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      in US Politics

      Biden’s 100 days: bold action and broad vision amid grief and turmoil

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      On the 50th day of his presidency, Joe Biden marched into the Oval Office and took a seat behind the Resolute desk, where the massive, 628-page American Rescue Plan awaited his signature. Across the room hung a portrait of Franklin D Roosevelt, a nod to the transformative presidency Biden envisions for a nation tormented by disease, strife and division.The $1.9tn package was designed to tame the worst public health crisis in a century and to pave the way for an overhaul of the American economy. It overcame unanimous Republican opposition in Congress, where Democrats hold the barest majority.“This historic legislation is about rebuilding the backbone of this country and giving people in this nation, working people, middle-class folks, people who built the country, a fighting chance,” Biden said. And with the flick of a pen, he signed into law one of the most expensive economic relief bills in American history.Biden took office at a moment of profound grief and turmoil, inheriting from Donald Trump a virus that has killed more than 550,000 and exposed glaring inequalities in healthcare, education and the economy. Fear and anxiety still gripped the nation in the aftermath of the 6 January insurrection at the Capitol, when Trump loyalists stormed the building in a bloody attempt to stop lawmakers certifying Biden’s electoral victory. All of this amid a generational reckoning on race and the ever-accelerating threat of climate change.One hundred days into his term, Biden’s solution to the myriad crises is an ambitious economic agenda that promises to “own the future” by dramatically expanding the role of government in American life.The White House is guided by the belief that if it can lift the nation from the Covid-19 crisis and the economic havoc it wrought, it can begin to restore Americans’ faith in government and pave the way for the next phase of the Biden presidency.“We need to remember the government isn’t some foreign force in a distant capital,” Biden said in his first primetime address, hours after signing the American Rescue Plan. “It’s us. All of us.”The pandemic remains an inescapable challenge. But the picture is inarguably brighter than it was when Biden delivered his inaugural address in January to a sea of American flags marking the crowds absent from the Mall. Now, Biden is dangling the prospect of backyard barbecues by the Fourth of July.Marshaling a “full-scale, wartime effort”, his administration has built one of the largest and most effective mass immunization campaigns in the world.At its peak the US was administering more than 3m shots a day. In a nation of nearly 330 million, more than 50% of adults including 80% over 65 are at least partially vaccinated. Last week, Biden surpassed his goal of administering 200m shots by his 100th day. The problem is rapidly becoming too much vaccine and not enough people willing to be vaccinated.“That was arguably one of his main jobs as president – to start getting this pandemic under control,” said Dr Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, “It’s not fully under control yet, but it is clearly in much better shape than it would have been had this incredible vaccination effort not happened.”Jha credits the campaign’s success to several factors, from improving coordination between the federal government and states to tweaking the way doses are extracted from vials. He added that such success is due in part to the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed, which dramatically accelerated vaccine development.Deaths from the coronavirus have declined sharply since a peak in January, as many of the most vulnerable Americans are vaccinated. Yet infections are rising again in many parts of the country. The more contagious B117 variant of the coronavirus that was first discovered in the UK has emerged as the dominant strain in the US, and young people are at particular risk. Even so, a number of Republican states have ignored Biden’s pleas to keep mask mandates and other restrictions in place.Reaching the roughly 130 million Americans who have yet to be inoculated remains a challenge, as demand softens and vaccine hesitancy persists. As of 19 April, all adult Americans became eligible to receive a vaccine, marking what Biden called a “new phase” of the immunization effort.Public health experts are working to confront misinformation and conspiracy theories. The decision by federal health officials to temporarily halt the use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine after rare instances of blood clots among millions who have received the shot further fueled mistrust in some corners.“The biggest challenge that the administration faces over the next 100 days is in building confidence in people who are not sure they want the vaccine,” Jha said. “That is going to take an enormous amount of effort and, in some ways, it’s much harder than simply building vaccination sites because it’s sociological.”As the vaccine campaigns help Americans push past the pandemic, and the economy begins to show signs of recovery after a year of hardship, Biden is turning to the potentially legacy defining pieces of his agenda. He plans to spend trillions more on an infrastructure package.“It is not a plan that tinkers around the edges,” Biden said, introducing the first half of a multi-trillion dollar agenda in a speech outside Pittsburgh. “It is a once-in-a-generation investment in America.”The president’s “Build Back Better” agenda widens the definition of infrastructure to include investments in home care, an expansion of broadband and a restructuring of the tax system in addition to more traditional public works projects like roads, bridges and railways. It also represents the cornerstone of Biden’s fight against climate change, which he has called the “the existential crisis of our time”. Embedded throughout the plan are proposals to reduce carbon emissions by investing in green infrastructure and technologies, electric vehicles and clean energy, as well as a clean electricity standard that aims to ​decarbonize the nation’s power sector by 2035 – and the whole economy by mid-century.At a White House virtual climate summit with world leaders, Biden unveiled an ambitious ​new pledge ​to cut US carbon emissions by at least half by 2030.A forthcoming piece of his infrastructure agenda is expected to center on expanding childcare services and making education more affordable and accessible. It too envisions hundreds of billions of dollars of spending.It is perhaps a surprising approach for a man who has spent nearly four decades in public life building a reputation as a consensus-minded moderate eager to negotiate with his “friends across the aisle”. In the Democratic primary, he was cast as the establishment alternative in a field of rising stars and progressive challengers.But since emerging as the party’s standard bearer, Biden has steadily embraced a more expansive vision, arguing that the social and economic moment demands bold action.During his first press conference last month, Biden said repeatedly he wanted to “change the paradigm” – a stark shift in tone from the early days of his presidential campaign, when he promised donors that under his leadership “nothing would fundamentally change”.Congressman Jim Clyburn, the Democratic majority whip and a close ally and friend of the president, said Biden’s tenure has so far “exceeded my expectations – not my hopes are my dreams – but my expectations.”Clyburn, who is widely credited with saving Biden’s campaign by endorsing him weeks before the South Carolina primary, said he was pleasantly surprised by Biden’s infrastructure proposal, which he “didn’t expect to be as bold as it is”.