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Revealed: the 20 firms behind a third of all carbon emissions

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/09/revealed-20-firms-third-carbon-emissions?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Librem_Social #climatechange #climatecrisis

Disappearing Peruvian glaciers

It is common knowledge that glaciers are melting in most areas across the globe. The speed at which tropical glaciers in the Peruvian Andes are retreating is particularly alarming, however. In the first detailed investigation of all Peruvian mountain ranges, a research team has ascertained a drastic reduction of almost 30 percent in the area covered by glaciers between 2000 and 2016.

Large, long-term study suggests link between eating mushrooms and a lower risk of prostate cancer

Results from the first long-term cohort study of more than 36,000 Japanese men over decades suggest an association between eating mushrooms and a lower risk of prostate cancer.

Particles emitted by consumer 3D printers could hurt indoor air quality

The particles emitted from 3D printers can negatively impact indoor air quality and have the potential to harm respiratory health, according to a new study.

Another casualty of climate change? Recreational fishing

Another casualty of climate change will likely be shoreline recreational fishing, according to new research. The study finds some regions of the U.S. may benefit from increasing temperatures, but those benefits will be more than offset by declines in fishing elsewhere.

Stark Lessons From Wall Street’s #MeToo Moment

On Wall Street, most men accused of sexual harassment continue to pursue their careers — even after paying large judgements.

The post Stark Lessons From Wall Street’s #MeToo Moment appeared first on The Intercept.

Even a Small Nuclear War Could Trigger a Global Apocalypse

This story was originally published by Wired and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Stipulated: A nuclear war would be real bad. But, like, how bad, exactly? What if it wasn’t all-out, the United States and Russia throwing thousands of warheads at each other, but instead something more limited? Longtime adversaries India […]

The Trump Administration Has Figured out How to Get Rid of Federal Workers Without Firing Them

“It’s nearly impossible to fire a federal worker,” acting White House chief of staff and budget chief Mick Mulvaney told the audience at a South Carolina Republicans’ dinner in August. “I know that because a lot of them work for me, and I’ve tried. You can’t do it.” But Mulvaney reassured his audience that the […]

A worker owned taxi #coop in Southend has grown from 6 to 70 drivers.

They repaid all their investors and returned £3000 to their members last year. The same year Uber left the area after failing to compete with them.

We need this in every town and city!

https://www.thenews.coop/138486/topic/development/southend-taxi-co-op-launches-operations-neighbouring-rochford/

Trump Ally Sen. Ron Johnson Had a Meltdown on “Meet the Press”

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) gave a wild performance on “Meet the Press” Sunday, refusing to answer questions posed by host Chuck Todd, instead peddling unfounded conspiracy theories about the 2016 election. The bizarre interview is a demonstration of how President Donald Trump’s allies have responded to the impeachment inquiry by rallying around debunked theories about […]

The Country’s “Most Polluted Air Basin” Braces for a Trump Plan That Will Make Things Worse

This story was originally published by City Lab and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Kieshaun White says that he doesn’t like to talk politics when it comes to the environment. He prefers to stick to the data. A year ago, as a high school senior, he launched a network of air-pollution […]

A Second Whistleblower Is Coming Forward in Ukraine Scandal, Attorneys Say

The lawyers representing the first whistleblower, whose complaint about Donald Trump’s behavior provoked an impeachment inquiry, said Sunday that they now representing another whistleblower with knowledge of the Ukraine scandal. The second whistleblower poses a threat to the president’s attempts to downplay the scandal because the second person supposedly has first-hand knowledge of Trump’s dealings […]

Why is the Army Still Honoring Confederate Generals?

The Army has faced almost no resistance to bases named for prominent white supremacists.

The post Why is the Army Still Honoring Confederate Generals? appeared first on The Intercept.

Yes, we know you're excited; Yes, you can see the anodized chassis we got into this Aspen batch; Yes, we are asking you to be patient as we incrementally ship through tens of thousands of Librem 5 phones over the next handful of months; Yes, you will get yours. Yes, you will be impressed. @purism #librem5

Trolls Are Sowing Discord Between Sanders and Warren Supporters

As the Democratic primaries approach, relationships between supporters of Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the two most viable progressive presidential contenders to ever face off in the Democratic primaries, are beginning to fray. Though, in general, goodwill continues to prevail—Warren’s campaign team sent dinner and cookies to Sanders’ campaign staff following his heart procedure—lately tempers have been heating up, ignited by injudicious comments and outright nasty jibes that take on a life of their own in social media. Consider these recent examples.

On CNN in September, Emily Tisch Sussman, a former vice president at the Center for American Progress, attempted to shame progressives who support Sanders: “If you are still supporting Sanders as opposed to Warren, it’s kind of showing your sexism. Because she has more detailed plans, and her plans have evolved.”

On the Bernie side of the fence, you have political commentator Benjamin Studebaker, who, in a critique of progressive media coverage of the race, had this to say about Warren:

She’s as bad as Hillary. She’s worse, because Hillary made it obvious, and she hides it so well that for months, the left press has gone easy on her. No more. Don’t give her an inch, because she’ll take a mile. Be relentless. She’s Harris. She’s Biden. She’s Booker. Make it so.

