Trying to stay alive in Syria’s last rebel-held city
“Help us,” begs a doctor in a hospital that’s been bombed multiple times, “We’re human beings.”
In Idlib, the last rebel stronghold in Syria, hospitals, markets and schools have been systematically targeted. CNN’s Arwa Damon takes us inside the besieged city to meet children, mothers, farmers and others who are struggling to stay alive.
“Help us,” begs a doctor in a hospital that’s been bombed multiple times, “We’re human beings.”In Idlib, the last rebel stronghold in Syria, hospitals, markets and schools have been systematically targeted. CNN’s Arwa Damon takes us inside the besieged city to meet children, mothers, farmers and others who are struggling to stay alive.
New Michael Moore-backed doc tackles alternative energy
Lindsey Bahr, Associated Press August 7, 2019
LOS ANGELES (AP) — What if alternative energy isn’t all it’s cracked up to be? That’s the provocative question explored in the documentary “Planet of the Humans,” which is backed and promoted by filmmaker Michael Moore and directed by one of his longtime collaborators. It premiered last week at his Traverse City Film Festival.
The film, which does not yet have distribution, is a low-budget but piercing examination of what the filmmakers say are the false promises of the environmental movement and why we’re still “addicted” to fossil fuels. Director Jeff Gibbs takes on electric cars, solar panels, windmills, biomass, biofuel, leading environmentalist groups like the Sierra Club, and even figures from Al Gore and Van Jones, who served as Barack Obama’s special adviser for green jobs, to 350.org leader Bill McKibben, a leading environmentalist and advocate for grassroots climate change movements.
Gibbs, who produced Moore’s “Bowling for Columbine” and “Fahrenheit 9/11,” didn’t set out to take on the environmental movement. He said he wanted to know why things weren’t getting better. But when he started pulling on the thread, he and Moore said they were shocked to find how inextricably entangled alternative energy is with coal and natural gas, since they say everything from wind turbines to electric car charging stations are tethered to the grid, and even how the Koch brothers are tied to solar panel production through their glass production business.
“It turned out the wakeup call was about our own side,” Gibbs said in a phone interview. “It was kind of crushing to discover that the things I believed in weren’t real, first of all, and then to discover not only are the solar panels and wind turbines not going to save us … but (also) that there is this whole dark side of the corporate money … It dawned on me that these technologies were just another profit center.”
Both know the film is going to be a “tough pill to swallow.” It was a difficult eye-opener for them as well.
“We all want to feel good about something like the electric car, but in the back of your head somewhere you’ve thought, ‘Yeah, but where is the electricity coming from? And it’s like, ‘I don’t want to think about that, I’m glad we have electric cars,'” Moore said. “I’ve passed by the windmill farms, and oh it’s so beautiful to see them going, and don’t tell me that we’ve gone too far now and it isn’t going to save us … Well, my feeling is just hit me with everything. I’m like let’s just deal with it now, all at once.”
It’s part of the reason why they had to make it independently. Gibbs said he tried for years to get an environmental group on board to help offset the costs, only to be turned down at every door. He was further disheartened when, in the film, he approaches people like Jones, McKibben and a local Sierra Club leader, and asks them about their stance on biofuel and biomass. Biomass, like wood and garbage, can be used to produce heat and is considered a renewable source of energy. It can also be converted to gas or liquid biofuels that can be burned for energy.
He finds every one ill-prepared to comment on their stance about the biomass process, which the documentary says requires cutting down enormous numbers of trees to produce the woodchips that are converted into energy. Neither Jones nor McKibben responded to request for comment from The Associated Press.
“I like so many people in the film and I’m one of those people who wanted to believe all of these years that that was the right path,” Moore said. “(But) I refuse to let us die out. I refuse to let this planet die.”
They were even nervous to show it to the festival crowd, where they expected maybe a “50-50 response.” Instead, they got a standing ovation. And there were even members of The Sierra Club there.
“It’s up to people who actually share the same values to sometimes call each other out and bring out the uncomfortable truths,” Gibbs said. “This is not a film by climate change deniers, this is a film by people who really care about the environment.”
Although the findings will be disheartening, both Gibbs and Moore say they hope that it inspires people to reset and start thinking differently.
“Now we can begin to come up with the right solutions that might make a difference … The film doesn’t have the answers but it will get us asking a better set of questions,” Gibbs said. “I really do trust that when millions of people are discussing an issue, answers will emerge … This is what we do as humans, we solve problems, but we’ve got to have the right questions.”
