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      in US Politics

      Trump impeachment: defense wraps up, claiming free speech is at stake – live

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      Key events

      Show

      3.27pm EST15:27
      Trump’s legal team has wrapped up its defense

      2.02pm EST14:02
      Afternoon summary

      12.00pm EST12:00
      Trump’s defense team expected to push for swift conclusion of trial

      8.37am EST08:37
      US fast food workers hold Black History Month strike to demand $15 an hour

      8.07am EST08:07
      Trump advisor: legal team expected to use just four hours today in Senate for defense

      7.45am EST07:45
      Trump’s laywers expected to concede violence was traumatic and unacceptable, but argue Trump had nothing to do with it

      7.09am EST07:09
      Georgia officials investigate groups that mobilized Black voters in state crucial to election outcome

      Live feed

      Show

      4.36pm EST16:36

      Democratic senator Ed Markey asks when Trump learned of the breach at the Capitol, and what he did about it. (It’s the same question Collins and Murkowski asked earlier.)
      Stacey Plaskett, a House delegate from the Virgin Islands and an impeachment manager, says we do not know. “The reason this question keeps coming up is because the answer is nothing.”
      Mitt Romney, Republican senator and Trump foe, asks if Trump knew whether Mike Pence had been removed from the Senate when the president criticized him in a 2.24pm tweet.
      Defense lawyer Van der Veen says “the answer is no, at no point was the president informed that the vice president was in any danger”. Van der Veen then criticizes the House impeachment managers for rushing the trial.
      I don’t see the connection.

      Eli Stokols
      (@EliStokols)
      van der Veen responds: “At no point was the president informed the vice president was in any danger.”Says the q is irrelevant: “This is an article of impeachment for incitement.”

      February 12, 2021

      David Frum
      (@davidfrum)
      Which is untrue of course. And then van der Veen went on to argue that even if Trump did recklessly endanger the life of VP Pence, it’s nobody’s business. https://t.co/cdC4kN81cy

      February 12, 2021

      Updated
      at 4.37pm EST

      4.24pm EST16:24

      Republican senator Tim Scott has a question: “Isn’t this simply a political show trial that is designed to discredit President Trump […] and shame the 74m Americans who voted for him?”
      Bruce Castor, for the defense: “Thats precisely what the 45th president believes this is about.”
      Castor says the purpose of the trial – which is actually related to an insurrection that left five people dead – is to “embarrass” Trump.

      4.14pm EST16:14

      A question for the defense team, from GOP senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski:
      “Exactly when did President Trump learn of the breach of the Capitol” and what actions did he take to bring the riot to an end?
      Van der Veen, for the defense, doesn’t give a proper answer.

      Neal Katyal
      (@neal_katyal)
      Woah. Trump lawyer can’t answer it. At all. He just rants about the lack of due process. Seems to me this would be the first thing I would ask if I were Trump’s lawyer while getting ready. Devastating silence.

      February 12, 2021

      Collins and Murkowski are believed to be swing voters on whether to convict Trump.

      4.06pm EST16:06

      Senator Lindsey Graham has a question for the defense. The question is on behalf of Graham, Senator Ted Cruz, and others – all ardent Trump defenders.
      “Does a politician raising bail for rioters encourage more rioting?” the defense is asked.
      One of the defense lawyers – I think it’s Castor says: “Yes.”
      This is part of the Republican strategy to compare the Capitol rioters to Black Lives Matter protesters.

      Joy WE VOTED!! WEAR A MASK!! Reid 😷)
      (@JoyAnnReid)
      Of course @LindseyGrahamSC uses his question to throw a bomb at Black Lives Matter who are who he means when he says “rioters.” (Narrator: BLM protesters were not “rioters,” and insurrectionist Lindsey Graham would fit in perfectly in the Confederacy.)