“A lot of people, I among them, felt that because of this 50-50 split in the Senate, he would go less bold,” Clyburn said. “But I think that he has calculated, the way that I would, that in the legislative process, you never get all that you ask for … so it’s much better to get some of a big bill, then some of a little bill.”Republicans are balking at the scale and cost of Biden’s plans, as well as his proposal to pay for it by raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has vowed to fight Democrats “every step of the way” on Biden’s infrastructure plan, which he has panned as a “Trojan Horse” for liberal priorities.“It won’t build back better,” he said last week. “It’ll build back never.”Democratic leaders have yet to choose a legislative path forward for Biden’s infrastructure plan, but, thanks to a recent ruling by the Senate parliamentarian, they now have multiple avenues to circumvent Republican opposition.Biden’s infrastructure plan has not sat well with moderate Republicans, who say they were expecting a governing partner in the White House.“A Senate evenly split between both parties and a bare Democratic House majority are hardly a mandate to ‘go it alone’,” Mitt Romney, a Republican senator from Utah who is part of a working group that hopes to find a bipartisan solution on infrastructure, wrote recently on Twitter.The group unveiled a counterproposal hat is a fraction of the size of Biden’s public works plan, touting it as a “very generous offer”. The White House welcomed the effort but the vast spending gap suggested the differences between the parties may be too wide to overcome.The president is keenly aware of the difficult math in the Senate, having spent more than 30 years in the chamber. Even if bipartisan discussions collapse and Democrats go it alone, Biden will still face challenges keeping his ungainly coalition together.But in choosing bold action over incrementalism, Biden is gambling that voters will forgive the price tag if Democrats can deliver tangible results like universal broadband and affordable childcare while seeking to put Republicans on the defensive over their opposition to a plan that polling suggests is broadly popular.A recent New York Times survey found that two in three Americans, including seven in 10 independents, approve of Biden’s infrastructure spending.Progressives are pressing the 78-year-old president to act urgently, knowing Democrats’ precarious hold on Congress is only guaranteed through January 2022. Declaring the “era of small government” over, they argue that there is a political risk to being too cautious. Pursuing an expansive economic agenda, they say, is not only good policy but good politics.Biden, for the most part, appears to agree. He has argued that spending too little confronting the nation’s crises is riskier than spending too much. He told Republicans at a meeting last week that he was open to compromise, but vowed that “inaction is not an option”.In a recent speech, Biden said it was time to retire the theory of “trickle down” economics, saying now was the time for building an economy that “grows from the bottom up and the middle out”.“This is the first time we’ve been able, since the Johnson administration and maybe even before that, to begin to change the paradigm,” the president said.Shortly after former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty of murdering George Floyd last week, Biden placed an emotional call. Huddled in the courthouse, Floyd’s family put the president on speakerphone.“At least, God, now there is some justice,” Biden told them. “We’re all so relieved.”Their attorney, Ben Crump, urged the president to pressure Congress to pass policing reform and to use this moment to confront America’s violent legacy of racism.“You got it, pal,” Biden said. “This gives us a shot to deal with genuine, systemic racism.”The murder of Floyd, who was Black, at the hands of a white police officer touched off global protests against police brutality and systemic racism. Biden said then that the long overdue racial reckoning created a once-in-a-generation opportunity to directly historic racial injustices.As president, Biden has placed emphasis on racial equity, drawing support from civil rights activists and criticism from conservatives.He assembled a cabinet that is the most diverse in history, including the first female, first African American and first Asian American vice-president, as well as the first Native American and first openly gay cabinet secretaries, the first female treasury secretary, the first African American defense secretary and the first immigrant to lead the Department of Homeland Security.Confronting systemic racism is the “responsibility of the whole of our government”, the White House declared, laying out steps the new administration would take to address inequality in housing, education, criminal justice, healthcare and the economy.He has emphasized equity in vaccine distribution and targeted underserved communities with his $1.9tn relief plan. His infrastructure plan dedicates funding to neighborhoods harmed by pollution and environmental hazards as well as to homecare aids, predominantly women of color. He endorsed statehood for the District of Columbia, a heavily Black city that does not have voting representation in Congress. He warned that some states were “backsliding into the days of Jim Crow” by imposing new voting restrictions.Yet a major voting rights bill remains stalled along with a long-promised policing overhaul. Biden’s sweeping immigration reform has yet to gain traction as Republicans hammer the administration over an influx of migrant children at the Mexico border. Spasms of gun violence have renewed calls for gun control.Biden’s first in-person meeting with a foreign leader began with the Japanese prime pinister, Yoshihide Suga, extending his condolences for a mass shooting at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis, which left eight people dead. Suga also condemned a rising tide of violence against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders since the start of coronavirus lockdowns.The summit underscored Biden’s belief that the nation’s crises are not only an inflection point for America – but for the world. Biden has framed his domestic revitalization effort as part of a global conflict between authoritarianism and democracy.“That’s what competition between America and China and the rest of the world is all about,” Biden said in his infrastructure speech. “It’s a basic question: Can democracies still deliver for their people?”Jonathan Alter, author of The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope, said Biden, like the 32nd president, has a rare opportunity to transform the political landscape for generations.“Roosevelt and his New Deal represented a new social contract between the government and the people in terms of what the government owed Americans,” he said. That lasted for nearly five decades, he said, until Ronald Reagan gave rise to a new era of small-government and free-market competition.Whether Biden can forge a new social contract to meet the most urgent challenges of the 21st century – yawning inequality, a warming climate and rising authoritarianism – is a question unlikely to be answered by his 100th day in office, Alter cautioned. But he expects the next 100 to be revealing.“It’s hard to imagine but Biden has already spent several times as much in 1933-dollars as Roosevelt did in his first 100 days,” Alter said. “And the odds that a Rooseveltian achievement in American political life will take place this year are highly likely.” More

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      in World Politics

      The Case of Forced Cremations in Sri Lanka

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      From 1983 to 2009, Sri Lanka saw a bloody civil war between the majority Buddhist Sinhalese and the minority Tamils. The conflict led to invaluable losses both economically and politically. To this day, the deep socio-religious wounds have yet to heal on the island in South Asia.

