Raw Story in January 2016:

In a Raw Story exclusive, former and current employees of the Malheur Refuge have provided new revelations on the conflict between Dwight and Steve Hammond, two local ranchers who have clashed with federal government agencies for decades. The employees claim the Hammonds illegal grazing was damaging the refuge that’s home to 320 bird and 58 mammal species. They allege the Hammonds lawbreaking ranged from aerial hunting of animals in the refuge to death threats against employees and their families to cattle grazing that was altering the entire species composition of critical ecosystems.

…

The beef the Hammonds currently have with the feds is over access to land under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management. More than 20 years ago the Hammonds also had a permit for grazing on the Malheur Wildlife Refuge. That was canceled in the mid-90s because of what officials say was the Hammonds’ constant violation of the permit’s terms. Today, the [Fish and Wildlife Service] is still caught in the middle because the Hammonds need to cross the 187,700 acres of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge to access the BLM land on which their cattle are allowed to graze.

Marvin Plenert, 80, who served as Northwest regional director for the Fish and Wildlife Service from 1986 to 1994, says the agency tried to accommodate the Hammonds. “We gave them a day to cross through the refuge and they took two or three weeks to do it. They were in your face about everything. They kept pushing the envelope, cut fences, cattle wound up in the refuge illegally.”

…

It’s now well-known that Malheur, an oasis in the arid Great Basin that spans six states, is called “one of the crown jewels of the National Wildlife Refuge System.” It’s a “crucial stop along the Pacific Flyway and offers resting, breeding and nesting habitat for hundreds of migratory birds and other wildlife.” But the little-known story is how years of uncontrolled grazing by Hammonds and other ranchers were sending shockwaves through the refuge.

Cameron says when he arrived at Malheur in 1989, relations were “fairly good” with local ranchers, and about 30 of them had permits for grazing and haying on refuge land. Prior to his arrival changes had been made to match grazing policies with enforcement. He says National Wildlife Refuges allow public recreation in any way feasible. “That can be hunting, fishing, birdwatching, hiking — as long as it’s compatible with the wildlife on the refuge.” Cattle had been grazing year-round on Malheur, but the policy has a higher threshold for economic uses like grazing. “It has to be beneficial to wildlife or otherwise we don’t allow it.”

Implementing the prescribed grazing practices led the Hammonds and Fish and Wildlife Service to butt heads in the early 1990s over the Bridge and Mud creeks and a watering hole for birds. Cameron says Hammonds’ cattle would get into Bridge Creek, a deep canyon, “until someone drove them out.” The cattle would devour woody plant species crucial to the ecosystem.

With the loss of the anchoring trees, the banks started eroding. Cameron says the creek would “become like a drainage ditch and the water table in the meadows around the creek would start dropping.” The effects rippled through the meadow, altering the entire species composition. Unable to reach water, grass would die off, sagebrush and other undesirable species would take root, and ground-nesting birds would lose breeding sites. He says, “Studies show 80 percent of the wildlife that lives in the Great Basin depends on a healthy riparian habitat, and that’s what was along Bridge Creek.”

Cameron oversaw the rebuilding of fences around the refuge that had been wiped out by floods in the 1980s, removing some corrals for cattle that were of little use under the new grazing guidelines, and restoring habitat. He claims corrals in areas where cattle grazed “enticed the Hammonds to leave them there and they would get into the riparian areas, rather than moving them through the refuge.” Both Cameron and Plenert, the former regional director, say the Hammonds would leave their cattle on the refuge for weeks at a time, damaging the land despite the clear rules.

Cameron says, “The cattle like to eat the young plants, willows, elderberries we were trying to introduce in the creek banks, it’s like candy for them.” An entire replanting was wiped out by the Hammonds’ cattle and “a year or two later we would go back and try to restore the habitat to stabilize the creek banks.”

