06 January 20
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05 January 20
Australia Is Committing Climate Suicide
Richard Flanagan, The New York Times
Flanagan writes: "Australia today is ground zero for the climate catastrophe."
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In this photo provided by The Iranian Students News Agency, flag draped coffins of Gen. Qassem Soleimani and others who were killed in Iraq in a U.S. drone strike are carried on a truck surrounded by mourners in the city of Ahvaz on Sunday. (photo: Alireza Mohammadi/AP)
ALSO SEE: US-Led Coalition Halts ISIS Fight as It Prepares for Iranian Attacks
Richard Flanagan, The New York Times
Flanagan writes: "Australia today is ground zero for the climate catastrophe."
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In this photo provided by The Iranian Students News Agency, flag draped coffins of Gen. Qassem Soleimani and others who were killed in Iraq in a U.S. drone strike are carried on a truck surrounded by mourners in the city of Ahvaz on Sunday. (photo: Alireza Mohammadi/AP)
ALSO SEE: US-Led Coalition Halts ISIS Fight as It Prepares for Iranian Attacks
Iraqi Parliament Votes to Expel US Troops From Country in Wake of Soleimani Strike
Bobby Allyn and Jane Arraf, NPR
Excerpt: "Iraq's parliament, meeting for an emergency session, voted on Sunday to expel the thousands of American troops stationed in the country, the latest response to a United States drone strike that killed the influential Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani."
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Brittany Kaiser, the then director of program development at Cambridge Analytica, takes part in a press briefing by Leave.EU in London on November 18, 2015. (photo: Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images)
Bobby Allyn and Jane Arraf, NPR
Excerpt: "Iraq's parliament, meeting for an emergency session, voted on Sunday to expel the thousands of American troops stationed in the country, the latest response to a United States drone strike that killed the influential Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani."
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Brittany Kaiser, the then director of program development at Cambridge Analytica, takes part in a press briefing by Leave.EU in London on November 18, 2015. (photo: Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images)
Carole Cadwalladr, Guardian UK
Cadwalladr writes: "An explosive leak of tens of thousands of documents from the defunct data firm Cambridge Analytica is set to expose the inner workings of the company that collapsed after the Observer revealed it had misappropriated 87 million Facebook profiles."
More than 100,000 documents relating to work in 68 countries that will lay bare the global infrastructure of an operation used to manipulate voters on “an industrial scale” are set to be released over the next months.
It comes as Christopher Steele, the ex-head of MI6’s Russia desk and the intelligence expert behind the so-called “Steele dossier” into Trump’s relationship with Russia, said that while the company had closed down, the failure to properly punish bad actors meant that the prospects for manipulation of the US election this year were even worse.
The release of documents began on New Year’s Day on an anonymous Twitter account, @HindsightFiles, with links to material on elections in Malaysia, Kenya and Brazil. The documents were revealed to have come from Brittany Kaiser, an ex-Cambridge Analytica employee turned whistleblower, and to be the same ones subpoenaed by Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Kaiser, who starred in the Oscar-shortlisted Netflix documentary The Great Hack, decided to go public after last month’s election in Britain. “It’s so abundantly clear our electoral systems are wide open to abuse,” she said. “I’m very fearful about what is going to happen in the US election later this year, and I think one of the few ways of protecting ourselves is to get as much information out there as possible.”
The documents were retrieved from her email accounts and hard drives, and though she handed over some material to parliament in April 2018, she said there were thousands and thousands more pages which showed a “breadth and depth of the work” that went “way beyond what people think they know about ‘the Cambridge Analytica scandal’”.
Donald Trump at the White House. (photo: Joyce N. Boghosian/White House Press Office)
Donald Trump: Lest Old Distortions Be Forgot
Hope Yen, Josh Boak and Calvin Woodward, Associated Press
Excerpt: "President Donald Trump closed out the old year by reprising a selection of his most familiar falsehoods and putting a few of his predecessor's accomplishments in his own win column."
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Cyntoia Brown. (photo: AP)
Hope Yen, Josh Boak and Calvin Woodward, Associated Press
Excerpt: "President Donald Trump closed out the old year by reprising a selection of his most familiar falsehoods and putting a few of his predecessor's accomplishments in his own win column."
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Cyntoia Brown. (photo: AP)
Cyntoia Brown-Long, The Washington Post
Brown-Long writes: "In August 2006, a Tennessee prosecutor convinced a jury that I was guilty of murdering a man who had trafficked me for sex. I was told to expect a sentence of 60 years. I received a life sentence. I was 16 years old."
