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This evening's music features Tennessee blues guitarist and singer Son Bonds. Enjoy!

“The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.”

-- Edward O. Wilson

News and Opinion

In Just Months, the Coronavirus Is Killing More Americans Than 20 Years of War in Vietnam

Born in controversy, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is now the most poignant monument on Washington, D.C.’s National Mall. Designed in 1981 by a Yale undergraduate named Maya Lin, the memorial consists of polished black granite panels that form a 125-degree angle and are inscribed with the names of the U.S. military personnel dead from that conflict. The two walls, low at the ends and high where they meet in the middle, list the deceased chronologically — an individual accounting, day by day, of each American life lost.

It took 20 years, from 1955 to 1975, for the United States to lose 58,220 men and women — 47,434 in combat — to the nation’s most divisive conflict since the Civil War. In less than four months, just as many Americans will have died from the Covid-19 pandemic — the toll, on Sunday, stood at 55,383, a few thousand shy of the total number killed in Southeast Asia. In short order, America will pass that appalling milestone. If this is indeed a war, as President Donald Trump has described it — in his words, “We’re waging a war against the invisible enemy” — a question can be asked: Where and how will the dead of this conflict be memorialized?

Will a president who staked his legacy on a “big, beautiful wall” along the Mexican border actually be remembered for a very different wall: one that bears the names of scores of thousands of Americans who died on his watch?

Coronavirus 'Effectively Eliminated' in New Zealand Following Comprehensive Approach of Jacinda Ardern's Government

Five weeks after launching an aggressive nationwide lockdown to combat the coronavirus pandemic—coupled with one of the most robust economic relief packages of any country—New Zealand's government on Monday announced that the new coronavirus is currently "eliminated" in the nation.

The country's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Monday that while cases are not at zero, new cases have been in the single digits for the past several days—an "incredible" statistic, said Ardern, as other countries face thousands of new cases per day.

"We have done what very few countries have been able to do," Ardern said last week as the country was preparing to move from a Level 4 restrictions to Level 3, allowing some businesses to reopen. "We have stopped a wave of devastation."

One new case was reported Monday, as well as four "probable cases" and one new death.

"We've achieved our goal of elimination... That never meant zero but it does mean we know where our cases are coming from," Director General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said.

As the country reduces restrictions to Level 3, businesses that reopen will be required to maintain physical distancing rules. Schools will reopen with limited capacity, and workers will still be encouraged to work from home if they are able to. Events such as weddings and funerals will only be able to take place with up to 10 people in attendance, and public buildings such as museums, libraries, and gyms will remain shuttered for the time being.

New Zealand has confirmed a total of 1,469 cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, since the first case there was detected on February 28.

In New Zealand, home to 4.8 million, the disease has infected about 30 in every 100,000 people and has killed 19 people—fewer than one in every 100,000 people.

The numbers in the island nation contrast sharply with those in the U.S., where nearly one million people have been sickened—nearly 300 in every 100,000—and more than 50,000 people have died.

Ardern has been credited with enforcing a strict lockdown even before the disease had claimed any lives in New Zealand. Two weeks after the first case was reported, the prime minister ordered anyone entering the country to self-quarantine for 14 days. Most businesses shut down on March 23, when there were 102 cases and no deaths, and the country began enforcing Level 4 restrictons—forbidding people to leave home except for outdoor exercise nearby—on March 25.

Ardern's extreme measures were in line with the recommendations of top public health officials, including U.S. National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins, who said last month that the measures most effective at slowing the outbreak would likely be seen as "too drastic" by many.

New Zealand has also been testing the public at one of the highest rates in the world, Ardern said Monday, administering nearly 124,000 tests in recent weeks with the capacity to complete 8,000 tests per day. The U.S. has increased its testing capacity in the past month, but public health experts say the severe lag in confronting the pandemic in the U.S. after the first case was reported there in January has made the disease difficult to contain. ...

New Zealand paired its orders for the country to stay at home for five weeks with a major relief package amounting to about 4% of the country's GDP—a far more significant spending plan than other wealthy countries.

The government covered wages for all New Zealanders who had to self-isolate but couldn't work from home or were caring for sick family members. Businesses were also offered subsidies to continue paying employees, and the government doubled its healthcare spending.

