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“It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster.”

-- Voltaire

News and Opinion

Biden Iran envoy boasted of depriving civilians of food, driving up Iranian inequality

The Joseph Biden administration has named Richard Nephew as its deputy Iran envoy. As the former principal deputy coordinator of sanctions policy for Barack Obama’s State Department, Nephew took personal credit for depriving Iranians of food, sabotaging their automobile industry, and driving up unemployment rates. Nephew has described the destruction of Iran’s economy as “a tremendous success,” and lamented during a visit to Russia that food was still plentiful in the country’s capital despite mounting US sanctions.

Nephew’s appointment to a senior diplomatic post suggests that rather than immediately returning to the JCPOA nuclear deal, the Biden administration will finesse sanctions illegally imposed by Trump to pressure Iran into an onerous, reworked agreement that Tehran is unlikely to join.

After coordinating Obama’s sanctions regime against Iran, Nephew left the administration for a position at the energy industry-funded Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. There, he published a book outlining in blunt terms how he honed the craft of economic warfare and applied it against Iran.

Entitled “The Art of Sanctions: A View From The Field,” the book’s cover image features two Caucasian hands drawing a rope for a noose, presumably to strangle some insufficiently pliant Global South government. Its contents read like a list of criminal confessions, detailing in chillingly clinical terms how the sanctions Nephew conceived from inside an air-conditioned office in Washington immiserated average Iranians. With his candor, Nephew has shattered the official US rhetoric about “targeted sanctions” that exclusively punish “bad actors” and their business cronies while leaving civilian populations unharmed. ...

In response to online criticism, Nephew has claimed that “the main target” of the sanctions regime he designed was “the oligarchs.” But his book on “The Art of Sanctions” tells another story. Nephew fondly recalls how he structured sanctions to sabotage Iranian economic reforms that would have improved the purchasing power of average people. The Obama administration destroyed the economic prospects of Iran’s working-class majority while ensuring that “only the wealthy or those in positions of power could take advantage of Iran’s continued connectedness,” he wrote. As “stories began to emerge from Iran of intensified income inequality and inflation,” Nephew pronounced another success.

Brazil: Lula has convictions quashed, leaving him free to challenge Bolsonaro

Brazil’s former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva could be set for a sensational comeback attempt after a supreme court judge annulled a series of criminal convictions against the leftist icon and restored his political rights.

The ruling, which analysts called a political bombshell, means Lula is almost certain to challenge Brazil’s incumbent president, Jair Bolsonaro, in the 2022 presidential election. “The election starts today … It’s virtually impossible Lula won’t be a candidate,” said Thomas Traumann, a Rio de Janeiro-based political observer. “In American terms, it’s going to be like Sanders versus Trump.” The Valor Econômico, Brazil’s leading financial newspaper, declared: “Lula is back in the game.”

Lula was president of Latin America’s largest economy for two terms, between 2003 and 2011, and oversaw a historic period of commodity-fuelled growth and poverty reduction. The Workers’ party (PT) politician, who is now 75, had hoped to seek a third term in 2018 but was sidelined after being jailed on disputed corruption charges, paving the way for Bolsonaro’s landslide victory.

When a random dude ice fishing is more insightful than everybody on your network... https://t.co/e4yYmtRKgz

— Ron Placone (@RonPlacone) March 8, 2021

Joe Biden waves the white flag on the Pentagon budget

It appears that the U.S. military has dodged a bullet. Defense officials reported last week that rather than cut the Pentagon budget, the Biden White House will “flatline” military expenditures, postponing a reset of defense spending priorities. A senior Pentagon official confirms the report, first headlined in Breaking Defense, telling me that the Biden defense budget (due for release on May 3), will come in at just over $696 billion (total national security outlays, including those to the Department of Energy, could total more than $735 billion), a figure comparable to the base funding provided to the Pentagon in 2021. Put simply, the new Biden administration will keep in place the lavish spending on defense that was a hallmark of the Trump years — a decision likely to spur howls of protest from Biden’s progressive supporters. ...

