Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "JD Vance Doesn't Understand The Church" went up tonight.
Scientists have suggested saving life on Earth by keeping it on the moon in a modern space-age Noah's Ark.
This "lunar biorepository" could store cryopreserved samples from the most endangered species on Earth to protect its biodiversity, according to a new paper in the journal BioScience.
The samples would be protected from Earth-based issues, ranging from natural disasters and climate change to geopolitical conflicts, by virtue of being far away, on the moon.
The plan has three main goals: to safeguard the diversity of life on Earth, to protect species that might be useful for space exploration, such as those that could provide biomaterials for food or filtration, and to preserve microorganisms that may one day be needed for terraforming other planets.
Hagedorn says the team wanted to identify a location where no people or energy would be required to keep cryogenically frozen, living cells colder than -196°C – the temperature at which nitrogen is a liquid and all biological processes are suspended.
“There is no place on Earth cold enough to have a passive repository that must be held at -196°C, so we thought about space or the moon,” says Hagedorn.
She says the team settled on the lunar south pole due to its deep craters with permanently shadowed and cold regions. Burying samples about 2 metres below the surface would also keep them safe from radiation, she says.
The Ranger program began in 1960 and was managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California. The Soviet Luna 3 spacecraft had already captured the first images of the Moon's far side in 1959, but the US sought to show off its technical prowess with something more high-resolution before a landing expected by the end of the decade.
It was a stepwise program. The first Block I mission would check out the Atlas-Agena launch vehicle by placing the Ranger spacecraft in a highly elliptical Earth orbit to check out the hardware. The second set of missions, Block II, would impact the Moon and capture images and science data on the way down. They also carried a payload intended to survive the landing and operate for 30 days, transmitting the seismic data to Earth.
The final Block III phase would have the spacecraft carry a high-resolution imaging system comprising six television cameras with wide and narrow-angle capabilities.
"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
The embassy's spokesperson told Shafaq News Agency, “We received a report from Iraqi authorities about an Iraqi citizen injured by gunfire near our Baghdad building on the evening of July 26.”
"The investigation found that the shooting inside the embassy was accidental. The embassy is treating the unfortunate incident seriously and is continuing its investigation," he added.
Furthermore, the US Embassy, through its spokesman, expressed deep concern over the Iraqi citizen’s injury and wished her a speedy recovery, confirming that Iraqi authorities have been informed and coordination with them continues.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Iran's capital after attending the inauguration of the country's new president, Iranian officials and the militant group said early Wednesday. Hamas said it was an Israeli airstrike that killed the group's top political leader.
It was the second Israeli assassination of a senior Iran-allied militant commander in the space of just 12 hours, casting a growing shadow over U.S.-backed efforts to broker a cease-fire in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war and sharply increasing concern that the Gaza war could spread into a wider regional conflict in the Middle East, where the U.S. has thousands of troops based.
In Israel, a group of far-right protesters, including at least one member of the Knesset, broke into two Israeli military bases on Monday in an effort to prevent Israeli military police from detaining nine soldiers suspected of torturing Palestinian prisoners. The nine soldiers are reportedly being investigated for gang raping a Palestinian prisoner at Sde Teiman, a facility where prisoners from Gaza say they have been routinely beaten and tortured. Some prisoners held at the site had limbs amputated due to injuries sustained from constant handcuffing.
The protesters who stormed the military bases on Monday included far-right Knesset member Zvi Sukkot, who is a member of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s party.
This development illustrated the deep changes occurring in Israeli society and its relationship with the army, which until a few years ago was perceived as a body enjoying broad legitimacy and at the heart of the Israeli consensus, both from the right and left.
However, since the beginning of the genocidal war in Gaza and the military and intelligence failures of the army to protect villages and towns surrounding Gaza, the army has lost its consensus, with sectoral and political splits rife within the military.
However, this trend did not start with the war and encompasses deep institutional problems within Israeli institutions such as the army and the Supreme Court.
The UN Human Rights Office today published a report on arbitrary, prolonged and incommunicado detention by Israeli authorities, affecting thousands of Palestinians since last October. The report also covers allegations of torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, including sexual abuse of women and men.
