December, 10 2021, 10:40am EDT
Open Markets Applauds FDIC Board for Voting to Examine Bank Mergers
Condemns FDIC chair’s attempt to obstruct efforts to rein in Too Big to Fail banks.
WASHINGTON
Yesterday, three members of the currently four-member Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Board voted to carefully review the existing regulatory process for bank mergers--with input from the public. In response, FDIC Chair and former bank executive Jelena McWilliams is now attempting to illegitimately overturn the results of the vote, and block the Board majority's efforts to mitigate risks of Too Big to Fail banks.
The authorities of the FDIC Board are exercised by the board, not the chair. Open Markets condemns this undemocratic act by Chair McWilliams, which not only violates the FDIC bylaws but also breaches a statute established by the Federal Deposit Insurance Act.
In response, Barry Lynn, executive director of the Open Markets Institute, issued the following statement:
"We strongly welcome the long-overdue action by the FDIC's Board to review the harms caused by decades of consolidation in banking, and work to prevent Too Big to Fail banks from getting even bigger. Over the last generation, banking consolidation has caused extensive harm to the vibrancy and stability of the American economy as a whole. Any move to significantly reverse years of dangerous consolidation will be good for the public as a whole, and for entrepreneurs, working people, and families.
It is deeply disappointing to see an unprecedented attempt by the FDIC Chair to stymie a majority vote of the FDIC Board. Congress created an FDIC board to ensure a democratic process for safeguarding our financial institutions--not for the Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Comptroller of the Currency to simply rubber-stamp the whims of a minority Board member. The Open Markets Institute and other public interest groups look forward to working with the majority to protect and expand these vitally important reforms. "
The Open Markets Institute works to address threats to our democracy, individual liberties, and our national security from today's unprecedented levels of corporate concentration and monopoly power. By combining policy, legal, and market structure expertise with sophisticated communications and outreach efforts, Open Markets seeks not only to hold today's monopolies accountable for abuse of power, but to rebuild an economic system where progress is easier to achieve, because power is far more widely and equitably distributed
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'Inexcusable': Amnesty Slams Biden Admin for Delaying Report on Israel's Use of US Weapons
"The Biden administration had months to put together a report on information they should already be collecting."
May 09, 2024
A leading human rights organization on Wednesday slammed the Biden administration's decision to indefinitely delay the release of a report on whether Israel and other U.S. allies are using American weaponry in compliance with international law.
"The Biden administration had months to put together a report on information they should already be collecting—whether grave human rights violations and other serious violations of international law are being committed using U.S.-provided weapons in seven conflicts around the world," said Amanda Klasing, national director for government relations at Amnesty International USA. "They must release it urgently."
"This is especially urgent," Klasing added, "given the Israeli military's ground operation in Rafah, in the occupied Gaza Strip, where more than 1.4 million Palestinians, including 600,000 children, are sheltering. Burying the head in the sand tactic doesn't make the violations of the government of Israel go away."
Required under a White House policy implemented in February, the report was supposed to be delivered to Congress on May 8.
U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said during a press briefing Wednesday that the administration will "have it up in the coming days," but declined to offer a specific timeline.
"It is overdue for President Biden to end U.S. complicity with the government of Israel's grave violations of international law."
U.S. President Joe Biden admitted in a CNN interview Wednesday that the Israeli military has killed civilians in Gaza with American-made bombs—something human rights organizations like Amnesty have been documenting for months.
In a research brief submitted to the Biden administration last week, Amnesty detailed three cases in which Israel's military has used U.S.-made weapons in violation of international law. In October, Israeli forces used Joint Direct Attack Munitions manufactured by Boeing to carry out airstrikes on two Gaza homes, killing 43 civilians—including 19 children and 14 women.
While applauding Biden's decision to halt a shipment of thousands of bombs to Israel as it attacks Rafah, Amnesty said Wednesday that it was "inexcusable" for the State Department to postpone the long-awaited report.
"It is overdue for President Biden to end U.S. complicity with the government of Israel's grave violations of international law," said Klasing. "Tough conversations with counterparts in Israel are tragically and clearly not doing the job—violations continue unabated, and civilians are paying the price with their lives."
It's unclear why the administration was unable to meet its own deadline for providing U.S. lawmakers with the report on Israel's use of American weaponry.