Last week, Chrystul Kizer, charged with first-degree intentional homicide and arson in the death of a 33-year-old man who had sexually abused her multiple times, was told by a Wisconsin judge that she faces life in prison. She was 17 when she is alleged to have shot him.
The more things change.
I take responsibility for the life I took in a moment of fear and desperation. But if my trial had been held today, my defense likely would have included a discussion of domestic-minor sex trafficking and the diminished culpability of girls who are caught up in it. Since 2006, there has been new understanding of the complex trauma that sex trafficking inflicts on its young victims. Children who are bought and sold for sex are not prostitutes, they are trafficking victims. Because of the new awareness brought to my case by advocates, then-Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam (R) granted me clemency in January, scheduling me for release after 15 years served.
I was freed in August, but that can’t be the end of this story. It has always been my hope that my case would show people there is a need to change things for other young women in similar circumstances. A 2016 Vera Institute report showed that 86 percent of all women in jail report having experienced sexual violence in their lifetime, 77 percent report partner violence, and 60 percent report caregiver violence. I, too, was assaulted by a man who told me that I needed to prostitute myself to survive. I know my situation was far from unique.
But it is now painfully clear to me that my clemency has not translated into larger-scale change. As I spend my first holiday season at home since my release, many women languish in prison cells as a result of the same laws and practices that affected me.
There can be great power in putting a name and a face to injustice. When we hear a person’s story, it becomes that much easier for us to put ourselves in their shoes, to empathize — and to mobilize. But how we respond determines whether the faces we see can serve as representation for the ones we don’t. For every name we know — for every #freecyntoiabrown campaign — there are countless others who will never be heard. Unless we work to change the laws behind the injustices, identical injustices will follow.
We know about the 14-year-old trafficking victim, identified in HuffPost by her nickname “Lici,” serving 20 years in Texas. We know about Alexis Martin, a 15-year-old serving 21 years to life in Ohio for playing a role in the killing of her trafficker. Now, thanks to reporting by The Post’s Jessica Contrera, Kizer is in our timelines. But how many others are out there? And how do we advocate in a way that reaches beyond the few to the many?
For every injustice we see in the criminal-justice system, there is a law, practice or policy that allowed it to happen. That is where the change must happen. In Kizer’s case, a loophole in the law allowed a judge to deny her the ability to use an “affirmative defense” — the option to argue that she should be acquitted because the crime occurred as a result of her being trafficked. Now, unless her appeal is successful, a law specifically designed to protect victims of sex trafficking simply would not apply to Kizer. It is only when we bring the cracks in the system to light that we can effectively lobby to close them. It is only in closing these cracks that we can ensure justice for all.
A year ago, I was sitting in a prison cell, praying that the world would redefine what justice looks like for people like me. Chrystul, and all trafficking survivors, deserve the kind of justice that boldly acknowledges: “Your life matters, too.”
The scholar Cornel West encourages us to “be a voice, not an echo.” To be a voice in the face of injustice requires more than shouting into a bullhorn. It is our responsibility to become stewards of a system that exists to serve, and not to subject. That responsibility involves looking past the emotions, digging into the details and committing ourselves to advocating for change that affects everyone — not just the names we know. And the only way to ensure our voices are not mere echoes on a timeline is to pursue substantive changes to the laws, practices and policies that govern our justice system.
An injustice to one is a threat to us all. #FreeEveryCyntoia
E. Jean Carroll in New York. (photo: Chris Buck/Guardian UK)
Trump Asks New York Judge to Dismiss Rape Allegation Case
Erik Larson, Bloomberg
Larson writes: "President Donald Trump asked a New York judge to throw out an advice columnist's lawsuit accusing him of defamation after he denied her claim that he raped her in a department store dressing room two decades ago."
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Erik Larson, Bloomberg
Larson writes: "President Donald Trump asked a New York judge to throw out an advice columnist's lawsuit accusing him of defamation after he denied her claim that he raped her in a department store dressing room two decades ago."
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Volunteers sort trash in Beirut amidst ongoing protests. (photo: ANWAR AMRO/AFP/Getty Images)
Alexandra Talty, Sierra Magazine
Talty writes: "Five Gen-Zers crouched around a small pile of trash in the center of Martyr's Square in downtown Beirut in the early November sun. Wearing white gloves, they sorted bottle caps, cigarette butts, hookah mouthpieces, ticker tape, and plastic food packaging: all detritus from the previous day's protests."
