Examining the Case Against the Filibuster - In a new book, Adam Jentleson blames government failures on more than a century of Southern obstruction in the Senate. - link
Joe Biden Is Playing It Cool with Benjamin Netanyahu - The Biden Administration’s support for the Abraham Accords is having unintended consequences for Israel’s Prime Minister. - link
On Climate, Biden’s Administration Needs to Combat Zombie Trumpism Quickly - And Montana’s Yaak Valley is a good place to start. - link
The Indoor-Dining Debate Isn’t a Debate at All - On Valentine’s Day, New Yorkers will be allowed to eat inside restaurants again. We shouldn’t. - link
The World Likes Biden But Doubts the U.S. Can Reclaim Global Leadership - The new President’s core problem is convincing allies to believe in America again. - link
From Vox
Biden will reverse Trump’s decision to label Yemen’s Houthis as terrorists -
Houthi supporters take part in a drive for rebel fighters on February 4 in Sana’a, Yemen. | Mohammed Hamoud/Getty Images
The move reinforces Biden’s swift new direction on Yemen policy.
The Biden administration plans to remove Yemen’s Houthi rebels from the Foreign Terrorist Organizations list as soon as Friday, reversing a last-minute move by the Trump administration and reinforcing President Joe Biden’s new approach to the conflict in Yemen.
In mid-January, just days before Biden would be sworn into office, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced President Trump’s intent to designate the Iran-backed Houthi movement in Yemen as a “foreign terrorist organization.”
The Houthis, formally known as Ansar Allah, are an armed rebel group of Zaydi Shia (a minority sect within Shia Islam) who have been fighting a civil war against Yemen’s Saudi-backed government since 2014. That civil war morphed into an international one in March 2015, when Saudi Arabia and several of its allies in the Gulf decided to intervene militarily in the civil war, waging war against the Houthis. Meanwhile, Iran, Saudi Arabia’s regional foe, has backed the Houthis.
Critics said the move was an attempt by Pompeo to both hurt Iran by punishing one of its proxies and box in the incoming Biden administration as he headed out the door, but Pompeo seems to truly believe the decision was the right one.
Pompeo’s hopes are about to be dashed.
NEW: The Biden administration will announce the revocation of the FTO designation on the Houthis today, per two sources.
Reverses a last minute Trump admin move and could make it easier for humanitarian aid to reach the most vulnerable.
According to three people familiar with the decision, the Biden administration will revoke the foreign terrorist organization designation — known as an FTO — from the rebel group as part of its new strategy to handle the Yemen war. Two of the sources said the State Department had formally notified Congress of its decision.
During a Thursday speech, President Joe Biden said the US would seek an elusive diplomatic settlement to the conflict, which would require the Houthis to strike a deal with Saudi Arabia, regional players, and possibly the US.
The Biden administration then moved quickly to revoke the FTO label: It’d be bad politics for the US to negotiate with a terrorist group.
But there’s another reason to do so, too: It could help Yemen’s most vulnerable. The war has killed about 233,000 people, mostly from indirect causes such as lack of food, water, and health services, while another roughly 24 million Yemenis require assistance to stay alive and fend off diseases like cholera.
Trump’s labeling of the Houthi rebels as terrorists made providing that assistance harder. Simply put, for aid groups to deliver assistance, they would have to negotiate with Houthi members who control a lot of Yemen’s territory. But US law essentially says no aid organization can do deals with terrorists, even if it’s to provide life-saving support to those in need
There’s a workaround if the US provides waivers to certain aid teams, but the Trump administration rushed its decision before working on and implementing an effective plan.
“This decision has nothing to do with our view of the Houthis and their reprehensible conduct, including attacks against civilians and the kidnapping of American citizens,” a State Department official told me on the condition of anonymity.