Public health agencies were given resources for contact-tracing to determine who ill people could have potentially spread the disease to, which hospitals received support to increase intensive care units.

"This package is one of the largest in the world on a per capita basis," Grant Robertson, New Zealand's finance minister, said in March as the package was announced.

How the US makes countries pay for its wars: Economics of American imperialism with Michael Hudson

US Drove Last Year's Over $1.9 Trillion in Global Military Spending

A new analysis on Monday showing that the world's military spending surpassed $1.9 trillion last year, once again led by the United States under President Donald Trump, provoked demands that governments across the globe prioritize peace and the health of people as the coronavirus pandemic continues to ravage the planet.

The latest annual report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) found that the top military spenders after the U.S. were China, India, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. Total spending in 2019 was 3.6% higher than in the previous year and accounted for 2.2% of global gross domestic product (GDP).

"Global military expenditure was 7.2% higher in 2019 than it was in 2010, showing a trend that military spending growth has accelerated in recent years," SIPRI researcher Nan Tian said in a statement. "This is the highest level of spending since the 2008 global financial crisis and probably represents a peak in expenditure."

The report was released Monday as the global number of confirmed COVID-19 cases climbed toward three million and the pandemic's death toll stood at over 207,000. Highlighting the new SIPRI data in the midst of the outbreak Monday, the U.K.-based Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) declared on Twitter that "out of this crisis we must build a world where real human needs are prioritized."

In a statement responding to the analysis, the International Peace Bureau (IPB) also pointed to the public health crisis as evidence of the need for a worldwide shift in priorities.

Who were the top 10 military spenders in 2019?

1) USA
2) China
3) India
4) Russia
5) Saudi Arabia
6) France
7) Germany
8) UK
9) Japan
10) South Korea

Together they spent $1430 billion, accounting for 75% of global military spending https://t.co/ZSlbz8iP16 pic.twitter.com/MsiRUPXFAj

— SIPRI (@SIPRIorg) April 27, 2020

Our Latest Sinophobia Fest

One hundred nine years ago, one G. G. Rupert published an extraordinary book called “The Yellow Peril, or The Orient vs. The Occident as Viewed by Modern Statesmen and Ancient Prophets.” The book was a racist diatribe all dressed up as learned historical scholarship. It quickly proved a best-seller and brought Rupert, a Seventh-Day Adventist preacher in Oklahoma, a lot of money and passing fame. ... Spells of scapegoating paranoia such as Rupert’s have come and never quite gone since William Randolph Hearst introduced the “yellow peril” genre in his newspapers at the turn of the 20thcentury. Rupert now goes down as a foolish rube and Hearst a cynical conniver in pursuit of circulation.

But let us not miss that it is their direct descendants — on Capitol Hill, at the State Department, and in the American press — who are up to nothing more nor less than the same shameful chicanery as we look for someone to blame for our pitifully inept response to the Covid–19 crisis. China cultivated the Covid–19 virus in a Wuhan biological warfare laboratory. China has purposely infected the West as an act of aggression. “The Chinese Communist Party will pay a price for what they did,” says Mike Pompeo, the most dangerously dumb secretary of state to serve in my lifetime. Grandstanding dreamers in Congress intend to make China pay trillions of dollars in retribution. (Wait for it.) Missouri is suing China for “lying to the world.” (Wait for this, too.)

From San Francisco — of all cities, San Francisco — we now read reports of white pedestrians spitting on Chinese–Americans at stoplights. Let us consider such events carefully as we purport to be repelled. The Biden-for-president campaign spit on the Chinese last week in a much-remarked ad G. G. Rupert or Hearst could have written. Settle in: Who out-xenophobes who is now set as the defining issue in the 2020 election contests. ...

The facts of the Covid–19 phenom need to be sorted, and it would be reassuring to think cool heads will get this done after the world has drawn together to defeat it. This remains a “maybe.” It is not clear there are any cool heads among us, and the world is hardly drawing together in response to a crisis common to us all.

In the meantime, it is well to recognize what is proceeding under the cover of our collective folie as to China’s alleged responsibility after the fact. We watch, read, and listen as Washington and its media clerks manufacture our consent for a full-dress Cold War with China, the Russian attempt having failed to deliver the goods. However long it takes to overcome the Covid–19 virus, the new Cold War with the mainland will plague us longer.