      Since the war ended, there have been intermittent episodes of violence between ethnoreligious groups. Although the patterns seem similar, different communities are now involved in the confrontations. The focus has shifted to make Sri Lankan Muslims — who make up around 9.7% of the country’s total population — the new target of extreme Buddhist Sinhalese factions that jumped on the bandwagon of rising Islamophobia.

      Islamophobia in Sri Lanka

      In Sri Lanka, Muslims are defined by faith, not ethnicity since they are neither Tamil nor Sinhalese. During Mahinda Rajapaksa’s presidential term in office from 2005 to 2015, as well as under incumbent President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Muslims experienced a rise in Islamophobia. Acts perceived as anti-Muslim include calls, in 2013, by a hardline Buddhist Sinhalese group to boycott halal food items. In 2019, the government banned burqas following the Easter Sunday bombings in which Islamist militants killed 269 people at churches and hotels.

      Is India’s Vaccine Diplomacy a Good Idea?

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      The most serious incidents involving the Muslim community since the end of the war took place in Aluthgama in 2014, Gintota in 2017 and the Ampara and Kandy’s districts in 2018. Acts of violence involved the burning of mosques, the destruction of Muslim-owned property, the displacement of thousands of civilians and the loss of lives.

      The brutal attack on Easter Sunday led to, among other things, the draconian application of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), which increased pressure on an already scrutinized minority. A well-known example of this backlash against Muslims was the case of Mohamed Shafi, a gynecologist at the Kurunegala Hospital. Shafi was arrested in 2019 under the PTA on trumped-up charges of illegally sterilizing Sinhalese women. Hejaaz Hizbullah, a senior lawyer, peace advocate and human rights activist, is currently in detention under the PTA. He has been accused of “aiding and abetting” one of the suicide bombers who attacked churches on Easter Sunday and “for engaging in activities deemed ‘detrimental to the religious harmony among communities.’”

      Forced Cremations

      The COVID-19 pandemic has provided the perfect breeding ground for far-right governments to bulldoze the human rights of minorities. In Sri Lanka, Muslims have been the target.

      Embed from Getty Images

      In December 2020, Fahim, a three-wheeler taxi driver, and his wife mourned not only the death of their 20-day-old son, but the forced cremation of his tiny body by state authorities. The newborn was admitted to the hospital, where he passed away after contracting COVID-19. Fahim was denied access to his son’s corpse and, despite refusing to give his consent, the baby was cremated just days later.

      That family’s grief was felt by many Muslims across Sri Lanka. Since COVID-19 first reached Sri Lanka in early 2020, the government announced a mandatory cremation-only policy. The government claimed this was to prevent the possible spread of the disease by coming into contact with infected corpses. The policy alarmed Sri Lankan Muslims as cremation is forbidden in Islam. Several petitions and pleas were made by the minority community to allow for the burial of their loved ones. Yet the Sri Lankan state, which has a long history of violence against minorities, refused to change its policy for over a year.

      The anguish experienced by Sri Lankan Muslims was by itself a great burden to bear during these unprecedented times. But the state did not hold back on delivering further blows to the community. According to Amnesty International, families were “forced to bear the cost of cremation, typically around LKR 50,000-60,000 (approximately USD270-325), in a year that has economically strained many families.” The human rights organization stated, in December 2020, that many families led a difficult and painful protest by refusing to accept the ashes and making the associated payments required for cremating their loved ones.

      Burying the Dead

      In April 2020, Sri Lankan Muslims saw a glimmer of hope when the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that burials were safe. The WHO announced that there is no evidence to suggest that the coronavirus, which causes the COVID-19 disease, can spread from an infected corpse. Meanwhile, in December, top Sri Lankan doctors released a statement urging for the burial of Muslim victims of COVID-19. They stated that “each citizen of Sri Lanka should be allowed to be cremated or buried as per his/her and the family’s desire within the strict guidelines recommended by the Ministry of Health.”

      Despite expert opinions and recommendations to allow COVID-19 victims to be buried, the Sri Lankan government claimed that doing so “could contaminate ground water.” In an interview with the BBC, Professor Malik Peiris, a world-renowned Sri Lankan virologist, stated that COVID-19 is “not a waterborne disease.” He added: “I haven’t seen any evidence to suggest it spreads through dead bodies. A virus can only multiply in a living cell. Once a person dies, the ability of the viruses to multiply decreases. … Dead bodies aren’t buried right in running water. Once you bury the body six feet under wrapped in impermeable wrapping, it is highly unlikely it would contaminate running water.”

      In January 2021, an expert panel appointed by Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Health revised its initial guidelines by approving either burying or cremating COVID-19 victims. But the minister of health, Pavithra Wanniarachchi, chose to ignore the recommendation. She said in parliament that “the decision to cremate COVID dead in Sri Lanka will not be amended on religious, political or any other grounds.” She claimed a sub-committee said corpses should be cremated.

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      Sri Lankan Muslims have raised concerns at how the community reacted to the state-sanctioned racism. In January, Sri Lanka’s Muslim Council (SLMC) claimed that more than half of the island’s COVID-19 victims were from the Muslim community. “We have a disproportionate number of fatalities because Muslims don’t seek treatment fearing that they will be cremated if they are diagnosed with the virus after going to hospital,” spokesman Hilmy Ahamed told AFP.

      The SLMC and Sri Lanka’s justice minister, Ali Sabry, accused the government of trying to provoke the youth into doing “something rash” by refusing to allow Muslims to bury their dead. There have been no reports of isolated incidents or evidence of young Muslims taking to violence in response.

