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newstfionline · 4 months ago

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Monday, July 15, 2024

FBI says it has not determined a motive for assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump (AP) On the heels of an attempt to kill him, former President Donald Trump called Sunday for unity and resilience as shocked leaders across the political divide recoiled from the shooting that left him wounded but “fine.” The FBI identified the shooter, who was fatally shot by Secret Service agents, as Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, and said he attacked from an elevated position 140 yards from the rally venue at a farm show in Butler. The FBI said Sunday that it had not yet determined a motive, but the agency believed that Crooks acted alone and that he was not previously on the bureau’s radar. Not long before shots rang out, rallygoers noticed a man climbing to the roof of a nearby building and warned local police, according to two law enforcement officials. One local police officer climbed to the roof and encountered Crooks, who pointed his rifle at the officer. The officer retreated down the ladder, and Crooks quickly took a shot toward Trump, and that’s when Secret Service snipers shot him, said the officials. The officials also told AP that bomb-making materials were found inside Crooks’ vehicle, and bomb-making materials were found at his home. Officials described the devices as “rudimentary.”

American attitudes toward political violence (NYT) Robert Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago who has studied American attitudes toward political violence since the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob, conducted a nationwide poll on the topic last month. It found that 10 percent of those surveyed said that the “use of force is justified to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president.” A third of those who gave that answer also said they owned a gun. Seven percent of those surveyed said they “support force to restore Trump to the presidency.” Half of them said they owned guns. The shooting at Mr. Trump’s rally “is a consequence of such significant support for political violence in our country,” Mr. Pape wrote in an email. “Indeed, significant lone wolf attacks motivated by political violence have been growing for years in the United States, against members of Congress from both parties as well as federal officials and national leaders.”

Angry Birds Take on Drones at New York City Beach (NYT) One is a distinctive shorebird, slightly smaller than an average sea gull, with a bright orange bill that pries open clams, oysters and other shellfish. The other is a remote-controlled gadget with rotating blades. In the skies above Rockaway Beach in Queens, bird and drone are not, it seems, coexisting in harmony. Just as New Yorkers flock to the beach to escape the sweltering summer heat, American Oystercatchers have taken to attacking a fleet of drones deployed by city officials to scan for sharks and swimmers in distress. The aerial conflict between animal and machine is raising concerns about the safety of the shorebirds, as they aggressively pursue the buzzing drones in defense of their nests, city officials and bird experts said.

In Brazil, Early Wildfires Break Records—and Raise Alarm (NYT) Brazil is still weeks away from its traditional fire season, but hundreds of blazes, fanned by searing temperatures, are already laying waste to the Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical wetlands, and to parts of the Amazon rainforest. Scientists say the burning of such vast swaths of land may represent a new normal under rising global temperatures and uneven rain. There were more wildfires in Brazil’s share of the Pantanal, an enormous trove of biodiversity stretching across three countries, between January and June of this year than during the same period in any other year, according to the National Institute for Space Research, which has been tracking fires in Brazil since 1998. The highest number of fires in at least two decades was also recorded in the Amazon and in the Cerrado savanna, a patchwork of shrubs, grasslands and gnarled trees encompassing 1.2 million square miles in Brazil’s central and northeastern regions. Extreme weather has caused fires recklessly ignited by people to quickly spread out of control, one scientist said, “creating the ideal conditions for any spark to become a wildfire.”

Shifts in the international drug trade have devastated poor Colombians whose livelihood is tied to cocaine (NYT) For decades, one industry has sustained the small, remote Colombian village of Caño Cabra: cocaine. Those who live in this community in the central part of the country rise early nearly every morning to pick coca leaf, scraping brittle branches, sometimes until their hands bleed. Later, they mix the leaves with gasoline and other chemicals to make chalky white bricks of coca paste. But two years ago, the villagers said, something alarming happened: The drug traffickers who buy the coca paste and turn it into cocaine stopped showing up. Suddenly, people who were already poor had no income. Food became scarce. An exodus to other parts of Colombia in search of jobs followed. The town of 200 people shrunk to 40. The same pattern was repeated again and again in communities across the country where coca is the only source of income. Colombia, the global nexus of the cocaine industry, where Pablo Escobar became the world’s best known criminal, and which still produces more of the drug than any other nation, is facing tectonic shifts as a result of domestic and global forces that are reshaping the drug industry. The surge in global coca production has led to too much supply.

Germany is forcing some asylum seekers to work, when they just want real jobs (Washington Post) After a decade of backlash over a historic influx of asylum seekers, mostly from the Middle East, some localities in Germany are experimenting with low-paid, mandatory work programs for immigrants. Proponents maintain that these programs are engines of integration, while critics slam them as slave labor. The debate comes against the backdrop of an aging Germany whose economy is in desperate need of workers, and an immigrant community that is in desperate need of jobs but faces restrictions during the asylum process. Deep in the eastern state of Thuringia, the district of Saale-Orla-Kries has implemented one of these pilot projects for dozens of Syrian immigrants. Hanan Baghdadhi, 48, and Anas Alharerei, 26, work three days a week at the town’s sports association for about $0.86 an hour. (Germany’s standard minimum wage is about $12.85 an hour.) Their meager pay supplements a monthly allowance of nearly $500 from the state. Anyone eligible for the work program who refuses to participate is docked about $200 from that allowance. It can take migrants years to get real jobs, even though Germany needs 400,000 new workers annually to sustain its current rate of economic growth.

