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

Doomiest images of 2020

31 December 2020 (Desdemona Despair) – In 2020, the long campaign by conservatives to squelch scientific decision-making in government reached its goal: the complete sidelining of evidence-based expertise in favor of arbitrary political whim. Last year’s Doomiest Graph presaged this development, but even Desdemona couldn’t have imagined the mass death that would result as government […]

A performance protest on 15 June 2020 in Brasilia honors Brazilians who died after contracting the novel coronavirus. Photo: Adriano Machado / Reuters

Brazil ignored the warnings about COVID-19 – “A human catastrophe of unimaginable proportions”

By Terrence McCoy 16 June 2020 RIO DE JANEIRO (The Washington Post) – Weeks ago, when this seaside metropolis had recorded fewer than 10,000 cases of the novel coronavirus and there still appeared to be time, some of Brazil’s most respected scientists made their last-ditch appeal. The country had reached a pivotal juncture. Cases were […]

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

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

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 […]

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