Aimee Terese, who cohosts the “What’s Left?” podcast with Studebaker, likewise gives Warren no quarter, tweeting: 

Then there was the brouhaha that erupted when the Working Families Party (WFP), which in 2016 backed Sanders, voted in September to endorse Warren.

WFP polled two groups of people, what it described as “tens of thousands” of supporters (party members and/or subscribers to the party’s online newsletter) and the 56 members of the party’s national committee. The votes of each of the two groups, the supporters and the leadership, were weighted, with each receiving 50% stake in the final outcome. Once the votes were tallied, Warren won 61% of the weighted vote. WFP, however, refused to release the vote tallies from each group as it has in past election cycles, leading Sanders supporters to suspect that their candidate was the preferred choice of the members, and Warren the pick of the party leaders (a group who played a role in the selection process analogous to the Democratic Party’s superdelegates).

Some outraged Sanders supporters lashed out on twitter, attacking Maurice Mitchell, WFP’s national director and Nelini Stamp, WFP’s national organizing director, both of whom are black. This prompted more than 100 black leaders to sign a letter decrying the attacks, that read in part:

[Mitchell and Stamp] are being threatened on a daily basis, by self-identified Sanders supporters, with hateful, violent and racist threats. “Uncle Tom.” “Slave.” “Cunt.” These kinds of threats have no place in our movements, and are reminiscent of the threats Black people would receive when daring to vote …

Indeed, according to screenshots of deleted tweets captured by Time magazine, one Sanders supporter, addressing Mitchell, tweeted: “Why not have the balls to respond you cunt. You half man. You corporatist. You SLAVE!” Another pro-Sanders tweeter said of Warren, “She wants to bring you back to incremental slavery of neoliberalism. @SenSanders is the progressive future, you [sic] choice stinks of corruption.”

This disturbed Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza, who has not endorsed any candidate. She wrote on Medium:

When a party issues an endorsement, particularly a party that hones its focus on families that are struggling every day to live with dignity, it is right for those of us who care about the same things to interrogate the process. …

But what we cannot do, what we must not do, is devolve into such nastiness that we wish cancer on their families, call them Uncle Toms who are dancing for slave masters, wish that they would be raped, and the like. I cannot say that we are better than that because I’ve seen the tweets. But what I know is that we who long for freedom and safety and dignity and justice will not win if we cannot be distinguished from the Right

Mitchell says he is pleased that there are “two champions of Medicare for All and a wealth tax in this race.” But he is unapologetic about the party’s endorsement:

Senator Warren has an unmatched ability to explain in everyday terms how our economy and democracy got rigged, who rigged them, and how we can unrig them. She’s a fighter for working families who strikes fear into the hearts of Wall Street and Silicon Valley CEOs. We’re so glad there are two leading structural change candidates in this primary, but we’re thrilled to support Warren.

Later that month, attacks against Warren by Sanders supporters again erupted on Twitter after someone with the name @isamuel, a “Catholic American Socialist” with more than 16,000 followers, reposted a video clip of an interview in which Warren spoke about her mother being part Cherokee and part Delaware (a claim she was unable to prove and no longer makes). That video, which went viral, originated from a person with the name @AlytaDeLeon, an “antiwar Mexican American socialist.” They posted it as if it were a recent video, and not one from 2012 that has long been in circulation. Since joining Twitter in March, @AlytaDeLeon has sent out more than 7,000 tweets. We don’t know why most of the recent ones are devoted to attacking Warren. The person who tweets at @AlytaDeLeon did not respond to multiple inquiries from In These Times.

What we do know is that Russia has already deployed a network of bots and fake social media accounts to sow discord among Democratic voters in 2020, just as it did in the 2016 election. The Wall Street Journal reported that during the June and July Democratic Debates:

Hundreds of social-media accounts with bot-like traits promoted misinformation and content aimed at inflaming racial divisions. … The hashtag #DemDebateSoWhite was tweeted Tuesday [July 30] night by an account from a user with the name Susannah Faulkner and then shared by conservative activist Ali Alexander. The hashtag received thousands of interactions, but … a high number of the accounts using the hashtag had bot-like characteristics. The original tweet appears to have been taken down, but the hashtag continued circulate on Twitter.

It is unclear how many of the attacks on Working Families staff were sent by bots or covert agitators, or where they originated from, but Time reports that many of the attacks were “accompanied with the hashtag #BernieorBust,” which was commonly used in 2016 by Russian trolls to sow division between Sanders and Clinton supporters.

That’s not to say policy differences between the candidates shouldn’t be vigorously debated. Progressives need to make an informed decision. Sticking to smart critiques rather than hyperbole and vitriol, however, could also pay political dividends. Warren and Sanders appear set to go to the 2020 Democratic National Convention with substantial numbers of delegates. Should no candidate win on the first ballot, as seems likely, it is hard to see how either could get the nomination without the other’s delegates.

At the debates, Sanders and Warren have stood shoulder to shoulder, defending Medicare for All from tepid centrists. It’s time for their supporters to do the same, and not get baited into flame wars.