Category: government

the war in Ukraine

I noted in this post that I joined in fears that Russia was about to escalate its hostilities toward Ukraine around the time of the Olympics and now it is happening.

The war there has been going on since 2014 when Russia took over the Crimean peninsula. At that time, separatists in the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, with the backing of Russian troops, took control of the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk and some territory around them. Earlier this week, Russia recognized Donetsk and Luhansk as separate republics, including not only rebel-held territory but also land under the control of Ukraine. Putin also sent more troops into the area, calling them “peacekeepers” when they are actually invaders into Ukraine. Russia also has at least 150,000 troops with heavy weaponry just over the border on three sides of Ukraine.

I’m very afraid for the people of Ukraine. They have already lost about 14,000 people to this war but would lose many, many more if Russia launches a major offensive against them. The thirty countries of NATO are instituting economic sanctions against Russia and have increased military support to Ukraine, although they will not take part in the fighting directly. They are also preparing for possible refugees if Russia does undertake an invasion of the whole country.

It’s likely that people in Europe, and to a lesser extent in North America, will be impacted in terms of oil and gas supplies because Russia is a major producer and exporter and has used fossil fuels as a weapon before. It’s also likely that the Russian attack will include cyber warfare against Ukraine and possibly NATO countries.

President Biden has made clear that the US will keep its NATO commitments to defend member nations against attack and has moved additional troops into Europe. Because Ukraine is not a member of NATO, they only have their own armed forces to actively fight against Russia.

I hope it will be enough.

Putin has tried to claim that Ukraine was never really an independent entity, but he is mistaken. Even during the Soviet era, there were many people who proudly identified as Ukrainians, even when they were forced to flee to other countries, such as the US. Currently in Ukraine, there are even citizens who are Russian speakers who are ready to take up arms to defend Ukraine and its democracy.

Perhaps, Putin will realize that and back down before more blood is shed. I know there are diplomats still trying to avert a large-scale war but things look very grim now.

Putin does not inspire hope for peace.

One-Liner Wednesday: history

History does not repeat, but it does instruct.

Timothy Snyder

Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2022/02/16/one-liner-wednesday-i-won-2/

politics and/or science

Over the course of the pandemic, I’ve posted frequently about it, the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine trial in which B, T, and I are participating, the evolving science on the SARS-CoV-2 virus and its variants, the similarly evolving public health recommendations, and how these are being implemented here in my home state of New York and elsewhere in the United States. I do sometimes comment on the pandemic in the UK and globally, but I know best what happens close to home.

Throughout the pandemic, New York had been in the vanguard of following the recommendations of public health experts, avoiding the tendency we have seen in so many other states to ignore the benefits of masking, distancing, limiting crowds, getting vaccinated, isolating if infected, etc.

That ended this week.

Governor Hochul bowed to public and political pressure and lifted the mask mandate for businesses. While it is true that statewide the peak of the Omicron wave has passed and the vaccination rate is decent, my county’s risk is still rated as very high, with 44.7 per 100,000 daily cases. Technically, New York as a state is also in the very high category with 31.2/100,000 today (February 11), but it is counties like mine that are keeping the state in that risk category rather than dropping into the (merely) high category. Medium and low risk are a long way off at this point.

Meanwhile, the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are recommending not only that everyone age two and over wear a mask while in public but also that those masks be N95 or similarly protective types because Omicron is so highly contagious. Alarmingly, an even more contagious omicron sub-variant has reached the US, making protective masks that much more important.

Does this sound like the proper time to end mask mandates for businesses in New York State?

Certainly not, if one is truly following the science.

The problem is that many people are tired of having to deal with the pandemic and are complaining very loudly. The politicians who had been following the science hear them and loosen the rules that had been helping to get their residents through the current wave with as little hospitalization and death as possible. This could extend the current omicron wave and increase the likelihood of yet another new variant that has the potential to be even more transmissible or evade current vaccines and treatments or cause more severe disease.

Regardless of New York State rules, I am continuing to follow medical advice, to avoid crowds, and wear an N95 when in public. Because I am vaccinated and boosted, I will still visit with people who are similarly protected without a mask. I had hoped to return to church services this weekend but have decided that I can’t do so with the daily case rate still being so high; being stationary in a room with that many people for over an hour is too much risk for me, even masked.

Sigh.

