Carl Bildt at The Washington Post writes—Trump’s Denmark saga of the absurd:
Apart from the surreal theater of the entire thing, and the profoundly insulting behavior toward a long-standing and loyal ally, the issues of Greenland and the Arctic are serious indeed.
But it’s certainly not exchanging territories that is the way forward. Greenland is not for sale, and neither is Svalbard or Iceland. Instead, the necessary way forward is developing cooperation between all the stakeholders of this vast and challenging region to address challenges that are common to all of them. And climate change and its effects are by far the most serious of them.
When the United States in the form of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo turned up at the ministerial meeting of the Arctic Council in Rovaniemi, Finland, he spent most of his energy attacking China and ended up vetoing the communique that had been agreed upon by everyone else. The reason? It mentioned climate change, and that was not acceptable to the Trump administration. All others had been discussing little but the rising temperatures, which are happening two or three times faster here than anywhere else on Earth.
All the others issued the paper agreed between them anyhow. Pompeo flew away, saying he was on his way to Greenland. He didn’t show up — he canceled the visit.
Canceling visits now seems to be what remains of Arctic policy for the United States. Perhaps just as well. All other countries are keen to try to prevent Greenland from turning green again. We would all suffer the consequences.
Abigail Weinberg at Mother Jones writes—Stop Sharing Those Viral Photos of the Amazon Burning:
The hashtag #AmazonRainforest was trending on Twitter Wednesday, with many users outraged that the mainstream media was not sufficiently reporting on the fires that have ravaged the world’s largest rainforest. There are very real fires burning in the Amazon and they do deserve more coverage, but there’s a big problem with this viral campaign: Most of the photos claiming to show the fires are fakes.
The Amazon has experienced more than 80 percent more fires in 2019 than in the same period last year, according to a National Institute for Space Research (INPE) report from August 2019. Many of them were started by farmers deliberately clearing land for cattle ranching, Reuters reports, and they have increased since Jair Bolsonaro, who is unsympathetic to rainforest preservation efforts, took office as president of Brazil in January. [...]
But many of the viral images that purportedly show the blazes are actually from different fires.
Alexandra Petri at The Washington Post writes—Oh, good, Donald Trump is God now:
Glorious news, everyone! Donald Trump is God! Everything makes sense now, and the final purpose of all things is at last clear. Donald Trump on Wednesday proudly quoted a messenger who said he was “the second coming of God,” and he described himself as “the chosen one,” looking up at the sky. As I said, wonderful, good, normal news!
How did we not recognize it before? He can multiply crowds at a wish. He can make the night day and the day night. He can make Melania Trump appear in a window where she is not. He can make friends enemies and enemies, friends. He can stare unblinkingly into the sun (at an eclipse, no less), for the sun shall not strike him by day. He turned Chris Christie into a pillar of salt; his arrival was heralded by a burned-out Bush. With Trump, all things are possible. Don’t give him a baby to cut in half; he’ll do it.
*Donald Trump’s entire staff transforms into snakes*
Richard Flanagan at The Guardian writes—Six sentences of hope: defining a unifying vision in the face of the climate crisis:
In 1971, the Liberal Billy McMahon – routinely judged the worst Australian prime minister ever, an achievement not to be underestimated in a nation where the worst routinely rule – created a new portfolio: Environment, Arts and Aboriginal Affairs. Nobody wanted the job: given it, Peter Howson observed that he was responsible for “trees, boongs and poofters.”
What’s changed with our conservative rulers over the last half century? On the evidence of the shame the prime minister, Scott Morrison, visited on all Australians last week at the Pacific Islands Forum, not very much. There he tried to pressure Pacific leaders to remove from the final forum communique and climate change statement all references to coal, to limiting warming to less than 1.5C, and to setting out a plan for net zero emissions by 2050.
Tuvalu’s prime minister, Enele Sopoaga, was too diplomatic when he told Scott Morrison: “You are trying to save your economy, I am trying to save my people.”
Because it isn’t Australia’s economic security that is at stake, but the security of the profits of coalmining corporations and their owners – the likes of Gautam Adani and Gina Rinehart – along with the security of the seats of influential Queensland MPs for whom Clive Palmer’s $60m-plus election campaign was so important.
Lloyd Green at The Guardian writes—Jew-baiting is part of the Trump playbook. It's a feature, not a bug:
Three years ago, thinly veiled antisemitic messages from Team Trump were features, not bugs. Pepe the Frog was a constant campaign meme. In July 2016, Trump tweeted out an image of the star of David, Hillary Clinton and piles of money. After the initial stir, the six-pointed star was replaced by Trump with a circle. Still, folks “got it”, on both sides, just like in Charlottesville.
Then just days before the election, George Soros, Janet Yellen and Lloyd Blankfein took center stage in Trump’s closing ad. Back then Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar were not on the stage – someone else would have to make do.
