First up, here are the theme posts from last night:
Dinosaurs. New information has emerged regarding their extinction. Katie Hunt (CNN) reports:
It was an asteroid strike that doomed the dinosaurs to extinction 66 million years ago.
But what were their lives like before it hit? Whether they were thriving or already teetering on the brink has long been a matter of debate for paleontologists.
A new study suggests that dinosaurs were in decline for as many as 10 million years before the city-sized asteroid that hit off the coast of what is now Mexico dealt the final death blow and that this decline impeded their ability to recover from the asteroid's aftermath.
The strike created the 125-mile-wide Chicxulub crater, unleashing climate-changing gases into the atmosphere, ultimately killing off three quarters of life on the planet.
Brooks Hays (UPI) adds:
According to the new study, published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, rates of extinction were outpacing speciation among the six largest dinosaur families some 76 million years ago, well before the asteroid strike.
"The impact of a 12-kilometer-wide asteroid 66 million years ago was thus the coup de grâce for an animal group already struggling," researchers wrote in the paper.
To better understand how the dinosaurs were faring prior to the K-Pg extinction event, researchers used statistical modeling to estimate rates of extinction and speciation.
The novel modeling technique allowed scientists to minimize bias associated with gaps in the fossil record.
"Although the dinosaur fossil record provides invaluable data for our understanding of macroevolutionary patterns and processes through time, it is biased and incomplete," scientists wrote. "Previous attempts to estimate dinosaur diversity dynamics were based on simple counts of the numbers of species in specific time intervals."
AFP reports:
Fabien Condamine, from the University of Montpellier's Institute of Evolutionary Science and lead study author, said his team had followed the decline of six families of dinosaur, comprising nearly 250 distinct species.
"We have a peak in diversity around 76 million years ago," he told AFP.
"Then there's a decline that lasts 10 million years -- that's more than the entire duration of the Homo genus."
The team found two possible explanations for the falling dinosaur diversity identified in the fossil records and their own computer modelling.
For one, the pace of the species decline corresponded with a strong cooling of the global climate around 75 million years ago, when temperatures fell up to eight degrees Celsius.
Condamine said that dinosaurs were adapted to a mesothermal climate -- predominantly warm and damp -- that had prevailed for tens of millions of years throughout their time on Earth.
"With strong cooling, like other large animals, they likely weren't able to adapt," he said.
The second possible decline explanation came as something of shock to the team.
Whereas both herbivores and carnivores would have been expected to be impacted at roughly the same time, the team found a two-million year lag between their respective declines.
"So the decline of the herbivores, which were the prey, would therefore have cascaded into a decline in meat-eaters," said Condamine.
The study concluded that not only did a cooling climate and reduced diversity among herbivores lead to the dinosaurs' slow decline, it also left the various species unable to recover after the meteor strike.
And I'll include this skeptical note from SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE:
“This kind of information cannot really be shown with these sort of methods because ultimately it is the underlying data that really matter. And the fossil record is really incomplete,” Alfio Alessandro Chiarenza, a paleontologist at the University of Vigo in Spain who wasn’t involved in the study, tells New Scientist.
In particular, Chiarenza highlighted the fact that roughly 60 percent of North America isn’t represented in the fossil record for the Late Cretaceous because only certain locations preserved fossils from that era.
“We don’t know what’s going on in Africa, we don’t know the diversity in most of Europe,” Chiarenza tells New Scientist. “In Asia, we don’t have the right rocks that precede the extinction.”
So that's some interesting news.
"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
Thursday, July 1, 2021. Hell's a little richer today, but the world has lost a War Criminal.
That's Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Requiem for a War Hawk" which ran November 19, 2006 -- Bully Boy Bush, Dick Cheney and Condi Rice gather due to the departing Donald Rumsfeld -- who was Rumsfled at that point. He argued 'stay the course' in Iraq but, of course, he fled his own duty, leaving his post as Secretary of Defense while the illegal war he helped start continued to drag on (and still does continue).
Rumsfled has fled again. He's passed away.
Below, the cast of THE WIZ reacts to the news of Donald's passing.
At the age of 88, the War Criminal passed away. Bully Boy Bush issued a statement apparently crafted by someone else in which he hailed Rumsfled as "intelligent" to which a disbelieving world yells back, "Spell it!"
We all know he's too stupid to spell the word.
Dick and his equally homophobic wife* Lynne Cheney issued a statement about the "huge change he made in our lives" -- I guess it's not surprising to learn that he waterboarded Dick and Lynne -- Lynne did write that trashy sex novel so their kinkiness really isn't all that surprising. (Dick and Lynne now embrace their lesbian daughter. In 2004, when the issue of gay rights was raised in a vice presidential debate between John Edwards and Dick Cheney, Edwards spoke about the importance of equality and hoped that Dick would agree since Mary was a lesbian. The response was to try to shame Edwards, the Democratic Party and the whole wide world because a lesbian had been acknowledged.)
