Goodbye Betsy!

A farewell message to Betsy DeVos from the brilliant team at Slate.com:

So long, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos! It wasn’t just that you were unqualified to lead America’s educational system, as someone who never worked at a public school, attended a public school, or took out a school loan.  It was that you were the opposite of qualified, an early example of the Trump administration’s elitist disregard for the very role of government agencies themselves.  You sailed into the Department of Education as if sailing into port on one of your yachts, buoyed by your belief that public schools are a “dead end,” your declaration that government “sucks,” and your family’s hundreds of millions of dollars donated to Republican causes.

And yeah, you made the most of the opportunity.  You promoted charter and religious schools while ignoring public schools.  You reduced protections for victims of sexual assault, for minority students, for gay and trans students.  You gleefully ignored a court order and continued to collect loan payments from students at a defunct, fraudulent for-profit university—16,000 times, including wage garnishments and tax seizures.

As chair of the Trump administration’s “school safety commission,” formed after the Parkland shootings, you declined to recommend any gun control measures, but you did rescind an Obama-era guideline instructing schools not to punish minority students more harshly than white ones.  Thank goodness!

But it was in 2020, as American schools faced arguably their biggest crisis since the civil rights era, that you really made your contempt for teachers and children plain.  As schools across the country sought aid and advice to reopen safely in the fall, you holed up in your Michigan compound, protected by around-the-clock U.S. Marshals that have cost taxpayers as much as $25 million over four years. (You’re the first Cabinet secretary ever to insist on such protection)  From your mansion, you joined Donald Trump’s demands that schools reopen NOW—but offered no support or assistance.  The end result: politicizing school reopening as an issue, making it more difficult for schools to open safely.  You’ve overseen a slow-motion education disaster that will have lasting effects on an entire generation of children.

And you’ve done it all with a haughty, better-than-this attitude that makes clear just how little of a shit you give.  You didn’t give a shit during your confirmation hearings, when you plagiarized your Senate questionnaire and didn’t bother to learn anything about the Americans With Disabilities Act.  You didn’t give a shit this summer, when you sniffed, “The secretary of education isn’t the nation’s superintendent.”  Well, soon you won’t be the nation’s anything.  I can’t wait to never think about you again.  You’re expelled.

 

Somebody Got Moved to the Kids Table at Thanksgiving

Accidental Release of Software Code Reveals Chilling Depths of Genocide in China's Xinjiang Region

Earlier this month, a Chinese firm that has cashed in on deploying AI-powered surveillance gear in Xinjiang momentarily published some of its code online, providing a glimpse into how tech firms track the region’s Uighur population on behalf of the Chinese government.

In what can only be described as a massive fuck-up, someone—likely a software engineer employed by Dahua Technology, the surveillance-gear supplier—posted the company’s software development kit for video tracking tools, which are built specifically to identify Uighurs.

The code includes race-based tagging and tracking, as well as seemingly harmless physical-trait identifiers like whether a scanned subject has a beard, wears a mask, or carries a handbag or backpack. Among other visibly quantifiable traits, it classifies the clothing that a person is wearing, and, apparently, the person’s emotional state: NORMAL, ANGER, DISGUST, FEAR, CONFUSED, SCREAM, and more.

As long as someone who is already tracked stays within view of Dahua’s cameras, the algorithm can determine what mode of transportation they rode on, down to the vehicle’s make, as well as identify its license plate. And the system is designed to be embedded into any piece of hardware with a camera and internet connection, co-opting things like ATMs into part of the network of devices that track Uighurs.

Dahua is partially state-owned and its shares are traded on the stock market in Shenzhen. It is China’s second largest surveillance company, according to a report by Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post.   In October 2019, Dahua was placed on the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Entity List because it was “implicated in human rights violations and abuses in China’s campaign targeting Uighurs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities” in Xinjiang—part of a campaign that scholars and observers have characterized as cultural genocide.

Xinjiang is supposed to be an autonomous region, but make no mistake-- it is firmly under the iron grip of the Chinese government, with CCP cadres dispatched to oversee security matters under the guise of counterterrorism and poverty alleviation.  The latest revelation about Dahua's software only serves as a chilling reminder that Chinese tech companies are now serving up an automated means to monitor, track, and surveil people in Xinjiang, sealing their fate within algorithmic black boxes.

The Chinese government implements draconian measures to suppress Uighur Muslims’ expression of culture and religion. It has banned “abnormally long” beards and jailed men who refuse to shave their facial hair; the verdict in one case was a six-year prison sentence. Women are not allowed to wear veils in public. In the past three years, thousands of mosques have been demolished or damaged. Historical sites and cemeteries have been razed in the past decade.

Xinjiang’s Uighurs may also be detained if they communicate with people outside of the region, particularly if they use VPNs and blocked apps like WhatsApp. Even setting a clock or watch two hours behind Beijing to “Ürümqi time” can draw scrutiny from the authorities.

