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Sadiq Khan Makes an Impassioned Call to Reject Brexit

by AlexandriaOrme Posted on June 22, 2016

Mother Jones

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In the final stretch leading up to Thursday’s landmark referendum that will decide Britain’s fate as a member of the European Union, London mayor Sadiq Khan on Tuesday made a rousing speech urging voters to reject Brexit—a campaign he condemned as “project hate” against immigrants.

Khan’s sharp rhetoric was a part of BBC’s Great Debate on Tuesday, in which leading members of both sides in the campaign to determine Britain’s future in the EU made last-minute appeals to voters about whether or not Britain should retain its membership. Pro-Brexit leader and former London mayor Boris Johnson also participated in the televised debate, where he continued his calls for Britain to leave and “take back control” of its economy and its destiny. Johnson also said that if Britain were to vote in favor Britain’s departure on Thursday, it could mark the beginning of a new “independence day” for the country.

Khan and Scottish Tory Leader Ruth Davidson slammed Johnson for spreading “lies” about the cost of EU membership and using Turkey’s potential membership to fuel fears concerning terrorism and Britain’s security. They argued that contrary to those who want to leave the EU, the cost of membership does not outweigh its benefits.

Johnson, along with the the far-right political party United Kingdom Independence Party, have been criticized for employing scare-mongering tactics to convince Britons to withdraw its EU membership. UKIP leader Nigel Farage insists that his party is not racist.

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Sadiq Khan Makes an Impassioned Call to Reject Brexit

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2015 Saw a Record Number of Attacks on US Mosques

by Grace98Vohrpzxo Posted on June 20, 2016

Mother Jones

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The past three years have been difficult for Muslim-Americans, according to a new report tracking increasing Islamophobia issued by the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the UC-Berkeley Center for Race and Gender. Among the most eye-catching findings: the researchers recorded 78 attacks on mosques last year, the highest since CAIR began monitoring such incidents in 2009.

The report highlights the growth of many other forms of discrimination. Self-declared “Muslim-free” businesses have cropped up across the country, and bullying of Muslim students, even by teachers, is on the rise. One piece of good news is a decrease in law enforcement anti-terrorism trainings led by purported experts who spread fear and misinformation about Muslims.

The report suggests that anti-Muslim incidents spike in the wake of terrorist events, noting an uptick in violent anti-Muslim rhetoric that took place after Islamic State militants beheaded two Americans in Syria in August 2014. Additional armed anti-Islam demonstrations sprouted up in the wake of an attempted terror attack on a cartoon contest in Garland, Texas last year, where illustrators had been invited to submit caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed. And after November’s Paris attacks, there was a marked increase in attacks on American mosques.

The study comes after a Republican primary season that repeatedly featured anti-Muslim rhetoric. Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has repeatedly called for a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslim migration to the United States. Sen. Ted Cruz spoke at summits hosted by the Center for Security Policy, a group which has been declared an extremist anti-Muslim group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Ben Carson told Meet the Press that he believed Islam was inconsistent with the Constitution and said he wouldn’t vote for a Muslim to be president. Two-thirds of Republican primary voters in New Hampshire favored banning Muslims from entering the United States, and last September, a survey of Republican voters in Iowa found that almost a third think Islam should be illegal.

Here are some key developments highlighted in the report:

Mosque Attacks

Last year saw a spike in attacks on Muslim places of worship.

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Thirty-four mosques were targeted in just the final two months of 2015—more incidents than typically occur across an entire year. Only two of November’s attacks took place before the Paris terror attacks.

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September 2015: Three young men burned three crosses on a New York’s mosque’s lawn.
November 2015: Vandals targeted a Texas mosque, covering the door in feces and throwing torn Korans on the ground.
December 2015: A severed pig’s head was left outside a Philadelphia mosque.
December 2015: A mosque in California was firebombed shortly before a prayer service.
December 2015: Raw bacon was wrapped around the door handles of a Las Vegas mosque.

Anti-Sharia movement

Since 2010, many state legislatures have seen bills introduced to prevent the influence of Sharia law on US courts, an effort which critics say has no purpose other than to vilify Muslims. As even a writer in the conservative National Review noted, “this ‘creeping Sharia’ phenomenon supposedly going on in American courts is not even happening.” Nonetheless, anti-Sharia and anti-foreign law bills have been popular among Republican state lawmakers.

Anti-foreign law bills have been enacted in ten states.
Over 80 similar bills and amendments were introduced between 2013-2015â&#128;¨. All but one were solely sponsored by Republicans.
To date, none of these laws have been invoked in legal proceedings.