“Our action is due entirely to the humanitarian consequences of this last-minute designation from the prior administration, which the United Nations and humanitarian organizations have since made clear would accelerate the world’s worst humanitarian crisis,” the official said, adding that the US remains committed to protecting Saudi Arabia from further Houthi attacks.
Activist and humanitarian groups praised the administration’s decision.
“This purely counterproductive designation had caused months of uncertainty as aid organizations, banks, and importers of critical commodities like food and fuel were left in limbo,” said Scott Paul, Oxfam America’s policy advocacy director. “As the Biden administration has made clear, it is the humanitarian consequences of the designation, not the conduct of the de facto authorities, that warrants this reversal.”
With the new policy, the Biden administration reversed a notable Trump national security decision, put the US on the road to a diplomatic solution in Yemen, and perhaps ensured thousands of Yemenis get the care they need.
It shows how quickly Biden’s team is moving: In just two days, the new administration has sparked a major shift in America’s role in Yemen’s war.
The UK ended deep coal production in 2016. So why is it opening a new coal mine in 2021? -
Miners react after their last shift at Kellingley Colliery on December 18, 2015 in Knottingley, England. | Nigel Roddis - WPA/Getty Images
Climate activists and scientists say the mine runs counter to the UK’s climate targets.
The United Kingdom is facing strong criticism from climate change scientists and activists for its decision to move ahead with plans to develop the country’s first deep coal mine in 30 years, despite warnings that doing so could destroy any chance of achieving the country’s climate change target of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
In a January 29 letter, the Climate Change Committee, an independent body that advises the UK government on progress toward emissions targets, said opening the mine would lead to significant increases in the UK’s annual CO2 emissions. If the mine is allowed to operate through 2049 as is currently planned, the committee says the UK’s goal of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050, which many experts have said isn’t fast enough as it is, will be in jeopardy.
The mine is set to be developed in west Cumbria, a county in northwest England that the Guardian reports “has seen years of redundancies and high unemployment rates” due to the closure of a major chemical plant and the decommissioning of a nuclear facility in the area. The Cumbria County Council, which approved the project, said it did so because it will create jobs in an area of high unemployment, according to the BBC.
West Cumbria Mining
Proposed design for Woodhouse Colliery. If opened, it will be the UK’s first operational deep coal mine in 30 years.
But scientists and climate activists have slammed the decision to go ahead with the mine.
On February 3, Jim Hansen, one of the world’s leading climate scientists, wrote a letter to UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson warning that continuing with the plan to open the mine showed “contemptuous disregard of the future of young people and nature” and would result in Johnson’s “humiliation” at COP 26, the annual UN climate change conference which the UK is set to host in Glasgow later this year.
Hansen, who is famous for testifying to the science of human-induced warming before the US Congress way back in 1998, gave Johnson the option to be a part of changing history on climate change or face protests in the streets.
“In leading the UK, as host to the COP, you have a chance to change the course of our climate trajectory, earning the UK and yourself historic accolades — or you can stick with business-almost-as-usual and be vilified in the streets of Glasgow, London, and around the world,” Hansen’s letter reads.
But if the UK has committed to ending the domestic use of coal for electricity by 2025 and ending government support for overseas fossil fuel projects, how can it also be moving forward with opening a new coal mine?
Woodhouse Colliery won’t be your average coal mine — or so the mining company says
Woodhouse Colliery — the name of the Cumbria mine project, which is operated by West Cumbria Mining — would be the UK’s first new operational deep coal mine in 30 years. The last operating deep coal mine, in North Yorkshire, was capped off in 2016 — “bringing to an end centuries of deep coal mining in Britain,” in the words of a BBC report at the time.
Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images
Coal miners finish the final shift before closure at the Kellingley Colliery in Yorkshire, northern England, on December 18, 2015.
According to West Cumbria Mining, the coal will be “processed in a plant which is a ‘building within a building’ to further minimize noise, dust and light impacts.” As a result, the company says the mines are “cleaner, safer to work in and more sympathetic to their environment.”