      Under Pressure

      While Muslims were singled out by the state and Buddhist Sinhalese hardliners, they received support from religious leaders and Sri Lankans of other faiths. Acts of solidarity took place in recent months and many Sri Lankans spoke out against the cremation-only policy. The government, which is losing public confidence over its handling of the pandemic, had been under intense pressure to overturn its decision. Aside from concerned citizens, international bodies such as the United Nations and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation condemned the forced cremations.

      On February 22, as the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) commenced its 46th annual session, Sri Lanka was in a precarious position. With a backlog of war crimes that remained unaddressed, a UNHRC resolution against Sri Lanka loomed. On February 25, the Sri Lankan government issued its official gazette, finally allowing Muslim and Christian victims of COVID-19 to be buried.

      *[Fair Observer is a media partner of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in US Politics

      ‘We take safety seriously’: Fauci says J&J vaccine pause should raise confidence

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      Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser said on Sunday the recent pause on the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine should raise confidence in health agencies’ focus on vaccine safety, as the administration tries to curb deadly outbreaks across the US.The most dangerous outbreak is in Michigan, where more younger people are being hospitalized than at any point in the pandemic.“Something we need to pay attention to is that we’re having still about 50,000 new infections per day,” Dr Anthony Fauci told ABC’s This Week. “That’s a precarious level and we don’t want that to go up.”An independent government advisory panel on Friday voted in favor of resuming use of the Johnson & Johnson single-shot vaccine after it was put on pause to review cases of a blood clotting disorder in six women who received it. The vaccine will now include a warning on its label about the potential risk for rare blood clots and a fact sheet on potential side effects will be given to medical providers and vaccine recipients.Fauci said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) were “the gold standard for both safety and the evaluation of [vaccine] efficacy”.“I think in the long run what we’re going to see – we’ll probably see it soon – is that people will realize that we take safety very seriously.”The risk of developing the clotting disorder after receiving the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is extremely low. The highest-risk group appears to be women aged 30 to 39, in which there have been 11.8 cases per million doses given. Among men and women 50 and older, there has been less than one case per million doses.“We’ve looked at it,” Fauci said. “Now let’s get back and get people vaccinated. And that’s what we’re going to be doing, get as many people vaccinated as we possibly can.”Fauci said he expected updated guidance on mask use for vaccinated people to be released soon. In the US, 28% adults are fully vaccinated, according to the CDC.He said he was encouraged by the effectiveness of the vaccines available, but warned that the US has still not reined in Covid-19. More than 568,000 people have died from the virus in the US.Across the country, people in their 20s, 30s and 40s account for a growing share of hospitalizations. Michigan has confirmed 91,000 new cases in the past two weeks, more than in the two most populous states, California and Texas, combined.The seven-day average for Covid-19 hospitalizations last week was 38,550, according to the CDC. At the peak of the pandemic, in December and January, the highest such average was 123,907.The majority of the Michigan residents 65 and older have been vaccinated but that does not fully explain why cases have risen among those 60 and younger. Part of the change is being attributed to the B117 virus variant, which is more contagious and more deadly, and to an easing of restrictions on dining, crowds and mask wearing.Dr Mark Hamed, medical director in the emergency department at McKenzie Hospital in Sandusky, Michigan, said people may have been lulled into a false sense of security because the region was spared from rampant cases last year.Many people are still unvaccinated and the area “is being hit pretty hard”, Hamed told the Associated Press. “Our ER is absolutely swamped beyond belief.”On ABC, Fauci was asked to address those who are hesitant to be vaccinated, including the Wisconsin Republican senator Ron Johnson, who has no medical expertise or background but said this week there was no reason to “push” vaccines on the American people.“We have a highly efficacious and effective vaccine that’s really very, very safe,” Fauci said. “That is the reason why you want everyone to get vaccinated, so I don’t understand the argument.”Surveys have shown Republicans to be one of the most vaccine hesitant groups. Democrats (67%) are more likely than independents (47%) and Republicans (36%) to report getting a first dose, according to a Monmouth University poll in early April.Former president Donald Trump, who downplayed the severity of the pandemic throughout 2020, has encouraged people to get a vaccine.On Sunday the Republican senator Shelley Moore Capito, of West Virginia, encouraged people to get vaccinated and said of Johnson: “I definitely think that comments like that hurt. I believe that we should all have confidence that we should to not just protect ourselves, but our communities and our neighbors. We should get vaccinated.”West Virginia was an early national leader in the vaccine rollout and 28.8% of residents are now fully vaccinated.“We’re starting to find that we have more vaccine than we do have people who are willing to step forward,” Capito, who has been vaccinated, told CNN’s State of the Union. “So I’m trying to do whatever I can to say it’s safe, it’s reliable and it’s really about you and your neighbor.” More

