During a routine trip to an Arkansas Walmart to pick up milk, a university scientist made a historically buggy discovery.
Michael
Skvarla, director of Penn State University's Insect Identification Lab,
found a large mysterious insect outside the Fayetteville super
chain's building – an experience he remembers "vividly."
"I saw this huge insect on the side of the building," he said in a press release from
Penn State. "I thought it looked interesting, so I put it in my hand
and did the rest of my shopping with it between my fingers. I got home,
mounted it, and promptly forgot about it for almost a decade."
[. . .]
“We
were watching what Dr. Skvarla saw under his microscope and he’s
talking about the features and then just kinda stops,” said Codey
Mathis, a doctoral candidate in entomology at Penn State.
“We all realized together that the insect was not what it was labeled and was in fact a super-rare giant lacewing.
I still remember the feeling. It was so gratifying to know that the
excitement doesn’t dim, the wonder isn’t lost. Here we were making a
true discovery in the middle of an online lab course.”
Green lacewings are insects in the large familyChrysopidae of the orderNeuroptera. There are about 85 genera and (differing between sources) 1,300–2,000 species in this widespread group. Members of the generaChrysopa and Chrysoperla are very common in North America and Europe; they are very similar[1] and
many of their species have been moved from one genus to the other time
and again, and in the nonscientific literature assignment to Chrysopa and Chrysoperla can rarely be relied upon. Since they are the most familiar neuropterans to many people, they are often simply called "lacewings". Since most of the diversity of Neuroptera are properly referred to as some sort of "lacewing", common lacewings is preferable.
Wednesday, March 1, 2023. The UN Secretary-General visits Iraq,
Moqtada's forces occupy an abandoned area in Baghdad, Marjorie Taylor
Greene and her pal Glenneth Greenwald remain jokes, and much more.
I
know we've noted the 5,000 year old tavern recently discovered in Iraq
several times in the last weeks but I don't believe we've noted a video
report of it. It is a big find and historically signficant.
Centuries ago, people gathered there.
Today?
Moqtada
al-Sadr's militia likes to gather in an abandoned building in Baghdad
but the PMF is apparently attempting to root out of the building.
The
PMF leadership at various times claimed and rejected the affiliation of
Saraya al-Salam, the large and powerful militia loyal to Sadr, which
has influence in Basra and other parts of Iraq’s south as well as a
strong presence in Baghdad. But the tenuous association between the PMF
and Saraya al-Salam, which never included an operational integration of
the Sadrists into the PMF, was often confrontational with competition
over legal and illegal economic rents and vote banks.
Both the PMF and Saraya al-Salam entrenched themselves in
and took over Iraq’s many formal and illegal economies, from the
construction contracts that followed the devastation of war; the service
sector; and the scrap metal trade to generalized extortion; customs
evasion; and oil, drug, and other contraband trafficking.
Meanwhile, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, is visiting Iraq today.
AFP notes, "UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres arrived in Iraq for his first
visit in six years Tuesday in a show of 'solidarity' after a drawn-out
political crisis in the country." Guterres' last visit to Iraq was in 2017. Sinan Mahmoud (THE NATIONAL) reports:
“This is a visit of solidarity,” Mr Guterres said in a briefing with Mr Hussein after arriving at Baghdad International Airport.
“A
solidarity with the people and the democratic institutions of Iraq and a
solidarity that means that the United Nations is totally committed to
support the consolidation of the institutions in this country.”
He
said he was confident that “Iraqis will be able to overcome the
difficulties and challenges they still face through an open and
inclusive dialogue”.
Mr Hussein described the visit as important, praising the relations and co-operation with the UN special mission to Iraq and UN.
“We always thank the secretary general for his support to the political process and democracy in Iraq,” Mr Hussein said.
Moving over to the US, we're going to again note THE DAILY SHOW for Chelsea Handler's look at MTG.
Marjorie
Taylor Greene: I have people come up to me and say crazy things to me
out of the blue in public places that they believe because they read it
on the internet.
Chelsea
Handler: Well if that's not the pot calling the kettle QAnon. This
woman thought 9/11 was a hoax, that the Clintons killed JFK Jr. and that
Jews are in charge of space lasers. But please, don't come at her with
some crazy ideas -- she might believe them.