At any given time, up to a million Uighurs are kept in 400 "thought-transformation" facilities (i.e., detention camps) built by the Chinese government. This form of detention is arbitrary, with cited reasons including “minor religious infection,” “relatives abroad,” and even “thinking is hard to grasp.” At these sites, there are classes to “reform” Uighurs who are kept against their will through what the Chinese government calls “education and vocational training.” Uighurs who have “graduated” from these facilities say that the Chinese government’s ultimate goal is to erase their language and traditions.

Although there are no gas chambers in Xinjiang, the Chinese government's effort to wipe out the Uighur's cultural identity is nothing more than genocide.

Carrie Underwood & John Legend - Hallelujah

Happy Turkey Day

Coronavirus Art - London, England

Beware The GOP

 As Frank Rich reminds us in the New York Magazine, the GOP will likely learn nothing from the Trump defeat:

Joe Biden’s victory cannot mask the fact that this country is divided, regardless of the Democratic margin in the presidential popular vote. The fundamental schisms pitting American tribes against each other would remain intact even in the fantastical event that the Electoral College were by some political miracle abolished in the interest of democratizing what we are overly fond of calling the world’s greatest democracy.

So as we cheer a Biden win, please let us not tell each other now that we are on our way to “healing.” Or that what Biden framed as a battle for the soul of America has been won, or even placed on hold. Yes, there was record voter turnout. But even as we congratulate ourselves on our enduring faith in the franchise, we must recognize that one of the two political parties is routinely engaged in sabotaging free elections with voter-suppression efforts aimed at the minority voters it cannot win over at the ballot box. These anti-democratic power grabs became a GOP staple decades before Donald Trump, culminating in the actions of a George W. Bush–anointed chief justice, John Roberts, whose Supreme Court shredded the Voting Rights Act of 1965. As Roberts famously wrote in 2007, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” Since then, discrimination on the basis of race has only expanded in states like Georgia and Florida, where Black voting rights have been cavalierly undermined and trashed.

Once Biden survives the GOP’s legal and extra-legal efforts to rob him of his electoral success and is sworn in as president, let’s skip the sanctimony about how “the system worked.” The system is teetering. Trump — in what may be his signal accomplishment — has exposed every weakness in its structure. It turns out that a president can even monkey around with the Postal Service to manipulate election results. He can lie, steal, self-deal, corrupt the legal system, coddle dictators, alienate allies, violate all the internal safeguards intended to prevent executive malfeasance, mismanage a public-health catastrophe that kills his own voters, and get away with it for four long years.

The GOP won’t be chastened by a Trump defeat. The Republicans are more unified than ever and certainly more unified than the Democrats. The Supreme Court has their back. There is no reason to think that a setback in a single election will cause America’s conservative movement to either dwindle in size or compromise its views no matter what transpires in a Biden presidency. We harbor any illusions to the contrary at our peril.

Goodbye Stephen!

A farewell message  to Stephen Miller from the brilliant team at Slate.com:

There comes a point in every young man’s life when childish trolling threatens to become not just a mode of expression but a way of being.   Most avoid that fate.  They mature.  They get busy.  But a few do not.  And then there’s Stephen Miller, who by all accounts spent his adolescence blasting right past that inflection point, into his current orbit as the provocateur in chief and petty tyrant of the White House’s anti-immigration crusade, so determined to Stick It to Them that his own boss would play “good cop” against him and other White House officials would look down when he entered the room.  It’s impressive!  And he’s exceptional in another way: Here in the twilight of the Trump presidency, when many of us are still puzzling over the career arcs of Bill Barr or Lindsey Graham or Susan Collins, Miller is in a rarified tier of villainy where armchair psychologizing or “how did he get here's” no longer apply.  The damage he has done is all that matters.

Of the many things that no longer matter to me about Stephen Miller: that he is the only senior adviser to have survived—thrived—all four years of the term while not having sprung from or married into Trumpian gametes. Or that he was a jerk at Santa Monica High School, or that he capitalized on the Duke lacrosse rape allegations.  I don’t care about his rapid ascent up the Michele Bachmann and Jeff Sessions staff ladder, or that he (and Jared Kushner) provided the rare sight of a fitted suit and skinny tie in the West Wing.  I don’t care about the pitch of his voice, or his surprisingly wooden delivery at a podium, or that he got married.  There’s much about his brutishly short life thus far that I don’t care to evaluate.  There’s only one thing to know.

While Stephen Miller was in the White House, thousands of children were forcibly marked with the trauma of being caged away from their parents, and hundreds may never see their parents again. And it happened on a scale far below what he’d pushed for. It’s difficult to write that dispassionately, and without some embarrassment: One would prefer to discuss federal policy without losing one’s shit, and yet no other response feels commensurate or honest.

The cruelty, the abuse, the hatred—all this must be destroyed with a kind of berserk fervor. But he’s also a man. And like all men who commit crimes against humanity, he should be imprisoned by the society he wounded, forever prevented from spreading his pestilence and fear. In a just world, this reckoning would happen right on Jan. 21. It won’t. But one way or another, he will have to leave that building and its protection, and it’s a day that cannot come fast enough.

