16 Jul
A Foreign Perspective, News and Analyses
English Online International Newspapers
Nearly all of these are English-edition daily newspapers. These sites have interesting editorials and essays, and many have links to other good news sources. We try to limit this list to those sites which are regularly updated, reliable, with a high percentage of “up” time.
Recommended:
Irish Examiner>>
France 24>>
Spiegel>>
The Age>>
The Observer>>
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Hunt and Johnson criticise Trump remarks but decline to call them racist
The Tory contenders join Theresa May in criticising the president, while also talking up the prospect of a post-Brexit trade deal.
By Alan McGuinness, political reporter
Image: Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt are competing to replace Theresa May as Tory leader and PM
Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt have criticised Donald Trump after he told four US congresswomen to “go back” to the “broken and crime infested places from which they came” – but declined to condemn the remarks as racist.
The Tory leadership contenders joined Theresa May in criticising Mr Trump, while also talking up the prospect of striking a post-Brexit free-trade deal with his administration.
The pair clashed in a debate hosted by The Sun and talkRadio as the contest enters its closing stages, with a winner announced next week.
The issue of relations between London and Washington has, along with Brexit, dominated the campaign.
Supporters of Brexit have long championed a UK-US deal as one of the chief benefits of leaving the EU.
But Mr Trump’s “America First” approach and controversial rhetoric present Mrs May’s successor with a delicate balancing act when it comes to building strong ties with Washington.
This was highlighted once again when the president told the four congresswomen of colour to go back to their “broken and crime infested” countries – an attack widely condemned as racist.
Mrs May – who will hand over to her successor on 24 July – called the comments “completely unacceptable”.
Asked whether he agreed with Mrs May, Mr Johnson replied: “If you are the leader of a great multiracial, multicultural society you simply cannot use that kind of language about sending people back to where they came from.
“That went out decades and decades ago and thank heavens for that, so it’s totally unacceptable and I agree with the prime minister.”
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2019 Audubon photography awards winners – in pictures
The National Audubon Society is an American non-profit environmental organisation dedicated to conservation. It protects birds and their habitats throughout the Americas using science, advocacy, education and on-the-ground conservation.
Every year, Audubon promotes a bird photography contest, with cash prizes up to $5,000 and a bird photography camp for young winners.
The 2019 Audubon photography awards attracted 2,253 entrants from all 50 US states, Washington DC and 10 Canadian provinces and territories. This year’s edition introduced two new categories: Plants for Birds, which awards photographers who capture a bird and a plant native to the location in which the photograph was taken, and the Fisher prize, in honour of Kevin Fisher, Audubon’s former creative director. The prize recognises a creative approach to photographing birds that blends originality with technical expertise.
Here are the winners of this year’s awards
Kathrin Swoboda, grand prize winnerHuntley Meadows Park, Alexandria, Virginia, US. Red-winged blackbirds are among the most abundant and conspicuous birds in north America. From early spring, males perch above marshes, pond edges, damp fields and roadside ditches, flaring their red shoulder patches and belting out arresting songs to announce their claims to breeding territories
Photograph: Kathrin Swoboda/Audubon photography awards
Kevin Ebi, professional honourable mentionSan Juan Island national historical park, in Friday Harbor, Washington, US. Bald eagles eat pretty much anything they want to. Their penchant for dining on carrion may seem less than regal, but they are also powerful predators. They capture a wide variety of fish, mammals, and birds, and do not hesitate to steal others’ prey
Photograph: Kevin Ebi/Audubon photography awards
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Politicians have chosen process over lives and the result has been rampant cancer in the region
Robert Taylor is a resident of Reserve, Louisiana. Photograph: Julie Dermansky/The Guardian
“Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people.” (Isaiah 10:1). I was reminded of this verse from the Bible when I read about the town of Reserve in Louisiana. It is the place in America with the highest risk of cancer due to air toxicity, caused by a raft of government and corporate failure that has deprived residents – many of whom are poor and black – of their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Reserve is home to the Pontchartrain Works facility, the only chemical plant in America to produce chloroprene, a likely carcinogen, that has spewed from the plant for almost 50 years. US government science has indicated this makes the risk of cancer in that area 50 times higher than the national average.
What is happening in Reserve, the subject of a year-long Guardian series, is ugly. It is tragic. It is immoral. And it is evil.
It is a clear example of what I describe as “policy violence”, which disproportionately affects poor communities of every race, but especially poorer communities of color. The plant’s operators, first the chemicals giant DuPont and now the Japanese corporation Denka, have for decades benefitted from Louisiana’s lax environmental rules and tax breaks to essentially target a community for profit.