The Fish and Wildlife Service built new corrals for ranchers. Cameron says, “It was on dry land, had a water supply, and trucks could get in and out to haul cattle if needed.” As for the 30 other permittees, “We were able to work with them very well. It was really mainly Dwight Hammond. We tried to work with Hammonds but they didn’t want to lose the free grazing they had for a long time. But the grazing was illegal to begin with because it’s wasn’t their property.”

In 1994 the Hammonds disabled a Caterpillar the FWS was using to fence a watering hole, and they were arrested and charged with felonies.

The charges were lessened and eventually dropped after the Hammonds entered into an agreement with provisions including a halt to interfering with fence construction and moving their cattle through the refuge in one day, which Cameron says is doable.

Leading up to the 1994 incident were the death threats. Cameron says, “My wife would take these phone calls, it was terribly vulgar language. They said they were going to wrap my son in barbed wire and throw him down a well. They said they knew exactly which rooms my kids slept in, in Burns. There were death threats to my wife and two other staff members and their wives. My family went to Bend rather than be in the community because it was so volatile at the time. The families of my biologist and my deputy manager family had to relocate as well for a short time.”

“At the refuge headquarters, one of the Hammonds said they would tear my head off and shit down the hole. One of the Hammonds told my Deputy Manager, Dan Walsworth, they were going to ‘put a chain around his neck and drag him behind a pickup.’” Cameron says it became practice “never to meet with the Hammonds alone and usually to have a law enforcement officer present.”

No wonder Trump likes them.

Peter Walker on Facebook:

I have no personal stakes here but I deeply dislike history being whitewashed. People who are the “salt of the earth” don’t threaten federal employees to “tear your head off and sh– down the hole,” nor do they say if they don’t get their way someone better “call the sheriff and an undertaker.”

Law? What law? Trump is all the law anyone will ever need. He’s pardoned the Hammonds.

President Trump on Tuesday pardoned a pair of Oregon cattle ranchers who had been serving out sentences for arson on federal land — sentences that set off an armed occupation of a wildlife refuge in 2016.

Dwight L. Hammond, now 76, and his son, Steven D. Hammond, 49, became a cause célèbre that inspired an antigovernment group’s battle with the federal government over its control of rural land in Oregon. The occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge resulted in the death of a rancher from Arizona.

And a lot of damage to our publicly-owned national wildlife refuge by some violent reactionaries who want to steal our public land for their cattle to graze.

“The Hammonds are devoted family men, respected contributors to their local community, and have widespread support from their neighbors, local law enforcement, and farmers and ranchers across the West,” Ms. Sanders said in the statement, which was issued while Mr. Trump was en route to Brussels for a NATO meeting.

So being devoted family men makes it ok to torch public land?

Liu Xia is free at last. HRW reports:

The Chinese government permitted Liu Xia, the widow of dissident Liu Xiaobo, to board a plane to Germany on the morning of July 10, 2018, nearly a year to the day since her husband’s death, Human Rights Watch said today. The German government negotiated Liu Xia’s release, whose health significantly deteriorated during nearly eight years of house arrest.

“It is a tremendous relief that Liu Xia has been able to leave China for freedom abroad,” said Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch. “Ever since her late husband received the Nobel Peace Prize while in a Chinese prison, Liu Xia was also unjustly detained. The German government deserves credit for its sustained pressure and hard work to gain Liu Xia’s release.”

Liu Xia, 57, an artist, photographer, and poet, was never charged with a crime. However, since October 2010, when Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, she had been held arbitrarily under house arrest. Throughout Liu Xiaobo’s hospitalization till his death on July 13, 2017, Liu Xia was prevented from speaking freely to family, friends, or the media.

In the past year since her husband’s death, authorities continued to closely guard her home, allowing only a few friends and family members to speak to her on the phone or visit her. Liu Xia is reportedly suffering from severe depression and a range of physical ailments, including a heart condition. In April, she said to a friend in an emotional phone call, “If I can’t leave, I’ll die in my home… It would be easier to die than to live.”

They are still persecuting her brother, who has not been allowed to leave.

