The rivers have dried up

My Sunday movie was The Hand of God. It is a 2021 Italian film, a coming of age story about Fabietto. It was directed by Paolo Sorrentino and is autobiographical. It is set in 1980s Naples. Much of the Italian came out rapid fire, so one needed to be quick in reading subtitles. Fabietto mostly has a Walkman at his hip and earphones around his neck. He is finishing high school and contemplating college, sharing a room with older brother Marchino. He doesn’t have friends. The big thing in his life is Diego Maradona is coming to play on the Naples soccer team. Simon Abrams of RogerEbert.com reviewed the film and made a connection I didn’t see. I did see Marchino audition for a part as an extra in a Fellini film. Fabietto stayed in the waiting room with other people auditioning. I’ve only seen a few of Fellini films so didn’t catch that all those other people in the waiting room could be characters from those films. This is a sedate film. For the first half of the film we see a lot of eccentric family and friends, including a sister who seems to always be in the bathroom and a baroness who lives upstairs. Then tragedy strikes and he has to grow up rather quickly and figure out what to do with his life. I enjoyed it, though for the first half I wondered where this is all going, especially since the story doesn’t start with Fabietto. I heard about this film because it was nominated for Best International Feature Film at this year’s Oscars. It has collected quite a few other minor nominations and wins. Mark Sumner’s Ukraine Update for Daily Kos has five parts. The first is the status of shipping grain from Ukraine, which is happening. In addition to ongoing shipments the US said it will purchase grain and give it to the UN World Food Program. However, there are still two big problems. The first is continued Russian theft. The second is the shipments that have gone out so far are minuscule compared to what Ukraine shipped last year, before the war. The second part is Russian ambassador Mikhail Uyanov, very much a government official, responded to a tweet from Ukraine’s Zelensky with essentially a call to genocide. One of the things Uyanov is a pat of is the International Atomic Energy Agency – the organization Zelensky is asking to secure the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. The third part discusses the report from the Ukraine Support Tracker saying the announcements of support for Ukraine’s military are slowing. Sumner wrote that one reason for that is these countries are still working on delivering equipment previously promised. So don’t worry. At least right now. The fourth part discusses the big explosions in Crimea. Recently an attack on a Crimean airfield took out half of the jets of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. I had previously shared one report that Ukraine said it was a team of saboteurs. Sumner said we really don’t know. That mystery allows for a good meme of a shark attacking a Russian swimmer and below that are gigantic jaws about to chomp on both the shark and the swimmer. The jaws are labeled “Whatever is hitting Crimea these days.” The last part is a video of a display during Kyiv’s Independence day celebrations, much smaller this year. Some are calling a display of tanks Russia finally getting its military parade in the Ukraine capital. But these tanks were captured and most are in bad shape. Matthew Braunginn, a Kos Emerging Fellow, wrote there really isn’t any hypocrisy when the GOP decries defunding local police forces and also calls for defunding the FBI. Braunginn wrote:

What is reality isn’t important; what is essential is the right’s perceptions. The GOP views local and state police as defenders of the white racial order, opponents of multicultural democracy, and the FBI as upholders of a multicultural democracy. And they view such a democracy as un-American and as communist and/or Marxist—words and phrases that have long been dog whistles for diversity. ... If you believe yourself to be rational, logical, and evidence-driven over emotionally driven, then follow the data, learn the history of policing and the failures of police reform strategies, and engage with the ideas of defunding and abolition openly. There are plenty of books on this, starting with The End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale, Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom by Derecka Purnell, and Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Y. Davis. There are also lots of good articles, backed up with good research, covering reform history, the flawed narrative of law enforcement, and police effectiveness.

I may need to add a book or two to my reading shelf. Max Kennerly quoted Shane Goldmacher, political reporter for the New York Times, who wrote:

A new conservative nonprofit helmed by Leonard Leo scored a $1.6 billion donation — an extraordinary sum that could boost the right for years to come. This is the first reporting revealing the existence of the Marble Freedom Trust.

Kennerly added:

Leonard Leo is the single person most responsible for stacking the courts with partisans who overturned Roe v. Wade, gutted the Voting Rights Act, broke the Clean Air Act, and made it impossible to regulate handguns. Imagine what he plans to do with this.

A couple months ago the Hightower Lowdown did a four page issue on how Leo built up the Federalist Society so that it could nominate the far right justices now dominating the court. Hunter of Kos wrote about a new dark money group called Citizens for Sanity. He wrote that it looks like multimillion dollar effort designed to troll conservatives, to peddle new conspiracy theories. And conservatives, who appear to not be very bright, will eat it up. Hunter concluded:

Once again: Republicanism is reliant on hoaxes. It is now how they campaign, and how they govern, and how they try to evade responsibility for even criminal acts. Not just the dark money groups, but individual campaigns are now centered around "The 2020 elections were secretly rigged against Trump," or, "The entire American education system is actually a trick perpetrated on the country by woke anti-racist groomers." Hoax-based gibberish is now the basis of all of Republicanism. And we're left once again wondering: Will it work? How much will it work? What percentage of conservative voters, after turning their own brains to absolute mush by watching pro-fascist conspiracy programs propped up by the Murdoch family for just a bit more wealth, will vote to ignore the abortion debate, Florida's future coastlines, the future inhabitability of large parts of the Republican-held South, the return of polio, and an economy that's no longer collapsing because they are absolutely convinced a secret plot by "woke" people will destroy the country if they don't keep voting for the party that turns everything it governs to crap?