The senior Pentagon official who spoke with Responsible Statecraft agrees. “If you had asked me just six months ago I would have said that we’re going to have cuts, and maybe even big cuts, in defense spending,” the official said. “But no more. This is all politics. Biden doesn’t want to endanger his domestic agenda, which means he’s not going to pick a fight over defense dollars.”

“This was all decided in the Oval Office,” a former high-profile budget official who is familiar with the Biden budgeting process told us. “I can imagine the meeting: it was Biden, Harris, Ron Klain [Biden’s chief of staff] maybe Susan Rice [the head of the Domestic Policy Council] and Brian Deese [the Director of the National Economic Council] and that’s about it. It’s one of those few times, right at the beginning of a new administration, when the defense budget isn’t decided at the Pentagon. And my bet is that Biden gave the marching orders: ‘doing nothing on defense doesn’t cost us a thing.’ It was probably a pretty short meeting.”

In fact, the White House seems prepared to argue that even modest defense spending cuts undermine the Biden administration’s plans for a post-pandemic economic recovery, as cuts to defense outlays will translate into cuts in defense jobs — a major engine of economic growth. ...

Finally, the White House is apparently concerned that pushing for defense cuts is likely to peel away crucial support among Senate Republicans and moderate Democrats for Biden’s legislative initiatives on immigration, infrastructure, and climate change. Refusing to reduce defense spending won’t get those votes, but it will keep them in play.

Most Small Business Owners Still Haven’t Had Their PPP Loans Forgiven

Congress created the PPP, to be overseen by the U.S. Small Business Administration, last March to cover payroll and other expenses in the coronavirus pandemic with the promise that loans would be forgiven, essentially converted to grants. ... According to a recent survey of 1,093 small business owners by payroll services company Gusto, 56 percent of those that got PPP loans haven’t had them forgiven yet. Over 60 percent say it’s because they haven’t applied yet — often because their bank hasn’t allowed them to start the process. Another quarter have applied and not heard back. Over the last six months, “Most lenders were not open for forgiveness and didn’t provide information to businesses about how to apply,” said Jeanette Quick, lead counsel at Gusto. The numbers are even worse for Black business owners: Three-quarters still haven’t received forgiveness.

It’s not that applications are sitting untouched at the SBA, which is tasked with approving PPP forgiveness applications submitted by lenders. It’s forgiven 1.8 million of the applications it’s received and has only 242,000 in process. But it still hasn’t received 3.2 million applications out of the 5.3 million loans disbursed in 2020. In the fall, the holdup seemed to be that the SBA just hadn’t given lenders the information they needed. Forgiveness forms kept changing, and concrete guidance about which loans would be automatically forgiven and how has been slow to come. But the agency has since made some clarifications and issued paperwork. Now the choke point is lenders themselves.

There’s also a second round of PPP money available, and banks generate fees for every new loan — billions of dollars’ worth. “The incentives for banks [are] on the side of generating these new loans, because they receive their revenue from all the new PPP loans they generate,” said Luke Pardue, an economist at Gusto. They get no fees for pushing forgiveness applications through.

“Not having their loans forgiven is a huge burden that will weigh on these small business owners,” Pardue said. “It hampers their economic growth and the growth of the economy.” But banks don’t have the same sense of urgency.

Biden & Most Dems: We absolutely support raising the minimum wage to $15

Manchin: I support raising the minimum wage to at least $11

The Democratic Congress: We’re compromising between these positions by rejecting any minimum wage increase whatsoever pic.twitter.com/TwwHZfQVoE

— David Sirota (@davidsirota) March 8, 2021

It's Day 50, Is The Biden Presidency ALREADY Over With No Filibuster Changes?

A "major development?" Feh. Wishful thinking. Moderate ass-covering.

Joe Manchin Signals He Is Open to Filibuster Reform

As support for abolishing the legislative filibuster outright continued to grow inside the Senate Democratic caucus, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia signaled Sunday that he would be open to reforming the archaic rule to make it "more painful" for the minority to wield as a tool of endless obstruction.