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      in US Politics

      Biden gets serious about going green | First Thing

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      Good morning.The US will cut its carbon emissions by at least half by 2030, the White House has promised. The news comes before a two-day virtual White House climate summit, beginning today. The summit brings together 40 world leaders to discuss how to fulfil the 2015 Paris climate agreement, and speed up their plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions.But poorer countries have said they need the money to be able to make environmental change happen, and argue that richer countries, which have more capital and emit more carbon dioxide, should be putting their hands in their pockets. Poorer countries were promised $100bn a year in climate finance from 2020, but last year that was not met.
      The summit also marks the first meeting of Biden and China’s president, Xi Jinping. With their interests overlapping on climate, will it be a step in the right direction for their fraught relationship?
      Offering money is not the right approach to Brazil’s climate denial, two former Brazilian environment ministers argue. “Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon is not the result of a lack of money,” they write, “but a consequence of the government’s deliberate failure of care.” They say giving Brazil money to stop chopping down the Amazon could funnel funds to the “very land-grabbers behind the destruction”.
      The justice department is going to investigate the Minneapolis police forceThe justice department will launch a sweeping investigation into policing practices in Minneapolis, it announced yesterday. The news came less than a day after a former police officer in the force was found guilty of murdering George Floyd, after kneeling on his neck for more than nine minutes during an arrest.
      What will the investigation look into? The attorney general, Merrick Garland, said the investigation would determine whether the force had “engaged in a pattern and practice of unconstitutional or unlawful policing”. It will examine the use of force by officers, including during protests, potential discriminatory practices, and accountability.
      Biden briefed on the fatal police shooting of a 16-year-oldJoe Biden has been briefed on the fatal shooting of a black teenage girl by police in Ohio, the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said. An officer shot dead 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant on Tuesday, just minutes before the jury convicted a former police officer of murdering George Floyd.Psaki said Ma’Khia’s death cast a shadow “just as America was hopeful of a step forward”, adding: “She was a child. We’re thinking of her friends and family, in the communities that are hurting and grieving her loss.”
      What do we know about Ma’Khia’s death? Police in Columbus, Ohio, were called to reports of someone being attacked. Bodycamera footage released by Columbus police shows Ma’Khia appearing to hold a knife and clashing with two people, before an officer shoots her four times and she falls to the ground. Authorities in the city said police intervened to save the life of another girl whom Bryant had closed in on.
      Columbus has one of the highest rates of fatal police shootings in the US, according to a recent study, but is by no means the only area grappling with issues around police conduct:
      In North Carolina, a sheriff’s deputy shot dead a black man while serving a search warrant, according to authorities. Andrew Brown was killed yesterday morning, apparently while driving away. Details about the warrant have not been released, but court records show Brown had a history of drug charges.
      A Virginia police officer has been sacked after the Guardian revealed he had donated to and expressed support for Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager accused of killing two people during a protest against police brutality last year.
      More than 200m coronavirus shots have been administered in the USThe US has administered 200m vaccine doses since Biden took office, achieving the goal he set for his first 100 days. He had initially promised 100m doses in his first 100 days, but doubled the goal after the program gained unexpected pace. As of this week, all US adults are eligible to a receive a vaccine.
      More than 80% of Americans over 65 will have had one dose by today, according to Biden. More than 50% of adults are at least partially vaccinated, with about 28m vaccine doses being administered each week.
      The president also announced a new federal programme to give workers paid leave to receive their vaccination, saying: “No working American should lose a single dollar from their paycheck because they chose to fulfil their patriotic duty of getting vaccinated.”In other news …
      Biden is likely to formally recognise the Armenian genocide at the hands of the Ottoman empire during the first world war, according to officials. As a candidate, Biden promised this, but it could add to an already tense relationship with the Turkish leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
      Four people have been killed in a car bomb at a hotel hosting a Chinese ambassador in Pakistan. A dozen others were wounded at the luxury hotel, but the ambassador was out for a meeting when the bomb exploded. The Pakistan Taliban has claimed responsibility.
      Stat of the day: in Corona, Queens, just 37% of residents have received their first Covid vaccine dose. In the wealthier Upper East Side, the figure is 64%. Why is the difference so stark?Corona, Queens, is home to many of New York’s undocumented migrants and essential workers. Last year, when the city was the centre of the global coronavirus outbreak, the neighbourhood was considered the “epicenter of the epicenter”. But now it has one of the lowest rates of vaccinations, 37% compared with 64% in the Upper East Side. Amanda Holpuch asks what coronavirus has shown us about inequality in the city.Don’t miss this: a globally unprecedented coronavirus surge is pushing India to the brinkA new increase in coronavirus in India is pushing hospitals to the brink of collapse. The unprecedented spread resulted in India recording 314,835 new cases over the previous 24 hours, the highest daily increase of any country during the pandemic. Rebecca Ratcliffe shares more information about this dire situationwhich, Peter Beaumont argues, serves as a warning to other countries.Last Thing: an Italian man managed to skip work for 15 years An Italian man been coined the “king of absentees” after skipping work for 15 years. The 67-year-old hospital employee in the Calabrian city of Catanzaro continued to take home a salary of €538,000 ($648,000), despite not having turned up to work since 2005. Now the holiday is over and he is facing charges of abuse of office, forgery, and aggravated extortion.Sign upSign up for the US morning briefingFirst Thing is delivered to thousands of inboxes every weekday. If you are not already signed up, subscribe now. More

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      in US Politics

      Why New York mayor is ‘second toughest job in US’