Will Bunch, a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, tweeted a link to a new article:

Paramilitary posturing. Voter suppression. Enlisting state power to go after his enemies. Ron DeSantis has brought full-on fascism to Florida, and now he's taking it national The GOP's DeSantis and Trump are racing into rock bottom for 2024.

This appears to be the first step in running for president 2024. In this tweet Bunch included an excerpt from the article. The PI isn’t behind a paywall, but it does insist I turn off my ad blocker. Bunch also mentions his new book After the Ivory Tower Falls, in which people like DeSantis are trying to destroy higher ed because it fosters critical thinking. And why destroy critical thinking? Because a person might figure out they’re not supposed to be oppressed. Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Kos, had three interesting quotes. The first is a tweet by Edward-Isaac Dovere:

NBC news poll finds “threats to democracy” is now voters’ top issue, above “cost of living” and “jobs and the economy.” Abortion, which has been energizing base Democrats, not ranked as a top issue here. Neither is Crime, which Republicans have tried to make a top issue.

Threats to democracy had a score of 21 (percent of people declaring it the top threat?). Cost of living got a score of 16, Climate change at 9, Abortion at 8, and crime at 8. Dworkin quoted Scott Maxwell of the Orlando Sentinel:

Florida has a teacher shortage that just won’t quit — thousands of vacancies affecting students throughout the state. So Gov. Ron DeSantis, scrambling for solutions, wants to tap veterans, firefighters and police officers to fill the classrooms. I think it’d be great to help more veterans launch second careers. But here’s what the governor doesn’t seem to realize: Veterans have been in Florida classrooms for years. Yet many got the hell out, saying the same thing other teachers say — that teaching in this state stinks.

Dworkin included tweets by DCPetterson, who showed a bridge over a dry river bed:

This is the Loire, the longest river in France. It's gone now. It evaporated. That hasn't happened in at least 2000 years, and likely not at any time in recorded human history.

and Marc Heberden with another view:

Here's one from today. The Loire. And there have been weirdly violent, out of season storms. With the drought, a lot of farming is suffering, but ironically this is going to be a major year for vineyards, some of which are already having to harvest. Two months early ...

Emma Newburger of CNBC wrote about the drought in China. She has pictures of the Jialing River with the river bed exposed and a narrower Yangtze River. Rainfall in the river basin is down 45% compared to recent years. As many as 66 rivers have dried up. China is experiencing a heat wave with temps topping 100F and in some places topping 110F. Sichuan province ordered factories to shut down for six days to ease power shortages. Lean McElrath tweeted, with a photo and a link to an article in the Miami Herald:

Drought conditions in Europe are revealing ancient “Hungersteine”—or “Hunger Stones”—markers of previous times of drought and famine. One stone from 1616 is engraved with a warning that reads: “Wenn du mich seehst, dann weine” or “If you see me, weep.”

In another tweet, McElrath wrote:

Scientists found trees growing in the Arctic tundra: “The trees…hopped over the mountains into the tundra. Going by climate models, this wasn’t supposed to happen for a hundred years or more. And yet it’s happening now.” Climate change is accelerating.

That included a link to an article in The Guardian, which included this summary:

Global heating has caused ‘shocking’ changes in forests across the Americas, studies find. Trees are advancing into the Arctic tundra and retreating from boreal forests further south, where stunting and die-offs are expected.

RNA sphere tweeted a two minute video of an Asian man who creates piles of rocks that one is sure can’t possibly balance like that. Back to teachers – Laura Clawson of Kos quoted a tweet by the Economic Policy Institute that shows every state underpays their teachers. That was determined by comparing the wages of teachers with the wages of people with a similar amount of education. Rhode Island underpays by 3.4%, Colorado by 35.9%, and Michigan is about in the middle with underpaying by 18.4%. More than 28 states underpay by more than 20%. Aysha Qamar of Kos reported that astronaut Nicole Aunapu Mann of the Wailacki Round Valley Indian Tribes will be the first Native American woman to go to space. She and fellow travelers American Josh Cassada, Russian Anna Kikina, and Japanese Koichi Wakata are schedule to lift off in a SpaceX rocket on Sept. 29. They will go to the International Space Station for a six month stay. Qamar also listed Mann’s accomplishments to show she is well qualified. Mann is also slated to be, in a few years, the first woman on the moon. Ari Shapiro of NPR did a five minute interview with Mann. Brother is coming tomorrow evening for a visit. So it may be the weekend before I post again.