While reiterating his opposition to completely eliminating the filibuster—which is currently standing in the way of a sweeping expansion of voting rights, immigration reform, climate legislation, and other priorities of the Biden White House—the West Virginia Democrat noted Sunday morning that in recent years the filibuster has evolved to a point of requiring virtually no effort to deploy beyond sending an email.

Manchin, the most conservative Democrat in the Senate, suggested to Chuck Todd of NBC News that he would be willing to support a return to the talking filibuster, wherein senators who wish to block legislation from advancing must remain on the Senate floor and speak continuously.

In a Sunday appearance on Fox News, Manchin raised a similar idea, saying, "The filibuster should be painful, it really should be painful and we've made it more comfortable over the years."

"Maybe it has to be more painful, maybe you have to stand there," Manchin continued. "There's things we can talk about." ...

Manchin's Sunday statements came less than a week after the West Virginia Democrat shouted at reporters that he will "never" agree to killing the filibuster, which progressives have taken to calling a "Jim Crow relic" in reference to its past use as a weapon against civil rights legislation.

"Jesus Christ! What don't you understand about never?" Manchin said to reporters last Monday.

In the days that followed Manchin's outburst, several members of the Senate Democratic caucus who are far from progressive firebrands—including Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Bob Casey (D-Pa.)—spoke out in favor of abolishing the filibuster in the face of an intransigent Republican minority.

You’re such a fraud. You voted against raising the minimum wage. 2/3rds of minimum wage earners are women. Everyone sees through you. https://t.co/fUfE1z6q88

— Katie Halper (@kthalps) March 8, 2021

Ryan Grim: ENTIRE Nevada Dem Party Raids Coffers, RESIGNS After DSA Wins

Entire Staff of Nevada Democratic Party Quits After Democratic Socialist Slate Won Every Seat

Not long after Judith Whitmer won her election on Saturday to become chair of the Nevada Democratic Party, she got an email from the party’s executive director, Alana Mounce. The message from Mounce began with a note of congratulations, before getting to her main point. She was quitting. So was every other employee. And so were all the consultants. And the staff would be taking severance checks with them, thank you very much.

On March 6, a coalition of progressive candidates backed by the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America took over the leadership of the Nevada Democratic Party, sweeping all five party leadership positions in a contested election that evening. Whitmer, who had been chair of the Clark County Democratic Party, was elected chair. The incumbents had prepared for the loss, having recently moved $450,000 out of the party’s coffers and into the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s account. The DSCC will put the money toward the 2022 reelection bid of Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, a vulnerable first-term Democrat.

While Whitmer’s opponents say she was planning to fire them anyway, Whitmer denies that claim. “I’ve been putting in the work,” Whitmer told The Intercept for the latest episode of Deconstructed. “What they just didn’t expect is that we got better and better at organizing and out-organizing them at every turn.”

The battle between the insurgent progressive wing of the party and what’s known in Nevada as the Reid machine — a tightly run operation still guided by former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid — began five years ago, when Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders organized support for his 2016 presidential primary run, while Reid was working behind the scenes to help his opponent, Hillary Clinton. ...

The mass exodus of party staff, despite the rhetoric around unity, wasn’t a shock, Whitmer told The Intercept. “We weren’t really surprised, in that we were prepared for it,” she said. “But what hit us by surprise and was sort of shocking is that for a slate that claimed that they were all about unity, and kept this false narrative of division going on throughout the entire campaign — in fact they kept intensifying that — that’s what was surprising about it, was the willingness to just walk away, instead of working with us.” ... Instead of finding a way to work with the newcomers, the Reid machine is setting up an independent shop. Reid declined to comment.

Push for Robinhood Tax Grows as Poll Shows Majority in NY Support Levy on Wall Street Trades

While a financial transactions tax has existed in New York state for more than a century, nearly $350 billion raised through the levy has been rebated back to Wall Street over the past four decades. A new poll conducted by Zogby Strategies shows that a majority of New Yorkers want to stop sending revenue back to speculators and once again collect the stock transfer tax according to state law—and use the funds to invest in green energy and infrastructure jobs.