Treason and espionage cases are rising in Russia since the war in Ukraine began (AP) Treason cases have been rare in Russia in the last 30 years, with a handful annually. But since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, they have skyrocketed, along with espionage prosecutions, ensnaring citizens and foreigners alike, regardless of their politics. The more recent victims range from Kremlin critics and independent journalists to veteran scientists working with countries that Moscow considers friendly. The accused are often held in strict isolation in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo Prison, tried behind closed doors, and almost always convicted, with long prison sentences. In 2022, Putin urged the security services to “harshly suppress the actions of foreign intelligence services, promptly identify traitors, spies and saboteurs.” The First Department, a rights group that specializes in such prosecutions and takes its name from a division of the security service, counted over 100 known treason cases in 2023, lawyer Evgeny Smirnov told The Associated Press. He added there probably were another 100 that nobody knows about.

Ukraine Is Targeting Crimea, a Critical Base for Russia’s Invasion (NYT) In a clear night sky above the shores of Odesa, the faint glow from missiles streaks over the Black Sea. For much of the war, it was one-way traffic, with Russia using the occupied Crimean Peninsula first as a launchpad for its full-scale invasion and then as a staging ground for routine aerial bombardments. Ukraine, now armed with American-made precision missiles, is for the first time capable of reaching every corner of Crimea—and the missiles are increasingly flying in both directions. While it is unlikely to have much effect on the front line, Ukraine’s campaign with the long-range version of the Army Tactical Missile Systems, known as ATACMS, appears meant to force the Kremlin to make difficult choices about where to deploy some of its most valuable air defenses to protect critical military infrastructure.

Sizzling heat wave in parts of southern and central Europe prompts alerts (AP) Weather alerts, forest fires, melting pavement in cities: A sizzling heat wave has sent temperatures in parts of central and southern Europe soaring toward 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) in some places. From Italy to Romania, authorities warned people to be cautious, drive carefully if going on holiday, drink plenty of water and avoid going out during the hottest hours of the day. Italian authorities declared a red weather alert in seven cities on Thursday, mostly in the central parts of the country but also the capital Rome and Trieste in the northeast. Rome’s municipal authorities issued a digital app to help people locate public drinking fountains as temperatures reached 38 C (100 F) on Thursday. The heat conditions are aggravated by humidity and could affect healthy people as well as those with health conditions, Italian authorities warned.

Booming Turkish TV drama industry captures hearts and minds worldwide (AP) Under the sweltering Turkish sun, tourists wander through sets that recreate Ottoman and Byzantine-era castles, take selfies with actors in traditional Ottoman costumes and watch horseback stunt performances. Among them is Riia Toivanen, 22, a devoted fan of Turkish television drama who traveled to Istanbul from Finland with her mother to delve into the realm of her beloved shows. Some 8,000 miles (12,800 kilometers) across the globe in Villa Carlos Paz in Argentina, 66-year-old retired teacher Raquel Greco watches an episode of a Turkish romantic comedy, surrounded by memorabilia from her once-in-a-lifetime trip to Istanbul where she visited landmarks she knew from years of watching Turkish shows. The global popularity of Turkish TV dramas—or dizi in Turkish—has thrust Turkey into the position of a leading exporter of television, greatly bolstering the nation’s international image and drawing millions of viewers and tourists worldwide to its historical and cultural sites which are backdrops to many of the shows.

How Hamas Is Fighting in Gaza: Tunnels, Traps and Ambushes (NYT) They hide under residential neighborhoods, storing their weapons in miles of tunnels and in houses, mosques, sofas—even a child’s bedroom—blurring the boundary between civilians and combatants. They emerge from hiding in plainclothes, sometimes wearing sandals or tracksuits before firing on Israeli troops, attaching mines to their vehicles, or firing rockets from launchers in civilian areas. They rig abandoned homes with explosives and tripwires, sometimes luring Israeli soldiers to enter the booby-trapped buildings by scattering signs of a Hamas presence. Through eight months of fighting in Gaza, Hamas’s military wing—the Qassam Brigades—has fought as a decentralized and largely hidden force. From below ground, Hamas’s ghost army has appeared only fleetingly, emerging suddenly from a warren of tunnels—often armed with rocket-propelled grenades—to pick off soldiers and then returning swiftly to their subterranean fortress. Sometimes, they have hid among the few civilians who decided to remain in their neighborhoods despite Israeli orders to evacuate, or accompanied civilians as they returned to areas that the Israelis had captured and then abandoned.

#headlines #news

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qqueenofhades · 6 years ago

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The Punisher as Medieval Romance: Tropes, Themes, and Characters

So a few days ago, an anon asked about more mythologies/inspirations for Kastle, apart from Hades/Persephone, and I mentioned that Frank’s character and his overall story arc have substantial (and fascinating) parallels with medieval romances. I was just answering quickly, but I then started to think about it in more depth, and realized that in fact, damn near all of The Punisher can be read as a modern-day medieval romance, sometimes subverting long-established tropes and sometimes playing them almost straight. This extends into Daredevil canon as well, as the characters around Frank also fit into recognizable mythic-medieval roles, and… yes. I resisted writing a long and research-heavy meta, clearly what I needed to do on the last week of term, for oh, forty-eight hours. Then, well, we know how that goes.