MTG is still calling the kettle QAnon. As Daniel Villareal (LGBTQ NATION) reports, Marjorie is whining that she was eating out and a woman and her son yelled at her:
The last time the U.S. had such a division, it resulted in a 4 year
civil war. The war killed over a million Americans, including soldiers,
non-combatant civilians, and slaves.
In response to Greene’s tweet, [David] Hogg, now age 22, wrote a tweet directly tagging her Twitter screen name.
“@mtgreenee Man that sucks. I was attacked and screamed at in 2018 by
an insane woman named Marjorie Taylor Greene. She had no respect for
the privacy of me as an 18 year old school shooting survivor or my
staff. She was self righteous, insane, and completely out of control,”
Hogg wrote.
Ever notice that if
Marjorie were a Drag King, she could impersonate Glenneth Greenwald?
It's the nose, right? Maybe that's why he made her his hag?
The
great Glenneth Greenwald has spoken -- or at least hissed -- Elizabeth
Warren is a fool. The thing about Glenneth and other foolish people is
that they never realize they're foolish. What prompted his fit? The
senator Tweeted the following:
Elizabeth Warren
@SenWarren
·
Feb 24
In the 1990s, America had 51 major contractors bidding for defense work. Today, there are only five massive companies remaining. Defense contracting should be reworked to break up the massive contracts awarded to the big guys and create opportunities for firms of all sizes.
Glenneth reTweeted a mocking of her and then added this:
In the mocking thread they go on and on about weapons.
Is Elizabeth really the fool or are they?
Now
we actually pay attention to Iraq so I'm fully aware that defense
contractors do much more than just defense. They're hired by the
Defense Dept so they're contractors for the Defense Dept. But they may
be doing something as basic as cleaning, they be part of a construction
project, they can do any number of things. The Government Accountability Office has noted that service acquisitions account for a big portion of the budget and has stressed that oversight is greatly needed.
Was
Elizabeth the fool or was the fool all the people who were so stupid --
including Glenneth -- that they didn't realize how the defense
contractors work?
Excelsior University notes:
The
use of defense contractors stretches back to the American Revolution.
During that war, the Continental Army was inexperienced and
ill-equipped, so contractors provided food, clothing, horses, wagons,
weapons, and even scouting services. Today, the Department of Defense
still requires the help of defense contractors for the U.S. military.
A
defense contractor is a business organization or individual who
provides products or services to a government’s military or intelligence
department. These products and services can include technical support,
training, weaponry, aircrafts, vehicles, communications support,
logistics, and electrical systems.
Defense contractors often play a major role overseas,
where they provide deployed troops with services such as language
interpretation, perimeter security, weapon systems maintenance, and
supervision of other contractors. During past US military operations in
Iraq and Afghanistan, they have often made up 50% or more of the entire DOD presence, including military personnel.
If it's all too confusing for you -- and if you're a fan of Glenneth, it probably is -- you can refer to this primer from the US Defense Dept on their contractors. We'll note this since it's about Iraq:
In Iraq, armed and unarmed security contractors have been
employed to provide services such as protecting fixed
locations; guarding traveling convoys; providing security
escorts; and training police and military personnel. The
number of security contractor employees working for DOD
in Iraq and Syria has fluctuated significantly over time,
depending on various factors. As of the fourth quarter of
FY2022, DOD reported 941 security contractor personnel
in Iraq and Syria, none of whom were identified as armed
security contractors.
Only thing missing was this diversity angle but, with a tweet that perfect, who can complain?
That
wacky Glenneth taking time out from giving Marjorie Taylor Greene a dry
hump to provide laughs on Twitter. As for the diversity angle -- it's
built into contracts with contractors. Does it hurt when you're that
stupid, Glenneth?
And, for the record, the Tweet fits in perfectly with other Tweets the senator's been offering:
found that corporations in the most concentrated sectors have been the most successful at expanding their profit margins on the backs of consumers. This is exactly why we need to enforce antitrust laws and increase market competition.
Or are those concepts beyond your limited vision and, sadly, even more limited knowledge base?
Maybe
Glenneth could get off Twitter for 24 hours and work on composing an
apology to the Iraqi people for promoting the Iraq War that destroyed
their country and killed over a million people?
