Tell the coal lobby, variability of solar and wind power problem solved!
Tribute to Stan Lee
As Steven Gary Schlussel commented: He was so much more. Those engineers, doctors and scientists were inspired to greater heights by comic book and sci fi writers. They dream and say “what if” and the engineers say “gee, if I just….” God Bless Stan Lee!
Here’s to the musicians, the poets and writers, the sculptors and painters, the photographers and dancers, the choreographers, the directors, the comics and actors, the artists and designers. You are the ones who create the future. Hats off to you!
Mitigating Risk – Reducing Fire Fodder
After the devastating toxicity of 2018 wildfire smoke struck our local communities, including my own family, I redoubled my own efforts to help eliminate wildfire and its deadly smoke. During the 9-days I was providing assistance as ‘local knowledge’ on the Klamathon wildfire fire line, I saw many trees that survived that blazing inferno only because the local wild horses had grazed off the fuel from under these trees as well as having broken off all the low-hanging fire ladders.
So talking turned to action. I reached out to our friend Craig C. Downer who happens to be a wildlife biologist, and who like Laura and I, also studies wild horses and who had at one point in his career worked for the BLM on their wild horse program.
On Oct. 11th, we began a cooperative research study of the Natural Wildfire Abatement And Forest Protection Plan, also known as the Wild Horse Fire Brigade. Here are the basics:
Ecosystem-study: To determine the suitability of the pilot-project called Wild Horse Fire Brigade, I evaluated the fauna and flora on the California side of the Soda Mountain Wilderness Area. My review found few large-bodied herbivores. Therefore, it was not surprising that excess vegetation has become established throughout this remote, rugged terrain. Although wild horses are present, their numbers are below the ecosystem’s carrying capacity, likely due to the abundance of mountain lions and coyotes. The current stocking-density is 1 horse per 250 acres. However, the land can easily support 1 horse per 30-to-50 acres. Water-sources are sufficient, even at higher elevations. Despite their low numbers, these privately-owned wild horses are grazing down the vegetation, especially under conifers and oaks.
No Smoke: Wild horses offer a smoke-free way of reducing ground-fuels. Just one wild horse can abate more than 5 tons of senescent grass and brush every year without risk of fire. Contrast such preventive grazing with prescribed burning or, in other words, pre-grazing v. pre-burning. Burns inflict immediate damage on the ecosystem. The fires can spread out of control. They also produce copious smoke. Smoke-exposure is particularly toxic to children, the elderly, and those with heart or lung conditions. Research shows a correlation between smoke-exposure and autoimmune and neurodegenerative disorders.
Cost Advantage: Wild horses graze for free year round. They are the no-cost option. Prescribed burns cost taxpayers $400 an acre and must be repeated every year.
Economic Boon: Wild horses are tourist-magnets. Your area could become an eco-tourist destination. Visitors would spend dollars at local restaurants, motels, and retail shops. Jobs would be created. Better to be visited by photographers than by fire-fighters!
Here are four advantages you have over the competition for market-share:
1. Unique angle: The Siskiyou Wild Horse Fire Brigade would be the first pilot-project to demonstrate wild horses’ natural fire-prevention role. Visitors would learn about this and other benefits that wild horses impart to the environment, such as improving soil-conditions and reseeding native vegetation.
2. Easy-access angle: Visitors to herd management areas often complain that they can’t find any horses. However, during my inspections of the Simpson ranch, I regularly observed wild horses. Such encounters happened even during brief stops, often without my needing to exit my vehicle. Thus, you offer easy access, whether by vehicle or on foot, and a high probability of sighting wild horses.
3. Historic angle: Cultural and paleontological evidence shows that wild horses have inhabited the Soda Mountain Wilderness of Southern Oregon and Northern California for millennia. New research into Native American history evidences a pre-colombian horse-culture in the Americas.
4. Scenic angle: Wild horses enhance the viewshed. Promotional materials use the word “breathtaking” to describe them. Your beautiful landscape and beautiful wild horses are powerful draws.