Donald lived to be 88. Most of his victims were not so fortunate.
Iraqis responded on Thursday (Jul 1) with a mixture of bitterness and indifference to the death of Donald Rumsfeld, former United States defence secretary and architect of the 2003 invasion of their country.
"I'm not saddened by the death of an occupier," said Saad Jabbar, a transport ministry employee, a day after Rumsfeld's family announced his death at the age of 88.
The US "left us nothing but memories of occupation and destruction".
In charge of the US military for most of George W Bush's presidency, Rumsfeld led the charge into devastating wars in Iraq and Afghanistan following the Sep 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon.
The Iraq invasion, based on false claims that Baghdad had weapons of mass destruction, removed dictator Saddam Hussein, and Washington promised it would bring democracy and freedom to the region.
In reality it sparked years of sectarian violence and led to the emergence of the jihadist Islamic State group.
"I don't think history will look kindly at (Rumsfeld and Bush) because of the catastrophes they caused, including to the Iraqi people," said a tribal leader from Iraq's Anbar province who asked not to be named.
Glenn Greenwald Tweets:
There's nothing that Donald Trump managed to do that got close to the worst and most destructive acts of Donald Rumsfeld and his comrades. greenwald.substack.com/p/no-matter-th
Abby Martin's EMPIRE FILES Tweeted:
Katie Halper Tweets:
Sad but true. Ugly men -- on the inside and on the outside -- like Donald and Bully Boy Bush were openly gushed over by the press. Their masochistic tendencies were on full display daily.
From April 23, 2006, that's "Ego Mania vs. the United States."
George Zornick Tweets:
Margaret Kimberley Tweets:
Sarah Abdallah Tweets:
Fiorella Isabel Tweets:
Kevin Gosztola offers this Twitter thread:
Richard Medhurst Tweets:
Member of the European Union MEP Radek Sikorski Tweets:
Akilah Hughes Tweets:
Julian Borger (GUARDIAN) observes:
Donald Rumsfeld’s name will forever be associated with the biggest military fiasco in US history, the 2003 invasion of Iraq in pursuit of non-existent weapons of mass destruction, alongside the widespread use of torture that has dogged America’s reputation ever since.
It is not just the poor decisions he made as defence secretary for which Rumsfeld will be remembered, but also his efforts to cover up inconvenient facts that did not align with his version of reality.
Documents surfaced after the invasion that showed that Rumsfeld was quite aware of the gaping holes in the intelligence about Iraqi WMD, but he consistently presented the claims to the public as if they were cast-iron certainties.
He also played down the growing insurgency against the US-led occupation after Saddam Hussein’s fall, dismissing the collapse of law and order in Baghdad with the insouciant phrase “stuff happens”, which would go on to haunt him for the rest of his life.
It is not just the poor decisions he made as defence secretary for which Rumsfeld will be remembered, but also his efforts to cover up inconvenient facts that did not align with his version of reality.
Documents surfaced after the invasion that showed that Rumsfeld was quite aware of the gaping holes in the intelligence about Iraqi WMD, but he consistently presented the claims to the public as if they were cast-iron certainties.
He also played down the growing insurgency against the US-led occupation after Saddam Hussein’s fall, dismissing the collapse of law and order in Baghdad with the insouciant phrase “stuff happens”, which would go on to haunt him for the rest of his life.
His reluctance to heed warnings that did not fit in with his world view alienated the generals and the military rank and file. His insistence there was no serious threat in Iraq contributed to the fact that the US military was driving around in lightly armoured Humvees a year after the invasion.
In November 2006, the Army Times took the unusual step of calling for his resignation.
“Rumsfeld has lost credibility with the uniformed leadership, with the troops, with Congress and with the public at large,” an editorial said. “His strategy has failed, and his ability to lead is compromised. And although the blame for our failures in Iraq rests with the secretary, it will be the troops who bear its brunt.”
Iraq, the land of orphans and widows, remains a disaster thanks to Donald Rumsfeld and his ilk. As they struggle with one day after another over 100 degrees F and with little to no electricity, the protests resume. Zhyan English notes:
And they continue to protest in Basra.
Protests continue, as MIDDLE EAST EYE notes, in spite of the attacks on the protesters.
The following sites updated:
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The Convo Couch11 hours ago
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BEYOND THE TRAILER11 hours ago
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THE JIMMY DORE SHOW11 hours ago
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NASA11 hours ago
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THE KATIE HALPER SHOW11 hours ago
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SHADOW PROOF11 hours ago
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NATELAND11 hours ago
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Howie Hawkins11 hours ago
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The Karen Hunter Show11 hours ago
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