In March 2019 report,the Cumbria City Council claimed the mine would be carbon neutral — a term that refers to the state of producing net-zero carbon dioxide emissions, which is reached by eliminating the combustion of fossil fuels like coal, or by capturing or offsetting the carbon emissions through processes like planting trees. According to the Cumbria County Council’s report, coal from the Cumbria mine will replace the need for coal from elsewhere, which it says makes it carbon neutral.
But a January 2020 report by Green Alliance, an independent environmental think tank and charity in the UK, threw cold water on the Cumbria mine’s carbon neutral claims. The report argues that according to basic economic theory, “an increase in a supply of a commodity, such as coal, would reduce the price, leading to increased demand, and therefore, increased emissions.”
As a result of this increase in demand, the report’s authors say the steelmaking industry will have less incentive to efficiently use or recycle the coal it uses. The industry would also be less likely to pursue alternative ways to make steel, such as through the Direct Reduced Iron Process which uses natural gas — still a fossil fuel but one that is less polluting than coal.
In defense of the coal mine, the Cumbria County Council has also suggested that the coal produced would be used in the UK and EU, therefore ending emissions from coal imports. But according to the Green Alliance’s report, the county council claims without evidence that having no transport emissions will make up for emissions produced by mining the coal.
The bottom line, the Green Alliance says, is that Woodhouse Colliery won’t be carbon neutral with its plans to extract 2.43 million tons of coking coal per year. That will produce 9 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalents, a measure of greenhouse emissions based on their global warming potential, per year.
And that doesn’t even include the emissions from extraction.
The UK government has bought into the false dichotomy of climate action versus jobs
The new mine will be located in Cumbria county near Whitehaven, one of the UK’s poorest towns, with 14 percent of households having financial difficulty paying heating bills as of 2018. So the appeal of 500 new jobs, which the mining company says Woodhouse Colliery would produce, is hard for some local leaders and citizens to overlook (though there is some local opposition).
“But it’s not true,” Tim Crosland, director of Plan B, a UK organization that supports taking legal action to fight against climate change, told me in an interview. Crosland disputed that the promise of “a few hundred precarious jobs in a dying industry” would be worth it to the people of Cumbria in the end. “We need good quality sustainable jobs for the future,” Crosland added.
The government is afraid that canceling the mine is a choice between jobs and environmental concerns, Crosland told me.
“The government is sensitive to the perception that they seem to be sacrificing jobs to serve a metropolitan elite agenda,” he said. “But if you actually look at the expert evidence from the International Energy Agency, the International Monetary Fund, Oxford University — not radical but mainstream thinkers — they say you create more jobs by investing in clean infrastructure.”
Indeed, framing the need for continued investment in fossil fuels as important for jobs and arguing that moving away from fossil fuels will hurt jobs and the economy is a classic talking point the fossil fuel industry has used for decades to thwart climate action.
There’s still a chance the UK could reverse its decision
Ed Davey of the UK’s Liberal Democratic Party has written a letter urging Alok Sharma, the UK’s climate czar, to resign if Prime Minister Johnson doesn’t rescind his decision to approve the mine.
Sharma, who will help lead COP 26 later this year, is reported to be livid over the decision to open the mine.
After all, the COP 26 summit is where the UK is meant to urge other nations to phase out fossil fuels. That’ll be a lot harder to do if the UK itself just approved the development of a brand new coal mine right there at home.
But Crosland said it’s possible all of this opposition might convince Prime Minister Boris Johnson to reverse course. “We’ve seen that the one thing Johnson is is susceptible to this type of pressure, if he reads the signs,” Crosland said.
“If Johnson comes to believe that the Cumbria mine will jeopardize the prospects of the UK coming out of COP 26 with some sort of credibility intact, then I think there’s a chance the government will change its plans,” he said.