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The Islamophobia network

The report identified 33 groups whose “primary purpose” is to spread fear and hatred of Islam. Financial information collected by CAIR suggests that the following organizations had the highest average annual revenue between 2008 and 2013.

  1. David Horowitz Freedom Center
  2. Middle East Media and Research Institute
  3. Clarion Project
  4. Middle East Forum
  5. Center for Security Policy
  6. Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America
  7. Investigative Project on Terrorism Foundation
  8. Christian Action Network
  9. Abstraction Fund
  10. ACT for America

Textbooks

After a firestorm of complaints that school textbooks were too pro-Islam, Florida and Tennessee passed laws giving parents more power to reject certain course materials.

Muslim-free businesses

Since 2014, businesses in Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, New York, Oklahoma, and New Hampshire have publicly declared themselves “Muslim-free.”

Media Bias

A 2014 study of national TV news published in the Journal of Communication found that “among those described as domestic terrorists in the news reports, 81 percent were identifiable as Muslims. Yet in FBI reports from those years, only 6 percent of domestic terror suspects were Muslim.”

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2015 Saw a Record Number of Attacks on US Mosques

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Eliminating One Constitutional Right Does Not Make All the Rest Fair Game

by JimMatheson0 Posted on June 19, 2016

Mother Jones

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Timothy Edgar—former national security counsel for the ACLU, former deputy for civil liberties in the George Bush administration, and the first-ever director of privacy and civil liberties under President Obama—says that using terrorist watchlists to ban gun sales doesn’t pose a civil liberties problem. After all, we already use these lists to prohibit people from boarding airplanes:

According to the Supreme Court, both the right to keep and bear arms and the right to travel are fundamental liberties. The right to travel is exercised far more frequently. While there were 23 million gun sales requiring a background check in 2015, there were almost 900 million travelers on domestic and international flights serving the United States in the same year.

….While using the terrorist watch list to prevent gun sales would inconvenience those who may be on the list by mistake, there is no reason to fetishize the 2nd Amendment over other rights. The no-fly list causes inconvenience and hardship, but not even the ACLU thinks it should be abolished because it understands the need to keep terrorists from boarding airplanes. Preventing terrorists from buying weapons is just as necessary.

This is a rather cavalier description of the ACLU’s stand on no-fly lists:

We filed a landmark challenge to the No Fly List in which a federal judge struck down the government’s redress process, ruling that it “falls far short of satisfying the requirements of due process” and is “wholly ineffective.”…A bloated, opaque watchlisting system is neither fair nor effective. A system in which innocent people languish on blacklists indefinitely, with their rights curtailed and their names sullied, is at odds with our Constitution and values.

“Due process” is the key phrase here: the US government should never be able to revoke fundamental liberties based on mere suspicion. This doesn’t necessarily mean that suspects are entitled to a full-on court hearing, but due process does mean something substantive, speedy, and fair. An appeal to the same agency that took away your rights in the first place doesn’t count in my book—especially when that agency is literally bound by no rules about what it does and doesn’t have to tell you about why you’ve been blacklisted. That’s how the no-fly list works, and the appeal process in Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s proposed ban on gun purchases would be at least as bad.

In any case, I have a question for Edgar and other proponents of both the no-fly list and the gun ban: what other fundamental liberties should the government be able to ignore in the name of fighting terrorism? This isn’t a frivolous question. If these two rights can be taken away, what’s the argument for not restricting the right to free speech of people on terror watchlists? Or fair trials? Or self-incrimination? Or freedom of religion? Or cruel and unusual punishment?

This kind of question is too often treated as nothing more than the juvenile hysteria of civil liberties purists who see fascism around every corner. But think about where we are. The right to travel freely has already been effectively eliminated. Eliminating the right to bear arms has a pretty good chance of passing Congress. George Bush plainly had no qualms about cruel and unusual punishment, and there’s no telling if he ever got close to allowing the torture of American citizens. Donald Trump gets loud cheers when he proposes substantial infringement on Muslim freedom of religion. Warrantless surveillance is now so normal it barely merits a yawn. And we hear endlessly these days about jihadist recruiting via social media, which suggests—to use Edgar’s phrasing— that preventing terrorists from using Facebook might be just as necessary as keeping them off airplanes.

We’re not close to fascism. But when a former counsel for the ACLU argues that taking away a constitutional right is OK because we’ve already taken away another one, it’s not very hard to see the slippery slope in action. By that logic, there’s literally no right that’s safe for anyone who’s ever been investigated for terrorist connections by the FBI. As tempting as it is for frustrated liberals to exploit a horrific massacre in order to pass something—anything—related to gun control, this is the wrong way to go about it.

