Monday, August 12th, 2019
Andy Kroll, Washington Bureau Chief -
Stephan: I'll just let this story speak for itself.
Another of Trump’s unconfirmed acting agency heads, with issues in his background,
Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan
Credit: Andrew Harnik/AP/Shutterstock
WASHINGTON — It was a pretty straightforward request.
In January, the watchdog group American Oversight asked the Department of Homeland Security to provide the number of analysts inside the agency’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis devoted to working on “non-Islamist domestic terrorism threats” — including right-wing extremism or attacks motivated by “white supremacist or antigovernment ideology” — for the past ten years. The group also asked for memos, guidance, or other paperwork regarding any changes to the number of analysts working on those issues since President Trump took office.
Some of the most violent hate crimes and acts of domestic terrorism in this country’s history have occurred in the last decade: the 2012 mass shooting at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, the mass shooting at the Emanuel AME church in Charleston in 2015, the Unite the Right march in Charlottesville in 2017 and the murder of […]
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Monday, August 12th, 2019
Stephan: The Trump administration and the Republican Senate, on the basis of what they do, not what they say, do not believe in climate change, and they don't really believe in ecology or environmentalism. They have the Abrahamic christofascist view that the earth is an exploitable bank account left to White men 10,000 years ago, to ravage and exploit as they see fit.
Asian carp, jolted by an electric current from a research boat, jump from the Illinois River near Havana, Ill. An effort is underway to reintroduce alligator gar into lakes, rivers and backwaters of several states possibly to help control populations of the invasive carp. Credit: John Flesher/AP
Republicans sat on a report for months about how to block Asian carp from our nation’s Great Lakes, but now environmentalists are hoping Congress approves money this year to fund preliminary work for a $778 million plan to stop the fish at a dam near Joliet, Ill.
Todd Semonite, commanding general of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, is recommending the plan which includes building a channel with additional electric barriers, flushing lock systems and using underwater speakers to bombard the fish with noise.
“With the Asian Carp on the doorstep of our region’s most vital natural resource,we have a small window of time to stop this invasive species before it inflicts irreparable damage on […]
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Sunday, August 11th, 2019
Dan Spinelli, Reporter - Mother Jones
Stephan: This is the most intelligent and sensible thing about gun policies I have seen proposed in years. It is fact-based, doable, self-financing, and it fosters wellbeing. Elizabeth Warren, actually knows how to think in a fact-based way, and in my opinion, would make an excellent president.
Elizabeth Warren
Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty
The deadly shootings last week in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas, catapulted gun violence to the forefront of the Democratic presidential primary. Now Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has laid out a detailed plan to combat the problem.
The proposals, which Warren says will reduce deaths from gun violence by 80 percent, were released Saturday morning in advance of a candidate forum in Iowa hosted by three gun control advocacy groups.
“We might not know how to get all the way there yet,” Warren wrote in a post on Medium, where she has laid out most of her campaign’s policy proposals. “But we’ll start by implementing solutions that we believe will work.”
Like many of her Democratic rivals, Warren supports an assault weapons ban and universal background checks before gun purchases, but her plan also would hike taxes on gun manufacturers, establish a federal licensing system for gun owners, set a uniform, one-week waiting period for purchases, bar anyone convicted of a hate crime from owning guns, and support urban-intervention programs.
“The next president […]
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Sunday, August 11th, 2019
Center for Biological Diversity, - Global Research Institute
Stephan: Are corporations more important than people you ask? Read this, it will answer that question.
The United States allows the use of 85 pesticides that have been banned or are being phased out in the European Union, China or Brazil, according to a peer-reviewed study published today by the academic journal Environmental Health.
In 2016 the United States used 322 million pounds of pesticides that are banned in the E.U., accounting for more than one-quarter of all agricultural pesticide use in this country, according to the study. U.S. applicators also used 40 million pounds of pesticides that are banned or being phased out in China and 26 million pounds of pesticides that are banned or being phased out in Brazil.
“It’s appalling the U.S. lags so far behind these major agricultural powers in banning harmful pesticides,” said Nathan Donley, a senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity and author of the study. “The fact that we’re still using hundreds of millions of pounds of poisons other nations have wisely rejected as too risky spotlights our dangerously lax approach to phasing out hazardous pesticides.”
The study compared the approval status of more than 500 […]
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Sunday, August 11th, 2019
STEPHEN LEAHY, - National Geographic
Stephan: The Trump administration has just re-authorized the use of pesticides fatal to bees. The implications are horrifying but entirely typical of the most corrupt government in American history.
Honeybees on the outside of a bee hive. U.S. agriculture has become almost 50 times more toxic to honeybees and other insects over the past 25 years, a new study finds.
Credit: Dieter Telemans/Panos/Redux
America’s agricultural landscape is now 48 times more toxic to honeybees, and likely other insects, than it was 25 years ago, almost entirely due to widespread use of so-called neonicotinoid pesticides, according to a new study published today in the journal PLOS One.
This enormous rise in toxicity matches the sharp declines in bees, butterflies, and other pollinators as well as birds, says co-author Kendra Klein, senior staff scientist at Friends of the Earth US.
“This is the second Silent Spring. Neonics are like a new DDT, except they are a thousand times more toxic to bees than DDT was,” Klein says in an interview.
Using a new tool that measures toxicity to honey bees, the length of time a […]
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