But while Trump ran as a populist, he has governed like a plutocrat, cutting taxes for the rich, bashing workers and unions, undermining the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), and otherwise favoring policies that hurt many of the people who voted for him.

Before COVID-19 or even Trump arrived on the scene, some 80,000 Americans were dying every year of drug overdoses, and many more were falling victim to suicide, depression, alcoholism, obesity, and other lifestyle-related diseases. As economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton show in their book Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism, these pathologies have increasingly afflicted desperate, lower skilled, un- or under-employed whites – a cohort in which midlife mortality has been rising.

But the American precariat also comprises urban, college-educated secular progressives who in recent years have mobilized behind leftist politicians like Senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. It is this group that has taken to the streets to demand not just racial justice but also economic opportunity (indeed, the two issues are closely intertwined).

This should not come as a surprise, considering that income and wealth inequality has been rising for decades, owing to many factors, including globalization, trade, migration, automation, the weakening of organized labor, the rise of winner-take-all markets, and racial discrimination. A racially and socially segregated educational system fosters the myth of meritocracy while consolidating the position of elites, whose children consistently gain access to the top academic institutions and then go on to take the best jobs (usually marrying one another along the way, thereby reproducing the conditions from which they themselves benefited).

These trends, meanwhile, have created political feedback loops through lobbying, campaign finance, and other forms of influence, further entrenching a tax and regulatory regime that benefits the wealthy. It is no wonder that, as Warren Buffett famously quipped, his secretary’s marginal tax rate is higher than his.

Or, as a satirical headline in The Onion recently put it: “Protesters Criticized for Looting Businesses Without Forming Private Equity Firm First.” Plutocrats like Trump and his cronies have been looting the US for decades, using high-tech financial tools, tax- and bankruptcy-law loopholes, and other methods to extract wealth and income from the middle and working classes. Under these circumstances, the outrage that Fox News commentators have been voicing over a few cases of looting in New York and other cities represents the height of moral hypocrisy.

It is no secret that what is good for Wall Street is bad for Main Street, which is why major stock-market indices have reached new highs as the middle class has been hollowed out and fallen into deeper despair. With the wealthiest 10% owning 84% of all stocks, and with the bottom 75% owning none at all, a rising stock market does absolutely nothing for the wealth of two-thirds of Americans.

As the economist Thomas Philippon shows in The Great Reversal, the concentration of oligopolistic power in the hands of major US corporations is further exacerbating inequality and leaving ordinary citizens marginalized. A few lucky unicorns (start-ups valued at $1 billion or more) run by a few lucky twenty-somethings will not change the fact that most young Americans increasingly live precarious lives performing dead-end gig work.

To be sure, the American Dream was always more aspiration than reality. Economic, social, and intergenerational mobility have always fallen short of what the myth of the self-made man or woman would lead one to expect. But with social mobility now declining as inequality rises, today’s young people are right to be angry.

The new proletariat – the precariat – is now revolting. To paraphrase Marx and Friedrich Engels in The Communist Manifesto: “Let the Plutocrat classes tremble at a Precariat revolution. The Precarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Precarious workers of all countries, unite!”

NOURIEL ROUBINI
Writing for PS since 2007
Nouriel Roubini, Professor of Economics at New York University's Stern School of Business and Chairman of Roubini Macro Associates, was Senior Economist for International Affairs in the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton Administration. He has worked for the International Monetary Fund, the US Federal Reserve, and the World Bank. His website is NourielRoubini.com.

Israel’s Trumpian Unilateralism

Nir Keidar/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Jun 23, 2020 DAOUD KUTTAB

Under the cover of a sham "peace plan" put forward by the Trump administration earlier this year, Israel is rushing to seize occupied Palestinian territory in the West Bank. The Netanyahu government's cynical strategy not only violates longstanding international law, but also undermines Israel's own long-term interests.

AMMAN – Since the end of World War II, the international community has embraced a simple but powerful principle: No country, no matter how powerful, may take land from its neighbors by force. When Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands in 1982, the world voiced few objections to the United Kingdom’s military intervention to retake its territory. When Iraq occupied Kuwait in 1990, the United Nations authorized military action to expel them. And when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, the UN imposed heavy sanctions that remain in place today.