Kevin Martin, the president of Peace Action, argued in an op-ed for Common Dreams on Thursday that the delay "reflects internal divisions within the State Department not just about Israel's fallacious claim of compliance, but what to recommend to the executive branch in terms of possible action against Israel."
An internal State Department memo that leaked last month showed that officials at four of the department's bureaus did not believe the Israeli government's written assurances that its use of American weaponry in Gaza has followed international law.
Several State Department officials have resigned since October over the Biden administration's decision to arm Israel's assault on Gaza, which has killed more than 34,900 people and sparked an appalling humanitarian crisis.
Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now, said Thursday that the Biden administration's "suspension of massive bombs to Israel is an important but long-overdue acknowledgment that Israel has been using American weapons to indiscriminately kill Palestinian civilians in violation of the most basic laws of war."
"Suspending all weapons transfers to Israel shouldn't be a political tactic," said Whitson, "but rather adhering to long-standing laws that prohibit arming abusers."
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800+ Jewish Professors Urge Biden, Senate to Oppose 'Dangerous' Antisemitism Bill
"Criticism of the state of Israel, the Israeli government, policies of the Israeli government, or Zionist ideology is not—in and of itself—antisemitic," reads a new letter.
May 09, 2024
A Dartmouth University professor who once served as the school's head of Jewish studies and was violently arrested at a Palestinian rights protest last week was among more than 800 Jewish educators who had signed a letter as of Thursday, demanding that lawmakers and U.S. President Joe Biden oppose a bill claiming to combat antisemitism.
The Awareness of Antisemitism Act, said the letter, would actually "amplify the real threats Jewish Americans already face" by "conflating antisemitism with legitimate criticism of Israel."
The bill, which was passed by the Republican-controlled House last week over the objections of 70 progressive Democrats and 21 Republicans, would codify the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, which includes "targeting of the state of Israel" and "drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis."
The Awareness of Antisemitism Act, which could soon be taken up by the Senate, would require the Department of Education to consider the group's working definition when determining whether harassment is motivated by antisemitism.
The professors noted that the working definition has been "internationally criticized," with more than 100 civil society organizations—including some Israeli groups—calling on the United Nations last year to reject the IHRA's interpretation because it has been "misused" to shield Israel from legitimate criticism.
"We hold varied opinions on Israel," reads the letter. "Whatever our differences, we oppose the IHRA's definition of antisemitism. If imported into federal law, the IHRA definition will delegitimize and silence Jewish Americans—among others—who advocate for Palestinian human rights or otherwise criticize Israeli policies."
The professors pointed out the irony that by using the IHRA definition—which also includes "accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel" than their own home countries—the bill "hardens the dangerous notion that Jewish identity is inextricably linked to every decision of Israel's government."
"Far from combating antisemitism, this dynamic promises to amplify the real threats Jewish Americans already face," the letter reads.
Annelise Orleck, the Dartmouth professor who was arrested last week, was joined by other Jewish academics including City University of New York professor Peter Beinart and professor emeritus Avishai Margalit of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in signing the letter.
Orleck, a labor historian, told ABC affiliate WMUR after her arrest that she hopes Dartmouth and other schools that have cracked down on and condemned pro-Palestinian protests in recent weeks will "stop weaponizing antisemitism."
The professors urged political leaders who are "earnestly concerned with antisemitism" to "join hundreds of Jewish scholars from across the globe who have endorsed alternative definitions of antisemitism—such as those contained in the Nexus Document or Jerusalem Declaration. Unlike the IHRA definition, these documents offer meaningful tools to combat antisemitism without undermining Jewish safety and civil rights by insulating Israel from legitimate criticism."
When the Antisemitism Awareness Act was passed by the House last week, Jewish-led Palestinian rights groups were among those that condemned the proposal.
Biden has angered pro-Palestinian rights groups by suggesting the campus protests that have spread across the U.S. in recent weeks, with students and faculty demanding an end to U.S. support for Israel as it bombards Gaza, are inherently antisemitic.
"Criticism of the state of Israel, the Israeli government, policies of the Israeli government, or Zionist ideology is not—in and of itself—antisemitic," reads the professors' letter, which was first publicized Wednesday. "We accordingly urge our political leaders to reject any effort to codify into federal law a definition of antisemitism that conflates antisemitism with criticism of the state of Israel."