Israel outpaced the world in vaccinations. Now it’s seeing the results. -
Israelis get the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine at Clalit Health Services, in a gymnasium in the central Israeli city of Hod Hasharon, on February 4, 2021. | Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images
There’s still a long way to go, but also a reason for hope.
Israel has outpaced the world in vaccinating its population against Covid-19. Now the results are starting to come in. And, so far, the news is good for both Israel and the world.
Maccabi Health Services, one of Israel’s four health maintenance organizations (HMOs), tracked 163,000 Israelis who had received both of the two required doses of the Pfizer vaccine; only 31 of those people tested positive for Covid-19, compared to an unvaccinated sample in which about 6,500 did.
According to data from the Israeli Ministry of Health, 531 of 750,000 fully vaccinated people over 60 years old tested positive for Covid-19 — which is just 0.07 percent. Out of the people who tested positive, only 38 were hospitalized, with symptoms ranging from moderate to critical. Another Israeli HMO, Clalit, found that Covid-19 positivity decreased by 33 percent among 200,000 people 14 days after they’d received just the first Pfizer dose compared to the same number of unvaccinated people.
This is all very promising, especially as the world banks on a vaccine as the best path out of this pandemic and as new variants of the virus emerge. “We say with caution, the magic has started,” Eran Segal, a scientist at the Weizmann Institute, posted on Twitter, accompanied by data showing a decline in hospitalizations and critical illness among the 60-or-over group in recent weeks.
But scientists caution that there’s still a long way to go. Experts noted that serious cases are declining, but overall infections are not diminishing as swiftly. And many of these studies rely on preliminary data, and these findings may change over time, especially with these new coronavirus variants emerging.
Israel also entered a strict lockdown in early January, just as the vaccination campaign was ramping up, which may have also helped nudge cases downward.
Who’s getting vaccinated, and how people might behave once they get those shots, may also influence the findings. Those who got vaccinated early and have gotten their full two doses might have been highly motivated; now comes the more challenging part of inoculating vaccine-hesitant or more marginalized communities. Israel has also faced criticism for its failure to extend its vaccination program to Palestinians, which could also make herd immunity harder to achieve.
Israel offers lessons in how to vaccinate a population quickly, but it’s also starting to show the challenges — and how difficult global immunization efforts are going to be. “Israel is the canary in the coal mine,” said Bruce Rosen, director of the Smokler Center for Health Policy Research at the Myers-JDC-Brookdale Institute (MJB) in Jerusalem.
How Israel’s vaccination program offered a real-world vaccination test case
Israel achieved this largely because of its existing health infrastructure, a universal, digitized system that gave the country a ready-made way to track and communicate with people.
All Israeli citizensare enrolled in one of four health maintenance organizations (HMOs) for their care. Everyone has an ID number, which allows for easy access to electronic records.
This system also allows health care workers to update a person’s vaccination status, monitor any side effects, and schedule an appointment for the next dose. Many Israelis said they got their appointment for the second dose shortly after getting injected with the first, usually scheduled for exactly 21 days later.
This public health infrastructure meant massive vaccination sites popped up quickly, places that were accessible and big enough to be able to space people out and keep them as socially distanced as possible. Experts told me in January that Israel’s knack for responding in emergencies meant it was particularly suited for the logistical and speed challenges of a vaccination campaign.
Israel also benefits from being a small country, and word of mouth did help in the vaccination rollout. Though Israel prioritized people over 60 and health care workers in the first phase of the campaign, it embraced a “no waste” policy, meaning vaccine providers prioritized using the doses above all else. If there were extra jabs at the end of the day or week, they might call in the pizza guy or the lady standing at the bus stop.
“For a vaccination campaign, we are well-prepared, but we’re also flexible,” Hagai Levine, an epidemiologist at Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Public Health, told me in January. “When you plan, you don’t know, for example, how the cold chain will look, how many vaccines you will get — so you need to make rapid adjustments. And we are good at that.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (who, with elections approaching, has a lot to gain from a successful vaccination campaign) has said that Israel’s population could be fully vaccinated by the end of March.