For 53 years, Palestinians have placed their hopes in this principle. In 1967, it was codified in the preamble to UN Security Council Resolution 242, which established a roadmap for peace between Israel and Palestine, and further affirmed “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war.” Although living under occupation has always been unacceptable to Palestinians, it was made tolerable by the hope that right would overcome might, and Israel’s “inadmissible” occupation eventually would end.

Moreover, unlike the Falklanders, the Kuwaitis, or the Ukrainians, Palestinians have shown flexibility in trying to negotiate an acceptable settlement with Israel. But instead of being rewarded for this good faith, Palestinian offers of land swaps (equal in size and quality) have been twisted by policymakers in Israel to legitimize the theft of occupied Palestinian territory.

And now Israel is moving to annex much of the West Bank. Of course, the Israelis would never be this brazen on their own. They are exploiting an opening created by the sham “peace plan” unveiled in January by US President Donald Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Conceived by the Israelis and presented by the United States, the plan would give large parts of the occupied territories – including the strategically vital Jordan Valley – to Israel. Palestinians will be left, literally, out in the desert.

While the Americans have stated that their “vision” must be accepted fully or not at all, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, facing a court trial on multiple charges of corruption, has been happy to pocket whatever political handouts Trump offers him in the meantime. With the unconditional support of the world’s leading superpower, Israel can now pursue land grabs without any regard for past agreements with the Palestinians, Jordanians, or Egyptians, let alone objections from the rest of the world.

To be sure, at the poorly prepared Camp David II summit in 2000, the Palestinian president, Yasser Arafat, accepted the basic idea of land swaps; but Palestinians have since made clear that any such exchange must be equal in size and quality. And this year, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas informed the Quartet (the UN, the US, the European Union, and Russia) that Palestinians acknowledged the need for some slight border modification so long as an independent Palestinian state is actually established.


Palestinians have accepted that some of the more populous illegal Jewish settlements that have been built on Palestinian land just across the 1967 Green Line could be incorporated into Israel in exchange for, say, a land corridor connecting Gaza and the West Bank. The problem is that the Israelis and some American officials regularly misrepresent this position by claiming that Palestinians have rejected peace offers and refused to negotiate. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In recent years, as former US Secretary of State John Kerry explained in April 2014, the impasse between the Israelis and Palestinians primarily reflected Israel’s greenlighting of new settlements in Palestinian territory. And, since 2018, when the US moved its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem (in violation of UNSC resolutions), Palestinian leaders have boycotted negotiations sponsored by the overtly pro-Israel Trump administration, while remaining open to multiparty talks.

In fact, the Palestinians have already indicated that they would participate in negotiations sponsored by a “Quartet-plus” group that could also include US allies such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Japan. Picking up on this opening, Russia has invited the Palestinians and Israelis for talks in Moscow. Netanyahu has repeatedly refused.

Moreover, in June, Palestinian officials submitted a four-page counter-proposal to the Trump plan, wherein they agreed to accept a demilitarized Palestinian state with minor border adjustments. But the pro-Israel hawks in the White House have ignored these offers.

In their rush to annex Palestinian lands, Israeli officials are justifying their illegal behavior on the grounds that they are only seizing territory demarcated in the Trump administration’s plan. But even the naive Kushner, the architect of that plan, has rejected the idea that such transfers should occur unilaterally. The point of negotiations, after all, is to facilitate a give and take. If one side gets to take what it wants before talks have even begun, the process is pointless.

Such unilateralism is not only unfair and unjust; it is unworkable. Peace is achieved, and legitimized, not when political leaders sign some piece of paper (potentially under duress), but when the agreed terms have garnered support from the populations that will be affected by them. Without broad-based buy-in, peace will not endure.

Netanyahu’s attempts to annex Palestinian occupied lands unilaterally will only create the conditions for more bloodshed, anger, and bitterness. No wonder most American Jewish leaders, a majority of the US Congress, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, and hundreds of Israeli foreign-policy and security experts oppose the Netanyahu government’s reckless approach.

The situation demands a return to talks on clearly defined, mutually agreed terms, with the aim of producing a settlement that both sides can live with now and in the future. Short of that, unilateral acts will make the possibility of peace only more remote.

The first right whale calf born in 2019 has been found dead off the coast of New Jersey

© THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-Clearwater Marine Aquarium The first calf of the 2019-2020 season, and right whale #3560's first calf, was found dead off the coast of New Jersey.

On June 25, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) received reports of a deceased floating whale off the coast of New Jersey.

Sunday, the whale was identified as the male calf of North Atlantic right whale #3560.