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      It was during the administration of Fiorello LaGuardia that the position of New York City mayor became known as the “second toughest job in America”.LaGuardia, New York’s 99th mayor and a man whose name now graces the city’s streets, parks, schools and an airport labeled one of the worst in the country, became regarded as one of the city’s greatest ever leaders, despite facing a collapsing economy, all-powerful crime mobs and civic unrest when he took office in January 1934.When New York City’s next mayor takes office, however, they will face problems on perhaps an even larger scale, with the Covid-19 pandemic having ravaged a city already beset by deep income inequality and facing a reckoning over racial discrimination in policing and governance. The job could prove, once again, to be second only in difficulty to being the occupant of the Oval Office. Despite the challenges, dozens of candidates are running in June’s Democratic mayoral primary – which, given New York City’s left-leaning political makeup, is likely to decide the city’s next leader.The most pressing issue will be leading New York City out of the pandemic. The city was one of the worst hit by Covid-19, and many residents are still haunted by the scenes of April 2020, when ambulance sirens were a near-constant sound as hundreds of people a day succumbed to the virus.In total, more than 32,000 people have died, and in the most densely populated city in the country, the need for a successful, continued rollout of vaccinations will be essential, as will guiding economic and emotional recovery.“In communities across the city Covid is related to severe job loss in industries and occupations. It’s been differentially hard on the everyday workers of the city as opposed to the professional workers. So there’s a lot to be done to heal and revitalize those communities,” John Mollenkopf, distinguished professor of political science at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, said.“All the candidates have lined up policy position papers on what they’ll do [regarding the recovery from the pandemic], but there’s also a kind of symbolic and emotional dimension to it – of going out to the communities and healing their pain, of inspiring them and giving them confidence in the future. That’ll be a very important thing the mayor will do.”The winner of a mayoral election is frequently a reaction to how voters feel about the incumbent – in this case the term-limited Bill de Blasio, whose popularity has waned dramatically since his election in 2013. This year, however, with Covid recovery dominating the election “that dynamic is a lot less at play”, said Neal Kwatra, a Democratic strategist who has been active in New York politics for years.A key issue for the incoming mayor will be schooling, Kwatra said – dealing with the lost year many children have experienced but also the struggle many New Yorkers have faced in balancing work and childcare.“Especially for working-class, middle-class, poor New Yorkers, for whom there is no choice, they have to go to work, they are frontline workers in many of these industries that are helping to bring the city back on its feet,” Kwatra said.“Figuring out how we get our schools open safely and securely for parents for teachers and for students is going to be an enormously important task for the next mayor.”As if wrestling with the 1,700 schools, and more than 1.1 million students, isn’t enough, the city’s next leader will need to breathe life back into a hospitality industry that has been decimated by the pandemic.“The job creation connected to those industries is enormous and significant, so I think part of what the next mayor is going to also have to do is figure out how to send a message to folks that New York is open for business, that New York is safe,” Kwatra said.Looming over any recovery is the racial inequality and police brutality that many New Yorkers or color have faced.In the summer of 2020 Black Lives Matter protests intensified the focus on racial issues, and the Democratic primary could yet yield only the city’s second non-white mayor. New York is still seeking its first non-male leader, with at least six women, two of them women of color, among the main contenders and a non-binary candidate also in the running.The demonstrations of 2020, which brought out tens of thousands of protesters in New York, means the winner of the mayoral race will be under pressure to reimagine law enforcement in New York.“I think it will be very high [on the next mayor’s agenda], but it also will depend on who is ultimately elected,” Kwatra said.There have been demands among the left to defund, either completely or partially, the police, and the next mayor will be expected to take a firm line with the New York police department, the largest force in the country which employs 36,000 officers and 19,000 civilian employees.Some candidates have pledged to reform the NYPD, to various degrees. Dianne Morales a former public school teacher and non-profit executive, has arguably gone furthest. Her website has a section dedicated to “defund the police”, and if elected Morales would reallocate $3bn of the police’s budget to more socially minded services.“As Black men continue to be essentially executed by the state day in and day out in America, it’s impossible for that to not begin to more profoundly affect this mayoral race,” Kwatra said.Maya Wiley, a lawyer and civil rights executive with experience in New York City government, could lean on her experience as chair of the agency responsible for handling complaints about the New York police department. Eric Adams, the current borough president of Brooklyn, who joined the NYPD after being beaten by police aged 15 with the aim of changing the department “from within” has also pledged reform.Andrew Yang, the tech entrepreneur who ran for the US presidency in 2020, has drawn much of the early media attention in the mayoral race, but in recent weeks has also attracted scathing criticism from his rivals, who have attacked his commitment to the city and his governing experience.It is a point they are likely to continue making, as whoever wins will have a battle on their hands as they grapple with the city’s post-pandemic finances.Reuters reported that a net total of 70,000 people left New York City in 2020, but the data is less straightforward. According to location analytics company Unacast, 3.57 million people left the city between 1 January and 7 December , and “some 3.5 million people earning lower average incomes moved into the city during that same period”. Unacast claims that this resulted in a scarcely believable $34bn in lost revenue.As government income has dropped, fears have been raised that the situation could be as dire as that of the financial crisis the city faced in 1975. Back then the city nearly went bankrupt, and leaders attempted to rectify it by introducing swingeing budget cuts.Kimberly K Phillips-Fein, a professor of American history at New York University and author of Fear City: New York’s fiscal crisis and the rise of austerity politics, said the current situation does not rival the fiscal chaos of the 1970s, but said it was important any incoming mayor “recall the dangers of widespread service cuts as a way of addressing fiscal shortfalls”.“At this moment in particular, such cuts could be disastrous. We need more faith in our public sector, not less. We need a coherent plan for reopening schools safely, and a commitment to use resources to accomplish this; we need public health programs that we can trust to protect us,” Phillips-Fein said.“Should budget shortfalls emerge, the city should strive to find ways to address them without stark service cuts. In the 1970s these helped to accelerate political and economic polarization, and the same might well happen today.”The picture does at least look rosier than it did a few months ago, after New York agreed on a $212bn state budget in April. The budget, if signed by Andrew Cuomo, the state’s governor, will increase taxes on the wealthiest residents in New York City, and, Democratic lawmakers say, release money for schools, rent relief and childcare, but the next mayor will inevitably face tough decisions over spending.The mayor’s spending will be fraught with danger as they bid to rectify wealth disparity in the city. The Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York found that income inequality, even pre-pandemic, has grown over the past 10 years, and the issue of affordable housing has been highlighted by the fact that Covid-19 rates were particularly high in neighborhoods already suffering from soaring rents.Data from Streeteasy revealed traditionally lower-income areas like Elmhurst, Corona and Jackson Heights saw dramatic numbers of coronavirus cases, whereas wealthy neighborhoods like Battery Park City and the West Village saw the lowest numbers. In the last six years, according to Streeteasy, it is the former that were already struggling to cope with rising rent.“Between July 2014 and July 2020, rents in the zip codes that would be most affected by Covid-19 rose by 22%. That’s twice the rate of the city overall, where rents grew 11%. In what would turn out to be low-Covid-19 zip codes, rents rose by 10% in the same period,” Streeteasy said.Putting all these issues together, it is clear that the next mayor will have a daunting task ahead in terms of hauling New York City back on track. But as the city reports an encouraging vaccination rate, and as bars, restaurants and sporting venues begin to reopen, there are plenty of people who think reports of the city’s demise are exaggerated.“We’ll need a mayor that understands that the Covid crisis revealed in new ways the underlying class and status divisions in the city,” Mollenkopf said.“But New York is going to come back faster and better than the skeptics think. There’s a reason that the [population] concentration levels were as high as they have been in New York City – very good economic, social and political reasons. And the virus has given that a bruise but it hasn’t really changed anything.“So yes, it’s going to be a challenge. But it’s a great opportunity, also, for the next mayor.” More