A full discussion of the pilot can be found here:
http://www.myoutdoorbuddy.com/articles/139528/re-balancing-the-ecosystem:-good-for-outdoor-sports;-reduces-wildfires-and-toxic-smoke.php
For these reasons, I enthusiastically support the Wild Horse Fire Brigade project.
Thank you.
Craig C.Downer – Wildlife Biologist
Stage Re-Enactments Of Caravaggio’s Paintings
Quote From Confucius
If there is righteousness in the heart, there will be beauty in the character.
If there is beauty in the character, there will be harmony in the home.
If there is harmony in the home, there will be order in the nations.
When there is order in the nations, there will peace in the world.
Harry Patch Quote
Robert Downey Jnr 10 Rules For Success
Progress Killing Nature
Six Words For Love
I like this. I read an article some time back that says it is when we get mixed up between the different sorts of love (parent for a child etc.) that things go off the rails. I might be “old fashioned” but it is also a survival point for society. And when you look closely at the motives of those wishing to confuse us on this point you see rapidly why they do what they do. To destroy the society.
Facebook Allows Governments to Decide What to Censor
by David Archuleta Jr. November 9, 2018
Photo Source Mike Mozart | CC BY 2.0
Facebook and other social media companies give governments free reign to censor political dissent on their websites – and that is not “fake news.” Facebook’s unholy alliance with government actors includes Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. These partnerships have led to arrests and killings both in the US and abroad.
Glenn Greenwald reported last year on Facebooks’ admission that it unashamedly deletes accounts at the behest of the US and Israeli governments. An example he gives is the deletion of the Facebook and Instagram (Facebook owns Instagram) accounts of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov. Facebook’s reasoning was not that he had been accused of human rights violations or due to the content of his page, but simply because he had been added to a United States sanctions list. This came after reports that a Facebook delegation had met with Israeli officials to improve “cooperation against incitement” –which led to the deletion of pro-Palestinian accounts and news agencies. Hundreds of cases in which Palestinians were arrested for their Facebook postssubsequently took place also.
US support of Israel has a lot to do with maintaining hegemony in the Middle East. One of the reasons Saudi Arabia is such an important partner to the United States government is because of its role of backing US and Israeli policies and influence in the Arab world. An example is Saudi Arabia’s support of US and Israeli efforts to undermine the governments of Iran and Syria.
US social media companies work with the Saudi Arabian government to censor dissent and to cover up wrongdoing. In August, when news broke out that Saudi Arabia was planning on beheading Esra al-Ghamgam for peacefully protesting (which they did) Facebook and Twitter deleted hundreds of anti-Saudi accounts. The social media companies cited FireEye, the private intelligence firm, for their discovery. FireEye in turn accused the account of being Iranian propaganda. Facebook also deleted posts from users who shared an article on the Saudi Arabian warin Yemen, claiming that the photographs of starving Yemeni children went against their community standards.
All of this is compounded in the context of Saudi Arabian laws that jail people if they post satireon social media. It should also be kept in mind that the Deputy Crown Prince Muhammed bin Salam has met with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, and Microsoft CEO Satya Narayana Nadellato work on business deals and cooperation.
Both Facebook and Twitter purged over 800 accounts from their sites in an apparent attempt to curtail what it described as “inauthentic behavior.” It has relied on the advice of a number of nefarious organizations and agencies that have their own histories of “inauthentic behavior” to manipulate media and use misinformation and disinformation to manufacture consent of US imperialism and its partners. In fact, there are ties with Saudi Arabia in some of these bodies, despite that country’s reputation of being one of the most blatant censors of free speech in the world today.