Since 7 October, thousands of Palestinians - including medical staff, patients and residents fleeing the conflict, as well as captured fighters - have been taken from Gaza to Israel, usually shackled and blindfolded. Thousands more have been detained in the West Bank and Israel. They have generally been held in secret, without being given a reason for their detention, access to a lawyer or effective judicial review, the report states.
At least 53 Palestinian detainees are known to have died in Israeli military facilities and prisons since the horrific attacks by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups against Israeli civilians on 7 October.
The staggering number of men, women, children, doctors, journalists and human rights defenders detained since 7 October, most of them without charge or trial and held in deplorable conditions, along with reports of ill-treatment and torture and violation of due process guarantees, raises serious concerns regarding the arbitrariness and the fundamentally punitive nature of such arrests and detention, said UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk.
“The testimonies gathered by my Office and other entities indicate a range of appalling acts, such as waterboarding and the release of dogs on detainees, amongst other acts, in flagrant violation of international human rights law and international humanitarian law,” he said.
On Monday, the Israeli authorities said they were investigating a number of soldiers for allegedly abusing a Palestinian prisoner earlier this month at the Sde Teiman detention centre in the Negev desert.
In Gaza, mostly men and adolescent boys have been detained. Many have been taken into custody while sheltering in schools, hospitals and residential buildings, or at checkpoints during their displacement from north to south, the report finds.
The Israeli military does not usually explain publicly the basis for taking Palestinians into custody in Gaza, although it has in some cases alleged affiliation with Palestinian armed groups or their political wings.
Israel has also not provided information regarding the fate or whereabouts of many of those detained, and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has been denied access to facilities where they are held.
Conditions in military-run detention facilities appear worse, the report states, adding children were among those held, in some cases jointly with adults.
Detainees said they were held in cage-like facilities, stripped naked for prolonged periods, wearing only diapers. Their testimonies told of prolonged blindfolding, deprivation of food, sleep and water, and being subjected to electric shocks and being burnt with cigarettes. Some detainees said dogs were released on them, and others said they were subjected to waterboarding, or that their hands were tied and they were suspended from the ceiling. Some women and men also spoke of sexual and gender-based violence.
Accounts of hostages taken by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups last October also described appalling conditions of captivity, including lack of food, water and poor sanitary conditions, and lack of fresh air and sunlight. Some described being beaten while being taken into Gaza, or seeing other hostages being beaten while in captivity; receiving surgery or stitches without anaesthetic. There were also reports of sexual and gender-based violence in captivity. In addition, the report criticises the Palestinian Authority for continuing to carry out arbitrary detention and torture or other ill-treatment in the West Bank, reportedly principally to suppress criticism and political opposition.
“International humanitarian law protects all those being held, requiring their humane treatment and protection against all acts of violence or threats thereof,” said Türk.
“International law requires that all those deprived of their liberty be treated with humanity and dignity, and it strictly prohibits torture or other ill-treatment, including rape and other forms of sexual violence. Secret, prolonged incommunicado detention may also amount to a form of torture.”
The High Commissioner reiterated his call for the immediate release of all hostages still held in Gaza. All Palestinians arbitrarily detained by Israel must be released. He also called for prompt, thorough, independent, impartial and transparent investigations into all incidents that have led to serious violations of international law; ensure that perpetrators are held accountable and that all victims and their families are provided with their right to remedy and reparations.