Steve Kerr, Gregg Popovich slam ‘gutless’ lawmakers after mass shootings: They need to get ‘off their asses’
Ryan Young,Yahoo Sports August 6, 2019
A pair of mass shootings rocked the nation over the weekend, leaving more than 30 dead and dozens more injured in two cities across the country.
A suspect opened fire inside a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, on Saturday morning, leaving 22 people dead and injuring dozens more in the Mexican border city. Just hours later across the country, another shooter opened fire at a bar in Dayton, Ohio. Nine people died, including the alleged shooter’s sister, and 27 were injured.
The El Paso shooting marked the deadliest of the year, and the Dayton shooting marked the 251st mass shooting this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. Sunday was just the 216th day in the calendar year.
Kerr: Somebody could ‘start spraying us with an AR-15’
Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr, one of the most outspoken coaches in the NBA, spoke about the mass shootings on Monday at USA Basketball training camp in Las Vegas. Kerr, one of coach Gregg Popovich’s assistants for the upcoming FIBA World Cup, is a longtime advocate for gun control in the United States and is constantly using his platform to raise awareness on the issue.
Gun control, he said, is always in the front of his mind.
“Somebody could walk in the door in the gym right now and start spraying us with an AR-15,” Kerr said, “They could. It might happen because we’re all vulnerable, whether we go to a concert, a church, the mall or go to the movie theater or a school.
“It’s up to us as Americans to demand change from the gutless leadership that continues to allow this to happen and continues to somehow claim the second amendment is doing its job. The Second Amendment is about the right to defend yourself. The only thing that Second Amendment is doing is leading to mass murder right now. This is all just insanity.”
Kerr’s Twitter feed has been full of posts and reposts calling for stricter gun control, criticizing Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) since the shootings.
Though he’s clearly frustrated with the lack of action in Congress, Kerr does think change is just around the corner.
“It’s going to happen. The momentum is building,” Kerr said, “People are more and more frustrated in our country. I think at this point, the vast majority of people in this country have had it. Now it’s a matter of taking action.”
Kerr did make it clear that he doesn’t have an issue with guns as a whole. It’s the assault-style weapons that he feels, like so many others in the United States, don’t belong in the hands of the public.
“A lot of my friends have had guns. They’ve had them in gun lockers. It was kept safely away. They weren’t carrying around AR-15’s,” Kerr said, “They had hunting rifles. This is not what it’s about. This is not about someone’s ability to own a gun.
“It’s about someone’s ability to have a military style assault rifle with huge magazines. The cops got there in Dayton in one minute after the shooting started. In one minute, the shooter was killed from what I gather. But he killed nine people in one minute because of the gun and the weapon he had. We’re really going to say as Americans we should allow him to carry an AR-15? It’s ridiculous.”
Popovich: Lawmakers need to get ‘off their asses’ and do something
Kerr will be by Popovich’s side when USA Basketball heads to China for the FIBA World Cup later this month. Popovich, who is just as outspoken as Kerr, was asked Tuesday if he thought the team could be a welcome distraction for the country in the wake of the latest shootings.
While he didn’t discredit that idea, he had a much more blunt request of lawmakers instead.
“I think that, you know, the situation we’re all living in now, everybody looks for a little bit of distraction in some way, shape or form,” Popovich said, via Eric Woodyard of the Desert News.
“It’d be a lot better if people in power got off their asses and got something done.”
Though he knows USA Basketball can’t realistically solve any problems in the United States with its performance in the FIBA World Cup — regardless of how they do in the tournament, which kicks off on August 31 and runs through September 15 — Popovich at least hopes they can be a model for the country to build off of.
“We can’t fix the divisiveness in our country,” Popovich said Monday, “But what we can do is be a great example of how people can come together for a common goal and achieve it.
“It’s our responsibility to not only become the best team we can be, but it’s the way we conduct ourselves with USA on our shirts. We’re representing a lot of people.”
Show this handy video to all of your conservative friends who claim that President Obama didn’t accomplish anything in his two terms. He makes President Trump look like a lazy amateur.
Show this handy video to all of your conservative friends who claim that President Obama didn't accomplish anything in his two terms. He makes President Trump look like a lazy amateur.
