Journalism is paramount to democracy.

Reporters without Borders is an organization that understands the importance of their capacity to democracy and the safety of people within their countries. They try to bring about fairness in the treatment of journalists. They take donations as well.

Freedom of expression and information (click here) will always be the world’s most important freedom. If journalists were not free to report the facts, denounce abuses, and alert the public, how would we resist the problem of children-soldiers, defend women’s rights, or preserve our environment?

In some countries, torturers stop their atrocious deeds as soon as they are mentioned in the media. In others, corrupt politicians abandon their illegal habits when investigative journalists publish compromising details about their activities.

Still elsewhere, massacres are prevented when the international media focuses its attention and cameras on events....

In the four years of Donald John Trump as president, the arrests and torture of journalists increased dramatically. Why? Because the USA was isolated against the responsibility of upholding democracy and the vital journalism that sustains it. Organizations that support democracy cannot enforce the freedom of free speech themselves, they need strong countries and their people to defend those freedoms.

I firmly believe the four years of the insurgent Trump clearly demonstrates a leader actively removing democratic principles and the means to uphold democracy. He hated journalists rather than being a truthteller and upholding the best of the profession. The people of the USA cannot tolerate this betrayal of freedom at home or abroad. It is important the USA continues to be a beacon of hope throughout the world.

December 14, 2020
By Trevor Timm

On May 30, 2020, CNN correspondent Omar Jimenez (click here) and his camera crew were reporting from Minneapolis on the protests that had erupted in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd. While Jiminez was providing his view from the ground to CNN viewers (and still standing far away from any action that could be considered dangerous), he was approached and arrested by a group of police officers.

While the incident received significant outcry (and millions of views across social media), Jimenez turned out to be only the first of almost two dozen journalists who were arrested in Minnesota that week. Over the course of the year, he was one of over 100 reporters to be arrested while covering Black Lives Matter and election-related protests.

The Jimenez arrest was the start of a disturbing trend: Across the United States, journalists are being arrested for doing their job at a truly unprecedented rate....

I am concerned there might be a real network Gulen is running out of the USA.

This entire conspiracy theory keeps coming up. I don't like the idea that Gulen is considered a US-based terrorist. Gulen is supposed to be residing in the USA, but, if he is continuing any connection back to a criminal or opposition network that is actually involved with corruption then he has lost his status in the USA. 

March 26, 2021

Ankara, Turkey - A Turkish court on Friday (click here) sentenced two former police chiefs and a former military officer to life terms in prison over the 2007 killing of prominent Armenian-Turkish newspaper editor Hrant Dink, Turkey’s state-run news agency reported.

The slain journalist’s family and lawyers insisted, however, that the long-drawn-out trial had failed to shed light on the killing and possible collusion, and said they would appeal.

Dink was gunned down in Istanbul in broad daylight outside of his Agos newspaper’s office by a nationalist teenage gunman. A strong proponent of friendship between Armenia and Turkey, he had received death threats because of comments about the WWI mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks.

Two suspects, including the teenage shooter, were put on trial and imprisoned, but allegations persisted that there was a cover-up by security officials who ignored warnings that Dink would be targeted.

Turkish prosecutors in 2017 linked Dink’s assassination to the network led by U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen who is accused of masterminding a failed coup a year earlier, and charged 76 people over the killing. Gulen’s network is believed to have infiltrated police and other state institutions. The cleric denies involvement in the coup attempt....

Technologies seem to be keeping up with the challenge of the climate crisis.

Technology alone is not the answer to the climate crisis. They are measures of the urgency of the issues we face. Ultimately, the tools provide the information, and people and their government act on that information to end pollution and warming.

March 22, 2021
By Matthew Cappuci

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (click here) announced Monday that a major upgrade has been applied to the American Global Forecast System model, one of the main computer models used to predict weather across North America and the world.

The newly minted upgrade, which went live at 8 a.m. Eastern time, is the latest in improvements designed to make for more accurate forecasts as far out as about two weeks into the future. NOAA says it will lead to better predictions of hurricanes and other extreme events, ocean waves and weather systems high in the atmosphere.