Since President Xi Jinping took office in March 2013, China’s government has tightened its control over society and stepped up its campaign against independent activists, lawyers, and others deemed a threat to the Chinese Communist Party. Authorities have arbitrarily detained countless people for their peaceful work or views. Several human rights defenders have either died in detention or shortly after being released. China’s deteriorating rights record is also being felt beyond its borders as it seeks to undermine international human rights institutions.

Liu Xia’s release and her departure from the country show that sustained international pressure can bring about positive human rights developments in China, Human Rights Watch said. There are important opportunities in the upcoming months, including the European Union-China summit and the Asia-Europe Meeting summit, during which sustained public pressure should focus on other Chinese activists and lawyers wrongfully detained or imprisoned.

Donald? Anything?

Silke-Maria Weineck in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Is there anything more gratifying to a nice, liberal academic than turning on NPR and hearing them talk about a book you have written? In that lovely, calm, reasonable NPR voice that makes you think all will be well with the world, if only we can all learn to talk to one another in that lovely, calm, reasonable voice?

Not a lot, I would guess, although I myself have gone all the way off the NPR voice, because to me it sounds not so much lovely calm reasonable as soporific, exaggeratedly slow, and determinedly middlebrow. In reality I would of course rejoice at the publicity and expansion of readership, but I bet I wouldn’t much relish the actual discussion. If NPR had ever done a chat about Does God Hate Women? for instance? It would have been massively (however calmly-soporifically) censorious about it. It would have had a nice liberal priest and Linda Sarsour on to discuss and they would have shredded it for being so blunt and unkind and hostile to religion. Come to think of it, I’ve actually done the BBC version of that chat; they had Madeleine Bunting and Humera Khan to do the shredding.

Anyway, that aside, yes it’s highly gratifying to have one’s book discussed on Serious Radio.

And is there anything more aggravating than hearing that voice attribute the book you wrote to your male co-author? The very same voice that interviewed you for half an hour about this very book, of which you wrote the introduction, the first chapter, the last chapter, and the conclusion?

Here is what happened. Over the last year, I teamed up with Stefan Szymanski, a wildly successful sports economist at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, to explore a very odd phenomenon: the screeching fury that, across the globe, greets the word “soccer.”…

So of course we were thrilled when Anders Kelto said he wanted to do a segment on it for All Things Considered. Stefan is an old hound at this kind of thing, but I got a huge kick out of going to the little studio in Ann Arbor to get my visitor’s badge, sit down in front of one of those big microphones, put on my headphones, and hear that soothing NPR voice in my ears.

They had a good long detailed conversation.

Saturday morning, we got an email: “Hey Stefan and Silke, Just a quick heads up that NPR is planning to run the ‘football vs. soccer’ story today on Weekend All Things Considered, in case you want to listen live. It’s slated for 5:41 p.m., but just keep in mind that breaking news can cause schedules to change….. Oh, and because of the way the story came together, I was only able to use clips from Stefan — sorry, Silke!!!!!”

I get five exclamation marks! I suspect he would have dotted his i’s with hearts, if he could have. Not that he had anything to do with my erasure: The story just came together that way, you understand; there was no human involvement.

Also, women’s voices are so irritating, right?

I spent the day quietly fuming, but resigned to my fate. After all, I do not have NPR voice, whereas Stefan has a British accent and an established reputation. All I have to show for myself is a measly book prize from the Modern Language Association. Nobody ever wants to hear from the humanities, anyway, including people who say that the humanities are really, really important.

Then I get a text from a colleague who is listening to the story. It starts with “O god,” and informs me that not only are there no quotes from me in the story, as I already know, but that the book is now attributed exclusively to Stefan. My friend has already written to NPR in protest. He thinks I should ask for a retraction.

That cannot be, I think; surely he misheard. Kelto talked to me for half an hour. He has the book. My name is on the cover. Because I wrote half of it…So I go online and find the segment, and there it is: “Stefan Szymanski is the author of a new book, ‘It’s Football, Not Soccer….’”

