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      in World Politics

      Does Afghanistan Have a Green Future?

      by

      Everyone has a different doomsday scenario for Afghanistan once US and NATO troops withdraw by September 11. The Taliban will take over and reimpose their repressive social agenda. Al-Qaeda will multiply rapidly and again become a global threat. Rival warlords will split apart the country. Another wave of Afghan refugees will overwhelm Europe. And then there’s the scenario in which China basically takes over the country, or at least the most sought-after parts of the country: the resources that lie beneath Afghan soil.

      “Afghanistan is one of the richest mining regions in the world, holding untapped mineral wealth and rare Earth elements estimated at roughly $3 trillion,” writes Chris Dolan in The Hill. “Competition with China over mineral wealth is intensifying and Afghanistan presents China with a new opportunity to expand its mining and transportation projects in the Belt and Road initiative.”

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      So far, the China “threat,” like all the others, is hypothetical since Beijing has been hesitant to invest a lot into the war-torn country. In 2007, China contracted to build a large copper mine at Mes Aynak but has done so little to set up operations there that the Afghan government is considering retendering the contract to another investor. The Chinese have their own complaints about the Mes Aynak arrangement, particularly around security and renegotiating some of the terms of the contract. Other than the stalled copper mine and some oil exploration, Chinese investments in Afghanistan have been minimal compared to what Beijing is pouring into neighboring Pakistan.

      Whether to block China, thwart al-Qaeda or muscle through a power-sharing deal with the Taliban, the United States has no plans to abandon Afghanistan completely. The Biden administration is looking to move US bases there to another country, perhaps in Central Asia. In the meantime, Washington will maintain its air war from aircraft carriers or from more distant points in the Middle East, and it will continue to train and provide financial support for the Afghan army.

      Embed from Getty Images

      As for ensuring that Afghanistan rises from the bottom of the world’s social and economic indices — currently, it’s the least peaceful, one of the most corrupt and one of the worst-off countries in terms of human development — the US appears to be washing its hands of any responsibility. So much for the Pottery Barn rule. From Washington’s perspective, Afghanistan was broken long before the 2001 invasion. Mission (never-to-be) accomplished.

      Indeed, in his remarks last week on “the way forward in Afghanistan,” President Joe Biden had very little to say about Afghanistan itself, aside from its military and the various threats the country poses to the United States. He said virtually nothing about the Afghan economy, Afghan society or the Afghan people. At most, the United States appears to be bracing for the worst-case scenario and preparing to minimize the impact on US national interests.

      A Different Future for Afghanistan

      When Seth Warren Rose looks at Afghanistan, he doesn’t see red, he sees green: the green of money, yes, but more importantly the green of environmental sustainability. “I grew up with Vietnam being considered a war not a country,” he told me. “Afghanistan is the same. Americans think of Afghanistan only as a war. But there are 30 million-plus people living there.”

      Rose’s outfit, the Eneref Institute, is gathering support from Afghan politicians for a bold initiative to make Afghanistan carbon-neutral. “If you look at the carbon footprint of Afghanistan, it’s minimal,” Rose continued. “They haven’t really industrialized. Obviously, they’ll let the world in once they establish a peace. But why don’t they establish a mechanism, as long as they’re selling their resources, to do so in a way that’s non-toxic, energy-efficient, and net-carbon zero?”

      As Rose explained to me, Eneref’s proposal is to keep Afghanistan’s oil in the ground but to develop methods of extracting other valuable underground resources in an environmentally more sustainable manner. In this way, the country could “use its mineral wealth to leapfrog industrialization.” This Lead the Leap campaign has lined up a number of prominent Afghans as advisers and secured the support of the Afghan senate.

      Extracting Afghanistan’s mineral wealth in a carbon-neutral fashion is easier said than done. Extractive industries are notoriously dirty, responsible for 80% of the planet’s biodiversity loss and half the world’s carbon emissions (and that’s just in the extraction process). Workers die in large numbers in the mining sector, whether immediately in accidents or through exposure to dangerous substances over the long term. Communities around mines have to deal with often-horrifying pollution in their air, land and water. And wherever mines extract valuable substances, conflict is sure to follow (see, for example, “blood diamonds”).