The stock transfer tax has been on the Empire State's books "since a Republican governor introduced it in 1905—and still is," a team of researchers at the Tax Justice Network explained in a paper published last month.

"The tax was progressive and highly effective, raising around $80 billion (in 2020 dollars) until 1979 when the New York mayor and state governor caved into Wall Street pressure and phased in a 100% annual 'rebate,' which unfortunately also remains in effect," the paper continues. "So the tax is in effect levied—then kicked straight back to Wall Street."

As pollster John Zogby wrote Sunday in Forbes, "Most New Yorkers are not even aware of this issue." However, a coalition of public interest groups, unions, and lawmakers in Albany recently commissioned a poll "to test support or opposition of breathing new life into this phantom tax."

According to Zogby's survey of 704 likely voters statewide, 53% agreed the stock transfer tax should be collected while just 34% disagreed. Zogby wrote that "after arguments both in support and opposition were read to voters, agreement rose to 59% while opposition declined to 30%—a 29-point differential."

"When asked if the stock transfer tax can provide billions for investment in jobs, notably for infrastructure and green energy, 63% are more likely to support the collection while only 18% are less likely," Zogby noted. "The most persuasive argument was additional billions for investment—58% of those who initially 'somewhat disagreed' with the tax moved into the support column." ...

New York State Assembly Rep. Phil Steck (D-113), who told researchers at the Tax Justice Network that "the whole public sector has been starved," has introduced a bill to remove the rebate, which would make it possible to redistribute billions of dollars in revenue each year rather than taxing financial transactions and then reimbursing stock traders. State Sen. James B. Sanders (D-10), chair of the State Senate Committee on Banks, is sponsoring companion legislation in the upper chamber.

The authors of the paper wrote that Steck has introduced "a disarmingly simple three-page bill that would raise some $10-20 billion a year from Wall Street and plough the money into the pandemic response and the local economy, creating jobs with a fair, efficient, and progressive tax."

Steck's bill currently has 56 sponsors in the New York State Assembly and 13 in the Senate. In light of the new Zogby poll showing that a majority of New Yorkers support reactivating the stock transfer tax—as the state legislature is now considering—Tax Justice Network on Sunday resubmitted their analysis to lawmakers in Albany.

James Henry, an economist, lawyer, and one of the paper's co-authors, on Monday noted that "the New York State legislature is meeting Tuesday to decide what its revenue options are and Wall Street is really digging in especially because Gov. Andrew Cuomo is imperiled. They have systematically understated the Wall Street revenues that this tax would produce."

In an interview last year, Henry told Salon that "New York has a chance to set an example for the world and that is a very painless tax that is highly concentrated on very, very wealthy people and institutions that can be used for many ongoing needs."

"If the feds adopt a national financial transaction tax before New York State does, then all the money would flow into the federal treasury," Henry said Monday. "So there's really no good argument for not doing this except that Wall Street is very nervous about this escalating into the first successful progressive tax reform in 50 years."

CDC says fully vaccinated Americans can gather indoors without masks

Americans who have been fully vaccinated are now allowed to meet each other indoors without wearing masks, under long-awaited guidelines released by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The guidelines released on Monday said that those who have been fully vaccinated can safely gather indoors with unvaccinated people from a single household without wearing masks.

Vaccinated people can come together in the same way with people considered at low-risk for severe disease, such as in the case of vaccinated grandparents visiting healthy children and grandchildren.

That will probably be a huge relief for older Americans, many of whom have been vaccinated but have gone months without visiting children, grandchildren or other relatives because of the pandemic.

Harvard professor sparks outrage with claims about Japan's 'comfort women'

A Harvard University professor has sparked outrage among fellow academics and campaigners after claiming that women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military had chosen to work in wartime brothels. J Mark Ramseyer, a professor of Japanese legal studies at Harvard Law School, challenged the accepted narrative that as many as 200,000 “comfort women” – mostly Koreans, but also Chinese, south-east Asians and a small number of Japanese and Europeans – were coerced or tricked into working in military brothels between 1932 and Japan’s defeat in 1945.