At some point, the pandemic will end and I will follow medical and scientific advice on what my “new normal” will be. I had hoped that our state policies would be an aid in this, as they had been through most of these past months, but that remains to be seen.

I’m just hoping that this latest relaxation of protections doesn’t cause even more cases than we have already suffered.

Update: Almost immediately after publishing this post, I saw reports of this study from the CDC, which shows that booster effectiveness wanes significantly after four months. Given that B, T, and I all had our boosters on the early side due to our participation in the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine trial, I’m all the more resolute in my vigilance regarding masking, distancing, etc. While we are all still likely to avoid severe disease or hospitalization due to our longer-than-four-months-ago boosters, I prefer to try to avoid infection entirely.

over COVID?

Over the last few weeks, many people here in the United States have said publicly that they are “over COVID” or “through with the pandemic” and are going to “go back to normal” which means living like they did before SARS-CoV-2 appeared.

Guess what? Pandemics don’t disappear just because we are tired or frustrated or in denial. There were 3,622 COVID deaths reported in the US yesterday, adding to the almost 900,000 deaths in the US since the start of the pandemic and 5.7 million deaths worldwide. These staggering totals are almost certainly undercounted, as some regions don’t have the will or capacity to track and report. Also, some deaths result from lasting heart, lung, or neurological damage from COVID rather than from the active infection itself and so may not be identified as COVID related.

Some people are saying we just have to live with COVID, as we do with flu and other viruses. Thus, they are saying that it is now endemic, but here is the problem. There is a specific definition of pandemic, “(of a disease) prevalent over a whole country or the world” (Oxford Languages). Looking at case numbers in the US and around the world, it’s obvious this is still a pandemic. We will get to a point where it is endemic, someday, through a mix of vaccination and immunity from having been infected, although no one yet knows how long immunity acquired through either route will last. Dictionary.com has a handy non-epidemiologist explainer of pandemic, epidemic, and endemic.

The subtext of being “over COVID” seems to be more along the lines of I’m tired of masking and distancing and avoiding crowds, so I’m just going to get back out there because a) I’m vaccinated/boosted so I don’t think I’ll get sick or at least not seriously so; b) I am young/strong/take vitamins/exercise so I’m not going to get sick; c) I don’t believe there is such a thing as this virus; d) you can’t tell me what to do; or e) we have to ease up on restrictions now so that we can re-institute them when the next variant or spike in cases occurs.

The thing is that a virus doesn’t care about your age or status or location. It’s only mission is to live and replicate and it will adapt to make that happen as easily and widely as possible. Exhibit A: the Omicron variant, which is wildly contagious and somewhat able to cause breakthrough infections in the vaccinated.

As regular readers here may recall, spouse B, daughter T, and I are all part of the Pfizer/BioNTech phase three vaccine trial. We are all vaccinated and boosted, although we were boosted on the early side of the curve, B and T as part of the trial that is contributing efficacy data that we see reported out in the news, and I who received a booster through the trial as soon as it was authorized for public use but before most people in my age range were eligible. I am also contributing data for the study, but I’m not on the leading edge like B and T. Therefore, while many of the boosted can get comfort from knowing that their immunity is likely still strong because the data from the trials is showing that, I don’t know if B and T might be showing a decline because there hasn’t been enough time to collect and analyze that data. I’m sure we would all love to know that booster immunity lasts a year or longer but it’s only been about seven months so far, so we can’t know. Likewise, we don’t know how long immunity lasts after infection.

I know that I am unlikely to become seriously ill, to be hospitalized, or to die if I contract COVID, but that doesn’t mean that I’m ready to be cavalier about it. I don’t want to be sick if I can prevent it by continuing with masking, distancing, and avoiding crowds. Even mild cases of COVID can result in months of symptoms, which is termed “long COVID.” As someone who has lived with a person suffering from FM/ME, which causes similar symptoms, I find the prospect of long COVID frightening.

What frightens me even more is the danger of spreading COVID to someone else. I have many friends who are older than I and at higher risk, as well as friends who are immunocompromised. Young children still are not eligible for immunization, although Pfizer/BioNTech has just applied for emergency use authorization for children 6 months-4 years of age, so perhaps that will begin in the coming weeks. I’m sure I also happen upon unvaccinated people because the fully vaccinated rate in my county is 62% and the boosted rate is only 33%. Some of the fully vaccinated are not yet booster eligible but we know that boosted people have the best chance against Omicron, so, if I am out in public, chances are that only 1 in 3 people I encounter will be a similar status to me.