 

 

Buh-Bye Trump!

Ghanians Fight Industrial Overfishing with Smartphone App

 Illegal and destructive practices by industrial trawlers in Ghana have led to one of the worst overfishing crises in west Africa, with small pelagic species known as “the people’s fish” driven to the brink of collapse.  Researchers predict the total loss of small pelagic fish populations, the staple of coastal communities in Ghana, within five years unless urgent action is taken.  Scores of small-scale fishers are now fighting back against illegal trawlers using a smartphone app that allows them to record, log and report any alleged fishery crimes they spot out at sea.

Evidence gathered via the app, developed by the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF), was used to report an alleged infraction of fisheries law to Ghana’s Fisheries Commission.  A canoe fisher who spotted an industrial trawler with its nets within the six-mile nautical exclusion zone reserved for small-scale fishers, used the app to photograph and film the boat, and a report was submitted to the Ghanaian government.

When a user spots a vessel they believe is illegally fishing, coming too close to shore, or damaging canoes or gear, they use the app to take a photo of the boat, with its name or identification number. The app records the location and uploads it to a central database, managed by the EJF, where it can be used to catch and penalize perpetrators.

The tool, called Dase (which means “evidence” in Fante) is also being developed for use in Liberia, where dangerous clashes between canoes and industrial trawlers have been reported.

“Illegal fishing is causing the collapse of Ghana’s staple fish stocks and the loss of food security, livelihoods and tens of millions of dollars in national revenue,” said Nana Jojo Solomon, executive member of the Ghana National Canoe Fishermen Council, at the launch event in Cape Coast.  “This app means canoe fishers no longer have to stand by while industrial vessels fish illegally in their fishing grounds.”

So far 100 small-scale fishers are using the app to surveil Ghana’s 350-mile coastline.

Honduras Devastated by Hurricane Iota on the Heels of Eta

Iota made landfall in northwestern Nicaragua earlier this week as a Category 5 hurricane — the year’s biggest Atlantic storm — and left behind “catastrophic” damage, the government in Managua said.  The giant storm devastated much of the area spared by Hurricane Eta merely two weeks ago.

Hurricane Iota caused significant damage across Honduras, including to the country’s largest airport.  Ramón Villeda Morales International Airport near San Pedro Sula was submerged by water, and local media reports that it may not reopen for passengers until mid-December at the earliest.

Aerial view of the flooded Ramon Villeda Morales airport in San Pedro Sula, 240 km north of Tegucigalpa, after the passage of Hurricane Iota.

Leo Castellón, the superintendent of the company that operates the airport, said the facilities were under more than two meters of water and largely inaccessible due to flooding across the Sula Valley.

Authorities were prioritizing cleaning the runway in order to allow for the arrival of humanitarian flights, Castellón told El Heraldo. Evaluation and repairs to the passenger terminal will come later. Until the airport can be repaired, travelers should instead fly via Toncontín International Airport near Tegucigalpa, about four hours away by road.

Iota caused at least 44 deaths across the region and significant infrastructure damage in Honduras, Nicaragua and on Colombian islands.  Initial estimates by the United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, put the number of people affected by the hurricane at 4.6 million across the impoverished region, including 1.8 million children.

Bye Bye Donny - A Farewell Song for Trump

Trump's Grand Display Proves that White Male Privilege is Alive and Well

Wapo writer Robin Givhan wrote a powerful piece on the white privilege behind Trump's stubborn refusal to concede and the GOP's acceptance of his ridiculous behavior:

"Few images capture the position of privilege from which the president operates better than the ones that depict him at his golf club in Virginia. In several of the pictures, he isn’t playing the game — or even holding a club — but rather simply tooling around the course like a feudal lord in a golf cart with his personalized campaign baseball cap pulled low.

Trump is the unmasked duffer clutching the wheel of a golf cart, zipping over knolls while his caddie — also unmasked — hangs off the back.

The picture of a well-fed White man in a golf cart at a private club is a familiar trope in film and literature that has long been used to telegraph a narrative about fat-cat economics, stifling social hierarchies and inherited advantages.

It’s a classic metaphor for privilege and disregard — and sometimes establishment ineptness — and one that is also terribly apt for Trump.  While a pandemic rages across the country, the president works on his swing.

In truth, Trump doesn’t even look like he’s having a particularly good time golfing. He simply appears to be avoiding the dreadfulness of his responsibilities.  Such is his privilege.

In these long days since Joe Biden became president-elect, Trump’s refusal to concede or at least stop obstructing a peaceful transition of power can be described as many things — delusional, childish, unpatriotic, dangerous — but above all else it has been a tremendous display of the deference afforded to this man. As a man, who also happens to be White and wealthy, he has been able to muster the breathless support of both men and women  because he lays claim to the benefit of the doubt even where there isn’t even a shadow of it.

