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.”

Showed how his beliefs were built upon hate and misinformation

Hunter of Daily Kos reported it isn’t easy writing an obituary for Pat Robertson. And yes, an obituary is appropriate – Robertson died at the age of 93. It isn’t easy because by cultural convention obituaries tread lightly on the worst things a person has done. Thankfully, Hunter didn’t follow that convention. Hunter did note there are no real claims that Robertson was a deeply spiritual man. Which is accurate, because though his Christian Broadcasting Network he was a political voice. So let’s look at the damage. Robertson was the one who turned television into a weapon. After 9/11 he and Jerry Falwell used Robertson’s 700 Club to blame the attack on a long list of progressives, including LGBT people. Robertson also laid blame on Haiti after its 2010 earthquake.

He was a political figure through and through and through. God's enemies were conservatism's enemies were Republicanism's enemies, and that was all there was to it. So when a disaster struck, there was never talk that it was because God was angry at the greed of those who had cut poverty programs to give private jet owners slightly better tax treatment. God never smote those who pressed for less aid to poor children, or towns that treated immigrants with contempt. And when hurricanes hit places where hurricanes usually hit, it was never because God had gotten good and tired of a state's racist gerrymanderings or gun policies. Conservatism's enemies were all the same to him; he could not be bothered to suss out any difference.

Robertson was a bully who as fully in support of keeping straight white Christian men at the top of the social hierarchy. Even worse, he claimed his bullying was at God’s direction. LA Knightlock tweeted a cartoon (creator not identified) with the caption “Freedom of Religion in action.” It shows a person wearing a shirt saying “God loves me not you” and cramming a Bible into the mouth of another.. Mike Luckovich posted a cartoon on Kos showing Jesus at the Last Supper. A bit of explanation for my non Christian readers. This is his Passover meal, his last meal before he was arrested, tried, and executed. In the original scene in the Bible Jesus says one of his twelve disciples will betray him, telling authorities a place where they can arrest Jesus. In Luckovich’s version Jesus says:

By your cruelty to LGBTQ+ members, one of you will betray me...

David Hayward tweeted a cartoon showing Jesus saying, “Let’s go love everybody!” and the disciples all thinking “Everybody??” Well, look at that, something not at all surprising... Charles Jay of the Kos community reported Harlan Crow, the sugar daddy for Justice Clarence Thomas, has also been making strategic buys of members of Congress. Crow and colleagues donated to Sens, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, the big blocks of Biden’s progressive agenda in the Senate. He also donated to the Unbreakable Nine, Democratic members of the House who were instrumental in sinking Biden’s Build Back Better bill. SemDem of the Kos community discussed New College in Florida and why that appears to be a particular target of DeathSantis. I’ve mentioned the way DeathSantis has been attacking everything that has even a hint of “woke” about it, including education. SemDem also documents how much DeathSantis is doing this for white supremacists. This is his base. And he has been doing a lot. He has banned teaching about race and LGBTQ issues with laws vague enough that teachers self-censure. That came with book bans. Voters approved a measure to restore voting rights to felons, yet the policy repeatedly gets roadblocks (hint: most ex-felons are black). He threatened public universities that have anything associated with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), which is an attack on marginalized communities. A moment now for another Luckovich cartoon. At a press conference there is this exchange between DeathSantis and a reporter:

I’m waging a war on woke because woke is broke and I will make woke croak, no joke... But my question was about climate change...

Back to SemDem’s story. In addition to all that, there have been actual Nazi rallies, complete with swastikas. When asked about it DeathSantis deflects the question. But New College has been under particular attack. He installed six of his cronies on the board, people who had no education experience. They ousted the president. The new prez, a DeathSantis guy, is now being paid close to triple what the last prez got. The board abolished programs that supported minorities, and denied tenure to progressive professors (and since New College is progressive…). Why? It all revolves around Derek Black. He’s the son of Don Black, the grand wizard of the KKK and founder of Stormfront (the website that radicalized Dylan Roof, who murdered nine black victims in a South Carolina Church). Derek is also the son of David Duke. Derek grew up in this stuff and was nicknamed “the heir,” destined to inherit his dad’s empire. And he was all for it, giving speeches just as fiery as his dadn’s. The lad popularized the term “white genocide,” a term that implied if minorities outnumbered whites, “white culture” would be destroyed. Derek wanted to go to college to study medieval history in the belief it would prove European superiority. He convinced his parents to let him go to New College, where one can design their own plan of study in whatever one wants. Yeah, the supremacist heir chose the progressive school. Derek tried to hide his beliefs, but a quick search told other students who he was. They demanded his expulsion. The college refused. A progressive Jewish organization invited Derek to their weekly Shabbat services. Being otherwise isolated, he accepted the offer. And just by being friendly with him he saw the terrible things he had said about Jews weren’t true. Allison Gornick, a fellow student and a Jew who once refused to be in the same room with him, decided to talk to him.

They had similar interests, which they bonded over, and eventually she confronted him about his ideology. She went through point by point to demonstrate how his beliefs were built upon hate and misinformation. She would send academic studies to refute his many beliefs that minorities were inferior due to everything from IQ scores to crime. Through the fights, they forged a strong friendship, and eventually, a romance. ... In 2013, Derek sent a letter to the Southern Poverty Law Center that rocked the white supremacist movement to the core, and outraged the hate communities in Florida. The key phrase was this: “I do not believe advocacy against ‘oppression of whites’ exists in any form but an entrenched desire to preserve white power at the expense of others. I am sorry for the damage done by my actions and my past endorsement of white nationalism.” The diversity of the college and their willingness to challenge his ingrained beliefs wound up saving him from a lifetime of hatred. But suddenly his complete denunciation of white supremacy was the top discussion on hate radio and hate chat sites. Instantly, his father banished him from his home. The callers to his radio program were beside themselves with rage. The man they had groomed to be their leader had been “brainwashed” by the libs at New College. Derek, for his part, did not disagree that New College changed him. ... The attack on New College is not just another piece of fodder on DeSantis’ culture war, or another attempt to “own the libs.” It was a deliberate assault on an institution that wounded the white supremacist movement.