I listen to the segment in mounting disbelief. It turns out that Kelto wasn’t satisfied to air just one voice on this segment. One guy with a British accent won’t do. Whom else could he possibly ask to comment, to make this an appropriately diverse NPR segment? Yes, he finds another guy with a British accent, who repeats what the first guy with the British accent said.

But there wasn’t room for the other author.

I share this new development with what is by now my Facebook support group. Pretty much all of them write books, so they all understand what it means to hear on NPR about a book you have written but has now been written without you. A bunch of them write to NPR, including the formidably kind (and kindly formidable) Rebecca Solnit of Men Explain Things to Me fame, who knows a thing or two about how this stuff works. One of them demands that Kelto be suspended, but I think he should simply be sentenced to reporting only on women’s work for a year…

Oh, I think for the rest of his career, don’t you?

Not such good news. Sylvia Acosta on Facebook:

I just experienced a Handmaidens Tale moment at the DFW airport by Customs and Border Protection. I was traveling back from Rome and stopped by US customs. I was asked if Sybonae was my daughter and I said yes. Then they asked why if she was my daughter I didn’t have the same last name. I told them I had already established my career and earned my doctorate with my last name Acosta so I had decided not to change it. That is why we had different names. Then the customs office said, well maybe you should have taken your husbands last names so you could prove you were her mom. I told him I had a lot of proof she was my daughter without having had his last name. He then took me to another room where they proceeded to interrogate me and my daughter to prove I was her parent. I had to reexplain why we didn’t share last names and again one said well maybe you should consider changing your name to reflect that you are her mother. I then proceeded to tell them that they were perpetuating an institutionalized misogynistic system which required that a woman take her husbands name and after that and a whole lot more about what I thought about what they had said to me that they let us go. I am furious.

It’s had 13,584 shares as of this moment.

A nice piece of news for a change. Reirani Kiri Taurima on Facebook:

This is The Prime Minister Of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern. She’s 37. She’s the youngest head of government in the world. She’s also the first western woman to give birth while in power. 2 days after the baby was born – with midwives, standard in NZ hospitals – she introduced her to the country during a press conference on the nightly news. It was really lovely. She named her Neve Te Aroha. Te Aroha means “The Love” in Maori. It represents ALL the names that were submitted (upon her request) from various tribes throughout the country, and was her attempt at capturing them all.

This is her and her partner, no, he’s NOT her husband (gasp!), walking to the press conference. He’s TV fishing show Host Clarke Gayford, and HE will be staying at home with baby Neve when his lady goes back to running the country in 6 weeks. Clarke sports a snazzy sweater he picked up at the op-shop (second-hand store) in Gisborne, and thinks its just kinda logical that he gives up his day job to stay home and look after the baby.

A week after the birth on July 1st Jacinda introduced a $5billion Families Package that she’d drafted on the floor of her friends house in Hastings – before her pregnancy. It’s based on the knowledge that the first few years of a babies life are the most important. The package gives an extra $75 a week to low-income families with new babies, and an extra $700 to families for winter heating costs as well (it’s cold as hell down there in the winter). It also increases the Paid Leave for all new parents from 20 weeks to 22 weeks. She announced the details via Facebook live, from her couch, right after she’d finished breastfeeding the baby. Because Kiwis. Some of the most down-to-earth, no-drama-having, just-do-it kind of people you’ll ever meet.

And because Women. We really do know how to lead, and to do it well.

#ManaWahine

Welcome to the world Neve Te Aroha.

Another religious maniac heard from:

I agree. Leaders must once again acknowledge the importance of submission to God in a free society. What good are God given rights in America if people do not acknowledge God? #History #Truth #Bible pic.twitter.com/H9EhBNPbJN

— Jason Rapert (@jasonrapert) July 8, 2018

Leaders must once again acknowledge the importance of submission to God in a free society.