Supporters have asserted that the president should be allowed to exhaust all of his legal options; he should be allowed to get used to the idea of loss; he should be given a chance to collect himself. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell  in formal remarks spoke about the president like an indulgent parent blaming everyone else for his child’s bad behavior.

White male privilege is powerful.  It overrides facts.  It excuses horrendous behavior.  It exalts the unqualified.

Others who might well have liked to choose fantasy over fact didn’t have that privilege. Hillary Clinton, who won the popular vote but lost the electoral [college] to Trump in 2016, was barely given 24 hours to nurse her wounds before much of the country was tapping its toes anxious for her concession.

In Georgia, Stacey Abrams lost her 2018 gubernatorial race to Republican Brian Kemp, a man who was  overseeing the election in which he was a candidate.  Abrams spoke up about voter suppression [and] took her concerns to court.  She took her time.  But then, 10 days after voters had gone to the polls, she accepted the reality of her circumstances.

It has been two weeks since Election Day. Trump has neither conceded nor formally and finally acknowledged Biden’s victory.  He simply golfs.

Michelle Obama posted a long missive on her Instagram in which she recalled how difficult it was for her to welcome the Trumps into the White House, but that she did so because she felt compelled to put country before personal animus.  Trump’s 73 million voters  have no intention of letting the pleas of a Black woman rise up to drown out the drumbeat of White male privilege because that hierarchy has always been essential to Trump’s appeal.

The only voices that can silence that privilege come from those who also have it.  Perhaps they will listen.  Perhaps they will pull the president aside and broker a deal with a bit of straight talk and an elbow bump.  Perhaps they will do so.  Just a couple of lucky White guys on the golf course."

Coronavirus Art - Jakarta, Indonesia

Africa on the Forefront of Coronavirus Testing

 For the first time since the Covid-19 outbreak began, Africa may be poised to reshape rapid testing for the virus.  The Pasteur Institute, a biomedical research center based in Senegal's capital city of Dakar, says it is close to producing an affordable, handheld Covid-19 diagnostic test kit that can give results in a matter of minutes.

The institute is running a new venture called DiaTropix, which has been working in partnership with five research organizations to create the revolutionary test kit.  Amadou Sall, director of the Pasteur Institute and DiaTropix, said that the biomedical center hopes the kit will cost as little as $1 to purchase.  "This is a very simple technology, like a pregnancy test that you can use everywhere at the community level, which is important for Africa," he said.

The new rapid test kit does not require electricity or need laboratory analysis.  Instead, it consists of a simple test strip housed in a plastic unit and uses a small blood sample collected by pricking a finger, much like tools used to test insulin. The blood is tested for coronavirus-related antibodies, and the result is shown on the test strip.

The Covid-19 rapid test kits will first be available on the African continent through governments and health organizations like the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC). The initial focus for distribution will be on public health and then moving into self-testing.  The goal is to issue 10 to 15 million kits by February 2021.

This is not the first time the Pasteur Institute has been at the forefront of providing public health solutions in the face of a pandemic.  It has been manufacturing vaccines for about 80 years, and offered diagnostic and epidemiological surveillance during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa from 2013 to 2016.

Amadou Sall, who is also the director of the WHO Collaborating Center for Arboviruses and Viral Hemorrhagic Fevers in Senegal, believes the presence of the rapid Covid-19 test kits will help boost the economy.  "If you are facing a situation where people cannot work because they are sick ... it's very disruptive for the economy. And in this regard, investing in those initiatives (testing kits) to promote access is a way to keep the economy going," he said.

Goodbye Jared!

A farewell message to Jared Kushner from the brilliant team at Slate.com:

Who ever imagined the world would open so many doors, to give you so many options? But really, for a bright young man who knows how things work, why not?  Coronavirus medical logistics expert, Middle East peace negotiator, campaign manager, criminal justice reformer, technology implementer, government systems innovator—that was you, all of it, all you.

 But you couldn't quite navigate the halls of private school parenting, could you?  You were so self-centered and boorish (or unable to stand up to your father in law) that you’d rather upend your children’s education and social life than wear a slightly uncomfortable piece of cloth over your face every once in a while.

Now what? Reach into the pocket of your skinny suit, and get out your phone.  Try sending another encrypted DM to your good friend and fellow global dignitary Mohammed bin Salman to see what’s up, what you can do for him.  What? “Safety number changed.”  Huh, how about that.  Scroll down, try another name, maybe one of the Chinese oligarchs?  Nothing there, either. The Kuwaitis?  Hmm. Oh, that incoming call?  That’s your mortgage lender.  Good luck!

A Valuable Lesson From the Election

Give It Up, Trump-- You're a Fucking Loser!

The Department of Homeland Security has called the presidential election "the most secure in American history"  Yet Trump has continued his legal efforts despite losing in courts over and over again.

