It won't be Thanksgiving, a two day federal holiday, without the Thanksgiving meal, family (all those new faces and babies) and the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
This Blog is created to stress the importance of Peace as an environmental directive. “I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it’s hell.” – Harry Truman (I receive no compensation from any entry on this blog.)
Thursday, November 25, 2021
In the USA, Thanksgiving is in full swing.
It won't be Thanksgiving, a two day federal holiday, without the Thanksgiving meal, family (all those new faces and babies) and the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
China has become a dangerous place for human beings.
By Alexander Smith and Tim Stellah
The head of the Women’s Tennis Association (click here) cast doubt Wednesday on the veracity of an email attributed to Peng Shuai, the Chinese athlete who hasn’t been seen publicly since a post on her social media account made allegations of sexual assault against a former top official in the Chinese Communist Party.
Association chairman Steve Simon said in a statement that the email, which was sent to his organization and published by a verified Twitter feed of China’s state-owned English-language satellite news channel, only raised his “concerns about her safety and whereabouts.”
“I have a hard time believing that Peng Shuai actually wrote the email we received or believes what is being attributed to her,” Simon said, adding that the world needs “independent and verifiable proof that she is safe.”...
China is sincerely entering a new phase of international presence. It is seeking prestige through technology to the moon rather than allowing free expression of it's people. Prestige is important to communist regimes. They believe they can wage war with iconic images of people to state it is not a hostile country to The West. Poorer countries accept China's communist economic expansion as a way to have cheaper goods. But, what all the iconic people and thrifty economics China provides gives way to a better image and reputation for international understanding while domestically it is still a human rights abuser (click here). China absolutely loves the word "dissident" as if it's regime is going to fall because of them.
China is beginning to close down it's relationships with The West, wants to own Taiwan and end it's relationship with The West to bring economic ruin with it's semi-conductor industry.
Communism is not a philosophy that is kind to people, it enslaves them and takes away the very essence of human nature that fights oppression and self-expression. Zhang Zhen is a clear demostration of the oppression of China and it's desperation in image making. If she is still alive today her spiritual distress needs to end with her release and her wellness addressed.
This is the second time a popular political figure within a communist regime's reach have entered into hunger strikes, the other Alexei Navalny (click here). The hunger strikes are a SYMPTOM and not a demonstration of "will." Their hunger strikes are brought on by extreme oppression as they are used as suffering icons to enforce the regime in power. It is enlightening to many that know these incredible people to realize the power that suffering under the regime proves it's eminent loss of support internationally. That international pressure is an extension of the human struggle felt within these communist regimes.
19 November 2021I also find it alarming that two women are the subject of communist oppression at a time in The West when women are flourishing. That translates inside China as a reason to be cautious as women as to how they address "their place" within the country.
China was a hope by Wall Street to become another huge economic engine as is the USA. That is becoming less and less the case and only proves that China was interested in the wealth it could find to make it's regime stronger. China is deteriorating because it no longer has the ability to reach into USA corporate intelligence to carry out faux claims and seeks only to be a military power with it's reach into space as a method of tempering that image.
Joe Machin is going to lose his election. He is begging for money now.
Machin is moaning about the pipeline to Biden for political reasons, not reasons of governance. His approval rating has dropped, but, so has his disapproval rating dropped. He is hoping come 2024, a presidential election year, his "uncertain" rating which has increased will carry him through another election.
Machin receives his election funding from oil & gas and other GOP sources. He isn't a Democrat, but, in saying so West Virginians believe their federal interests are balanced between the two parties, hence, Machin's boat and his claims of bipartisan influence.
By asking Biden to restore the XL pipeline he is looking for money from the GOP and his petroleum industry buddies. It is all quid pro quo and the Democrats have two years to find someone that can primary Machin and hope the people will back a new candidate that isn't as deceitful as Machin.
Machin can be viewed as a "Snyder Democrat," in one that doesn't care about potable water.
Nearly every corner of the world has opposed this pipeline and it is necessary to end the idea it is possible. Machin's petroleum buddies want him to hit back with the pipeline after COP26 and the emergence of the urgency of seeking the end of greenhouse gas emissions.
Machin is their puppet in quid pro quo.
The Democrats need to run real candidate that reflects hope to the people of West Virginia. Machin is nothing but more of the same corruption that has always existed.