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Eliminating One Constitutional Right Does Not Make All the Rest Fair Game

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Donald Trump Goes on Anti-Muslim Warpath

by FranziskaAshburn Posted on June 13, 2016

Mother Jones

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Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump launched a forceful, angry attack on immigration and Muslims in a speech in Manchester, New Hampshire, on Monday, renewing his call to ban Muslims from entering the United States and saying Hillary Clinton would allow potential terrorists into the country.

“We cannot continue to allow thousands upon thousands of people to pour into our country, many of whom have the same thought process as this savage killer,” Trump said, referring to the man who killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando on Sunday. The speech was scheduled before Sunday’s attacks and was originally planned as a major anti-Clinton campaign speech, but the Trump campaign retooled the remarks to “further address this terrorist attack, immigration, and national security.”

Trump blamed lax immigration laws for the killer’s presence in the United States, erroneously saying that he was born in Afghanistan and that his father supports the Afghan Taliban. (The father, Siddique Mateen, is a television commentator whose political views appear to be incoherent.) “The bottom line is that the only reason the killer was in America in the first place was because we allowed his family to come here,” Trump said.

Immigration dominated the speech, with Trump growing angrier and louder as he claimed the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton want to allow huge numbers of refugees into the United States without proper screening. “Under the Clinton plan, you’d be admitting hundreds of thousands of refugees from the Middle East with no system to vet them, or to prevent the radicalization of their children,” he said. As an example, he falsely cited a “tremendous flow of Syrian refugees into the United States.” In reality, fewer than 2,000 Syrians have entered the United States so far in 2016, representing less than a fifth of the intake the government had promised.

More ominously, Trump suggested that American Muslims are operating as a fifth column by hiding attackers like Omar Mateen, the Orlando shooter, and the couple that carried out the San Bernardino terrorist attack last year. “They have to work with us, they have to cooperate with law enforcement,” Trump said of American Muslims. “They knew that he was bad. They knew that the people in San Bernardino were bad. But they used the excuse of racial profiling for not reporting it.”

By attacking radical Muslims, Trump also tried to cast himself as a defender of the gay community. He started the speech with a moment of silence for the victims of the shooting and called the attack “an assault on the ability of free people to live their lives, love who they want, and express their identity.” Trump, who opposes same-sex marriage and has vowed to overturn the Supreme Court ruling that made it legal nationwide, later called Clinton’s immigration policies a betrayal of the gay community. “Hillary Clinton can never claim to be a friend of the gay community as long as she continues to support immigration policies that bring Islamic extremists to our country who suppress women, gays, and anyone who doesn’t share their views,” he said.

The speech was not the first time Trump addressed the Orlando attack. On Sunday, Trump published tweets thanking his followers for the “congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism” and calling again for a ban on allowing Muslims into the United States, a proposal other Republicans have said he should drop. Trump then suggested on Monday that President Barack Obama may purposefully be turning a blind eye to terrorism, winking at conspiracy theories that Obama is secretly Muslim and anti-American. “He doesn’t get it or he gets it better than anybody understand,” Trump said during an interview on Fox & Friends. “It’s one or the other.” He repeated variations on the claim during other media appearances on Monday.

On Monday, Roger Stone, one of Trump’s close friends and advisers, also suggested that Huma Abedin, a longtime aide to Clinton, might be a terrorist operative. “She has a very troubling past,” Stone said on the Breitbart News Daily radio show. “She comes out of nowhere. She seems to have an enormous amount of cash, even prior to the time that she goes to work for Hillary. So we have to ask: Do we have a Saudi spy in our midst? Do we have a terrorist agent?”

Clinton gave her own speech on Monday, in which she decried Trump’s “inflammatory anti-Muslim rhetoric” without mentioning him by name.

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Donald Trump Goes on Anti-Muslim Warpath

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Alaska is way, way hotter than normal right now

by PamelaNegrete8 Posted on June 11, 2016

Baked Alaska

Alaska is way, way hotter than normal right now

By on Jun 11, 2016

Cross-posted from

Climate CentralShare

Alaska just can’t seem to shake the fever it has been running. This spring was easily the hottest the state has ever recorded and it contributed to a year-to-date temperature that is more than 10 degrees F (5.5 degrees C) above average, according to data released Wednesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

How much spring temperatures differed from average in Alaska.NOAA

The Lower 48, meanwhile, had its warmest spring since the record-breaking scorcher of 2012.