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      in World Politics

      Bill Gates and the Zero-Sum Vaccination Game

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      The debate is raging once again about the true origin of COVID-19. Was it zoonotic, originating in a bat cave and then infecting exotic meat in Wuhan’s wet market as the majority of scientists claimed throughout 2020? At the approach of the November election, US President Donald Trump preferred to believe the pandemic was a plot to destroy his presidency conducted by a man he previously called an intimate “friend,” China’s President Xi Jinping. The virus was already spreading when Trump explained to World Economic Forum in Davos the nature of his relationship with Xi: “He’s for China, I’m for the US, but other than that, we love each other.”

      Four months later, Trump began contradicting scientists and blaming Xi’s China by claiming “that the virus originated in a laboratory and was accidentally released.” In September, he preferred to suggest to his voters that COVID-19 was the result of an Asian conspiracy designed to undermine his presidency. This sparked a wave of anti-Asian attacks in the US that have continued to this day.

      Prominent scientists today recognize that Trump’s initial assessment may have been right. Their colleagues who dismissed the idea of an accidental release of the virus from a Wuhan laboratory were either misled or disingenuously defensive of an equally unproven thesis. The scientists may have been impelled to reject the suspicion of a laboratory accident not only out of a lack of direct evidence, but also out of fear of the political blame game the president was beginning to exploit to distract attention from his own failure to respond appropriately to the crisis.

      Trump obviously preferred to see the war against a virus as a PR opportunity to bolster his image as a fearless leader. Allowing politicians to place blame on China, even for an accident, might have become as dangerous for the world as the virus itself, adding to the reigning misery rather than resolving the mystery of the origin of the disease.

      Wealth Inequality Breeds Health Inequality

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      Science itself and its public image have taken a hit from this ongoing catastrophe. The honored, if not revered Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted to prioritizing the distribution of masks among the medical community above the general public at a time when little was still known about how contagious COVID-19 was and how it spread. Political leaders across the globe, including Trump, all found themselves in a thankless position as they were required to demonstrate their leadership with insufficient knowledge of the nature of the challenge and a penury of material means to confront it.

      Many deserve to share the blame for a situation that, despite progress with vaccines, is still in many ways worsening. But, as Alexander Zaitchik exposes in an important article in The New Republic, the person perhaps most to blame for our global failure to respond effectively is neither a scientist nor a politician. His name is Bill Gates.

      Most rational people would reason that a global crisis requires a global response. Most realists recognize that in a civilization dominated by sovereign nation-states, summoning a unified response to any global crisis will never be easy. Humanity’s quasi-universal awareness of the problem of global warming over the decades demonstrates the difficulty of mobilizing humankind to implement even a minimalist response.

      In his article, “How Bill Gates Impeded Global Access to Covid Vaccines,” Zaitchik narrates a depressing story that began in February 2020, when the nature of the COVID-19 threat had become clear. In conformity with its mission, the World Health Organization (WHO) coordinated a “research and innovation forum to mobilize international action” aimed at combating the spreading epidemic. It sought to “maintain broad and open channels of communication, since collaboration and information-sharing minimize duplication and accelerate discovery.”

      Collaboration and sharing of science would be critical to any effective response. With most research publicly funded — a point Mariana Mazzucato made this week — it specifically recommended patent pooling. Zaitchik notes that optimism was still possible: “Battle-scarred veterans of the medicines-access and open-science movements hoped the immensity of the pandemic would override a global drug system based on proprietary science and market monopolies.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Proprietary science:

      An oxymoron to the extent that “science” simply means human knowledge and cannot be owned or commodified.

      Contextual Note

      The WHO was thus prepared to play the role assigned to its mission as stated in its constitution: “The health of all peoples is fundamental to the attainment of peace and security and is dependent upon the fullest co-operation of individuals and States.” Aware of the challenge lying ahead of them, the team began to prepare its campaign. Alas, it hadn’t counted on the intervention of the globe’s self-appointed Mr. World Health, Bill Gates, whose title derives from his contributing billions of dollars to the causes he believes in (the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has invested $1.75 billion in the development and distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine). Among them is the most sacred of all causes: intellectual property. 

      Embed from Getty Images

      Zaitchik describes in detail how Gates — a man with no skills in science, security or politics — has positioned himself to dictate to the world how contemporary science will affect every human being’s security. The key, following the logic of all capitalistic projects, is the management of scarcity. Without scarcity, industry cannot survive and prosper. Little does it matter that because of scarcity many humans simply will not survive.

      Before Gates’s intervention, the group sought “to create a voluntary intellectual property pool inside the WHO.” In so doing, they demonstrated their naivety: “That pharmaceutical companies and their allied governments would allow intellectual property concerns to slow things down — from research and development to manufacturing scale-up — does not seem to have occurred to them.” But that is exactly what happened, thanks to Gates’s overpowering voice (measured by billions of dollars rather than decibels) and his “reputation as a wise, beneficent, and prophetic leader.” When the dust cleared, what emerged was “a zero-sum vaccination battle that has left much of the world on the losing side.”

      Zaitchik documents the ensuing catastrophe due largely to “Gates’s dedication to monopoly medicine” and his “unwavering commitment to drug companies’ right to exclusive control over medical science and the markets for its products.” No one other than powerful governments can hope to compete with Gates’s cash reserves. But Gates’s own government, in Washington, DC, — whether under a Democrat or a Republican president — would never compete as a matter of principle. Competition is a private game. No other government in the world has the power to compete. The US government, like Gates himself, appears addicted to “politically constructed and politically imposed monopolies.”