A Michigan lawyer for Donald Trump’s campaign filed a case in the wrong court. Lawsuits in Arizona and Nevada were dropped. A Georgia challenge was quickly rejected for lack of evidence. His Pennsylvania legal team just threw in the towel.

The president’s legal machine — the one papering swing states with lawsuits and affidavits in support of Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of widespread fraud — is slowly grinding to a halt after suffering a slew of legal defeats and setbacks.

In the effort to stop Joe Biden’s victory from being certified, so many lawsuits have been filed in so many state and federal courts that no one has an exact number. But one thing is certain: the Trump campaign has an almost perfect record, having won only one case and lost at least a dozen.

An appeals court in Pennsylvania rejected an objection by Trump's lawyers to practices involving mailed ballots; a Michigan judge threw out claims made by the campaign as "incorrect and not credible."

In a case in Arizona, where Democrat Joe Biden holds a slender lead over Trump, the president's lawyers admitted the judge no longer needed to weigh in because "the tabulation of votes statewide has rendered unnecessary a judicial ruling as to the presidential electors."

A Trump attorney dropped his star-crossed case in Arizona’s Maricopa County, where the campaign was pushing the so-called SharpieGate conspiracy theory, a bogus claim that ballots were spoiled because voters used a marker to bubble in their choice of candidates. During the hearing, Trump’s team abandoned mentioning the issue after elections officials made the case that it was an invalid argument.

Another Michigan judge dismissed a Republican lawsuit to delay the certification of that state’s vote count.  Another lawsuit in Michigan, filed by the conservative Great Lakes Justice Center on behalf of two Republican poll watchers, was rejected Friday by a state judge who found that the plaintiffs’ allegations of fraud were really an exercise in speculation fueled by unfamiliarity with the vote-counting process.

As Trump's legal efforts start circling the drain, two of the law firms representing his campaign have now quit.  Porter Wright Morris & Arthur, the law firm leading the Trump campaign’s efforts to challenge the presidential election results in Pennsylvania, abruptly withdrew from a federal lawsuit that it had filed on behalf of the campaign. That followed a similar move by an Arizona law firm that was representing the Republican Party as it challenged that state’s results.  Yesterday, a top lawyer at Jones Day, which has represented Trump’s campaigns for more than four years, told colleagues during a video conference call that Jones Day would not get involved in additional litigation in this election.

Trump's efforts have resulted in one minor victory in Pennsylvania when late Thursday, a judge ordered that the state could not count ballots that had been set aside because they had been cast under a policy changing the relevant deadline. However, the number of ballots involved  isn't close to being sufficient to change the outcome of the election.

Even Trump toadie Bill Barr has failed to come up with any legal ammunition in the doomed struggle against Biden's victory.  Federal prosecutors in the Department of Justice who were assigned to monitor election malfeasance are now telling Barr they see no evidence of substantial irregularities .  Even worse, the assistant U.S. attorneys told Barr that the release of his memorandum (which changed long-standing Justice Department policy on the steps prosecutors can take before the results of an election are certified) “thrusts career prosecutors into partisan politics."  The policy change was "not based in fact,” the assistant U.S. attorneys wrote.

The only issue left to debate is when Trump will acknowledge Biden's victory and if Trump will attend Biden's inauguration.  Anyone taking bets?

Foo Fighters - Shame, Shame

Coronavirus Art - Jaipur, India

Coronavirus Mutation Found in Minks Can Spread Back to Humans

Danish authorities have said a lockdown will be introduced in some areas over a coronavirus mutation found in mink that can spread to humans.  Bars, restaurants, public transport and all public indoor sports will be closed in seven North Jutland municipalities. The new restrictions will initially be in place through December 3rd.

The government has warned that the effectiveness of any future vaccine could be affected by the mutation.  Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said the mutated virus had been found to weaken the body's ability to form antibodies, potentially making the current vaccines under development for Covid-19 ineffective.

Denmark is planning to cull all its mink - as many as 17 million.  The Scandinavian country is the world's biggest producer of mink fur and its main export markets are China and Hong Kong. Culling began late last month, after many mink cases were detected.

The World Health Organization has said mink appear to be "good reservoirs" of coronavirus. It also commended Denmark's "determination and courage" for going ahead with the culls, despite the economic impact it would bring.  Coronavirus cases have been detected in other farmed mink in the Netherlands and Spain since the pandemic began in Europe.

But cases are spreading fast in Denmark - 207 mink farms in Jutland are affected - and at least five cases of the new virus strain were found. Authorities said 12 people had been infected with the mutated strain.  Meanwhile, Health Minister Magnus Heunicke said about half of the 783 human cases reported in north Denmark related to a strain of the virus that originated in the mink farms.

Spain culled 100,000 mink in July after cases were detected at a farm in Aragón province, and tens of thousands of the animals were slaughtered in the Netherlands following outbreaks on farms there.  Studies are under way to find out how and why mink have been able to catch and spread the infection.

If You Don't Watch to Catch the COVID, Stay the Fuck Away From the White House!

