Global
I would like to announce the publication of a book, which discusses the excessive weight that our total human population and economy has imposed on the global environment. The book may be freely downloaded and circulated from the following link:
http://eacpe.org/app/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Malthus-Revisited-by-John-Scales-Avery.pdf
Malthus' “Essay on The Principle of Population”
Tallahassee, FL --Three Florida legislators running for re-election, along with eight voters and the Florida Democratic Party, have filed a legal action to prevent state and local election officials from continuing to destroy election materials critical for verifying election results. The lawsuit filed Wednesday in state court asks that the ballot images automatically created by digital voting equipment used throughout Florida be preserved for 22 months as required by federal and state law and be treated as public records available for inspection and production under such laws.
Currently, at least 27 of the state's county Supervisors of Elections (SOEs) are preserving the ballot images while the others are not. The lawsuit seeks an order requiring Secretary of State Laurel Lee and State Elections Director Maria Matthews to instruct all SOEs of their legal duty to preserve ballot images and that defendant SOEs be enjoined from destroying the images following the August 18 primary and November 3rd general elections and all elections thereafter.
World BEYOND War, July 2, 2020
The Beginning or the End may have been the beginning of the end.
If you imagine humanity existing a century from now in a society that includes history classes, you can expect, barring major changes, that U.S. text books will describe this as a time of peace, perhaps noting Trump’s failure to assist the Venezuelans with greater humanitarian force, and certainly devoting a few sentences to Trump’s enslavement to Vladimir Putin.
There will have been researchers and professors, who will have gathered up every scrap of information, every document, video clip, deathbed confession, and secret surveillance. They will have established beyond a shadow of a doubt that Donald J. Trump was a greedy fascistic imbecile guilty of an extravaganza of crimes and abuses who was never remotely in the service of Putin, who in fact routinely enraged Putin with sanctions, economic competition, the shredding of treaties and agreements, the expulsion of personnel, the bombing of Russian troops, and endless aggressive militarism and NATO expansion. And that knowledge simply will not matter.
In his recently revised and updated book The Invisible Rainbow: A History of Electricity and Life, scientist Arthur Firstenberg has made both science and history comprehensible by explaining the importance and significance to life on Earth of a vital consideration that has long been ‘invisible’: electricity.
Indeed, as Firstenberg makes clear, if we want to understand life on Earth, we cannot do so without understanding the role that electricity plays in making life possible, healing it and, if abused, threatening us all.
Firstenberg’s book is unusual on at least two counts. Based on decades of scientific research, he carefully explains each point in language accessible to the non-scientist while documenting his case with exceptional clarity and detail complemented by a 138-page bibliography.
If you want to really understand this issue, and what is at stake, you will be doing yourself a favor by reading this book.
The Universe, Electricity and Life: In Brief
In November 2019, the Washington Post and other major news media accused Children’s Health Defense (CHD) of using Facebook advertisements to spread “misinformation” about vaccines.
The basis for these accusations, which have since continued, is a study published in the prestigious medical journal Vaccine that named CHD as a top buyer of vaccine-related Facebook ads. What the media failed to inform the public, however, is that the government-funded – and therefore co-opted - authors of this study failed to identify even a single example of a Facebook ad from CHD that contained any misinformation.
SEATTLE, WA. The Seattle federal judge's restraining order banning tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets and concussion grenades put Seattle on the cusp of a potential historical turning point. Seattle has had the option to turn away from police violence after the judge's order, making the judge's order banning indiscriminate use of weapons on peaceful protesters a key to such a historic transformation. But the use yesterday of rubber bullets and the brandishing of pepper spray in violation of the judge's order are evidence of police resistance to this change.
The size of the Seattle Police Autonomous Zone or SPAZ increased overnight somewhat, as police tape advanced to eliminate a key vantage point from which to photograph the Black Power fist sculpture.
Largely unreported at this point are the internal battles within Seattle city government for the soul of Seattle, which for the time being seem to have been won by police in defiance of both the federal judge's order and of some of the more conciliatory statements of the mayor.
As the summer sun rose on Wednesday morning (July 1st) Christopher Columbus was banished from the courtyard at City Hall. What also could be replaced is the name of our city, but that could take years.
The questions now being asked are, what should replace either?
One answer is not so difficult, the other far more challenging. But perhaps necessary if “Columbus” wants to remain a Midwest boomtown and attract young people, who have been trending more and more progressive even before Trump.
City Council President Shannon Hardin on Twitter has asked for suggestions regarding what to replace the Columbus statue with. He specifically said “art,” not a historical person.
Tasked with replacing the statue is the Columbus Art Commission, and Hardin has promised it will be a “public process.” Hopefully that will be the case when it comes to changing our police department.
“Council is focused on eradicating systemic racism, police misconduct and social injustice through every means possible,” wrote Hardin in the tweet announcing suggestions to replace the Columbus statue.
As a sociologist, my area of specialty is the study of social movements. Specifically, I am interested in how social movements represent themselves visually. In other words, protest art is something I can really geek out on.
However, being neither an artist nor someone who has been able to attend protests due to health concerns, I knew I would miss part of the story if I wrote this one on my own. To get more perspective, I decided to talk to a better-informed friend.
Claressa Dalloway is an artist who has been actively involved in many of the protests in downtown Cbus. As such, she is familiar with events as they took place in the height of the protest in May and early June. We decided that the best way to interact with the art was to pick a point near the Statehouse, and just start walking.
FIRST ART PIECE: FACE CRYING - ABOVE
JB: “So, here is one. What do you think about this one?”
CD: “A lot of the windows are boarded up, so a lot of the art that is similar to this.
he 2020 election will be decided by 3 factors: Registration Rolls, Vote by Mail, and Ballot Counting.
How effectively a national grassroots election-protection upheaval can affect them will decide the fate of the Earth.
THE REGISTRATION ROLLS have been stripped of 16 million or more citizens mostly of youth and color, but many have been re-registered.
Election Protection (EP) activists must fight to make voter registration as easy and fair as possible, contact and re-register the disenfranchised, confirm the registrations of those who think they’re registered but are not, and register millions of new voters, especially among those who have just marched for racial justice and police reform.
VOTE BY MAIL (VBM) has successfully provided paper ballots in Colorado, Utah, Washington, Oregon & Hawaii. All states have always provided absentee ballots. But the virus could force 2020 VBM totals from 5% overall to 40-80%, overwhelming unprepared counties & states.