Do we have any songs about hurricanes? I'm not talking
about Rueben Carter. I guess there's Blondie's "The Tide Is High"
maybe is close?
At any rate, hurricanes are in the news. AP reports:
What
used to be a rare one-two punch of consecutive hurricanes hitting about
the same place in the United States weeks apart seems to be happening
more often, and a new study says climate change will make back-to-back storms more frequent and nastier in the future.
Using
computer simulations, scientists at Princeton University calculate that
the deadly storm duet that used to happen once every few decades could
happen every two or three years as the world warms from the burning of
coal, oil and natural gas, according to a study in Monday’s Nature Climate Change.
Louisiana and Florida residents have already felt it.
In 2021, major Hurricane Ida blasted Louisiana with 150 mph winds. Just 15 days later a weakening Nicholas came nearby, close
enough for its wind, rain and storm surge to add to the problems, said
study co-author Ning Lin, a risk engineer and climate scientist at
Princeton. Her study looked at not just the storms but the problems
back-to-back hurricanes caused to people.
Climate
change is real. Trust me, I wish it wasn't. I wish we could all
ignore it. But it's real and it's impacting our world. We need to
address it and do so seriously. Denise Chow (NBC NEWS) reports:
Stronger
storms fueled by climate change will penetrate deeper into the United
States and threaten parts of the country unaccustomed to high-speed
winds, according to a new analysis of the country's vulnerability to
tropical cyclones.
More
than 13 million properties in the U.S. that are not currently affected
by tropical cyclones will be at risk of damage from hurricane-force
winds in the decades ahead, according to the study.
The report on worsening winds and
their projected financial impacts was released Monday by First Street
Foundation, a nonprofit research group based in Brooklyn, New York.
Researchers
found that more intense storms brought on by climate change would
expose millions more properties to wind damage in the next 30 years,
particularly as tropical cyclone winds penetrate farther inland and as
storms migrate poleward up the East Coast.
I
wish things had stayed the same. I wish we had been strong caretakers
of the planet. But we weren't. And if we don't address this now, it's
only going to get worse. We made this mess, we need to clean it up.
On
Friday, Aug. 5, 2016, the National Hurricane Center identified an
ill-defined area of low pressure drifting westward along Florida’s
sweeping Big Bend, where the state’s panhandle arcs into its long-tailed
peninsula. A tropical disturbance in August over the Gulf of Mexico
typically garners the wary eye of hurricane forecasters and coastal
residents alike, but by Sunday, Aug. 7, the disorganized disturbance was
moving inland, adrift over the Deep South. Everyone knows tropical
cyclones don’t form over land, or at least they shouldn’t.
In
the coming days, the nameless, unclassified low-pressure system of
tropical origins would blanket parishes of southern Louisiana in
biblical rains, enough in the span of a few days to have filled
Florida’s Lake Okeechobee — the largest freshwater lake in the
Southeastern U.S. — four times over. The ensuing floods triggered the
most expansive federal response to a disaster since Superstorm Sandy.
And at a cost of over $12 billion, it was the most expensive disaster to
strike Louisiana in over a decade.
It wasn’t a tropical storm. It wasn’t even a tropical depression. But it certainly felt like one.
The
lack of a name for this catastrophe became its own topic of discussion
in the ensuing days, raising a key question: Could arbitrary definitions
from yesteryear be hindering how we perceive and respond to the
tropical threats of today?
Modern-day hurricane messaging rests on an aging foundation. Although scientists have fine-tuned their forecasts, dramatically slicing hurricane track errors in half since
the days of Hurricane Andrew, and more recently enlisting social
science teams to tailor-make forecast graphics, our language and
terminology are miring communications in the past.
We
can see the generation gap in conspicuous areas like the names we give
to tropical storms and hurricanes. Once-popular names like Arlene,
Beryl, Debby, and Wilfred still pepper the six rotating lists — but according to the Social Security Administration,
the popularity of these names peaked in 1934, 1920, 1959, and 1917,
respectively. Of the 126 names included on the original six Atlantic
lists introduced in 1979, over half remain.
But
personifying storms with names from generations past is a benign
symptom compared to widely used definitions that carry over from bygone
centuries. Take, for example, tropical storms — tropical cyclones whose
maximum sustained winds reach 39 mph. It’s at this stage that storms
attain a name.
