Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

City apartments or jungle huts: What chemicals and microbes lurk inside?

Researchers found city homes to be rife with industrial chemicals, cleaning agents and fungi that love warm, dark surfaces, while jungle huts had fresher air, more sunlight and natural materials with which humans evolved.

From cone snail venom to pain relief

Conotoxins are bioactive peptides found in the venom that marine cone snails produce for prey capture and defense. They are used as pharmacological tools to study pain signalling and have the potential to become a new class of analgesics. Scientists have now provided an overview on the status quo of conotoxin research.

With the Help of Teachers Unions, the Climate Strikes Could Be Moving Into Phase 2

As young people across the country join the global movement to mobilize school strikes to demand climate action, one group is starting to think more seriously about how to best support those efforts: their teachers.

Educators, like those in the California Federation of Teachers and the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA), are beginning to leverage their power both as teachers and union members to push the bounds of climate activism.

This Isn’t the First Time the United States Has Abandoned the Kurds

The Trump administration announced October 6 that U.S. troops were withdrawing from northern Syria—not leaving the country, but retreating just enough to leave Kurdish allies defenseless.

Unsurprisingly, Turkey used the opportunity to invade. Roughly 180,000 people living in northern Syria were displaced, while more than 200 were killed in fighting. On October 22, a Russia-brokered peace left Turkey and Russia in control of a swath of northern Syria.

The United States had allied with Syrian Kurds in the fight against ISIS in 2014, but U.S. support was purely militaristic. Turkey—itself a U.S. ally, through NATO—continued repressing its own Kurdish population while receiving U.S. security assistance, and considered the Syrian Kurds on its southern border a terrorist threat. Meanwhile, the United States offered no diplomatic support for Syrian Kurds. Instead, the United States used Kurdish fighters to beat back ISIS, at great human cost, then left them behind.

It’s not the first time the United States has treated an ally badly, nor even the first time we have done so to the Kurds, as James Ciment wrote for In These Times in September 1996. In his article, “Useful Victims,” Ciment lays out the precarious geopolitical position of one of the world’s largest stateless people:

The roughly 30 million Kurds, who inhabit a broad swath of mountainous terrain in the northern Middle East, have been called “history’s losers.” A fiercely independent and culturally distinctive Muslim people, the Kurds have had the misfortune of occupying the territory of several aggressive and repressive regional powers, including Turkey, Iraq and Iran, [regimes] determined to build coherent nation-states where none existed before. Viewing the Kurds as an obstacle to that mission, these regimes have dealt ruthlessly with them. After the Iran-Iraq War … [Saddam Hussein] murdered up to several hundred thousand Iraqi Kurds … in retaliation for their support for [Iran].

In response to Hussein’s aggression, the United States helped establish a “safe haven” in northern Iraq for the Kurds.

The United States used the safe haven as an excuse to expand its military presence in the region and mount attacks on the Hussein regime—but showed little interest in the Kurds themselves. In 1995, Turkey invaded the safe haven and the United States stepped aside. By 1996, Ciment wrote, “Clinton administration officials [were hinting] that the United States may be attempting to distance itself from” the Kurds. He concluded:

If the United States chooses to abandon the Kurds in the near future, it will not be the first time. After cutting off military aid to the Kurds in 1975, thus betraying them in their struggle against the then-pro-Soviet, anti-Shah Baghdad government, [then-Secretary of State] Henry Kissinger was heard to remark: “Covert action is not missionary work.” Indeed.

The Final Reveal

These gender reveals have gotten a *little* out of hand.

Anti-Flag Announce New Album “20/20 Vision”, Stream Video for “Hate Conquers All”

Political punk stalwarts Anti-Flag have a new record coming out next year. It’s titled 20/20 Vision and will be available on January 17 via Spinefarm Records. To get you lot in the mood for it, the band have been good enough to put out a single ahead of its release. You can check out the video […]

The post Anti-Flag Announce New Album “20/20 Vision”, Stream Video for “Hate Conquers All” appeared first on Dying Scene.

We have been mapping public cctv cameras on openstreetmap.

https://thejeshgn.com/2019/10/07/surveillance-in-bengaluru-updates/

Why It’s Got to Be Bernie

We’re headed for a climate catastrophe, and it’s capitalism’s fault.

Introducing Skate Punk Act: Basement Sound

So many Dying Scene readers make this humble website a daily virtual stop in their Internet wanderings because they crave new discoveries. Navigating the vast sea of new bands popping up daily on Spotify or Bandcamp is a daunting task but that’s what we’re here for – to save you hours upon hours of listening […]

The post Introducing Skate Punk Act: Basement Sound appeared first on Dying Scene.

Chicago Teachers Didn’t Win Everything, But They’ve Transformed the City—And the Labor Movement

Chicago teachers and staff returned to the classrooms Friday after more than two weeks on strike. Their walkout lasted longer than the city’s landmark 2012 strike, as well as those in Los Angeles and Oakland earlier this year.

System provides cooling with no electricity

Imagine a device that can sit outside under blazing sunlight on a clear day, and without using any power cool things down by more than 23 degrees Fahrenheit (13 degrees Celsius). It almost sounds like magic, but a new system can do exactly that.

In and out with 10-minute electrical vehicle recharge

Electric vehicle owners may soon be able to pull into a fueling station, plug their car in, go to the restroom, get a cup of coffee and in 10 minutes, drive out with a fully charged battery, according to a team of engineers.

Rice yields plummet and arsenic rises in future climate-soil scenarios

Research combining future climate conditions and arsenic-induced soil stresses predicts rice yields could decline about 40 percent by 2100, a loss that would impact about 2 billion people dependent on the global crop.

System Error

Twitter is banning political ads. Your move, Zuck!

This Perfect Shitstorm Crystallizes the Climate Crisis We Face
https://earther.gizmodo.com/this-perfect-shitstorm-crystallizes-the-climate-crisis-1839483105 #climatechange #climatecrisis

#Fishery #collapse ‘confirms Silent Spring #pesticide prophecy’ | #Environment | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/31/fishery-collapse-confirms-silent-spring-pesticide-prophecy

#Neonictinoids #Ecology #Farming #Agriculture

Any Good Climate Plan Must Address Poverty and Racism

When the Green New Deal resolution was introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), many were confused by its scope: Why would a climate plan also promise housing and healthcare?

But the resolution’s emphasis on economic justice showed AOC and Markey were paying attention. Environmental justice advocates have long connected pollution with poverty and racism, and as Michelle Chen reported for In These Times in August 2009, these connections hold true for climate change. In “Falling Through the Climate Gap,” Chen writes:

Climate change will exacerbate regional health disparities tied to industrial air pollution. In many areas, people of color suffer greater impacts from dirty air, because they are more likely than whites to live in communities heavily exposed to pollution sources like coal-fired power plants [and] oil refineries. …

Many urban neighborhoods … are prone to the “heat island” effect: Surfaces absorb heat and raise area temperatures. Further, the prevalence of heat-trapping surfaces in a neighborhood correlates strongly with poverty and the proportion of people of color.

As seen in the uneven destruction wrought by [Hurricane] Katrina, a community’s resilience is often determined by social privilege. Marginal populations tend to lack insurance and be neglected by emergency response and healthcare systems. …

The poor and people of color are disproportionately threatened by potential floods. Their vulnerability is heightened not only because of where they live, but also factors like limited English ability and lack of access to emergency transportation. …

Extreme weather … could drastically increase energy prices, making it harder for working-class families to cover the cost of electricity. Climate volatility could also lead to job losses in the farming and tourism sectors. 

Because of these disparities, environmental justice advocates insist that “investments in social services, housing and infrastructure” are critical to the climate fight, Chen reports.

The relatively moderate climate bill Congress was considering in 2009 (co-authored by Markey) never passed. The next big federal climate push only took off in December 2018—the Green New Deal. As Christine MacDonald reported for InTheseTimes.com in September, several leading presidential contenders have put out detailed plans for how they’d use the Green New Deal to support marginalized communities.

Climate policy has often been determined by the wealthy and powerful—those who are causing the crisis—and its record is one of failure. It’s high time those who will be most affected set the priorities. 

The Purge: Trump Years

Climate Inktober

Some excerpts from Sarah Glidden’s daily ruminations on climate change.