Critics Lash Joint US-Russia Declaration on Elbe River Anniversary

In what seems a very innocuous statement, the US and Russia issued a joint commemoration this weekend of the 1945 meeting of US and Russian troops on the Elbe River, saying it showed the nations “overcoming their differences in pursuit of a greater cause.”

The intention is to liken the common enemy, Nazi Germany in 1945, to the current foe of the coronavirus pandemic, and suggest that the US and Russia could once again put aside differences to work together in this new crisis.

But because this is 2020, and the statement involves Russia, it necessarily became a political row almost immediately, with the statement panned both by President Trump’s political rivals as a sign of his being too close to Russia, and by anti-Russia hawks who see this as Vladimir Putin trying to trick the US in some way into being less hostile.

Keiser Report | Anatomy of a Fiat Currency Collapse

Bipartisan Group of Lawmakers Wants to Let Payday Lenders Obtain Small Business Loans

A bipartisan group of House lawmakers is pressing the Trump administration to make coronavirus relief loans meant for small businesses available to payday lenders, the financial institutions notorious for preying on desperate borrowers with deceptive advertising and exorbitant interest rates.

In a letter last week to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Small Business Administration chief Jovita Carranza, 24 Republicans and four Democrats said "small-size nonbanks" should be eligible for first come, first served Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans designed for companies with fewer than 500 employees.

Politico reported that while "payday lenders weren't explicitly mentioned" in the letter, "a spokesperson for Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-Mo.), one of the lawmakers who led the letter, confirmed the intent was to include them in the request."

"These businesses have been shut out completely from the PPP, which has forced many of them to lay off their highly trained employees who would have preferred to keep their jobs than seek government unemployment assistance," the lawmakers wrote.

In addition to the two dozen Republicans, the letter was signed by Reps. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.), and Al Lawson (D-Fla.). ...

Amanda Fischer, policy director at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, told& Politico that providing small business loans to payday lenders would "supercharge inequality for the low-wage workers suffering the most from this recession."

"The companies now asking for government help are the same ones that ruthlessly pursue borrowers when they can't pay their debts," said Fischer. "Families need better unemployment insurance, additional direct payments, and forbearance on mortgage and rent—not taxpayer-financed predatory loans."

In a tweet last Friday, Fischer suggested sarcastically, "How about we give payday lenders small business loans, but we charge 480% in interest and can garnish their profits for repayment?"

House Democrats Call for Hazard Pay, Workplace Protections for TSA Agents and Other Federal Workers

More than 150 House Democrats, led by Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey, Mark Pocan of Wisconsin, and Salud Carbajal of California, urged congressional leadership in a letter on Monday to include worker safety provisions protecting front-line federal workers in the upcoming coronavirus response legislation.

In the letter, which was addressed to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, progressive and moderate Democrats call for an emergency temporary standard from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, to protect essential federal workers who face elevated risk of exposure to Covid-19 with provisions that include increased hazard pay, parity in union bargaining, and expanded telework.

OSHA, an agency of the Labor Department, recently put out guidelines detailing steps workplaces can take in response to the pandemic — but the agency’s recommendations aren’t mandatory or being enforced. An emergency temporary standard, Democratic lawmakers say, would make the worker protections enforceable.

For the last several rounds of negotiations over coronavirus relief, Democrats have advocated for expanding these protections to at-risk workers, including health care providers and support personnel at the Department of Veterans Affairs, employees at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and TSA agents. But Republicans continue to oppose it.

Dear Democrat morons, symbolism is not a fitting substitute for food and other existential needs.

Democrats Finally Stood Up For Something: Trump Should Stop Signing Stimulus Checks

Democrats are finally drawing a line in the sand, and it is here: President Trump needs to stop putting his personal signature on stimulus checks from the U.S. taxpayer. In fact, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is introducing a bill to stop it called the “No PR Act.”

The bill would prohibit spending federal dollars on materials sporting Trump or Vice President Mike Pence’s names or signatures, Schumer told Politico Monday, adding that the measure aims to stop Trump’s “exploitation” of coronavirus response efforts for his own political gain.

