Music: Lars Danielsson — ‘Song for E.’
Esbjörn Svensson 1964-2008
Nations gather to tackle the world’s sixth mass extinction
The Guardian reports: From giraffes to sharks, the world’s endangered species could gain better protection at an international wildlife conference. The triennial summit of Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites), that began on Saturday, will tackle disputes over the conservation of great beasts such as elephants and rhinos, as well as cracking down on the exploitation of unheralded but vital species such as sea cucumbers, which clean ocean floors. Extraordinary creatures being driven to extinction by the exotic…
Echoes of al Qaeda: Neo-Nazi group, ‘The Base,’ training fellow white supremacists
Vice News reports: A neo-Nazi group focused on providing paramilitary-style training to far-right extremists has been conducting a massive recruitment drive and claims to have already conducted live-fire training with its members. The Base, which is connected to extreme-right groups the Atomwaffen Division and the Feuerkrieg Division, has been promoting its growth on social media with photos announcing its presence in major cities across North America, including New York, Los Angeles, and Seattle, and in Europe, South Africa, and Australia….
Stephen Miller’s grip on the Trump anti-immigrant agenda
The New York Times reports: When historians try to explain how opponents of immigration captured the Republican Party, they may turn to the spring of 2007, when President George W. Bush threw his waning powers behind a legalization plan and conservative populists buried it in scorn. Mr. Bush was so taken aback, he said he worried about America “losing its soul,” and immigration politics have never been the same. That spring was significant for another reason, too: An intense young…
Black Americans have fought to make our democracy’s founding ideals true
Nikole Hannah-Jones writes: My dad always flew an American flag in our front yard. The blue paint on our two-story house was perennially chipping; the fence, or the rail by the stairs, or the front door, existed in a perpetual state of disrepair, but that flag always flew pristine. Our corner lot, which had been redlined by the federal government, was along the river that divided the black side from the white side of our Iowa town. At the edge…
Tasty seaweed reduces cow methane emissions by 99% — and it could soon be a climate game-changer
Good News Network reports: A puffy pink seaweed that can stop cows from burping out methane is being primed for mass farming by Australian researchers. The particular seaweed species, called Asparagopsis, grows prolifically off the Queensland Coast, and was the only seaweed found to have the effect in a study five years ago led by CSIRO. Even a small amount of the seaweed in a cow’s diet was shown to reduce the animal’s gases by 99%. Associate Professor Nick Paul,…
‘Kochland’ examines the Koch brothers’ early, crucial role in climate-change denial
Jane Mayer writes: If there is any lingering uncertainty that the Koch brothers are the primary sponsors of climate-change doubt in the United States, it ought to be put to rest by the publication of “Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America,” by the business reporter Christopher Leonard. This seven-hundred-and-four-page tome doesn’t break much new political ground, but it shows the extraordinary behind-the-scenes influence that Charles and David Koch have exerted to cripple government action…
The last days of Jeffrey Epstein
The New York Times reports: Jeffrey Epstein, inmate 76318-054, hated his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center. It was cramped, dank and infested with vermin, so Mr. Epstein, long accustomed to using his wealth to play by his own rules, devised a way out. He paid numerous lawyers to visit the jail for as many as 12 hours a day, giving him the right to see them in a private meeting room. Mr. Epstein was there for so long that…
Music: Lars Danielsson — ‘Ironside’
‘We’re literally watching the Greenland ice sheet disappear right before our very eyes’
The Associated Press reports: The fields of rippling ice 500 feet below the NASA plane give way to the blue-green of water dotted with irregular chunks of bleached-white ice, some the size of battleships, some as tall as 15-story buildings. Like nearly every other glacier on Greenland, the massive Kangerlussuaq is melting. In fact, the giant frozen island has seen one of its biggest melts on record this year. NASA scientist Josh Willis is now closely studying the phenomenon…
A world spiraling towards chaos, mirrors Trump’s erratic, amoral and incompetent foreign policy
Michelle Goldberg writes: Earlier this week, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, Asad Majeed Khan, visited The New York Times editorial board, and I asked him about the threat of armed conflict between his country and India over Kashmir. India and Pakistan have already fought two wars over the Himalayan territory, which both countries claim, and which is mostly divided between them. India recently revoked the constitutionally guaranteed autonomy of the part of Kashmir it controls and put nearly seven…
How Elizabeth Warren went from a regulation critic to Wall Street watchdog
CNN reports: Long before Elizabeth Warren became one of the nation’s leading progressive voices, she was an academic who articulated a conservative worldview on the economy. As a law professor in the 1980s and 1990s, Warren criticized the overabundance of government regulations, calling them “a tax,” and spoke to conservative legal groups like the Federalist Society and the Manhattan Institute, a CNN KFile review of Warren’s academic research, interviews and speeches in this period found. The material, including Warren’s previously…
Honoring and empowering tribal nations and indigenous peoples
Elizabeth Warren writes: In 2003, the United States Commission on Civil Rights released a report on the state of federal support for Indian Country. The report detailed the chronic failure of the federal government to provide the resources necessary to fulfill its promises to Native Americans, and noted that, as a result, “Native Americans continue to rank at or near the bottom of nearly every social, health, and economic indicator.” In December of last year, the Civil Rights Commission released…
Ilhan Omar is already changing Washington
Emily Tamkin writes: This week, Donald Trump opened a new front in his war against women of color in Congress. “It would show great weakness if Israel allowed Rep. Omar and Rep. Tlaib to visit,” the president tweeted Thursday morning, referring to Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, two young Muslim Democrats who make up half of the progressive congressional “squad” that Trump last month wished would “go back” to “the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”…
‘Christian left’ is reviving in America, appalled by treatment of migrants
Citing scripture and church teachings, ever more Christians are pushing progressive policy positions based in their faith. Shutterstock By Laura E. Alexander, University of Nebraska Omaha Holding pictures of migrant children who have died in U.S. custody and forming a cross with their bodies on the floor of the Russell Senate Office Building, 70 Catholics were arrested in July for obstructing a public place, which is considered a misdemeanor. The protesters hoped that images of 90-year-old nuns and priests in…
Trump’s interest in buying Greenland seen by Denmark as ‘final proof that he has gone mad’
Reuters reports: Greenland on Friday dismissed the notion that it might be up for sale after reports that U.S. President Donald Trump had privately discussed with his advisers the idea of buying the world’s biggest island. “We are open for business, but we’re not for sale,” Greenland’s foreign minister Ane Lone Bagger told Reuters. Trump is due to visit Copenhagen in September and the Arctic will be on the agenda during meetings with the prime ministers of Denmark and Greenland,…