A note that I work specifically on medieval history, rather than medieval literature, so if I say anything clangingly bad, I hope my brethren and sistren medievalists can forgive me for it. Also, I don’t know if any of this is intentional on the part of the writers, so it’s not like I am identifying anything they’re specifically doing (or if they are, I don’t know about it), but this is just me, as a nerd, wandering into the candy store and being like “OH HEY GUYS LOOK AT THIS.” Of course, not all the examples fit in every aspect between medieval romance and modern Marvel canon, but there are still enough of them in a number of ways to make this interpretation plausible. And indeed, considering how Marvel stories have become ubiquitously embedded in our popular lexicon almost exactly in the way Arthurian legends and stories did for their medieval equivalent, it’s a noteworthy comparison.

(As you may be able to guess, this will be long.)

Let’s start with the source material. The medieval Arthurian romances are part of what is known as the Matter of Britain: the vast corpus of texts, written and rewritten across several centuries and by countless authors (usually French or English) that deals with some aspect of this mythology. Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Merlin, the Knights of the Round Table, and other characters appear in various guises and playing different roles in each of these texts. They are still “themselves” on each appearance, but the interpretation and the storyline is largely up to each individual author. One may remark that this bears some similarities with the Marvel comic universe. The characters have been written and re-written in a vast array of formats from their first creation to their present modern iteration (and likewise, Hollywood is still making a King Arthur movie every other year). They have been interpreted by many authors and given different plots and re-imaginings, and are part of our collective pop-culture reference in the way that Arthurian romance and chivalric literature was in the medieval era. If Twitter had existed back then, we would have fans begging for Arthur Pendragon to be saved from Camlann the way we now have fans begging NASA to save Tony Stark. It’s a kind of cultural entertainment that you’re probably at least aware of, even if you’ve never participated in, and thus has reached similar levels of saturation. The Arthurian romances inspired endless knock-offs. We likewise have an omnipresent superhero genre. It reinvents and redefines the hero’s journey for its particular day and age on a massive scale. In some sense, we don’t even need to explain these characters or tropes, because everyone already knows who and what they are.

So… onto Frank. At first glance, he is a considerably unlikely medieval romantic hero, right? He’s rough around the edges, has (to say the least) grey morality, and is generally regarded as an outcast and a loner in his community, rather than some idealized, flawless Sir Galahad type who has never done anything wrong in his life and nobly avoids all temptation. But he’s actually a hero in the middle of his trials and tribulations and the corresponding loss (and eventual reaffirmation) of heroic identity. The broad strokes of Frank’s character arc, as seen in Daredevil season 2 and Punisher season 1, are these:

Separation from home and family;

Exile from society and the implied loss of chivalric (military) virtue;

Test of honor/contests against other knights, good and bad (Matt Murdock, Wilson Fisk, Lewis Wilson, etc);

Search for the Grail (life, restoration to honor, vengeance for his family, completion of the chivalric quest);

Partnership with worthy knights on the search (David Lieberman, Curtis Hoyle);

Resisting temptation from a knight’s wife (Sarah Lieberman);

Saving a fair maiden and having to be worthy of her love, while bound by a code of secrecy (Karen Page);

Confrontation of betrayal by an intimate/revelation of the dark side of chivalric honor (Billy Russo);

Menaced by a quasi-mythical and possibly demonic figure who must be defeated, who fights him in a parallel battle at the beginning/end of the story (Agent Orange/Rawlins);

Attempt to re-enter society and re-establish identity (end of s1, though that will be once more disrupted and complicated by s2);

All of this is, basically, the overall character arc for a medieval hero. Pretty much beat by beat. Also, while we’ve gotten used to think of ‘chivalry’ as implying a certain kind of idealized and virtuous behavior around ladies (holding doors, gentlemanly actions, whatever) that was only a small part of the overall code of chivalry – which, at its core, was an ethos about fighting, military prowess, and the display of valor through acts of war. Frank says that he loves being a soldier, and this would be a sentiment familiar to a medieval knight. Chrétien de Troyes has a line about how, essentially, only morally suspect half-men prefer peace. The soldier’s proper right, duty, and true joy in life is the practice of war, and he earns chivalry – martial renown – by doing it. It is not merely a pretty or romantic veneer on courtly behavior (though that is often how it is presented), but about war, the military, the destruction of opponents, and the very nature of being a constant soldier. To say the least, this fits Frank’s character extremely well. He is the consummate soldier who in fact needs a constant war to fight, and who has built an honorable legacy for himself (decorated Marine, Navy Cross, etc) prior to his forcible separation from society. This darker, grittier underside of chivalry, when the violence, bloodshed, and distortion of self was a constant concern, also fits very well with the tone of The Punisher.

That separation is often the keystone for a medieval hero’s journey, and functions to drive him out from the context in which he has until now been respected and earned his living. Sometimes we have an outright reason for that action, sometimes the hero just leaves Camelot and sets out on a quest, but Frank’s separation from society bears some similarity to Bisclavret, a twelfth-century werewolf romance written by a woman (Marie de France), and interesting for various reasons. (Some literature is available via Google Books.) In this case, the hero (the eponymous Bisclavret) is driven from society by the treachery of his wife, who hides his clothes so he can’t turn back from a wolf into a human and is forced to spend seven years in the forest as a beast. Of course Frank loses his wife, rather than being betrayed by her, but there’s still the connection between loss of wife – loss of home – loss of self, resulting in exile to the margins of society and transformation into a “monster.” Bisclavret never gives up his principles and identity even while forced to remain a wolf, and Frank gains a reputation as the “Punisher,” but likewise adheres to his own code of honor. He remains a knight, even if a knight-errant.