You
may wonder why the threshold was set at 39 mph instead of 40 mph,
especially since the accuracy of instruments only allows forecasters to
estimate tropical cyclone winds to the nearest 5 mph. That’s because the
tropical storm threshold is derived from a primitive scale developed in
1805 by Royal Navy officer Francis Beaufort and expanded in 1926 to
estimate wind speed from observed sea conditions. At Beaufort force 8 —
gale conditions, signaling a strong wind or stiff breeze — ocean
behavior suggests winds of at least 39 mph. By the 1950s, gale-force
winds came to define the term “tropical storm.”
Although
there’s nothing scientifically significant about 39 mph winds, the
threshold has outsized societal implications. When forecasters christen a
tropical storm with a name, special attention is given to it by the
public and press. Financial triggers like higher-dollar named-storm
deductibles kick in, leaving many homeowners to pay more out-of-pocket
for damages before their insurance pays. Television stations replay the
ubiquitous forecast cone and update viewers on the storm’s strength.
What Sir Francis Beaufort advanced over 200 years ago for mariners has
unknowingly seeped into the crevices of modern-day hurricane
communications without many — including meteorologists — understanding
how or why the arcane threshold is still used today.
Similarly,
the term for entry-level tropical cyclones, “tropical depressions,” was
conceived as a byproduct of jargon past. Though mostly obsolete today
in U.S. meteorology, the word “depression” was common parlance among
early 20th-century weather forecasters in describing a variety of
low-pressure systems. By the early 1960s, the adjective “tropical” was
added to distinguish warm-core depressions in the tropics from
midlatitude or wintertime lows. The moniker stuck, despite its
anachronous and often confusing connotation: Today, most folks think of
depression as a physical or psychological condition rather than a
meteorological phenomenon.
Tuesday, February 28, 2023. The attacks on the LGBTQ+ community are not
about protecting children, Iraqis protest proposed changes to their
elections while the country faces severe water issues, and much more.
Librarians in Louisiana are being targeted and facing harassment from
conservative activists who want to ban or limit access to LGBTQ books
in public libraries.
Ever since Amanda Jones, a middle school librarian, spoke out broadly
against censorship over the summer, she has found herself in the
crosshairs of an escalating, statewide campaign.
Conservative groups had begun to challenge specific books in her
community, and Jones pushed back during a public board meeting in July,
saying that everyone in town deserved to have access to information and
see themselves reflected in the public library collection.
“Just because you don’t want to read or see [a particular book], it
does not give you the right to deny others or demand its relocation,”
said Jones at the meeting. She is the president of the Louisiana
Association of School Librarians and has worked as an educator and
librarian in Livingston Parish, Louisiana, for more than two decades.
“Once you start relocating and banning one topic, it becomes a
slippery slope, and where does it end?” she added. Since then, Jones
said she has faced unrelenting attacks online, like falsely representing
that she shares “sexually erotic and pornographic materials” with
children as young as six and “advocat[es] teaching anal sex to 11 year
olds,” according to a defamation lawsuit filed by Jones in August
against the owners of two conservative Facebook groups. In court
documents, Jones claimed she was cast “as a deviant and a danger to
children.” The lawsuit was dismissed in September but Jones plans to
appeal.
Despite nationwide opinion polls showing parents are largely satisfied
with their childrens’ education, efforts to ban or challenge books in
schools and libraries surged last year, as a conservative political
movement in the name of parents’ rights took aim at literature mostly
focused on themes of race, gender, and LGBTQ issues.
The American Library Association, which annually tracks the number of book challenges,
documented 681 attempts to ban or restrict library resources between
Jan. 1 and Aug. 31, 2022. About 1,650 unique titles were targeted during
that time. The ALA said the latest figures were set to exceed last
year’s totals.
While it's not
surprising that religious illiterates would want to ban books -- this
is a group whose 'John Steinbeck,' after all, is Kirk Cameron with those
bad picture books -- it is amazing that so many would go along with it
and buy into the lie that it's about helping children.
You're
never helping children by removing books. You're never helping
children by refusing to admit that the children aren't all straight.
They're not interested in helping anyone but their own selves who can't
seem to handle the reality that LGBTQ+ people exist.