      Nor is it so easy to leapfrog over the extraction industry into a clean energy future. Many green technologies, such as solar panels, are dependent on an array of minerals like copper and zinc, while wind turbines and electric vehicles require inputs like cobalt, lithium and rare earth elements.

      Eneref’s bid to green Afghanistan’s mining sector is part of a much larger effort to make the entire production chain of the extraction industry sustainable. The World Bank, for instance, has launched a Climate Smart Mining initiative that focuses on using renewable energy in mining operations, preventing deforestation and promoting sustainable land-use strategies, and reusing minerals to minimize waste.

      The mining industry is also responsible for its share of “greenwashing,” making only cosmetic changes before proceeding with business as usual. Civil society organizations, shareholders and committed politicians can put pressure on companies to adhere to international regulations and corporate codes of conduct. But particularly in poor countries like Afghanistan, which are desperate enough for revenue in the short term to overlook longer-term environmental consequences, mining companies are more willing to cut corners when it comes to carbon emissions.

      But there’s another option.

      The Next OPEC?

      Afghanistan has little leverage over mining operations beyond the $3 trillion of natural resources beneath its soil. That wealth is useless, however, if Afghanistan can’t get it out of the ground. Perhaps the Chinese reluctance to invest more into copper extraction is a godsend. China, after all, pays little attention to sustainability in its extraction operations overseas.

      Many countries, like Congo and Venezuela, are in the same position as Afghanistan. If they rebuff China or any other potential investor, the latter can turn to more amenable investment opportunities elsewhere.

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      Unless, of course, all mineral-rich countries form a new cartel. Let’s call this cartel OMEC, the Organization of Mineral-Exporting Countries. This mineral-version of OPEC could impose its own carbon-reducing restrictions on the extraction industry. “No one country has the wherewithal, the power, the influence, to demand that Russia, China and the United States follow carbon-neutral rules,” Rose concluded. “So, let’s gather a third of the world to create a union.”

      Remember, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) wasn’t just a mechanism to extract more money from the petroleum-desperate. It was originally designed to restrict oil production. As Lester Brown recounts in “Building a Sustainable Society,” the founder of OPEC, Venezuelan Minister of Mines and Hydrocarbons Juan Pablo Perez Alfonso, believed that “his mission in life was to stop the waste of valuable energy resources. When describing his early vision of OPEC, he said, ‘Most people see OPEC as a way to raise oil prices, but I see it as a way to lower the use of energy.’ Shortly before he died in late 1979, he referred to OPEC as the ‘leading ecology group in the world.’”

      OMEC could similarly perform a valuable ecological function by regulating the extraction of minerals to keep the price high, reduce waste and help turn countries like Afghanistan into the mineral equivalent of a Gulf state. Of course, to avoid the “resource curse,” OMEC members would have to submit to serious anti-corruption programs, devote profits to communal advancement rather than individual wealth and set aside a portion of proceeds to future contingencies (like Norway’s oil fund).

      But most of all, OMEC members must leverage their relatively small carbon footprints into economic advantage. I’ve written elsewhere about how a country like North Korea, which lags far behind South Korea on virtually every economic and social indicator, could parlay its single advantage of a smaller carbon footprint into a clean energy future that would lead the Korean peninsula and the region. Like Afghanistan, North Korea has significant mineral resources that could finance such a transformation.

      For decades, countries like North Korea and Afghanistan were promised material advancement — leading perhaps someday to membership in the club of richest nations called the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) — if they just followed the conventional path of industrialization. The poorest of the poor haven’t made much progress in the last couple decades, and that industrial model has proved disastrous on a number of levels. Perhaps it’s finally time for them to band together according to an entirely different model of economic cooperation and development.