President Biden is releasing oil from the national reserves. Every other president has done the same thing when prices were high. The prices locally have already dropped 24 cents. It is working. The people won't have this issue if they purchase electric vehicles and the sooner the better. Electricity is a stable price that can be counted on to increase job opportunity as well as stable energy costs. There won't be problems with a families budget day to day because of fossil fuel energy profiteers. Enough is enough. The American family needs safe and efficient transportation.
The computer chip/semi-conductor industry is becoming more dependable, even in difficult times caused by the pandemic. There is plant being planned by Samsung outside of Austin, Texas (click here). There isn't a Wall Street company involved with semi-conductors happy about sourcing Taiwan, now that China is being a real jerk about communism imposition. Communication companies that provide for social media are leaving China because of growing regulations and danger to their own people. It is time to make the USA completely self-contained in the needs that really are that of national security. I think Samsung is doing the right thing for their company as well as a more secure USA and it's economic engine.
August 7, 2020
In the West Virginia coalfields (click here) — on the edge of which my aunt and uncle live, and where I spent holidays and vacations as a kid — the economic mood ranges from depressed to apocalyptic. At one point, more than 100,000 West Virginians worked in the mines that produced well-paying jobs and gave people money to spend. That money spilled over into other sectors: retail, construction, and education, to name a few, and was the backbone of the state’s economy. Now, fewer than 20,000 locals work in these mines, and the jobs that do exist pay far less than they used to, thanks to successful anti-union actions by coal companies. As a result, a region that once boomed along with human consumption of fossil fuels is now littered with shuttered mines, shuttered storefronts, and shuttered dreams....
West Virginians need to realize their needss are best filled by sincere Democrats that want to actually provide real jobs rather than the sparce number of coal jobs. Machin's corruption needs to be displayed and allow for a successful primary to elect a person that sincerely cares about West Virginian people.
Opposition to Keystone XL centered on the devastating environmental consequences (click here) of the project. The pipeline faced more than a decade of sustained protests from environmental activists and organizations; Indigenous communities; religious leaders; and the farmers, ranchers, and business owners along its proposed route. One such protest, a historic act of civil disobedience outside the White House in August 2011, resulted in the arrest of more than 1,200 demonstrators. “This is not a pipeline to America,” said the late civil rights activist Julian Bond, among the many arrested. “It’s a pipeline through America, and it threatens to be a disaster for us if it leaks poisons on the way.” Leading scientists and economists came out in opposition to the project, in addition to unions and world leaders such as the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and former president Jimmy Carter (together, these and other Nobel laureates have written letters against the project). In 2014, more than two million comments urging a rejection of the pipeline were submitted to the U.S. Department of State during a 30-day public comment period.
Tuesday, November 23, 2021
Latex allergy.
Inclusion is important.
I was really pleased to see our society has finally caught up with modern times. This is a new shade of bandaid (click here) by Walgreens. It is fabric, generic and sells for $3.29. I am proud of Walgreens. They should keep up the good work. I can hold up head up a little higher everytime I walk into Walgreens now.
It is my opinion...
...the Supreme Court is playing god. I also believe Thomas has been siding with women as Ginsberg would have just so on he can be anti-women with this opinion.
The justices, except for Roberts, is deciding that the neural tube development at six weeks is the benchmark for a viable fetus rather than the 24-25 week which has been standard for any decision for the past fifty years.
FETAL PAIN has always been the issue. That developed out of the decision regarding late term abortions. NOW, the Justices, except for Robert and the three thinking judges, are attempting to move the benchmark to the first development of any nervous tissue at six weeks.
By the ninth week, (click here) the brain appears as a small, smooth structure. Over the course of pregnancy, the structure of the brain will change as it grows and begins to form the characteristic folds that designate distinct brain regions. Changes in brain anatomy reflect dramatic changes at the cellular level. Neurons in the different brain regions begin producing the chemical signaling molecules that will enable communication between nerve cells. The fiber pathways that will become the brain’s information superhighway are forming. The cells that will make up the neocortex—the part of the brain that coordinates sight, sound, spatial reasoning, conscious thought, and language—begin to communicate
Mayo
Week 6: The neural tube closes (click here)
Growth is rapid this week. Just four weeks after conception, the neural tube along your baby's back is closing. The baby's brain and spinal cord will develop from the neural tube. The heart and other organs also are starting to form.
Structures necessary to the formation of the eyes and ears develop. Small buds appear that will soon become arms. Your baby's body begins to take on a C-shaped curvature
Five CRACKPOTS on the court are attempting to argue there is no way of knowing if the fetus feels pain at six weeks, hence, that has to stand as the correct place for abortion.