Dwyane Wade and Gabrielle Union noted reality at Saturday's NAACP Awards.
Will we fight for some or will we fight for all of our people?
A
point we make repeatedly -- in writing, in talks -- is that an elected
official claiming to help children is not helping them with nonsense
like ''don't say gay.'' We point out that these people are ignoring
that gay children are in elementary school.
Marcia:
And you both are right about that. We are there. And some of us
know. We know we're gay. And your decision to pull books or try to
silence conversations are not helpful to us. It's nonsense. I remember
the kids in my class all looking at TIME magazine because it had a KING
KONG story and Jessica Lange was pictured with her top down as Kong
fondled her. You don't know what's already in your libraries, to be
honest. And you can't kid proof them. Even if you could, you're only
hurting someone like me who knows she's a lesbian early on. You're
telling me that I'm not valued. Stop saying you're helping children
because you're not and, let's be honest, it's going to be the LGBTQ+
kids that are more likely to need help and books in school at a young
age. We're navigating and we need the resources.
Students at 14 Iowa public school districts and
one university are planning to walk out of classWednesday to protest
bills introduced in the Iowa Legislature that they say discriminate
against the rights of LGBTQ+ people.
The statewide protest is being led by student groups IowaWTF and Iowa Queer Student Alliance or IowaQSA. Both groups track legislation at the state level.
Wednesday's
protest is being spurred by Iowa youth who say they do not feel
legislators are listening to the people most impacted by these bills:
students.
As we noted in yesterday's snapshot, Iraqis are protesting proposed changes to their elections.
Iraqis staged a protest in Baghdad
on Monday in opposition to changes to the country’s parliamentary and
provincial elections law that would bring back a voting system that
benefits large parties.
The Demonstrations Committee, a group in Iraq
that co-ordinates anti-government protests, attempted to rally
demonstrators on Facebook, “calling for major unified Iraqi protests in
Baghdad for all the provinces in front of the House of Representatives
on Monday to reject the notorious Sainte Lague law”.
The group said the Sainte Lague law, which was replaced in 2021, would ensure “the removal of emerging powers and independents”.
After
massive protests that erupted in October 2019 and persisted until the
spring of 2020, forcing the administration of former prime minister Adel
Abdul Mahdi to resign, the government agreed to hold early elections,
which it did in 2021.
Iraq’s
elites were shaken by the protests, the largest demonstrations in
Shiite-majority provinces in the country's modern history, while a harsh
security clampdown left at least 600 dead.
The
2021 elections were held under a new law to replace the Sainte Lague
system, with numerous small electoral districts in each province, a move
that gave new independent parties — many of which were supported by
protesters — a stronger chance of winning seats.
The Sainte Lague system involved a complicated formula used to apportion seats in favour of established parties.
It was replaced a simple policy to apportion seats to parties with the highest number of votes.
Voters could also vote for individual candidates, rather than party lists, further boosting independent politicians.
Combined, the three changes ensured that about 30 candidates who claimed to be independent won seats in 2021.
The Iran-backed Co-ordination Framework and leading Sunni and Kurdish
parties now want to return to a voting system known as Modified Sainte
Lague that benefitted larger parties between 2014 and 2021.
Iraq's Tigris and Euphrates rivers have witnessed a
sharp decrease in their levels in the south of the country, officials
said Sunday, pledging to take urgent measures to ease water shortages.
In Nasiriyah, capital of the southern province of Dhi Qar, an AFP
photographer saw the river bed of the mighty Euphrates dry in patches.
The water ministry blamed the situation in some southern provinces on
"the low quantity of water reaching Iraq from neighboring Türkiye".
At a meeting to discuss the problem, Iraqi President Barham Salih
highlighted the need for Iraq to reach an agreement with its neighbours
over water sharing. The sources of the two main Iraqi rivers, the Tigris
and the Euphrates, are both located in Turkey, and many Turkish and
Iranian dams are located upstream of Iraq. The Iraqi authorities have
accused Tehran and Ankara of reducing the flow of the rivers, however,
agricultural practices in Iraq have also contributed to the decline in
water reserves.
