Jacob Bogage and Lisa Rein , Reporters - The Washington Post
Stephan: This attempt by Trump to take over the post office is all wrong. I don't know how many ways it has to be made clear to Americans, whether it is a lack of empathy, grifting, appointing incompetents, Trump cares nothing for anyone but himself.
In my view, this attack on the Post Office is because Trump hates Jeff Bezos, because he is so much richer than Trump and contemptuous of him; a fight amongst the rich that holds the potential to really screw up the lives of ordinary Americans. If you live in a big city the post office is usually not a big deal. But if you live in or near a small village the post office is a central part of village life.
A vehicle blurs past as a woman enters the Georgetown Post Office in Washington, D.C. on April 22, 2020. The Postal Service is struggling financially. Credit: Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post
The Treasury Department is considering taking unprecedented control over key operations of the U.S. Postal Service by imposing tough terms on an emergency coronavirus loan from Congress, which would fulfill President Trump’s longtime goal of changing how the service does business, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Officials working under Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who must approve the $10 billion loan, have told senior officials at the USPS in recent weeks that he could use the loan as leverage to give the administration influence over how much the agency charges for delivering packages and how it manages its finances, according to the two people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the talks are preliminary.
Trump has railed for years against what he sees as mismanagement at the Postal Service, which he argues has been exploited by e-commerce sites such as Amazon, and has sought […]
Maximo Torero, Chief Economist of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome. - Foreign Policy
Stephan: This is what the Trump administration should have been thinking about. They should have been leading the way into a global approach to the food crisis that is coming. Instead, they have done ... well, you know what they have done.
FLORIDA CITY, FLORIDA – APRIL 01: Farm workers harvest zucchini on the Sam Accursio & Son’s Farm on April 01, 2020 in Florida City, Florida. Sergio Martinez, a harvest crew supervisor, said that the coronavirus pandemic has caused them “to have to throw crops away due to less demand for produce in stores and restaurants. The farm workers who are essential to providing food for homebound families are worried that if the restaurants stay closed and peoples changed grocery store habits continue they would be out of work with no work for the near future.” Credit: Joe Raedle/Getty
The coronavirus has focused the world’s attention on the woeful lack of ventilators, respiratory masks, and intensive care unit beds available in many countries. Far less attention has been paid to another pandemic-driven shortage lurking over the horizon: food.
As trade walls go up and governments panic about preserving their own food sources, the coronavirus threatens to disrupt global supply chains. Russia, the world’s largest wheat exporter, is limiting grain exports from April to June. Egypt, the world’s biggest wheat importer, […]
Stephan: My wife and I were down in her extensive gardens today and we both noted that although we specifically grow plants to attract and support bees and butterflies that this Spring there seem fewer than previous years. Then I came back and read this. This is about the fifth report I have published on this subject, and each report is worse than the one before.
The insects are vanishing, the ocean creatures are vanishing, I really think we are getting to a tipping point where if we do not change our attitudes about the earth and the matrix of consciousness we are going to destroy human civilization as we know it. And I do not think we have a lot of time left to make this transition. We have to create a culture based on wellbeing at every level. Be very clear, this is a decision that each of us must make; it must come from the bottom up, not the top down.
A red admiral butterfly stands on a flower in an urban garden in the city center on August 9, 2018 in Berlin. Credit: Sean Gallup/Getty
The largest ever assessment of long-term insect abundance found that there has been a nearly 25% decrease of land-dwelling bugs like ants, butterflies, and grasshoppers over the past 30 years—a revelation that inspired fresh demands for urgent international action to tackle the decades-long, human-caused “bugpocalypse.”
“Insect populations are like logs of wood that are pushed under water. They want to come up, while we keep pushing them further down. But we can reduce the pressure so they can rise again.” —Roel van Klink, lead author
The Guardianreported on the new assessment, published in the journal Science:
The analysis combined 166 long-term surveys from almost 1,700 sites and found that some species were bucking the overall downward trend. In particular, freshwater insects have been increasing by 11% each decade following action to clean up polluted rivers and lakes. However, this group represent only about 10% of insect species and do not pollinate crops.
Researchers said insects remained critically understudied in many regions, with […]
Stephan: If you read SR regularly you know I predicted and then began following this trend as it has developed. Sea rise is happening whether you believe in climate change or not.
You can see in the Covid-19 Pandemic that the values we are operating under and practice are not very successful in real nation, let alone international crisis. We must transition into a wellbeing oriented society. The data is clear. Those societies that are doing so are doing better by almost any social outcome measure you can think of from healthcare to life span.
Rising sea levels are a global reality. According to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ice sheets around the world are melting at an alarming pace. Greenland’s ice sheet alone could potentially raise levels around the globe by twenty feet, as the fastest melting large chunk of ice on the planet. For its part, the Antarctic ice sheet has tripled its mass loss between 2007 and 2016, when compared with the ten years before this.
A Miami-Dade neighborhood that relies on septic tanks experiences flooding during the 2016 King Tide. A new report commissioned by the county shows that half of the county’s septic tanks break down yearly, a problem that sea level rise will worsen. Miami-Dade County
How will the US be affected in the future? It is hard to accurately predict exactly how much the seas will rise. Some research indicates that sea levels are rising by about 12 inches (30 cm) per century right now, compared with the past, when they only rose by about 6-8 inches (16-21 cm) every one hundred years.
Stephan: We are going to have food difficulties, particularly because food prices are going to go up, and there will be some starvation but mostly, I think, inadequacy for a significant number of people with modest incomes. I am dumbstruck at how utterly incompetent and unprepared the Trump administration is dealing with the food issue, which any competent leader should have anticipated and prepared for.
NAIROBI, Kenya — In the largest slum in Kenya’s capital, people desperate to eat set off a stampede during a recent giveaway of flour and cooking oil, leaving scores injured and two people dead.
In Kibera, the largest slum in Nairobi, Kenya, residents already live in extreme poverty. Coronavirus lockdowns have caused many more to go hungry. Credit: Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
In India, thousands of workers are lining up twice a day for bread and fried vegetables to keep hunger at bay.
And across Colombia, poor households are hanging red clothing and flags from their windows and balconies as a sign that they are hungry.
“We don’t have any money, and now we need to survive,” said Pauline Karushi, who lost her job at a jewelry business in Nairobi, and lives in two rooms with her child and four other relatives. “That means not eating much.”
The coronavirus pandemic has brought hunger to millions of people around the world. National lockdowns and social distancing measures are drying up work and incomes, and are likely to disrupt agricultural production and […]