      Historical Note

      The egregious oxymoron “proprietary science” would have seemed strange to the ears of anyone living before the industrial revolution. Were he alive today and imbued with modern economic culture, the 15th-century German printer, Johannes Gutenberg, would be claiming a percentage of every book, journal or magazine produced thanks to his invention of the printing press. Instead, Adolph II of Nassau, Archbishop of Maintz rewarded Gutenburg — the Bill Gates or Elon Musk of his day — for his innovation “with the title of ‘Gentleman of the Court’.” He also received “a court outfit, a stipend and two tonnes of grain and wine, tax-free.” The wine can be explained by the fact that Gutenberg’s inspiration for the printing press came from observing a wine press.

      Gates deserves to be similarly honored for his invention of MS-DOS. Rather than the billions extracted from the Earth’s entire population thanks to his skill at monopoly creation and predatory business practices, he should have received from the governor of the state of Washington an appropriate title (“Gentleman of the coding room”), a flashy suit of clothes with a matching raincoat (for Seattle weather), a generous stipend (a million of two per year would be appropriate) and maybe an unlimited supply of canned foods, since he is a believer in and expert practitioner of canned economic and scientific wisdom.

      As many of the rest of us queue up for one of the competing vaccines that promise to bail us all out — despite their disparities in performance adding to the confusion created by the incompetence of competitive governments — we should reflect on what all this tells us about an economic system whose vaunted efficiency Gates believes in and practices while using his money and clout to impose it on an unwilling world.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Fauci: Republican vaccine deniers are hurting efforts to lift Covid restrictions

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      Republicans who refuse the Covid-19 vaccination are actively “working against” efforts to lift the very coronavirus restrictions they insist are an infringement of their civil liberties, Dr Anthony Fauci, the US government’s leading infectious disease expert, said on Sunday.Fauci’s comments came as the government announced that half of all adults in the US had received at least one Covid-19 shot, marking another milestone in the nation’s largest-ever vaccination campaign. Almost 130 million people 18 or older have received at least one dose of a vaccine, or 50.4% of the total adult population, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported. Almost 84 million adults, or about 32.5% of the population, have been fully vaccinated.But Fauci, who was involved in a fiery exchange over the issue with the Republican congressman Jim Jordan on Thursday, told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday he was frustrated by recent studies showing that up to 45% of Republicans would not take the vaccine.“The fact that one may not want to get vaccinated, in this case a disturbingly large proportion of Republicans, only actually works against where they want to be,” he said.“They want to be able to say these restrictions that are put on by public health recommendations are things that they’re very concerned about. But the way you get rid of those restrictions is to get as many people vaccinated as quickly and as efficiently as possible.“When that happens for absolutely certain you’re going to see the level of virus in the community go down and down and down to the point where you would not have to have those public health restrictions.”Fauci said the attitude displayed by the Republican vaccine deniers was “paradoxical”.“On the one hand they want to be relieved of the restrictions. On the other hand, they don’t want to get vaccinated, it just almost doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “This is a public health issue, it’s not a civil liberties issue.”Fauci clashed with Jordan, a congressman from Ohio, when the US’s top health officials testified before Congress on Thursday and Jordan asked Fauci when Americans “get their liberty and freedoms back”.“We’re not talking about liberties. We’re talking about a pandemic that has killed 560,000 Americans,” Fauci told the congressman.About one in four members of the House of Representatives had not been vaccinated by March, three months after shots were being made available. A list of those who are not vaccinated is not publicly available, but several Republican members of Congress have admitted they do not plan to get the jab.Fauci’s comments come amid a resurgence of Covid-19 across the US, with an 8% rise in new cases in the last two weeks even as the number of those vaccinated continues to grow.Fauci said the single shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine, the use of which was suspended in the US last week after reports of extremely rare and severe blood clots in six women, could be reinstated as early as Friday at a meeting of the CDC’s advisory committee on immunization practices (ACIP).“I doubt very seriously they’ll just cancel it,” he said in a later appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press. “I do think that there will likely be some sort of warning or restriction or risk assessment. I don’t think [the advisory committee] is going to say, ‘everything’s fine,’ I think it’ll likely say, ‘OK, we’re going to use it, but be careful under these certain circumstances’.”He said that although the incidences of blood clots were rare, “you have six cases in close to seven million people,” he said, the temporary suspension of the J&J vaccine was necessary.“There’s a twofold reason for doing it, to pause and take a look in more detail about it, and to make sure that the physicians treat people appropriately,” he said.Meanwhile, the Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer, acknowledged on Sunday her state was at “a very serious moment” as new infections continued to rise, but she continued to resist growing pressure to reinstate restrictions she lifted in March.Michigan has become a new Covid-19 hotspot, with hospitalizations setting a new pandemic record last week and the state recording more than 2,200 cases of the B117 coronavirus variant, more than one-tenth the total for the entire US.“In the waning months I have been sued by my legislature, I have lost in a Republican controlled Supreme Court, and I don’t have all of the exact same tools,” Whitmer told MTP host Chuck Todd, who asked if she was backing away from a firmer stance.“Despite those things, we still have some of the strongest mitigation measures in the country, masked mandates, capacity limitations, working from home. We’re moving fast to get shots in arms, a million in two weeks, a million in just the last nine days. [But] I’m working with a smaller set of tools at my disposal.“We are at a very serious moment and that’s precisely why we’re going to keep following the science, imploring people to do the right things, keep our mitigations up and keep moving vaccines as quickly as we possibly can.”Globally, coronavirus deaths passed the grim milestone of three million on Saturday. Jeremy Farrar, director of the UK’s Wellcome Trust, warned that the true number of deaths was probably much higher.“Worryingly, this pandemic is still growing at an alarming rate. Hundreds of thousands are dying every month,” he said.The US leads the world in Covid-19 deaths with 566,937 deaths and almost 32m cases, more than twice as many as any other country according to the Johns Hopkins university of medicine on Sunday. More