Those are not great odds, especially with a variant as contagious as Omicron accounting for 99% of US cases. I have recently upped my mask protection to N95s, as I wrote about here. I’m learning how to deal with them as someone who needs progressive lenses in her glasses. The tighter fit of the N95 masks makes it difficult for my glasses to be in the correct position, so I can get a headache from eyestrain if I try to do close work for any length of time. Still, I’m trying to wear the N95s when I have to go out with a surgical mask/good quality cloth mask combo if I have to take the N95 off.

I used this site, https://covidactnow.org/us/new_york-ny/county/broome_county/?s=28791756, to find today’s Broome County statistics. (You can use it to find statistics in your area in the US. International data may be found here: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/.) It rates our risk level as “Extremely High.” While other may be “over COVID,” I am not ready to take that much risk for myself, my family, and my community.

As conditions change, I will re-evaluate and adjust my behavior as I see fit. Until then, I hope that those I meet will respect my viewpoint.

I’m not “over COVID” yet.

voting in the US

I’m tired of politicians in Republican-led states that are restricting voting practices boasting that their policies still make voting easier than in “liberal” New York.

I live in New York state and here’s the deal. New York has long had very cumbersome voting rules. Registration and changes in party affiliation had to be completed months in advance of election day. Absentee voting by mail was only for medical issues with a doctor’s letter or being out of the county on election day. Until the pandemic, there were no early voting days. When we did have some early voting for the November 2020 election due to the pandemic, I waited in line for three hours to cast my ballot. Fear of COVID was allowed as a medical exemption so voting by mail was easier in 2020 but those ballots were not counted for over a week.

I envied family and friends in other states where most of the voting was done by mail, often with ballots mailed routinely to registered voters. States with open primaries, same-day registration, weeks of early voting days. States where it was not as cumbersome to fulfill the fundamental responsibility of being a citizen.

Because of the election interference problems of 2016, there had been a lot of preparations done to make the 2020 election more secure. The pandemic added another layer of complexity but the election was very successful with high turnout and accurate results reported. There were only scattered instances of voter fraud. Despite the vociferous and continuing lies from the former president and other Republicans, the election was free and fair. Dozens of recounts, audits, and court cases have upheld the results.

That is not to say that there were no problems. In my Congressional district, New York 22, the vote count was so close that it had not been certified when the new Congress first met in early January. During the January 6 attack, there was no representative from my district huddled in the House chamber and then evacuated to a safer location. The contested election results wound up in court. One of the main issues was that one of the counties did not process new voter registrations even though they arrived before the deadline. When those people appeared to vote, they were not allowed to cast ballots, which was significant in a district where only a few dozen votes separated the candidates. The court allowed the vote count to stand, seating the Republican candidate who had won in 2016 in place of the Democratic incumbent who had beaten her in 2018.

In a way, this foreshadows some of the efforts underway in various states to make registering and voting more difficult for people who are deemed likely to vote for Democrats. This has variously been applied to people of color, urban dwellers, elders, college students, and Latinx populations, depending on the state. For example, in Texas, a handgun license is accepted as identification for voting but a student ID is not. There have also been moves to close polling locations in certain areas, for example, to create long lines to vote in majority black neighborhoods while white neighborhoods have more polling places with only a few minutes’ wait. We also see increased amounts of gerrymandering, whereby districts are drawn in convoluted ways to dilute the voting power of a group, whether that is regarding political party, race, or ethnicity.

These kinds of voter suppression tactics and interference in representation have been around for a long time but are worse now than in recent US history due to Supreme Court decisions in 2013 and 2021 which made much of the 1965 Voting Rights Act unenforceable.

What is even more unsettling are the new laws in some states that are empowering partisans to determine which of the votes cast get counted and which get thrown out. The counting of valid votes should be totally straightforward and non-partisan. It’s math. Inserting politics means that it’s possible for electoral college votes to be awarded to the candidate who lost the popular vote in the state, perhaps overseen by the state legislature. We have seen a frightening example of this already with several states sending fraudulent slates of electors for Trump in states where Biden won the popular vote. We have just learned that these cases are being investigated by the Department of Justice.