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Biodiversity and Climate Crises 'Increase the Risks of Future Pandemics': Study
"New study in Nature confirms that if we want to avoid the next pandemic—we should stop destroying biodiversity, heating, and polluting the planet," one expert said.
May 09, 2024
Biodiversity loss, the introduction of invasive species, the climate emergency, and chemical pollution all increase the risk of infectious disease, a first-of-its-kind analysis has found.
The paper, published in Nature Wednesday, reviewed 972 studies and 2,938 observations on how human-driven environmental change had impacted the spread of disease, looking specifically at 1,497 host-parasite relationships.
"New study in Nature confirms that if we want to avoid the next pandemic—we should stop destroying biodiversity, heating, and polluting the planet," Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, who leads the World Health Organization's climate change unit and was not involved with the study, wrote on social media. "Just one more reason to go for a greener, healthier future."
"This adds to a very long list of reasons we should be rapidly moving away from fossil fuels and trying to mitigate the impacts of climate change."
The Covid-19 pandemic, which some scientists believe passed from bats to humans, has led to increased interest in how diseases emerge and spread. At the same time, research research has pointed to a larger range for pathogens and their hosts as one of the health dangers of the climate emergency. For example, The Lancet's most recent report on climate change and health predicted that, if temperatures rise by 2°C above preindustrial levels by 2100, the ideal conditions for Vibrio would expand by 17-25% and the risk of catching dengue fever would go up by 36-37%.
While previous studies had considered how certain types of environmental change—like deforestation or global heating—impacted disease spread, no study had considered the risk for plants, animals, and humans across the different ways that industrial society has altered the environment.
"This literature gap is critical to fill because resources for infectious disease management will always be limited and could be poorly targeted without knowledge of which global change drivers most affect infectious diseaserisk," the study authors write.
The researchers looked at four major drivers of change: biodiversity loss, the introduction of new species, the climate crisis, and habitat loss or alteration. They found that human-driven biodiversity loss increased illness and death by almost nine times compared with areas where biodiversity remained intact. The next most impactful changes were the introduction of new species, global heating and increased carbon dioxide levels, and chemical pollution such as pesticides and fertilizers, which can put additional pressure on plants' and animals' immune systems.
"It could mean that by modifying the environment, we increase the risks of future pandemics," study co-author Jason Rohr, a University of Notre Dame biology professor, toldThe Washington Post of the results.
One way that the loss of species can increase disease is by eliminating rare species, Rohr explained toThe New York Times. As parasites and pathogens tend to evolve to infect more common species, when these species are all that remain, the risk of infection goes up. One example is the rise of white-footed mice, who host Lyme disease. One theory is that as these mice have proliferated in comparison with other, rarer mammals, the rates of Lyme disease in the U.S. have gone up. Of course, the spread of Lyme disease has also been linked to the expansion of the range of ticks due to warming temperatures, in an example of how different environmental alterations can interact to increase illness.
"This adds to a very long list of reasons we should be rapidly moving away from fossil fuels and trying to mitigate the impacts of climate change," Bard College professor Felicia Keesing, who was not a part of the study, told the Post in response to its findings.
One of the study's more surprising discoveries was that habitat loss actually decreased disease. The authors think this is due to the rise and expansion of cities, as urban areas tend to have better public health and fewer opportunities for humans and animals to mix and exchange germs.
"In urban areas with lots of concrete, there is a much smaller number of species that can thrive in that environment," Rohr toldThe Guardian. "From a human disease perspective, there is often greater sanitation and health infrastructure than in rural environments."
Colin Carlson, a Georgetown University biologist who was not part of the research team, told the Times that the lack of urban biodiversity was "not a good thing."
Next, the researchers hope to explore more about the connections between the different drivers of change.
"Importantly, greater effort is needed to identify win-win solutions that address multiple societal stressors, such as disease, food, energy, water, sustainability, and poverty challenges," they write.
However, the study already points the way toward some recommendations: "Specifically, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, managing ecosystem health, and preventing biological invasions and biodiversityloss could help to reduce the burden of plant, animal, and humandiseases,especially when coupled with improvements to social and economic determinants of health," the researchers advise.
Carlson told the Times that the study was "a big step forward in the science."
"This paper is one of the strongest pieces of evidence that I think has been published that shows how important it is health systems start getting ready to exist in a world with climate change, with biodiversity loss," Carlson said.
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