The upgrade focuses on addressing the underlying physics of the model and how it handles various features of the atmosphere. It’s known as version 16.0 of the model frequently referred to by forecasters as simply the GFS or the “American” model.

The upgrade piggybacks off the launch of the GFS FV3 model, or Finite-Volume Cubed-Sphere Dynamical Core, a souped-up version of the previous GFS model that debuted in summer of 2019. Its release was delayed while model biases were addressed, including a tendency for model depictions to skew too cold and snowy. After changes, the FV3 was released, fully replacing the legacy GFS model in September.

The latest upgrade focuses on addressing some additional biases. The upgrade also adjusts how initial conditions, or current weather information, are ingested into and processed by the model, while integrating more sources of data from weather satellites and ordinary aircraft....

More election interference from Vladimir Putin.

The marches are continuing in Belarus. The West must take notice of the election interference of democracies new or old. This is a growing problem.

March 29, 2021

Vladimir Putin, (click here) center, and  Alexander Lukashenko, left, in Sochi, Russia. on Feb. 21.

Minsk: Police in Belarus (click here) detained dozens of protesters and at least five journalists on Saturday, a rights group said, as the opposition restarted rallies against strongman leader Alexander Lukashenko’s rule.

Protests erupted in the ex-Soviet country last August after Lukashenko claimed a sixth presidential term in a vote the opposition and Western diplomats said was rigged. But they died down over the winter in the wake of a violent crackdown that saw thousands of protesters detained, several killed and hundreds receive lengthy prison sentences over the unrest.

The opposition Telegram channel Nexta that mobilises and coordinates protesters called this week for a "second wave" of rallies to kick off on Saturday.

The Viasna human rights group said that by 4:30 pm (1330) GMT law enforcement had detained at least 37 people including five journalists in cities across the country.

Opposition supporters in the capital Minsk had planned on gathering in the city centre by early afternoon, but were prevented from doing so by police, who cordoned off several streets, as well as a main square and park, an AFP journalist said.

Images circulating social media and published by local media showed the Minsk city centre heavily guarded by military vehicles....

This is Canada's Yellowstone.

First, everyone wanted the wolves of Yellowstone National Park to be gone so all the grazing animals could flourish and tourism would not have to deal with them. The video below explains how an entire park could not flourish without it's a top-line predator.

March 18, 2021
By University of British Columbia

A team of researchers has determined the declining caribou population is part of a natural chain reaction from forest harvesting which can attract predators and competition for food

A new study comparing decades of environmental monitoring records (click here) has confirmed that Canada's caribou are not faring as well as other animals like moose and wolves in the same areas—and also teased out why.

The study used 16 years of data to examine changes in vegetation, moose, wolves and caribou. "Caribou are declining across Canada and have been recently lost in the Lower 48 States," says Melanie Dickie, a doctoral student with UBC Okanagan's Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science.

"Understanding why caribou are declining is the first step to effectively managing the species—it tells us which parts of the issue we can target with management actions and how that might help caribou."

Dickie, along with fellow UBCO researchers Dr. Clayton Lamb and Dr. Adam Ford, describe the decline in caribou populations as an ecological puzzle. Typically, there are multiple factors, all changing at once, making it hard to identify how the pieces fit together. Factors such as predation from wolves and other large carnivores, increasing moose and deer populations, and habitat alteration through resource extraction and wildfires all play a part. The study aimed to sort out the roles each of these play in caribou population declines.

Once land is cleared by either wildfire or harvesting, the mature forest transforms into more productive early seral forage. With the tree canopy removed, there is a significant increase in sunlight, allowing understory plants to thrive. These plants provide food that benefits moose, deer and their predators. These predators then have a spillover effect on the rarer caribou, creating apparent competition between moose and caribou.

"Changes in primary productivity have the potential to substantially alter food webs, with positive outcomes for some species and negative outcomes for others," Dickie explains. "Understanding the environmental context and species interactions that give rise to these different outcomes is a major challenge to both theoretical and applied ecology."...

