No city in the country should have a gang data base.

Evidently, Chicago pledged to clean their “gang database” which has proven to be a tool of discrimination, at the very least. Gang databases need to be removed from law enforcement at the local level and quit possibly all law enforcement.

Either a person has a criminal record or not. Gangs don’t have Social Security Numbers and cannot commit infractions. Gangs are an understood group of people in most cases that can organize to commit crimes.

Criminal organization to commit crimes is racketeering. Either there is racketeering or not. Most so called gangs are usually compromised of young people affiliated for the sake of belonging. Crimes affiliated with gangs are random and exists in impoverished areas. There is no way a gang also is conducting racketeering. That is too sophisticated an operation. 

There should be no gangland data base in Chicago or any place else. It is an unnecessary activity/classification that victimizes people and forces them into an identity rather than individuality.

George Floyd should still be alive. There is no doubt about it. This was murder.

When other professionals responsible for the lives of citizens starts to call supervisors in realizing there was something very wrong with the apprehension of George Floyd, there is reason to believe there isn't anything that was done well or right and that his death was murder.

George Floyd was respected in his community and considered an important person to many, many people.

George Floyd was unarmed. The police developed new techniques to kill given all the fuss in the country about gunning down unarmed black men. That is my opinion and I am not going to change it.

March 29, 2021
By Janelle Griffith

Minneapolis - The first witness in Derek Chauvin's murder trial, (click here) a 911 dispatcher, testified Monday that she alerted a police supervisor May 25 after she watched Minneapolis police officers pin George Floyd to the ground live in a security video.

The dispatcher, Jena Scurry, said it was a "gut instinct" that led her to call a police sergeant who was a supervisor for the officers at the scene. She said she glanced up at wall-mounted dispatch screens between taking other calls and saw a police squad car moving back and forth outside Cup Foods, a convenience store. An employee at Cup Foods had called police alleging that Floyd had tried to pass a counterfeit $20 bill.

Scurry said that her job is primarily to listen and that it is rare for a dispatcher to witness an incident in which police are at a scene. She said she has observed police at a scene only three or four times in her seven-year career.

Scurry said the police officers restrained Floyd for so long that she asked someone whether her "screens had frozen because it hadn't changed" and "was told that it was not frozen."...

Here again the right wing is looking to see what sticks to the wall.

This is a non-news issue. The Flint Water Crisis should have received so much attention so early.

It is a great house. I would love to live in that house. It has real character. It is a magnificent mansion actually. But, the only problem with these houses is that they are OLD. It was built in 1893 and ANY renovation to these houses is complicated and lengthy. The Vice President has a right to be upset that it is taking this long, but, I am not surprised.

Humphry Davy invented the FIRST electric light bulb in 1800. The everyday use of electricity in homes didn't exist for some time. A house like this has antiquated infrastructure. So, anytime modern changes are made to these houses they are somewhat a major undertaking because it has to be brought up to SPECS. I think it is right to renovate it and bring modern electrical wiring and plumbing into the structure. It is the Vice President's house and there should be no doubt the house is absolutely safe from aged building components.

The house allows for a lot of FUNCTION because it has so many rooms, is near a space observatory, and is on government grounds which is safe from the extremists in the country. But, this is a non-issue. The news media doesn't have a story here.

I am sure there are government inspectors somewhere that can validate the renovations have to meet CODE. If the length is taking too long or there are reports of poor construction work then the contractors can be replaced. But, I am not surprised a kitchen renovation is taking longer than anticipated. The contractors should provide the Vice President with a timeline to completion so the family can decide how to proceed. I am sort of surprised the family has not been given more information about the renovation and a timeline.

The white nineteenth-century house (click here) at Number One Observatory Circle in northwestern Washington, D.C. was built in 1893. Originally intended for the superintendent of the USNO, the house was so lovely that in 1923, the chief of naval operations kicked out the superintendent so he could move in himself. Historically, Vice Presidents and their families lived in their own homes, but the cost of securing these private residences grew substantially over the years. Finally, in 1974, Congress agreed to refurbish the house at the Naval Observatory as a home for the Vice President....

March 27, 2021

Washington - It has been more than two months (click here) since Kamala Harris was sworn in as vice president of the United States, a historic moment for the country, as Harris is the first woman and the first woman of color to hold the second-highest office in the land. Yet, Harris — along with her husband Georgetown Law professor Douglas Emhoff — is still, ostensibly, living out of suitcases, unable to move into the private residence reserved for the vice president because it is undergoing renovations....

