governance – Page 61 – Desdemona Despair

An indigenous woman, wearing a face mask that reads “Indigenous lives matter”, attends the funeral of Chief Messias Kokama, 53, from the Parque das Tribos (Tribes Park), who passed away due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), at Parque das Tribos in Manaus, Brazil, 14 May 2020. Photo: Bruno Kelly / REUTERS

May 18, 2020

Coronavirus pandemic reaches dozens of indigenous groups in Brazil, felling Chief Messias Kokama – Hospitals on brink of collapse as Bolsonaro does pushups with supporters

By Rob Picheta, Vasco Cotovio, and Shasta Darlington 18 May 2020 (CNN) – The health care system in Brazil’s largest city is wavering on the brink of collapse and coronavirus deaths throughout the South American nation are soaring — but President Jair Bolsonaro nonetheless reveled in crowds of supporters on Sunday, joining yet another anti-lockdown […]

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

May 1, 2020

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

April 30, 2020

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 […]

Aerial view of the Clinical Research Center of the National Institutes of Health. Photo: NIH

April 28, 2020

Trump cuts U.S. research on bat-human virus transmission over China ties

By Sarah Owermohle 27 April 2020 (Politico) – The Trump administration abruptly cut off funding for a project studying how coronaviruses spread from bats to people after reports linked the work to a lab in Wuhan, China, at the center of conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 pandemic’s origins. The National Institutes of Health on Friday […]

Dame Jane Goodall is known for her work with primates, but she’s also an avid animal rights and environmental activist. In a CNET interviews, she says, “It’s because of our lack of respect for the environment that this terrible COVID-19 virus has shut down the world”. Photo: National Geographic

April 26, 2020

Dame Jane Goodall: “It’s because of our lack of respect for the environment that this terrible COVID-19 virus has shut down the world”

By Bonnie Burton 23 April 2020 (CNET) – Jane Goodall has a lot to say about how human disregard for animals and the environment brought on the coronavirus pandemic. But the famed British primatologist believes there’s still a chance we can repair our relationship with the natural world, a point she stresses in the new National Geographic […]

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

April 21, 2020

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

April 19, 2020

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

April 19, 2020

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 […]

Aerial view of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig burning after an explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, off the southeast tip of Louisiana, 21 April 2010. Ten years after an oil rig explosion killed 11 workers and unleashed an environmental nightmare in the Gulf of Mexico, companies are drilling into deeper and deeper waters where the payoffs can be huge but the risks are greater than ever. Photo: Gerald Herbert / AP Photo

April 19, 2020

10 years after BP spill: Oil drilled deeper; rules relaxed – “I’m concerned that in the industry, the lessons aren’t fully learned — that we’re tending to backslide”

By Kevin Mcgill and Matthew Brown 18 April 2020 NEW ORLEANS (AP) – Ten years after an oil rig explosion killed 11 workers and unleashed an environmental nightmare in the Gulf of Mexico, companies are drilling into deeper and deeper waters, where the payoffs can be huge but the risks are greater than ever. Industry leaders and […]

Zezico Guajajara, an indigenous teacher and a supporter of the Guardians of the Forest, was murdered on 31 March 2020. He is the fifth Amazon forest protector to be killed in six months. Brazil’s populist President Jair Bolsonaro has drawn intense domestic and international criticism for failing to protect the Guardians’ territory in the eastern Amazon region. Photo: Zezico Guajajara

April 5, 2020

Amazon land defender Zezico Guajajara murdered – “The loggers are desperate to get rid of the Guardians, targeting them one by one”

2 April 2020 (BBC News) – A member of a protected tribe in the Amazon has been killed by gunmen, authorities in the Brazilian state of Maranhao say. The body of Zezico Guajajara, of the Guajajara tribe, was found near his village on Tuesday. He had been shot. The former teacher was a supporter of […]