READ MORE: Vessel strikes blamed for at least four of nine right whale deaths in 2019

According to a NOAA release, he was the first of 10 reported calves in the 2019/2020 calving season.

“We were encouraged to learn of this right whale calf’s birth last year, marking the first calf born of the season,” said Philip Hamilton, a New England Aquarium researcher, in the release.


“The news of its death is distressing and yet another setback for an endangered species we are working tirelessly to protect.”

The calf and its mother were first spotted in mid-December, and were last seen April 6 this year. They were photographed together in the Gulf of Mexico in March.


The mother is 15 years old and this was her first calf, the release says.

In the last decade, she has travelled from Canada to Florida.

Her current status is unknown.

Read more: Endangered dead right whale known as ‘Wolverine’ reported drifting in Gulf of St. Lawrence

NOAA says in the release these animals need their space.

Earlier this year, a different right whale calf was struck by a vessel and injured. They were last seen alive Jan. 15, but the calf’s current status is unknown.

“The law requires keeping a safe distance of at least 500 yards by sea and air (including drones) from North Atlantic right whales because of the dire status of the species,” reads the release.

NOAA completed a necropsy of the calf of right whale #3560.

According to the release, it hopes to share results early this week.

Administration skips hearing on violence against protesters

By ELLEN KNICKMEYER, Associated Press

© Thomson Reuters US Navy veteran and Black Lives Matter protester Kishon McDonald (L) and George Washington University Law School Law Professor Jonathan Turley (R) watch a video footage of clashes between police and protesters, during a U.S. House Natural Resources Committee hearing on "The U.S. Park Police Attack on Peaceful Protesters at Lafayette Square", on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., June 29, 2020. Michael Reynolds/Pool via REUTERS

WASHINGTON (AP) — The head of the U.S. Park Police refused to appear Monday to answer lawmakers’ questions on violence against demonstrators and journalists outside the White House, saying he couldn’t as long as the federal force remains on highest alert for protests and attacks against monuments.

The White House, however, trumpeted the administration's continuing support of law officers in the now subsiding protests. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told reporters that President Donald Trump's vision was “for law and order, for peace in our streets, and against anarchy.”

The Trump administration at a House Natural Resources Committee hearing Monday on official use of force at this month's street protests did provide a written count and details on federal statues that had suffered lasting damage in the nation’s capital -– two. But Democratic lawmakers charged officials again failed to provide any evidence justifying the Park Police’s subjecting protesters and news media to chemical agents, clubbing and punching while clearing Lafayette Square in front of the White House on June 1.

“If there was a shred of evidence,” the administration would have presented “fact witnesses to support this gaslighting,” Rep. Jared Huffman, a California Democrat, said.

Republican Rep. Rob Bishop of Utah said the committee hearing, which featured an Australian journalist and a military veteran injured in authorities’ routing of demonstrators, but no administration officials, amounted to “political theater” and “good drama.”

The forceful clearing of protesters from Lafayette Square came during weeks of massive street demonstrations around the country against police killings of Black Americans. More recently, sporadic protests nationally have sought to take down statues of Confederate generals and other monuments that are seen as glossing over historic wrongs to U.S. Blacks, Latinos and Native Americans.

The clearing of Lafayette Square is the subject of an Interior Department inspector-general’s review and at least one lawsuit brought by those wounded. One of those, Navy veteran Kishon McDonald, told lawmakers Monday of being hit by the shrapnel from flash-bang grenades that authorities fired to chase away what he said were peaceful protesters.

“It hurts as a Black man to see that it’s 2020 and we still have a government who would do this to us again over something that seems so right to protest about,” McDonald said.

The acting chief of the U.S. Park Police, Gregory T. Monahan, wrote lawmakers that it would be impossible for him to appear to discuss his force’s actions because of “ongoing protests and accompanying violence and destruction of memorials and monuments.” Monahan suggested mid-to late July instead.

Interior Secretary David Bernhardt earlier this month said law officers and other security forces in Washington were under a “state of siege." Bernhardt in a letter to lawmakers then cited unspecified injuries to 50 Park Police officers, and said protesters brought on the forceful response by lobbing bricks, Molotov cocktails and other projectiles at authorities.

Democratic lawmakers say witness and journalist accounts and videos don’t support that, and say the administration has yet to detail the alleged wounds suffered by officers.

McEnany said federal officials have arrested over 100 of what she called “anarchists” for alleged rioting and destruction of federal property.

