Sunday, February 10, 2019
Venezuela: Thousands flee to Colombia while US aid languishes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWRsleUlx8I
Why Is the Political Establishment So Afraid of Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal?
Instead of pouring money into
endless war and tax cuts for the rich, Congress now has a chance to solve the
climate crisis. But devotion to the economic status quo is standing in the way.
At a time of widespread
environmental devastation, much of the U.S. political establishment appears
allergic to large-scale public projects that would solve the climate crisis
through directly challenging the economic status quo.
This attitude was perhaps best
encapsulated by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s glib mockery of
the Green New Deal plan laid out Thursday morning by Rep. Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.). In an interview with Politico,
Pelosi referred to the proposal as “the green dream or whatever they call it.”
She went on to suggest that the plan had not been thought through, saying,
“nobody knows what it is, but they’re for it, right?”
Pelosi is not the only
lawmaker who is reflexively resistant to the plan. There is the predictable
opposition from Republicans, including Rep. John Shimkus (Ill.), the ranking
member on the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Environment
and Climate Change. He said
at a hearing Wednesday, “We should be open to the fact that wealth transfer
schemes suggested in the radical policies like the Green New Deal may not be
the best path to community prosperity and preparedness.”
Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO),
meanwhile, turned to red-baiting, saying the Green New Deal “sounds too much
like a Soviet five-year plan.” Lamborn’s critique echoed President Trump, who
warned in his State of the Union (SOTU) speech on Tuesday that “in the United
States, we are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country. America
was founded on liberty and independence—not government coercion, domination and
control.”
Pelosi herself has directly
aided this anti-socialist appeal. At a CNN Town Hall event in 2017, Pelosi was
asked by a New York University student, who cited the growing popularity of
socialist policies among Democrats, whether the party “could move farther left
to a more populist message?” She responded, “We’re capitalists, and that’s just
the way it is.” In the aftermath of Ocasio-Cortez’s shocking victory last year,
Pelosi was asked whether democratic socialism was “ascendant” in the party. Her
response: “No.” And when Trump said in his SOTU address Tuesday that “Tonight,
we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country,” Pelosi applauded.
This opposition to democratic
socialist policies helps explain why Pelosi has been so resistant to embrace
the Democrats’ rising left flank that wants to see immediate action on
redistributing wealth and power away from the top echelons of society. Such
demands for a radical restructuring of the U.S. economy is a critical element
underpinning calls for enacting up-and-coming left-wing policies like the Green
New Deal.
Pelosi’s ideological
positioning has, not surprisingly, dovetailed with opposition to the Green New
Deal. Last year, Ocasio-Cortez joined a demonstration at Pelosi’s office
organized by the Sunrise Movement—a youth-led environmental justice group—which
called for the creation of a select committee to craft a Green New Deal. Rather
than instituting such a committee, however, Pelosi instead created a select
committee on climate change more broadly, with powers much more limited scope
than what organizers had demanded. Pelosi’s committee, furthermore, will not
require members to eschew campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry,
another demand laid out by the Sunrise Movement.
Meanwhile, other Democratic
leaders are more cagey and guarded. Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), the chair of
the U.S. House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, released an ambiguous
statement today in which she declined to support the Green New Deal but praised
the passion behind it. “We must examine the entire range of tools we have to
tackle the climate crisis,” she said. “I share the sense of urgency behind the
Green New Deal and I believe that we must act boldly to reduce greenhouse gases
and to make clean energy a pillar of our economy.”
Completely missing from
Republicans’ outright opposition—and some Democrats’ ambiguous hedging—is a
recognition of what’s at stake. The planet faces monumental warming with
threats not just of sea level rise and expansive droughts but massive bouts of
famine, economic devastation and refugee crises. Instead of grappling with the
massive destruction wrought by worsening climate change, the political
establishment is continuing to deflect the debate toward criticism of those who
want action that’s too bold, or public projects that are too ambitious.