There have been several bills in Congress to try to address these problems. They have passed the House but not the Senate where they have been impeded by the filibuster that would need ten Republicans to join with the Democratic caucus to advance the bills for a vote.

It’s shameful that Republicans are not standing up for democracy and the right of all citizens to participate in free and fair elections. They are apparently afraid that, if everyone votes and all the votes are counted accurately in fairly drawn districts, they will lose elections and power.

They should, though, be prioritizing our democratic principles and highest ideals. The last time the Voting Rights Act was re-authorized in 2006 it passed in the Senate 98-0 with 17 currently serving Republican senators supporting it. The Voting Rights Act originally targeted black voter suppression in certain jurisdictions with known discriminatory practices and the Supreme Court considered these formulae outdated. The current legislation under consideration goes further in securing voting rights for all in that it addresses a wider range of problems over the country that have appeared or been threatened over time. It would help voters in Democrat-led states like New York as well as Republican-led states like Florida.

Some have argued that the courts will prevent injustice but that does not always happen, as we found in the case in NY-22 where voters were disenfranchised without redress. We are also seeing, unfortunately, cases where judges are acting in a partisan way rather than an impartial, merits-of-the-case way.

Our Constitution begins, “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union”. Over our history, voting has been restricted by race, age, gender, and wealth. As we strive to “form a more perfect Union,” we must ensure that all adult American citizens have equal access to voting, whatever their race, age, gender, ethnicity, religion, political opinions, education, place of residence, or health status. We need just and enforceable laws to make that possible. I call on all members of Congress to support their fellow citizens in order to make our union stronger and “more perfect”.
*****
Join us for Linda’s Just Jot It January! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2022/01/27/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-27th-2022/

healing the earth together

On Thursday, I posted that I had a new poem available on Silver Birch Press as part of their series “How to Heal the Earth.” The prompt for the series read, in part, “Your poem can offer practical ideas of how to heal the earth from a personal perspective (i.e., something specific to you and not didactic or soapboxy) or your poem can offer fanciful thoughts that defy the practical.”

Anyone who knows me will not be surprised that I came down on the practical rather than fanciful side. (I’ll leave it to you to determine whether my poem or this post is soapboxy.)

I wrote a list poem, helpfully formatted into a checklist by Word, that relates some of the things I and my family have done to help combat environmental degradation and climate change. The list blends practical, individual actions, like using LED bulbs and driving an electric car, with social and political actions, like voting and boycotting. Okay, there are also a few more poetic lines thrown in, too.

One of the excuses people use for not taking individual action is that they don’t think that their change will have any impact in the face of such a large challenge as global warming. It’s true that the impact of any one individual action is infinitesimally small but those actions do add up within your household, in your neighborhood, your region, your country to something larger and helpful. If everyone, though, throws up their hands and accepts the polluting status quo, the condition of the planet worsens faster, often harming worst and first those who did the least to create the problems in the first place. As someone from the United States, which is historically the largest contributor to global warming, I feel a particular responsibility to cut carbon emissions as much as I can and am fortunate enough to have the resources to do so.

Individual actions will never be enough, though, unless systemic changes also occur. The political and economic systems in most countries are heavily weighted toward fossil fuels and those companies wield a lot of power. Trying to counteract that is also an example of needing many, many individual actions to create positive change. For example, I and hundreds of thousands fellow New Yorkers worked for years to ban fracking and enact a climate bill in our state. There were protests, public commentary, writing and calling elected officials, court cases, elections, research, networking, meetings, and on and on, but the needed legislation finally passed. Of course, there is still work to be done as it is being implemented but, if so many of us hadn’t made our voices heard, my region would probably look like our neighboring counties in Pennsylvania with large fracked gas wells and the pollution they bring as part of our landscape.

There is still plenty of work to do on the systemic level in the US and around the world, too. Current efforts include boycotting the banks that fund fossil fuel extraction and infrastructure, despite the danger that the companies may never be able to pay the loans back and will go bankrupt with lots of stranded assets in the form of rights to extract fossil fuels that cannot be fulfilled if the world is going to stay under 1.5, or even 2, degrees Celsius in global warming. There is also a major divestment push against fossil fuel companies with some pension funds, universities, and other large institutions refusing to hold stock in those companies. In the US, we are also trying to get more federal funding for the transition to renewable energy and an end to decades of subsidies for fossil fuels.