If “leaders” must acknowledge the importance of submission to God then we’re not talking about a free society, are we. The mandate is not free, the “acknowledgement” of a lie is not free, the citation of a non-existent entity is not free, and above all the demand for submission to a god is the very opposite of freedom. It’s the opposite of freedom in its arbitrary substitution of fictions for reality, in its assumption of shared beliefs when no such assumption is warranted or fair, and in its valorization of submission, of all things.

A free society spits on the whole idea of submission.

A CFI press release:

The Center for Inquiry has filed a lawsuit in the District of Columbia on behalf of the general public against drug retailer CVS for consumer fraud over its sale and marketing of useless homeopathic medicines. CFI, an organization advancing reason and science, accused the country’s largest drug retailer of deceiving consumers through its misrepresentation of homeopathy’s safety and effectiveness, wasting customers’ money and putting their health at risk.

Click here to access the official complaint (PDF).

Homeopathy is an 18th-century pseudoscience premised on the absurd, unscientific notion that a substance that causes a particular symptom is what should be ingested to alleviate it. Dangerous substances are diluted to the point that no trace of the active ingredient remains, but its alleged effectiveness rests on the nonsensical claim that water molecules have “memories” of the original substance. Homeopathic treatments have no effect whatsoever beyond that of a placebo.

“Homeopathy is a total sham, and CVS knows it. Yet the company persists in deceiving its customers about the effectiveness of homeopathic products,” said Nicholas Little, CFI’s Vice President and General Counsel. “Homeopathics are shelved right alongside scientifically-proven medicines, under the same signs for cold and flu, pain relief, sleep aids, and so on.”

“If you search for ‘flu treatment’ on their website, it even suggests homeopathics to you,” said Little. “CVS is making no distinction between those products that have been vetted and tested by science, and those that are nothing but snake oil.”

I did a post back on January 17 2014 about the homeopathic asthma remedy for sale at my local chain drugstore. The bogus “remedy” for a disease that can kill you.

It clearly suggests it’s a treatment for shortness of breath, wheezing, tightness in chest – yet it has no active ingredient. It’s water. Strength to Nick’s sword arm.

Apart from being a waste of money, choosing homeopathic treatments to the exclusion of evidence-based medicines can result in worsened or prolonged symptoms, and in some cases, even death. Several products have been found to contain poisonous ingredients which have affected tens of thousands of adults and children in just the last few years.

“CVS is taking cynical advantage of their customers’ confusion and trust in the CVS brand, and putting their health at risk to make a profit,” said Little. “And they can’t claim ignorance. If the people in charge of the country’s largest pharmacy don’t know that homeopathy is bunk, they should be kept as far away from the American healthcare system as possible.”

“We made a number of efforts to discuss this situation with CVS, but the concerns we raised were ignored,” said Robyn Blumner, president and CEO of CFI. “Homeopathy is a multi-billion dollar consumer fraud. If CVS would rather line its pockets than protect Americans’ health, we have no choice but to take this fight to the courts.”

CFI has for many years lobbied for tighter regulation of homeopathic products, and has been invited by the Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission to provide expert testimony. As a result, the FTC declared in 2016 that the marketing of homeopathic products for specific diseases and symptoms is only acceptable if consumers are told: “(1) there is no scientific evidence that the product works and (2) the product’s claims are based only on theories of homeopathy from the 1700s that are not accepted by most modern medical experts.” And last year, the FDA announced a new “risk-based” policy of regulatory action against homeopathic products.

“CVS should be warned, the evidence for our case is extremely strong,” said Blumner. “And if CVS’s endorsement of homeopathy is any indication, evidence will not be their strong suit.”

Git’em.

More Trump dragging us all down down down: a California prosecutor calls Representative Maxine Waters a cunt and a bitch and says she should be killed.

The lead hard-core gang prosecutor in the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office is under investigation for a series of offensive rants on social media, triggering demands for his dismissal.

Deputy District Attorney Michael Selyem, who joined the D.A.’s Office 12 years ago, targeted outspoken U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, former first lady Michelle Obama, Mexican immigrants and the victim of a police shooting in Facebook and Instagram posts labeled by one critic as “hateful rhetoric.”

