COTW: Sixteen Years of War

credit: AP

Update:  Just in time for Veterans Day, a bomber penetrated the Baghram air base, Afghanistan early Saturday morning and blew himself to bits taking four US personnel with him.  Sixteen others were injured in the attack as they gathered for a "fun run" in celebration of Veterans Day.  The Taliban claimed credit for the attack and told AP they were looking to do the most damage they could.  The giant base has several layers of security including retinal scans.

{4.11.16} The war in Afghanistan is entering its sixteenth year, but it earned only one passing mention by the two allowed candidates for President during their staged debates.  The anniversary of 'Merica's longest war was marked by another ghastly killing in Kunduz, the site of US strafing of a charity hospital run by Doctors Without Boarders in October, 2015.  This time thirty civilians were killed by US airstrikes, called in after heavy fighting erupted between Taliban and government forces on Thursday three miles from the city center.  Two US personnel were also killed.  Despite the Nobel laureate's promises, eight thousand US soldiers remain in the country.The chart below shows the increasing number of civilians killed in the fighting:

credit: UN

World's Tallest Tropical Tree Located

credit: Carnegie Institution for Science

It rises along with two of its siblings to an astounding 309 feet above the rain forest floor of Sabah, Borneo.  It is the world's tallest tropical tree, measured by LIDAR overflights.  The Shorea faguetiani or Yellow Meranti (provisional) was located by Gregory Asner of the Carnegie Institution for Science at Stanford University during a mapping survey of the relatively undisturbed Danum Valley. He also located 49 other trees taller than the previously announced record holder at 294 feet.  Film director James Cameron, who directed the Avatar science fiction film about the industrial exploitation of an extraterrestrial forest world appropriately funded the helicopter flight.  Asner told an audience that the location was extremely moving to him and provides yet another example of the power of nature that can inspire man to protect other forms of life on his home planet.  He noted that trees of this immense size and age do not exist outside of undisturbed, primary forest.  This tree is six times the average length of a sperm whale*.  The LIDAR mapping technique [image] uses 500,000 laser beams per second shot from a helicopter to produce a three dimensional image of the forest canopy to ground level.

*The tallest coast redwood tree living in Redwood National Park, California is 379.1 feet tall.  Hyperion is said to be the world's largest living tree.  Park officials should be extremely vigilant in protecting this magnificent living creature from insane attacks by vandals, thrill seekers, extremists of various sorts, or just plain idiots.  Hyperion was not located until 2006.  It is named after one of the Titans of Greek mythology, a child of the Earth and Sky.

The Death of Democracy

Roughly half of 'Mericans woke up after election day to find their democracy had died overnight. For the second time in sixteen years a presidential candidate wins the popular vote but looses the only vote that counts in the Electoral College. (Clinton 59.79 million, Trump 59.5 million according to AP) Thousands took the streets last night to express their displeasure with the anachronistic process that disenfranchises a majority of the people. The fact is that American politics has devolved into a contest between two well-defined voting blocs divided by geography, economics and culture: one is working class and embraces diversity, the other is presumptively privileged and clings to conformity. Three states whose electorate is divided between these two blocs and voters who view themselves as independent control the outcome of contested presidential elections. Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida together control 67 electoral votes. Today, a presidential candidate cannot win an election without carrying at least one or two of these states. Hillary Clinton lost all three. The custom is--and it is just a custom because only thirty states have made it law--that the result of the popular vote in a state controls to whom its electoral votes are awarded.

Because this undemocratic process is not truly representative of the people's will, there is discussion on how to fix it. Frankly only a constitutional amendment will solve the problem, and that process would require Herculean resolve that a few transitory demonstrations will not provide. Nevertheless, people in populous states that are reliably part of one bloc such as California or Texas justifiably believe their votes do not count. The proposed Interstate Popular Vote Compact, which would not take effect until states controlling 270 electoral votes have signed, is an attempt to short-cut the amendment route but it is probably unconstitutional since it violates the equal protection doctrine of one person, one vote. It preserves the Electoral College, but awards electors based on the result of the national popular vote. The compact would substitute the current domination of "battleground states" for those "spectator" states who agree to elect a president by national popular vote. So far eleven states controlling 165 electoral votes have passed the agreement. There is nothing sacred about the Electoral College. In 1789 only three states used the winner-take-all rule to award its electoral votes for president; the Constitution does not require this (Article II, Section 1). It is time to scrap a system intended for a different, less educated age, or risk being equated with Russia among the world's republics.

