Trump, Jared Kushner, and Ivanka Kushner as Immortan Joe and henchmen from “Mad Max: Fury Road”. “But nowhere has our policy been more evident than backward countries and failed states. Like the U.S. Here, as thousands of people died and got buried in mass graves, Il Duce left you to fight each other over medical equipment by entrusting it to his little shit-goblin-in-law.” Photo: The Juice Media

Honest Government Ad: Pandemic Update – “Scientists have been warning us for decades to prepare for this crisis. Did we? Of course not.”

30 April 2020 (The Juice Media) – The Government has made an ad about its response to the pandemic, and it’s surprisingly honest and informative. Scientists have been warning us for decades to prepare for this crisis. Did we? Of course not. The Machine said there was no profit in preventing future crises. So instead, […]

Aerial view of coffins being buried at an area where new graves have been dug at the Parque Tarumã cemetery in Manaus, Brazil, in April 2020. On 26 April 2020, 140 bodies of people killed by COVID-19 were laid to rest in Manaus, the jungle-flanked capital of Amazonas state. Normally the figure would be closer to 30 – but these are no longer normal times. Photo: Michael Dantas / AFP / Getty Images

Manaus fills mass graves as Covid-19 hits the Amazon – “They were just dumped there like dogs. What are our lives worth now? Nothing.”

By Tom Phillips and Fabiano Maisonnave 30 April 2020 MANAUS (The Guardian) – Day and night, the dead are delivered into the tawny Amazonian earth – the latest victims of a devastating pandemic now reaching deep into the heart of the Brazilian rainforest. On Sunday 140 bodies were laid to rest in Manaus, the jungle-flanked capital of […]

A healthcare worker stands in a crosswalk to block hundreds of pro-death pro-Covid protesters in Denver, on 19 April 2020. Photo: Alyson McClaran / Reuters

Are we finally seeing science denialism for the death wish it is? “Denying the severity of COVID-19 is tantamount to denying the worth of the thousands who have died and the thousands more who will”

By Heather Houser 16 April 2020 (the Austin Statesman) – Every day it seems we read headlines that connect science denialism to cruel indifference and death. Just recently, when talking about the initial COVID-19 response, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi asserted that ”[Trump’s] denial at the beginning was deadly.” In Arizona, some residents called […]

Protesters shout outside the Ohio Statehouse Atrium where reporters listen during state officials’ coronavirus update Monday, 13 April 2020. About 100 demonstrators assembled outside the building, upset that the state remains under a stay-at-home order and that non-essential businesses remain closed. Photo: Joshua A. Bickel / Dispatch

Attacks on press credibility endanger U.S. democracy and global press freedom

WASHINGTON, D.C., 16 April 2020 (CPJ) – When President Donald J. Trump initially minimized the danger of the COVID-19 virus in the first two months of 2020, he attacked news media reporting about the growing threat and his administration’s slow response. “Low Ratings Fake News MSDNC (Comcast) & @CNN are doing everything possible to make […]

Trump during a daily press briefing on the coronavirus crisis, 10 April 2020. An attack ad for Donald Trump's campaign for reelection showed Gary Locke, a former governor of Washington state and U.S. ambassador to China, as a Chinese official. Photo: Reuters

Masha Gessen: We won’t know the exact moment when democracy dies – “Autocracy creeps in, staking one claim after another, but it does not firmly and finally announce its own arrival”

By Masha Gessen 16 April 2020 (The New Yorker) – In the early days of the Trump Presidency, there was a lot of speculation about when, if, and how we would pass the point of no return, when we would know that American democracy had been destroyed. That conversation faded after a while, drowned out by the […]

Map showing climate risk by country, 2017. The climate risk of each country is based on its ND-GAIN Index score for 2017. The ND-GAIN Index is a composite measure, with a range of 0-100, of a country’s vulnerability to climate change and its readiness to improve resilience. Vulnerability is quantified by the level of exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity of six life-supporting sectors (food, water, health, ecosystem services, human habitat and infrastructure). Readiness measures a country’s ability to realize adaptive actions in the economic, governance and social spheres. Data: University of Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative Index (available at https://gain.nd.edu/). Graphic: UNDESA

U.N. warns that runaway inequality is destabilizing the world’s democracies – “Efforts to reduce inequality will inevitably challenge the interests of certain individuals and groups. At their core, they affect the balance of power.”

By Christopher Ingraham 11 February 2020 (The Washington Post) – Runaway inequality is eroding trust in democratic societies and paving the way for authoritarian and nativist regimes to take root, according to a dire new report from the United Nations. The findings note that solutions — including robust social safety nets, an active redistribution of wealth and […]

Indigenous leader of the Celia Xakriaba tribe walks next to the Xingu River during a four-day pow wow in Piaracu village, in Xingu Indigenous Park, near Sao Jose do Xingu, Mato Grosso state, Brazil, 15 January 2020. Photo: Ricardo Moraes / REUTERS

Brazil tribes back manifesto to save Amazon rainforest and its indigenous people from the “genocide, ethnocide, and ecocide” planned by far-right President Jair Bolsonaro

By Ricardo Moraes 18 January 2020 XINGU INDIGENOUS PARK, Brazil (Reuters) – Leaders of native tribes in Brazil issued a rallying call to protect the Amazon rainforest and its indigenous people from what they called the “genocide, ethnocide and ecocide” planned by the country’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro. A manifesto signed on Friday at the […]

Number of journalists imprisoned per country on 1 December 2019. Data: Committee to Protect Journalists. China, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt the world’s worst jailers of journalists. Graphic: A. Bhandari / Reuters

China imprisoned more journalists than any other country in 2019

By Gerry Doyle 10 December 2019 (Reuters) – China imprisoned at least 48 journalists in 2019, more than any other country, displacing Turkey as the most oppressive place for the profession, a report by the Committee to Protect Journalists report said on Wednesday. At least 250 journalists were imprisoned worldwide this year, according to the […]

Fires burn in Pará state, Brazil, in September 2019. Jair Bolsonaro accused Leonardo DiCaprio of ‘giving money for the Amazon to be torched’. Photo: Nelson Almeida/ AFP / Getty Images

Brazil’s president Bolsonaro claims Leonardo DiCaprio paid for Amazon fires – “Our negligent and incompetent president, responsible for an environmental dismantling unprecedented in our country, wants to blame DiCaprio”

By Tom Phillips 29 November 2019 (The Guardian) – Brazil’s president has falsely accused the actor and environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio of bankrolling the deliberate incineration of the Amazon rainforest. Jair Bolsonaro – a populist nationalist who has vowed to drive environmental NGOs from Brazil – made the claim on Friday, reportedly telling supporters: “This Leonardo DiCaprio’s […]

Undated photos of Susan and Carl Chase show them in their teenage years. They chose to end their lives on 27 October 2019, writing, “Dying is natural, and inescapable. We see nothing good about stretching the process out over as many years as possible.” Photo: Carl and Susan Chase / The Ellsworth American

Together, a Maine couple left the world, provoking a debate about death and choice – “The pressure of over-population is bringing about the destruction of civilization and will eventually cause the extinction of our species as we make the planet unfit for ourselves”

By Eric Russell 24 November 2019 (Portland Press Herald) – They wanted to leave this world together, on their own terms, and so on 27 October 2019, Carl and Susan Chase held hands in their favorite spot at home overlooking Horseshoe Cove in Brooksville until death came. Carl, an accomplished sailor and musician, was 77. […]

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