The Disaffected Lib Mk. II

How did we screw up this planet, our one and only, so thoroughly in just one lifetime? No, this isn't about greenhouse gases or global warming. It's about a new study looking at chemical contamination, a different sort of tipping point.  From The Guardian : The study concludes that chemical pollution has crossed a “planetary boundary”, the point at which human-made changes to the Earth push it outside the stable environment of the last 10,000 years. Chemical pollution threatens Earth’s systems by damaging the biological and physical processes that underpin all life. For example, pesticides wipe out many non-target insects, which are fundamental to all ecosystems and, therefore, to the provision of clean air, water and food. “ There has been a fiftyfold increase in the production of chemicals since 1950 and this is projected to triple again by 2050 ,” said Patricia Villarrubia-Gómez, a PhD candidate and research assistant at the Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC) who was part of...

  I'm sure that quite a few of us have had our fill of the rightwing dandy and pompous git, Jordan Peterson. Recently JP attempted to revive his flagging celebrity with an op-ed in, where else, the National Post, " Open the damn country up, before Canadians wreck something we can't fix ." Tyee  columnist, Andrew Nikiforuk, penned a timely retort to Peterson's whinging . I'm not going to cherry pick Peterson's op-ed or Nikiforuk's broadside in reply. The links are there. Read them for yourself. I think you'll be glad you did.

  Why do our governments, elected to office by ordinary citizens, abet those who would harm us ? Chris Hedges accuses them of "social murder." It's mass murder. The global catastrophe that awaits us, already baked into the ecosystem from the failure to curb the use of fossil fuels and animal agriculture, presage new, deadlier pandemics, mass migrations of billions of desperate people, plummeting crop yields, mass starvation and systems collapse. The science that elucidates this social death is known to the ruling elites. The science that warned us of this pandemic, and others that will follow, is known to the ruling elites. The science that shows that a failure to halt carbon emissions will lead to a climate crisis and ultimately the extinction of the human species and most other species is known to the ruling elites. They cannot claim ignorance. Only indifference. As grim a future as you can imagine . The facts are incontrovertible. Each of the last four decades have bee...

  During his presidency, Donald Trump set out to thoroughly corrupt the US Supreme Court by stacking the bench with reliable, hard right justices, people who could be counted on to do the "right" thing. The integrity of the highest court of the land was irrelevant. The idea of turning the USSC into a political agency was of no moment. This post is about how one of Trump's appointments, the controversial Brett Kavanaugh, has run afoul of the radical right movement that has taken over the Republican Party. Kavanaugh on Thursday joined with the court’s five other conservatives to strike down President Biden’s vaccine-or-testing mandate for large businesses . But in a separate decision, he and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joined with the court’s three liberal justices in allowing Biden’s separate vaccine mandate for health-care workers to move forward. Fox News host Tucker Carlson got the ball rolling Thursday night by muttering that Kavanaugh was a “ cringing little li...

  NYT columnist, David Brooks, writes that American society has run amok . Brooks opens with stats. In 2020 Americans drove 13 per cent less yet fatalities rose 7 per cent. In the first half of 2021, motor vehicle deaths rose 18 per cent over the 2020 record. The deaths are put down to driving under the influence, reckless driving and failing to wear seat belts. While gloomy numbers like these were rattling around in my brain, a Substack article from Matthew Yglesias hit my inbox this week. It was titled, “ All Kinds of Bad Behavior Is on the Rise. ” Not only is reckless driving on the rise, Yglesias pointed out, but the number of altercations on airplanes has exploded, the murder rate is surging in cities, drug overdoses are increasing, Americans are drinking more, nurses say patients are getting more abusive , and so on and so on. Teachers are facing a rising tide of disruptive behavior. The Wall Street Journal reported in December : “Schools have seen an increase in both minor i...

   NASA is predicting more extreme weather events, more and hotter heat waves, more intense rainfall, more coastal floodings - pretty much the worst year we've endured, only worse. And the US space agency says last summer in British Columbia was the canary in the mine. In an interview with Global News’ Jackson Proskow, Gavin Schmidt, Director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies said that the world has reached a plateau of warming that’s actually part of an ongoing continued warming. This is because of the increases in greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide and methane, he said. “We’re seeing global warming…having impacts directly on weather extremes (as shown by) the heat waves in Western Canada last summer, changes in coastal flooding, and changes in intense precipitation,” said Schmidt. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. Last February was North America's coldest since 1994 and then, well. Overall, the February 2021 temperature departure for North America ...

Can someone explain the rules to me? The rules about cultural appropriation. I get it, some of it. White actors should not perform roles for native characters. Makes sense. Ditto for the role of Shakespeare's Othello, a moor.  Laurence Fishburne nailed that role. In today's edition of Deutsche Welle, Dame Helen Mirrin is catching hell for playing the role of Golda Meir.  British actor Maureen Lipman has made headlines by asking if award-winning actor Helen Mirren was the right choice to play Golda Meir in an upcoming biopic on Israel's first female prime minister. For Lipman, "the Jewishness of the character is so integral" to the figure, she told the weekly The Jewish Chronicle. But Mirren is not a Jew. Meanwhile, Denzel Washington is getting rave reviews for his performance as Shakespeare's medieval Scottish badboy, Macbeth. Othello, Golda Meir, Macbeth - I'm confused. Wikipedia suggests that cultural appropriation happens all the time but it becomes c...