      February 12, 2021

      Updated
      at 4.09pm EST

      4.03pm EST16:03

      “Isn’t it the case that the attack [on January 6] would not have happened if not for Donald Trump?” was the first, strangely worded question. It’s posed by Democratic senators to the House impeachment managers (essentially, the prosecution.)
      Rep Joaquin Castro, one of the impeachment managers, answered. Castro said – essentially – yes.
      He said Trump, as far back as mid-December, directed his supporters to travel to the Capitol on January 6. Once there, Trump told his supporters to “fight like hell”, and told them “they could play by different rules”, Castro said.

      3.56pm EST15:56

      The impeachment trial has restarted shortly. In the next phase, Senators will have four hours to ask the defense and the prosecution questions.
      It’s not clear how late they’ll run tonight. There’s a dinner break scheduled for 5pm, but the questioning could resume after. The Senate will reconvene at 10am ET Saturday, and a final vote could take place later that day, at 3pm.

      3.27pm EST15:27

      Trump’s legal team has wrapped up its defense

      That was a bit of an anti-climax. Castor finished by pivoting back to the free speech argument Trump’s lawyers made earlier – that Trump’s speech to his supporters on January 6 was protected under the first amendment.
      “This trial is about far more than President Trump,” Castor said. He said the trial is instead about canceling speech that “the majority does not agree with”.
      “Are we going to allow canceling and silencing to be sanctioned in this body?” Castor asked.
      Trump’s defense argument seems to hinge both on a) Trump’s speech on January 6 did not incite the riot (although the defense team did not address Trump’s previous statements) and b) in any case, what Trump said is protected by free speech laws.

      Updated
      at 3.28pm EST

      3.15pm EST15:15

      Castor suggested that Trump’s speech on January 6 did not incite the riot
      The lawyer hasn’t addressed the broader issue of whether Trump’s months-long tirade against the election result had anything to do with it.
      “The January 6 speech did not cause the riots,” Castor said.
      Castor then moved onto the January phone call between Trump and Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger. During that call Trump pressured Raffensperger, a Republican, to “find” votes so that Trump could be announced the winner in Georgia.
      Georgia prosecutors have opened a criminal inquiry into Trump’s call.
      Castor read from a transcript of the call and said Trump was expressing legitimate concern over the election result.
      For some context, here is some of what Trump said in that Georgia phone call:
      “So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.”

      Updated
      at 3.28pm EST

      3.03pm EST15:03

      Bruce Castor continues. He says the House impeachment managers “manipulated” Trump’s words when they presented their case.
      Castor then speaks Latin for a little bit and suggests House impeachment managers are “trying to fool you”.
      “President Trump was immediate in his calls for calm,” Castor says. (Trump wasn’t.)
      “President Trump’s words couldn’t have incited the events at the capitol,” Castor said, because people were already gathering at the Capitol before Trump gave his speech at the Ellipse, which a 15 minute walk away.

      Trip Gabriel
      (@tripgabriel)
      Castor — the lawyer who’s rambling, unfocused opening statement on Tuesday enraged Trump — begins by going over ground argued earlier, and showing the same clips.

      February 12, 2021

      Andrew Desiderio
      (@AndrewDesiderio)
      DOJ has specifically referred to the events of Jan. 6 as an insurrection. https://t.co/msWzru3fXd

      February 12, 2021

      Eliza Collins
      (@elizacollins1)
      Trump’s lawyers are arguing that he is not guilty because 1. The trial is unconstitutional 2. The trial is politically motivated 3. Trump’s use of word “fight” and other language was ordinary political talk 4. Trump loves law and order. Our full coverage: https://t.co/RMwlZdYR56

      February 12, 2021

      Updated
      at 3.08pm EST

      2.48pm EST14:48

      Castor began his defense by showing a video, most of which is cribbed from the video Trump’s legal team played earlier.
      It contrasts Democrats defending Black Lives Matter protesters, spliced in with selected clips of violence at some of the BLM demonstrations, with Trump talking about “law and order”. Law and order is frequently used as a racist dog whistle.
      “January 6 was a terrible day for our country,” Castor conceded, but he continued: “President Trump did not incite or cause the horrific violence.”
      This tactic from the defense – that Trump’s supporters storming the Capitol was bad, but it wasn’t Trump’s fault – is something we expected.
      Castor added: “Political hatred has no place in the American justice system, and certainly no place in the congress of the United States.”