The National Park Service, part of the Interior Department, in a report Monday detailed structural damage to two statues — the toppling of a statue to Confederate officer Albert Pike, and the scratching of paint and the bending of a sword, along with damage to the wooden carriages of cannons, of a statue of President Andrew Jackson in front of the White House. Jackson was a slaveowner who presided over the large-scale uprooting of Native American communities to take their land.

Other statues had graffiti scrawled on them, since removed, the park service said.

At a separate briefing Monday, a House Oversight subcommittee addressed the treatment of protesters and journalists at demonstrations across the country, including Lafayette Square.

The administration has denied that authorities forced protesters from the square that day so Trump could stage a law-and-order photo op nearby, clinching an upheld Bible. Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said Trump and Attorney General William Barr unleashed pepper spray, tear gas and rubber bullets on a crowd of peaceful protesters — many of them constituents from his suburban Washington district — in order to clear a path so Trump “could perform the most grotesque photo op in American history, waving someone else’s Bible upside-down and above his head.″
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Associated Press writers Matthew Daly and Darlene Superville contributed. Knickmeyer reported from Oklahoma City.

GOOD NEWS
Buffalo protester who was injured by police released from hospital

© Courtesy Bill Jacobson Martin Gugino attends a demonstration.

The 75-year-old protester who was pushed to the ground by police officers in Buffalo, New York, has been released from the hospital almost four weeks after being injured.

Martin Gugino was attending a protest outside City Hall on June 4 when he was pushed to the ground by a line of police officers clearing out the relatively empty area. He fell and hit the back of his head, fracturing his skull and putting him in the hospital for 26 days.

He was released Tuesday from the Erie County Medical Center, his attorney said. His lawyer, Kelly Zarcone, said he will be recovering at an "undisclosed location" to preserve his privacy.

"I was able to see Martin today and he looks great. He can walk with a little help and his condition will continue to improve with rest and time," Zarcone said in a statement. "I brought him the cards and letters sent to my office and he said he still felt overjoyed at the continued support and well wishes, 'like it was Christmas Day.'"MORE: Trump tweets conspiracy theory about Buffalo protester police officers knocked to ground

Gugino is an activist and regular at protests in New York state, his friends said, but has never been anything but peaceful and is a regular volunteer for Catholic charities.

"Martin said that he is pleased at the progress made so far to protect the safety of peaceful protesters, a topic near and dear to his heart," Zarcone said Tuesday. "He respects the burden of authority placed upon law enforcement but looks forward to the continued implementation of systemic changes to eliminate police brutality."© Courtesy Bill Jacobson Martin Gugino attends a demonstration.

Officers Aaron Torgalski and Robert McCabe were charged earlier this month with second-degree assault in the incident and released on their own recognizance. They both pleaded not guilty and are expected back in court July 20.

In a statement prior to the arrests, Buffalo police had said Gugino tripped and fell despite the video evidence.

MORE: Buffalo police officers arrested after shoving 75-year-old protester

The incident rose as high as the White House. President Donald Trump tweeted a conspiracy theory on June 9, writing Gugino may be an "ANTIFA provocateur" and that the whole incident could be part of a "set up."

At the time, Zarcone called the president's accusations "dark, dangerous, and untrue."

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo mocked Trump's theory, asking, "What do you think, it was staged? You think that the blood coming out of his head was staged? Is that what you are saying?"

ABC News' Aaron Katersky contributed to this report.

New Mexico tribe transforms old casino into movie studio

© Provided by The Canadian Press

TESUQUE PUEBLO, N.M. — A small northern New Mexico Native American tribe has opened a movie studio in a former casino that it hopes will lure big productions.

The Tesuque Pueblo recently converted the building near Santa Fe into a movie studio campus called Camel Rock Studios with more than 25,000 square feet (2,323 square meters) of filming space.

The tribe's lands feature stunning desert and the iconic Camel Rock formation in the red-brown foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and tribal officials said outdoor filming can take place on 27 square miles (70 square kilometres) of the reservation.

The tribe with about 800 members decided to open the studio after scenes from the Universal Pictures western movie “News of the World” starring Tom Hanks were filmed last year in the Camel Rock Casino, which closed in 2018.