GOP Rep. Mike Conaway Of Texas Announces Retirement After 15 Years In Congress
Dominique Mosbergen, HuffPost July 31, 2019
GOP reportedly fears a wave of departures as fifth Republican congressman retires in just two weeks
Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas) announced Wednesday that he will not seek reelection in 2020, becoming the fifth congressional Republican in just two weeks to announce an imminent retirement.
“This will be my final term,” he said at a press conference in Texas.
Citing frustrations with gridlock in Congress and the three-term limit on committee chairman positions, the eight-term congressman said he wanted to “leave on my own terms.”
Conaway was first elected to represent Texas’ 11th Congressional District in 2004. He’s the ranking Republican on the House Agriculture Committee and is also a senior member of the House Intelligence Committee and the House Armed Services Committee. Conaway previously gained national attention for his role helming the Intelligence Committee’s probe into Russian election interference.
Conaway’s retirement decision comes on the heels of similar announcements made by GOP Reps. Pete Olson of Texas, Paul Mitchell of Michigan, Martha Roby of Alabama and Rob Bishop of Utah ― all of whom have said they won’t be running for reelection next year.
As The Hill’s Reid Wilson noted on Tuesday, House Republicans ― now in the minority for the first time in eight years ― are concerned that a “massive wave of retirements” could undermine their chances of winning back their majority in Congress in 2020.
“We are in the minority. That is never much fun in the House,” a senior Republican member of Congress told Wilson, speaking anonymously. “The odds are against us retaking the majority.”
Opinion: Trump’s cuts to food stamps are indefensible, economically and morally
By Karen Dolan July 31, 2019
SNAP program reduces poverty better than anything else, with very little fraud
Getty Images
A half a million kids will lose their school lunch assistance if the Trump administration changes the rules for food stamps.
Under new changes proposed by the Trump administration, over 3 million struggling parents, children, people living with disabilities, and older American may lose access to food stamps, also known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Children in families who are slated to lose their SNAP benefits will also lose critical school-lunch assistance.
The Trump administration wants to eliminate an eligibility criterion known as broad-based categorical eligibility (BBCE), which enables states to expand access to those in need of food assistance based on other programs they qualify for.
By eliminating it, the administration is effectively creating a benefits cliff, where a parent’s small raise at work — or a modest amount of savings — could end up disqualifying a family from SNAP entirely. That leaves them poorer for getting a raise or saving money, or else puts them at risk of their food aid falling through the bureaucratic cracks.
Failed twice
Trump and the Republicans attempted to get this reduction in the nation’s most effective social safety-net program rammed through Congress last year — and failed. They also failed in their attempt to significantly defund the program. So now Trump is attempting to reduce food access to families in need via executive fiat.
SNAP reduces poverty more simply and directly than nearly any other program. Because it’s responsive to the overall economy, it expands during economic downturns and contracts when poverty levels fall. This enables people to weather temporary economic hardship, stay above the official poverty level, and gets money more quickly into the economy.
It also literally puts food into children’s mouths, while their parents work and save.
Why would the administration want to take critical food assistance away from children and families who need it? The administration has claimed ineligible people are using the program, perhaps fraudulently. But that’s unlikely.
Looking at figures through 2016, Forbes contributor Simon Constable calculated potentially fraudulent SNAP expenditures at under 1% of the cost of the program — a minuscule amount compared to behemoth agencies like the Pentagon, which can’t even pass an audit, and which nonetheless keeps getting budget increases.
Rigorous standards
SNAP, by contrast, “has some of the most rigorous program integrity standards and systems of any federal program,” adds Robert Greenstein of the Center of Budget and Policy Priorities, including for recipients who qualify by their participation in other programs.
According to the center, SNAP is one of the most effective economic stimulators per federal dollar spent of any program. During the economic downturn of 2009, for example, Moody’s Analytics estimated that for every dollar increase in SNAP benefits that year, $1.70 economic activity was generated.
Further, the administration has repeatedly claimed — also falsely — that poverty is all but solved.
That’s not remotely true.
According to research by the Poor People’s Campaign and the Institute for Policy Studies, 140 million Americans are either poor or low-income. In this wealthiest nation on the planet, even as more wealth concentrates at the top, some 43% of us struggle to make ends meet — a number that far outpaces the official poverty measure, not to mention Trump’s mis-characterization of it.
Our social safety net, which includes assistance for basic needs such as housing, health, and nutrition, is insufficient and under attack.
