Thomas Paine's version of "you didn't build that":
"Separate an individual from society,and give him an island or a continent to possess,and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich. So inseparably are the means connected with the end,in all cases,that where the former do not exist the latter cannot be obtained. All accumulation, therefore,of personal property,beyond what a man's own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice,of gratitude,and of civilization,a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came"
Submitted by Leah
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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.
The Vatican has sought to downplay expectations over the four-day meeting, which begins on Thursday. Photograph: Gerald Herbert/AP
More than 100 senior Roman Catholic bishops from around the world will gather in Rome this week for a summit Pope Francis has called to address clerical sexual abuse – the most serious crisis in the church since the Reformation, according to a Catholic historian.
The Vatican has sought to downplay expectations surrounding the four-day meeting, which begins on Thursday. But survivors and advocacy groups say it must deliver clear outcomes if it is to begin to restore the church’s damaged credibility on the issue and avoid being seen as a talking shop.
The removal from the priesthood of the former archbishop and cardinal Theodore McCarrick, one of the church’s most prominent figures, at the weekend sent a strong signal from the Vatican that sexual abuse will no longer be swept under the carpet. Francis on Sunday asked for prayers for the summit, calling abuse “an urgent challenge of our time”.
Although Francis, who will be present throughout the summit and will give a closing speech, has previously warned that expectations must be “deflated”, the senior Vatican figure moderating the conference said last week that the church’s credibility was “strongly at stake”.
Father Federico Lombardi said in Rome: “We must deal with this theme with depth and without fear.”
Conceding there had been “resistance” by some bishops, he added: “If we don’t commit ourselves to fight against these crimes, in society and in the church, then we are not fulfilling our duty.”
Massimo Faggioli, a church historian and professor of theology, has said: “In my opinion, [this is] the most serious crisis in the Catholic church since the Protestant Reformation.” The issue, he added, was being used to “radically delegitimise” Francis’s papacy.
The presidents of 115 bishops’ conferences from around the world have been invited to Rome, along with a dozen heads of eastern Orthodox churches and 10 representatives of women’s religious orders.
Bishops were urged to meet with survivors of sexual abuse in their countries ahead of the conference. Survivors will give testimonies at daily prayer services during the Rome meeting, and vigils and marches organised by advocacy groups are expected to take place outside.
The protection of minors in the church summit comes after a year in which the church was shaken by multiple scandals of sexual abuse and its cover-up by senior members of the church in North and South America, Europe and Australia.
The pope was accused of failing to grasp the seriousness and scale of the problem, and of disregarding widespread rumours of sexual abuse concerning McCarrick. Francis’s conservative enemies seized on the issue to attack his papacy.
But in December, the pope vowed the church would never again cover up sexual abuse, and would spare no effort to bring perpetrators of such “abominations” to justice. He warned abusers to “hand yourself over to human justice, and prepare for divine justice”.
This month, he acknowledged for the first time the sexual abuse of nuns by priests and bishops, saying some had been reduced to “sexual slavery”. In one case, an Indian bishop has been accused of repeatedly raping a nun over a two-year period.
Pope Francis will attend the summit. Photograph: Luca Zennaro/EPA
The abuse scandals that have emerged over the past 20 years have been concentrated in western countries. Very little is known about the scale of abuse in the global south, where the Catholic church has undergone huge growth.
“Many bishops in the global south do not believe that sex abuse of minors is a problem in their countries. They see it as a first world problem,” Thomas Reese, a Jesuit priest and commentator on the church, wrote last month.
“This is in part because many global south bishops have no idea how bad the problem is. In their traditional cultures, victims of abuse are very reluctant to come forward to report the abuse to the church or civil authorities.
“As a result, too many bishops around the world … deny the problem; they treat it as a sin, not a crime; they don’t listen to the victims; they believe the priest when he says he will never do it again; they keep him in ministry; they cover up.”
The Rome summit, Reese suggested, was primarily aimed at these bishops rather than at the American church.
Despite efforts to play down expectations of the conference, some survivors and church figures hope Francis will explicitly lay down the law to bishops – although they enjoy significant autonomy in their dioceses.
Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago, a member of the committee preparing the meeting, said he was confident “we can expect decisive action to follow from the meeting … both in Rome and in dioceses worldwide”.
The summit would “advance a framework of protocols for responding to allegations of clergy sexual abuse”, including identifying “concrete steps required to implement practices that safeguard children and to bring justice to victims in a way that is responsible, accountable and transparent – even in cultures where law enforcement or the government may not be reliable partners,” he told America magazine.
Francis had “acknowledged and apologised for his mistakes, itself an important action, and a model for all bishops” and had made it clear that a bishop “can be legitimately removed from office if he has through negligence committed or through omission facilitated acts that have caused grave harm to others”, Cupich said.
He added: “The very fact that the pope has called this meeting indicates his resolve to make sure there is no doubt about what to do in such matters.”
Although Francis had come in for criticism over his handling of the sexual abuse issue, “it is not a question of what is at stake for the pontificate of Pope Francis, but what is at stake for the church,” Cupich said.