It has happened for generations across political lines. Both Democrats and Republicans have chosen corporate process over people’s lives in Reserve, and elsewhere in the area between New Orleans and Baton Rouge known locally as Cancer Alley. But would any politician; a governor of Louisiana, a member of the house of representatives or a US senator, stand for this if it were their community or their family? The answer, of course, is no.
Often, elected representatives in this region will say that these polluting giants are necessary because they create jobs. To them I say the answer is simple: invest in clean energy.
The history of state-sanctioned oppression in Reserve has gone back for hundreds of years. The Pontchartrain Works facility is built on the site of a former plantation, and many residents in this area trace their roots back to slavery. The continuation of these economies, built on greed and evil intent, is striking. First slavery, then Jim Crow and now petrochemical pollution.
But just as these forms of oppression were made legal by the state, so, too, did people with a clear moral conscience fight against them. There can never be an acceptance of exploitation, of death from cancer and pollution.
Slavery was fought with an abolition movement. Jim Crow was opposed by civil rights leaders. This era of toxic pollution must be stopped too.
Many people in Reserve, and elsewhere in Cancer Alley, have been fighting this for years, all too often ignored by their elected representatives. It is particularly telling that Louisiana has just passed a regressive anti-abortion law while doing little to help the residents of Reserve.
I would challenge every so-called “pro-life” politician in Louisiana who is not also advocating on behalf of the citizens of Reserve to rethink that moniker.
All of this is why I will come to Reserve later this month.
Our movement, the Poor People’s Campaign, is built from the bottom up and aims to shift the moral narrative around this country. We want to make sure people don’t just hear the facts and figures about Cancer Alley, but they see the faces, the humanity, and the people that are being impacted. We believe there must be a policy remedy to what is going on in Reserve.
Too often, corporate exploitation and government failures occur in the darkness, away from the media spotlight. We must expose what is happening there to the light now.
We hope the people in Reserve will become part of our nationwide struggle.
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Cancertown: A Conversation on the most toxic air in America – a series of events in New Orleans and Reserve will take place on 26 and 27 July. The event is co-sponsored by the Guardian and the Poor People’s Campaign
World Politics
United States
Four Democratic women targeted by Trump accuse him of following an ‘agenda of white nationalists’ at a press conference
‘We will not be silenced’: squad Democrats decry Trump attacks – video
Four Democratic congresswomen of color targeted by Donald Trump’s racist attacks have accused the US president of following an “agenda of white nationalists” and asked that Americans “do not take the bait” of his divisive rhetoric.
In a joint press conference at the Capitol, the congresswomen spoke out after Trump said they should “go back” to the “crime infested” countries they came from, prompting condemnation in the US and across the world.
Of the four, all are non-white and all except Ilhan Omar of Minnesota were born US citizens. Omar came to the US aged 12 as a refugee and took up American citizenship five years later. All are progressives within the Democratic party, and advocate for left-leaning policies
The women – Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts – called Trump’s remarks a “blatantly racist” attack on elected leaders, and an attempt to distract from the corrupt and inhuman practices of his administration.
“This is a disruptive distraction from the issues of care, concern and consequence to the American people that we were sent here with a decisive mandate from our constituents to work on,” said Pressley, who was the first black woman elected to Congress from Massachusetts.
“This is the agenda of white nationalists, whether it is happening in chat rooms, or it is happening on national TV, and now it is reached the White House garden,” said Omar, who called this a “pivotal moment in our country “ with the “eyes of history” watching.
Listing vulgar comments Trump has made publicly and privately about women, people of color and African nations, Omar said he has “openly violated the oath he took” by allowing “human rights abuses” at the US Mexico border and of colluding with a foreign government during the 2016 presidential election, which Trump has denied.
“It is time for us to stop allowing this president to make a mockery of our Constitution,” she said. “It is time to impeach this president.”
Ocasio-Cortez, who was born in the Bronx and is of Puerto Rican descent, said she was “not surprised” by Trump’s comments.
“This president … does not know how to defend his policies and so what he does is attack us personally,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
Tlaib, the Detroit-born daughter of Palestinian immigrants, renewed her calls for Trump to be impeached for his “utter disregard and disrespect of the United States Constitution.”
“Sadly, this is not the first nor will it be the last time we hear disgusting, bigoted language from the president,” Tlaib said. “We know this is who he is.”
But she stressed that she would continue to stay focused on the priorities that she believes her constituents want her to address, including the conditions at the US border, poverty in America, and the expansion of access to healthcare.