While May as a whole was only slightly above average — thanks in part to whiplashing weather from the beginning of the month to the end — every state in the contiguous United States had warmer-than-normal temperatures for the spring as a whole.

The main area of relative cool in May was in the Central and Southern plains, where considerable rains fell during the month. Storm systems generally tend to drag in cooler air and cloudy days help to keep a lid on temperatures.

“In addition, when soils are waterlogged it prevents afternoon temperatures from rising as high as they would if soils were dry,” Deke Arndt, chief of the monitoring branch of NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, said in an email.

The contiguous United States is having its fourth warmest year-to-date; May’s milder weather brought that trend down a bit from April when 2016 was in the No. 2 slot.

The clear standout of above-average temperatures for the Lower 48 — both in May and spring as a whole — was the coastal Pacific Northwest. Seattle had its fourth-hottest May and several spots in Washington, including Seattle-Tacoma Airport, were having their hottest year-to-date.

Alaska, for first time in modern records, had a spring average temperature of 32 degrees F (0 degrees C) — that may sound cold, but warmth is a relative term. That temperature handily beat the previous record hot spring of 1998 by 2 degrees F (1 degrees C), according to NOAA.

Several spots in Alaska, including Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Juneau, recorded their hottest springs. Several others, including Barrow, the northernmost city in the United States, had their second-warmest spring.

Year-to-date, the state is running 10.3 degrees F above the 1925-2000 average of 26.1 degrees F (-3.3 degrees C) and 2.4 degrees F (1.3 degrees C) higher than the previous mark of 23.7 degrees F (-4.6 degrees C) set in 1981. In fact, the past three January-May periods are among the four warmest in Alaska’s records.

Year-to-date temperature anomalies across the contiguous United States.NOAA

Rick Thoman, climate science and services manager for the NWS’s Alaska region, said that several factors had converged to keep Alaska so relatively toasty, including persistent high pressure systems over the region and warm waters off the coast. Early snowmelt has also exacerbated the spring heat.

The effects of the elevated temperatures are readily apparent, Thoman said, with berries ripening weeks earlier than usual, very early “last frosts”, and an early start to construction projects.

Temperatures in Alaska have also steadily risen — like the planet as a whole, and the Arctic in particular — thanks to the excess heat trapped by human emissions of greenhouse gases. There is a 99 percent chance that 2016 will be the hottest year on record globally, mainly due to that excess heat.

NOAA forecasters expect the odds this summer to continue to favor above-average temperatures across Alaska, and there’s a good chance that 2016 as a whole could be record-hot for the state as well. But that depends on how the rest of the year plays out.

“Certainly, the combination of five months already in the books and the outlook for continued warmth raises the chances for the warmest year on record,” Arndt said. “But it would just take one or two really cold months to change the scenario from ‘warmest year’ to ‘one of the warmest years.’ ”

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Alaska is way, way hotter than normal right now

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Eco-Friendly Passive Homes Don’t Need AC to Stay Cool

by AlbertoMueller Posted on June 10, 2016

While Americans look for ways to make their homes more efficient, European designerscontinue building energy-sealed, so-called passive homes that make our Energy Star appliances look like minimal contributions to the cause. Passive architecture has caught on in the Pacific Northwest and abroad, but its yet to take hold in most of the United States. Have you heard about the passive home trend?

What is Passive Design?

Passive homes are extremely energy-efficient buildings that require no air conditioning or heating systems. They are sealed so tightly that no air can escape the interior of the home, leading to absolutely minimal heat transfer. As a result, the temperature in the home stays extremely comfortable year-round, resulting in a huge decrease in energy expenditure.

So how do builders make this happen? It all starts with very, very thick walls. According to the New York Times, a passive home built in a cold state like Minnesota wouldrequire walls that are up to 18 inches thick. Windows are also paned multiple times and are manufactured with a similar thick design.

Humidity is kept in check and air recycled through ventilators that mix fresh, outside air with inside air. These systems use only minimal energy and keep the air inside the structure feeling fresh and clean.

All of these factors result in huge energy savings, but owners of passive homes will tell you that even the reduced heating bill costs cant match the greatest benefit of living in a climate-controlled environment: comfort.

What matters is that I have never lived in such a comfortable house, Don Freas of Olympia, Washington, told the New York Times.

Why Hasnt the Trend Caught on in the US?

The U.S. is lagging behind other countries when it comes to implementing passive technology. The knowledge of how to build these structures has been around since the 1990s, but because gas and energy remain relatively affordable in the U.S.as opposed to in other countries, where they are much more expensive, incentivizing homeowners to make energy-efficient decisionsAmerican homeowners have been slow to jump on the bandwagon.