Said differently, religion and ethnicity were fair game for Trump from start to finish, and Jews were not off-limits. As one of Trump’s lawyers told me, it was about expedience, that’s all; nothing personal, just look at Jared Kushner. Or as Steve Bannon confided to Michael Wolff, he couldn’t vouch that Trump wasn’t a racist, but Bannon could say that Trump “probably wasn’t an antisemite”.
Bari Weiss at The New York Times writes—Donald Trump and the ‘Disloyal’ Jews:
The major debate tearing apart the American Jewish community on this particular Wednesday is whether or not the 45th president of the United States just accused them — us — of disloyalty to Israel and the Jewish people or of disloyalty to the Republican Party and the man who has remade it in his image. [...]
Brace yourself for further presidential Twitter rants on the matter because I do not believe that Mr. Trump is capable of higher-order thoughts about loyalty — loyalty to the office in which he sits, loyalty to the Republic, and, above all, loyalty to the idea of keeping America united. Fealty to him is the only litmus test.
Indeed, if we have learned anything about the former host of “The Apprentice,” it is that he looks at the world in the exact way he looked at those contestants. You’re a winner or you’re a loser. You’re for him or you’re a turncoat. In his small mind, if you’re on Team Jew, you vote for his party because Republicans are pro-Israel and, therefore, pro-Jew. If you’re on Team Anti-Semite, well, then you vote for the other guys.
All of which is why I have zero doubt that if the prime minister of Israel criticized Mr. Trump on the wrong day or in the wrong way, the president would dump Israel at that very moment. And it is why anyone with a shred of knowledge about Jewish history should be extremely concerned.
Lev Golinkin at the Los Angeles Times writes—Trump’s disloyalty lie about Jews echoes a blood-soaked anti-Semitic slur:
On Tuesday, when Donald Trump accused American Jews who vote for Democrats of “great disloyalty,” he invoked an anti-Semitic trope that is not just offensive but also historically lethal.
Like the racist fear of African American men assaulting white women, the idea that Jews are suspect citizens of their home nations is deep-seated, pernicious and blood-soaked. It persists over time, from Exodus to the Gospel of Matthew in the Bible, from the ovens of Auschwitz to last year’s massacre at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue. Hearing it echoed from the White House is not only chilling but also representative of yet another way the Trump administration is eroding American values. It denies a fundamental American value: e pluribus unum — out of many, one.
Will Bunch at The Philadelphia Inquirer writes—Anti-fascism won WWII for America. Now Trump calls it ‘domestic terrorism.’ What the...?
Will we kowtow to Trump and his white nationalist base and accept only the narrowest possible meaning of anti-fascism? — “antifa,” which to millions of folks who only get information from the quasi-state-media known as the Fox News Channel has been both mischaracterized and then amplified into a scary violent army. And will they succeed in taking the radical, sometimes misguided and occasionally reprehensible acts of a very few to then outlaw legitimate dissent against white supremacy?
Or can we successfully define “anti-fascism” as something much closer to what it really is — the masses of people who show up in force in places like Portland not to commit acts of violence but to make a public stand? The ones who come out to say that they won’t respond to either the violent vanguard of white supremacist groups — like those who carried torches, chanted against Jews and murdered the peaceful protester Heather Heyer in Charlottesville — or the increasingly neo-fascist tendencies of the 45th president by sitting at home on their couches?
And can we acknowledge that the ideals of American anti-fascism — that the first green shoots of a hate-fueled, authoritarian society need to be not tolerated but tamped down and crushed before it gets to be too late — were forged in blood in places like Normandy and Iwo Jima and enshrined in the slogan, “Never Again!”?
Nicole M. Aschoff at Jacobin writes—An Industrial Policy That Puts Workers First:
Industrial policy is en vogue again. The Financial Times editorial board recently announced its tentative support for industrial policy in the United States, writing that “the need to transition to a worker-led economy is increasingly clear.”
The FT isn’t calling for socialism. Instead, the studiously bland piece highlights recent suggestions (from both Democrats and Republicans) for a reboot of industrial policy and hints that Elizabeth Warren’s “Plan for Economic Patriotism” might not be a terrible idea.
Warren’s proposal is the latest addition to her growing platform of ambitious ideas to overturn the neoliberal status quo. In her industrial policy endeavor, Warren takes on “unpatriotic” US corporations like Levis and General Electric that have offshored production to cheaper locales, “abandoning loyal American workers and hollowing out American cities along the way.” Warren argues:
If we want faster growth, stronger American industry, and more good American jobs, then our government should do what other leading nations do and act aggressively to achieve those goals instead of catering to the financial interests of companies with no particular allegiance to America.
The aggressive action Warren urges includes the establishment of a new federal agency called the Department of Economic Development whose “sole responsibility” is to “create and defend quality, sustainable American jobs.” The DED — which would subsume the Commerce Department, the Small Business Administration, and other agencies that work on job creation — would essentially oversee all trade-related matters, set up worker training and apprenticeship programs, and take a leading role in job-creating research and development. [...]