Experts said that’s still feasible, though it’s far from as simple as it sounds.
Important questions remain around Israel’s vaccination program — and the world’s
Israel’s data indicates that the vaccines are working at the individual level; the outcomes of those who have been inoculated compare favorably to those who haven’t. Israel’s streamlined health infrastructure makes it very easy to know who’s been vaccinated and how they’re responding, and compare it against those who haven’t.
But that system is also helping it win the vaccine race in another way: In a world where vaccines are in short supply, Israel is getting a regular stream in part because the country promised to provide the vast collection of vaccine data to Pfizer, so it can monitor the effects of the vaccine. (Israel, however, also reportedly paid a premium for the vaccine doses.)
But experts said it only gets more complicated from here, especially when it comes to achieving the goal of herd immunity — basically, when enough of the population is immune to the virus that it provides indirect protection to everyone else.
New variants of the virus pose a challenge, especially if those mutations make the virus better at getting around the protections offered by the vaccine. Right now, the vaccines available have shown to be broadly effective against these variants, but that could change.
There are other questions scientists and public health experts want to answer. Brian Wahl, an epidemiologist with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said that the vaccines are effective against the disease, they’re still learning about its impact on transmission. That is, how likely it is that a vaccinated person who doesn’t get ill from Covid-19 could still spread it.
Another question is how long the protection from the vaccine will last. “We need to be continuing to look at how well the vaccine protects several months beyond administration, Wahl said.
This is also a new vaccine, and not everyone is enthusiastic about getting it. Often the people first in line for their doses want to be there; it doesn’t take much to get them to their appointments. This is not always the case for vaccine-skeptical or -hesitant people, and getting those people vaccinated is a challenge Israel, and other countries, face.
But Ann Blake, a postdoctoral fellow at Baylor College of Medicine who’s been studying Israel’s efforts, said she feels optimistic about Israel’s ability to overcome some of this hesitancy.
“Israel’s vaccination campaign showcases a coordinated and organized communications campaign that uses local community leaders and credible messengers in tandem with a synchronized message from the highest levels of government with the specific aim of encouraging vaccination among the vaccine hesitant,” she wrote in an email, addingthat it could serveas a model for other countries, including here in the United States.
Beyond hesitancy, experts pointed out that, right now, only people 16 or older are eligible for the Covid-19 vaccine, and scientists are unsure when kids will be approved for Covid-19 vaccinations. All of that leaves a chunk of the population that won’t get vaccinated and could still transmit the virus. “If you had 100 percent [of people] vaccinated, it would be one thing,” Rosen said. “But you don’t. So this is much more complicated in reality.”
Israel has also faced criticism for excluding Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip from its vaccination campaign, despite making the shots available to Israeli settlers living in the West Bank.
Israel says that based on the terms of the Oslo Accords, the 1990s agreements signed between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the Palestinian Authority is responsible for health care in the Palestinian territories. But human rights and health groups have pressured Israel to “ensure that quality vaccines be provided to Palestinians living under Israeli occupation,” arguing that restrictions imposed by the occupation limit the Palestinian Authority’s purchasing and distribution capabilities.
Israel did send about 2,000 Moderna doses to Palestinian authorities this week, with a promise of 3,000 more. But that is nowhere close to enough to serve the entire population of more than 4.5 million.
If Palestinians lack safe and effective vaccines, that could also undermine Israel’s efforts at achieving herd immunity, especially since many Palestinian workers move back and forth into Israel every day.
“We have to insist that Israel is responsible for Palestinian health as an occupier, especially during pandemics, and that infectious diseases do not know borders,” Rita Giacaman, a professor of public health at the Institute of Community and Public Health at Birzeit University in the West Bank, told me.