As the four women were speaking, Trump was live tweeting his own caustic commentary. He implied that his provocative stance had forced the Democrats to embrace the congresswomen which in turn meant “they are endorsing Socialism, hate of Israel and the USA! Not good for the Democrats!”
The Democratic congresswomen spoke out at the end of an extraordinary 24 hours in which Trump doggedly dug himself deeper into the row over his xenophobic tirade that began on Sunday morning with a stream of unashamedly racist tweets.
In them, the US president interjected himself uninvited into the middle of an argument that had been developing between the four progressive members of Congress and Nancy Pelosi, the most powerful Democrat on Capitol Hill.
In his Twitter storm, Trump called on the four – who he did not name directly but clearly invoked – to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came”.
The president’s use of the “go back home” racist trope led to an immediate and explosive response, with condemnation erupting across the US and around the world.
Race-baiting has been a consistent theme of Trump’s presidency – starting on the day he announced his presidential run in June 2015 when he accused Mexico of sending “rapists” to the US as immigrants.
Pelosi made clear her deep displeasure that Trump had chosen to interfere in her party’s internal affairs in such poisonous terms, denouncing his comments as another manifestation of his desire to make “America white again”.
US representatives Ayanna Pressley, right, speaks during a news conference with Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
Pelosi announced on Monday that the House would move to formally condemn the president’s “xenophobic” tweets about members of Congress with resolution.
A number of Democratic candidates in the 2020 presidential race piled in. Joe Biden, the former vice president who currently leads the Democratic field, slammed into Trump for continuing to “spew hateful rhetoric, sow division, and stoke racial tensions for his own political gain.”
Kamala Harris, a US senator from California and the only black woman in the 2020 race, called Trump’s remarks “absolutely racist and un-American”.
World leaders also made a rare foray into domestic US politics. The out-going British prime minister Theresa May let it be known through a spokesman that she found Trump’s language with regard to the four congresswomen “completely unacceptable”.
Sadiq Khan, the first Muslim mayor of London, said he had heard the “go back home” trope frequently in his life, but it had come “from racists and fascists, never form a mainstream politician.” Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister, stopped just short of casting Trump as a racist when he said: “This is not how we do things in Canada”.
Though provoking storms of disapproval is hardly something new for the US president, on this occasion Trump has embraced the row with singular verve. He appeared only to be further energized by the global pounding he received, enthusiastically hurling himself at the dispute.
In an indication of the divisive, us-against-them tactics Trump will run on in 2020, his re-election campaign seized on a comment by Omar to suggest that she was refusing to denounce terrorist organization Al-Qaida.
Over the course of Monday Trump refused to back down – flinging the opprobrium he had come under over the previous 24 hours back in the faces of his critics.
“When will the Radical Left Congresswomen apologize to our country… for the foul language they have used, and the terrible things they have said,” he tweeted.
Later on Monday he further denigrated Ocasio-Cortez and her fellow progressive Democrats as “a bunch of Communists… they hate our Country”. He doubled down on his “go back home” remarks in front of reporters in the White House, saying “If you’re not happy here, then you can leave”.
As the storm raged, top Republicans were notable for being absent. The most prevalent form of response from within Trump’s own party was no response at all.
Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, refused to engage with reporters’ questions about Trump’s offensive remarks, claiming he would address the issue on Tuesday at his regular press conference.
Some moderate Republicans did speak out. Susan Collins, a US senator from Maine, lamented Trump’s tweets as going “way over the line”. The only Republican senator who is African American, Tim Scott, referred to the president’s “racially offensive language”.
But such critics were in the small minority. Chuck Schumer, the lead Democrat in the US senate, accused the bulk of his Republican peers who held their silence of “making a deal with the devil”. He asked them: “Where are you when something this serious, this bigoted, this un-American happens?”
In her remarks, Ocasio-Cortez recalled the first time she visited Washington with her father as a little girl. Sitting on the edge of the Reflecting Pool that stretched along the National Mall between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, her father told her: “All of this belongs to you.”
“I want to tell children across this country … that no matter what the president says, this country belongs to you,” she said. “Today, that notion – that very notion – was challenged.”
‘Karl Marx failed to consider software’: billionaire Tom Steyer on inequality and his 2020 run>>
‘We will not be silenced’: squad Democrats decry Trump attacks – video>>
Congresswomen condemn Trump attack: ‘this is the agenda of white nationalists’ – as it happen>>
Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt refuse to call Trump’s comments racist – as it happened>>
Donald Trump says tweets about congresswomen were ‘not at all’ racist – video>>