It is taking the law into their own hands. The Rule of Law regarding fetal development has always been 24 to 25 weeks of development is the first time a fetus can feel pain because it is when the brain and spinal cord HOOK UP.
The FIVE CRACKPOTS, probably led by Alito, are assaulting the right of a full citizen of the USA in favor of the standard of an unborn fetus. Now, is the time to end all requirements for abortion and go back to patient - doctor confidentiality.
The EXTREMIST argument is based on the idea that SPASTIC movements “in utero” like thumb sucking is all conscious movement.
IT IS A LIE!!!!!
The Five Crackpots are ignoring the Rule of Law and a 50 year precedent to overthrow this democracy for a Christian theocracy. They should be impeached!!!
Monday, November 22, 2021
The looting is continuing in vulnerable communities.
I suggest President Biden begin to ask the country to be careful and make example of New York City. Guns are of little use and even can be used against occupants of any building, home or apartment unless there is a warning system to wake people from their sleep.
Did you see the full “Beaver Moon?” (click here)
Here it is, captured by photographers around the world as our satellite rose spectacularly—and from some locations was eclipsed by the Earth.
If you were in Europe it looked liked any other rising full Moon—spectacular, for sure, though nothing out of the ordinary ... if you can call a glowing orbiting orb “ordinary.”
For those in North America, Australia and eastern Asia the full Moon went a copper-reddish color at all but a slither of its surface entered Earth’s shadow in space....
Sunday, November 21, 2021
Peng Shual is a global citizen with a global reputation. People will not lose interest in her simply because China is being oppressive.
By Matthew Futterman and Christopher Clarey
Nearly two weeks after people across the world (click here) began asking “Where is Peng Shuai?,” two questionable videos surfaced Saturday on social media of a person who appears to be the Chinese tennis star at a restaurant.
The videos were shared on Twitter by the editor of a state-run newspaper, but the seemingly unnatural conversation in one video and the unclear location and dates of both raised questions about Peng’s safety and whether she was appearing in the videos of her own free will. A third video, said to be of Peng at a tennis match in Beijing, was posted about 10 hours later, on Sunday.
Peng, in a social media post this month, accused a former top government official of sexually assaulting her. After the allegation, the Chinese government removed almost all references of Peng on social media within the country, and Peng disappeared from public life. Her absence prompted outrage across the world, especially from top officials and stars in tennis....
Deforestation is loss of chlorophyll sinks for CO2 and profound habitat loss throwing nature's balance into a downward spiral.
By Charles Maynes and Grace Widyatmadja
Her name is Elizabeth Ann.
By Michael Booth
Anything at all to make a buck. A decade ago Antarctica tourism was unheard of and it should have remained that way.
By Dana Bergstrom
And each vessel, each cargo item, and each person could be harbouring non-native species, hitchhiking their way south. This threat to Antarctica’s fragile ecosystem is what our new evaluation, released today, grapples with.
We mapped the last five years of planes and ships visiting the continent, illuminating for the first time the extent of travel across the hemispheres and the potential source locations for non-native species, as the map below shows. We found that, luckily, while some have breached Antarctica, they generally have yet to get a stranglehold, leaving the continent still relatively pristine.
But Antarctica is getting busier, with new research stations, rebuilding and more tourism activities planned. Our challenge is to keep it pristine under this growing human activity and climate change threat....
By Morgan Greene
Europe is moving on greenhouse gas emissions, but, as is the case globally, not enough yet.
Europe's climate (click here) is warming much faster than the rest of the world and scientists are trying to understand why.
The world is nowhere near on track to limiting the global temperature rise to the 1.5 degrees Celsius required by the Paris Agreement, the international treaty negotiated at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris in 2015. In fact, latest predictions show that globally, the climate is set to get on average 2.4 degrees C warmer compared to the pre-industrial era, unless emissions of greenhouse gases are drastically cut.
But not all parts of the world are set to be hit equally. Europe, in fact, has already passed the 1.5-degree C threshold and is currently 2.2 degrees C warmer than it was before the industrial revolution, Samantha Burgess, deputy director for climate change services at the European Earth observation program Copernicus, said Tuesday (Nov. 2) in a briefing at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) that is concluding this week in Glasgow, Scotland.
Climate denial is waning, but it is being replaced with anti-immigration rhetoric.