Universal's use of the casino for filming helped convinced tribal officials decide to transform the empty building into studio space, said Timothy Brown, president and CEO of the Pueblo of Tesuque Development Corporation. Also influencing the decision were investments in New Mexico movie studios by Netflix and NBCUniversal in recent years, said Tunte Vigil, Tesuque Pueblo’s business development associate.

The tribe's governor, Robert Mora, Sr. "thinks this is a great opportunity for the pueblo to get into this industry,” Vigil said. “The market is really open right now, and the (tribal government) wants to bring different businesses to the pueblo.”

No productions are happening now and none are planned for the immediate future because the pueblo and most of New Mexico remain under strict COVID-19 business restrictions. But Brown said that that hasn’t stopped potential productions from contacting the pueblo and asking to reserve studio time.

Cheyenne and Arapaho filmmaker Chris Eyre, a Santa Fe resident and an advisor to Camel Rock Studio, said the studio’s unique aspect is that its former makeup as a casino provides the site with pre-made infrastructure that can be used for filming different types of movie scenes

“It’s a museum. It’s an opulent hotel lobby. It’s a capitol building,” said Eyer, who directed the 1998 film “Smoke Signals” about two Coeur d'Alene tribal members who travel from Idaho to Arizona to retrieve the remains of their father after he died alone. “There are sorts of interesting standing sets that can be creatively (crafted) for all sorts of scenes.”

The site also has a set workshop called a mill that can be used by crews to build sets for use inside the casino or on the tribe's land, Eyer said, adding that he could envision movies filmed there that are set in the Middle East or the U.S. Southwest.

Older movies filmed on the Tesuque Pueblo include the 1955 western “The Man from Laramie” starring James Stewart and the 1988 “Young Guns” with Emilio Estevez and Kiefer Sutherland.

But Eyer said previous productions had stereotypes about Indigenous people and limited Native American input and that tribal officials hope future productions don't follow in their footsteps.

The studio is being established at a time when Native American writers including Pulitzer Prize-winning Cheyenne and Arapaho author Tommy Orange and Inupiaq American poet Joan Naviyuk Kane are transforming American Literature — and putting pressure on Hollywood to incorporate more Native American stories.

Tribal officials plan to create internships and movie training programs for Tesuque Pueblo members and hope that the studio will foster a new storytelling movement, Eyer said.

“Native Americans are natural storytellers,” he said. “What better place to do it?”

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Associated Press writer Russell Contreras is a member of the AP’s Race and Ethnicity team. Follow Contreras on Twitter at http://twitter.com/russcontreras

Russell Contreras, The Associated Press

New Orleans housing leader warns of ‘eviction’ avalanche as end of COVID-19 aid looms

© ABC News Lawyer Winfield, 53, says the rising number of eviction cases in Louisiana should be treated as a crisis because of their relation to the coronavirus pandemic.

As the coronavirus pandemic enters its fifth month, an increasing number of renters from across the country are facing a grim reality -- possible eviction.

In New Orleans, mothers like Shankya Phillips worry about their families and the roofs over their head.

"Where do you get help from, where do you turn when you can't turn to a shelter anymore, when the home you are living in, you can't afford," Phillips said. "It's scary."

The 28-year-old mother of two is about to get evicted.

"I just want people to know this is actually happening, that this is real life. Like, people are actually getting kicked down the street," she told ABC News correspondent Kayna Whitworth.

© ABC News Shanyka Phillips, a mother of two in New Orleans, has been unemployed for more than three months after the clothing store she worked in closed due to the pandemic. She fears eviction.

Phillips lives in an apartment that she describes as leaky, and has been unemployed since the clothing store she worked at shut down three months ago.

The extra federal unemployment benefits of up to $600 a week, provided as part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act, will end at the end of July, leaving millions of unemployed Americans like Phillips in limbo.

About 28 million Americans are at risk of eviction as a recession fueled by COVID-19 creates economic havoc across the country, according to new estimates from the real estate analytics firm Amherst Holdings.

© ABC News New Orleans is just one of an increasing number of places where protections for tenants are starting to phase out, even as coronavirus cases rise in some areas of the country.
The 120-day moratorium on evictions in federally assisted housing properties mandated by the CARES Act is also set to expire on July 25th. According to the Urban Institute, that moratorium covers roughly 12.3 million out of the 43.8 million rental units in the U.S. -- one in four units.


For the roughly three-quarters of American rental units that aren't federally subsidized, eviction moratoriums are dependent on state and local governments. In Louisiana, the moratorium ended June 15.