Of Waters, Selyem said: “Being a loud-mouthed c#nt in the ghetto you would think someone would have shot this bitch by now …”

Free speech, first amendment, yadda yadda, but do D.A.s generally want their offices brought into disrepute by prosecutors who barf out misogynist racist insults and death-hopes on social media?

In an online argument with someone over the police shooting of a civilian, Selyem wrote, “That shitbag got exactly what he deserved. … You reap what you sow. And by the way go fuck yourself you liberal shitbag.” [I filled in the redactions]

Selyem also posted a doctored picture of Michelle Obama holding a sign saying, “Trump grabbed my penis.”

Some already have called for Selyem’s termination, saying the posts were not only offensive, unprofessional and beneath the dignity of a public prosecutor, but that anyone who publicly espouses such sentiments cannot impartially administer justice.

“It is disgusting that a public official sworn to protect the public would have these ugly viewpoints,” said Zeke Hernandez, president of the Santa Ana League of United Latin American Citizens No. 147. “The district attorney needs to take any and all appropriate action to let the public know that it does not agree with Selyem’s hateful rhetoric.”

That includes Selyem’s dismissal, Hernandez said.

Fair?

I suppose a compromise could be moving Selyem to a less fraught branch of prosecution – bank fraud type of thing. But really? Yes, I think a guy like that shouldn’t be working in law enforcement.

A year ago Newsweek wryly pointed out that back in 2009 Fox News was so desperate for material on Obama that it had to resort to sneering at his lunch choices.

In news from eight years ago that appears to be from some alternate reality, Obama left the White House and went out for a local bite to eat with vice president and BFF Joe Biden in May. The two politicians ordered hamburgers, MSNBC journalist Andrea Mitchell reported at the time, with the sitting president requesting mustard on his red meat.

The story was featured on Sean Hannity’s show, Hannity’s America, as a screen showed a photoshopped image of Obama surrounded by bottles of mustard with the words “PRESIDENT POUPON” plastered on a red and white banner.

And Hannity actually did make an issue of the fact that Obama ordered mustard on his burger and then asked if they had spicy mustard, Dijon mustard. He actually did.

I just love it when men explain to women how lucky they are to be free of oppression.

being cis has nothing to do with your sex or being a woman. Like me, you're cis if you're not trans or non-binary.

What you feel is the prick of being labeled, something you haven't had to deal with because you were fortunate enough to be born cis

— Will o' the Wisse — ceasefire now (@wissewords) July 8, 2018

Yaaaaaaaz definitely, women never have to feel the prick (or stab) of being labeled. Nobody ever tells us what we are, corrects us about what we are no matter how vehemently we protest, calls us harsh names, teams up in groups to do all that. Lucky lucky lucky fortunate us.

The Guardian:

Iran has arrested a number of people for posting videos on Instagram, including a young woman whose targeting for her clips of her dancing to music has prompted outrage.

According to activists, Maedeh Hojabri, who appears to be in her late teenage years, was one of a number of users behind popular Instagram accounts who have been arrested. The identities of the other detainees have not been confirmed.

Her account, which has been suspended, was reported to have had more than 600,000 followers.

Hojabri has since appeared on a state television programme with other detainees, in which she and others made what activists say were forced confessions, a tactic often used by Iranian authorities.

State TV showed a young woman, her face blurred, crying and shaking while describing her motivation for producing the videos.

https://twitter.com/AlinejadMasih/status/1015560964199075840

One effect of global warming was always going to be more extreme weather events. That’s not in the future tense any more.

Japan is being swamped by rain.

Record rainfall continued to batter Japan on Sunday, with millions of people being urged to leave their homes because of the risk of flooding and landslides that have already killed dozens.

Government officials pleaded with affected residents to “take adequate actions and follow evacuation instructions issued by municipal governments” as forecasters predicted more rain in western and central Japan.