      2.42pm EST14:42

      Donald Trump’s legal team has resumed their defense. Bruce Castor, who reportedly left Trump furious after a lackluster performance earlier this week, will handle the next section.
      During the break, Democratic senators lined up to pan the defense.
      “Donald Trump was told that if he didn’t stop lying about the election people would be killed,” Senator Tim Kaine told reporters, according to the Washington Post. “He wouldn’t stop, and the Capitol was attacked and seven people are dead who would be alive today.”
      Senator Richard J. Blumenthal said the Trump defense team is “trying to draw a false, dangerous and distorted equivalence”, the Post reported.
      “And I think it is plainly a distraction from Donald Trump’s inviting the mob to Washington, knowing it was armed; changing the route and the timing so as to incite them to march on the Capitol; and then reveling, without remorse, without doing anything to protect his own vice president and all of us,” Blumenthal said.
      “I think that the case is even more powerful after this very distorted and false argument.” More

    • 163 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Cuomo faces calls to resign amid allegations of hiding nursing home Covid deaths

      by

      Andrew Cuomo – New York’s governor who was once hailed the king of the US Covid-19 response – was facing fresh calls for his removal from office on Friday after new allegations emerged that he and senior staff covered up the extent of the virus deaths in the state’s nursing homes.
      The New York Post said it obtained a leaked recording of the governor’s top aide, Melissa DeRosa, admitting to Democrats in private conversations this week that the administration withheld the true data because it feared the Department of Justice would use the figures to pursue complaints of state misconduct.
      “Basically, we froze,” the newspaper said DeRosa told the lawmakers, referring to tweets from Donald Trump last August that she said turned the issue of New York’s nursing home deaths “into this giant political football”, and his calls for the justice department to investigate.
      “We were in a position where we weren’t sure if what we were going to give to the Department of Justice, or what we give to you guys, what we start saying, was going to be used against us while we weren’t sure if there was going to be an investigation.”
      On Friday, however, New York’s 14 Democratic state senators released a joint statement calling for the repeal of Cuomo’s emergency executive powers to deal with the pandemic. “While Covid-19 has tested the limits of our people and state … it is clear that the expanded emergency powers granted to the governor are no longer appropriate,” they wrote.
      It emerged earlier this week that New York’s nursing home coronavirus death toll was far higher than Cuomo’s administration had initially admitted. New figures were released following a court order in response to a freedom of information request by the Empire Center for Public Policy showed a significant rise from about 9,000 to close to 15,000 once the previously omitted deaths of nursing home residents who died in hospitals were factored in.
      “Who cares [if they] died in the hospital, died in a nursing home? They died,” Cuomo said at a news conference in January after New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, released a damning report stating nursing home deaths were 50% higher than his administration had claimed.
      DeRosa’s admission added fuel to growing calls for Cuomo’s resignation, impeachment or removal from office, and on Friday the New York congressman Tom Reed said he would pursue legal action against the governor’s aide.
      “I’m going to be looking at filing a personal criminal complaint against this individual today in local law enforcement offices as well as federal offices, because she needs to be arrested today,” he said in an interview with Fox Business.
      Other Republicans were quick to attack Cuomo. “If the governor is involved, he should be immediately removed from office,” said Rob Ortt, state senator and minority leader, in a statement.
      DeRosa’s admission, he said, “was the latest in a series of disturbing acts of corruption by his administration. Instead of apologizing or providing answers to the thousands of New York families who lost loved ones, the governor’s administration made apologies to politicians behind closed doors for the ‘political inconvenience’ this scandal has caused them.”
      Nick Langworthy, the state GOP chair, said: “Andrew Cuomo has abused his power and destroyed the trust placed in the office of governor. Prosecution and impeachment discussions must begin right away,” according to Politico.
      New York Democrats are also unhappy with Cuomo, who was on Friday scheduled to be in Washington DC to join a conference with Joe Biden on the Covid-19 American Rescue Plan.
      “This is a betrayal of the public trust. There needs to be full accountability for what happened, and the legislature needs to reconsider its broad grant of emergency powers to the governor,” Andrew Gounardes, the Democratic state senator, said on Twitter.
      Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the senate majority leader, was equally scathing. “Crucial information should never be withheld from entities that are empowered to pursue oversight,” she said in a statement. “Politics should not be part of this tragic pandemic and our responses to it must be led by policy, not politics.”
      On Friday, DeRosa was attempting to downplay the situation, according to the New York Times, claiming that the administration had to temporarily shelve state legislators’ calls for greater transparency over the figures to prioritize demands from the justice department.
      “We informed the houses [of the New York legislature] of this at the time. We were comprehensive and transparent in our responses to the DoJ and then had to immediately focus our resources on the second wave and vaccine rollout,” she said in a statement.
      New York state had recorded a total Covid-19 death toll of 45,453 by Friday morning, according to the Johns Hopkins coronavirus database, second in the nation to California (46,022).
      The New York health commissioner, Howard Zucker, told lawmakers this week that the number of nursing home residents who had died was 13,297, which rose to 15,049 with the inclusion of deaths from other assisted living or adult care facilities. More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Biden blasts Trump administration's handling of vaccine program – video