Indeed, the uneven distribution of vaccines will ultimately prolong the coronavirus crisis everywhere. Israel’s example shows how a rapid campaign can work, but also the limitations of just one country succeeding against the pandemic.
From The Hindu: Sports
John Barnes: ‘Whether or not Liverpool retains Premier League title depends on Manchester City’ - Liverpool FC legend John Barnes discusses the club’s Premier League misfortunes this season, manager Jürgen Klopp’s legacy and the documentary on their 2019-20 title win
Ind vs Eng, 1st Test Day 2 | Joe Root becomes first player to score 200 in 100th Test - On February 5, Root became the ninth player in the history of the game to score a ton on his 100th appearance when he brought up his 20th hundred
Ind vs Eng, 1st Test | Joe Root’s double ton guides England to 555-8 at stumps on Day 2 - The 30-year-old Root became the first player to notch up a double ton in his 100th Test
Win will be perfect way to round off Root’s ‘special’ Test: Stokes - Privileged to hand over Root his 100th Test cap at Chepauk, says the England vice-captain
Injuries everywhere; Medvedev and Russia into ATP Cup final - “Crazy match,” Daniil Medvedev said. “Happy to win even if many things I didn’t like. Most important thing is to win for the country and be in the final.”
From The Hindu: National News
Sena mouthpiece indicates disquiet in alliance over Patole replacing Thorat - An editorial in the Sena mouthpiece Saamana said that the three coalition partners will take a decision on the Speaker’s post through negotiations now.
Fishers opting for juvenile harvesting - As the fisheries sector enters another annual lean season, fishers in many parts are opting for juvenile harvesting, a dangerous and illegal practice
Today’s times can’t be exaggerated as Emergency: N. Ram - There aree still spaces where one can air strong opinions and fight repression, he says
Delhi Police warns strict action against air-travellers found carrying ammunition in baggage - A total of 13 cases, where ammunition has been found in the baggage of passengers during security check, have already been registered this year.
New building of AMMA inaugurated - Actor Mohanlal refuses to comment on farmers’ protest
From BBC: Europe
Russia expels European diplomats over Navalny protests - Moscow say the diplomats attended weekend protests in support of Putin critic Alexei Navalny.
Stutthof camp: Woman, 95, accused of aiding Nazi mass murder - The woman was the secretary to the SS commandant of the Stutthof camp.
Romania baptisms: Six-week-old baby’s death sparks calls for change - The death of a six-week-old baby after a ceremony prompts a key archbishop to back reforms.
French skiers swerve Covid in cross-country boom - Cross-country replaces downhill skiing in French resorts struggling to survive the pandemic.
Denmark to build ‘first energy island’ in North Sea - The ambitious and costly artificial island will provide energy for three million households.
From Ars Technica
A new lens technology is primed to jumpstart phone cameras - Smartphone optics have been pretty much the same for more than a decade. - link
Gaming sites are still letting streamers profit from hate - Far-right, racist figures monetize livestreams via “donation management services.” - link
Tweaking COVID vaccines to fight variants won’t require big trials, FDA says - The regulatory agency is drawing on its experience with annually tweaked flu shots. - link
Klobuchar targets Big Tech with biggest antitrust overhaul in 45 years - Big Tech got big through acquisitions—and this bill aims to prevent that in the future. - link
Mac utility Homebrew finally gets native Apple Silicon and M1 support - There aren’t bottles for every package yet, but the work is in progress. - link
Superman is out flying and sees wonder woman naked on a rooftop with her legs wide open and moaning in delight -
He thinks to himself that as he is faster than a speeding bullet he can do his business with her and fly off before she knows it. He toys with the idea and decides to go for it. He swoops down fucks her with lightning thrusts and zooms off in a flash. The whole event lasts less than a second. As soon as he’s gone wonder woman gasps, sits up and yells “what the hell was that?!”
“I don’t know but my ass hurts like hell” replies the invisible Man
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Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images
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