…

The flooding had killed at least 68 people by Sunday afternoon, and 56 more were missing. More than three million people were told to move to safer places such as school buildings or municipal shelters.

In the US the fires have started already.

Firefighters have been able to build containment around several destructive wildfires burning in California.

The state’s largest blaze, the 138-square-mile County Fire burning in Napa and Yolo counties, is 57 percent contained. It has destroyed 10 structures since it broke out June 30. It’s one of many fires burning around the drought-ridden states in the U.S. West.

In early July.

Trump is at his golf course today.

Ice cream, Mandrake? Children’s ice cream?

A resolution to encourage breast-feeding was expected to be approved quickly and easily by the hundreds of government delegates who gathered this spring in Geneva for the United Nations-affiliated World Health Assembly.

Based on decades of research, the resolution says that mother’s milk is healthiest for children and countries should strive to limit the inaccurate or misleading marketing of breast milk substitutes.

Then the United States delegation, embracing the interests of infant formula manufacturers, upended the deliberations.

Ahhh yes the interests of people who make $$$ by selling substitutes for human breast milk – of course they are self-evidently more important than the interest of billions of infants.

American officials sought to water down the resolution by removing language that called on governments to “protect, promote and support breast-feeding” and another passage that called on policymakers to restrict the promotion of food products that many experts say can have deleterious effects on young children.

The American officials didn’t get their way at first, so they resorted to threats.

Ecuador, which had planned to introduce the measure, was the first to find itself in the cross hairs.

The Americans were blunt: If Ecuador refused to drop the resolution, Washington would unleash punishing trade measures and withdraw crucial military aid. The Ecuadorean government quickly acquiesced.

All that, to protect the profits of formula-makers against those pesky nursing babies.

“We were astonished, appalled and also saddened,” said Patti Rundall, the policy director of the British advocacy group Baby Milk Action, who has attended meetings of the assembly, the decision-making body of the World Health Organization, since the late 1980s.

“What happened was tantamount to blackmail, with the U.S. holding the world hostage and trying to overturn nearly 40 years of consensus on best way to protect infant and young child health,” she said.

But then the Russians introduced the measure and the US was all “oh well in that case by all means.”

Although lobbyists from the baby food industry attended the meetings in Geneva, health advocates said they saw no direct evidence that they played a role in Washington’s strong-arm tactics. The $70 billion industry, which is dominated by a handful of American and European companies, has seen sales flatten in wealthy countries in recent years, as more women embrace breast-feeding. Overall, global sales are expected to rise by 4 percent in 2018, according to Euromonitor, with most of that growth occurring in developing nations.

The intensity of the administration’s opposition to the breast-feeding resolution stunned public health officials and foreign diplomats, who described it as a marked contrast to the Obama administration, which largely supported W.H.O.’s longstanding policy of encouraging breast-feeding.

I expect it’s much like their intense opposition to any kind of environmental protections: nothing must be allowed to compete with profits. There is zero profit to be made from infants sucking down the breast milk, and that’s just a god damn waste, when money can be made by selling infant formula instead.

I find this so infuriating – no doubt disproportionately so, but all the same.

When Tennessee K-12 public students begin classes next month, the national motto “In God We Trust” will be required to be posted somewhere in their schools.

That’s not a real thing – a “national motto.” Congress can make one up if it wants to, but it’s stupid. Congress can make up a national sandwich, a national rock song, a national hat, a national ice cream flavor – a national any damn thing, but it doesn’t mean anything. And as for making up a “national motto” that is a fact claim about a non-existent magical sky-pest – they can fuck right off with that. It’s grotesque that anyone should be forcing it on children who attend public schools. There is no god, and I don’t trust it an inch. Both.

What’s called the “National Motto Act” passed quietly at the Tennessee General Assembly last April.

The bill says local districts shall require each school to display ‘In God We Trust” in a prominent location such as an entry, cafeteria or common area.

The bill’s sponsor said there is no penalty for not displaying the motto.

Disgusting. Keep your god to yourselves.