Five American Deaths from a rare storm.

March 26, 2021 at 10:24 a.m. EDT
By Jason Samenow, Matthew Cappucci and Reis Thebault

An outbreak of severe weather, (click here) including several destructive tornadoes, swept across the South Thursday, killing at least five people in Alabama and one in Georgia. The swarm of storms came after roughly 50 tornadoes tore through the region last week.

An extremely volatile atmospheric setup prompted the National Weather Service to declare a rare level 5 out of 5 “high risk” for severe thunderstorms, focused in Alabama but touching several surrounding states.

During the mid-afternoon Thursday, a tornadic thunderstorm carved a 100-plus mile path across north central Alabama into northwest Georgia, spawning multiple twisters while passing south of Tuscaloosa and then south and east of Birmingham. The tornadoes left behind pockets of severe damage along with reports of injuries and fatalities.

A tornado killed at least five people in Calhoun County, Ala., located between Birmingham and the Georgia border. Among the dead are a family of three that lived in a wood-frame house in the small town of Ohatchee, along with a man and a woman who lived in mobile homes in Ohatchee and Wellington, respectively, county coroner Pat Brown told The Washington Post....

Risk Categories for Thunderstorms (click here)

Democracies have to be defended. If the USA does not lead, then who will?

March 22, 2021
By Arshad Mohammed, Daphne Psaledakis, Patricia Zengerle

Washington - U.S. sanctions may not deter Russia (click here) from its alleged election meddling and cyber hacking in the short term but will signal Washington’s renewed willingness to hold the Kremlin publicly to account for acts it views as malign.

President Joe Biden has vowed Russian President Vladimir Putin will “pay a price” and is expected to impose sanctions as soon as this week that could range from freezing the U.S. assets of Russians to curbing Moscow’s ability to issue sovereign debt.

Russia denies meddling in U.S. elections and orchestrating the cyber hack that used U.S. tech company SolarWinds Corp to penetrate U.S. government networks.

The Kremlin has also dismissed reports it offered bounties to Taliban militants to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

While the two nations’ presidents quickly extended the New START arms control treaty, Biden has taken a much tougher stance toward Putin than his predecessor, Donald Trump, and the U.S. and Russian leaders have made no secret of their disagreements....

Hunting the eagle killer: A cyanobacterial neurotoxin causes vacuolar myelinopathy

26 March 2021 (click here)
By Steffen Breinlinger, Tabitha J. Phillips, Brigette N. Haram, Jan Mare, José A. Martínez Yerena, Pavel Hrouzek, Roman Sobotka, W. Matthew Henderson, Peter Schmieder, Susan M. Williams, James D. Lauderdale, H. Dayton Wilde, Wesley Gerrin, Andreja Kust, John W. Washington, Christoph Wagner, Benedikt Geier, Manuel Liebeke, Heike Enke, Timo H. J. Niedermeyer, and Susan B. Wilde

A lethal combination

Although many human activities have clear negative effects on the natural world, there are also unforeseen consequences. Bald eagle mass death events in the southeastern United States may be one such downstream effect of human activity. After considerable effort, Breinlinger et al. identified the cause of these events as an insidious combination of factors. Colonization of waterways by an invasive, introduced plant provided a substrate for the growth of a previously unidentified cyanobacterium. Exposure of this cyanobacterium to bromide, typically anthropogenic in origin, resulted in the production of a neurotoxin that both causes neuropathy in animals that prey on the plants and also bioaccumulates to kill predators such as bald eagles.

Science, 26 MARCH 2021, VOL 371, ISSUE 6536

In order to save a democracy, corruption has to be ripped out by the roots.

March 27, 2021

Constitutional Court Chairman Oleksandr Tupytskiy 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy (click here) has dismissed two judges from the Constitutional Court, deepening a feud with the top court over anti-graft reform.

In a March 27 decree, Zelenskiy removed Constitutional Court Chairman Oleksandr Tupytskiy and another judge, Oleksandr Kasminin, for continuing to “threaten Ukraine’s independence and national security.”

