Creature Feature: Elephants Learn Teamwork

This video clip from BBC Earth show Asia elephants learning, quickly, to use teamwork to obtain a food treat.  The experimental design is similar to one used to test the intelligence of chimpanzees, who also learn quickly how to depend on a teammate to reach food beyond the reach of a single individual.

Such empirical confirmation of the intelligence of elephants hopefully will help conservationists preserve the lives of a the remaining Asian elephants. They are under renewed attack from poachers who are now murdering them for their hides, not their tusks. More than 100 elephants have died since 2013 at the hands of poachers. In this year alone 20 elephants have been killed with poisoned darts in Myanmar. All were skinned or close to being skinned when there carcasses were discovered. Reportedly the hides are used for jewelry and potions. The slaughter extends to mothers and their calves. Pictures of the barbaric abuse are too horrific to be displayed.  US Person thinks humans are capable of emulating the elephant and use teamwork to put a sudden halt to this perverted horror.

elephant skin for sale at the Golden Rock market

Trump Quid Pro Quo Alleged in Dossier

The Russian Connection is now white-hot, as calls for the Trump's impeachment grow in intensity.  The furor is fueled by the Steele Dossier complied by former British MI6 operative Christopher Steele for an anti-Trump political action committee. The dossier alleges that then candidate Trump agreed to refrain from criticizing the 2014 Russian intervention in the Ukraine if Russia agreed to feed the hacked Hillary Clinton and DNC emails to Wikileaks.  A confidential source told Steele that Russia hacked the DNC and leaked the documents to Wikileaks with the full knowledge and support of senior members of Trump's campaign organization.  Two Trump campaign representatives succeeded in tabling a Republican platform plank to provide Ukraine with "defensive" lethal weapons to fight insurgents backed by the Kremlin.  Platform language was changed from providing "lethal defensive weapons" to "providing appropriate assistance" after Trump's people objected.

Initially Trump's campaign rhetoric concerning Russia was tough and uncompromising.  But that tone changed after he hired Paul Manafort to be his campaign manager.  Manafort has business connections with the Kremlin, and he helped Viktor Yanukovitch, the Kremlin's choice, win the Ukraine presidency in 2010.  Records indicate that Manafort was slated to be paid $12.7 million for his performance.  The dossier details alleged offers by the Kremlin for sweetheart business deals that the candidate turned down.

The BBC reports that the dossier also contains compromising personal material about the President.  Supposedly he was filmed with a group of prostitutes in the presidential suite of Moscow's Ritz-Carlton hotel and also in St. Petersburg.  Apparently this "kompromat" prompted the CIA to launch its own counterintelligence task force to investigate the credibility of such claims in 2016*.  Penthouse magazine has offered a million for the hotel tape, if it exists.  Fake news or "polezni durak"?

*Beyond the sleaze is the possibility that Russians have a large amount of financial leverage over the Trump Organization.  In 2008, Donald Trump Jr. — the GOP nominee’s son and the VP for Development for The Trump Organization — told attendees at a real estate conference in New York City that “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.” Americans need to know how much money has poured into The Trump Organization from Russia and from whom. Sergei Millian, the president of the U.S. Russian Chamber of Commerce and friend of Trump, claims in 2016 the figure is in the hundreds of millions.

COTW: Britain's Hung Parliament

Jeremy Corbyn can declare a Pyrrhic victory in Britain [chart above] since Tory Prime Minister Theresa May failed to achieve a mandate for her course to exit the EU in a snap general election. The loss of the Tories slim majority in Parliament indicates the depth of dissatisfaction with austerity policies among young voters. Two thirds of voters under twenty-four voted Labour. Half under thirty-four voted Labour. [see chart below, credit: Financial Times] Corbyn's party did not win an outright majority but pulled to within three points of the Tories' vote total. Many commentators are saying that the shocking outcome--once again the Murdoch dominated CMM got it totally wrong predicting a Tory landslide--leaves the Tory "Brixit" policy in ruins. It certainly gives EU negotiators more leverage over Britain's exit from the single market, if it ever materializes. Even the hardcore capitalist newspaper, Financial Times, has appealed to Jeremy Corbyn in its editorial pages to abandon a "hard exit" from the Union. How the British economy can successfully compete without the trade advantages of its natural European market is becoming increasing problematic. Estimates are that post-Brexit trade with the European Union may fall by 40 percent, and foreign investment by 20 percent.

the Queen addresses her subjects, Getty Images

May is attempting to cobble a working governing arrangement with the cranky Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland, delaying the Queen's Speech to Parliament [photo]. The Liberal Party has already ruled out a coalition government with the Tories having been burned once before. Speculation is rife that a deal with the extreme Unionists--founded by Ulster fundamentalist Rev. Ian Paisley--will blow up in the Prime Minister's face, and a second general election will have to be called soon. Whether Corbyn can provide a real alternative to the Tory financial war machine remains to be determined given his constant capitulation to the neoliberal Blairites in his party. His opposition to driving out the right-wing MPs who sought his removal, agreeing to free votes on military action in Syria, the renewal of Trident nuclear weapons, and then incorporating these retreats into his own manifesto indicate his wiliness to accommodate the ruling plutocracy at the expense of workers.