I’m wondering who runs the Richard Dawkins Foundation Twitter, because it’s someone surprisingly crude and ignorant and dogmatic. A very young intern? But I’m wondering why no adults are supervising.

The science is clear and overwhelmingly one-sided. Transgender people exist & are valid. Their existence poses no threat to you or society.

Take time to learn about things. Stay skeptical, always, but learn when to admit you’re wrong should the evidence be sufficient.

— Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science (@rdfrs) July 6, 2018

What? The science is real that transgender people are valid?? What kind of bonkers claim is that? What does it even mean? That’s not something Dawkins would ever say so we know it’s someone else, and I’d be floored if Robyn Blumner said anything that absurd, so who is it?

And then the equally rude and stupid “learn about things” – what things? It sounds like Trump.

And it’s not a one-off.

Tldr; The question is settled and we are moving on to tackle *actual* problems.

Like the encroaching theocracy.

Watch this space.

— Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science (@rdfrs) July 6, 2018

“The question is settled” is not a good look, especially when it most emphatically is not.

The scientific literature. Go read. You’ve got a lot to do.

Run along now.

— Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science (@rdfrs) July 6, 2018

Not even close. “The scientific literature” has nothing to say about whether particular people “are valid” because that’s not any kind of scientific claim to begin with. I’m not clear on what kind of claim it is, but I know it ain’t empirical. And these brisk insulting little commands are just rude-Twitter…they’re not the kind of thing you expect to see a foundation for science and reason pumping out.

Your ignorance is noticed.

— Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science (@rdfrs) July 6, 2018

https://twitter.com/rdfrs/status/1015397305883811840

https://twitter.com/rdfrs/status/1015502198833340416

It’s weird, I tells ya.

Oh yes, it’s all going very well.

North Korea accused the Trump administration on Saturday of pushing a “unilateral and gangster-like demand for denuclearization” and called it “deeply regrettable,” hours after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said his two days of talks in the North Korean capital were “productive.”

How is this possible? Trump just told us the problem was over, done, history,  finito. Fixed by him, he said it was.

On Saturday, Mr. Pompeo and his entourage offered no immediate evidence that they had come away with anything tangible to show that North Korea was willing to surrender its nuclear and missile weapons programs.

Tangible? Oh come now, that’s a very high bar. Surely Trump’s word is all that’s required.

Mr. Pompeo came to Pyongyang to try to get the North Koreans to match their vague commitment to denuclearization — signed by Kim Jong-un in the June meeting with President Trump — with some kind of action. Among the first priorities were a declaration of weapons sites, a timeline of deconstruction efforts and, perhaps, a written statement that the North’s definition of denuclearization matched Mr. Pompeo’s.

Asked if he had gotten any of those, Mr. Pompeo declined to divulge details.

In other words, no.

Privately, Mr. Pompeo has said that he doubts the North Korean leader will ever give up his nuclear weapons. And those doubts have been reinforced in recent days by intelligence showing that North Korea, far from dismantling its weapons facilities, has been expanding them and taking steps to conceal the efforts from the United States.

Mr. Trump has said his summit meeting with Mr. Kim was a success, and he has declared the North “no longer a nuclear threat.” Squaring Mr. Trump’s evaluation with what increasingly seems like a more troubling reality has become one of Mr. Pompeo’s greatest challenges as the United States’ chief diplomat.

That’s not a “challenge,” it’s an impossibility. Trump’s evaluation is sheer dictator-drivel, and there’s no way to “square” it with reality. The Times should skip that kind of evasive bafflegab.

Many people who have negotiated with North Korea in the past, or who follow the country closely, also express doubt that the North will surrender its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

But Heather Nauert, the State Department spokeswoman, denied on Saturday that Mr. Pompeo saw the process as doomed.

“There’s a lot of hard work that’s left to be done,” she said. “We never thought this would be easy, and that’s why consultations continue.”

Who’s “we”? Trump did. Trump told us he’d fixed it and that the threat was over.