Both judges were appointed by pro-Russia former President Viktor Yanukovych, who was ousted in 2014 following the Euromaidan protests.

The decree comes after the Constitutional Court in October struck down some anti-corruption legislation and curbed the powers of the National Anti-Corruption Agency (NAZK). The court decision dealt a blow to reforms demanded by the West and threatened to impact lending from the International Monetary Fund....

They are called microclimates. Conservation groups should be assessing areas to protect. This is vital.

July 8, 2020
By Tara Lohan

For more than a century, (click here) the famous formation of long, symmetric columns of basalt have drawn tourists to marvel at the geology of Devils Postpile National Monument near Mammoth Lakes, California.

But recently scientists have found another interesting natural feature in the park. A valley with high walls and a north-south alignment blocks sunlight and traps cold air, creating cool temperatures that, they believe, may become a kind of refuge for plants and animals facing a warming world.

All across the world rising temperatures are changing ecosystems and threatening some of the species evolved to live in those places, forcing them to try to adapt or move. That’s why scientists are focusing attention on a field of study — climate-change refugia — that could help improve conservation and minimize biodiversity loss in the face of climate change.

The journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment dedicated its newest issue to the topic, with studies about how to identify, protect and manage these important areas. Authors in the issue say these climate-change refugia — areas largely buffered from current climate change effects because of unique local conditions, like the valley at Devils Postpile — could serve as ecological safe havens....

March 26, 2021

Vladislav Yesypenko, a freelance contributor to RFE/RL, was detained by FSB officers in Crimea on March 16.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) (click here) says it fears that a detained Crimean journalist’s televised “confession” to spying on behalf of Ukraine was obtained under torture and has called for his immediate release and the withdrawal of the charges against him.

In a statement on March 26, Jeanne Cavelier, the head of RSF’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk, expressed concern about “the psychological and physical pressure” Vladislav Yesypenko has been subjected to.

Cavelier also condemned the ban on access to his lawyer.

Yesypenko, a freelance contributor to Crimea.Realities, a regional news outlet of RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service, was “visibly pale and had difficulty talking when he made his confession -- one almost certainly obtained under duress -- in an interview for local Russian TV channel Krym24 that seemed more like a police interrogation,” the Paris-based media freedom watchdog said.

The interview was broadcast on March 18, eight days after Yesypenko, who has Ukrainian and Russian dual nationality, was arrested in Ukraine’s Russia-annexed Crimea region.

Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) said Yesypenko was suspected of collecting information for Ukrainian intelligence and claimed that an object "looking like an explosive device" was found in his automobile during his apprehension.

The journalist was charged with “making firearms,” which is punishable by up to six years in prison....

Take a good hard look. This is the petroleum industry subsidized by the USA government.

28 March 2021
By Oliver Milman

Many of us will have felt the grip of claustrophobic isolation (click here) over the past year, but the lawyer Steven Donziger has experienced an extreme, very personal confinement as a pandemic arrived and then raged around him in New York City.

On Sunday, Donziger reached his 600th day of an unprecedented house arrest that has resulted from a sprawling, Kafkaesque legal battle with the oil giant Chevron. Donziger spearheaded a lengthy crusade against the company on behalf of tens of thousands of Indigenous people in the Amazon rainforest whose homes and health were devastated by oil pollution, only to himself become, as he describes it, the victim of a “planned targeting by a corporation to destroy my life”.

Since August 2019, Donziger has been restricted to his elegant Manhattan apartment, a clunky court-mandated monitoring bracelet he calls “the black claw” continuously strapped to his left ankle. He cannot even venture into the hallway, or to pick up his mail. Exempted excursions for medical appointments or major school events for his 14-year-old son require permission days in advance. An indoor bike sits by the front door in lieu of alternative exercise options....

...Chevron wants the narrative to be that he’s a criminal. The implications of that for the entire environmental movement against oil companies is terrifying.”...

So much of the rainforest has protected populations of people, can't the United Nations place peacekeepers to keep out the oil industry that are killing people?

Greta Thunberg where are you? This is the young people's fight, too.