The judge has it wrong. These groups practice and prepare for no reason at all, except their own fears of government.

"Bottom-up" organizations seeking to enforce the law with their own understanding. The actual Rule of Law has nothing to do with their purpose.

March 29, 2021

...According to The Detroit News, (click here) Judge Michael Klaeren of the 12th District Court in Jackson County, Michigan, dismissed the charges of false report and threat of terrorism against Paul Bellar, Joseph Morrison and Pete Musico.

“There has to be some form of intent here to incite mayhem,” said Klaeren.

Bellar, 21; Morrison 42; and Musico, 36, are among six men who have been charged in the plot to kidnap Whitmer: Shawn Fix, 38; Michael Null, 38; and William Null, 38. According to the FBI, the men planned to kidnap Whitmer at the governor’s vacation home prior to last Election Day....

'

While on the topic of domestic abuse.

March 20, 2021
By Carlotta Gall

Istanbul - In two surprise midnight decrees, (click here) President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has withdrawn Turkey from an international treaty on preventing violence against women and removed the head of the central bank, moves likely to please his followers but further estrange him from Western partners.

Mr. Erdogan had floated the idea of withdrawing from the treaty, known as the Istanbul Convention, for more than a year as he courted conservative and nationalist followers to shore up his flagging popularity. Women’s groups immediately announced a protest rally on Saturday afternoon.

The president, who has increasingly insisted on greater control over the Central Bank, appears to have opposed a raising of interest rates last week by the central bank chief, Naci Agbal.

Mr. Erdogan has steadily concentrated more authority into his own hands over his 18 years in power. His latest actions, overnight between Friday and Saturday, came amid a flurry of attacks on political opponents that seem intended to solidify his political base....

President Biden has been involved in efforts to end domestic violence that includes the use of guns to kill women that have been abused by their husbands or significant other. Turkey is an ally through NATO. It is unthinkable that President Erdogan did this. Turkey in some ways is becoming a worry.

March 21, 2021

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr.(click here) discussing the Violence Against Women Act in July 1994. He was one of the sponsors of the bill, which was signed into law by President Bill Clinton later that year.

Credit...
Turkey’s sudden and unwarranted withdrawal (click here) from the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence, better known as the Istanbul Convention, is deeply disappointing. Around the world, we are seeing increases in the number of domestic violence incidents, including reports of rising femicide in Turkey, the first nation to sign the convention. Countries should be working to strengthen and renew their commitments to ending violence against women, not rejecting international treaties designed to protect women and hold abusers accountable. This is a disheartening step backward for the international movement to end violence against women globally.

Gender-based violence is a scourge that touches every nation in every corner of the world. In the past few weeks, we’ve seen too many examples of horrific and brutal assaults on women, including the tragic murders in Georgia. And we’ve seen the broader damage that living under the daily specter of gender-based violence does to women everywhere. It hurts all of us, and we all must do more to create societies where women are able to go about their lives free from violence.

I am so proud of these women in Turkey. They are taking on the fight for their rights. Evidently, the color purple is growing to be a political issue. This effort proves the international convention was valued in Turkey by all the right people, women.

March 20, 2021

By Zeynep Bilginsoy

Istanbul - Turkey withdrew early Saturday (click here) from a landmark European treaty protecting women from violence that it was the first country to sign 10 years ago and which bears the name of its largest city.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s overnight decree annulling Turkey’s ratification of the Istanbul Convention is a blow to women’s rights advocates, who say the agreement is crucial to combating domestic violence. Hundreds of women gathered at demonstrations across Turkey on Saturday to protest the move....

The Biden Administration is not hiding anything from Americans.

"Morning Papers"

The Rooster

Okeydoke

There is a humanitarian crisis at the border and nothing more. There are no attacks coming across the border and if there are guns, then it is the drug cartels and there ain't anything new about that.

Ted Cruz is worried about his Senate seat and is trying to create a wedge issue for his particular politics. That will never be a wedge issue. The humanitarian crisis is real and it is ongoing because the climate crisis storms have devastated the Northern Triad and areas of Mexico. Where are all the Republican Senators touring the devastation of these people's homelands?

"Look," if there is no land capable of supporting housing because the mudslides have removed small towns from existence. If the coffee plants that were harvested and sold in small Non-GMO markets for a family's income are gone along with the topsoil, there isn't going to be any alternative but to move from that land.

