All states have been ecocidal

As I settled into retirement and could live anywhere I considered the question. East Coast? Hurricanes. Texas? The same (and that it’s Texas). West Coast? Fires. West in general? Drought. Might as well stay right here in Michigan. Far from hurricanes. Tornado Alley seems to have shifted south. With the Great Lakes around us the chance of drought is lower, as is the chance of fire. After a wet spring, June has been dry (though thankfully not blazing hot – I’ve been able to keep both furnace and AC off for a while). I’ve heard the whole summer might be dry. And there have been lots of fires in northern Michigan (as in north of a line from Saginaw to Muskegon). Mark Sumner of Daily Kos wrote that Republicans like to say we’re not in a climate crisis, what you see around us is just weather. All that smoke from Canada fires that turned New York’s skies orange – just weather.

When the climate changes, forests relocate over generations—long, slow tree generations. The individual trees can’t pack up and move. In the face of rising temperatures and shifting rainfall, forests become stressed. Stressed forests have more debris. More dead branches. More standing deadwood. Stressed forests burn. That’s what people in the northeast are inhaling this week, the soot of forests who couldn’t respond fast enough to deal with what we’ve put them through. The remains of trees who couldn’t get away.

Then Sumner included photos of Australia in 2020, California in 2021, and now in New York. He doesn’t have photos of fires in Siberia (burning again this year), and fires in Africa last year that burned 4 million square kilometers. We would not have paid attention to Canada’s fires if their smoke didn’t stink up the National Mall.

Eventually, these forests will stop burning. Because they’ll stop being forests.

Peter Gelderloos responded to a tweet about the shrinking (and maybe vanishing) Arctic summer ice:

Also, anarchists: scientists, stop addressing yourselves to the State. All states have been ecocidal. They are taking you for a ride. Lend your resources and platforms to those of us risking our lives to stop this machine. For decades, they haven't listened and now it's too late.

Then he linked to a few of his books that look interesting. There is Worshiping Power with a description of “We need to stop thinking of the State as a potential vehicle for emancipation. From its origins, the State has never been anything other than a tool to accumulate power.” A second is The Solutions are Already Here, Strategies for Ecological Revolution from Below – “International governmental responses to the climate emergency are structurally incapable of solving the crisis. But there is hope.” And, since I believe nonviolence is important to disrupt the social hierarchy because violence enforces a hierarchy so one needs to be nonviolent to avoid replacing one hierarchy with another... The third books is The Failure of Nonviolence – “Nonviolent campaigns around the world have helped oppressive regimes change their masks, and have helped police to limit the growth of rebellious social movements.” Some day I may actually buy and read them. Kos of Kos discussed the question of who blew up the dam in Ukraine that flooded Kherson. There is talk that Ukraine did it to sweep away the Russian soldiers on the south side of the river. But Ukraine wasn’t going to hit those defenses anyway and their economic and ecological costs are way too high for them to consider it. Did Russia let the dam fail through incompetence? Or was it intentional? Kos believes it was incompetence. Because Crimea just lost its source of drinking water, though Crimea still has a supply that will last for quite a while. Crimea could be easy to isolate. Take out the Karch Bridge (already damaged) and sever the land bridge by liberating a swath to Mariupol and Crimea could be liberated without invading. In another update Sumner reported that Ukraine is pushing hard against Russian forces on the front north of Melitopol and Mariupol. They seem to be significant attacks with actual gains in territory. The casualties and equipment loss appear to be worth it. And from a post from yesterday afternoon Kos reported that the long awaited counteroffensive is indeed underway. Western equipment is showing up along the front disabled, though unlike Soviet era tanks disabled is not the same as destroyed and the crew inside is quite likely still alive. But this is going to be hard. Russia has had a long time to build up its defenses and the area being attacked has the most elaborate defenses. But it is also the area with the most strategic value. Kos describes how well dug in. There are five lines of defense. It appears Ukraine has gotten through the first one. Only four more of the first set to go, and they won’t be easier. The nasty guy has been indicted for the crimes of illegally keeping documents and improperly handling classified documents. There are 38 counts in all. Several news sources lay out the list. Sumner mentions the charges, then looks at the details, including the various places the boxes were stored around Mar-a-Lago. Such as on the stage of the ballroom in view of guests at various functions (was he showing them off?).

It could not be more ridiculous if the whole affair were titled “Laurel and Hardy meet the FBI.”

You young people may need to look up the comedy team of Laurel and Hardy. Through all that shifting of boxes hither and yon through the estate it seems like 34 boxes are missing. Why haven’t Trump’s other properties been searched?

Also, this isn’t just 100 years of potential penalties: It’s more like 380 years. It’s hard to see anyone, no matter their previous address, walking away from this without spending some time with some pretty strict limits on their range of travel. Evidence-wise, Trump and Nauta are on the well-done side of cooked gooses. Whether any attorney—or any judge—can get them out of this seems doubtful. Some of those who have rushed to endorse Trump following his indictment need to whip out their reading glasses and take a close look, because this stuff is very hard to dismiss.

Sumner explained the types of charges. He also added a timeline of events, why the nasty guy’s keeping the documents is a violation of the Presidential Records Act, and what it means that so many of the documents are classified. When Sumner wrote that it was doubtful any judge could get him out of this he linked to another of his articles reporting that the judge for the cases has been chosen – Aileen Cannon. It seems the nasty guy may have won the judge lottery.

That would be the same Trump-appointed, Trump-serving Cannon who completely overlooked existing law to appoint a “special master” to help Trump keep documents from being reviewed by the Department of Justice. The same Cannon who supported the most ridiculous claims from Trump’s third-rate legal team. The same Cannon who, when the special master made reasonable demands on Trump’s team, overruled the judge she had appointed to give Trump gift after gift in rulings so ridiculous even right-wing pundits seemed shocked. It would be the same Cannon whose actions in this case were absolutely shredded in a ruling from the 11th Circuit that tossed out everything she had done, except the two months of stalling she achieved for Trump. Now Cannon gets a chance to show her gratitude to Trump again with an appointment that seems like a cruel joke on the nation.

Yesterday I wrote about the death of Pat Robertson and the damage he did through his Christian Broadcasting Network. Now for a couple cartoons. One by Bill Bramhall, cartoonist for New York Daily News. It shows Robertson arriving in heaven where there is a big rainbow over the entrance and a sign saying “All are welcome.” Robertson says, “You gotta be kidding me.” The other is by Ann Telnaes of the Washington Post. It was published when Robertson’s buddy Jerry Falwell died. A woman at a reception window tells Falwell, “No, it’s not a mistake Rev. Falwell – there is no heaven and reincarnation is your only option. You can come back as a liberal, feminist, or homosexual.”