16 September 2011

By Dominic Rushe

Victims of what they say is (click here) one the world's worst environmental disasters will on Friday ask a New York court to free up billions of dollars in compensation awarded to them in a record ruling earlier this year – and oust the judge who blocked their claim.

The $8bn fine was imposed by an Ecuadorian court in February on oil giant Chevron, on behalf of 30,000 residents of the Amazon basin whose health and environment were allegedly damaged by chemical-laden waste water dumped by Texaco's operations from 1972 to 1990. Chevron bought Texaco in 2001.

Chevron has attacked the judgment as a "fraud." The company has claimed the entire case is an extortion scheme. In March, Chevron secured an injunction from judge Lewis Kaplan against the decision, ahead of a trial set for November.

Chevron spokesman Kent Robertson said the Ecuadorians were guilty of "shocking levels of misconduct." He said: "The fraud that has been uncovered is undeniable."

Humberto Piaguaje, one of the plaintiffs, and a leader of the indigenous Secoya people of Ecuador's northern Amazon rainforest, said: "Chevron is the one that's the criminal here. They came to our lands, they destroyed our lives, our culture and left us in poverty."...

Oh, yes. American media is owned by the petroleum industry. There is no doubt about it. As soon as something comes up to defeat their products, a made for TV movie of commercials shows up on the screens all across the USA to promote the oil companies. It is true. This story is not told in the USA because the petroleum industry owns the American media. Even during elections and we know what party they like the best, don't we?

June 22-29, 2015
By James North

...The American public (click here) is largely uninformed about this epic struggle, even though it’s as important as the dispute over the Keystone XL oil pipeline. The mainstream US media, when it hasn’t ignored the case, has often taken Chevron’s side, implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) endorsing the company’s view that an alliance of Ecuadoran extortionists and crooked US lawyers is using the corrupt Ecuadoran court system to shake down an innocent corporation.

On closer inspection, the truth is totally different. If the plaintiffs finally win in the end, the rain-forest inhabitants will not just have their habitat start to be cleansed of the oil muck that oozes into their water supply, or enjoy improved health facilities to treat what they argue are elevated levels of cancer and other diseases. They will also have proved the success of an innovative legal strategy that recruits financial help in the rich developed world to provide at least a fighting chance against a corporate colossus like Chevron, which has already spent, by some estimates, $2 billion in its massive legal and propaganda campaign. But if Chevron prevails, it will be one more depressing proof that multinational corporations can defy national and international law and pollute with impunity....

It's Sunday Night

28 March 2021

By Richard Luscombe

The “vast majority” of the almost 550,000 (click here) coronavirus deaths in the US could have been prevented if Donald Trump’s administration had acted earlier and with greater conviction, according to one of the public health experts charged with leading the pandemic response at the time.

Dr Deborah Birx was the White House coronavirus taskforce coordinator in the Trump administration and is among six leading medical experts involved in the then government’s efforts to fight the outbreak who will assess errors, missteps and moments of success, during a CNN documentary to be broadcast on Sunday night....

Incarceration by Logic featuring Jason Maliki 

You know what it's like
Tell 'em Logic
To wake up every day enslaved to something?
Your whole life changes
That you once didn't understand
Didn't comprehend
Didn't want
Now craving (Now craving)
You become accustomed to this lifestyle
Addicted
Me? I live a life behind bars
With no parole
That's it, it's a life behind bars

Incarceration
Livin' like a don, like a killa (Incarceration)
Livin' like a G, ain't no one realer (Incarceration)
Everything I got, that's what I'm givin' (Incarceration)
A life behind these bars is how I'm living (Incarceration)
Incarceration
Livin' like a don, like a killa (Incarceration)
Livin' like a G, ain't no one realer (Incarceration)
Everything I got, that's what I'm givin' (Incarceration)
A life behind these bars is how I'm living