Bisclavret is rescued and brought back from the woods by an unnamed king, who sees his humanity and treats him well even as a monster (and yes, there are some definite homoerotic undertones in the fact that it’s the king’s love that restores him to himself, after his wife rejects him for his monsterhood or arguably, queerness). However, you could credibly parallel this to Frank and David Lieberman, who believes that he can help Frank and they can restore him to his former self/his good name. David of course physically helps Curtis care for Frank after his injuries in TP 1x05, and in general performs the humanizing role for the “monster.” He serves as Frank’s companion in the wilderness and believes that he is not the way the rest of society sees him (just as everyone else in Bisclavret sees him as a werewolf and has to be convinced by his good behavior that he’s really a man). Likewise, Karen recognizes early in Daredevil season 2, and never gives up in believing, that Frank still has honor. He’s (literally) not a monster to her. He has been expelled from the chivalric society in which he operated before, but he has not completely abandoned his morality.

Next, as noted, the motif of contests against other knights is essentially a central theme in all quest narratives. Frank must match his wits and skills against challengers, and be paralleled and anti-paralleled to them. One of his most obvious foils is against Matt, as they are explicitly set up as reflections and reverse images of each other. In some sense, Matt is the perfect chivalric knight, at least in DD s1/s2. His morality tends to the black and white, he always has some sense of how his faith informs or restricts his actions, and he constantly incorporates the church’s teaching into his sense of self. As Richard Kaeuper discusses in Holy Warriors: The Religious Ideology of Chivalry, this is basically exactly what the medieval church would want for a knight. Some degree of coexistence (sometimes a great deal) exists between chivalry and Christianity, but the underlying question of violence and sin always underlies it – can a man who makes his living by killing people really claim to be acting in a holy cause? Matt avoids this paradox (or tries to) by not killing anyone, but Frank almost exactly embodies the tension between these two ideologies that was ever-present in the medieval era. Clerical moralists always worried that knights were too comfortable with killing, violence, and general unethical behavior (even as they needed and co-opted that violence for their own purposes, such as the preaching and popularization of the crusades). For their part, the knights often selectively used the parts of Christianity that they liked, and fashioned it into their own ethos, just like Frank does to justify his campaign of vengeance.

In other words, Matt and Frank are perfect symbols of the struggle between church and chivalry, with Matt embodying one side (reconciliation) and Frank embodying the other (estrangement), but neither of them are completely excluded from knighthood despite their differences. They’re in fact the central tension of its existence – how violent can a knight be, and how much consideration, superficial or otherwise, does he have to pay to the church’s restriction of his ethics and behavior? There is some argument that chivalric literature was written as an attempted correction or moral instruction for real-life knights, who were supposed to take it as guidance on their own behavior and be more merciful. This isn’t always the case, since as noted, the literature exalts the very kind of violent behavior that built a chivalric reputation, but there was always that inherent wariness about how much was too much. Matt and Frank push and pull each other on this very question, end up working together at points because they are both within the system, but can’t fully reconcile.

(Also I’d like to point out: Stick, Matt, and Elektra as Merlin, Arthur, and Morgana. Stick is the mysterious, possibly immortal mentor, who teaches and mentors both of them, but also misleads and manipulates them for his own purposes. Matt becomes the ‘hero,’ son of the dead/fallen king (Uther Pendragon/Battlin’ Jack Murdock), while Elektra becomes the villainess/feared sorceress, marginalized by a society frightened of her agency and unwillingness to play nice. Also, one of Arthur’s two half-sisters, usually Morgause but sometimes Morgana, is the mother of his illegitimate son, Mordred, who is prophesied to be his destruction. So there is a dark/forbidden/taboo sexual aspect to their relationship, and just as Mordred causes the ultimate fall of Camelot, Matt and Elektra are literally caught in a falling building at the end of Defenders, which destroys their current identities. Matt enters Once and Future King stage after that and at the beginning of DDS3, where he is ‘gone’ or sleeping or suffering a crisis of faith and must summon up the wherewithal to return, and the character of Benjamin Poindexter becomes one of the many Arthur imposters. There are also some parallels for Elektra with Nimue, the ambitious young student of Merlin’s who overthrows him, ends his reign, and imprisons him in a tree.)

Anyway, back to Frank. So what are knights actually doing with all this questing? Well, various things, but they’re most often searching for the Holy Grail: symbolic of eternal life, forgiveness and atonement of sins, return to self. For this reason, few of them actually find it or are able to encounter it without being changed. It too has a deeply underlying Christian context, and Frank, the ex-Catholic, has been estranged from his belief but not separated entirely. (Likewise, if you were not worthy to look on it, you could be blinded, so… the fact that Matt himself is blind is arguably a commentary on who he actually is vs. how he imagines himself.) The Grail is also, interestingly, in the custody of a figure known as the Fisher King. He is the keeper of the castle where the Grail is hidden, and in the context of the Punisher, he’s basically Curtis.

The Fisher King, for a start, is always wounded in the legs or the thigh, and unable to stand. Some scholars have interpreted this as a metaphor for castration (since “thigh” is often a euphemism for the genitals), and that the Fisher King is passive and impotent because he is physically unable to perform warfare and thus to acquire chivalry. Either way, the Fisher King is the keeper of eternal life, but is physically disabled and needs the help of a knight to activate that power. Curtis is to some degree a subversion of this trope, because he is explicitly not helpless and functions to enable other questing knights (veterans with PTSD) to search for the Grail (health and reconciliation to society)… but in TP 1x09, he still needs Frank to save him. Frank has to encounter the Fisher King and make the correct choice/ask the right question (which wire to cut) to save him and continue his own path toward the Grail. Curtis, by running the veterans’ group, is symbolically the keeper of eternal life, where questers have to literally ask questions/talk to each other to restore themselves, and Frank, by going at the end of s1, is still trying to reach it. But true to form, with the beginning of s2, he’s not going to be able to entirely get there. There is still another obstacle/quest to overcome.