New Orleans is just one of an increasing number of places where protections for tenants are starting to phase out, even as cases rise in some areas.

The eviction rate in New Orleans before COVID-19 was already twice the national average. In some neighborhoods, however, it was up to four times higher.MORE: 'Mass evictions' on the horizon as US confronts coronavirus housing crisis: Advocates

Unemployment is now four times higher than before the pandemic. When coupled with the expiring federal benefits, Cashauna Hill, director of the Louisiana Fair Housing Action Center, is worried the city is on a collision course.

"Folks here know what's coming down the pike. We, unfortunately, have had more than our share of experience dealing with disasters and governmental failures," Hill told ABC News.

© ABC News Cashauna Hill is the director of the Louisiana Fair Housing Action Center. She and her staff are working to keep people from getting evicted.

Hill and her staff are fighting to keep people like 53-year-old Lawyer Winfield in their homes.

"You know there's a certain comfort in having this little place... I can't imagine being without it," Winfield told ABC News. 

© ABC News Lawyer Winfield, 53, says the rising number of eviction cases in Louisiana should be treated as a crisis because of their relation to the coronavirus pandemic. He is trying to keep his home.

Southeast Louisiana Legal Services told ABC News it had seen a 100% increase in their eviction cases. Meanwhile, 41% of Louisiana renters said they were worried about being able to make June's rent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Winfield says the housing crisis that has been impacting New Orleans for years should be taken seriously now. "It must be treated as a crisis because of this pandemic," he said.

Without extended aid, housing rights advocates fear for what's to come.

"We're really concerned that we're going to see an avalanche of evictions as the courts open back up," Hill said.

But landlords are also feeling the strain.

© ABC News Kim Valene, a landlord for 20 years, says she's never had to evict someone until now.

Kym Valene has been a landlord in the big easy for nearly 20 years and says she never had to evict someone until now.

"I'm not a bad guy and I really like my tenants and take care of my property. But you've got to understand, you know, certain people are taking advantage of the situation," she said.

Valene is currently trying to remove a tenant who she says has not paid rent since the pandemic began and has a pit bull dog, which are illegal in the city.

© ABC News New Orleans is just one of an increasing number of places where protections for tenants are starting to phase out, even as coronavirus cases rise in some areas of the country

.MORE: Tenants behind on rent in pandemic face harassment, eviction

Valene says she wasn't able to take action until the moratorium on evictions expired. In the end, she anticipates losing $15,000 and she says she still has to pay her mortgage, property taxes and insurance.

Impending evictions have the city on edge and health leaders taking notice.

"Every economic impact has a public health impact, and so, certainly putting people out of their homes would be devastating," Dr. Jen Avengo, director of New Orleans' Health Department, told ABC News.

Avengo says she has been working on solutions to address New Orleans' housing crisis for years, and the pandemic has only exacerbated the problem.

"We need help and we need it soon," she said.

© ABC News Dr. Jen Avegno is the director of the City of New Orleans Department of Health. She says putting people out of their homes would have a devastating impact to economic as well as public health.

For mothers like Phillips, the dream is a simple one.

"I want to raise my kids with a nice little fence in the front yard, and where my dog can run around and not have to worry about them getting shot," Phillips said.

But right now, that dream is out of reach.

"It makes you want to leave New Orleans," she said. "But who wants to leave the place they love?"

Jenna Harrison contributed to this report

SocGen's Australian securities arm pleads guilty to client money offences

© Reuters/Benoit Tessier FILE PHOTO: The logo of Societe Generale is seen on the firm's headquarters in the financial and business district of La Defense near Paris(Reuters) - Australia's corporate regulator on Wednesday said the Australian securities unit of France's Societe Generale SA (SocGen) has pleaded guilty to charges of breaching client money provisions.
This comes after the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) last month said the unit faces restrictions on new customers if it does not comply with new licensing conditions related to client money laws.

Societe Generale Securities Australia is the second company this year to face criminal prosecution on charges of breaching client money codes, which ensure that client money is kept in authorised accounts, the regulator said on Wednesday.

The French investment bank in an emailed statement said the unit's plea was in line with "its responsible and transparent position".

The securities unit on Tuesday pleaded guilty to the charges brought by ASIC in March which include two counts of making non-permitted payments out of a client money account and two counts of failing to pay money into separate bank accounts, over the period Dec. 8, 2014 to Feb. 8, 2017.

