Music: Matthieu Saglio — ‘Caravelle’
Less punishment, more justice
David Cole writes: The mass protests spurred by George Floyd’s killing have been more sustained and widespread than any this country has seen before in response to police abuse. When the initial ones prompted even more police violence—officers driving cars into peaceful demonstrators or beating them with truncheons, using chemical agents and flash grenades to clear crowds for a presidential photo op, pepper-spraying young and old alike—the aggression, much of it captured on video, only inspired more people to join…
Trump’s private army
Elizabeth Goitein writes: It doesn’t take a legal expert to know that what’s happening in Portland, Oregon is an abuse of power. When unidentified federal forces dressed as soldiers pull people off the streets into unmarked vans, something is gravely wrong. What’s less apparent is that this abuse is part of an ongoing effort by the administration to get around “posse comitatus”: the principle that the president cannot use the military as a domestic police force. The implications for the…
Is it time to shut down the Department of Homeland Security?
Jonathan Blitzer writes: In early June, after the killing of George Floyd, when tens of thousands of mostly peaceful demonstrators assembled in cities across the country to protest police brutality, the Department of Homeland Security sent hundreds of its agents to patrol the crowds. They cleared space for a Presidential photo op in front of St. John’s Church, in Washington, D.C., by forcibly removing demonstrators, and in New York City they reportedly made at least one arrest at gunpoint. The…
How California went from coronavirus success story to disaster — and how it can regain control
George Rutherford writes: In the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, California seemed to be a success story. Today, however, the state’s case count is surging, recently topping 400,000 total and surpassing New York. Compared with levels around Memorial Day in Southern California and around the second week in June in Northern California, daily cases have increased fourfold. In recent weeks, the average number of daily deaths statewide has increased by 50 percent. What is driving this surge, and how…
Coronavirus ravaged Florida, as Ron DeSantis sidelined scientists and followed Trump
The Washington Post reports: As Florida became a global epicenter of the coronavirus, Gov. Ron DeSantis held one meeting this month with his top public health official, Scott Rivkees, according to the governor’s schedule. His health department has sidelined scientists, halting briefings last month with disease specialists and telling the experts there was not sufficient personnel from the state to continue participating. “I never received information about what happened with my ideas or results,” said Thomas Hladish, a University of…
Protests swell in Russia’s far east in a stark new challenge to Putin
The New York Times reports: Watching the passing masses of protesters chanting “Freedom!” and “Putin resign!” while passing drivers honked, applauded and offered high-fives, a sidewalk vendor selling little cucumbers and plastic cups of forest raspberries said she would join in, too, if she did not have to work. “There will be a revolution,” the vendor, Irina Lukasheva, 56, predicted. “What did our grandfathers fight for? Not for poverty or for the oligarchs sitting over there in the Kremlin.” The…
Ancient microbial arms race sharpened our immune system — but also left us vulnerable
Ann Gibbons writes: At a recent symposium on the evolution of infectious diseases, University of California, San Diego (UCSD), pathologist Nissi Varki noted that humans suffer from a long list of deadly diseases—including typhoid fever, cholera, mumps, whooping cough, measles, smallpox, polio, and gonorrhea—that don’t afflict apes and most other mammals. All of those pathogens follow the same well-trodden pathway to break into our cells: They manipulate sugar molecules called sialic acids. Hundreds of millions of these sugars stud the…
Music: Matthieu Saglio — ‘Amanecer’
Videos show how federal officers escalated violence in Portland
The New York Times reports: After flooding the streets around the federal courthouse in Portland with tear gas during Friday’s early morning hours, dozens of federal officers in camouflage and tactical gear stood in formation around the front of the building. Then, as one protester blared a soundtrack of “The Imperial March,” the officers started advancing. Through the acrid haze, they continued to fire flash grenades and welt-inducing marble-size balls filled with caustic chemicals. They moved down Main Street…
The federal police in Portland don’t even understand what ‘arrests’ are
Andrew Manuel Crespo writes: This past week, the Department of Homeland Security held a news conference to clear up a few things about the federal paramilitary police force grabbing protesters on the streets of Portland, Ore. If the goal was to reassure everyone that these armor-clad agents were acting lawfully, it did not go well. Instead the conference revealed, with painstaking clarity, a very big problem: The deputy director of President Trump’s new federal police force does not know what…
Homeland Security was destined to become a secret police force
Masha Gessen writes: In a press conference on Tuesday, Chad Wolf, the acting head of the Department of Homeland Security, responded to media reports that unidentified federal agents using unmarked vehicles have been arresting protesters in Portland, Oregon. Since early July, men in military-style uniforms have waged battle against protesters there, using tear gas and nonlethal munitions; video and photographs coming out of Portland have shown scenes of urban warfare, with what looks like a regular army moving on unarmed…
Media coverage of the 2016 campaign was disastrous. Now’s the last chance to get 2020 right
Margaret Sullivan writes: How did the news media mess up in the 100 days leading up to the 2016 presidential election? Let me count the ways. Journalists relied too much on what opinion polls were saying and often presented a skewed interpretation of their meaning. That fed the sense that Hillary Clinton would be the inevitable winner. They vastly overplayed the Clinton email story, particularly the “reopened investigation” aspect in October. Given Donald Trump’s background and behavior, the emphasis was…
Corporate insiders pocket $1 billion in rush for coronavirus vaccine
The New York Times reports: On June 26, a small South San Francisco company called Vaxart made a surprise announcement: A coronavirus vaccine it was working on had been selected by the U.S. government to be part of Operation Warp Speed, the flagship federal initiative to quickly develop drugs to combat Covid-19. Vaxart’s shares soared. Company insiders, who weeks earlier had received stock options worth a few million dollars, saw the value of those awards increase sixfold. And a hedge…
Italy’s illnesses could be contagious
Rachel Donadio writes: In Europe, Italy was hit hardest by the pandemic because it was hit first. Hospitals filled up with patients; one local newspaper was so overwhelmed with obituaries that it published only thumbnail-size ones. The entire country was subject to draconian restrictions, the strictest in the West. Still, Italy rallied: Infections are now under control, a contact-tracing system is in place, and its economy and borders have reopened, although not to visitors from the United States. Tourist-dependent cities…
If language started with hand gestures, why did it later become vocal?
Kensy Cooperrider writes: Some say language evolved by firelight, with our ancestors sharing stories deep into the night. Others suggest it began as baby talk, or as imitations of animal calls, or as gasps of surprise. Charles Darwin proposed that language started with snippets of song; Noam Chomsky thought it was just an accident, the result of a freak genetic mutation. Proposals about the origins of language abound. And it’s no wonder: language is a marvel, our most distinctive capacity….