Yet this opposition to costly
and large-scale legislation apparently doesn’t extend to projects that concern
endless war and tax cuts for the wealthy. Bipartisan lawmakers, including
Pelosi, handed a major win to Trump last year by passing the staggering $716
billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2019, which included
funds for a nuclear buildup. Meanwhile, in 2017, Republicans gleefully lined up
behind Trump to hand a tax break to corporations and the super-rich that
will add
nearly $2 trillion to the U.S. debt.
This incongruence is enabled
by a media echo chamber. During an interview with
NPR’s “Morning Edition” on Thursday, Ocasio-Cortez was grilled by host Steve
Inskeep about how she would pay for her climate plan. “It is just certainly a
lot of money. You don’t specify where it’s going to come from other than saying
it will all pay for itself.” This refrain has been echoed across major media
outlets since the concept of a Green New Deal was first introduced, from Politico to
“60
Minutes.” As Aylin Woodward notes in
Business Insider, “Much of the discussion so far about the Green New Deal has
centered on how to pay for its lofty objectives.”
Ocasio-Cortez’s response to
Inskeep was instructive. “I think the first move we need to do is kind of break
the mistaken idea that taxes pay for 100 percent of government expenditure,”
Ocasio-Cortez answered. “It’s just not how government expenditure works,” she
said. “We can recoup costs, but oftentimes you look at, for example, the GOP
tax cut which I think was an irresponsible use of government expenditure, but
government projects are often financed by a combination of taxes, deficit
spending and other kinds of investments, you know, bonds and so on.”
She went on to point out the
long term failure of a market fundamentalist approach to environmental policy
in dealing with climate change. “We have tried their approach for 40 years—to
let the private sector take care of it,” she explained, laying out a case for
massive government intervention that–until recently–has rarely surfaced in
mainstream political discourse.
Yet, amazingly, this hostile
political climate is failing to squash the Green New Deal. To achieve the goals
of staving off the worst effects of climate change while putting the United
States on a path to environmental sustainability and economic equity, the Green
New Deal calls for eliminating net greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, massively
investing in government programs to update infrastructure and build up
renewable energy sources, transforming sectors of the economy such as
manufacturing and transportation to remove carbon emissions, retrofitting
buildings and providing guaranteed living-wage employment to anyone who wants a
job.
Not all of the details have
been hashed out, and it will no doubt take considerable struggle—and outside
agitating—to ensure any
final plan is informed by left principles. But, nonetheless, the proposal
represents the most ambitious effort yet to tackle the climate crisis.
And it correctly refocuses the
question of cost away from whether the United States can afford to pay for such
a bold proposal to whether it can afford not to.
Already more than 60 members
of the House and 9 senators have co-sponsored Ocasio-Cortez and Markey’s
resolution. Much like other bold left-wing proposals such as Medicare for All
and tuition-free college, the Green New Deal has emerged as a consensus policy
back by a number of high-profile potential 2020 Democratic nominees such as
Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand and
Bernie Sanders. And over 80 percent of the American public supports
the Green New Deal, including 92 percent of Democrats and 64 percent of
Republicans.
Republicans and centrist
Democrats alike seem content continuing to oversee the same economic and political
consensus that led us to the brink of climate chaos. But for the vast majority
of Americans who want real solutions to the crisis, today’s Green New Deal
resolution marks a clear escape path from the stale politics of the past.
Ocasio-Cortez Brilliantly Demonstrates Brokenness of American Political System
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzhehtyTsJw
Nancy Pelosi Works With Insurance Companies Against Medicare For All
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfEqr4UkFLw
Saturday, February 9, 2019
Israel kills two children in Gaza protests
9 February 2019
Israeli occupation forces
killed two protesters in Gaza on Friday, both of them children, according to Al Mezan, a human
rights group in the territory.
The deaths bring to three the
number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces during the week. Abdallah
Faisal Tawalbeh, 21, was shot dead by
soldiers in the northern West Bank on Monday.
Also on Friday, Yasir Hamid
Ishtayeh, from the West Bank city of Nablus, was reported to
have died in Israeli prison, two days after the death
of Faris Baroud in his 28th year of imprisonment.
On Friday, Hasan Iyad Abd
al-Fattah Shalabi, 14, died after he was shot in the chest while 60 meters from
the boundary fence with Israel in Khan Younis, southern Gaza.