Gaza remains under assault. Day 299 of the assault in the wave that began in October. Binoy Kampmark (DISSIDENT VOICE) points out, "Bloodletting as form; murder as fashion. The ongoing campaign in Gaza by Israel’s Defence Forces continues without stalling and restriction. But the burgeoning number of corpses is starting to become a challenge for the propaganda outlets: How to justify it? Fortunately for Israel, the United States, its unqualified defender, is happy to provide cover for murder covered in the sheath of self-defence." CNN has explained, "The Gaza Strip is 'the most dangerous place' in the world to be a child, according to the executive director of the United Nations Children's Fund." ABC NEWS quotes UNICEF's December 9th statement, ""The Gaza Strip is the most dangerous place in the world to be a child. Scores of children are reportedly being killed and injured on a daily basis. Entire neighborhoods, where children used to play and go to school have been turned into stacks of rubble, with no life in them." NBC NEWS notes, "Strong majorities of all voters in the U.S. disapprove of President Joe Biden’s handling of foreign policy and the Israel-Hamas war, according to the latest national NBC News poll. The erosion is most pronounced among Democrats, a majority of whom believe Israel has gone too far in its military action in Gaza." The slaughter continues. It has displaced over 1 million people per the US Congressional Research Service. Jessica Corbett (COMMON DREAMS) points out, "Academics and legal experts around the world, including Holocaust scholars, have condemned the six-week Israeli assault of Gaza as genocide." The death toll of Palestinians in Gaza is grows higher and higher. United Nations Women noted, "More than 1.9 million people -- 85 per cent of the total population of Gaza -- have been displaced, including what UN Women estimates to be nearly 1 million women and girls. The entire population of Gaza -- roughly 2.2 million people -- are in crisis levels of acute food insecurity or worse." THE NATIONAL notes, "Gaza death toll rises to 39,445 killed and 91,073 wounded." Months ago, AP noted, "About 4,000 people are reported missing." February 7th, Jeremy Scahill explained on DEMOCRACY NOW! that "there’s an estimated 7,000 or 8,000 Palestinians missing, many of them in graves that are the rubble of their former home." February 5th, the United Nations' Phillipe Lazzarini Tweeted:
A polio epidemic has broken out in the Gaza Strip 25 years after Palestine was declared free from the highly infectious disease.
Inoculation campaigns in the enclave came to halt after the start of the war with Israel, which has destroyed sewage infrastructure and disrupted waste-collection services.
Thousands of tonnes of rubbish have accumulated since then, creating conditions suitable for the spread of diseases.
Compounding the crisis has been the displacement of the majority of Gaza's population, a situation that has deprived them of clean water and sanitation services, Gaza's Health Ministry said as it declared the endemic.
“This poses a health threat to the residents of the Gaza Strip and neighbouring countries, and a setback to the global polio eradication programme,” the ministry said.
Dr Medhat Abbas, director general of Al Shifa Medical Complex, told The National that the streets were full of sewage.
“Personal hygiene is absent. You can't wash your hands, even after you've used the bathroom,” he said. “So, there's pollution and this disease is spread through faeces.”
Before the detection of the poliovirus, foreign medics had to burn their clothes before returning to their countries after hepatitis A and other communicable diseases were detected, another doctor told The National.
A national coalition of education justice groups are urging Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, not to choose Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro as a running mate due to his support for taxpayer-funded school vouchers.
Advocates for public education say voucher programs funnel much needed funding away from public schools and into private religious schools as well as for-profit startups that often don’t perform well and tend to close after just a few years.
On the other side of the debate over vouchers is the school privatization movement. Largely funded by billionaires, the movement has worked with the Republican Party to establish and expand universal school voucher programs in at least 10 states, as well as Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico. Betsy DeVos, former President Trump’s education secretary, is famously one of those billionaire backers of voucher programs. In Shapiro’s home state of Pennsylvania, Republican megadonor Jeffrey Yass faced protests after spending millions of dollars promoting school vouchers and GOP candidates such as Lou Barletta, who lost to MAGA extremist Doug Mastriano in the 2020 Republican primary for governor. Mastriano, a controversial doomsday Christian, lost to Shapiro.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, “War, Peace and the Presidency.” I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump made headlines this week after suggesting that this year’s election could be the last U.S. election if he wins in November. Trump made the comment Friday in Florida at Turning Point Action’s Believers’ Summit.
DONALD TRUMP: Christians, get out and vote! Just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what? It’ll be fixed. It’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians. I love you, Christians. I’m a Christian. I love you. Get out. You got to get out and vote. In four years you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not going to have to vote.