The regulator said each offence carries a maximum penalty of about A$45,000 ($31,086) with the matter being listed for sentence on Sept. 21.

($1 = 1.4476 Australian dollars)

(Reporting by Shreya Mariam Job in Bengaluru; Editing by Christopher Cushing)

MONOPOLY CAPITALISM
U.S. buys up worldwide stock of remdesivir, drug seen as potential COVID-19 treatment

© (Gilead Sciences via AP) FILE - In this March 2020 photo provided by Gilead Sciences, rubber stoppers are placed onto filled vials of the investigational drug remdesivir at a Gilead manufacturing site in the United States. Given through an IV, the medication is designed to interfere with an enzyme that reproduces viral genetic material.

The United States has secured nearly the entire worldwide supply of remdesivir, a drug that's proven effective for severely ill patients of the novel coronavirus — leaving hardly any for Canada and the rest of the world.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced Monday it has secured more than 500,000 treatment courses of the drug from its sole manufacturer Gilead Sciences for American hospitals through September. Each treatment course uses an average of over six vials of the drug.

Read more: Coronavirus drug remdesivir to cost $2,340 per patient in the U.S.

According to a news release, the buyout represents 100 per cent of Gilead's projected production for July, 90 per cent of August's production, and 90 per cent of production through September. A further "allocation for clinical trials" has also been secured.

HHS Secretary Alex Azar called the move "an amazing deal" struck by U.S. President Donald Trump "to ensure Americans have access to the first authorized therapeutic for COVID-19."

“To the extent possible, we want to ensure that any American patient who needs remdesivir can get it," Azar added in a statement.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted emergency use authorization to Gilead on May 1 after a major study by the by the U.S. National Institutes of Health showed remdesivir can reduce recovery time for hospitalized COVID-19 patients.

The 250,000 treatment courses that the company had donated to the U.S. and other countries will run out in about a week. After that, treatment courses will cost $2,340 each for people covered by government health programs in the United States and other developed countries, Gilead announced Monday.

Read more: Remdesivir, hailed as potential COVID-19 treatment, gets emergency U.S. FDA green light

Gilead has a patent on remdesivir, making it the only company able to manufacture the drug. That effectively means any other country that wants it may have to wait until at least September to procure it.

Global News has reached out to Public Services and Procurement Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada for comment on the U.S. announcement.

Health Canada has approved two clinical trials of the drug for use against COVID-19, and is currently reviewing Gilead's application to authorize remdesivir for treatment of the disease. It has yet to be approved or given emergency authorization in Canada.

The U.S. move is the latest in a string of roadblocks set up by the Trump administration as it has moved to stock up on medical supplies during the coronavirus pandemic, some of which have affected Canada specifically.

In April, U.S.-based company 3M said that it had been asked by the Trump administration not to supply N95 respirators to Canada. The White House later struck a new deal with the company that allowed the masks into Canada again.

That same month, Ontario Premier Doug Ford said around three to four million medical masks ordered from 3M were blocked at the U.S.-Canada border. Ford later clarified that 500,000 of those masks were released to Ontario.

—With files from the Associated Press

AP sources: White House aware of Russian bounties in 2019

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Top officials in the White House were aware in early 2019 of classified intelligence indicating Russia was secretly offering bounties to the Taliban for the deaths of Americans, a full year earlier than has been previously reported, according to U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the intelligence.

The assessment was included in at least one of President Donald Trump’s written daily intelligence briefings at the time, according to the officials. Then-national security adviser John Bolton also told colleagues he briefed Trump on the intelligence assessment in March 2019.

The White House did not respond to questions about Trump or other officials’ awareness of Russia’s provocations in 2019. The White House has said Trump was not — and still has not been — briefed on the intelligence assessments because they have not been fully verified. However, it is rare for intelligence to be confirmed without a shadow of a doubt before it is presented to top officials.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Bolton declined to comment Monday when asked by the AP if he had briefed Trump about the matter in 2019. On Sunday, he suggested to NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Trump was claiming ignorance of Russia’s provocations to justify his administration’s lack of a response.

“He can disown everything if nobody ever told him about it,” Bolton said.

The revelations cast new doubt on the White House’s efforts to distance Trump from the Russian intelligence assessments. The AP reported Sunday that concerns about Russian bounties were also included in a second written presidential daily briefing earlier this year and that current national security adviser Robert O’Brien had discussed the matter with Trump. O’Brien denies he did so.