In response to the emergency, the Iraqi Ministry of Water Resources
has promised to release more water from the dams located in the north of
the country. The World Bank has also called for Iraq to modernise its
irrigation methods and the Iraqi President has reiterated this call.
Robert Tollast (THE NATIONAL) explains, "Iraq has long accused Turkey of holding back water in a network of giant
dams, built between the 1970s and the present day. Since then, flows
from both rivers have declined by about 40 per cent, cutting off a
significant percentage of Iraq’s freshwater, although climate change has
also been blamed for declines." Amr Salem (IRAQI NEWS) adds,
"The Iraqi Ministry of Water Resources indicated that Iraq lost 70
percent of its water shares because of the policies of neighboring
countries."
That's
US Ambassador to Iraq Alina L. Romanowski meeting with Iraqi President
Abdul-Latif Rashid on Sunday. Her Tweet above notes that they discussed the
recent Iraqi delegation that made a trip to the US and that they
reaffirmed the US support for Iraq to be energy independent, to resume a
leading role in the region and to foster the country's private sector.
Somehow, Alina left out the discussion KURDISTAN 24 reports on:
The President of the Republic of Iraq, Abdul-Latif
Rashid, on Sunday, received United States Ambassador to Iraq, Alina L.
Romanowski, according to a readout from the Iraqi Presidency Office.
Strengthening bilateral ties between both countries, Iraq’s
participation in the United Nations (UN) 2023 Water Conference,
combating corruption, and the importance of cooperation on issues of
common interest were addressed in the meeting, the readout added.
The Iraqi President stressed the importance of Iraq’s participation
at the UN Water Conference in 2023, as Iraq is one of the countries most
affected by water scarcity and drought, per the readout.
The US ambassador reiterated her country's support for Iraq's efforts
to strengthen its security and sovereignty, and hoped that the UN Water
Conference in 2023 will adopt solutions for water scarcity in Iraq.
I made the mistake of live streaming BLACK POWER MEDIA.
Bigot Anthony Monteiro was on. As one person in the comments noted, "The Black Jimmy Dore."
Rot in hell, you old crusty lipped fool.
I don't have any use for you. You are a homophobic bigot who should be shunned by the world. You don't know a damn thing, you damn fool.
Prissy Monteiro comes off as a closet case, by the way.
I hope you choke on your hate and die, you piece of filth.
If you're used to my site, you may be shocked -- please note, I have strongly edited this before posting.
And I do care what my parents think about how I take on an issue. I also care very deeply about my brother who has suffered enough thanks to homophobes in the Black community like the bigot Anthony Monteiro. He just needs to die. He's got nothing to offer. He's old trash.
And he trashes trans-genders because, again, Monteiro is probably deep in the closet. He really seems the type.
I have no use for him and will never ever march with him.
I love my brother and I will not back up anyone who spits on him the way Monteiro does.
He needs to stop talking about LGBTQ+ people.
He's smearing them while celebrating right-wing racists.
Mondday, February 27, 2023. Is the CIA targeting supporters of Julian
Assange, Iraqis take to the streets of Baghdad to register their opinion
on proposed changes, attacks on the LGBTQ+ community continues in the
US, and much more.
In a feature article published last Thursday, the well-known German daily Der Spiegel pointedly asked whether the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was “hunting” associates and supporters of Julian Assange.
The persecuted WikiLeaks publisher remains in Britain’s
maximum-security Belmarsh Prison while the UK authorities seek to
facilitate his extradition to the US. There, Assange faces 175 years’
imprisonment for exposing the war crimes committed by American
imperialism and its allies in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Over
recent years, a wealth of material has been published laying bare the
scope of the US campaign against Assange and its gross illegality. In
October 2021, Yahoo! News issued an article, based on the
statements of 30 former and current US officials. It asserted that the
CIA and the Trump administration had plotted to kidnap or assassinate
Assange while he was an internationally-recognised political refugee in
Ecuador’s London embassy.
There are well-documented allegations
that UC Global, the security company contracted by the Ecuadorian
authorities to provide security to the embassy, was secretly
collaborating with the US authorities. UC Global whistleblowers have
attested to this, and the unlawful surveillance material, including
videos of Assange’s privileged discussions with his lawyers, has been
publicly released.