      *[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

      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 World Politics

      The Case of Forced Cremations in Sri Lanka

      by

      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.

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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

      Val Demings: officer who shot Ma’Khia Bryant ‘responded as he was trained’

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      Val Demings, a Democratic congresswoman and a former police chief, said on Sunday the officer who fatally shot teenager Ma’Khia Bryant in Ohio this week “responded as he was trained to do”.In an interview with CBS’s Face the Nation, Demings spoke about the Columbus officer’s actions and how her time as Orlando police chief informed her perspective on police reform.Ma’Khia, 16, was shot and killed on Tuesday, about 20 minutes before the former police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of murdering George Floyd in Minneapolis last year.Franklin county, where Ma’Khia was killed, has one of the highest rates of fatal police shootings in the US. In a departure from protocol, officials released body camera footage soon after Ma’Khia was killed. The video appears to show her swinging a knife at another individual. Officer Nicholas Reardon shoots at Ma’Khia, who falls.One of Ma’Khia’s close friends, Aaliyaha Tucker, told the Columbus Dispatch her friend was funny, kind, helpful and outgoing. “She’ll talk about how beautiful that you are,” Tucker said. “She was just a nice person.”On Saturday, a rally was held in memory of Ma’Khia’s at the Ohio statehouse.On CBS, host John Dickerson asked Demings about Reardon’s conduct, which would still be protected under a police reform bill, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which has passed the US House. The bill would restrain police officers from using excessive force unless a third party was in danger and de-escalation was not possible.“Everybody has the benefit of slowing the video down and seizing the perfect moment,” Demings said. “The officer on the street does not have that ability. He or she has to make those split-second decisions and they’re tough. “But the limited information that I know in viewing the video, it appears that the officer responded as he was trained to do with the main thought of preventing a tragedy and a loss of life of the person who was about to be assaulted.”Dickerson asked what Demings would say to officers who believe they are being scrutinized unfairly because of an increased focus on accountability. She said that when she spoke to officers, she told them to remember their training and that they work with human beings, and to use compassion.“The overwhelming majority of law enforcement officers in this nation are good people who go to work every day to protect and serve our communities,” Demings said. “I remind them of that. Always stand on the right side. Speak up.” More