      by

      Joe Biden has criticised Donald Trump’s handling of the US Covid vaccination program after confirming the country had ordered an additional 200m vaccine doses to be delivered by the end of July. Speaking at the National Institutes of Health on Thursday, the president spoke of the efforts his team had gone through to ensure high vaccination numbers and criticised Trump’s strategy for distributing vaccines. ‘My predecessor, to be very blunt about it, did not do his job,’ Biden said. ‘He didn’t order enough vaccines. He didn’t mobilise enough people to administer the shots’
      US finalizes order for 200m additional Covid-19 vaccine doses, Biden says More

    • 88 Shares169 Views

      in World Politics

      How Tough Is Biden Prepared to Look?

      by

      A week after taking office, US President Joe Biden made a point of breaking with the position of his predecessor, Donald Trump, who famously blamed China for deliberately spreading the coronavirus. Trump insisted on calling it the Wuhan flu, Kung flu or any other xenophobic alternative. Coming to the defense of the entire Asian community in the United States, Biden issued a memorandum stating the following: “Inflammatory and xenophobic rhetoric has put Asian-American and Pacific Islander persons, families, communities and businesses at risk.”

      The Iran Deal vs. the Logic of History

      READ MORE

      The World Health Organization (WHO) team conducting an investigation in Wuhan released its preliminary findings this week on the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. It maintained, as Reuters reports, “that the virus likely came from bats and not a laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan.” On February 10, an official of the US State Department announced what appeared to be a retreat to the Trump administration’s position: “The United States will not accept World Health Organization … findings coming out of its coronavirus investigation in Wuhan, China without independently verifying the findings using its own intelligence and conferring with allies.”

      One of the WHO inspectors, British zoologist and expert on disease ecology Peter Daszak, reacting to the State Department’s note, addressed this advice to Biden in a tweet: “Well now this👇. @JoeBiden has to look tough on China. Please don’t rely too much on US intel: increasingly disengaged under Trump & frankly wrong on many aspects. Happy to help.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Look tough:

      1. The principal action required to maintain the status of a bully, a person whose demeanor counts more than their substance
      2. The principal action required to maintain the image of the leader of a hegemon, called upon to make a show of being hyper-aggressive toward nations elected by politicians and the media as an existential threat  

      Contextual Note

      While the WHO team offered no definitive explanation of the origin, it focused on different possibilities of animal transmission requiring further investigation. When asked at a press conference on February 10 whether he had “any interest in punishing China for not being truthful about COVID last year,” President Biden cagily replied, “I’m interested in getting all the facts.” That answer leaves him free to look tough on China or, alternatively, to look tough at the intelligence that for the past four years has done what intelligence always does, responded obsequiously to the political solicitations of the administration in place.