 As you know, a White House cluster of COVID-19 cases was brought to light in early October after it was revealed that Donald Trump had tested positive.  At least 26 people were disclosed to have contracted the virus, and there was widespread concern that the Trump administration was failing to learn its lesson and take better care to prevent further outbreaks.

In the late October another report of outbreaks in the White House surfaced.  Mike Pence's chief of staff Marc Short, Pence aide Zach Bauer, outside adviser Marty Obst, and at least three staffers in Pence's office tested positive for the virus.  Short had been seen on the campaign trail actively eschewing the use of masks for months.  The White House actively tried to cover up the outbreaks in Pence's office-- and once they became known, refused to disclose the full extent of the outbreak.  Pence, who rarely wore a mask while flying on Air Force Two, continued campaign events, despite his direct exposure to the virus.

Amid all the excitement over the Biden victory, it has gone largely unnoticed that there is yet another White House outbreak of COVID-19.   Six White House aides and a Trump campaign adviser — including Mark Meadows, President Trump’s chief of staff — have contracted the coronavirus, raising fears of another outbreak sweeping through the ranks of the nation’s top officials as cases surge to record levels in the country.

Meadows, who routinely shrugged off the need to wear masks and embraced Trump’s strategy of playing down the threat from the coronavirus over the summer, informed a small group of White House advisers that he had tested positive for the virus the day after the election.  In addition, five other White House officials also tested positive for the virus in the days before and after Election Day.  Bloomberg News also reported on additional cases around the president, who contracted the virus last month and spent three days in the hospital receiving experimental treatments.  Nick Trainer, who worked on the president’s campaign, has also tested positive for the coronavirus, a person briefed on his diagnosis said.  It wasn't a day later that Ben Carson, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, revealed that he had tested positive.  David Bossie, an adviser Trump recently appointed to be the face of his efforts to contest vote tabulations in states like Nevada and Georgia, tested positive shortly thereafter.  White House Political Affairs Director Brian Jack later tested positive as well.

The new wave of infections rattled and angered members of the White House staff even as they struggled to come to grips with Trump’s loss in the presidential race.  News of the infections emerged despite warnings to keep quiet about the new cases, according to two White House officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to publicly discuss internal conversations.  Meadows and Trump have said repeatedly that they did not need to wear masks or maintain social distancing because they were frequently tested.  “It’s emblematic of the national failure to control Covid,” said Tom Frieden, who served as the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under President Barack Obama. “It shows the fallacy of relying on testing alone. Testing doesn’t replace other safety measures. It’s just one tool among many.”

It is likely that all these new cases may actually be part of the original outbreak, rather than a separate cluster of cases. That would suggest that the White House has not gotten control of the virus as it spreads through the West Wing.  “It may be the same cluster that has continued for well over a month,” Dr. Frieden said. “You’re not going to control it if you don’t try to control it.”  I'm quite sure that Biden will insist on a thorough disinfection before he moves in on January 20.

Goodbye, Ivanka!

 A farewell message to Ivanka from the brilliant team at Slate.com:

Whereas once I expended anger upon you, now I am simply glad never to be forced to think of you again. Whereas many have contended over the years that you acted valiantly, if secretly, to mitigate and ameliorate the cruelty of your father, the evidence suggests that you instead acted corruptly, if secretly, to coat his viciousness in silky pink pearlescent influencer goo.

Surely it is unjust to have been born to perform one task: moving Trump product, hawking the Trump brand, filling the Trump coffers, endlessly pitching and selling and managing the Trump units that filled the Trump warehouses, and the Trump wine bottles, and the foreign Trump factory storerooms full to bursting. That was the destiny you should have been left to fulfill, with its empty slogans of feminism and faith, equality and motherhood, globalism and environmentalism. But of course, feminism and faith, equality and motherhood, globalism and environmentalism are real values. When not just being repurposed to help you hawk mid-priced kitten heels, each demands the arduous work of justice. Humility, I understand, is not on brand for Trumps but attempts at any of these fundamentals of justice without humility is actually just shilling.

If and when you look back at your life, maybe you will realize that this is where it all went wrong: You were superb at the pitchman stuff, and maybe if your creepy dad hadn’t decided to run for president, you could have stayed in that branded plastic world of warehouses and factories and skyscrapers. But transactional justice words pressed through gauzy Instagram filters are not the stuff of democracy or morality, equality or faith. You’ve had great fun with this whole governance lark, to be sure, but frankly, the pain and suffering your dad so relishes make for bad influencer vibes. And in the end, when things became desperate, you committed fully to his side, changing your position on abortion and even voting itself. You would preserve your proximity to power at the expense of American democracy. Despite all the years of breathy talk of equality and dignity and empowerment, you—like your dad—think justice is the thing you alone are owed. 