Nearly 30,000 of these houses have already been built in Europe, reports the New York Times. In Germany, an entire neighborhood with 5,000 of these super-insulated, low-energy homes is under construction, and the City of Brussels is rewriting its building code to reflect passive standards.

So far in the U.S., only 90 passive homes have been certified. Some builders argue that the reason for slow U.S. growth has been the countrys vastly varying climate. While passive homes are relatively popular in the Pacific Northwest where the climate is mild and comparable to that of Europe, they require different technologies to function in the humid Midwest, cold northern regions and hot Southwest.

If U.S. builders can learn to adapt for the countrys various climates, it could be a boon for the environment. Mother Earth News reports that while an Energy Star-certified home could save energy expenditure by about 20 to 30 perfect, a passive home would increase that efficiency to 90 percent. Well have to see how passive homebuilding stacks up to other energy-saving building practices in the U.S. moving forward.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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Eco-Friendly Passive Homes Don’t Need AC to Stay Cool

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Record-breaking floods hit Paris. Get used to it.

by Diana A. Kincaid Posted on June 3, 2016

Record-breaking floods hit Paris. Get used to it.

By on Jun 3, 2016Share

Record-breaking rains and flooding have inundated western Europe this week, killing at least 15 in France, Germany, Romania, and Belgium.

Paris has been hit especially hard by the deluge. Thousands have evacuated as the Seine reached nearly 20 feet on Friday, its highest level since 1982. Meanwhile, cultural institutions like the Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay are taking no chances: They’ve closed to tourists and have relocated some valuable works out of harm’s way.

French president Francois Hollande said at a Friday press conference that “what is happening now, especially in Paris and in some regions, is exceptional.” However, scientists note that flooding of this magnitude is the new normal — thanks to climate change.

“Heavy rains? Massive flooding? Get used to it,” Princeton climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer told the Associated Press.

Incidentally, Paris was the site of the 2015 United Nations climate accord, in which nearly 200 nations agreed to limit rising greenhouse gases. While it was the most far-reaching climate accord in history, some critics say it isn’t ambitious enough to avert disaster — a disaster like the one unfolding in Paris.

See more images of the flooding below.

#palaislespiedsdansleau #palaisdejustice #quaideseine #iledelacite #paris #crue #seine #seineencrue #sousleau #innondation #3juin #6mètres

A photo posted by mawrjo (@mawrjo) on Jun 3, 2016 at 1:29pm PDT

Тут ездят машины. Не сейчас! #сена #наводнение #париж #июнь2016 #seine #inondation #flood #paris #juin2016

A photo posted by Maria Rodina (@eltormaria) on Jun 3, 2016 at 1:24pm PDT

Ça déborde encore ! #paris #seine #2016

A photo posted by @turquoiz on Jun 3, 2016 at 1:15pm PDT

Let’s make the best of it! #beachparty #parisattitude #parisflood

A photo posted by Rasmus Michau (@rasmusmichau) on Jun 3, 2016 at 9:53am PDT

#CrueParis #parisflood #inondation #paris #flood #statueofliberty

A photo posted by Bart Wander (@bartwander) on Jun 3, 2016 at 11:12am PDT

#paris #needcoffee #workday #rainyday #feelinghealthy #healthy #goodcoffee #happy #happiness #healthyfood #healthylife #healthylifestyle #sport #workingout #motivation #fruits #vegetables #healthyfood #healthier #dontdrink #dontsmoke #water #vegan #veggie #vegetarian #guiltfree #flooded #veggielife #flood #parisflood

A photo posted by @violinplayinggoat on Jun 3, 2016 at 11:07am PDT

Parisian flood #paris #flood #sortezcouvert #bridge #symetricalmonsters #underwater #rtt #solferino #cestcrue #parisflood #seine

A photo posted by Jordi Scuyer (@s_cuyer) on Jun 3, 2016 at 5:51am PDT

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Record-breaking floods hit Paris. Get used to it.

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Report: School Suspensions Are Costing Taxpayers Billions

by DeweyHanlon23 Posted on June 3, 2016

Mother Jones

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Suspend a student early in his high school career, and taxpayers could pay the price for years to come.

According to a study released Thursday by the University of California-Los Angeles, the suspensions of 10th graders across the United States in the 2001-02 school year prompted an estimated 68,000 students to eventually drop out of school. Those dropouts, researchers say, cost Americans some $11 billion in lost tax revenue and $35.6 billion in broader social costs—such as health care costs, job loss, and potential earnings—over the course of a lifetime.