“President Trump unfortunately appears to see the pandemic as just another opportunity to promote his own political interests,” Schumer said in a statement. “The No PR Act puts an end to the president’s exploitation of taxpayer money for promotional material that only benefits his re-election campaign.”

The move follows an unprecedented administration decision to print Trump’s signature on the $1,200 checks now being mailed out to Americans across the country to help them survive the economic devastation unleashed by the coronavirus contagion, which has shuttered businesses and sent unemployment figures skyrocketing. ...

Schumer hopes to pass the bill in the next round of coronavirus stimulus legislation, even though that seemingly won’t arrive in time to stop the Trump administration from mailing out millions of the Trump-signed checks, which began flowing this month.

Reporter discusses his Tara Reade bombshell, responds to accusations he's helping Trump

More details at the link:

A former neighbor of Joe Biden's accuser Tara Reade has come forward to corroborate her sexual-assault account

In March, when a former aide to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden accused the candidate of sexually assaulting her in 1993, two people came forward to say that the woman, Tara Reade, had told them of the incident shortly after it allegedly occurred — her brother, Collin Moulton, and a friend who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution.

Now two more sources have come forward to corroborate certain details about Reade's claims. One of them — a former neighbor of Reade's — has told Insider for the first time, on the record, that Reade disclosed details about the alleged assault to her in the mid-1990s.

"This happened, and I know it did because I remember talking about it," Lynda LaCasse, who lived next door to Reade in the mid-'90s, told Insider.

The other source, Lorraine Sanchez, who worked with Reade in the office of a California state senator in the mid-'90s, told Insider that she recalls Reade complaining at the time that her former boss in Washington, DC, had sexually harassed her, and that she had been fired after raising concerns.

Trump plots new election strategy: tie Biden to China – and attack them both

Meet “Beijing Biden”, also known as “Sleepy Joe”. According to Donald Trump and his allies, he is both a comrade of “Crazy Bernie” and an establishment creature of Washington, whose coziness with China and long history of verbal stumbles make him unfit for the presidency. This emerging, and at times conflicting, portrait of Joe Biden is part of a recent effort by the Trump campaign to define the presumptive Democratic nominee to its advantage, ahead of a general election that has now been thoroughly reshaped by the coronavirus pandemic.

As the death toll from the outbreak has passed 50,000 Americans and mass unemployment reaches historic levels, Trump’s main case for re-election – a roaring economy – has evaporated. Instead, he and his team are trying a new strategy: tying his political rival to an old geopolitical foe.

“China wants Sleepy Joe sooo badly,” Trump tweeted on 19 April, adding: “Joe is an easy mark, their DREAM CANDIDATE!” A campaign email earlier this month hammered the point: “I am TOUGH ON CHINA and Sleepy Joe Biden is WEAK ON CHINA.”

For weeks, Trump has sought to shift the focus for his administration’s erratic response to the crisis by harnessing America’s growing hostility toward China, where the virus originated. To defend himself against criticism of his handling of the outbreak, Trump has repeatedly pointed to a January decision to impose restrictions on travel from China, which he says impeded the virus’s spread in the US. ...

“This is the time to really set the tone and the narrative,” said Sam Nunberg, a former Trump campaign adviser. “Now is the time to sell the message to voters that Joe Biden is not the blue-collar, moderate from Scranton, Pennsylvania, who Barack Obama put on the ticket. This is not the Joe Biden you used to know.” Nunberg said China is only one front in the personal assault on Biden. Tying him to his former leftist rival Sanders and questioning his mental fitness are seen as equally damaging themes, he said.

Democrats Kick Bernie Off New York Ballot

'Democracy is Dead,' Declare Sanders Supporters After Bernie Taken Off New York Ballot

Supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders were enraged on Monday after New York's Board of Elections voted to remove the Vermont lawmaker's name from the state's presidential primary ballot in the election scheduled for June—a move described by campaign advisor Jeff Weaver as "a blow to American democracy" that the Democratic National Committee should reverse.

"No one asked New York to cancel the election," Weaver said in a statement. "The DNC didn't request it. The Biden campaign didn't request it. And our campaign communicated that we wanted to remain on the ballot."

Weaver added that the move was part of a pattern on the part of New York to strip voting rights from its citizens and should be treated as such.