  They struggled to wrest control of the House of Representatives from the Republicans but, with mid-terms still months away, their optimism is fading . Many blame it on the toxic work environment.  “Congress has gone from an adversarial work environment to a hostile work environment,” said Democratic strategist Jesse Ferguson, who was a senior DCCC aide for the 2010, 2012 and 2014 election cycles. “It shouldn’t surprise anyone that people in safe districts aren’t that excited to reup for Congress the way it is right now.” Members have spent the past two years working through a pandemic where the fun and interesting parts of the job—meeting constituents, traveling, seeing colleagues in-person—have been curtailed by COVID. The constant travel back and forth from districts to D.C. isn’t just a hassle, it’s a health risk. Omicron has renewed members’ worries about their own exposures, and those worries have been exacerbated by the half of House Republicans who won’t say if they’v...

I wouldn't post this except that it is from Forbes.  A study finds cannabis compounds can prevent infection by the Covid-19 virus.  The researchers found that two cannabinoid acids commonly found in hemp varietals of cannabis, cannabigerolic acid, or CBGA, and cannabidiolic acid, also known as CBDA, can bind to the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. By binding to the spike protein, the compounds can prevent the virus from entering cells and causing infection, potentially offering new avenues to prevent and treat the disease. Best you read this for yourself before you break out the rolling papers.

It's inarguable that our world is heating up. While some don't want to accept it, the world is heating faster than ever since we've maintained records. Here are the latest headlines. A quarter of the world's population experienced record heat in 2021.  2021 was New Zealand's hottest year on record. Australia just logged its hottest day ever . The West Australian town of Onslow hit 50.7 Celsius. For perspective, that's still just 1.1 C hotter than the 49.6 C that swept Lytton , B.C., last summer. In the States, winter has become the fastest warming season .  On Tuesday we learned that 2021 saw the world's oceans reach their hottest temperatures on record. Oceans absorb about 70 per cent of CO2 emissions but a staggering 90 per cent of the heat created by anthropogenic global warming. The problem is that changes in prevailing winds and ocean currents can cause oceans to release some of that retained heat. It is important to bear in mind that these impacts a...

America's Covid czar, Dr. Anthony Fauci, warns that the Omicron variant will " find just about everybody ." All the caution and protective measures that have helped so many avoid the Alpha and Delta variants will be less effective at shielding us from Omicron. "Omicron, with its extraordinary, unprecedented degree of efficiency of transmissibility, will ultimately find just about everybody," Dr. Anthony Fauci told J. Stephen Morrison, senior vice president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Fauci's warning is echoed by Dr. Jazz Atwal , Manitoba's deputy medical officer of health. "COVID-19 is no longer an emerging illness. It is here to stay, and our ability to contain the virus is limited. It is highly likely that everyone will be exposed to the virus in the coming weeks." One person of my acquaintance contracted the Alpha variant. None to my knowledge the Delta variant. However I know of entire families that have succumbed...

  It takes a Blitz. Modern governments are incredibly lethargic, even shiftless. Their societies keep falling further behind, unresponsive to looming and dire threats.  We don't mind so we don't matter. A little greenwashing from time to time and - problem solved. Germany's climate minister illustrates the point and what can be done about it. In its coalition government, the Greens hold the climate portfolio occupied by Robert Habeck who is trying to shake things up on his country's road to carbon zero. Introducing a broad outline of his ambitious plans to the public for the first time since entering government as part of a three-way coalition last month, the Green party’s Robert Habeck called for a threefold increase in the speed with which carbon dioxide emissions are reduced , arguing Germany faced a race against time and required a “massive national debate” to achieve the goals set out by his ministry. He said the government faced an uphill task to win many people...

The Quebec government has had it with anti-vaxxers.   Adult Quebecers who won’t get vaccinated and don’t have a medical exemption will be forced to pay a health “contribution,” Quebec Premier Francois Legault told reporters on Tuesday. Legault said the amount of the penalty hasn’t been decided but will be “significant.” About 10 per cent of adult Quebecers aren’t vaccinated, but they represent about half of all patients in intensive care, Legault said, adding that the unvaccinated should be forced to pay for the extra burden they are placing on the health-care system. There are no details about the amount of the penalties, how they'll be levied or how they'll be collected. Those details will be a factor in the inevitable court challenges.

  Although some have seen the resemblance . QAnon has been peddling nonsense about the Mango Mussolini, Donald J. Trump, as the son of legendary general, George S. Patton; nephew to Benito Mussolini and descendant of both Abraham Lincoln and Jesus H. Christ. The two-part conspiratorial Jesus Strand series, uploaded in October 2021, racked up more than 300,000 views on YouTube until it was removed last week after Newsweek alerted the platform. In the videos, Dallas QAnon leader Michael Protzman and other conspiracy theory influencers, who between them have tens of thousands of followers on social media, promoted numerous bogus beliefs, which included that Trump was related to the infamous Italian dictator. One conspiracy influencer said: "Our beloved President Donald Trump is a general like his father George S. Patton, a builder like his uncle Benito Mussolini, and a unifier like his great grandfather Abraham Lincoln." In the clip, Mussolini's dictatorship is whitewashed w...

  Robert Durst will go down in the books as one of the most successful murderers to elude justice in American history. The heir to a New York real estate fortune has departed this mortal coil, age 78. He was the prime suspect in the disappearance of his wife, Kathleen, in 1982. Police investigated, but the case — officially a missing-persons matter — went cold. The wiry and intense Mr. Durst spent much of the 1990s estranged from his family. Then he, too, vanished in October 2000 after authorities, acting on a tip, announced they had reopened the Kathleen Durst case. Days before investigators were scheduled to meet with longtime Durst confidante Susan Berman, she was found dead at her home in Beverly Hills, Calif. — shot in the back of the head, execution-style. New York authorities tracked down Mr. Durst in mid-2001, only after he had been jailed in Galveston, Tex., in yet another homicide — the shooting and dismembering of Morris Black, his 71-year-old neighbor in a cheap rooming...