Neglecting children
The impact of this neglect on the health and well being of our children, in particular, reverberates through our entire economy.
Our report compiles reams of data on the enormous economic costs of child poverty, such as the Children’s Defense Fund’s estimation that the economic cost of lost productivity, worsened health, and increased crime rates that stem from child poverty total roughly $700 billion per year — 3.5% of GDP.
Strengthening SNAP is key to reducing this damage. So on economic grounds alone, the Trump proposed rule change to kick millions struggling children, families — and not to mention people living with disabilities and older people — off critical food assistance makes no sense. On moral grounds, it’s indefensible.
As the Rev. Dr. William Barber and the Poor People’s Campaign often says, “Everybody’s got the right to live.” That right belongs to America’s 140 million poor and low-income people, including the 3.1 million children and families experiencing hardship that rely on the nutritional assistance provided by the SNAP program.
Karen Dolan directs the Criminalization of Race and Poverty Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. She’s a co-author of the IPS-Poor People’s Campaign Report, “A Poor People’s Moral Budget: Everybody Has the Right to Live.” The IPS is funded by private foundations and individual donors.
American farmer: Trump ‘took away all of our markets’
Adriana Belmonte, Yahoo Finance July 31, 2019
Farmer: We’re tired of being ‘jerked’ back and forth by rhetoric on both sides
The White House recently announced that it would be providing an additional $16 billion in aid to American farmers affected by the trade war between the U.S. and China.
But the problem for American farmers has becomes bigger than something a bailout can fix.
“This trade thing is what’s brought on by the president and it’s really frustrating because he took away all of our markets,” Bob Nuylen, a farmer from North Dakota who grows spring wheat and sunflowers, told Yahoo Finance. “We live in an area where we’re kind of in the middle of nowhere. It costs us a lot of money — over $1 a bushel to get our grain to markets.”
‘As low as I’ve seen them in a long time’
Since trade tensions began in 2018, farmers have faced major financial challenges, since China was once a major U.S. agriculture buyer.
And losing customers has become a major issue. Soybean farmers have been dealing with this, as China has turned to other countries like Brazil for soybeans. Nuylen said this is also happening for wheat farmers, as China has begun importing wheat from Russian regions.
“All these countries went to different countries to get their grain,” Nuylen said. “How are we going to get the relations back with them to buy our grain again and be our customers?”
Between 2016-2017, China was the fourth-largest wheat buyer in the world, importing more than 61 million U.S. bushels. In 2019, the top U.S. export destinations for wheat include Mexico, the Philippines, Japan, and Nigeria — China is not even among the top 10.
“Our prices are probably as low as I’ve seen them in a long time,” he told Yahoo Finance. “We were losing just about $70 an acre just by putting our crop in [the ground] this spring.”
While a deal between the U.S. and China would take months to be reached, farmers are remaining “cautiously optimistic,” Glenn Brunkow, a Kansas-based corn and soybean farmer said.
“Our hope is that the playing field is leveled up and these tariffs on the other side are taken away,” Brunkow said. “We feel like with the technology we have, the advantages we have, we can produce the crops as economically as anyone else in the whole world.”
‘Farmers are profoundly wary of the trade war’
This isn’t the first time that the USDA has doled out aid to struggling farmers. The Trump administration pledged two installments of a farmer bailout program. The first round of payments totaling $4.7 billion was paid in September 2018, while the second round was distributed in December. By February 2019, the total aid payments reached $7.7 billion.
“Payments are a welcome help for the bottom line of Missouri farmers,” Blake Hurst, president of the Missouri Farm Bureau, told Yahoo Finance in an email statement. “Although the trade payments vary widely from county to county, they’ll keep more than a few farmers in business for another year. …
“Having said all that,” the statement added, “farmers are profoundly wary of the trade war, embarrassed that ad hoc government subsidies are all that stands between many of us and financial ruin, and ready for the return of more normal times.”
The Wall Street Journal reported in February that farm bankruptcies in three major farm regions reached its highest level in at least 10 years. Much of this is because crop prices have been dragged down dramatically because of a decrease in consumers. Overall, U.S. farm debt soared over $409 billion in 2017, which is “the largest sum in nearly four decades and a level not seen since the 1980’s,” WSJ wrote.