So what about Karen? Visually and to some degree topically, she is set up as the lady whose love Frank needs to obtain and maintain, even in the wilderness of his exile. Karen is blonde-haired and blue-eyed, which was often viewed in the medieval era as the ideal/most beautiful kind of woman (because white supremacy in Europe has always existed to some degree, even if in differently constructed ways. However, the thirteenth-century Dutch romance Morien, and some other ones, feature black and mixed-race protagonists, who are just as able to achieve the predicates of the heroic quest as others). She is also, as discussed above, one of the only people to believe in Frank’s honor and to reach out to help him. However, this relationship has to be kept secret, and has the potential to destroy them both if revealed. This is a fairly close parallel to another of Marie de France’s romances: Lanval (adopted in fourteenth-century English form, by Thomas Chestre, as Sir Launfal).

In brief, Sir Lanval, after being cast out from Camelot, meets a fairy woman and they become lovers, and she promises him that he will have everything he needs, as long as he keeps her secret and never mentions her to anyone. (Marie’s original version of this is much less misogynist than Chestre’s, which adds Guinevere making sexual advances to Launfal and her jealousy being the cause of him being thrown out, so yes, Dudes Ruining Stuff has a long history.) This is not an exact analogue to Frank and Karen, but keeping the code of secrecy (Karen obviously can’t tell anyone about Frank, Frank receives what he needs from her in terms of information, emotional support, etc, but likewise can’t tell anyone about it) is paramount in both relationships. Speaking about the relationship or revealing it to the outside world will result in its destruction, and the fairy lady has to vouch for Lanval’s goodness to the court in Camelot, just as Karen stoutly defends Frank to the court of public opinion/literally everyone. In some sense, while the knight has to rescue the fair maiden, the fair maiden is also the arbitrator of his fate and his overall reputation. (Also, all of TP 1x10 is basically Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart, in which Lancelot must rescue the abducted Guinevere from Meleagant, and having to struggle with the revelation of this relationship and the fact they can’t be together and the dictates of public/proper behavior. Anyway.)

Lastly, Frank’s initial and final conflicts, and the overall shape of his quest, are dictated by his encounters with two archvillains: Billy Russo and William Rawlins, or “Agent Orange.” These are made especially painful for him by the fact that they are or were both close to him. Billy was his best friend, essentially part of his family, and as noted, there is a major theme in chivalric literature revolving around a betrayal (and subsequent murder) by those closest to you. We already discussed King Arthur being overthrown and killed by his incestuous illegitimate son, Mordred; the best-known version of that tale is of course Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, though only the seventh book, as linked above, actually tells the story of Arthur’s death. There is also Arthur’s half-sister and Mordred’s usual mother Queen Morgause; in the Morte, she is killed by her son Gaheris for committing adultery with Sir Lamorak and dishonoring her husband, King Lot. So in one sense, the knight is always doomed to face a betrayal from within his family, or from a close friend.

However, Billy Russo is also straight-up one of the demon knights of Perlesvaus, or, The High History of the Holy Grail. In Perlesvaus, Lancelot is haunted by the specter of these demon knights, who engage in a dark mockery of chivalric behavior, excesses of violence, and satanic imagery, and are otherwise the “dark side of the force” of honorable knighthood, as Richard Kaeuper puts it in Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe. Honor and chivalry are not permanent or unchangeable qualities, and in fact are very fragile. The perfect knight can and should have both of these, but he can also lose them very quickly by impious, dishonorable, murderous, or otherwise wrong actions. The demon knights are a metaphor and a commentary on the same tension we discussed in regard to Frank and Matt: when does a knight-errant become a bad knight? When does his behavior permanently transgress him and cast him beyond the reach of repentance? Billy outwardly embodies the same qualities as Frank, has been through the same wars, is part of the same order, but he isn’t a hero on a quest whose chivalric identity can eventually be reconciled to him. He has crossed too far to the wrong side of the line; now he is the embodiment of evil, a shadow parallel and a cautionary tale. He is not a knight-errant, he is merely a monster.

Then, of course, there’s Rawlins/Agent Orange. Noting the fact that his nickname is also color-coded, we can see some parallels to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In short, in this tale, a mysterious “Green Knight” challenges any man to strike him, with the condition that he will get to return the blow in a year and a day. Sir Gawain accepts and beheads him, after which the Green Knight stands up, picks up his head, and remains Gawain of his promise. Gawain has to struggle to both honorably keep his bargain and avoid dying, and is eventually struck at in return by the Green Knight, wounded, but not killed. In some interpretations, this has just been a test all along for Gawain to prove his honor, or an attempt by Morgana to deceive him and cause him to betray his chivalric ideals, and the Green Knight is just a pawn to achieve this. In others, the Green Knight is a potential embodiment of the Devil. (He also has a dual identity, as the Green Knight/Sir Bertilak, as Rawlins does.) Frank strikes at/beheads/blinds Rawlins, as seen in the flashbacks of TP 1x03, so Rawlins literally wants to do the same to him (an eye for an eye) in TP 1x12. In the story, Gawain and the Green Knight part on cordial terms, but in this case, Frank has to actually complete the death/destruction of his opponent. Like Gawain, however, he is wounded but not killed, and must find some way to survive his encounter with a possibly demonic entity determined to pay back in exact measure the physical wound/symbolic beheading inflicted earlier.