By Oliver Milman
...“When the Roman empire fell, (click here) it was largely as a result of uncontrolled immigration – the empire could no longer control its borders, people came in from the east and all over the place,” the British prime minister said in an interview on the eve of crucial UN climate talks in Scotland. Civilization can go into reverse as well as forwards, as Johnson told it, with Rome’s fate offering grave warning as to what could happen if global heating is not restrained.
This wrapping of ecological disaster with fears of rampant immigration is a narrative that has flourished in far-right fringe movements in Europe and the US and is now spilling into the discourse of mainstream politics. Whatever his intent, Johnson was following a current of rightwing thought that has shifted from outright dismissal of climate change to using its impacts to fortify ideological, and often racist, battle lines. Representatives of this line of thought around the world are, in many cases, echoing eco-fascist ideas that themselves are rooted in an earlier age of blood-and-soil nationalism.
In the US, a lawsuit by the Republican attorney general of Arizona has demanded the building of a border wall to prevent migrants coming from Mexico as these people “directly result in the release of pollutants, carbon dioxide, and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere”. In Spain, Santiago Abascal, leader of the populist Vox party, has called for a “patriotic” restoration of a “green Spain, clean and prosperous”....
October 25, 2021On Thursday, (click here) the National Security Council released a long-anticipated report on what environmental advocates are calling one the most pressing issues of our time: climate change-induced migration. The report is the first U.S. government report on the effects of climate on migration and arrives right as President Biden is slated to attend a major United Nations climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland known as COP26.
The 37-page report, which was commissioned by President Joe Biden in February with an August deadline, notes that climate migration, both within countries and between them, is already here, but is set to get a lot worse. Climate change is expected to displace as many as 143 million people, nearly three percent of the populations of Latin America, South Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa, by 2050. Roughly a quarter of those are expected to migrate internationally as a result of their displacement. The sheer mass of migrants will have “significant implications for international security, instability, conflict, and geopolitics,” the report says. This includes climate change-induced wars and conflicts over natural resources, namely water....
“To be honest with ourselves, yes, this is going to be really hard,” said Mr. Obama, who was welcomed with sustained applause by delegates from nearly 200 nations. “The thing we have going for us, is that humanity has done hard things before. I believe we can do hard things again.”
Mr. Obama noted that the Paris agreement, signed by 197 countries in 2015, created a framework for climate action, but nations, including the United States, failed to follow through on their commitments to keep global warming within relatively safe margins.
“Important work was done there, and important work is being done here,” he said. “That is the good news. Now, for the bad news. We are nowhere near where we need to be.”...
We are witnessing the destruction of the land based Greenland Ice Sheet. Is Antarctica far behind?
20 November 2021
This 2016 photo (click here) shows a rift that, within a few months, widened even farther and and released a Delaware-size iceberg from Antarctica’s Larsen C ice shelf. The rough surface of ice mélange is visible on one side of the rift.
Here's another reminder of the precarious position (click here) that the world's climate and ecosystems are in: a new study estimates that global warming could push the Antarctic ice sheet past a tipping point in as little as 10 years....
...As icebergs break off Antarctica, they float down a major channel known as Iceberg Alley. Debris released from these icebergs accumulates on the seafloor, giving researchers a record of history some 3.5 kilometers (2.2 miles) under the water.
By combining this natural logbook of iceberg drift with computer models of ice sheet behavior, the team was able to identify eight phases of ice sheet retreat across recent millennia. In each case, the ice sheet destabilization and subsequent restabilization happened within a decade or so.
The results published by the researchers augment modern satellite imagery, which only goes back around 40 years: they show increasing losses of ice from the interior of the Antarctic ice sheet, not just changes in ice shelves already freely floating on the water.
"We found that iceberg calving events on multi-year time scales were synchronous with discharge of grounded ice from the Antarctic ice sheet," says glaciologist Nick Golledge, from the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand.
The study showed the same sea rise pattern happening in each of the eight phases too, with global sea levels affected for several centuries and up to a millennium in some cases. Further statistical analysis identified the tipping points for these changes.
If the current shift in ice in Antarctica can be interpreted in the same way as the past events identified by the researchers, we might already be in the midst of a new tipping point – something we've seen in other parts of the world and the Arctic in recent years....
On the Fiest of Christ the King, Pope Francis directs young people to be Earth's stewards.
Vatican - Pope Francis (click here) on Sunday praised young people for their efforts to protect the Earth’s environment and told them to “be the critical conscience of society.”