What it is, what you know?
Stack my paper, watch it grow
These bitches tryna test my game but I spit flame and flow zirconium
My team gettin' this money
Presidential suite with honeys, now it's on again
On the phone with a girl that wants to bone again
But I have not the time
Gotta get up in the lab, write this rhyme
Unkillable flow that define, a murderous record like mine
Please come correct my baby girl, you know all I do is grind
I said it from day one, they the ones that's gonna help me shine
I'm talkin' 'bout RattPack, you know the deal, we real all the time
We livin' Luxurious, haters are furious 'cause they life ain't like mine (Stillmatic)
Aren't you in a BMW bumpin' Stillmatic?
But it could be, would be, if you still had a little bit of sense to make dollars
Instead of chasing materialistic girls and driving Impalas
It's that OG mentality, while the whole crew burn tree like calories
Now what it is? What it do?
Best duck down if I aim at you
I'm gunning hard, safety off
Sight's on, and I'm poppin' off

Incarceration
Livin' like a don, like a killa (Incarceration)
Livin' like a G, ain't no one realer (Incarceration)
Everything I got, that's what I'm givin' (Incarceration)
A life behind these bars is how I'm living (Incarceration)
Livin' like a don, like a killa (Incarceration)
Livin' like a G, ain't no one realer (Incarceration)
Everything I got, that's what I'm givin' (Incarceration)
A life behind these bars is how I'm living (Incarceration)

You had my mind wrapped up in your game (Up in your game)
Had me thinking that I'm going insane (Going insane)
All the mess that you put me through (I'm only through it baby)
Incarceration, karma's coming for you (Coming for you)
Now you're sittin' here cryin' to me (Cryin' to me)
You did me wrong, fuck your sympathy (No sympathy)
I can't go on believing, you're lyin' as they cheated (You a liar, baby)
Dang it, girl, can't you see?
Break the chains, set me free

Incarceration
Livin' like a don, like a killa (Incarceration)
Livin' like a G, ain't no one realer (Incarceration)
Everything I got, that's what I'm givin' (Incarceration)
A life behind these bars is how I'm living (Incarceration)
Livin' like a don, like a killa (Incarceration)
Livin' like a G, ain't no one realer (Incarceration)
Everything I got, that's what I'm givin' (Incarceration)
A life behind these bars is how I'm living (Incarceration)

And now you're messin' with my mind, it's incarceration
You gotta do the time, it's incarceration
Found you guilty, your soul is filthy, incarceration
And now you're messin' with my mind, it's incarceration
You gotta do the time, it's incarceration
Now that you're guilty, your soul is real filthy
Incarceration
Incarceration (Incarceration)
Incarceration (Incarceration)
Incarceration (Incarceration)
Incarceration (Incarceration)
Incarceration (Incarceration)
Incarceration (Incarceration)
Incarceration (Incarceration)
Incarceration (Incarceration)

These are the actual figuries from CBP on the southwest border of the USA. 2019 is the record surge of crossings.

CBP Southwest Border (click here)

This is Tropical Storm Agatha. It made landfall on May 29, 2019, near the Guatemala-Mexico border.

The northern movement started in March and peaked in May. The influx to the USA border continued for several months afterward. The land in the Northern Triad has become desolate to the people that live there and they cannot produce food or sustain shelter because the storms are unending.

These displaced people are a direct result of the climate crisis. They are not illegal aliens. The absolute truth of the matter is they are climate refugees. The USA needs to work with the Northern Triad to bring back land that is liveable and capable of producing food and trade.

The United States must do something in Myanmar. I know the allies will stand with any American initiative.

Hillary Clinton is known to the people of Myanmar. She should begin an initiative as a peace envoy. They would stop protesting and that is what they are being killed for, exerting their rights to be a democracy. They would stop knowing their cries were being ushered to a peace table.

March 28, 2021

Saturday was the deadliest day (click here) yet since a military coup took control in Myanmar. At least 114 people died as the military cracked down on protesters.

President Biden knows that a dual approach is the best resolve. The United States has to stand up to end violence. Both domestic violence and that abroad. As the world's largest and most able democracy, the USA cannot sit back comfortably and expect talking to solve the problems of so many countries and so many people. 

If the killing stops it will be the first step to a brokered peace that can satisfy all the parties involved.