So. . . yes. Overall, both in the broad parameters of his character arc, in the obstacles he confronts, and the other people he meets and the encounters he plays out with them, Frank is actually an excellent hero for a modern-medieval romance. The essential core of the medieval romance was not about love, though that was often present, but about identity, adventure, and the challenge to self, and while in some places these tropes have been updated or nuanced or subverted, in others they’re played as recognizably or directly descended from their medieval counterparts, and the way in which we have thought about stories and enjoyed them for a very long time.

#mcu #the punisher #the punisher meta #frank castle #kastle #frank x matt #medieval history #medieval literature #yes of course i ended up writing this #i am nothing if not predictable #long post

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anastpaul · 6 years ago

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Saint of the Day – 25 June – St Maximus of Turin (? – c 420) Father of the Church, Bishop, Writer, Theologian – known as Massimo – date of birth unknown – his date of death is also not certain. St Maximus is believed to have been a native of Rhaetia (modern day Northern Italy). Patron of Turin, Italy. St Maximus attended the synod of Milan where northern Italian bishops accepted the letter of Pope Leo I which set forth the orthodox doctrine of the Incarnation. He also attended the the Synod of Rome in 465. He was a prolific and inspirational Theological writer with 118 homilies, 116 sermons and 6 treatises surviving.

“Between the end of the fourth century and the beginning of the fifth, another Father of the Church after St Ambrose made a great contribution to the spread and consolidation of Christianity in Northern Italy – St Maximus, whom we come across in 398 as Bishop of Turin, a year after St Ambrose’s death. Very little is known about him, in compensation, we have inherited a collection of about 116 of his Sermons. It is possible to perceive in them the Bishop’s profound and vital bond with his city, which attests to an evident point of contact between the episcopal ministry of Ambrose and that of Maximus.

At that time serious tensions were disturbing orderly civil coexistence. In this context, as pastor and teacher, Maximus succeeded in obtaining the Christian people’s support. The city was threatened by various groups of barbarians. They entered by the Eastern passes, which went as far as the Western Alps. Turin was therefore permanently garrisoned by troops and at critical moments became a refuge for the populations fleeing from the countryside and urban centres where there was no protection. Maximus’ interventions in the face of this situation testify to his commitment to respond to the civil degradation and disintegration. Although it is still difficult to determine the social composition of those for whom the Sermons were intended, it would seem that Maximus’ preaching – to avoid the risk of vagueness – was specifically addressed to a chosen nucleus of the Christian community of Turin, consisting of rich landowners who had property in the Turinese countryside and a house in the city. This was a clear-sighted pastoral decision by the Bishop, who saw this type of preaching as the most effective way to preserve and strengthen his own ties with the people.

To illustrate this view of Maximus’ ministry in his city, I would like to point out for example Sermons 17 and 18, dedicated to an ever timely topic: wealth and poverty in Christian communities. In this context too, the city was fraught with serious tensions. Riches were accumulated and hidden. “No one thinks about the needs of others”, the Bishop remarked bitterly in his 17th Sermon. “In fact, not only do many Christians not share their own possessions but they also rob others of theirs. Not only, I say, do they not bring the money they collect to the feet of the apostles but in addition, they drag from priests’ feet, their own brethren who are seeking help”. And he concluded: “In our cities there are many guests or pilgrims. Do what you have promised”, adhering to faith, “so that what was said to Ananias will not be said to you as well: “You have not lied to men but to God'” (Sermon 17, 2-3).

In the next Sermon, the 18th, Maximus condemns the recurring forms of exploitation of others’ misfortunes. “Tell me, Christian”, the Bishop reprimands his faithful, “tell me why you snatched the booty abandoned by the plunderers? Why did you take home “ill-gotten gains’ as you yourself think, torn apart and contaminated?”. “But perhaps”, he continues, “you say you have purchased them and thereby believe you are avoiding the accusation of avarice. However, this is not the way to equate purchasing with selling. “It is a good thing to make purchases but that means what is sold freely in times of peace, not goods looted during the sack of a city… So act as a Christian and a citizen who purchases in order to repay” (Sermon 18: 3). Without being too obvious, Maximus thus managed to preach a profound relationship between a Christian’s and a citizen’s duties. In his eyes, living a Christian life also meant assuming civil commitments. Vice-versa, every Christian who, “despite being able to live by his own work, seizes the booty of others with the ferocity of wild beasts”; who “tricks his neighbour, who tries every day to nibble away at the boundaries of others, to gain possession of their produce, does not compare to a fox biting off the heads of chickens but rather to a wolf savaging pigs.” (Sermon 41, 4).

In comparison with the cautious, defensive attitude that Ambrose adopted to justify his famous project of redeeming prisoners of war, the historical changes that occurred in the relationship between the Bishop and the municipal institutions are clearly evident. By now sustained through legislation that invited Christians to redeem prisoners, Maximus, with the collapse of the civil authority of the Roman Empire, felt fully authorised in this regard to exercise true control over the city. This control was to become increasingly extensive and effective until it replaced the irresponsible evasion of the magistrates and civil institutions. In this context, Maximus not only strove to rekindle in the faithful the traditional love for their hometown but he also proclaimed the precise duty to pay taxes, however burdensome and unpleasant they might appear (cf. Sermon 26, 2). In short, the tone and substance of the Sermons imply an increased awareness of the Bishop’s political responsibility in the specific historical circumstances. He was “the lookout tower” posted in the city. Whoever could these watchmen be, Maximus wonders in Sermon 92, “other than the most blessed Bishops set on a lofty rock of wisdom, so to speak, to defend the peoples and to warn them about the evils approaching in the distance?”. And in Sermon 89 the Bishop of Turin describes his tasks to his faithful, making a unique comparison between the Bishop’s function and the function of bees: “Like the bee”, he said, Bishops “observe bodily chastity, they offer the food of heavenly life using the sting of the law. They are pure in sanctifying, gentle in restoring and severe in punishing”. With these words, St Maximus described the task of the Bishop in his time.

In short, historical and literary analysis show an increasing awareness of the political responsibility of the ecclesiastical authority in a context in which it continued de facto to replace the civil authority. Indeed, the ministry of the Bishop of Northwest Italy, starting with Eusebius who dwelled in his Vercelli “like a monk” to Maximus of Turin, positioned “like a sentinel” on the highest rock in the city, developed along these lines. It is obvious that the contemporary historical, cultural and social context is profoundly different. Today’s context is rather the context outlined by my venerable Predecessor, Pope John Paul II, in the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Ecclesia in Europa, in which he offers an articulate analysis of the challenges and signs of hope for the Church in Europe today (nn. 6-22). In any case, on the basis of the changed conditions, the believer’s duties to his city and his homeland still remain effective. The combination of the commitments of the “honest citizen” with those of the “good Christian” has not in fact disappeared.

In conclusion, to highlight one of the most important aspects of the unity of Christian life, I would like to recall the words of the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes: consistency between faith and conduct, between Gospel and culture. The Council exhorts the faithful “to perform their duties faithfully in the spirit of the Gospel. It is a mistake to think that because we have here no lasting city, but seek the city which is to come, we are entitled to shirk our earthly responsibilities; this is to forget that by our faith we are bound all the more to fulfil these responsibilities according to the vocation of each one” (n. 43).

In following the Magisterium of St Maximus and of many other Fathers, let us make our own, the Council’s desire, that the faithful may be increasingly anxious to “carry out their earthly activity in such a way as to integrate human, domestic, professional, scientific and technical enterprises with religious values, under whose supreme direction all things are ordered to the glory of God” (ibid.) and thus for humanity’s good.”…Pope Benedict XVI,General Audience, Wednesday, 31 October 2007

(via Saint of the Day - 25 June - St Maximus of Turin (? - c 420) Father of the Church)

#stmaximusofturin #june25stmaximusofturin #catholic #catholicism

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sciencespies · 4 years ago

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These Non-Lethal Methods Encouraged by Science Can Keep Wolves From Killing Livestock

https://sciencespies.com/nature/these-non-lethal-methods-encouraged-by-science-can-keep-wolves-from-killing-livestock/

These Non-Lethal Methods Encouraged by Science Can Keep Wolves From Killing Livestock

Nestled amid butterscotch-scented Ponderosa pines in Idaho’s backcountry one sunny, summer day in 1991, Suzanne Stone scooped her hands around her chin and let out an “Ahwooooo.” Stone, now an expert in wolf restoration heading the International Wildlife Coexistence Network, was then an intern at the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). After she sent two boisterous wolf howls rippling through nearby meadows, she listened curiously for a reply. Instead, a bullet from a distant rifle whistled just above her and her supervisor’s heads. Steve Fritts, a leading wolf scientist at USFWS, hurried Stone back to their car before reporting what happened. Hunting was legal in the area, but firing at federal employees—even unknowingly—was not. Federal investigators later traced the shot to a hunting outfitter hundreds of yards away.

“I knew then what wolves were facing in the backcountry,” she says. For nearly three decades, wolf populations in Idaho have been on the rise, pitting local communities and powerful interest groups against each other, a situation that plays out in many areas across the country where wolves exist. Hunters contend that wolves have fully recovered and now deplete elk and deer populations while some ranchers argue wolves need to be killed to keep livestock alive. Conservationists, on the other hand, say that the apex predators contribute vitally to a healthy ecosystem and are still functionally extinct in about 85 percent of their historic range.

In October, the Trump administration delisted gray wolves from the endangered species list, a move celebrated by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and Safari Club International, a hunter advocacy group, in a joint statement. The conservationist group Defenders of Wildlife, meanwhile, issued a statement of their own calling the delisting “premature and reckless.” They have joined other conservation groups to file a formal intent to sue the USFWS soon after the law takes effect in January.

With gray wolves set to lose their federal protection when delisting takes effect in January, individual states have resorted to patching together their own terms for management, making it easier for people to hunt them in some states. But hunting will likely stunt wolf recovery and destabilize ecosystems already hobbled by their scarcity. Wolves regulate coyote populations, preventing the latter group from hunting pronghorn sheep; wolves pick off weak, rather than healthy, prey, leading to stronger deer and elk herds; and they keep wild herbivores from overgrazing, rippling benefits down to the soil. For these reasons, biologists have been trying to convince ranchers and policymakers that nonlethal methods, both old and new, should be used to reduce livestock conflicts and keep wolf populations stable or growing.