The Der Spiegel article provides
additional information. It paints a picture of a global dragnet
established by the US government and its agencies to target not only
Assange, but also his collaborators. Much of the material is anecdotal,
but the standing of those providing it, together with the context of
established US state operations against WikiLeaks, makes for a
persuasive case.
Summarising the material it collected, Der Spiegel writes:
“At one point, a lawyer in London lost her laptop; at another, a
journalist researching Assange’s case had medical data stolen. The
office of Assange’s Spanish defence lawyers was broken into in a bizarre
way. In Ecuador, a Swedish software developer has been held in the
country for nearly four years on flimsy grounds. Elsewhere, Assange
supporters who prefer to remain anonymous reported similar spooky
incidents.
“That they are connected cannot be proven. Nor has it
been possible to determine the authors beyond doubt in any case so far.
It could be a matter of coincidences. ‘But who is to believe that?’ asks
Assange’s lawyer Aitor MartÃnez, who is certain that it is a concerted
campaign by U.S. authorities, whose often dubious methods WikiLeaks has
exposed quite a few times. ‘It’s a vendetta against Julian Assange,’
says the Spaniard. And the focus is not only on companions and family
members of Assange, but also on lawyers and journalists, who by law
should be particularly protected from wiretapping.”
Julian remains imprisoned and remains persecuted by US President Joe
Biden who, as vice president, once called him "a high tech terrorist."
Julian's 'crime' was revealing the
realities of Iraq -- Chelsea Manning was a whistle-blower who leaked the
information to Julian. WIKILEAKS then published the Iraq War Logs.
And many outlets used the publication to publish reports of their own.
For example, THE GUARDIAN published many articles based on The Iraq War
Logs. Jonathan Steele, David Leigh and Nick Davies offered, on October 22, 2012:
A grim picture of the US and Britain's legacy in Iraq has been revealed in a massive leak of American military documents that detail torture, summary executions and war crimes. Almost 400,000 secret US army field reports have been passed to the
Guardian and a number of other international media organisations via the
whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.
The electronic archive is believed to emanate from the same dissident
US army intelligence analyst who earlier this year is alleged to have
leaked a smaller tranche of 90,000 logs chronicling bloody encounters
and civilian killings in the Afghan war. The new logs detail how: •
US authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse,
torture, rape and even murder by Iraqi police and soldiers whose conduct
appears to be systematic and normally unpunished.
• A US helicopter gunship involved in a
notorious Baghdad incident had previously killed Iraqi insurgents after
they tried to surrender. • More than 15,000 civilians died in
previously unknown incidents. US and UK officials have insisted that no
official record of civilian casualties exists but the logs record 66,081
non-combatant deaths out of a total of 109,000 fatalities.
The numerous reports of detainee abuse, often supported by medical
evidence, describe prisoners shackled, blindfolded and hung by wrists or
ankles, and subjected to whipping, punching, kicking or electric
shocks. Six reports end with a detainee's apparent deat
The Biden administration
has been saying all the right things lately about respecting a free and
vigorous press, after four years of relentless media-bashing and legal
assaults under Donald Trump.
The attorney general, Merrick Garland, has even put in place expanded protections for journalists this fall, saying that “a free and independent press is vital to the functioning of our democracy”.
But the biggest test of Biden’s commitment remains imprisoned in a jail cell in London, where WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange
has been held since 2019 while facing prosecution in the United States
under the Espionage Act, a century-old statute that has never been used
before for publishing classified information.
Whether the US justice department continues to
pursue the Trump-era charges against the notorious leaker, whose group
put out secret information on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,
Guantánamo Bay, American diplomacy and internal Democratic politics
before the 2016 election, will go a long way toward determining whether
the current administration intends to make good on its pledges to
protect the press.
Now Biden is facing a re-energized push, both inside the United States and overseas, to drop Assange’s protracted prosecution.
Hobart 4 Assange and Melbourne for Assange Australia are
hosting rallies for Julian Assange and are proposing a Global Day of
Action on March 19th , the 20th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq.
On the 19th March 2003 the USA led an illegal military
invasion of Iraq based on its own fabricated secret intelligence that
Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction and working with terrorists.
This invasion proceeded despite at least 6 to 11 million people turning
out in at least 650 cities around the world to protest the United
States’ push to invade Iraq in the largest anti-war protests the world
has ever seen.