One particularly insidious think tank that Facebook partnered with earlier this year(though their relationship spans years) is the Atlantic Council to combat “emerging threats and disinformation campaigns from around the world.” Facebook even had a ‘war room’ with the Atlantic Council set up for the latest elections in Brazil, and will have one for the upcoming US midterm elections as well. This infamous group consists of defense contractors and ex-military types like Henry Kissinger, Mike Morel (former CIA Director), David Petraeus (Former CIA Director and Army General), and Michael Chertoff(former homeland security chief). The Atlantic Council has received funding directly from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, as well as all sorts of questionable institutions and state actorsincludingUnited Arab Emirates, NATO, BBVA Bank, BP, Central Bottling Company, Deutsche Bank, Nestle, Shell, and a myriad others including banks, oil conglomerates, telecom companies, petroleum companies, and more.
No wonder the Atlantic Council was silent on Saudi Arabia after the murder of Khashoggi, even though they had written up to eighteen articles after the mysterious poisoning of Russian operatives in the UK. Atlantic Council also meets regularly with the Saudi Regime. On top of all this, Facebook itself has become one of the Atlantic Council’s top donors, undisclosed but on par with the British Government, apparently to outsource the censoring of political opinion.
It should be no surprise, then, that Facebook has teamed up in the past with FireEye, self-described as a ‘private-sector intelligence operation’that just happens tobe funded by the CIA. Their agents seem to be intertwined with the Atlantic Council. Their Chief Intelligence Strategist, for example, who presented at FireEye’s Cyber Defense Summit is also a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, as are otherstaff members. Facebook has itself received funding from the CIAthrough partner organizations (including Palantir, which works with Immigration and Customs Enforcement with Amazon) that initially funded it and are now top stock holders. Facebook also partnered with the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute, both of which arefunded by the National Endownment for Democracy.
The NED is a government funded organization created under President Reagan to do overtly what the CIA used to covertly. All of these interests, coalescing in the form of intelligence and security firms, are now hand picking what we can and cannot see on our social media sites. That foreign and corporate interests have influence in US politics and domestic issues, or that they are often fronts or at least close associates with US “intelligence” agencies via variousthink tanks is not exactly new, but these cyberintelligence firms are a novel addition to the state apparatus. Their work with social media companies are likewise a relatively contemporary phenomenon.
Beyond censorship Facebook cooperates with police to arrest, brutalize, and kill activists. In March of this year US Special Operations Command held a conference with police departments,the Atlantic Council, and big tech companies like Microsoft on how to combat online dissent. A report of the conference published by the Atlantic Council describes how private social media companies are the government’s best bet in discouraging anti-government sentiment online. A particularly abhorrent example of censorship in 2016 was Facebook’s deletion of Korryn Gaines’ accountat the behest of the Baltimore police.
While the police were trying to serve an arrest warrant on Gaines (for a minor traffic stop in which the police pulled her out of her car and threatened to ‘break her limbs’) she barricaded herself in her apartment and began live streaming on social media. During that time Facebook deleted her account at the request of the police, who then promptly shot her to death. Without the video from Gaines’ social media or body cameras on the police (none of the officers had one on) there is no accountability and no real way to find out what happened. They had come with the warrant for her arrest, by the way, because of that minor traffic stop. They gave her trumped up charges of assaulting a police officer and disorderly conduct for which she failed to appear in court. We can be sure of their lying because police have a proven history of lyingand because not even the jury believed them – Gaine’s family was awarded millions.
We have every reason to wonder about the influence of Atlantic Council and similar organizations in shaping social media’s fake attacks on “fake news”, their new mask for outright censorship. How much of this kind of censorship is taken from a playbook provided by their Saudi and US government funders? Is there a link between this influence and the arrests and police brutality that often follows on the heels of social media censorship? If you would like to join the effort to end social media censorship sign up for AfGJ’s new Social Media Anti-Censorship Campaign (SMACC). As a rapid response network SMACC will give social media platforms a virtual “smack” by flooding them with calls and emails when they censor legitimate news sources or dissenting political opinions.
David Archuleta Jr. is National Co-Coordinator at the Alliance for Global Justice.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/11/09/facebook-allows-governments-to-decide-what-to-censor/