That is what the people of the Northern Triad are facing. We saw in a previous post a graph illustrating that is the truth. The movement north escalated for very real reasons while Trump thought terrorizing and mistreating the migrants would work to stop the surge to the southern USA border. Well, it didn't. That is a fact and quite frankly they have nothing to go back to when they are returned to their countries because their status is illegal.

The issue with the children has been discussed here and evidently, Cruz and his minions are trying to make lies into the truth and won't stop and FOX News accommodates all that.

The federal Donna Facility that Cruz believes tells the entire story is in the reporting below at the website for ABC which includes video. Nothing is being hidden regardless of the lies and propaganda.

The reason the press is being told they cannot have free access is that in previous administrations the migrants and children were used for political purposes. President Biden doesn't want that to happen. Some of the migrants will have grounds for asylum and many may be women running away from abuse and enslavement. Everyone in the media should know that women in shelters are not photographed so their abusers can find them. Has anyone honestly seen women in shelters appearing in ads for fundraising? I never have. The same holds true here.

THE MIGRANTS ARE NOT ON DISPLAY FOR ALL THE RIGHT REASONS, including their own safety and security.

Asylum seekers with valid reasons need to be protected.

End of discussion.

March 23, 2021

Faced with mounting pressure (click here) over the public's limited access to federal facilities housing a record number of migrant children, the Biden administration has now released its first official images from inside two Texas detention centers, with ABC News receiving an exclusive first look at videos and photos produced in recent days by the U.S. government.

The videos -- shot last week and released Tuesday by U.S. Customs and Border Protection -- show living conditions inside a processing facility in El Paso, Texas, and a holding facility in Donna, Texas, where unaccompanied children and other migrants, including families, are being held while they await transfer to other federal agencies better suited to address their needs.


In the government-sanctioned photos and videos, children arriving at the Donna facility wear masks as they have their temperatures checked and receive health scans. One photo shows a child in a playpen, being watched over by a contracted caretaker.

The nearly four-minute video from Donna then depicts a crowded but orderly facility, with children packed into enclosures and sleeping on mats on floors. The video also shows shelves from inside the facility stocked with items including linens, diapers, food, water and hand sanitizer....

"Good Night, Moon"

The Full

14.6 days

100.0 percent lit

March 26, 2021
By Laura Geggel

...The full moon (click here) lasts just an instant, but dedicated moon watchers can catch it at 2:48 p.m. EDT (18:48 UTC) on Sunday, when the moon appears opposite the sun in Earth-based longitude, according to a NASA statement. People who miss this fleeting moment will still be able to see a big, round moon — the rocky satellite will appear full for three days, from Saturday morning (March 27) through early Tuesday morning (March 30)....

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.

One of the tasks for the Biden HHS; is to stop the destruction of families and end insitutional curelty to children.

Children grow up with permanent feelings of abandonment. The child tax credit will help, but, the government has to change the way we take children away from families. It is an industry now that is hopelessly lost to the best outcomes for children. States without grandparent rights need to be addressed.

March 24, 2021
By Bacardi Jackson

Florida Dept. of Children and Families (click here)

I have witnessed and survived much (click here) – from overtly racist threats at gunpoint to the everyday microaggressions by people who feel obliged to police Black bodies, words, actions and even our audacity. These assaults accumulate, at times stinging like the death of a thousand cuts, but, like most Black people living, growing and becoming in America, and especially those of us situated in the Deep South, these experiences have been so par for the course that we find ourselves often in a state of numbness. Nothing cuts deeper and stirs the soul more, however, than that moment when one witnesses the burdens and baggage of racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, xenophobia or their many intersectionalities placed squarely on the shoulders of a child. The rage we learn to quell and hide is not easily contained when our children are under siege.

In my journey as a parent of Black children, I have had to work hard to shield them from, or at least shore them up to be prepared for, the ever-present dangers of living while Black. The adultification of Black children in particular means they often are not seen by others as worthy or in need of the same protections, leeway, nurturing or care afforded to their peers. As I have learned firsthand, there is no greater sense of helplessness than when someone with the power to shape and wield malleable laws supplants your parental authority and demands that you relinquish your power to protect. There is no greater indignity than the force of the state intentionally and with knowledge putting your child in a dangerous place – something I have suffered through and something parents of Florida children who have been “Baker Acted” know all too well.