No WMDs or evidence of ties between al-Qaeda and the Iraqi regime
were ever found and Iraq is still living with the catastrophic
consequences of this invasion, which led to the violent deaths of at
least 1 million Iraqi citizens, ongoing destabilisation and the rise of
new terrorist organisations armed with US weapons and military training.
Seven years later Wikileaks, with documents provided by Chelsea
Manning, exposed the true face of the Iraq war and hard evidence of US
war crimes, including the infamous “collateral murder” video.
Instead of prosecuting those responsible for the crimes the USA is
politically persecuting and torturing the messenger, Julian Assange.
The great truth teller of the Iraq war must not be let to die in jail! We cannot let this date to be forgotten.
Let us come together again, like many of us did 20 years ago, to denounce the US regime wars and to demand Julian’s freedom now!
In October last year, the Iraqi parliament approved a new government with a mandate to jump-start political reforms. Among its priorities is the amendment of Iraq’s problematic constitution.
Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani made
the first step in this process by appointing Hassan al-Yasseri as his
constitutional adviser. Meanwhile, the parliament has announced that it
will form a constitutional revision committee.
This will not be the first time that Iraq attempts to
reform its constitution since it entered into force in 2005.
Constitutional revision committees were formed in 2009 and 2019, but
both of those efforts petered out, mainly as a result of a failure to
build momentum.
Hundreds of protesters took to the streets in Baghdad on Monday to
denounce a draft elections law that would increase the size of the
country's electoral districts, potentially undermining independent
candidates.
The current legislation, under which the 2021 election was held, breaks
up each of the country's 18 provinces into several electoral districts.
The law, which was a key demand of mass anti-government protests that
kicked off in late 2019, was seen as giving independent candidates a
better chance at winning.
Last week, Parliament debated the draft, which would return Iraq to
having one electoral district per governorate. Independent lawmakers who
objected to the proposal, walked out of the session, which ended early
due to losing its quorum.
The Parliament is set to discuss the proposed law again on Monday but lawmakers were not expected to vote on the proposal.
The return to a single district per province is backed by the
Coordination Framework, a coalition of Iran-backed parties that forms
the majority bloc in the current parliament, and which brought Prime
Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani to power last year.
That action took place today. More actions are expected. CRISIS 24 reports:
Activists from the National Consciousness Movement plan to
demonstrate near the Green Zone in central Baghdad Feb. 27. The purpose
of the action is to denounce a perceived attempt from the Parliament to
return to previous election laws. Security forces have reportedly closed
Al-Jumhuriya Bridge and Karrada Maryam Street in preparation for the
protest.
Increased security and localized transport disruptions
are likely near the impacted area Feb. 27. Clashes between police and
protesters cannot be ruled out, particularly if demonstrators are overly
disruptive or if they ignore police orders to disperse.
Walkouts were held at two Lexington high schools Friday morning.
Hundreds of students walked out of Lafayette, Dunbar and Danville high schools to protest “anti-LGBTQ legislation.”
At
Lafayette, the student-organized rally was described as quick but
powerful. There were many cheers and flags waving in the air and posters
were held high.
One of the main bills discussed at the event was Senate Bill 150, which has been sent to the House by the Senate.
Right now, students say there are nine anti-trans, or LGBTQ, bills filed in the legislature.
Many
student speakers say school is their safe space. Students say they want
their voices to be heard and their hope is for senators and
representatives to make a change.
They all target children’s lives, especially HB 470.
One
Kentucky bill wouldn’t just ban trans youth from using the safest
bathroom–it could ban any shared bathroom, given it defines “community
standard of dress” by birth certificate.
How is it not an attack to segregate children like criminals?
That
bill would ban “discussing” orientation or identity tied to gender in
K-12. Discussion is “talking about with.” A kid referencing his moms,
being a flower girl for her two uncles, or being a boy who likes pink
will be silenced. A teenager talking about life–being bullied, left out,
having a crush–will be silenced by teachers at the threat of government
punishment.
Last year, three in five trans youth considered and one in five LGBTQ students attempted suicide.
It’s not because they’re trans. We know why: 94% of LGBTQ youth say recent politics harms their mental health, and just one accepting adult reduces suicide risk by half.