AMY GOODMAN: For more on who’s backing Trump’s efforts, we look at a secret organization of wealthy Christians who are working to purge more than a million voters from the rolls in battleground states and mobilize Republican voters to back Trump. It’s called Ziklag. The news outlets ProPublica and Documented obtained thousands of Ziklag’s internal files and found the group has divided its 2024 activities into three different operations: Steeplechase, which uses churches to get out the vote; and Watchtower, which aims to rally voters around opposition to transgender rights; the third operation called Checkmate, focused on funding so-called election integrity groups, as laid out in this Ziklag member strategy video.
ZIKLAG VIDEO: Voter irregularities are rampant across all 50 states, but especially pronounced in the battleground states. Public polling confirms Americans have lost confidence in electoral integrity. With the federal election already in full swing, more must be done to ensure fair elections in the most important republic in the world. That’s the purpose behind Operation Checkmate and its practical approaches to both get out the vote and clean electoral rolls through our coalition partners. Through these efforts, we have the opportunity to play a significant role in the upcoming election.
AMY GOODMAN: ProPublica reports Ziklag’s mission is to take dominion over seven spheres of public life, which it calls “mountains”: business, science and technology, family, arts and media, church, education and government.
For more, we continue with Andy Kroll, investigative reporter for ProPublica, his recent piece, “Inside Ziklag, the Secret Organization of Wealthy Christians Trying to Sway the Election and Change the Country.”
Andy, lay it out for us.
ANDY KROLL: Ziklag is a secretive network of ultrawealthy Christians, conservative Christians, who have this two-part goal, two-part vision for this country. One is to get heavily involved in the 2024 elections, in the ways that you just described, mobilizing pastors, knocking people off the voting rolls, demonizing trans people to motivate conservative voters. But then, looking toward the 20- and 30-year horizon, Ziklag’s goal is nothing less than moving the country toward a state of Christian nationalism, having biblical worldviews, quote-unquote, “biblical truth,” shaping, influencing every part of American culture, the seven mountains that you described. So, this really is, as one expert we quoted in the story told us, a vision for Christian supremacy.
AMY GOODMAN: “Ziklag” mean?
ANDY KROLL: Ziklag, the name, refers to a biblical reference about David taking refuge during his struggle with King Saul. The analogy here, of course, is that the Christians in this group apparently feel that they are under siege and that this group is their refuge, but then the place from which they plan their campaign, their assault to take back American culture.
AMY GOODMAN: In a Ziklag member briefing video that you obtained at ProPublica, one of Ziklag’s spiritual advisers, Lance Wallnau, a Christian evangelist and influencer, laid out a plan to deliver swing states by using an anti-transgender message to motivate conservative voters who are exhausted with Trump.
LANCE WALLNAU: If we can get the left to own their position on LGBTQ — the country has already drifted on the homosexual issue, but on transgenderism, there is a problem, and they know it. They’re going to want to talk about Trump, Trump, Trump, he’s indicted, the guy’s a criminal, this and that. They’re going to have riots on the street and all the kabuki theater. Meanwhile, if we talk about it’s not about Trump; it’s about the parents and their children, and the state is a threat. When you get Governor Newsom or Governor Whitmer or Polis, your top three potential candidates for the future presidency of the United States, other than Kamala, you got these — when they’re going to have to stand with their LGBTQ donors, and so, when they solidify that position, that’s where they’ve gone too far.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s Lance Wallnau, a Christian evangelist and influencer. Andy Kroll, if you can talk about him, what he’s saying, and who the other leaders of this are?
ANDY KROLL: Lance Wallnau is maybe one of the most important Christian evangelist figures that maybe your audience hasn’t heard of. He was one of the earliest Christian right leaders to endorse Donald Trump. We’re talking way back in 2015 here. He popularized this notion that Donald Trump was a modern-day Cyrus, a sort of flawed but virtuous leader who would deliver a victory for Christians. And that Cyrus idea really caught on, was a big reason that evangelicals turned out to such a big degree for Trump in ’16, again in ’20. Wallnau remains this bridge between the Christian right, Christian nationalism and Trump world.