"New York has clearly violated its approved delegate selection plan," said Weaver. "If this is not remedied, New York should lose all its delegates to the 2020 Democratic National Convention and there should be a broader review by the Democratic Party of New York's checkered pattern of voter disenfranchisement."

As Common Dreams reported, Monday's decision to remove Sanders from the ballot was framed by board co-chair Douglas Kellner and commissioner Andrew Spano—the two Democratic officials on the board in charge of making the call—as a public health concern.

"What the Sanders supporters want is essentially a beauty contest that given the situation with the public health emergency that exists now seems to be unnecessary and indeed frivolous," Kellner said Monday during the board's meeting.

Progressives were quick to point out that the move is guaranteed to harm the prospects of insurgent Democratic candidates challenging established, more conservative incumbents.

"Strong suspicion that the cancellation of the Dem primary, while it has the side effect of harming this bid to get Bernie delegates to the convention, is really about protecting threatened Dem incumbents challenged from the left by giving voters less reason to turn out," tweeted journalist David Dayen.

Lindsey Boylan, who is running to replace Rep. Jerry Nadler in New York's 10th District, said the concerns over the disease appeared to her to be incredibly selective.

"None of this makes sense," Boylan tweeted.

Growing Number of COVID-19 Cases in Wisconsin Fuels National Demands for Vote-by-Mail

The increasing number of COVID-19 cases among people who voted in-person for Wisconsin's April 7 election is fueling demands for Congress to help fund the implementation of expanded vote-by-mail provisions in every state for the rest of this year, particularly for the nation's general election scheduled for November.

"So far, 36 people who tested COVID-19 positive after April 9 have reported that they voted in person or worked the polls on election day," Jennifer Miller, a spokeswoman for the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, told Politico Monday. As the outlet reported:

Miller said "several" people within that group reported additional possible exposures, making it unclear whether the election itself is responsible for their contraction of the disease. If those people contracted the virus prior to the election, they could have also spread it to others who went to the polls that day.

For that and other reasons, the figure is likely to grow in coming weeks. Forty people in Milwaukee County who participated in the election have tested positive, according to WUWM. Milwaukee Health Commissioner Jeanette Kowalik on Friday said data was still being analyzed but could be finalized by May 1.

Wisconsin's Republican legislative leaders and state Supreme Court were roundly criticized for ignoring the advice of public health officials and moving forward with in-person voting on April 7—while other states delayed their elections—as well as for quashing last-minute efforts of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers to address the safety concerns about polling sites. The "civic catastrophe" and the emerging fallout have contributed to mounting calls to expand vote-by-mail nationwide.

In a statement Monday, Nancy Wang, executive director of the Michigan-based group Voters Not Politicians, pointed to the data on post-election coronavirus infections in Wisconsin as evidence that "Wisconsin lawmakers put voters' lives at risk by proceeding with in-person voting as usual during the COVID-19 pandemic, and now we are starting to see the consequences of that decision on people's lives."

Projections from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention "show that COVID-19 infections will likely continue this fall," Wang added. "We must act now to protect voters in Michigan during the August and November elections. We call on our lawmakers to swiftly move to a vote-by-mail solution for our state while providing safeguards to ensure no voter is disenfranchised. During this pandemic, vote-by-mail will save lives."

A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs revealed that there is rising support across the U.S. for vote-by-mail. The polling results, published Monday, found that six in 10 Americans would  support their states moving to vote-by-mail for the November election because of the pandemic.

The poll found that "Democrats are now much more likely than Republicans to support their state conducting elections exclusively by mail, 47% to 29%." The AP reported that the "wide partisan divide suggests President Donald Trump's public campaign against vote-by-mail may be resonating with his Republican backers."

Faced with intense pressure to defy Trump's baseless attacks and use federal legislation related to the pandemic to safeguard the right to vote, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) said on MSNBC Monday that "in this next bill, we will be supporting vote-by-mail" to protect both public health and the "life of our democracy."

'Grotesque, Deadly Failure': Trump USDA Under Fire for Allowing Millions of Pounds of Produce to Rot as Food Insecurity Surges

With food insecurity on the rise across the U.S. as the coronavirus pandemic continues to drive unprecedented job losses and economic disruption, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is facing backlash from lawmakers, farmers, and advocacy groups for its failure to act with urgency as millions of pounds of produce rot in fields across the nation.