Warren’s plan is a good start. Despite the FT’s characterization, however, it is not a “worker-led” plan.
E.J. Dionne Jr. writes—Trump is weaponizing evangelicals’ mistrust. And he’s succeeding:
We keep coming back to Trump’s white evangelical base because it seems so strange that religious people with strong moral convictions could embrace someone whose behavior violates so many of the norms they uphold. But party is a big deal these days, and there was nothing extraordinary about Trump’s share of the white evangelical vote. He won what Republican presidential candidates typically win. His 80 percent among white evangelicals in 2016 was hardly a surge from Mitt Romney’s 78 percent in 2012.
In the end, party triumphed over any qualms evangelicals may have felt about the “Access Hollywood” candidate. Long-standing conservative desires (for sympathetic Supreme Court justices) and inclinations (a deep dislike of Hillary Clinton) reinforced what partisanship recommended.
I get why those with strongly held traditional religious views feel hostility from centers of intellectual life and the arts. More secular liberals should consider Yale philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff’s suggestion in “Religion in the University” that religious voices be welcomed at institutions of higher learning in much the same way the once-excluded perspectives of feminists and African Americans are now welcomed. One of the academy’s purposes is to bring those with different backgrounds and experiences into reasoned dialogue. Religious people must be part of that conversation.
But reasoned dialogue is far removed from what’s happening in our politics now, and the irony is that the Trumpification of the evangelicals will only widen the gaps they mourn between themselves and other parts of our society.
Charles M. Blow at The New York Times writes—A Lust for Punishment:
People often wonder how Americans who had been traditional Republicans could line up behind Trump, who most assuredly is not a traditional Republican. They ask how the religious right could warm to a man who is the opposite in terms of character and piety to all that it has hitherto professed.
I have posited that this is in part because Trump has for them transcended the ordinary and mundane and attained the status of folk hero, a realm in which the rules no longer strictly apply.
But I think that there is also another facet worth exploring: the degree to which Trump’s own punitive spirit aligns with and gives voice and muscle to American conservatives’ long simmering punitive lust. And this insatiable desire to inflict pain has particular targets: women (specifically feminists), racial minorities, people who are L.G.B.T.Q. and religious minorities in this country. In short, the punishments are directed at anyone who isn’t part of, or supportive of, the white supremacist patriarchy.
Daphne Wisham at Other Words writes—Saving the Planet Means Fighting Bipartisan Corruption:
Burning fossil fuels boils our planet — that much is generally well known.
But often these fuels do serious damage before they ever get to market. They spill out of pipelines, poison groundwater, or explode on trains. Even when they don’t, building new pipelines and export terminals helps companies sell more fuel — often of the dirtiest variety, like tar sands — which threatens our planet.
That’s why strong grassroots movements have cropped up against transporting tar sands oil via the Keystone XL Pipeline and the TransMountain Pipeline.
With those pipelines still running into resistance, investors in Canada’s Athabasca tar sands region are scrambling to get their oil to market by any means necessary — including shipping crude oil by truck across the Canadian border, then transloading it to trains in North Dakota to get it to West Coast ports.
And as a new report produced by the Center for Sustainable Economy reveals, they’re getting some help from friends in high places.
The report examines two unlikely allies in this effort — former Obama Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and billionaire Trump campaign donor Richard A. Kayne. Their intertwined financial interests are going to absurd lengths to get tar sands crude to export terminals in Oregon.
Sheila McClear at The New Republic writes—
:
In high school, in the late ’90s, my friends and I played hooky and drove to Flint, Michigan, where we heard there was going to be a strike at the Delphi plant, an auto parts supplier to General Motors. We got there just in time to see the men walking out, marching slowly in horizontal lines, joined at the arms. Some of them were singing. An audience stood outside the plant gates, watching silently, and for a moment, everything held still. Later, I learned that 5,800 men and women had struck the Flint East plant, only to be joined by 2,700 strikers at nearby Flint Metal a week later. [...]
A large, traditional strike action like the one I witnessed is now fairly rare. Striking used to be a union’s biggest tool. But in today’s employer-friendly atmosphere, with rife with anti-union legislation like the recent wave of right-to-work laws, strikes are used as an opportunity for employers to break the union, from firing the leaders to lockouts to hiring permanent replacement workers. From 2010 to 2017, there were fewer than 13 strikes involving 1,000 workers per year in the private sector. That’s a major reversal from the average annual number of major strikes in the 1980s (83) and throughout the 1970s (288).
Considering these numbers, it almost feels strange to be writing about unions in America at all right now. Labor unions represent only 6.4 percent of America’s private-sector workers and 10.5 percent of workers overall—the lowest percentages in 100 years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Why concentrate on the tiny minority of workers in union jobs when there are so many blue-collar, pink-collar, and even white-collar workers who can’t get anything close to a fair deal from their bosses?
That’s one of the main questions that Steven Greenhouse, who covered labor and workplace issues for The New York Times for 19 years, asks and answers in his new book, Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor.