Jilly_in_VA
Jilly_in_VA's JournalRussian Wives Now Threatening Ride-Share to Go Get Their Men Back From Ukraine
More than 20 wives of Russian draftees are threatening to hitch a ride to the frontline in Ukraine to pull their husbands out of the war, according to a new report.
The women, from the Kursk and Voronezh regions, have traveled to Belgorod to confront the military leadership at the base from where their husbands were sent, the independent outlet Mozhem Obyasnit reports.
“We’re stopping the cars that go through the [guard] post. We’re tearfully asking them to give us cars to pull our guys out of there. We told them one thing—if they don’t come out and help us, then we, including a pregnant girl, will go to the frontline. If they won’t help [our guys], then we will. We’re going to get our husbands, there’s no other way,” one woman was quoted saying from the city of Valuyki.
The wives’ uprising at the military base is just the latest demonstration of growing outrage from family members of draftees who say the Russian military has knowingly sent the men to die in Ukraine with no equipment, training, or leadership. It’s also just the latest evidence of waning domestic support for the war as more and more ordinary Russians feel just a fraction of the fallout that Ukrainians have been suffering for nearly nine months.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/russian-wives-now-threatening-ride-share-to-go-get-their-men-back-from-ukraine
Local GOPer Calls Cops on Black Girl, 9, for Catching Bugs
An angry New Jersey mother fired off a heated speech on racism during a local board meeting last week after she says her Black daughter was racially profiled by a former council member, who freaked out simply because she was killing invasive insects.
Now, the family has demanded the town of Caldwell have a conversation about racial equity to ensure other children of color will feel safe when they step outside their homes.
“I am not here to label anyone, only to share my point of view as a Black woman, a Black mother, and a Black resident in this town,” Monique Joseph said as she stepped up to the dais during the public comments portion of a Caldwell Borough Council meeting on Nov. 1. “To bring awareness on racism and implicit bias that we experienced on the very street that we live on.”
Joseph described how her neighbor, Gordon Lawshe, called the police on her 9-year-old daughter Bobbi Wilson on Oct. 22 while Bobbi was outside trying to kill spotted lanternflies. The insect is known to be a danger to trees and other plants—so much so that scientists have recommended a myriad of ways for the public to kill them.
Joseph said she received a recording of Lawshe’s 911 call from the Caldwell Police Department.
“‘There’s a little Black woman walking, spraying stuff on the sidewalks and trees. I don’t know what the hell she’s doing; it scares me though,’” Lawshe told police, according to Joseph.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/local-republican-calls-caldwell-new-jersey-cops-on-9-year-old-black-girl-catching-lanternflies
Racists gonna racist. He's a neighbor and presumably knows who she is.
Statues discovered in a Tuscan spring could rewrite the history of art -- and the Roman Empire
A trove of bronze statues that archeologists say could rewrite the history of Italy's transition to the Roman Empire have been discovered in an ancient Tuscan thermal spring.
Italy's Ministry of Culture announced Tuesday that the remarkably well-preserved Etruscan figures were found at San Casciano die Bagni, in the Tuscany region, about 100 miles north of Rome.
The more than 20 bronze statues dating back over 2,000 years are being hailed as one of the most important archaeological discoveries in the region.
“What has re-emerged from the mud at San Casciano dei Bagni is a unique opportunity to rewrite the history of ancient art and with it the history of the passage between the Etruscans and Romans in Tuscany,” Jacopo Tabolli, who led the excavation, said in a statement announcing the find.
The figures represent gods, including Apollo and Hygieia, complete with anatomical details, suggesting the site was of great significance to ancient Etruscans. The statues were offered to the sacred water, the ministry said.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/italy-ancient-etruscan-statues-history-pre-roman-bronze-tuscany-rcna56158
How to move a country: Fiji's radical plan to escape rising sea levels
For the past four years, a special government taskforce in Fiji has been trying to work out how to move the country. The plan it has come up with runs to 130 pages of dense text, interspersed with intricate spider graphs and detailed timelines. The document has an uninspiring title – Standard Operating Procedures for Planned Relocations – but it is the most thorough plan ever devised to tackle one of the most urgent consequences of the climate crisis: how to relocate communities whose homes will soon be, or already are, underwater.
The task is huge. Fiji, which lies in the south Pacific, 1,800 miles east of Australia, has more than 300 islands and a population of just under 1 million. Like most of the Pacific, it is starkly susceptible to the impacts of the climate crisis. Surface temperatures and ocean heat in parts of the south-west Pacific are increasing three times faster than the global average rate. Severe cyclones routinely batter the region. In 2016, Cyclone Winston hit Fiji, killing 44 people and causing $1.4bn of damage, a third of Fiji’s GDP. Since then, Fiji has been hit by a further six cyclones. Five of the 15 countries most at risk from weather-related events are in the Pacific. Fiji is number 14.
What Fiji is attempting to do is unprecedented. For years, politicians and scientists have been talking about the prospect of climate migration. In Fiji, and in much of the Pacific, this migration has already begun. Here, the question is no longer if communities will be forced to move, but how exactly to do it. At present, 42 Fijian villages have been earmarked for potential relocation in the next five to 10 years, owing to the impacts of climate crisis. Six have already been moved. Every new cyclone or disaster brings with it the risk of yet more villages being added to the list.
Moving a village across Fiji’s lush, mountainous terrain is an astonishingly complex task. “We keep on trying to explain this,” Satyendra Prasad, Fiji’s ambassador to the UN, told the Guardian last year. “It is not just pulling out 30 or 40 houses in a village and moving them further upfield. I wish it were that simple.” He rattled off a list of the things that need to be moved along with homes: schools, health centres, roads, electricity, water, infrastructure, the village church. “And in case even that you were able to achieve, you have to relocate people’s burial grounds. Try doing that.” If anything, Prasad was understating the challenges, which are not just logistical – though that element is hard enough – but also financial, political, even spiritual.
The Standard Operating Procedures document is in the final stages of consultation and will soon go before Fiji’s cabinet for approval. “No other country, to the best of my knowledge, has progressed as far in their thinking about how to make planned relocation decisions at a national level,” says Erica Bower, an expert on planned relocations, who has worked with the UN and the Fijian government. “These are questions that so many governments around the world are going to be asking in the next 10 years, 20 years, 50 years.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/08/how-to-move-a-country-fiji-radical-plan-escape-rising-seas-climate-crisis
Some states in the US will have to be planning this soon. Unfortunately, those about to be hardest hit are led by climate deniers.
How to move a country: Fiji's radical plan to escape rising sea levels
For the past four years, a special government taskforce in Fiji has been trying to work out how to move the country. The plan it has come up with runs to 130 pages of dense text, interspersed with intricate spider graphs and detailed timelines. The document has an uninspiring title – Standard Operating Procedures for Planned Relocations – but it is the most thorough plan ever devised to tackle one of the most urgent consequences of the climate crisis: how to relocate communities whose homes will soon be, or already are, underwater.
The task is huge. Fiji, which lies in the south Pacific, 1,800 miles east of Australia, has more than 300 islands and a population of just under 1 million. Like most of the Pacific, it is starkly susceptible to the impacts of the climate crisis. Surface temperatures and ocean heat in parts of the south-west Pacific are increasing three times faster than the global average rate. Severe cyclones routinely batter the region. In 2016, Cyclone Winston hit Fiji, killing 44 people and causing $1.4bn of damage, a third of Fiji’s GDP. Since then, Fiji has been hit by a further six cyclones. Five of the 15 countries most at risk from weather-related events are in the Pacific. Fiji is number 14.