"While other federal agencies quickly adapted their programs to the coronavirus crisis, the Agriculture Department took more than a month to make its first significant move to buy up surplus fruits and vegetables—despite repeated entreaties," Politico reported Sunday, noting that the USDA's belated response came "as food banks across the country scramble to meet a massive surge in demand."

On April 17, as Common Dreams reported, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue unveiled the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program, a $19 billion plan purportedly aimed at providing relief to farmers and making "mass purchases of dairy, meat, and agricultural produce to get that food to the people in need."

But critics say the federal agency's plan doesn't come anywhere close to matching the scale of the crisis, which has fueled calls for a fundamental overhaul of the U.S. food system.

"This thing is a joke," Tony DiMare, owner of the Florida-based produce distribution company DiMare Fresh, told Politico of the USDA's plan, which includes $3 billion to purchase and distribute surplus produce.

"DiMare's company... has donated over a million pounds of tomatoes to food banks in his area," Politico reported, "but he still had to leave some 10 million pounds in the field."

Nikki Fried, Florida's commissioner of agriculture in Florida, told Politico that she asked Perdue a month ago to take action to prevent mass waste of produce but received no response. "Unfortunately, USDA didn't move until [last week]," Fried said.

As early as March 23, a coalition of produce industry groups wrote a letter (pdf) to Perdue warning that "there is at least $1 billion of perishable commodities without a dedicated destinationas a result of the unanticipated closure of foodservice establishments, including restaurants, hotels, schools, and universities."

"There is no reason these high-quality, nutritious, farmer-grown products should be left in facilities to rot when there are so many American families who are suddenly faced with food insecurity," the letter stated.

Politico reported that federal officials "predicted it would take the better part of a month" before surplus food is packed and shipped to food banks, which are facing shortages and going millions of dollars over budget as they attempt to meet skyrocketing demand.

By the time USDA's program is up and running, Politico noted, "it will be too late for many produce growers who saw a huge drop in demand right at the peak of their season."

As New York magazine's Matt Stieb wrote Sunday, "Two of the enduring images of COVID-19's economic impact contradict each other: As miles-long lines back up at food banks throughout the country... ripe fruits and vegetables are being buried in their fields, with farmers losing out on half of their usual markets with restaurants, schools, and hotels closed."

"Though the apparent simplicity of solving one crisis with the other—providing the food insecure with unsellable product, rather than dumping milk into manure pits—is frustrated by practical issues, the Department of Agriculture only emerged with a solution on April 17," Steib wrote.

Big Plastic Asks for $1 Billion Coronavirus Bailout

The plastic industry is asking Congress for $1 billion to bail out plastic recycling during the coronavirus crisis. “Recycling is an essential service and consumers are demanding products with more recycled content,” an alliance of industry groups that included Dow, the American Chemistry Council, Berry Global Group Inc., and the Plastics Industry Association wrote in an April 16 letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other House members. “In order to meet the demands of this crisis, we need investment now.”

The companies and industry trade groups seeking the money are calling themselves the Recover Coalition, a reference to the Recover Act, a bill introduced in the House in November that calls for allocating $500 million to recycling infrastructure over five years. In their letter, which was first reported in Plastics News, members of the coalition “implore” the House members to include the Recover bill “in any infrastructure package Congress considers either in response to the COVID-19 pandemic or separately” and to double the original funding request, noting that “We feel the time and need is right to seek a program of $1 billion.”

But others feel that the middle of a deadly pandemic, when millions of people don’t have enough money to pay rent and eat, is not the right time for the plastics industry to seek a government bailout. “Having multinational companies with their tin cups out asking for taxpayer dollars at this moment in time is wrong,” said Judith Enck, founder of the environmental group Beyond Plastics. “We need the federal spending to go to things like more testing, contact tracing, investments in clean energy — and not to attempts to prop up the feeble plastics recycling infrastructure.”

It’s worth noting that the companies now seeking additional taxpayer dollars to fund recycling already have hundreds of billions at their disposal to pay for the processing of the products they create. The 223 companies that belong to and fund the American Chemistry Council and the Recycling Partnership — both of which signed the letter — include 60 publicly held companies with a combined revenue of $2.7 trillion and net profit of $210 billion.