In an academic paper published online late last year, Ramseyer claimed the women were sex workers who had voluntarily entered into contracts – a view supported by Japanese ultra-conservatives seeking to whitewash their country’s wartime atrocities.

The article, titled Contracting for sex in the Pacific War, was due to appear in this month’s issue of the International Review of Law and Economics, but the issue has been suspended as Ramseyer’s claims come under increasing scrutiny. The journal issued an “expression of concern” and said the piece was under investigation. ...

Prominent academics challenged the veracity of Ramseyer’s research, saying they had found no historical evidence of the contracts he described in his article. Harvard historians Andrew Gordon and Carter Eckert called for the original article to be retracted. “We do not see how Ramseyer can make credible claims, in extremely emphatic wording, about contracts he has not read,” they said in a statement.

The Burglary That Exposed COINTELPRO: Activists Mark 50th Anniversary of Daring FBI Break-in

Case of reporter facing trial over BLM coverage seen as attack on press rights

A journalist will face trial in Iowa on Monday on charges arising from her arrest while covering a Black Lives Matter protest last year, in a case condemned by Amnesty International and news organizations across the US as an assault on press freedom. Andrea Sahouri, a public safety reporter for the Des Moines Register, is charged with “failure to disperse and interference with official acts, misdemeanors”. If convicted, she could face a fine and 30 days in jail. She has pleaded not guilty.

Sahouri was arrested at the protest in Des Moines on 31 May, six days after the killing of George Floyd by officers in Minneapolis, which touched off months of international protests against police brutality and for racial justice. She says she identified herself as a member of the press several times. But police pepper-sprayed and zip-tied her and her then boyfriend. Both were taken to Polk county jail.

https://t.co/Gm87U1d0Za

— Andrea May Sahouri (@andreamsahouri) June 1, 2020

A Des Moines police officer, Luke Wilson, has said he believed Sahouri was a protester because she was not wearing press credentials. Because Wilson did not turn on his body camera as he was supposed to, there is no video footage of the incident. Sahouri did film herself recounting what happened, while detained in a police car.

[More details here. -js]

Saagar Enjeti EXPOSES NYT, FBI '50 Year' WAR On Civil Liberties

Rochester, NY Police Again Under Fire After Officers Pepper-Spray, Tackle Mother Holding Toddler

The actions of Rochester, New York police officers—including two who were reportedly involved in the recent pepper-spraying of a 9-year-old girl—are under scrutiny following body camera footage released Friday showing them violently arresting a mother holding her daughter, age 3, while attempting to question her over shoplifting allegations of which she was cleared.

Footage of the February 22 encounter reviewed and released by the Rochester Police Accountability Board, an independent city watchdog agency, shows officers stopping the woman—whose name has not been released—and asking her what she stole from a nearby Rite Aid drugstore. The woman shows officers the contents of her purse, but when they don't let her go she runs away carrying her child and is pepper-sprayed and knocked to the ground by officers as they catch and arrest her. Additional footage shows the distraught toddler crying for her mother.

The arresting officer has been placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of an internal investigation, the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle reported. The woman was not charged with shoplifting. She was cited for trespassing.

The Appeal reported Rochester Police Accountability Board member Arlene Brown told journalists at a Friday online press conference that "it should have stopped" once the woman showed she didn't steal anything.

"It was the officers' actions from then on that escalated the situation, clearly putting the mother and child in stress," said Brown.

Board chair Shani Wilson said at the press conference that two of the officers who took part in the encounter were also involved in the January pepper-spraying of a 9-year-old Black girl. ...

Rochester City Council member Mary Lupien told The Appeal that "the only offense I saw is that the young woman was tackled to the ground by officers and pepper-sprayed while desperately trying to keep hold of her daughter."