Unfortunately, the Trump brand now includes family separations, environmental denialism, global degradation, needless pandemic deaths, LGBTQ affronts, and petulant, truth-free grievance, none of which can just be shipped out and sold like last year’s sagging merch. The shattered shiny detritus is littered everywhere, and the cleanup work will take years. And though it may be a designer fragrance, the smell of complicity lingers. Even at its glossiest, the Trump catalog was never all that interesting. Please, oh please, take me off your list.

 

Bye-Don!

 

Biodegradable Isn't What You Think

You care about the planet and would like avoid bottles and other goods made of single-use plastic.  But (apparently) it's complicated.  Choosing products with packaging that claim to be "biodegradable" or "compostable" might mean that they degrade only under special conditions-- and could complicate recycling efforts, according to Jason Locklin, director of the New Materials Institute at the University of Georgia.  "It's tremendously confusing, not just to the consumer, but even to many scientists," he said.

Corn-based plastic doesn’t come from petroleum. But in a landfill, it might be just as bad.  Food service items made from polylactic acid, or PLA, include bottles, disposable cutlery, plastic films, some grocery bags and other products. They look like plastic made from petroleum, but PLA is usually made from corn, though it can come from other plants, including beets, cassava and sugar cane. The labels on PLA products often describe them as compostable. But that doesn’t mean you can just throw the stuff into your backyard compost pile, if you have one. To properly degrade, they have to be sent to commercial compost facilities.  The process of industrial composting involves high heat and precisely controlled moisture, among other conditions, and it isn’t available in many parts of the country. Worse, PLA products look enough like regular recyclable plastic bottles, which are made from the most common plastic used in recyclable bottles, known as PET, that they can get mixed in at the recycling plant, and can contaminate the recycling stream.  And if your PLA trash ends up in a landfill, it will be there a very long time, because it’s unlikely to be exposed to conditions that would help it to break down.

Paper is OK-- but it depends on what's in the inside.  Similar to the push from some restaurants to replace plastic straws with paper ones, paper bottles are seen as a possible option to replace plastic ones. Because they can be made of sustainable, renewable materials (from trees!), paper bottles are getting the attention of major companies.  Paper, of course, is recyclable — as long as it is just paper. However, paper-based bottles and containers tend to be made with several layers of materials other than paper, including plastic or foil, to form barriers. One paper bottle maker’s website calls 100 percent biodegradability a “goal.”  Hypothetically, you could strip away the layers and recycle the paper, but who’s actually going to do that?

Fiber looks compostable, but may end up in the landfill anyway.  Some fast-casual restaurants use bowls designed and marketed to be compostable. They are made from bagasse, a fiber produced as a byproduct from sugar cane mills.  Getting fiber products to current levels of compostability has been a struggle for companies such as Sweetgreen and Chipotle, whose previous bowls turned out to contain PFAS, a family of chemicals linked to cancer that can remain in the environment even after the bowl has been composted.  They fixed that problem. But while your bowl may be compostable, if you don’t compost at home you have to throw it into a dedicated composting bin in the restaurant, or use a composting service.  But don’t put it in the recycling bin, as materials that come contaminated with food get rejected by recyclers.  And throwing the bowl into a trash can at the office or at home means it’s likely to go to a landfill anyway.

Bacteria-produced bioplastic is promising, but economically challenging.   PHA, or polyhydroxyalkanoate, has been the next big thing in biodegradability for years. This bioplastic, which can be produced by bacteria, has promising properties: Research suggests it can break down in conventional landfills.  In ocean water, it will degrade within a few years, a fraction of the 450 years that it takes standard plastic.  Producing the material economically, however, has been a technical challenge. Cove, a bottled water company, says it is about to bring out its product in containers made from PHA. The company that supplies the bioplastic to Cove, RWDC Industries, introduced drinking straws made from the material last year in Singapore, where the company is based.

There is certainly a market for environmentally friendly goods.  A report by the market research firm Mintel Group found that 34% of consumers said they would pay more for water packaged in 100% biodegradable bottles.  "There is a place for biodegradable materials," said Jenna Jambeck, a professor of environmental engineering at the University of Georgia.  However, she worries about the consequences of developing products that are seemingly environmentally friendly without planning for disposal and recycling.  "You have to think about end of life when you're designing things," she said.  Ultimately, Dr. Jambeck said, “the best thing you can do environmentally is not create any waste in the first place.” 

 

Hurricane Eta Wreaks Death and Shocking Devastation in Central America

Hurricane Eta unleashed torrential rains and catastrophic flooding in Central America, killing at least 18 people and turning streets into waist-high water channels. Death and destruction was reported in areas across Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Costa Rica and as far south as Panama.

A man reacts to damage from Hurricane Eta in Puerto Cabeza Nicaragua

Families waded through flooded streets in the northern Honduran city of San Pedro Sula, while cars sat nearly submerged in parts of the central Guatemalan city of San Pedro Carcha. “The situation is serious, it’s shocking and needs to be dealt with professionally, quickly,” Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez said, pointing to reports of people stranded or stuck on roofs of flooded homes.  Damage and destruction had spread across the “vast majority” of Honduras and speedboats and helicopters would be sent to rescue people in inaccessible areas, Hernandez said.