UCLA Center for Civil Rights Remedies

The study’s co-authors—UC-Santa Barbara professor emeritus Russell Rumberger and Daniel Losen, director of UCLA’s Center for Civil Rights Remedies—calculated those costs by first looking at how likely students were to drop out after receiving a suspension. They compared graduation rates of 10th graders who’d been suspended in their first semester with graduation rates of those who hadn’t been suspended; they then controlled for factors such as family income and parents’ educational attainment. Later, the researchers determined the financial impact of those departures based on a previous cost analysis by a Queens College professor named Clive Belfield.

Nationally, suspension rates have generally been on the upswing since the 1970s, particularly for children of color. Since 2013, the report notes, many large districts have reduced the number of suspensions handed out. Black students, who made up 16 percent of the overall public school population in the 2011-12 school year, received at least 32 percent of suspensions that year. Overall, 3.5 million students were suspended by US public schools in the 2011-12 school year.

UCLA Center for Civil Rights Remedies

Researchers argue that by reducing the national suspension rate by just 1 percent—perhaps via alternatives to traditional discipline—we could save up to $2.23 billion in social costs. Losen described the figures as “conservative,” noting the costs associated with suspensions could be far steeper—at least $100 billion—if multiple graduating classes were taken into account. “We’re feeling the costs of kids,” he says, “who were suspended 20 years ago.”

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Report: School Suspensions Are Costing Taxpayers Billions

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Trump Delegate Says Current US Leaders May Need to Be "Killed"

by StephanChristian Posted on June 2, 2016

Mother Jones

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Last December, Donald Trump’s presidential campaign approved David Riden to be a delegate candidate on the Tennessee ballot, and when the state held its primary in March, voters selected Riden to go to the Republican National Convention. When Riden represents Trump there in July, it will not be his first time as a delegate to a political gathering. Seven years ago in Illinois he attended the so-called “Continental Congress of 2009,” where he and other delegates put forth “Articles of Freedom” that called for abolishing all federal firearms laws, replacing the Department of Homeland Security with citizen militias, and, if necessary, launching an insurrection against the federal government.

Riden explains that his views today go even further than those of the Continental Congress of 2009—his involvement in which he says he explicitly disclosed to the Trump campaign when he applied to be a delegate. Riden told Mother Jones in an interview that US leaders who violate the Constitution may have to be done away with: “The polite word is ‘eliminated,'” he said. “The harsh word is ‘killed.'”

Riden said he keeps in contact with a militia group based in Tennessee, though he is not a militia member himself. He said all three branches of the US government are “way off away from the Constitution right now.” Americans may need to attack with assault weapons and bombs in the nation’s capital and elsewhere, he said:

There’s only one reason why the Founding Fathers put the Second Amendment…If the federal government were to follow the path of all other governments, at some point it will turn to tyranny against the people. And at that point, when it stops to uphold and abide by the Constitution—and we’re talking about the Supreme Court, Congress, and the executive branch, all three are way off away from the Constitution right now—the people have the right to assemble, bear arms, go to Washington, DC, or wherever necessary, and go into military battle against the government and replace those in government with individuals that will uphold the Constitution. The Constitution should remain, but the people that are abusing it should be, the polite word is, eliminated. The harsh word is killed. And they’re killed by American citizens with weapons. And if people have tanks, assault weapons, if they have bombs—they need to have the weaponry necessary to be able to overthrow the federal government.

Riden, a retired nuclear engineer, is one among an unknown number of Trump supporters with ties to the Patriot Movement, a loose-knit array of right-wing militias, nativists, and so-called “sovereign citizen” groups. These groups have swelled during the Barack Obama presidency. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, nearly 1,000 anti-government groups now operate in the United States, including as many as 276 armed militias, which have increased more than sixfold in number since Obama was elected in 2008.

The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

A different Trump delegate wrote an article, obtained by Mother Jones, that was published in the 1990s by a group opposing the federal government. And that delegate’s son—also a Trump delegate—was arrested recently on federal weapons charges.

Collins A. Bailey of Waldorf, Maryland, who was approved by Trump as a delegate from that state’s 5th Congressional District, wrote an article in 1995 that appeared in the newsletter of a Patriot group called United Sovereigns of America. Back then the militia movement was mushrooming in the aftermath of violent government crackdowns at Ruby Ridge and Waco. Bailey wrote about the Christian beliefs of America’s Founding Fathers: “These were men of conviction, men who had ‘No King But King Jesus.'” Bailey lauded a speech by Patrick Henry about organizing militias against the British, though he made no references to contemporary militias. An accompanying article in the newsletter, however, urged readers to “stockpile food, water, guns and ammunition,” and to “never surrender your weapons.”