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      in US Politics

      Arizona Republicans deploy Cyber Ninjas in pro-Trump election audit

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      Months after Donald Trump’s election defeat, Republicans in Arizona are challenging the outcome with an unprecedented effort to audit results in their most populous county – all run by a Florida company, Cyber Ninjas, with no elections experience.The state senate used its subpoena power to take possession of all 2.1m ballots in Maricopa county and the machines that counted them, along with computer hard drives full of data. The materials were then handed to Cyber Ninjas, a consultancy run by a man who has shared unfounded conspiracy theories claiming official election results are illegitimate.Elections professionals fear the process will severely undermine faith in democracy.“I think the activities that are taking place here are reckless and they in no way, shape or form resemble an audit,” said Jennifer Morrell, a partner at The Elections Group, a consulting firm advising state and local officials which has not worked in Arizona.Conspiracy theories about Joe Biden’s victory have had particular staying power in Arizona, which went Democratic for just the second time in 72 years. On Friday, Trump predicted the audit would reveal fraud and prompt similar reviews in other states he lost.“Thank you state senators and others in Arizona for commencing this full forensic audit,” he said in a statement. “I predict the results will be startling!”Cyber Ninjas began a manual recount on Friday, a day after Democrats asked a judge to put an end to the audit. The judge ordered the company to follow ballot and voter secrecy laws and demanded it turn over written procedures and training manuals before a hearing on Monday. He offered to pause the count over the weekend if Democrats posted a $1m bond to cover added expenses. The party declined.On a since-deleted Twitter account, Cyber Ninjas owner Doug Logan used hashtags and shared memes popular with people promoting unsupported allegations casting doubt on Biden’s victory. Logan says his personal views are irrelevant because he is running a transparent audit with video streamed online.“There’s a lot of Americans here, myself included, that are really bothered by the way our country is being ripped apart right now,” Logan said. “We want a transparent audit to be in place so that people can trust the results and can get everyone on the same page.”Logan refuses to disclose who is paying him or who is counting the ballots, and will not commit to using bipartisan teams for the process.The Republican-dominated Arizona senate refuses to let media observe the count. Reporters can accept a six-hour shift as an official observer but photography and note-taking are prohibited. It would be a violation of journalistic ethics for reporters to participate in an event they were covering.The state senate has put up $150,000 for the audit but Logan has acknowledged that is not enough to cover his expenses. A rightwing cable channel, One America News Network, raised money from unknown contributors which went directly to Cyber Ninjas. Logan would not commit to disclosing the donors and would not provide an estimate for the cost of his audit.Cyber Ninjas plans to have teams of three people manually count each ballot, looking only at the presidential and US Senate contests, which were won by Democrats.Logan said the counters were members of law enforcement and the military as well as retirees. He would not say how many were Democrats or Republicans and would not commit to ensuring the counting teams are bipartisan.The process was to be overseen by volunteers. As of a week ago, 70% were Republicans, according to Ken Bennett, a Republican former secretary of state serving as a liaison between the Senate and the auditors.Cyber Ninjas plans to review ballot-counting machines and data and to scan the composition of fibers in paper ballots in search of fakes. It plans to go door-to-door in select precincts to ask people if they voted. Logan was vague about how the precincts were chosen but said a statistical analysis was done “based on voter histories”.The audit has been beset by mistakes. Hand counters began the day using blue pens, which are banned in ballot counting rooms because they can be read by ballot machines. A crew from a group of Phoenix television stations, azfamily, had unfettered access to the supposedly secure facility as auditors were setting up equipment and receiving ballots and machines.Election experts said hand counts are prone to errors and questioned a lack of transparent procedures for adjudicating voter intent.Maricopa county conducted pre- and post-election reviews to check the accuracy of voting machines, including a hand count of a representative sample of ballots, as required by state law. The county hired two auditing firms that reported no malicious software or incorrect counting equipment.“We’re going to set up a new norm where we don’t accept the outcome of elections in a free and fair and just democracy, and that is the core of what is at stake here,” said Tammy Patrick, senior adviser at the Democracy Fund and a former Maricopa county elections official.“I think that is incredibly, incredibly problematic.” More