Wallnau is one of a number of really influential and well-known people that are part of Ziklag. Some members that your audience might have heard of, the Green family, they’re the family behind Hobby Lobby. Obviously, they’ve had a pretty big impact in trying to strike down parts of the Obamacare law back in the Obama presidency. The Uihlein family have donated to this effort. They are, of course, the billionaire office supply family out of the Midwest, major, major political donors to Republicans and to Donald Trump. And then, another family is the Waller family, influential in Ziklag. They are the owners of the Jockey apparel company, which probably a lot of people have heard of even if they haven’t heard of this family. So you have a number of really wealthy, really influential conservative Christian families in this group. They have the means to invest not just in political work, but also in this larger cultural transformation plan that Ziklag has really put its — really organized itself around.
AMY GOODMAN: Andy, talk about more in depth these three programs, Checkmate, Steeplechase and Watchtower.
ANDY KROLL: Yeah. You see an almost sort of wraparound, 360-degree approach to influencing the 2024 election in these three groups. So, with Steeplechase, you have mobilizing conservative pastors out in America, out in the field, to mobilize their congregations to get them out to vote. And, you know, there’s some concern that maybe there’s fatigue about Donald Trump in 2024, that maybe conservative Christians won’t turn out in the numbers they did in 2016. That’s what this program is there for, getting the church as involved as possible.
You have this anti-trans operation. As Lance Wallnau says in that video that you just played, they believe that going after trans people, demonizing transgender Americans, transgender healthcare, can, quote-unquote, “deliver” swing states. That’s what Lance Wallnau himself said.
But then, this final one, I think, is, honestly, perhaps the most interesting, this Operation Checkmate, putting money into mobilizing conservative voters in key counties — not just states, but the counties — so Maricopa County in Arizona, Fulton County in Georgia, the other battleground counties in the country, and then trying to put money into knocking more than a million voters off the voting rolls in these states. And you see this in a couple of ways. But what’s so interesting is how the Christian right, Christian nationalism is fusing here with the election integrity or, really, the election denial movement that grew out of the 2020 election. We didn’t have a lot of evidence of that before this reporting on Ziklag. But you see this bridge, again, between the Christian right and the election deniers in a really big way going into this election.
AMY GOODMAN: And how effective can they be in knocking voters off the rolls?
ANDY KROLL: A little bit of money goes a long way when you are trying to get people knocked off the eligibility list for voters. That’s what the experts, the political consultants, the folks that know these worlds, told us in the reporting for this story. You know, Ziklag is putting, say, $800,000 or $1 million into something called EagleAI, an artificial intelligence software that makes it easier to challenge the eligibility of voters en masse. So, you’re not doing it one by one; you’re doing it by the hundreds, by the thousands. You don’t need tens of millions of dollars, the experts told us, to be able to make those challenges and to sort of turbocharge the effort to make voters ineligible. You only need a few hundred thousand dollars, maybe a million dollars. That’s what this group, Ziklag, appears to be doing. So, it could have an effect. And we’re talking about margins again in Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, margins that are a few thousand, a few tens of thousands of voters.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Andy, how does the election officials in every state, especially in the battleground states, their cooperation with these efforts, how might that turn out in the coming election?
ANDY KROLL: Well, you have two different camps here. You have the election officials in these states and in these counties who are just trying to run a free and fair election. What we’ve heard from those officials is that these efforts, like EagleAI or the work of the group True the Vote, another, quote-unquote, “election integrity” group — these mass challenges to the voter rolls make an already difficult job, an already stressful job, a time-consuming job, even more difficult. It’s putting just more stress on the work of these local election officials, the ones who are trying to do a good job.
And then you have the officials who have sort of bought into the election integrity claims, who have bought into Donald Trump’s election denial for 2020 or 2022 even. And for them, they are, in some places, encouraging these mass challenges. And so you might see confusion. You might see chaos. You might see voters unaware that they’ve been removed from the rolls in these kinds of places. So, it’s just creating either more stress on good officials, or it’s creating more chaos with officials who buy into these baseless claims about election fraud.
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Another 'inappropriate' pastor8 hours ago
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Those crooked courts8 hours ago
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