Bailey is well known in Maryland Republican politics, having run unsuccessfully for Congress in 2008 and 2010. His campaigns have sounded themes of constitutional fundamentalism popular with the Patriot Movement. “Things are out of control,” he told the Minneapolis Star Tribune in 2008, around that year’s GOP national convention. “We should be a nation of laws under the Constitution; we should have the rule of law, not the rule of man.” Bailey used starker language on his personal MySpace page: “The Second Amendment does not address duck hunting,” he wrote in 2008. “Our Founding Fathers…wisely made many provisions to guard against tyranny, including tyranny from our own government.”

Reached briefly by phone and asked about the 1995 article, Bailey told Mother Jones: “No, we don’t have any ties to any militia groups, and I don’t remember ever submitting that to the organization you’re talking about. And that’s the only comment I can give you.” Then he hung up. (Mother Jones was unable to reach the Oklahoma-based United Sovereigns of America that published the 1995 newsletter; it appears to no longer exist.)

Read our investigation of the Patriot group called Oath Keepers.

By “we,” Bailey was also referring to a question about his son, Caleb A. Bailey, whom the Trump campaign also approved to be a delegate from Maryland to the Republican National Convention. The Trump campaign announced on May 19 that the younger Bailey would be “replaced immediately,” after Mother Jones and other media reported that he was indicted on federal weapons and child pornography charges. Unidentified federal investigators told local TV news station ABC 7 that when they raided Caleb Bailey’s 75-acre gated compound in Waldorf they found a fortified subterranean room under his home stocked with grenades, tear gas, and illegal machine guns.

It is unclear what Bailey’s intentions were for the stockpile, which federal prosecutors further described at a court hearing for him on May 26 as “a vast array of weapons found in an underground bunker.” Among the charges brought against Bailey, prosecutors allege that he attempted to mail ammunition and explosives to an individual in Wisconsin whose identity remains unclear. According to the US Attorney’s Office, “The contents of the package included 119 rounds of reloaded .50 caliber cartridges with M48A1 incendiary projectiles, and 200 rounds of 14.5mm M183A1 spotting projectiles which contain an explosive charge.”

The Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, Tobacco and Explosives (ATF), which led the raid, declined to comment specifically about the weapons discovered under Bailey’s home. Approached at the May 26 court hearing by Mother Jones and other media, Caleb Bailey’s attorney declined to comment.

The Patriot Movement, after quieting during the Bush years, has returned with a vengeance since Obama became president, animated by conspiracy theories including Mexican plans to “reconquer” the American Southwest and the infiltration of the United States by Muslims. As Obama’s reelection campaign ramped up in 2011, Trump became a ringleader for the conspiracy theory that Obama is not a native-born citizen of the United States. “I want to see the birth certificate,” Trump said on NBC’s Today show. “How come his family doesn’t know which hospital he was born in?” Trump later suggested that Obama might be withholding his long-form birth certificate for fear of revealing that he was born a Muslim. The New York business mogul became so well known for leading this line of attack that Obama (a Christian, born in Hawaii) was moved to rebuke him in what proved a memorable moment at the 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner.

Trump backed off the birther talk once Obama released his long-form birth certificate and Trump’s own presidential campaign began—though when pressed about it by CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Trump continued to float doubts about whether Obama was born in the United States. “I don’t know,” Trump said last July. “I really don’t know. I don’t know why he wouldn’t release his records.”

Birtherism has remained a focus for Riden, the Tennessee delegate for Trump. “I am 100 percent convinced that Obama was not born in Hawaii,” he said.

Riden said he listed the Continental Congress of 2009 on the resume he submitted as part of his delegate application to the Trump campaign. He said he also included it among the subjects he wanted to discuss with the media during the Republican National Convention.

“There is no question that Trump is giving these groups more fuel,” says Heidi Beirich, director of the Intelligence Project for the Southern Poverty Law Center. Patriot groups have thrilled to Trump’s calls to deport undocumented immigrants and ban Muslim refugees. The leader of the anti-immigrant Minuteman Project, Jim Gilchrist, who recently endorsed Trump for president, hailed him last year for having “unified” the Patriot Movement’s fractious groups: “He is the go-to guy.”