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      in US Politics

      McCarthy dodges questions about what Trump said as Capitol riot raged

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      One of the few House Republicans to vote for Donald Trump’s impeachment over the US Capitol attack said on Sunday his party was “in a perpetual state of denial” over the former president’s lie that his defeat by Joe Biden was the result of electoral fraud.At the same time, the Republican leader in the House refused to deny that during the deadly riot on 6 January, when he asked Trump to call off supporters the then president told to “fight like hell” to overturn the election, Trump said: “Well, Kevin, I guess these people were more upset about the election than you are.”Representative Peter Meijer spoke to CNN’s Inside Politics. The minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, appeared on Fox News Sunday. Both are part of a party which remains in the former president’s grip.In February a Republican congresswoman, Jaime Herrera Beutler, said McCarthy told her what Trump said on a call as the riot progressed.“When McCarthy finally reached the president on 6 January and asked him to publicly and forcefully call off the riot,” she said, “the president initially repeated the falsehood that it was antifa [leftwing activists] that had breached the Capitol.“McCarthy refuted that and told the president that these were Trump supporters. That’s when, according to McCarthy, the president said: ‘Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.’”Her account contradicted Trump’s claim that he took immediate action to stop an attack that resulted in five deaths as the mob sought lawmakers including Vice-President Mike Pence to kidnap and possibly kill. More than 400 charges have been brought.News outlets have also reported that the call between McCarthy and Trump became heated, the minority leader asking: “Who the fuck do you think you are talking to?”McCarthy was initially critical of Trump’s behaviour but quickly backed down and supported the president when he was impeached for inciting an insurrection.Meijer and Herrera Beutler were among 10 Republicans who voted with Democrats to send Trump for trial in the Senate, the most bipartisan such vote in US history. Trump was acquitted when only seven Republican senators voted to find him guilty.Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace asked McCarthy if Herrera Beutler’s account of his conversation with Trump was accurate.“I was the first person to contact [Trump] when the riot was going on,” McCarthy said. “He didn’t see it. What he ended the call [he] was saying, telling me he’ll put something out to make sure to stop this. And that’s what he did, he put a video out later.”Wallace replied that Trump’s appeal to supporters to stop the violence came “quite a lot later. And it was a pretty weak video. But I’m asking you specifically, did he say to you, ‘I guess some people are more concerned about the election than you are’?”“[In] my conversation with the president,” McCarthy said, “I engaged in the idea of making sure we could stop what was going on inside the Capitol. At that moment in time the president said he would help.”McCarthy was also asked if Trump “ever reached out to you since that report came out to discuss what you talked about in the 6 January phone call, and did you say to him, ‘I can’t because we’re under oath’?”“No, that never happened,” McCarthy said. “Never even close.”“And if it did happen,” Wallace said, “you would agree that would be witness tampering?”“Yeah,” said McCarthy, “but never happened, never even came close, never had any conversation like that. Never heard that rumour before till today.”McCarthy’s denials found an echo – or a reflection – in Meijer’s remarks to CNN.Like others who voted for impeachment, the Michigan representative has attracted a pro-Trump challenger. On Sunday he said the former president’s lies were “being pursued at the exclusion of actually being able to win more elections”.“Now one of the biggest challenges,” he said, “is if you don’t believe that you lost, if you think that the 2020 election was stolen, and then you drag that out and say, ‘Well, of course then the Georgia Senate elections must be stolen too,’ you just live in a perpetual state of denial. And I know there are plenty who don’t deny it, but it’s a conundrum.”On Fox News Sunday, McCarthy also refused to commit to supporting a congressional investigation of the Capitol attack, despite concessions from Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, in an attempt to get Republicans on board.Insisting any investigation should look into “political violence across this country”, McCarthy claimed the issue was “too important to negotiate in the press”. More

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      Republicans fret over AOC backing for Biden as 100-day mark draws near

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      As Joe Biden welcomed a series of polls showing majority approval for his first 100 days in the White House, and prepared to address Congress for the first time on Wednesday, Republicans attacked his progressive record in office.One senior senator said: “AOC said his first 100 days exceeded her expectations. That’s all you need to know.”Lindsey Graham of South Carolina was talking to Fox News Sunday about remarks by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a congresswoman and leading progressive from New York.Speaking to an online meeting on Friday, she said: “The Biden administration and President Biden have definitely exceeded expectations that progressives had.”Citing the $1.9tn Covid relief and stimulus bill, Ocasio-Cortez said Biden had been “very impressive” in negotiating with Congress to pass “progressive legislation”. She also voiced dissatisfaction with Biden’s $2.25tn infrastructure package.On Sunday, speaking to CNN’s State of the Union, Vice-President Kamala Harris trumpeted the administration’s achievements.“We are going to lift half of America’s children out of poverty,” she said. “How about that? How about that? Think about that … That’s good stuff. That’s really good stuff.”Republicans oppose the price tag on the American Jobs Plan and priorities within it, including plans to raise taxes on wealthier Americans and proposed spending on environmental initiatives.So do some Democrats – on Sunday the West Virginia senator Joe Manchin, a key vote in the 50-50 chamber, told CNN he favoured a slimmed down, “more targeted” bill.Graham was not the only senior GOP figure to complain about something many on the left have praised: that Biden campaigned as a moderate but is governing more as a progressive.Also speaking to Fox News Sunday, the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, accused Biden of “a bait and switch. The bait was he was going to govern as bipartisan but the switch is, he’s governed as a socialist”.Graham said: “During the campaign, he made us all believe that Joe Biden would be the moderate choice, that he really thought court-packing was a bonehead idea. All of a sudden we got a commission to change the structure of the supreme court. Making DC a state, I think that’s a very radical idea that will change the make-up of the United States Senate.”Progressives defend Biden’s commission on the supreme court as a necessary answer to Republican hardball tactics that skewed the panel 6-3 in favour of rightwing judges. However, Biden’s commission to examine the issue both contains conservative voices and is unlikely to produce an increase beyond nine justices any time soon.A bill to make DC a state, thereby giving the city representation it currently lacks and almost certainly electing two Democratic senators, has passed the House but is unlikely to pass the Senate.“AOC said his first 100 days exceeded her expectations,” Graham added. “That’s all you need. I like Joe Biden, but I’m in the 43%.”Sunday brought a slew of polls. Fox News put the president’s approval rating at 54% positive to 43% negative, nine points up on Donald Trump at the same time four years ago. NBC put Biden up 51%-43%, ABC made it 52%-42% and CBS reported a 58%-42% split.Graham also insisted Biden had “been a disaster on foreign policy”.The South Carolina senator was once an eager ally of John McCain, the late Arizona senator, presidential nominee and a leading GOP voice on foreign affairs. Biden was a senator from Delaware for 36 years and chaired the foreign relations committee.“The border is in chaos,” Graham said, “the Iranians are off the mat … Afghanistan is gonna fall apart, Russia and China are already pushing him around. So I’m very worried.“I think he’s been a very destabilising president, and economically thrown a wet blanket over the recovery, wanting to raise taxes a large amount and regulate America basically out of business.“So I’m not very impressed with the first 100 days. This is not what I thought I would get from Joe Biden.” More