On Monday night, O'Brien said that while the intelligence assessments regarding Russian bounties "have not been verified,” the administration has “been preparing should the situation warrant action.”

The administration’s earlier awareness of the Russian efforts raises additional questions about why Trump did not take any punitive action against Moscow for efforts that put the lives of Americans servicemembers at risk. Trump has sought throughout his time in office to improve relations with Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, moving earlier this year to try to reinstate Russia as part of a group of world leaders it had been kicked out of.

Officials said they did not consider the intelligence assessments in 2019 to be particularly urgent, given that Russian meddling in Afghanistan is not a new occurrence. The officials with knowledge of Bolton’s apparent briefing for Trump said it contained no “actionable intelligence,” meaning the intelligence community did not have enough information to form a strategic plan or response. However, the classified assessment of Russian bounties was the sole purpose of the meeting.

The officials insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose the highly sensitive information.

The intelligence that surfaced in early 2019 indicated Russian operatives had become more aggressive in their desire to contract with the Taliban and members of the Haqqani Network, a militant group aligned with the Taliban in Afghanistan and designated a foreign terrorist organization in 2012 during the Obama administration.

The National Security Council and the undersecretary of defence for intelligence did hold meetings regarding the intelligence. The Pentagon declined to comment and the NSC did not respond to questions about the meetings.

Concerns about Russian bounties flared anew this year after members of the elite Naval Special Warfare Development Group, known to the public as SEAL Team Six, raided a Taliban outpost and recovered roughly $500,000 in U.S. currency. The funds bolstered the suspicions of the American intelligence community that the Russians had offered money to Taliban militants and other linked associations.

The White House contends the president was unaware of this development as well.

The officials told the AP that career government officials developed potential options for the White House to respond to the Russian aggression in Afghanistan, which was first reported by The New York Times. However, the Trump administration has yet to authorize any action.

The intelligence in 2019 and 2020 surrounding Russian bounties was derived in part from debriefings of captured Taliban militants. Officials with knowledge of the matter told the AP that Taliban operatives from opposite ends of the country and from separate tribes offered similar accounts.

The officials would not name the specific groups or give specific locations in Afghanistan or time frames for when they were detained.

Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Putin, denied that Russian intelligence officers had offered payments to the Taliban in exchange for targeting U.S. and coalition forces.

The U.S. is investigating whether any Americans died as a result of the Russian bounties. Officials are focused in particular on an April 2019 attack on an American convoy. Three U.S. Marines were killed after a car rigged with explosives detonated near their armoured vehicles as they returned to Bagram Airfield, the largest U.S. military installation in Afghanistan.

The Marines exchanged gunfire with the vehicle at some point; however, it’s not known if the gunfire occurred before or after the car exploded.

Abdul Raqib Kohistani, the Bagram district police chief, said at the time that at least five Afghan civilians were wounded after the attack on the convoy, according to previous reporting by the AP. It is not known if the civilians were injured by the car bomb or the gunfire from U.S. Marines.

The Defence Department identified Marine Staff Sgt. Christopher Slutman, 43, of Newark, Delaware; Sgt. Benjamin Hines, 31, of York, Pennsylvania; and Cpl. Robert Hendriks, 25, of Locust Valley, New York, as the Marines killed in April 2019. The three Marines were all infantrymen assigned to 2nd Battalion, 25th Marines, a reserve infantry unit headquartered out of Garden City, New York.

Hendriks' father told the AP that even a rumour of Russian bounties should have been immediately addressed.

“If this was kind of swept under the carpet as to not make it a bigger issue with Russia, and one ounce of blood was spilled when they knew this, I lost all respect for this administration and everything,” Erik Hendriks said.

Marine Maj. Roger Hollenbeck said at the time that the reserve unit was a part of the Georgia Deployment Program-Resolute Support Mission, a recurring six-month rotation between U.S. Marines and Georgian Armed Forces. The unit first deployed to Afghanistan in October 2018.

Three other service members and an Afghan contractor were also wounded in the attack. As of April 2019, the attack was under a separate investigation, unrelated to the Russian bounties, to determine how it unfolded.

The officials who spoke to the AP also said they were looking closely at insider attacks — sometimes called “green-on-blue” incidents — from 2019 to determine if they are also linked to Russian bounties.

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Associated Press writers Zeke Miller and Deb Riechmann in Washington, Deepti Hajela in New York and Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed to this report.

James Laporta, The Associated Press