Trump has also courted these constituents with subtler messaging. He criticized Obama for not swiftly evicting an armed group that occupied a federal office in early 2016 in rural Oregon. But Trump also tacitly legitimized the occupiers—led by the infamously anti-government Bundy family—telling the New York Times that if he were president, he would personally invite them to meet with him in Washington.

“This is dog-whistle politics,” says Beirich. “He is directly energizing sections on the extremist right.”

Riden said his wife, Perry Riden, who is an alternate Trump delegate from Tennessee’s 3rd Congressional District, also thinks Obama is dangerous. “My wife looks at me and says, ‘Remember, he is one of them.’ Meaning he is a Muslim, he is on the side of the terrorists, he will…let Iran have nuclear weapons, which would destroy Israel and the United States, because his way of thinking is right in line with Iran, North Korea, and Russia.”

After Mother Jones broke the story in early May that Trump had selected William Johnson, a white nationalist leader, as a delegate from California to the GOP convention, the Trump campaign blamed Johnson’s inclusion on a “database error.” That came not long after Trump refused in a CNN interview to denounce an endorsement from a former head of the Ku Klux Klan. He later blamed that on a “bad ear piece.” Trump has also brushed off criticisms for perpetuating racist and anti-Semitic content spread by his followers on Twitter.

When it comes to Trump answering for his most controversial supporters, says Beirich, “He knows exactly what game he is playing.”

Additional reporting contributed by Russ Choma.

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Trump Delegate Says Current US Leaders May Need to Be "Killed"

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Wind turbines are powering nature’s paradise (and haven’t killed a single bird)

by JanetNewcombe Posted on June 1, 2016

Wind turbines are powering nature’s paradise (and haven’t killed a single bird)

By on Jun 1, 2016 2:33 pmShare

This story was originally published by Newsweek and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Charles Darwin made the Galápagos Islands synonymous with the idea of change as a means of survival. In the 19th century, the scientist marveled at how similar endemic finches, mockingbirds, and giant tortoises across the 19-island archipelago were uniquely adapted to individual islands and later theorized that this ability to adapt determines whether a species will survive long term. Today, one of the world’s largest wind-diesel hybrid systems, built on San Cristóbal Island, suggests the human population in the region is capable of the bold adaptive strategies it will need to survive in a post-climate-change world.

Electricity demand on San Cristóbal and the three other inhabited Galápagos islands is on the rise, driven by the growth of population (currently at 30,000 residents) and supported by thriving tourism. A plan to replace diesel electricity generation with renewable energy was already set in motion when, in January 2001, an oil tanker struck a reef and spilled more than 150,000 gallons of diesel near San Cristóbal, threatening the irreplaceable plants, birds, and marine life that had evolved there.

Workers clean the blades on a wind turbine on San Cristóbal Island in the Galapagos. The turbine provides 30 percent of the electricity consumed on San Cristóbal, replacing 2.3 million gallons of diesel fuel and avoiding 21,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions.Eolisca

Ecuador, with the help of the United Nations, quickly enlisted the help of the Global Sustainable Electricity Partnership, made up of 11 of the world’s largest electricity companies, to reduce the risk of another oil spill at this UNESCO World Heritage Site. Between 2007 and 2015, three 157-foot wind turbines have supplied, on average, 30 percent of the electricity consumed on San Cristóbal, replacing 2.3 million gallons of diesel fuel and avoiding 21,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

San Cristóbal’s energy is now in the hands of Elecgalapagos S.A., the local utility tasked with expanding the project to convert the Galápagos to zero-fossil-fuels territory. They think they can get to 70 percent renewable-energy use in the not-so-distant future. “You have to remember that none of our personnel on the Galápagos had ever seen a wind turbine before we started,” says Luis Vintimilla, an Ecuadorian who has been the project’s local general manager since its inception.

One unexpected problem: Wind turbine blades require regular cleaning, and Vintimilla couldn’t find any locals comfortable in high-altitude conditions. So he hired mountain climbers from the mainland to scrub down the blades. Also new was the job of making sure the turbines had not killed or injured any of the critically endangered endemic Galápagos petrels: large, long-winged seabirds.

The monitoring program’s results have been surprisingly good, considering the common criticism of wind farms as bird killers: Not a single petrel has been identified as hurt or killed. The wind turbines, it seems, are not only keeping the Galápagos green — they’re also making sure the archipelago’s most precarious creatures have a chance to keep on evolving.

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Wind turbines are powering nature’s paradise (and haven’t killed a single bird)

Posted in alo, Anchor, Anker, Citizen, FF, G & F, GE, Hipe, ONA, Paradise, solar, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Wind turbines are powering nature’s paradise (and haven’t killed a single bird)