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      Troy Carter wins Louisiana US House seat after fierce Democratic battle

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      The Democrat Troy Carter won a special election for a vacant US House seat in Louisiana, defeating a state senate colleague in an acrimonious clash that divided New Orleans.Carter easily beat Karen Carter Peterson on Saturday in the race for Louisiana’s only Democrat-held seat in Congress, in a victory for the moderate side of the party after Peterson, who would have been the first Black woman elected to Congress from the state, planted herself in the progressive camp.The state senators had both made previous failed bids for the seat and the race centered mainly on personality.The second district – majority Black, based on New Orleans but extending up the Mississippi into Baton Rouge and covering areas with severe pollution problems – was open because Cedric Richmond left the position shortly after he won last year’s election to work as a special adviser to Joe Biden.Each candidate touted high-profile endorsements.Peterson had backing from the voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams, progressive New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and New Orleans mayor LaToya Cantrell, among others.In addition to Richmond, Carter had backing from No3 House Democratic leader James Clyburn of South Carolina, New Orleans district attorney Jason Williams and every Black member of the state senate besides Peterson.“I will wake up every day with you on my mind, on my heart, and I will work for you tirelessly,” Carter told supporters. He also said he would focus on economic recovery from Covid-19, overhauling criminal sentencing laws, protecting LGBTQ rights and fighting for clean air in the district.Peterson, a former chair of Louisiana’s Democratic party, conceded soon after polls closed and pledged to “keep swinging hard for the people”.Carter and Peterson reached Saturday’s runoff after a 15-candidate March primary. Carter raised more cash but faced attack ads from out-of-state groups.In one debate, Peterson described herself as “bold and progressive”. Carter is known more for his ability to work across party lines. Peterson suggested Carter cozied up to Republicans. He said Peterson’s dogmatic approach damaged her ability to pass legislation.“In order to get things done, they need to send someone to Washington who can build bridges, not walls, that can establish relationships that mean something, not kick rocks because you don’t get your way, not spew lies because you’re losing,” Carter said.The two candidates backed an increase in the minimum wage, the legalization of recreational marijuana and abortion rights. They supported changes in how police are funded, though Peterson went further, saying she backed a “complete restructuring”.Both Carter and Peterson said they support Medicare for All. But while Peterson fully embraced shifting to a government-run, single-payer plan, Carter said he’d like people to have the option of retaining employer-financed coverage. More