      One American who, for the past four years, has made a point of looking tough and has been regularly featured in the media is Mike Pompeo, the final secretary of state under the Trump administration. In a desperate effort to keep the Trump mystique going to maintain its flagging ratings, Fox News brought Pompeo back to defend the Wuhan flu theme Trump consistently exploited for electoral advantage during last year’s presidential election campaign. In the interview, “Pompeo said ‘significant evidence’ remained that the coronavirus originated in a Chinese laboratory, casting doubt Tuesday on the World Health Organization‘s assessment that it likely spread from animals to humans.”

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      Pompeo, a former CIA director, admitted in 2019 that his job at the Central Intelligence Agency consisted of lying, cheating and stealing. He implied that he was now telling the truth, a fact ironically borne out by his honest admission of duplicity while at the CIA. And yet, there may be reason even today to believe that Pompeo has retained something of his talent for lying, which he will be willing to use for what he deems virtuous purposes. 

      The language people like Pompeo use often reveals how they manage to bend the truth when they aren’t simply betraying it. In the Fox interview, Pompeo explains, “I continue to know that there was significant evidence that this may well have come from that laboratory.” What can Pompeo possibly mean when he says, “I continue to know”? Is knowledge for Pompeo something that can appear and disappear? Knowledge is a state of awareness of truth, not an act of will, something one can decide according to the circumstances. 

      And because what someone knows must be a fact, what is the solid fact he says he continues to know? He tells us that it is the idea that the coronavirus “may have come from” the Wuhan laboratory. But something that “may” be true is at best a reasonable hypothesis and at worst a fabricated lie. Something that “may” be true cannot be called knowledge. Any honest speaker would use the verb “suspect.” But, in this age of conspiracy theories, people tend to suspect anything that is merely suspected. And Fox News has always preferred assertions to suspicions.

      In the same interview, Pompeo describes his recommendations for the US policy on China. He says the nation must “continue to make sure that the next century remains one dominated by rule of law, sovereignty and the things that the America first foreign policy put in place.” 

      Besides the fact that Pompeo offers another example of his favorite verb, “continue,” his odd assertion that “the next century” (the 22nd?) must be “dominated by rule of law” offers a curious yoking of two theoretically antinomic ideas: dominance and rule of law. The very idea of “rule of law” posits a relationship of equality between all concerned parties. It opposes the effect of domination. Rule of law is about level playing fields and fair play. Pompeo’s formulation reveals that he thinks of the rule of law as a specific tool of American domination. This is of course consistent with the facts, whatever the administration. The US still steadfastly refuses the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court and Trump’s “America First” policy refused any law other than its own.

      For those wondering why Fox News has taken the trouble to interview the former secretary of state of a president now being tried for sedition, the journalists reveal the interest at the end of the interview. Fox sees Pompeo as a worthy contender for the 2024 presidential campaign. He’s a cleaner version of Trump, but one who will always talk and look tough.

      Historical Note

      After the most contentious presidential election in its history, the US has been preparing to experience the transition from one radical style of hyperreality to another — from Donald Trump’s outlandish display of petulant rhetoric committed to reshaping the world in his image to Joe Biden’s reserved and fundamentally uncommitted avuncular manner. Just as in 2008, when they voted in Barack Obama after eight years of George W. Bush’s chaotic wars and a Wall Street crash, Americans are expecting a change of style and focus from the never-ending drama of the Trump years. 