Across wide swathes of Central America, high winds and heavy rain have damaged homes, roads and bridges, forcing thousands to take cover in shelters.  One unidentified woman on Honduran television made a desperate plea for help in a neighborhood of La Lima, a municipality on the southeastern flank of San Pedro Sula.  “I’ve got five children on the roof of my house and nobody’s helping me to get them down,” she said.

Weary residents make their way through a flooded street in La Lima, Honduras

One of the fiercest storms to hit Central America in years, Eta struck Nicaragua as a Category 4 hurricane with winds of 150 miles per hour before weakening as it moved inland and into neighboring Honduras.  By Thursday, authorities confirmed at least four deaths in Guatemala and seven in Honduras. Media in Nicaragua also reported two miners had died in a mudslide.

Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez ordered the army to mobilize helicopters and boats to evacuate inundated areas.  In the north of the country, many people were forced to take refuge on the roofs of their houses as floodwaters rose, relief agencies said. Three thousand people had already been evacuated from the path of the storm.  

Two children, an eight-year-old and a toddler of 11 months, died when a mudslide swept their home away in the northwestern department of Santa Barbara.  “A house was buried, leaving as a result two minors dead,” police said in a statement.  Two other children were killed in similar circumstances in the country’s south, authorities reported Wednesday.

Meanwhile, a 71-year-old American and his 51-year-old Costa Rican wife died when a landslide buried their home in the southern canton of Coto Brus, on the border with Panama. Their bodies were recovered by emergency workers.

The four people killed in Guatemala were swept away in mudslides as rain-saturated hillsides gave way.  They included two children, aged two and 11, who were killed when their home was swept away in the village of Los Triagles, in the country’s northern Quiche department, according to David de Leon of the Disaster Reduction Coordinating Committee.  Another person died in a village in the same region, where two other people are reported missing.  The fourth victim died in Chinaulta, just north of Guatemala City.

A man and a woman also died in flooding in Panama’s Chiriqui province, near the Costa Rica border, authorities said.  

There was some rare good news back in Honduras, where  60 fishermen who initially went missing on Tuesday returned after taking shelter on cays until they were reached by boats bringing food and fuel, said community leader Robin Morales.  Calling their escape a “miracle”, Morales said a man among them presumed dead from a heart attack also made it back. 

Eta is expected to return to sea and regain momentum as a tropical storm, reaching Cuba and southern Florida in the coming days.

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Election Still Too Close To Call; Trump Tries to Steal Victory

President Donald Trump's demand for vote counting to stop in an election that is still undecided may have been his most extreme and dangerous assault on the institutions of democracy yet in a presidency replete with them.

Trump appeared in the East Room of the White House early on Wednesday morning and lied about beating Joe Biden, and falsely claimed the election was being stolen from him in a massive act of fraud. He vowed to mount a challenge in the Supreme Court and lied yet again that he had already won states that were still counting votes, including Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. 

 

The election has not yet been won, and the President and the former vice president are still locked in a tight battle for the decisive states with millions of votes still being counted.  Trump's remarks essentially amounted to a demand for the legally cast votes of American citizens not to be recorded in a historic act of disenfranchisement.

What Is At Stake Today

As the nation heads to the polls, it is time to acknowledge the Titanic-level incompetence and malfeasance of the Trump administration.   But his ignorance is just the tip of a large fascistic (some say criminal) enterprise that Trump leads-- sowing divisions, promoting hate and displaying authoritarian tendencies.

Early on, political observers could see the signs of a pronounced era of extremism ushered in by Trump's election

Trump has presided over an American where even so-called "impartial" judges fail to protect voters and uphold bans on open carry of guns at voting places.

Trump has actively encouraged the formation of militia groups that later stormed capitals in Michigan and Virginia.

We even have the case of the law enforcement–obsessed 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse, who was charged with shooting and killing two people and injuring another in Kenosha, Wisconsin, during protests for Jacob Blake-- he was later discovered to have sat in the front row at a Donald Trump rally earlier in the year.

In the late stages of the campaign, convoys of Trump supporters took to the road around the nation-- one in Austin actually surrounded a Biden campaign bus on the highway to San Antonio, forcing it to slow down, and trying to run it off the road.  As a result, a planned campaign event was cancelled and the FBI is investigation.

A few hundred vehicles draped with banners supporting President Donald Trump snarled traffic around the New York metropolitan area two days before Election day and anti-Trump protesters clashed with police in Manhattan, leading to 11 arrests.

In Fort Worth, Texas, a pro-Trump caravan (more incredibly, escorted by local police) attempted to intimidate voters in a predominantly Black area of the city.

In California, a massive caravan of Donald Trump supporters paraded for 60 miles through Riverside County before converging on a large Temecula sports park, blocking access to a voting site, snarling traffic and intimidating voters.

Hopefully, Americans will see their way through these despicable tactics and put an end to this dark stain on our history.

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