Stephan: The thing that stands out for me about this attempt to subvert democracy by the Trump Cultists is how blatant the whole thing is, and how many Americans are just fine with what is being done.
Trump Cultist Michigan State Rep. Matt Maddock is a lead sponsor of legislation that would require fact checkers to register with the state and face possible fines for improper findings. Do you think anyone could look any smugger? Credit: Michigan House Republicans
Michigan state Republican lawmakers introduced legislation on Tuesday that would require news organizations that produce fact-checked articles to register with the state. Under the legislation, if state officials deem facts within the reporting to be untrue, the organization would be subject to fines.
House Bills 4813 and 4814 would apply to news organizations and websites that are part of the International Fact-Checking Network, created by the Poynter Institute, an organization that is dedicated to improving journalism and is attempting to connect fact checkers from around the world through the network.
The bills would require fact checkers to register with the office of the state’s secretary of state, and to insure themselves with a $1 million bond against the possibility of fines in the amount of $1,000 any time state officials find something has been incorrectly reported. The legislation would also […]
Jennifer Sarrett, Lecturer, Center for Study of Human Health, Emory University - AlterNet/Conversation
Stephan: The United States has 4.23% of the world's population and 25% of the world's prisoners, 2.3 million men and women, with a grotesque racial bias against people of color. The American Gulag is a national shame, and we are absolute hypocrites whenever we speak about the prison systems of other nations. Yet, you rarely hear about any of this. But matters are even worse than that. Back in the period of the Nixon administration, the Republicans decided to close down mental health institutions where the mentally ill could be safely housed and treated. The result? Of the 2.3 million prisoners in the American Gulag, more than 550,000, as this report describes, have emotional and intellectual disabilities. Yet another failure of the U.S. illness profit system, another shame America will not face.
High as they are, these rates are likely to be an underestimate. They are based on self-reports, and research has shown many people fail to report a disability – particularly an intellectual or cognitive disability – to avoid stigma or because they simply don’t know they have one.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics has also found that people with cognitive, intellectual and developmental disabilities are more prevalent in jails – where people are sent immediately after arrest, to await trial or to serve a sentence of one year or less – than prisons. Jails tend to be associated with what have been called “crimes of survival,” such as shoplifting and loitering. These offenses are linked to unemployed people and people experiencing homelessness – communities in which rates of disabilities are higher.
As a result, a disproportionate amount of people with disabilities enter America’s criminal justice system. I see this in my research on intellectual and developmental disabilities – diagnoses like autism, fetal alcohol syndrome, ADD/ADHD, Down syndrome, and general cognitive impairment are common in our criminal justice system.
Stephan: Criminal Trump knew exactly what he intended and created on 6th January, and it was not, as the Trump Cultists are now claiming, "normal tourist visits." Everything the TCs have been saying from that day to this has been nothing but knowing lies. These Congress members and Trump himself are actively trying to destroy our democracy.
Well, this is new.
Trump told his acting Secretary of Defense to use military force for what purpose?
Miller: Trump said "do whatever was necessary to protect the demonstrators that were executing their constitutionally protected rights."
President Donald Trump asked for National Guard troops to be deployed to protect his supporters at the rally on January 6 that culminated in hundreds of those supporters violently storming the Capitol, his former acting defense secretary told lawmakers on Wednesday.
Christopher Miller told the House Oversight and Reform Committee on Wednesday that he held a meeting with Trump on January 3, three days before the violent siege in Washington, DC, which resulted in at least five fatalities.
Miller said that Trump asked at the meeting if there had been any requests for National Guard support at the “Stop the Steal” rally on January 6, where Trump and his supporters would gather to make allegations of voter fraud in November’s presidential election.
Miller said he told Trump that Muriel Bowser, the mayor of the District of Columbia, had requested unarmed National Guard support for the planned demonstrations […]
Stephan: This report spells out a truth to which we should give the most serious consideration. A revised version of our civilization needs to emerge. One that understands and factors in the interconnectedness and interdependence of all life. We must restore the balance of the matrix of life, or we are going to make our lives miserable.
In the national park of Axios Delta near Thessaloniki city in Greece, there are 295 species of birds, 350 species of plants, 40 species of mammals, 18 species of reptiles, 9 species of amphibians and 7 species of invertebrates. Credit:Nicolas Economou / NurPhoto/Getty
The problem of biodiversity loss is not simply a matter of funding, a new report examining the failures of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has warned.
Instead, policy makers need to consider the structural causes that promote habitat and species loss, especially in poorer countries.
“Our research shows that not only are more financial resources necessary to stem the biodiversity crisis, but we need a broader rethink about how the rules of the economy are driving the sixth extinction,” the report’s co-lead researcher, Dr. Jessica Dempsey from the University of British Columbia’s Department of Geography, said in a University of Lancaster press release.
Dino Grandoni and Brady Dennis , Energy and Environmental Policy Reporter | Pulitzer Prize-winning national reporter - The Washington Post
Stephan: The thing about Trump as president that so amazed me is that he seemed to believe that if you censure people from talking about climate change you don't need to deal with it. As if it wouldn't happen. I think history is going to look back at Trump as the world's greatest mass murderer. He is going to be seen as one of history's monsters.
Ice forms along the Lake Michigan shoreline near downtown Chicago in February. An Environmental Protection Agency report detailed climate-related damage in the United States, including the loss of ice on the Great Lakes. Credit: Scott Olson/Getty
For years, President Donald Trump and his deputies played down the impact of greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels and delayed the release of an Environmental Protection Agency report detailing climate-related damage. But on Wednesday, the EPA released a detailed and disturbing account of the startling changes that Earth’s warming had on parts of the United States during Trump’s presidency.
The destruction of year-round permafrost in Alaska, loss of winter ice on the Great Lakes and spike in summer heat waves in U.S. cities all signal that climate change is intensifying, the EPA said in its report. The assessment, which languished under the Trump administration for three years, marks the first time the agency has said such changes are being driven at least in part by human-caused global warming.
As it launched an updated webpage to inform the […]