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      In space, no one will hear Bezos and Musk’s workers call for basic rights | Robert Reich

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      Elon Musk’s SpaceX just won a $2.9bn Nasa contract to land astronauts on the moon, beating out Jeff Bezos.The money isn’t a big deal for either of them. Musk is worth $179.7bn. Bezos, $197.8bn. Together, that’s almost as much as the bottom 40% of Americans combined.And the moon is only their stepping stone.Musk says SpaceX will land humans on Mars by 2026 and wants to establish a colony by 2050. Its purpose, he says, will be to ensure the survival of our species.“If we make life multi-planetary, there may come a day when some plants and animals die out on Earth but are still alive on Mars,” he tweeted.Bezos is also aiming to build extraterrestrial colonies, but in space rather than on Mars. He envisions “very large structures, miles on end” that will “hold a million people or more each”.Back on our home planet, Musk is building electric cars, which will help the environment. And Bezos is allowing us to shop from home, which might save a bit on gas and thereby also help the environment.But Musk and Bezos are treating their workers like, well, dirt.Most workers won’t be able to escape into outer space. A few billionaires are already lining upLast spring, after calling government stay-at-home orders “fascist” and tweeting “FREE AMERICA NOW”, Musk reopened his Tesla factory in Fremont, California before health officials said it was safe to do so. Almost immediately, 10 workers came down with the virus. As cases mounted, Musk fired workers who took unpaid leave. Seven months later, at least 450 Tesla workers had been infected.Musk’s production assistants, as they’re called, earn $19 an hour – hardly enough to afford rent and other costs of living in northern California. Musk is virulently anti-union. A few weeks ago, the National Labor Relations Board found that Tesla illegally interrogated workers over suspected efforts to form a union, fired one and disciplined another for union-related activities, threatened workers if they unionized and barred employees from communicating with the media.Bezos isn’t treating his earthling employees much better. His warehouses impose strict production quotas and subject workers to seemingly arbitrary firings, total surveillance and 10-hour workdays with only two half-hour breaks – often not enough time to get to a bathroom and back. Bezos boasts that his workers get $15 an hour but that comes to about $31,000 a year for a full-time worker, less than half the US median family income. And no paid sick leave.Bezos has fired at least two employees who publicly complained about lack of protective equipment during the pandemic. To thwart the recent union drive in Bessemer, Alabama, Amazon required workers to attend anti-union meetings, warned they’d have to pay union dues (untrue – Alabama is a “right-to-work” state), and threatened them with lost pay and benefits.Musk and Bezos are the richest people in America and their companies are among the country’s fastest growing. They thereby exert huge influence on how other chief executives understand their obligations to employees.The gap between the compensation of CEOs and average workers is already at a record high. They inhabit different worlds.If Musk and Bezos achieve their extraterrestrial aims, these worlds could be literally different. Most workers won’t be able to escape into outer space. A few billionaires are already lining up.The super-rich have always found means of escaping the perils of everyday life. During the plagues of the 17th century, European aristocrats decamped to their country estates. During the 2020 pandemic, wealthy Americans headed to the Hamptons, their ranches in Wyoming or their yachts.The rich have also found ways to protect themselves from the rest of humanity – in fortified castles, on hillsides safely above smoke and sewage, in grand mansions far from the madding crowds. Some of today’s super rich have created doomsday bunkers in case of nuclear war or social strife.But as earthly hazards grow – not just environmental menaces but also social instability related to growing inequality – escape will become more difficult. Bunkers won’t suffice. Not even space colonies can be counted on.I’m grateful to Musk for making electric cars and to Bezos for making it easy to order stuff online. But I wish they’d set better examples for protecting and lifting the people who do the work.It’s understandable that the super wealthy might wish to escape the gravitational pull of the rest of us. But there’s really no escape. If they’re serious about survival of the species, they need to act more responsibly toward working people here on terra firma. More