Lupien noted separately that despite police claims that the child was not sprayed, "pepper spray goes everywhere immediately, so this child was exposed to the gas."

"The trauma inflicted on this little girl and her mother will be a permanent scar and will ripple out into the community for years to come," she told The Appeal. "I'm calling for the complete dissolution of the Rochester Police Department and reformation with a mission to provide peacekeepers to serve our community."

The Murder of George Floyd: Officer Derek Chauvin Trial Set to Begin as New Charges Considered

Derek Chauvin murder trial delayed for decision on extra charge

The judge overseeing the trial of a former Minneapolis police officer accused of murdering George Floyd delayed the start of jury selection on Monday for at least a day while an appeal proceeds over the possible reinstatement of an additional charge.

Hundreds of protesters rallied outside the courthouse demanding racial justice and the conviction of Derek Chauvin, who is white and was fired and charged with murder after he knelt on Floyd’s neck when the Black man had been forced to the ground during an attempted arrest last May.

Chauvin is charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter but the Minnesota court of appeals ruled last Friday that a previous, lesser charge of third-degree murder should be reinstated in the trial by the judge, Peter Cahill.

Eric Nelson, Chauvin’s lead lawyer, told the court on Monday morning that Chauvin would soon ask the Minnesota supreme court to overturn Friday’s order, a process that could take weeks.

Krystal Ball: Did Trump KILL The Reagan Era And Neoliberal Consensus?

Outrage as Georgia Republicans advance bill to restrict voting access

Georgia lawmakers have advanced a measure that would significantly curtail voting access after a record number of voters propelled Democratic victories in the 2020 race.

The measure scraped through 29-20 in the GOP-controlled Georgia senate, which was the absolute minimum number of votes Republicans needed. Four Republicans, including some in competitive races, sat out the vote, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The bill, SB 241, would end the right to vote by mail without having to provide an excuse, a policy that Georgia Republicans implemented in the state in 2005. More than 1.3 million people voted by mail in the 2020 general election in the state. Under the bill only people age 65 and older, or who have one of a handful of state-approved excuses, would be allowed to vote by mail. Just 16 other states currently require a voter to give an excuse to vote by mail.

The legislation also would require voters to provide identification information, such as a driver’s license number, both when they apply to vote by mail and when they return the ballot.

New York attorney general names duo to investigate Cuomo sexual harassment claims

New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, on Monday appointed a former federal prosecutor and an employment lawyer to investigate allegations that the state governor, Andrew Cuomo, sexually harassed female aides.

Joon Kim, who was the acting US attorney in Manhattan during different times in 2017 and 2018, will join the employment lawyer, Anne Clark, in conducting the investigation, the attorney general’s office said.

James said the pair were “independent, legal experts who have decades of experience conducting investigations and fighting to uphold the rule of law”.

“There is no question that they both have the knowledge and background necessary to lead this investigation and provide New Yorkers with the answers they deserve,” she said in a statement.

The appointments came as New York lawmakers were privately debating whether to join calls for Cuomo to resign from office, or urge patience while the investigation is ongoing.

Yang DOMINATES NYC Mayoral Race Poll

Global heating pushes tropical regions towards limits of human livability

The climate crisis is pushing the planet’s tropical regions towards the limits of human livability, with rising heat and humidity threatening to plunge much of the world’s population into potentially lethal conditions, new research has found. Should governments fail to curb global heating to 1.5C above the pre-industrial era, areas in the tropical band that stretches either side of the equator risk changing into a new environment that will hit “the limit of human adaptation”, the study warns.

Humans’ ability to regulate their body heat is dependent upon the temperature and humidity of the surrounding air. We have a core body temperature that stays relatively stable at 37C (98.6F), while our skin is cooler to allow heat to flow away from the inner body. But should the wet-bulb temperature – a measure of air temperature and humidity – pass 35C, high skin temperature means the body is unable to cool itself, with potentially deadly consequences.

“If it is too humid our bodies can’t cool off by evaporating sweat – this is why humidity is important when we consider livability in a hot place,” said Yi Zhang, a Princeton University researcher who led the new study, published in Nature Geoscience. “High body core temperatures are dangerous or even lethal.”