All of these efforts have an individual as well as a corporate component. Whether you are inspired by prose or by (the much shorter and easier to read) poetry, I hope you will join me by doing what you are able to do to fight global warming and heal help the earth from wherever you are.
*****
Join us for Linda’s Just Jot It January and/or Stream of Consciousness Saturday! I chose to not take Linda up on the SoCS prompt this week, which is “icing on the cake”, but do want to wish Linda a happy birthday and a peaceful, healthy, creative year to come! You can find out more about #JusJoJan and #SoCS here: https://lindaghill.com/2022/01/21/the-friday-reminder-for-socs-jusjojan-2022-daily-prompt-jan-22nd/

How to Heal the Earth poem

Back in November, I posted that I had had a poem accepted by Silver Birch Press as part of their How to Heal the Earth series.

I’m pleased to share that my poem is now available here!

Please visit and comment either there or here if you are so moved. While you are there, you can read dozens of contributions to the How to Heal the Earth series along with the Thoughts About the Earth series.

Thank you to Silver Birch Press for including me in this series and for the lovely photo that they chose to accompany my poem.
*****
Join us for Linda’s Just Jot It January! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2022/01/20/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-20th-2022/

One-Liner Wednesday: MLK quote

It may be true that the law cannot change the heart but it can restrain the heartless.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Join us for Linda’s Just Jot It January and/or One-Liner Wednesdays! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2022/01/19/one-liner-wednesday-jusjojan-the-19th-2022-voice-to-text/

seditious conspiracy and excess electors

As we have just passed the one-year anniversary of the attack on the US Capitol, we are getting more public insight into the investigations surrounding it.

In the United States, law enforcement and local, state, and federal judiciary officials do not publicly comment on ongoing investigations. They do this to avoid tipping their hand to those who might potentially be contacted to testify or who might eventually be indicted and also to not prejudice future jurors. This does, however, lead to lots of public speculation. Over 700 people had been charged in connection to the January 6th attack, many with misdemeanors but some with felonies, such as assaulting police officers.

This week, eleven members of the extremist group Oath Keepers, including their founder Stewart Rhodes, were charged with seditious conspiracy in conjunction with the attack on the Capitol. While there had been a few prior conspiracy charges, such as conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, this is the first instance of charges of seditious conspiracy.

The indictment is quite detailed about the weeks of planning and the actions of the Oath Keepers before, during, and after the January 6th Capitol breach. It helps explain why it took a bit over a year to issue the indictment, as it takes time to amass the evidence needed for the grand jury to charge the defendants. Now that this indictment focused on the Oath Keepers has been handed down, it’s possible that we may see other, similar indictments of members of the Proud Boys and other extremist groups. Given the way that these big investigations tend to start with lesser crimes and work their way through to more serious charges among those who engaged in orchestrating events, we may eventually see indictments of some elected officials who helped or coordinated with these groups.

It is likely that we are seeing a similar dynamic with the House select committee investigation. Investigative reporters have recently obtained copies of forged electoral college certification documents for Donald Trump from five states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin) that Joe Biden won, which were sent to the Congress and the National Archives. This suggest an organized attempt by Republicans to commit election fraud. Note that these materials were obtained by journalists through Freedom of Information Act requests in the states. They were not leaked from any Congressional or judicial investigations but it seems that those investigations already have these documents as part of their evidence.

Patience is required to see if this evidence will eventually result in charges but it seems that more and more evidence of conspiracy to overturn a valid presidential election is coming to light. I find it unnerving to see how close the US came to a coup but I hope that these investigations will root out all those responsible and bring them to justice before they have another chance to try again. If they do get that chance and succeed in rigging an election or overturning the results of a fair election, the United States will cease to be the oldest functioning democracy in the modern world.

We must not risk that happening.

In the United States, no one is above the law.

At least, that is what we keep telling ourselves.
*****
Join us for Linda’s Just Jot It January! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2022/01/14/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-14th-2022/

One-Liner Wednesday: charity

“Charity is the humanitarian mask hiding the face of economic exploitation.”
~~~ Slavoy Žižek

Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesday and Just Jot It January! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2022/01/12/one-liner-wednesday-jusjojan-the-12th-2022-clutter/