      But just as the self-proclaimed change candidate Obama, once in office, showed more respect for continuity than commitment to renewal, on the theme of foreign policy, President Biden appears to be following Trump’s lead while simply reducing the tone. This phenomenon reflects a more fundamental reality at the core of today’s pseudo-democratic oligarchy. It is regularly masked by the transition from Republican to Democrat and vice versa. The reigning political hyperreality, despite the contrasting personal styles of successive presidents, will always prevail. Continuity trumps change.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Biden’s future policy on both China and Iran provides two cases in point. The clock is ticking on the need to recalibrate both of these relationships, more particularly on Iran, which has an election coming in just a few months. As the world anxiously awaits the new orientations of the Biden administration, the kind of continuity Pompeo appreciates may prove more dominant than the reversal people have come to expect. After all, Trump set about reversing everything Obama did, so why shouldn’t Biden do the same? The answer may simply be that that’s not what Democrats do.

      The average American has never been seriously interested in foreign policy. That very fact has consistently led to the kind of Manichaean thinking that dominated during the Cold War. In his 2000 election campaign, the inimitable George W. Bush summed up how that Manichaean system works: “When I was coming up, it was a dangerous world, and you knew exactly who they were. It was us versus them, and it was clear who them was. Today, we are not so sure who the they are, but we know they’re there.” As John Keats once wrote, “That is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” 

      *[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

    • 88 Shares129 Views

      in World Politics

      Is China the New Champion of Globalization?

      by

      On January 25, addressing a virtual World Economic Forum, China’s President Xi Jinping not only strongly advocated for a multilateral approach to the COVID-19 pandemic but insisted on the virtues and systemic benefits of free trade and globalization. Jeopardizing those elements may introduce conflict into the international system, Xi warned, clearly referring to, although not mentioning, the United States. This is not the first time Xi has credited himself as the “champion of globalization,” in particular when attending meetings in Davos. In 2017, in the early days of Donald Trump’s presidency, with the long shadow of barriers to trade and isolationist policies just starting to appear on the horizon, China’s president made important remarks encouraging free trade and opening up the markets.

      However, with Trump out and Joe Biden now in the Oval Office, there seems little to suggest any substantial change in US policy, at least in the foreseeable future. If the US isn’t particularly eager to work with China toward free trade and multilateral cooperation, the European Union, and Germany in particular, quickly opted for a completely different approach, signing a key investment deal with Beijing at the end of last year. The Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) will grant a greater level of market access for investors than ever before, including new important market openings.

      Forecasting the US-China Relationship

      READ MORE

      Washington did not miss the opportunity to express its concerns about a deal that suddenly and unexpectedly sidelined the United States at a moment when, after four years of relative anarchy and opportunism, restarting transatlantic relations should be a priority. Writing in the Financial Times, Gideon Rachman recently pointed out how little sense it makes to rely on a US security guarantee in Europe while undermining its security policy in the Pacific, considering how much Europe has benefitted from the fact that for the past 70 years, the world’s most powerful nation has been a liberal democracy. Germany, in fact, was able over the last decades to exercise a sui generis role of Zivilmacht (civilian power) by framing its national interest in geoeconomic terms, encouraging German exports worldwide while outsourcing its defense to the reassuring presence of US troops.

      To better understand Xi’s quasi-imperial stance at the World Economic Forum, it has to be placed not only against the backdrop of the recent investment deals with the European Union or with the 15 countries of the Asia-Pacific region, but on the big news that China is on course to overtake the US as the world’s biggest economy by 2028, five years ahead of earlier predictions, mainly due to the asymmetric impact of COVID-19. While it is clear that China has successfully contained the Sars-Cov-2 outbreak and the Chinese economy is now recovering at a higher speed than other countries, it is also true that a lack of transparency and delays in sharing information with the international community about the virus have contributed to an acceleration of the pandemic at a global level.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Nonetheless, in the current debate over shaping more efficient emergency policies, China is still emerging as the model to follow and imitate, despite being unpopular. There is little doubt that in the “social imaginary” of liberal societies, as reports from Europe and the US suggest, authoritarian regimes are seen by many as more efficient and better prepared to deal with crises than democracies. Yet we must not forget that this efficiency comes at the inevitable cost of political and civil rights.

