Stephan: Trump is leaving office having done everything he could to trash environmental protections for animals, birds, fish, and insects, as well as destroying public lands, parks, and monuments. But people more intelligent, with a greater understanding as to how the great Matrix of Consciousness works interdependently, are pushing back. Here is some of that, which will hopefully have a good outcome.
Western Environmental Law Center attorney Kelly Nokes warned that the Trump administation’s elimination of federal protections for gray wolves in the lower 48 threatens “potentially catastrophic ripple effects on ecosystems where wolves have yet to fully recovery.” Credit: Dennis Fast/VWPics/Universal Images Group/Getty
Over a dozen conservation groups on Thursday challenged the Trump administration’s stripping of key protections for gray wolves in the lower 48 states.
“This delisting decision is what happens when bad science drives bad policy,” said Earthjustice attorney Kristen Boyles in a statement.
Earthjustice, on behalf of organizations including the Center for Biologicial Diversity and Defenders of Wildlife, is one of the legal groups that filed suit against the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) rule—which took effect last week—removing endangered species protections. The Western Environmental Law Center, on behelf of groups including Cascadia Wildlands and WildEarth Guardians, filed a separate legal challenge (pdf) Thursday.https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=commondreams&creatorUserId=14296273&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1349757943722303489&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2F2021%2F01%2F14%2Fconservationists-file-lawsuits-stop-death-sentence-wolves-ordered-trump&siteScreenName=commondreams&siteUserId=14296273&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px
Western Environmental Law Center attorney Kelly Nokes said that areas where gray wolves had previously been delisted provide a cautionary tale.
“Allowing people to kill wolves in Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana has already stunted recovery in those states,” […]
Stephan: From the ages of 11 to 23 although I had no interest in hunting, which I thought an absurd activity since I had no interest in dressing out the corpses of animals or in eating them, I nonetheless was fascinated with the precision of marksmanship. And I got very good at it. So good the Army wanted me to be a sniper. Happily, I was able to become a medic, and when I came out of the Army, having seen what guns do to peoples' bodies, I put my 37 guns into my family's boat went out into the Chesapeake Bay and threw them into the sea, During what I think of as my "gun years" I was a member of the NRA, then an apolitical organization that sponsored safety training programs. A very different NRA than the corrupt political lobbying operation it has become, and I am glad to report that is now going bankrupt. Hopefully, this may help America recover from its psychotic gun obsession.
Wayne LaPierre head of he NRA
The National Rifle Association filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Texas on Friday as its current home, New York, pursues a fraud case against the organization.
The NRA was founded in New York in 1871 and has since presented itself as a defender of Second Amendment rights. The NRA attributes the move to Texas to a “corrupt political and regulatory environment” in New York.
New York Attorney General Letitia James filed suit to have the NRA dissolved in August. She accused CEO Wayne LaPierre and other senior staff with diverting millions of the nonprofit group’s dollars to luxury vacations, private jets and more. James called for the funds to be returned and the executives to be prohibited from serving on any not-for-profit in New York ever again.
“This is a transformational moment in the history of the NRA,” LaPierre said in a statement. He said the NRA is “dumping New York … at a time when the NRA is in its strongest financial condition in years. “
NPR’s Tim Mak previously reported that legal troubles have cost the organization $100 million.
Catherine Buni and Soraya Chemaly, - Scientific American
Stephan: Like me, you probably noticed that the Trumper insurrectionists who assaulted the Capitol, while a tiny percentage were women, or people of color, in the mass they were overwhelmingly White and male. Why is that? Here is an approach to an answer based science. I don't think this is the entire answer, but it does provide a partial answer.
Trumper Insurrectionists assault the Capitol. Credit: Lev/Radin/Getty
The scenes that played out at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday will forever live in infamy. As Congress prepared to certify electoral college votes and declare Joe Biden president-elect, thousands of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol Building, vandalizing the halls and occupying the office of the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.
Photographs and video show a band of insurrectionists that is overwhelmingly White and male. They carried guns, Confederate flags, flags emblazoned with swastikas, QAnon placards, and, according to police, chemical irritants. They scaled exterior walls, climbed scaffolding, smashed windows, hung from balconies, and crashed through the doors of the Senate chamber, one White man charging to the dais and yelling, “Trump won that election!”
Hours later, more than 120 legislators, overwhelmingly White and male, still pledged to fight Biden’s win.
Although it is certainly true that Trump maintains a significant following among White women, his most fervent supporters tend to be White and male. Distributed across a wide swath of socioeconomic status, these men have unwaveringly—and even violently—supported the […]
Dell Cameron and Dhruv Mehrota, Senior Privacy and Security Reporter/ Data Technology Reporter - Gizmodo
Stephan: Here is further confirmation about a trend I have been pointing out for several years now: the growing infestation of law enforcement and the military by MAGAts. This is a very dangerous trend that threatens our democracy and destroys our society's wellbeing.
Parler, founded in Nevada in 2018, bills itself as an alternative to “ideological suppression” at other social networks. Credit: Olivier Douliery Getty
Location data gleaned from thousands of videos posted on the social network Parler and extracted in the days before Amazon restricted access to app this week, reveal its users included police officers around the U.S. and service members stationed on bases at home and abroad.
The presence on Parler of active military and police raises concerns, experts said, about their potential exposure to far-right conspiracy theories and extremist ideologies enabled by the platform’s practically nonexistent moderation and its stated openness to hate speech. Military officials have long considered infiltration and recruitment by white supremacist groups a threat. Groups that endorsed a wide range of racist beliefs appear to have been operating openly on Parler, the experts said, with the de facto permission of its owners. The FBI has likewise raised concerns over law enforcement agents adopting radical views and being recruited—viewing their access to secured buildings, elected officials, and other VIPs as a singular threat.
Stephan: Almost all media coverage about the government focuses on public personalities, the men and women in office. But, in my view of the world, those people are only there because some large group of people, a majority of whoever is voting, chose them. That is why I keep saying that the problem with America is Americans. It is we, the people, who created the Trump government and permitted it to be staffed by MAGAts. And this disgusting Republican Congresswoman, Marjorie Taylor Greene, is today's best proof of this point. What were you thinking people of Georgia's 14th Congressional District?
Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene
Following Wednesday’s House impeachment vote in which Democrats formally charged President Trump with “incitement of insurrection,” several Republicans in Congress later expressed their condemnation of the decision using inflammatory rhetoric. One of GOP lawmaker, freshman Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, even preemptively announced her plan to impeach Joe Biden immediately after he takes office next week.
“On January 21, 2021,” Greene declared on Twitter, “I’ll be filing Articles of Impeachment against Joe Biden for abuse of power.” So far, no other members of Congress have rallied behind her.
Greene is a vocal anti-masker, refusing to wear a mask around other members of Congress even after several Democratic House members announced this week that they are COVID-positive. Greene, instead, blamed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for spreading the virus in the Capitol, saying to Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wa., on Twitter, “Before you point fingers at me or anyone else, you need to talk directly to @SpeakerPelosi about exposing ALL of us to covid when she called back POSITIVE covid House members last week for votes for Speaker!” Greene, however, offered no direct evidence of Pelosi’s […]