[Wet-bulb temperature is measured by a thermometer that has its bulb wrapped in a wet cloth, helping mimic the ability of humans to cool their skin by evaporating sweat.]

Dangerous conditions in the tropics will unfold even before the 1.5C threshold, however, with the paper warning that 1C of extreme wet-bulb temperature increase “could have adverse health impact equivalent to that of several degrees of temperature increase”. The world has already warmed by around 1.1C.

New Data Shows Humanity Has Degraded or Destroyed Two-Thirds of World's Rainforest

New data from a Norwegian nonprofit is generating fresh concerns about humanity's destruction of the natural world, revealing Monday that people have ravaged about two-thirds of original tropical rainforest cover globally.

The Rainforest Foundation Norway (RFN) analysis found that human activities including logging and land-use changes—often for farming—have destroyed 34% of old-growth tropical rainforests and degraded 30% worldwide.

RFN defined degraded forests as those that are partly destroyed or fully wiped out but replaced by more recent growth. The group's definition for intact forest, considered too strict by some experts, includes only areas that are at least 500 square kilometers or 193 square miles; trees and biodiversity are at greater risk in smaller zones.

The RFN findings, reported by Reuters, show that over half of the destruction since 2002 has been in the Amazon and neighboring rainforests. Deforestation in South America—particularly within Brazil, home to the majority of the Amazon—has caused recent alarm given the role of rainforests in trapping carbon.

"Forests act as a two-lane highway in the climate system," explained Nancy Harris, Forests Program research director at the World Resources Institute (WRI), earlier this year. "Standing forests absorb carbon, but clearing forests releases it into the atmosphere."

A forest carbon flux map released in January by organizations including WRI found that between 2001 and 2019, forests emitted an average of 8.1 billion metric tonnes of carbon dioxide annually due to deforestation and other disturbances but also absorbed 16 billion metric tonnes per year over the same period.

Reuters reported Monday on RFN's analysis:

As more rainforest is destroyed, there is more potential for climate change, which in turn makes it more difficult for remaining forests to survive, said the report's author Anders Krogh, a tropical forest researcher.

"It's a terrifying cycle," Krogh said. The total lost between just 2002 and 2019 was larger than the area of France, he found.

Deforestation has surged in Brazil since far-right President Jair Bolsonaro—a foe of both environmental regulations and Indigenous people in his country—took office in early 2019. Brazilian forest loss hit a 12-year high in 2020, according to satellite imagery from the country's space research agency.

Also of Interest

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

NYT Fails to Examine Its Participation in Brazil’s ‘Biggest Judicial Scandal’

Tipping Is a Legacy of Slavery

Interview with Martin Gurri, "A Short-Term Pessimist and Long-Term Optimist"

New Zealand: Ardern's decision to drop regular interview gives fuel to political foes

EU Parliament strips Puigdemont, two other Catalans of immunity

U.S. Launches New Afghanistan Initiative Which Is Unlikely To Fly

Hospital-Owning Frist Family 'Made a Killing' During Pandemic, With Wealth Soaring by $8.1 Billion

Senate Banking Committee Sets GameStop Hearing for Tuesday; Koch Money Pops Up Again

'A Climate Time Bomb': 370+ Groups Urge Biden to Immediately Halt Line 3 Pipeline

California Wildfire Smoke Harms Respiratory Health More than Fine Particulates from Any Other Source, Including Vehicle Emissions

Keiser Report | A New Currency For Global Trade

Jimmy Dore: Another Independent News Show Gets Shut Down

Rising: Top Biden Aide's PAST Screwing Workers For Uber

A Little Night Music

Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio - Move On Up

Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio - Fo Sho

Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio - Brotha James

Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio - Aces

Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio - Memphis

Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio - Tacoma Black Party

Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio - I Don't Want to Play That

Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio - Call Your Mom

Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio Virtual Concert

Jabrille “Jimmy James” Williams - Shortcake