      Xi Jinping is well aware that the Biden administration can finally change course for the US and its allies, forging a united and progressive front after years of populist, nativist and authoritarian politics. Perhaps this element can help understand Xi’s assertiveness at the World Economic Forum better than the recent economic successes. After all, political and civil rights are China’s Achilles’ heel. Criticism of the Communist Party, let alone advocating for basic human rights such as freedom of speech or the rule of law, inexorably leads to repression that falls with equal severity on the rich metropolis of Hong Kong and the poor areas of Xinjiang, sweeping up ordinary citizens and billionaires alike, from Joshua Wong to Jack Ma.

      Can China credibly profess the virtues of globalization to achieve harmony and balance in an international system if it doesn’t adhere to international law? Can Beijing speak of cooperation to solve global problems when it has withheld vital information about the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic? As Xi Jinping continues to steer the Middle Kingdom out of its historical isolation, avoiding challenging the United States for the position of world leader will be difficult, given China’s demographics and economic status. Will these two Weltanschauungen, two comprehensively different conceptions of the world, sooner or later present the international community with a choice?

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

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      US could have averted 40% of Covid deaths, says panel examining Trump's policies

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      The US could have averted 40% of the deaths from Covid-19, had the country’s death rates corresponded with the rates in other high-income G7 countries, according to a Lancet commission tasked with assessing Donald Trump’s health policy record.Almost 470,000 Americans have died from the coronavirus so far, with the number widely expected to go above half a million in the next few weeks. At the same time some 27 million people in the US have been infected. Both figures are by far the highest in the world.In seeking to respond to the pandemic, Trump has been widely condemned for not taking the pandemic seriously enough soon enough, spreading conspiracy theories, not encouraging mask wearing and undermining scientists and others seeking to combat the virus’ spread.Dr Mary T Bassett, a commission member and director of Harvard University’s FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, told the Guardian: “The US has fared so badly with this pandemic, but the bungling can’t be attributed only to Mr Trump, it also has to do with these societal failures … That’s not going to be solved by a vaccine.”In a wide-ranging assessment published on Thursday, the commission said Trump “brought misfortune to the USA and the planet” during his four years in office. The stinging critique not only blamed Trump, but also tied his actions to the historical conditions which made his presidency possible.“He was sort of a crowning achievement of a certain period but he’s not the only architect,” said Bassett, “And so we decided it’s important to put him in context, not to minimize how destructive his policy agenda has been and his personal fanning the flames of white supremacy, but to put it in context.”The commission condemned Trump’s response to Covid, but emphasized that the country entered the pandemic with a degraded public health infrastructure. Between 2002 and 2019, US public health spending fell from 3.21% to 2.45% – approximately half the share of spending in Canada and the UK.To determine how many deaths from Covid the US could have avoided, the commission weighted the average death rate in the other G7 countries – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the UK – and compared it to the US death rate.In another comparison, the commission found if US life expectancy was equivalent to the average in the other G7 countries, 461,000 fewer Americans would have died in 2018.The Lancet commission on public policy and health in the Trump era, launched in April 2017 to catalogue Trump health policies, examines the driving forces of his 2016 election win and offers policy recommendations. The 33 commissioners are from the US, UK and Canada and work in public health, law schools, medicine, unions, indigenous communities and other groups.The commission devotes as much time in the report to its namesake as it does to the conditions that made him possible.A line is drawn from neoliberal policies pushed in the past 40 years, such as those that intensified the drug war and resulted in mass incarceration, to health inequities Trump exacerbated while in office. Many of the connections date back even further, to the colonization of the Americas and the persistence of white supremacy in society.“I really think one of the accomplishments of the report is its historical truth-telling,” said Bassett, New York City’s health commissioner from 2014 to 2018.Trump’s response to documented health inequities and growing inequality was to attack programs and policies intended to make health insurance more affordable and accessible. In Trump’s first three years in office, there were 2.3 million more people without health insurance.Between 2017 and 2018, the health insurance coverage rate decreased by 1.6 percentage points for Latinos – roughly 1.5 million people – and by 2.8 percentage points for Native American and Alaska native people, while remaining stable for the white population, according to the commission.The report not only assesses health policy, but also includes lengthy sections on immigration, Puerto Rico, reproductive rights, racism and the environment. Dr Adam Gaffney, a commission member and Harvard Medical School assistant professor, said: “To only focus on medical care would neglect the many other inequities and injustices that produce health and sickness.”The commission said evidence is growing that Trump’s regulatory rollbacks have increased death and disease. Between 2016 and 2019, the annual number of deaths from environmental and occupational factors increased by more than 22,000 after years of steady decline.The negative consequences of the rescinded regulations disproportionately affected the states which most supported Trump in 2016. These are also states most affected by rollbacks in health insurance coverage, according to the report.The commission did identify a positive in Trump’s domestic agenda: his support for the First Step Act, a prison and sentencing reform bill which reduced mandatory minimum sentences for a number of drug-related crimes among other things.The commission also noted that historical advances usually follow a period of conflict and struggle and included recommendations for healthcare workers to advance progress in the wake of Trump’s presidency.The report includes a list of policy recommendations to address the issues it raised, including providing compensation for descendants of enslaved Africans and indigenous people, raising taxes on the wealthy, reducing defense spending and adopting a single-payer, national healthcare system.Gaffney said: “I hope this report pushes those with power to pursue the necessary policies to make this a healthier and happier nation.” More