COTW: Sixteen Years of War

credit: AP

Update:  Just in time for Veterans Day, a bomber penetrated the Baghram air base, Afghanistan and blew himself to bits taking four US personnel with him.

{4.11.16} The war in Afghanistan is entering its sixteenth year, but it earned only one passing mention by the two allowed candidates for President during their staged debates.  The anniversary of 'Merica's longest war was marked by another ghastly killing in Kunduz, the site of US strafing of a charity hospital run by Doctors Without Boarders in October, 2015.  This time thirty civilians were killed by US airstrikes, called in after heavy fighting erupted between Taliban and government forces on Thursday three miles from the city center.  Two US personnel were also killed.  Despite the Nobel laureate's promises, eight thousand US soldiers remain in the country.The chart below shows the increasing number of civilians killed in the fighting:

credit: UN

'Toontime: The Choice?

credit: JD Crowe
BC Idonwanna sez: Me vote for sovereignty!

Yes, there you have it 'Mericans: a misogynistic, spoiled rich kid versus a hypocritical, feminist plutocrat. Too bad the whole campaign could not have been reduced to 140 words and save US a lot of angst. Notice the small hands and defensive body posture!

COTW: Wildlife Services Told to Get Real

credit: High Country News

The federal agency that is in the business of killing wildlife at the whim of agricultural interests, Wildlife Services (a misnomer if there ever was one) was ordered by a federal court to update its twenty-two year old nationwide environmental impact statement on which it relies to kill wolves among a long list of other species labeled "vermin" or "predator" [see chart above]. The agency rarely uses non-lethal means to control wildlife populations because half of its budget is controlled by contracts with state and local agencies and businesses. Research on non-lethal alternatives is therefore stalled. The agency has been "studying" non-lethal controls since 1972! It killed a sickening and shocking 2.7 million animals in 2014, including 796 bobcats, 322 wolves, 580 black bears, 305 cougars and 61,702 coyotes. As a former agency biologist said, “Until Wildlife Services is told differently by the people who pay the bills, it’s hard to imagine real change. Managing animals is easy. Managing people is really hard.”

The court order came as part of a settlement with Wild Guardians, a non-profit conservation group and Wildlife Services in Nevada. The agency agreed to stop its operations in that state until the assessment is updated to properly address the impacts of predator removal in Nevada. Cultural predispositions are difficult to change. Predators in the west have been summarily shot since Meriwether Lewis killed a grizzly bear in Montana in 1805. Given that fact that in the 21st century many North American mammals are dying off due to habitat loss, its past time for man to change his behavior towards his fellow creatures. Non lethal control means work. Fifty-eight percent of sheep ranchers in Montana now use deterrence methods including guard dogs and lamb sheds. The backward state of Idaho paid $4600 per wolf in 2014 to gun down wolves. Developing a habit of tolerance is what is needed, not more genocide.

New Low: CO₂ Will Hit 400ppm All Year

The Mauna Loa Observatory predicts that global carbon dioxide levels will exceed 400ppm all year for the first time in recorded history and not recede for many generations into the future This is the recognized red line for disastrous climate change. The World Meteorological Organization said its annual "Greenhouse Gas Bulletin" that the strong El Nino event of 2015-16 has reduced the ability of natural sinks such as oceans and forests to absorb CO₂. These sinks absorb about half of the global carbon dioxide emissions. Those emissions have increased 37% in the period 1990 to 2015. The organization calls for implementation of the Paris Climate Agreement on a fast track.

In related news, Chinese environmental officials including the local bureau chief were arrested recently for their involvement in a scheme to alter air quality readings by stuffing cotton gauze into detection equipment in the industrial city of Xi'an. The head of the monitoring station made a copy of a key and provided a password to allow workers to stuff the detection equipment and report fraudulent readings to the government. Video surveillance tapes were also deleted. An insider told reporters the sabotage was accomplished to avoid paying penalties for high readings; air quality officials must shut down local industry if air quality becomes too impaired.  Last year the government discovered that another monitoring station altered its particulate readings by spraying samplers with a fire hose.