And it doesn’t help that farmers are facing unprecedented severe weather. Flooding has damaged crops across the Midwest. When combining that with bankruptcies, lower prices, and trade war struggles, mental health problems among rural America is becoming more prevalent than ever before.
“People think that farmers are just loaded with money but … just about every dollar a farmer makes, he puts back into the economy and their state and in the nation, because our inputs are so high,” Nuylen said. “We spend just about all the money we make back into the communities. If we’re struggling, everybody’s struggling.”
He added: “We kind of get a bad picture that we’re all big money and drive all this big equipment. In reality … these are record low incomes for farmers in the last couple of years. It’s getting tough out there. We’re going to start seeing a lot of suicide and a lot of farmers going out of business. So, that’s not a good thing.”
The concern is that farmers may reach a breaking point as things drag on.
“It’s going to be a scary situation if it doesn’t turn around pretty soon,” Nuylen said.
Going green: Ethiopia’s bid to plant four billion trees
Robbie Corey – Boulet, AFP July 30, 2019
Addis Ababa (AFP) – These days whenever Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed appears in public, he removes his jacket, rolls up his sleeves, grabs a shovel and gets to planting a tree.
Abiy is leading by example as Ethiopia plans to plant a mind-boggling four billion trees by October, as part of a global movement to restore forests to help fight climate change and protect resources.
The country says it has planted nearly three billion trees already since May.
On Monday, state employees were given the day off as Abiy sought to get the rest of the country involved, and the government claimed a “record-breaking” 350 million trees were planted in only one day.
“I think we demonstrated the capacity for people to come together collectively and deliver on a shared vision,” Billene Seyoum, Abiy’s press secretary, told AFP.
The figure has attracted scepticism about the sheer number of volunteers this would require, and the logistics involved.
“I personally don’t believe that we planted this much,” said Zelalem Worqagegnehu, a spokesman for the opposition Ezema party.
“It might be impossible to plant this many trees within a day.”
Yet Zelalem also noted that hundreds of members of his party planted trees of their own on Monday, and suggested the actual total was beside the point.
“We took this as a good opportunity to show solidarity with the citizens,” he said. “Our concern is the green legacy, making Ethiopia green.”
– Planting only first step –
Ethiopia’s forest cover declined from around 40 percent half a century ago to around 15 percent today, said Abiyot Berhanu, director of the Ethiopian Environment and Forest Research Institute.
“Deforestation has become very grave in many parts of Ethiopia,” he said.
The recent tree-planting drive has targeted areas that have been stripped of their trees over the years, Billene said.
The types of new trees planted have varied from region to region.
“A lot of nurseries have been working on producing more saplings over the past couple months,” Billene said, while some of the saplings and seedlings had come from abroad.
Reforestation is a major component of global initiatives to recapture carbon emissions. It can also purify water, produce oxygen and bolster farmers’ incomes, said Tim Christophersen, chair of the Global Partnership on Forest and Landscape Restoration.
But Christophersen said planting trees was only the first step.
“The most important factor is grazing pressure. If you plant a tree and a day later the goats come along they will absolutely eat the tree first before they eat the dry grass next to it,” he said.
“We don’t speak so much about planting trees but about growing trees.”
He said planting 350 million trees would require about 350,000 hectares (864,000 acres) — an area bigger than Luxembourg — and added that a volunteer could realistically plant about 100 trees a day.
“It is not impossible, but it would take a very well organised effort,” he told AFP.
He said that Ethiopia was one of only five countries ranked as having a “sufficiently ambitious” contribution to the 2015 Paris climate agreement, the UN’s pact to curb global warming.
Trees take in carbon from the air as part of the process of synthesis and store it in their leaves, branches and trunks.
Abiy’s tree-planting drive is part of a national environmental campaign, known as the Green Legacy Initiative, that includes cleaning waterways and making agriculture more sustainable.
Billene said the turnout Monday indicated that the prime minister’s environmentally friendly message was resonating.
“Everyone was clear and understood the long-term vision,” she said. “They actually bought into the benefits of what it means to have a green country.”
If Ethiopia really did plant 350 million trees on Monday, it would have smashed the current world record of around 50 million held by the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.
However an official determination may have to wait.
So far, Ethiopia has not attempted to register its achievement with Guinness World Records Limited, spokeswoman Jessica Dawes told AFP in an email.
“We are always on the lookout for new record breaking achievements however, and so we would encourage the organizers of this event to get in touch with us to register an application,” Dawes said.