Hamza Muhammad Rushdi
Ishtaiwi, 17, was fatally shot in the neck when he was 50 meters from the fence
east of Gaza City. A photo of the slain teen circulated on social media after
his death:
The boys killed in Gaza on
Friday are the fourth and fifth Palestinian child fatalities at the hands of
Israeli forces so far this year.
Thirty-eight children are
among the 188 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces during the Great March of
Return protests that were launched on 30 March last year.
Ahmad Ghazi Abbas Abu Jabal,
30, died on
Sunday from injuries sustained during protests along Gaza’s northern
boundary the previous week.
During Friday’s protests
Israeli forces injured more than 100 Palestinians, including 43 children, five
women and a paramedic, according to Al Mezan.
Nearly two dozen were injured
by live fire during the protests, while nearly 50 people were hit directly with
tear gas projectiles, critically wounding one.
More than 7,600 Palestinians
have been injured by live fire during the protests since their launch.
Healthcare system in crisis
While Gaza’s healthcare system
has been in chronic
crisis for years, it has become acute as hospitals struggle to cope with
the staggering number of protest casualties.
Israeli military officials
have warned lawmakers that Gaza’s healthcare system is on the verge of
collapse, making it “difficult for the Israeli army to fight in the Strip for
long” in any future military confrontation before “intense international
intervention,” the Tel Aviv daily Haaretz reported this
week.
Israel’s top leadership have
been informed by an international medical organization that “around 6,000
people with bullet wounds are still awaiting urgent operations,” according
to Haaretz.
“Most of the wounded are not
receiving proper medical care and a quarter have developed bone infections that
if untreated will lead to amputations. At this point there is no agency that
could treat those thousands of people,” the paper added.
There are not enough doctors
in Gaza as physicians who can leave the territory have emigrated, the report
states, while hospitals lack basic medicines.
Overburdened facilities have
prioritized treating mass casualties from protests and “patients with cancer,
diabetes or dialysis needs … are simply being sent home.”
Gaza patients denied
permission to travel
Meanwhile, Israel continues to
deny or delay permission to medical patients to travel outside Gaza for
treatment.
Israeli authorities have
allowed themselves “exceedingly long processing times” when evaluating
applications from Palestinians in Gaza seeking to enter Israel or the West
Bank, according to rights
groups.
The directive under
which COGAT, the
bureaucratic arm of Israel’s military occupation, operates allows 23 business
days to process applications from medical patients; 50 business days for
applications from Palestinians who wish to visit a seriously ill relative or
attend a first degree relative’s wedding; and 70 business days for applications
from those in Gaza who wish to study abroad.
Despite these lengthy
processing timeframes, COGAT “frequently fails to answer permit applications
within the times stipulated in the directive, and often doesn’t respond to
applications at all,” according to
Gisha, a group that monitors Israel’s closure of Gaza.
One of those affected by
Israel’s “draconian” policy is Atia Darwish, a photojournalist who was hit in
the left eye with a tear gas canister while covering protests in Gaza last
December.
The injury caused “multiple
facial fractures and severe bleeding at the back of his eye, putting his sight
at risk,” according to
the World Health Organization.
“He had surgery to remove
shrapnel from the wound, fix his lower jaw and replace fragmented bones in his
face with metal plates.”
“Not an exception”
But Darwish requires further
specialized care and his vision remains impaired.
He received a referral for
treatment at St. John Eye Hospital in Jerusalem but his travel application was
still under Israeli review by the time his appointment date arrived.
“His case is not an
exception,” the World Health Organization stated.
“Of 435 permit applications to
Israeli authorities by those injured during the Great March of Return
demonstrations, only 19 percent have been approved. Those unable to access the
health care they need face a higher risk of complications and poorer health
outcomes.”
St. John Eye Hospital is one
of six health facilities in occupied East Jerusalem affected by $25
million in aid cuts from the Trump administration in Washington.
The White House cut half a
billion dollars in aid to Palestinians last year, further raising fears over
the fate of the Palestinian healthcare system.
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