From The BBC: Your pictures of Scotland 16 - 23 April

It's always a pleasure for me to view this recurring feature. Today the punning efforts of
whoever it is that writes the photo captions is on full display. Enjoy!

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-56830279

It's now 6 days until I get my second Moderna jab. Not that I'm counting or anything. ;O)

From The Guardian: Scotland's Bass Rock: world's largest colony of northern gannets - in pictures

This focus on nature is just the calming influence I need today. Maybe you might find
the same.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2021/apr/21/scotlands-bass-rock-worlds-largest-colony-of-northern-gannets-in-pictures

From The Guardian: French officials perplexed by gold bars and coins found stashed in old house

I'd be happy to be perplexed in this way!

from article:

The surprise discovery of three jam jars filled with gold bars and hundreds of gold coins in an old building marked for renovation has left a mountain community in eastern France perplexed and celebrating.

The mayor of Morez, a small industrial town in a picturesque valley in the Jura, said the value of the find was more than €600,000 (£520,000). Town hall staff first found three jam jars of gold bars and coins worth €500,000 at the back of a dusty shelf, then opened a safe hidden behind boxes in a wardrobe to find up to €150,000 in gold coins.

The mayor, Laurent Petit, said the three-storey building in the town centre had been lived in by four brothers and sisters without children. When the last died in his 90s last year a relative offered to sell the building to the town hall for €130,000. Morez, like many other towns in France, was seeking to buy up and renovate old buildings to attract families back to its emptying centre.

“The house was packed with objects and furniture,” Petit said. “There had been several generations who didn’t throw anything away, kept everything and lived really frugally. I agreed we’d buy the property as it was and we’d gradually empty its contents ourselves.”

more text and photos at link

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/16/french-officials-perplexed-gold-bars-and-coins-found-stashed-old-house

From The BBC: Your pictures of Scotland 9 - 16 April

Ahhh, this is just what I need to provide a calming focus today.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-56717976

From Al Jazeera: The Boogaloo movement has a new strategy

And it's not good for children or other living things. Fascists and Anarchists are dangerous
people and the best thing we can do is lock them all up. In reading the entire article I
never did find an explanation of where "Agora" fits into all this or what it is exactly but if it's part of this new strategy then it's not good. I had enough to worry about before reading this...

from article:

*Members of the anti-government Boogaloo movement are adopting a new strategy to achieve the end of the US government, members tell Al Jazeera.

Adherents are calling for cooperation with left-wing organisations – previously considered adversaries by some in the Boogaloo – to foster a mass withdrawal from the political and economic systems overseen by the United States government.

Based on the political philosophy “agorism”, it aims to bleed the government of tax funds through a “Counter-Economy”, compliance with laws and mandates given by voters.

The desired result: the collapse of the US government through “death by a thousand cuts”.*

much more text and photos at link

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/4/16/holdagorism-what-is-the-ideologyoftheboogaloobois

I can't see anti-fa becoming allies with anarchists and fascists but then what do I know?
Talk me down. Please.

From The Guardian: Scientists sound warning note over malaria drug resistance in Africa

Resistance to malaria drugs in Africa may be starting to take hold, according to a study that maps changes similar to those seen a decade ago when drug resistance spread in south-east Asia.

In Cambodia and neighbouring countries, the artemisinin drug compounds widely used against malaria are no longer always effective. The falciparum malaria parasites have developed genetic mutations that allow them to evade the drugs. There has been great concern that drug resistance could spread to Africa, which has the highest burden of cases of this type of malaria – and the highest toll of child deaths from it.

A study in Rwanda, published in the Lancet Infectious Diseases journal on Wednesday, shows that the feared erosion of efficacy of the malaria drugs may have begun. As happened in south-east Asia, researchers have found that giving a child a course of artemisinin compound drugs does not always clear the malaria parasites from their blood in three days, as it should.

Artemisinins, introduced in the early 2000s from China, are given in combination with a different type of malaria drug to ensure all parasites are cleared and the efficacy of the drugs is not compromised. The most common combination is artemether-lumefantrine, which Rwanda began to use in 2006.

more text and photo at link

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/apr/15/africa-on-the-verge-of-resistance-to-key-malaria-drugs-rwanda-study-warns

From The Guardian: Rockin' in the free world? Inside the rightwing takeover of protest music

'It’s easy to laugh at hardcore patriots misunderstanding Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA, but such appropriation is increasingly widespread – and dangerously twisting the truth.'

'Did you know that Born in the USA is actually an anti-Vietnam war anthem? Since Donald Trump embraced the 1984 Bruce Springsteen song during rallies, the lyrics have prompted so much explanation it now borders on cliche. Yet it’s no less unsettling for it, becoming a prime example of a startlingly widespread trend for the right wing to co-opt music about struggle and progress.

President Ronald Reagan made the first attempt to gloss over the context of the song’s ironically upbeat chorus after the release of the Born in the USA album. Reagan name-checked Springsteen during a New Jersey rally in an attempt to connect the musician to a “message of hope” for America. Springsteen’s opposition to its use didn’t affect the fervour for the song from Trump and his supporters. As Barack Obama noted in an episode of his podcast series with Springsteen this month: “It ended up being appropriated as this iconic, patriotic song. Even though that was not necessarily your intention.

Neither has the Clash’s status as leftist punk icons been a sticking point for Boris Johnson, who named the band one of his favourites in 2019; nor has Rage Against the Machine’s socialism and anti-police stance been a problem for anti-mask truthers and Trump diehards, who last year blasted the band’s Killing in the Name at a Trump rally.'

much more text and photos at link:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/apr/13/right-wing-take-over-protest-music-bruce-springsteen-born-in-the-usa-american-politics

Damn reTHUG fascist insurrectionists are the reason why we can't have nice things!

From Al Jazeera: Knoxville shooting: One dead, officer wounded at Tennessee school

Police in the US city of Knoxville, Tennessee, say one person has died and a police officer has been wounded in an incident at a local high school on Monday afternoon.

In a statement shared on Twitter, the Knoxville Police Department (KPD) said law enforcement officers responded to a report “of a male subject who was possibly armed” at Austin-East Magnet High School in Knoxville.

snip

The officer was struck at least once, police said and transported to hospital with non-life threatening injures.

“One male was pronounced deceased at the scene, while another was detained for further investigation,” the KPD said in its statement, adding that no other gunshot victims were known.

more at link

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/4/12/us-multiple-victims-reported-in-school-shooting-in-tennessee

From The Guardian: 'A system of global apartheid': Harsha Walia on why the border crisis is a myth.

I consider this long read to be worthwhile and informative.

From article:

'The rising number of migrant children and families seeking to cross the US border with Mexico is emerging as one of the most serious political challenges for Joe Biden’s new administration.

That’s exactly what Donald Trump wants: he and other Republicans believe that Americans’ concerns about a supposed “border crisis” will help Republicans win back political power.

But Harsha Walia, the author of two books about border politics, argues that there is no “border crisis,” in the United States or anywhere else. Instead, there are the “actual crises” that drive mass migration – such as capitalism, war and the climate emergency – and “imagined crises” at political borders, which are used to justify further border securitization and violence.

Walia, a Canadian organizer who helped found No One Is Illegal, which advocates for migrants, refugees and undocumented people, talked to the Guardian about Border and Rule, her new book on global migration, border politics and the rise of what she calls “racist nationalism.” The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.'

much more at link:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/07/us-border-immigration-harsha-walia