Real estate in Florida: given the forecasts, why are people still building new condominiums? Illustration: Eiko Ojala
People tend to respond to immediate threats and financial consequences – and Florida’s coastal real estate may be on the cusp of delivering that harsh wake-up call
I stood behind a worn shopping center outside of Crystal Springs, Florida, looking for the refuge where a hundred manatees were gathered for winter. I found them clustered in the emerald-colored spring, trying to enjoy a wedge of sunlight and avoid the hordes of people like me, boxing them in on kayaks and tour boats, leering over wooden decks. The nearby canals were lined with expensive homes and docks with jetskis. One manatee breached the water for a breath, and I could see the propeller scar on its back.
2018 was the second deadliest year on record for manatees. Like many of our coastal species, they’re vulnerable to habitat loss and warming seas, which are more hospitable to algal blooms and red tide. Science has given us the foresight we need to make decisions that will reduce the future suffering of other species and ourselves, but we don’t heed it. Why?
Studies show that humans don’t respond well to abstract projections. We overvalue short-term benefits, such as driving SUVs, burning coal and building waterfront real estate. We choose these extravagances even though they impede beneficial long-term outcomes, such as saving threatened species, or reducing the intensity of climate change.
Humans tend to respond to immediate threats and financial consequences – and coastal real estate, especially in Florida, may be on the cusp of delivering that harsh wake-up call. The peninsula has outsized exposure: nearly 2 million people live in coastal cities. On the list of the 20 urban areas in America that will suffer the most from rising seas, Florida has five: St Petersburg, Tampa, Miami, Miami Beach and Panama City. In 2016, Zillow predicted that one out of eight homes in Florida would be underwater by 2100, a loss of $413bn in property.
A potential scenario of future sea level rise in South Beach, Miami, Florida. Photograph: Nickolay Lamm/Courtesy Climate Central
I flew into Miami in early December and the risk was visibly apparent from the airplane window. Aerial views of Miami and South Beach show high density construction on flat, sandy slivers of land. A recent National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicts Miami streets will flood every year by 2070.
South Beach was vibrant and populated, with mega-yachts docked in front of luxury homes, sorbet-colored art deco-era hotels rising a block from the water, cafes misting customers on the sidewalks, neon signs flashing bright in the night sky. But I wondered: given the forecasts, why are people still building new condominiums?
In Florida, you will see a bewildering mix of optimism, opportunism and denial in the real estate market: luxury condominiums going up in flood-prone South Beach, and property values rising in the vulnerable Keys, post-Hurricane Irma. And though the House of Representatives passed a bill to require real estate agents to disclose flood risks, the Senate has not reviewed it, and a culture of “systemic, fraudulent nondisclosure” persists in high flood risk areas.
You will see the massive benefits of privilege, and the way it allows a homeowner, particularly a second home owner, to afford the risk. You will see emerging issues like Miami’s climate gentrification, where previously low-income neighborhoods like Little Haiti are rising in value and under pressure from developers because of their higher ground, resulting in the displacement of people and place-based culture. Haitian playwright and bookstore owner Jan Mapou recently told a reporter: “Gentrification is coming forcefully: developers buying the major corners, raising the rents, forcing renters onto month-to-month leases … We’re not against development or modernization … but respect the people living there, their culture, their history.”
I spoke with a developer who wanted to remain anonymous, given business interests. He told me that he’s surprised that people are still buying, building and investing in coastal Florida. He estimated that a decade ago, only one in 10 buyers asked about the property elevation, or expressed concerns about rising seas. Today, nearly six of 10 ask and many decide not to buy in these same critical areas. “I’m worried we’re one bad storm away from a rush for the exits,” he told me.
I sought input from the environmental community as well. “Real estate is a huge economic driver here,” Laura Geselbracht, a senior marine scientist with the Nature Conservancy, said. “And it’s at risk from sea level rise. People don’t want to believe it. That’s a normal human condition – suspension of belief.
“If you’re not a millionaire and you own a property in a vulnerable area, it may be a wise decision to think about moving before the masses think about moving,” Geselbracht said. She also owns waterfront property on a canal in Fort Lauderdale, and is deeply invested in her community, but has cautioned her child not to expect the same lifestyle in the future.
She wonders why she doesn’t see more people of means in south Florida buying electric cars, getting solar panels and living more sustainably. “The quicker we take action, the better. We’ve got to be leaders so that we have a longer horizon of survival here,” she said. When she’s approached community leaders in the past, asking them to take steps toward sustainability, she often hears the same response: “Technology will solve it.”
It’s a high-stakes gamble. Consider innovative mitigation in action: raising roads, shoring up sea walls, adding pumps and drainage upgrades, beginning dredging projects, offering complex insurance structures. Proximity to these short-term solutions are not always pluses in a home buyer’s column, but acute reminders of vulnerability.
While Geselbracht is optimistic about developments like Orlando’s zero emissions goal, and Miami’s forward-looking Forever bond, she’s not ready to pin all her hopes on innovation. She also wonders about the fallacy of “safe” investments elsewhere. “There are air quality issues and forest fires out west, and extreme heat inland.”