What Fiji is attempting to do is unprecedented. For years, politicians and scientists have been talking about the prospect of climate migration. In Fiji, and in much of the Pacific, this migration has already begun. Here, the question is no longer if communities will be forced to move, but how exactly to do it. At present, 42 Fijian villages have been earmarked for potential relocation in the next five to 10 years, owing to the impacts of climate crisis. Six have already been moved. Every new cyclone or disaster brings with it the risk of yet more villages being added to the list.
Moving a village across Fiji’s lush, mountainous terrain is an astonishingly complex task. “We keep on trying to explain this,” Satyendra Prasad, Fiji’s ambassador to the UN, told the Guardian last year. “It is not just pulling out 30 or 40 houses in a village and moving them further upfield. I wish it were that simple.” He rattled off a list of the things that need to be moved along with homes: schools, health centres, roads, electricity, water, infrastructure, the village church. “And in case even that you were able to achieve, you have to relocate people’s burial grounds. Try doing that.” If anything, Prasad was understating the challenges, which are not just logistical – though that element is hard enough – but also financial, political, even spiritual.
The Standard Operating Procedures document is in the final stages of consultation and will soon go before Fiji’s cabinet for approval. “No other country, to the best of my knowledge, has progressed as far in their thinking about how to make planned relocation decisions at a national level,” says Erica Bower, an expert on planned relocations, who has worked with the UN and the Fijian government. “These are questions that so many governments around the world are going to be asking in the next 10 years, 20 years, 50 years.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/08/how-to-move-a-country-fiji-radical-plan-escape-rising-seas-climate-crisis
Went to save democracy at 7 am in rural VA
Husband dragged me out of bed to go vote with him. It was quite busy at our rural polling station, which is a local elementary school, but no lines, moving quickly. Some idiot woman in front of me had brought her dog with her but at least it was reasonably well-behaved. There were more signs for the Democratic candidate, Jennifer Lewis, than for the Republican incumbent, Ben Cline, outside, and I've seen more this time around. That race was the only thing on the ballot so I duly filled in my oval, deposited my ballot in the whirr-click counting machine, and came on home.
Nikki Haley Says Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Black American Pastor, Should Be 'Deported'
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R), who served under Donald Trump as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said on Sunday that Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.)—a Black American pastor—should be “deported.”
During a rally for Warnock’s Republican opponent, Herschel Walker, Haley talked about being the daughter of immigrants, telling the Georgia crowd, “Legal immigrants are more patriotic than the leftists these days. They worked to come into America and they love America. They want the laws followed in America. So the only person we need to make sure we deport is Warnock.” The crowd cheered.
That’s a pretty stunning thing to say. Deported to where, Nikki? Reverend Warnock was born in Georgia; his dad served in the U.S. Army in World War II, and he is currently serving in the U.S. Senate. Essentially saying this man should “go back to Africa” is quite a closing message, two days before a midterm election.
The race in Georgia, a former red state that recently gave Democrats control of the Senate by electing Warnock and Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) in 2020, is shaping up to be a nail-biter. Despite Walker’s inane comments on the campaign trail, his abuse of his ex-wife, flashing a fake police badge at a debate, and lying over and over about having paid for abortions, mainstream Republicans like Haley and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) have continued to prop him up, because the GOP desperately needs to flip that seat. RealClearPolitics’ latest aggregate of polling shows that it’s working: Walker leads by half a point. The latest polling from FiveThirtyEight shows the former Georgia footballer leading by an entire point.
https://jezebel.com/nikki-haley-says-sen-raphael-warnock-a-black-american-1849751700
That's a lot out of the mouth of Nimrata Rhandawa, a brown first-generation American... just saying
Iowa teen who killed alleged rapist escapes custody
An Iowa sex-trafficking victim who at age 15 killed her alleged rapist escaped custody on Friday, violating the probation she was ordered to serve at a correctional facility after pleading guilty to manslaughter, according to reports.
Pieper Lewis, who is now 18, could face up to two decades behind bars after this alleged probation violation. Authorities have issued a warrant for her arrest, the Des Moines Register newspaper reported.