Though the five were students, they hadn’t been in class for 26 days. Some of their teachers were getting upset, but the activists considered cleaning up after the protests that had been roiling the country since mid-October more important than studying.
They wanted to show the country how to take care of itself, said Paul Hanna, 17, pausing her sorting. “Without recycling, most of the trash goes into the sea.”
“We don’t want to see trash in the street,” said Mira Raheb, also 17. “If we clean here, it will change [the mentality].”
Like youth activists around the world, Lebanese environmentalists are objecting to the status quo, which in Lebanon means protesting against rampant government corruption, a faltering economy, and a long list of environmental problems that dominate daily life. Hoping to capitalize on the current unrest, they are also working to set the country on a greener path.
Since the Civil War ended in the 1990s, Lebanon has been unable to consistently provide 24/7 electricity, a functioning public transit network, proper waste management, or drinking water for its citizens. The lack of basic services impacts poor and working-class families especially hard, and the environment also suffers, with people turning to diesel-powered generators and relying on plastic water bottles.
This past October, a wildfire erupted in a forested area south of Beirut and quickly got out of control, burning more than 3,000 acres. Hot, windy conditions played a role, but so did government incompetence (three privately donated firefighting helicopters sat in disrepair at a nearby airport).
Five days later, over 1 million Lebanese were in the streets demanding that the members of the government step down. By the end of October, Prime Minister Saad Hariri had resigned.
“The forest fires were a major precursor to the revolution,” said Adib Dada, 36. An environmental architect and biomimicry specialist, Dada has led a guerilla gardening project as part of the protests, planting 30 native trees and shrubs in downtown Beirut with a group called Regenerate Lebanon.
The NGO has been fundamental in galvanizing the public around collective green solutions for the country’s environmental problems. “It is about continuous actions, really protesting the change we need to see,” said Joslin Kehdy, the group’s founder.
As the protest centralized around Martyr’s Square this past fall, Regenerate Lebanon set up an encampment there. It includes a kitchen that serves around 250 locally sourced meals daily without using any plastic (organizers rely instead on stainless steel kitchenware or the briq, a traditional Lebanese water jug). It has a maker space that boasts a living wall as well as a library and an area to collect donations like clothes and foodstuffs. Citizens can stop by a “cafe,” where there is potable filtered water and solar-powered recharging stations. Kehdy sees the encampment as a micro-model that is already being replicated in some villages.
One of the biggest environmental issues that has brought Lebanese from all religious sects together to protest is the garbage that for years has been piling up on the streets and beaches.
Since 2015, the country has spent at least $430 million on landfill contracts that went to business associates of politicians in power. According to reports, landfill operators have not been recycling despite mandates to do so and have been dumping trash and toxic waste directly into the Mediterranean.
“People are demanding a right to live in a country that manages its waste in a sustainable way,” said Julien Jreissati, campaigner at Greenpeace Middle East and North Africa. Pointing out that there are both political and environmental slogans at the protests, Jreissati believes that the waste problem could easily be solved if the government created a proper strategy. As of now, Greenpeace Middle East and North Africa estimates that only 10 percent of trash in Lebanon is recycled.
An environmental organization known as the Green Tent, which coordinated the Gen-Zers’ trash sorting in downtown Beirut, was established largely in response to this crisis. When a group of friends saw the mountain of trash left behind by the protests, they began cleaning it up.
“We decided to take this initiative to act physically instead of shouting and swearing,” said Karmal Charafeddine, 34. “It’s paying back our civil duties.”
After a night of protests, whoever was available would meet at 8 a.m. to begin collecting and sorting. Volunteers started showing up, and the Green Tent began coordinating with other environmental groups like Regenerate Lebanon to come up with creative solutions for reusing waste — for example, collecting glass and donating it to traditional blowers to make new glassware. Over half a million cigarette butts were handed to local shaper Paul Abbas, who is turning them into surfboard mats.
As protests have become more decentralized, the Green Tent has “decided to go mobile,” said Charafeddine. The group is no longer doing cleanups in Martyr’s Square, but has organized two outside of Beirut and is in the process of planning a country-wide cleanup.
Now nearing the end of December, the unrest in Lebanon shows no signs of stopping, but one thing is certain: The Lebanese refuse to go back to the status quo.
“I used to think the problem was so big — waste, the water crisis,” said Joanne Hayek, a member of Regenerate Lebanon. “For me, the biggest change is that we realized in fact we all had the same dream of a clean Lebanon. That has aligned us.”
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