I spoke with young farmers who recently decided to purchase a farm away from the coast. “As we looked for farmland to buy, we certainly thought hard about what the climate would be like in 10, 20, 30 years,” one of the owners of Ten Mothers Farm told me. “We knew we didn’t want to be near the coast, and we wondered whether even being in the south-east was a bad idea. Ultimately we decided that the most important thing was to be in a community that’s supportive and that we believe will be resilient.”
While baby boomers may be slow to adjust spending behavior to climate change, the Florida developer told me, millennials will not, and that shift will likely impact the market in the decade to come.
I grew up in two eastern North Carolina towns, Rocky Mount and Atlantic Beach, that have been bludgeoned by hurricanes. There, friends have real estate that falls into an increasingly common, and expensive, pattern: flood, repair, rebuild. Many are locked into this expensive, emotionally draining pattern because they can’t sell their homes, which have been flooded multiple times.
Browsing real estate in nearby New Bern, which was dramatically flooded by Hurricane Florence last year, reveals the terminology indicative of this practice. Homes are presented as a “blank canvas” and “waiting to be brought back to life”. There are optimistic takes, too, like “circumstances have created great potential”, and “great fishing”.
According to a 2018 report from the Union of Concerned Scientists, it’s not just houses that will flood, but also “roads, bridges, power plants, airports, ports, public buildings, military bases and other critical infrastructure along the coast”. Furthermore, the report indicates that financial markets have not accounted for this future downturn. The economic impact will be “staggering” and the window for towns to maintain creditworthiness and build resilience is “narrowing”.
The Union of Concerned Scientists point out that “nearly 175 communities nationwide can expect significant chronic flooding by 2045” and of those “nearly 40% – or 67 communities – currently have poverty levels above the national average”. States with areas of particular concern are North Carolina, Maryland and Louisiana, where a significant percentage of at-risk properties are owned by people of color.
The climate change-induced real estate crisis is imminent in the south, and it’s going to have a brutal impact on those who can’t afford new insurance, relocation, lowered property values, or bandages such as private sea walls. It will have an outsized impact on homeowners who live in flood zones or near over-heated superfund sites and toxic factories, and those who can’t afford to pay taxes on submerged land where they can no longer make a home.
I look at real estate listings and wonder, what if the places you love most are no longer a good investment? What if we’re so focused on denial, data and property that we fail to grasp the human side of the situation?
The moral imperative to act is not about salvaging expensive second homes on the waterfront. It is about taking responsibility for human action, helping frontline communities solve a complicated economic and cultural challenge, and doing what we can to help species whose survival is imperiled by our lack of foresight.
Parody about ‘faking’ national emergency hits nerve while actor who plays him asks if his safety is threatened
Donald Trump has savaged Saturday Night Live as a “total Republican hit job” while calling for “retribution” and an investigation of the show after another unflattering portrayal of the president by Alec Baldwin.
The actor responded by questioning whether the president’s words represented “a threat to my safety and that of my family”.
“We need wall. We have a tremendous amount of drugs coming in through the southern border, or the ‘brown line’ as many people have asked me not to call it,” said Baldwin.
“You all see why I gotta fake this emergency, right? I have to because I want to. It’s really simple. We have a problem. Drugs are coming into this country through no wall.
“Wall works, wall makes safe. You don’t have to be smart to understand that – in fact it’s even easier to understand if you’re not that smart.”
The president, who has proven very sensitive to the way he is covered in the media, was clearly unimpressed with Baldwin’s characterisation, saying on Twitter there was “nothing funny about tired Saturday Night Live on Fake News NBC!” The president asked how the networks got away with shows like this “without retribution … very unfair and should be looked into”.
In characteristic capitals, he added: “THE RIGGED AND CORRUPT MEDIA IS THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!”
“I’ll immediately be sued and the ruling will not go in my favour and then it will end up in the supreme court and then I’ll call my buddy Kavanaugh and I’ll say ‘It’s time to repay the Donny’ and he’ll say, ‘New phone, who dis?’ And by then the Mueller report will be released, crumbling my house of cards and I can plead insanity and do a few months in the puzzle factory and my personal hell of playing president will finally be over.”
Trump’s talk of “retribution” drew criticism, with lawmakers and journalists suggesting the threats violated core democratic principles. The Democrat Congressman Ted Lieu tweeted: “One thing that makes America great is that people can laugh at you without retribution.”
Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent for the New York Times, said that while such language had become commonplace “it’s worth remembering that no other president in decades publicly threatened ‘retribution’ against a television network because it satirized him”.
The American Civil Liberties Union tweeted a short reminder about free speech: “It’s called the First Amendment.”
Baldwin tweeted later on Sunday, writing: “I wonder if a sitting President exhorting his followers that my role in a TV comedy qualifies me as an enemy of the people constitutes a threat to my safety and that of my family?”
Trump has lashed out in the past over Saturday Night Live sketches mocking him and his administration, but has largely refrained from criticising the show in recent months. In October, Trump tweeted his support for Kanye West, who appeared on the show wearing a Make America Great Again hat.
In that tweet Trump reminded readers he once hosted SNL – during the 2016 election, controversially – but said it was “no longer funny, no talent or charm. It is just a political ad for the Dems.”
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