Lewis pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and willful injury for fatally stabbing Zachary Brooks in a fit of rage in June 2020. Lewis said that Brooks, 37, sexually assaulted her multiple times, according to the newspaper.
Prosecutors and police have not denied that Lewis was trafficked and sexually assaulted. The prosecution contended that Brooks was sleeping when he was stabbed and that he did not present a danger to Lewis at that moment.
Unlike dozens of other US states, Iowa does not have a law providing trafficking victims even a minimal level of criminal immunity. In September, Judge David M Porter sentenced Lewis to five years’ probation, to be served at a women’s correctional facility, the Register reported.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/nov/06/iowa-pieper-lewis-escapes-custody
This is Cyntoia Brown all over again. She should not even be imprisoned. If she is on probation, she should be outside the walls.
'A brazen intrusion': China's foreign police stations raise hackles in Canada
At a strip mall convenience store sandwiched between a hotpot restaurant and hair salon on the outskirts of Toronto, a clerk serves a steady flow of customers on a drizzly autumn morning.
In an office park a few miles away, a travel agent sorts through passports, arranging visas and booking tickets for her Chinese clientele.
And on a quiet street in a nearby suburb, a resident has grown frustrated that he and his family have been roped into an international row over a supposed network of clandestine Chinese police stations.
“I don’t know what this is all about,” the man said. “There’s some kind of mistake. We have nothing to do with this. Look around. This is just a house.”
All three addresses have been linked to a purported network of unsanctioned and illegal Chinese “police stations” around the world, used to exert pressure on exiles and expatriates.
The allegations came after a string of cases around the world in which China has been accused of overstepping diplomatic and legal norms to persecute its citizens far beyond its borders. In a report released last month, the Madrid-based NGO Safeguard Defenders detailed 54 alleged Chinese police stations around the world, prompting authorities in a number of countries, including Germany, the Netherlands and Canada, to launch police investigations.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/07/chinese-police-stations-toronto-canada
They're no doubt here too.
How Political Violence Went Mainstream on the Right
by RACHEL KLEINFELDThe attack against Paul Pelosi was horrific, but it was not an isolated event. In the last five years, political violence has skyrocketed on the right, and desire is growing on the left. The public’s willingness to support partisan violence in America now approaches levels recorded in Northern Ireland at the height of its troubles.
But the problem we face is not solely the number of incidents. It’s that violence has been mainstreamed on the right. It’s effectively become another partisan tool for too many in the GOP. Changing the climate that fuels political violence won’t be easy, but there are ways to do so, particularly by easing polarization so that mainstream Republicans step away from supporting a violent faction.
America has always had a high level of political violence compared to similar high-income, consolidated democracies. In the 1960s and 1970s, when such violence last peaked, it was committed by fringe groups, mostly on the left. In the 1980s and 1990s, extremist fringes on the right started growing. While violence was identifiably ideological, from left-leaning causes like the environment to anti-abortion activists on the right, it was not partisan. Supporting political violence could only hurt mainstream politicians, and it had nothing to do with the election calendar.
Today, violence on the left still looks like this. Progressives who support violence are disconnected from the Democratic Party and are generally disavowed by political leaders (though Democrats could do more to speak against the high levels of property violence that ravaged small businesses during the summer of 2020).
But on the right, support for violence is no longer a fringe position. Hate crimes remain the purview of the normal criminal demographic: unemployed and unmarried young men without kids. However, those joining violent political events like the Jan. 6 insurrection are more likely to be married middle-aged men with jobs and kids. Those most likely to support violence on the right feel most connected to the Republican Party according to a November 2021 Bright Line Watch survey. This is not a marginal movement: It is people who see violence as a means to defend their values, an extension of their political activity.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/11/07/political-violence-mainstream-right-wing-00065297
I rarely read Politico, but this seemed timely
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