The take-away lesson from the recent general elections: Anglo-Saxon nationalists on both sides of the Atlantic are caught in a game of pickle between the globalized ruling elites typified by the former Rothschild banker and newly elected French President Macron.

'Toontime: Up A Lazy River with Trump

Comey's testimony was a disaster for the Trump Circus.  It confirmed what the media has reported earlier: Comey was fired for investigating the Russian Connection.  US Person previously wrote that an intelligence dossier prepared by a former British spy alleges that the Russians are in possession of financial information that is very damaging to Trump, perhaps creating fears in the US intelligence community that the President could be subjected to undue influence by his Russian contacts.   US investigators have since corroborated that some of the conversations described in the dossier actually took place based on top secret telephone intercepts.  Comey testified he could not talk about the dossier's contents in an "open setting"*  The White House spokesman has called CNN's reporting, "fake news"--not quite as disturbing as fake "twits".

credit:  Adam Zyglis

* Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, asked Comey about the dossier and the allegations contained within. “At the time of your departure from the FBI, was the FBI able to confirm any criminal allegations contained in the Steele document?”  Comey answered, “Mr. Chairman, I don’t think that’s a question I can answer in an open setting because it goes into the details of the investigation."

Puntang the Rhino Euthanized

first western specimen, W. Bell, 1793

One of the last three of Malaysia's Sumatran rhinos (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis) Puntang, a female was euthanized early Sunday morning after treating veterinarians diagnosed her with terminal squamous cell cancer.  She was believed to be around twenty-five years old.  Puntang was captured in 2011 and lived out her life in Tabin Wildlife Reserve, a fenced sanctuary, with two other rhinos.  She underwent dental surgery in April after caretakers observed a large abscess thought to be due to dental infection in her jaw.  The surgery was successful, but the abscess remained. Puntang was euthanized to end her suffering.  She was in pain, unable to vocalize and could not breath through her left nostril. 

It was hoped she would contribute to the rapidly dwindling gene pool of her species, but like other hairy rhinos she was unable to breed in captivity. The live in small, isolated groups and have a very low birthrate which contributes the threat of extinction in the wild.  Puntang still produced eggs, so she might have been able to contribute to in vitro fertilization efforts, but her caretakers were unable to retrieve any oocytes.  Only 55 to 100 Sumatran rhinos are thought to be still alive; most live in Indonesia.

US Leaves Trump Behind on Climate

Thanks to the pledges of eleven states including the world's fifth largest economy, California, and 246 cities, the United States will stay the course on reducing greenhouse gas emissions in spite of the trumped-up Trump.  Amazon, Apple and Target have also joined the movement towards a sustainable future.  Those commitments represent more than 40% of the US economy according to AP.  It is no surprise that most of these states have Democratic delegations.  Also not surprising is that the red states in the country's "fly-over zone" are fighting greenhouse reduction goals. [map] Undoing most of the nation's existing legislation to reduce global warming would take years of court battles.  Some experts think that if the United States simply moves on with existing programs, it will be able to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 19% by 2025, which is close to the 25-28% reductions agreed to in the Paris accord.  So this is another "accomplishment" the Trumpster can take credit for: activating the American public to support reducing greenhouse gas for the world, and Pittsburgh for pity's sake.  Resist here.

Toontime: Poor, White and No Brains

credit: Kevin Siers

BC Idonwanna sez: The Russians grabbed Hillary too!

When someone explains to US Person why poor white people repeatedly vote against their own economic interests, then he will not have to post "rude" cartoons like this one anymore. Racism is too facile an answer, and blaming the Russians for a broken political system is simply silly, if not distracting. No one has explained how a few Russian hackers, probably acting on their own accord, managed to convince over 300 members of the Electoral College, who are supposed to know better, to vote for Trump. Were the leaked documents from the database of the Democratic Party that volatile (something on the order of LBJ ordered a hit on JFK) that an entire nation was swayed to vote against its presidential candidate? NOT.  The truth is the Democratic Party establishment fielded the wrong candidate--Hillary had huge negatives going into the election and the resignation of her sycophant DNC chair, Wasserman-Schultz, a bump in the road--and completely missed an inflection point of history.  Because like the Repugnants, they are a front for the plutocracy. It was the sage of Baltimore, H.L. Mencken who said, "democracy is the pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." Real Americans, you betcha'!