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      CDC study recommends double masking to reduce Covid-19 exposure

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      The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has found close-fitting surgical masks worn underneath cloth masks – known as double masking – can significantly enhance protection against Covid-19.This is the first CDC-backed research to recommend “double-masking”, although the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr Anthony Fauci, has recommended the public consider the measure in past briefings.“There’s nothing wrong with people wearing two masks,” Fauci said at a press briefing one week before the research was released. “I often myself wear two masks.”The CDC study found the most protective masks fit well around the face “to prevent leakage of air around the masks edges”, and also recommended knotting ear loops near the facial covering portion of the mask to contour the mask closer to the face.The study did not look at the effectiveness of respirators, like N95s, and most health authorities recommend the public continue to reserve respirators for medical personnel.This CDC study compared wearing no mask, a poorly fitted surgical mask, cloth-only mask and double-masking in a simulation of respiratory droplets between two people – a source and a receiver.The study found when people wear a well-fitted surgical mask covered by a cloth mask, they can increase their own protection from aerosol droplets by 90% or more, and that possible transmission is significantly reduced when both parties wore masks.“Universal masking is a highly effective means to slow the spread of Sars-CoV-2 when combined with other protective measures, such as physical distancing, avoiding crowds and poorly ventilated indoor spaces, and good hand hygiene,” the study found.Importantly, the study also had limitations. The findings are not generalizable to men with beards and facial hair, which can interfere with masks, or to children, whose faces are smaller. As well, the study did not compare two surgical masks or two cloth masks, and the study looked at only one type of cloth mask, though there are many types of mask on the market.Fourteen states and Washington DC have universal masking policies. The Joe Biden administration also recently ordered masks be worn on all federal grounds and on domestic transport. Biden called on all Americans to wear masks for the first 100 days of his presidency, calling it a “patriotic duty”.Recent forecasts have also begun to take universal masking into account. If 95% of people wore masks in public, forecasters at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation believe more than 116,000 lives could be saved by 1 June, compared with the institute’s “worst-case” scenario, in which 702,000 people could die from Covid-19.The CDC first recommended the public wear cloth masks in April 2020, about one month after the American north-east was hit hard by the virus. At the time, those recommendations were vague, asking Americans to consider wearing masks, “fashioned from household items or made at home from common materials at low cost”.While the science on face coverings is “advancing rapidly”, a recent review in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences noted face coverings have been worn to contain airborne pathogens since the 13th century. More