Today, we released a report, Costly and Cruel: How Misuse of the Baker Act Harms 37,000 Florida Children Each Year, about the outrageously prolific use of Florida’s Baker Act to involuntary commit children to psychiatric facilities for examination....

Flint, Michigan continues on it's quest for justice.

The deadline (click here) to do one thing or the other in the Flint water crisis settlement is Monday, March 29.

March 29, 2021

Flint - More than 30,000 registration forms (click here) have been received from people who want to participate in a $641.2 million Flint water lawsuit settlement.

Special Master Deborah Greenspan reported 33,341 registration forms were turned in by the start of the week. The deadline is next Monday.

Registration, which is required to receive money from the settlement, can be completed online by clicking here. Registration forms also were mailed to all Flint residents. Anyone with questions about the process can call 1-800-493-1754 or email FlintWater@ArcherSystems.com....

30,000 forms, some of which are lawyers.

Now, that the Michigan Attorney General is prosecuting the perpetrators of the poisoning of the people of Flint, Michigan there is the issue of the contractors. The lawyers should know any wrongdoing will be punished.

March 27, 2021
By Coleman Waterman

Flint - A court date (click here) has been set for a contracting firm cited by Michigan officials for allegedly dumping construction material in a Flint neighborhood rather than properly disposing it.

WT Stevens is to appear for a pretrial hearing before Genesee County District Judge David Guinn at 8:30 a.m. on Monday, March 29.

The former contractor received more than $27 million from the City of Flint to replace lead pipes. He was cited by both the Genesee County Drain Commission and the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) for failing to have a soil erosion plan at the dump site. WT Stevens was also cited for placing leftover construction material including soil, concrete and debris (commonly called “spoils”) in a north side Flint neighborhood instead of properly disposing of it....

I am away from home but will post about Flint when I return in the early AM.

3/27/2021

1:35 pm

Sorry for the tardiness. All I can say in my own defense is that it is springtime.

Let's take a look at Flint.

To begin, President Biden brought Flint up in the first news conference he shared with the American people. The reason he did was because of the large number of lead pipes still in homes all across the country. I want to qualify that because it is not the same as Flint.

President Biden is correct to be worried about the country and the lead service lines to homes and children across the USA. The best reason is that we cannot leave it to chance that lead won't come out of the pipes and into the water. Drinking water standards and water quality were never a high priority for the previous president (who's name I shall not mention).

By consequence of the highly destructive previous federal administrtion, there can easily be caustics in the nation's drinking water. The standards for the water are only a part of water quality. The contribution of overland flow and water runoff also plays a role in water quality. So, in environmental justice, if there is a coal plant throwing soot into the air, that shoot will fall to the ground and also causes acid rain. The leaching and overland flow are just as deadly as the lead pipes.

Whenever any sort of toxin enters drinking water and a water treatment plant ends that contaminant, there is a cost to pay for that water treatment. Now, in the case of the water Flint, Michigan used to receive in their pipes, it was glacial water and at the time relatively pure. But, if that glacial water is contaminated in the most minor amount with a caustic substance, then it needs to be treated. But, what often happens is the STANDARD for that toxin can be changed to allow higher amounts of the substance to pass into American diets.

What does that mean? It means the previous administration cut the cost of water treatment at the cost of American health and ultimately illness and longevity. It is this unthinkable reality that is upon us today. After the previous administration, which thought nothing of citizen deaths and even welcomed them, was finished reducing the cost of water treatment, there are dangerous substances in our country's water and it is most probably having an effect on the degree of lead in the homes of those with leaching lead pipes.

The country needs to take stock of the changes the previous administration made into reducing costs to water treatment while allowing higher contaminants in that water. The idea contaminants were increased by the previous standard will effect the entire country whether they have lead service pipes or not.

But, it is notable that President Biden called up the episode of Flint, Michigan in expressing concern for the entire country. The tragedy that resulted in Flint, Michigan under the direction of a ruthless governor not different from the previous president in valuing American lives, has made an impression on the people to the degree their lives can be changed by ruthless standards that feed greed. There is a deep appreciation of the tragedy that occurred in Flint, Michigan. All I can say is this appreciation for what can occur under wayward leadership is the credit of all the whistleblowers. Flint, Michigan has a proud history of standing up for itself when no one else was successful. That is being an American. We are grateful to them and am sincerely sorry for the loss that took a year to surface after the tragedy.