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“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs, but not every man’s greed.” – Mahatma Gandhi
“Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children’s children. Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance.”
– Theodore Roosevelt
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Easter Mourning In Sri Lanka: A series of explosions rocked the small island nation of Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday. Coordinated blasts hit churches and high-end hotels, killing more than 200 and wounding more than twice that many. At least 27 foreigners were killed, including several American citizens. Security forces were deployed to religious sites, and defense officials set up a national operations center for investigations. Misinformation began spreading almost immediately on social media sites, including Facebook and Instagram, and steps were taken to block that activity.
No one claimed responsibility for the attacks in the aftermath, but Sri Lanka’s defense minister said seven suspects linked to the explosions had been arrested. He described the violence as a terrorist attack carried out by religious extremists who he believed were part of one group. “Whatever religious extremism that they are following, we will take the necessary actions against them and will stop these groups from operating in this country in the near future.” The minister of economic reforms and public distribution tweeted that he had visited several shattered churches; he described horrific scenes, with “many body parts strewn all over.” A witness near St. Anthony’s Shrine in Colombo, the capital, said: “It was a river of blood. There were children too.”
President Trump and other world leaders offered condolences as details of the assault mounted. The country’s Muslims also denounced the attacks on Christians. The tropical nation in the Indian Ocean is primarily Buddhist. Less than 10 percent of the population identifies as Catholic, but religious and ethnic tensions have festered for decades. A civil war raged for 26 years until 2009, when security forces defeated rebels who were fighting for an independent homeland. Sunday’s violence came just as the country was prepared to mark the 10-year anniversary of the end of its civil war. Additional read: Sri Lankans Accuse Him of Wartime Atrocities. California May Decide. (NYT, $)
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Two Fires Don’t Make A Right: In Paris Saturday, Yellow Vest protesters marched and set fires, this time outraged that a billion dollars had been donated to restore a historically significant landmark, Notre Dame Cathedral, heavily damaged by fire days earlier. Activists have marched in the streets every Saturday since November, demanding French President Emmanuel Macron respond to an economic inequality that has crippled the working class and elderly in France. Demonstrators were set off by how quickly French billionaires pledged funds to restore the damaged cathedral, yet many working class people struggle to pay their bills. While their demands may have merit, to attack the businesses and possessions of innocent people, destroy cultural artifacts and monuments belonging to everyone, and endanger the lives of firefighters, police and other public servants and responders, seems criminally misguided at best. (NPR)
2019 China is a 1984 Surveillance Moment: Northwestern China’s Xinjiang region is one of the most intrusive police states in the world. Its 22 million residents make up only 1.5 percent of China’s population, but perhaps a million people are being held in extrajudicial political “re-education camps” designed to indoctrinate ethnic minorities and force them to reject their religious beliefs. Outside the camps, residents, particularly the ethnic Muslim Uyghur minority, also live caged lives. Uyghurs are banned from many religious acts and from entering certain stores; they must first swipe their ID cards, which describes them as “safe,” “normal,” or “unsafe.” The ancient town of Kashgar is a surveillance prison that demonstrates the Communist Party’s vision of automated authoritarianism. Besides the vast amount of controls built by Beijing, including surveillance apps, voice printing, and facial recognition cameras, neighbors now spy on neighbors. Authorities use the fear of family being put in re-education camps to control and silence Xinjiang residents and students while abroad; many are detained as soon as they return. (NYT)
This Land Is My Land, This Land Is My Land: Guy Shrubsole has authored a new book, Who Owns England?, in which he reveals data from his research showing that half of England is owned by less than 1 percent of the population. “Land ownership in England is astonishingly unequal, heavily concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite.” About 25,000 landowners, typically members of the aristocracy and corporations, have control of half of the country. While land has long been concentrated in the hands of a small number of owners, precise information about property ownership has been notoriously hard to access. But a combination of the development of digital maps and data as well as pressure from campaigners has made it possible to assemble the shocking statistics. Jon Trickett, Labor MP and shadow minister for the Cabinet Office, hailed the significance of the findings and called for a full debate on the issue. “It’s simply not right that aristocrats, whose families have owned the same areas of land for centuries, and large corporations exercise more influence over local neighborhoods – in both urban and rural areas – than the people who live there. Land is a source of wealth, it impacts on house prices, it is a source of food and it can provide enjoyment for millions of people.” (Guardian)
Additional World News:
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Democrats Divided on Trump: House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said on Fox News Sunday that House Democrats will meet in the coming weeks to discuss whether to pursue impeachment proceedings against President Trump. Democrats have been divided over the impeachment issue since Thursday’s release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election and the president’s possible obstruction of justice. Only two 2020 Democratic presidential contenders — Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and Julián Castro (Tex.) — have called for impeachment proceedings to commence based on the report’s findings. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), among others, have urged members of their party to hold off and instead continue their own investigations of Trump.
Much of the reticence comes from the probability that even if the House found for impeachment, the Republican-controlled Senate would refuse to convict. Trump initially praised the Mueller investigation as a total exoneration, but that was prior to the report’s release. In a Friday tweet the president dismissed assertions he may have obstructed justice as “total bullsh*t.” On Sunday Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, defended the president’s tweet, saying “There’s nothing wrong with taking information from Russians,” suggesting that campaigns regularly receive information from unusual sources. (WaPo)
Additional Mueller reads:
Additional USA News
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How Technology Enables Spying: The pregnancy app Ovia Health marketed itself as a digital counseling and feedback service that would help infertile women conceive, be supportive throughout a pregnancy, and chart the baby’s first online medical data. It also allowed the women’s bosses, human resource departments, and insurance companies to know the most incredible amount of personal information imaginable. Companies offer the powerful monitoring tool alongside other health benefits and incentivize workers to input as much about their bodies as they can, saying the data can help the companies minimize health-care spending, discover medical problems and better plan for the months ahead. Companies pay for Ovia’s “family benefits solution” package on a per-employee basis, but Ovia also makes money off targeted in-app advertising, including from sellers of fertility-support supplements, life insurance, cord-blood banking and cleaning products. (WaPo, $)
Technology Has Become Code for Surveillance:
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