Michael Moore, filmmakers respond to criticism of new bombshell environmental film

Halt destruction of nature or suffer even worse pandemics, say world’s top scientists

The coronavirus pandemic is likely to be followed by even more deadly and destructive disease outbreaks unless their root cause – the rampant destruction of the natural world – is rapidly halted, the world’s leading biodiversity experts have warned. “There is a single species responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic – us,” they said. “Recent pandemics are a direct consequence of human activity, particularly our global financial and economic systems that prize economic growth at any cost. We have a small window of opportunity, in overcoming the challenges of the current crisis, to avoid sowing the seeds of future ones.”

Professors Josef Settele, Sandra Díaz and Eduardo Brondizio led the most comprehensive planetary health check ever undertaken, which was published in 2019 by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). It concluded that human society was in jeopardy from the accelerating decline of the Earth’s natural life-support systems.

In an article published on Monday, with Dr Peter Daszak, who is preparing the next IPBES assessment, they write: “Rampant deforestation, uncontrolled expansion of agriculture, intensive farming, mining and infrastructure development, as well as the exploitation of wild species have created a ‘perfect storm’ for the spillover of diseases.”

These activities cause pandemics by bringing more people into contact and conflict with animals, from which 70% of emerging human diseases originate, they said. Combined with urbanisation and the explosive growth of global air travel, this enabled a harmless virus in Asian bats to bring “untold human suffering and halt economies and societies around the world. This is the human hand in pandemic emergence. Yet [Covid-19] may be only the beginning.”

“Future pandemics are likely to happen more frequently, spread more rapidly, have greater economic impact and kill more people if we are not extremely careful about the possible impacts of the choices we make today,” they said.

Meteorologists say 2020 on course to be hottest year since records began

This year is on course to be the world’s hottest since measurements began, according to meteorologists, who estimate there is a 50% to 75% chance that 2020 will break the record set four years ago. Although the coronavirus lockdown has temporarily cleared the skies, it has done nothing to cool the climate, which needs deeper, longer-term measures, the scientists say.

Heat records have been broken from the Antarctic to Greenland since January, which has surprised many scientists because this is not an El Niño year, the phenomenon usually associated with high temperatures. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration calculates there is a 75% chance that 2020 will be the hottest year since measurements began.

The US agency said trends were closely tracking the current record of 2016, when temperatures soared early in the year due to an unusually intense El Niño and then came down. The US agency said there was a 99.9% likelihood that 2020 will be one of the top five years for temperatures on record.

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

ASSANGE EXTRADITION: Hearing Put Off Until July or November Because of Virus

To Pressure Iran, Pompeo Turns to the Deal Trump Renounced

Former UK Ambassador Craig Murray Indicted For Contempt of Court

U.S. Could Be Weeks From Meat Shortages With Shutdowns Spreading

The New York Fed Is Exercising Powers Never Bestowed on It by any Law

The Covid Live Test Of Your Government

Jimmy Dore: Biden Has Wife Talk Instead Of Him. WTF?!?

The Rania & Anya Show feat. Eugene Puryear: imagining the movement beyond Bernie Sanders

Krystal and Saagar: Media, Kamala, Dem COMPLICITY in Biden cover-up will only help Trump

Krystal & Saagar: Woketivists who decried Joe Rogan endorsement silent on Howard Stern backing Biden

Krystal and Saagar: Examining reports Trump was warned early about coronavirus dangers

Krystal Ball: Bombshell Joe Biden Tara Reade story forces liberal feminists to reckon with silence

A Little Night Music

Son Bonds - 80 Highway Blues

Sleepy John Estes & Son Bonds - Working Man Blues

Son Bonds - Old Bachelor Blues

Hammie Nixon & Son Bonds - Trouble Trouble Blues

Brownsville ''Son'' Bonds - Weary And Worried Blues

Brownsville "Son" Bonds - Back And Side Blues

Sleepy John Estes & Son Bonds - Liquor Store Blues

Brownsville Son Bonds & Charlie Pickett - Get Up and Go

The Delta Boys (Sleepy John Estes & Son Bonds) - You Shouldn't Say That