Wolves were nearly wiped out from the lower 48 by 1960, but numbers rebounded after Congress passed the Endangered Species Act in 1973 and scientists reintroduced the predators to Yellowstone National Park and Idaho in 1995. Hunting ramped up between 2008 and 2012 when the USFWS delisted gray wolves in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming, in part to protect livestock from attack. But that tactic may have been counterproductive. Research from the Carnivore Coexistence Lab at the University of Wisconsin Madison has shown that killing gray wolves actually leads to three times more livestock attacks, a finding supported by behavioral studies elsewhere. “The wolf pack is a family,” says Adrian Treves, who runs the lab. They cooperate to defend territory and raise pups. When one is killed, the destabilizing effect ripples through the pack. Reproductive age goes down, and naive juvenile attacks on livestock go up, according to Colleen St. Clair, a biologist at the University of Alberta.

Ranchers’ fears also run deeper than just slain cows. Even if livestock don’t die, wolves may chase or stress cattle enough that many lose weight, get trampled or injured. “I have major concerns about [wolves],” says Megan Brown, a cattle rancher in northern California who has encountered bears and wolves on her property. “I’ve noticed this happening slightly more now that the wolves are back.” (In 2011, California confirmed its first wild wolf sighting in 87 years.)

One newly proven tactic to discourage wolf-cattle conflicts is to keep an abundant population of the predators’ natural prey. Wolves prefer eating native wild animals, and depleted deer or elk populations nudge them toward abundant sheep and cattle. “Predators are always facing this cost benefit ratio,” St. Clair says. “When they choose to try to prey on livestock, it’s because they are in a situation where that’s their best option.” She suggests planting deer or elk carcasses in wolf habitats or imposing stricter hunting limits that could increase prey populations. Since doing so could also grow predator numbers, both approaches are contentious.

A tried-and-true change some ranchers have made is to keep their herds disease-free and haul dead livestock far from the rest. Wolves are exceptionally sensitive to weakened prey. “It’s like ringing the dinner bell and saying, ‘Come on in there’s a feast here’,” says Stone. Once the scent of a carcass lures them near a herd, healthy livestock become more vulnerable. Moving bone piles and carcasses far from the herd “may be the single best action” to prevent wolf predation on livestock from happening in the first place, according to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. This approach, while effective, adds costs to ranching and requires some to manage land differently than they have for generations.

It’s also not going to be a cure-all; ranchers can’t bury or haul thousand-pound carcasses from some remote pastures in the dead of winter, and healthy herds need protection too. Since wolves have evolved to be shy around unfamiliar things, a common strategy is to scare them away with devices called nonlethal deterrents. A centuries’ old example comes from Polish hunting practices: fladry is a perimeter of tightly spaced colorful flags. The configuration is not a physical barrier, but the narrow spacing between flags still throws wolves off. Hunters previously used fladry to funnel wolves into an ambush area, but scientists now champion the tool to spare them. In one instance, a biologist used fladry around a carcass visited by wolves. A hungry carnivore leapt over a nearby barbed wire fence “like it wasn’t even there,” but didn’t cross the fladry.

Since wolf reintroduction in 1995, scientists have gathered much evidence showing that random blasts of colorful light, noise or motion can also protect livestock enclosures by keeping wolves on edge. Stone recalls one wolf getting blasted with Van Halen. “It was one of our Wildlife Services guys’ favorite albums, and it was very hard rock,” she says. The frightened wolf fled further than any other in her experience. Ranchers also scare away wolves using strobe lights and starter pistols. Stone, who has used countless deterrents in her 30 years of experience, even reported success with inflatable tubemen—those giant grinning effigies that dance unpredictably, often around used car lots. She assembled a pair on an Oregon hobby farm in 2018 where wolves had eaten llamas, and wolves have still not returned, she says.

Nonlethal deterrent devices have limitations, though. Some require electricity and all only protect enclosed areas—two deal-breakers for herds grazing open pastures. Even in ideal scenarios, wolves eventually tease out empty threats. “Animals are incredibly smart,” says St. Clair. “Their lives depend on figuring out which of these dangers are real dangers.” Targeting multiple senses with a rotating library of deterrents staves off their pattern recognition, but habituation remains a major consideration.

St. Clair is currently researching how tricking wolves into thinking livestock is disgusting food, can condition, rather than scare them. Her approach includes developing microcapsules with nauseating chemicals that she plants in carcasses as bait for curious carnivores. Making an animal vomit triggers an association with what they just ate, ironing a crease into a primitive subsection deep in the brain. So if a wolf eats a carcass laced with this flavorless capsule, it would start to steer clear of dead steer. This “conditioned disgust” aversion showed promising results in a 2009 study on captive wolves, but the method hasn’t been tested widely in wild wolves.

Recognizing animal cognition inevitably leads to appreciating individual differences between wolves. “We know that individuals vary in their ingenuity—their determination to get through our defenses, their tendency to repeat and cause multiple problems,” Treves says.

The environmental nonprofit Resolve and AI company CVEDIA recently announced WildEyes, a field camera that reportedly recognizes different individuals. “It’s a perfect example of how technology is catching up with the new paradigm of coexistence-type work,” says Stone. WildEyes can automatically alert ranchers of worrisome individuals in the area, or set off deterrents to scare the wolves away. The new technology has been tested on Tibetan wolves, but has not been used in the United States.

According to Stone, one rancher in Montana is testing a tool that monitors livestock heart rates to detect distress—a sort of Fitbit for ungulates. When the device senses stressed livestock, it alerts the rancher that a predator may be close. And other ranchers are also supercharging classic deterrents. Turbofladry combines fladry with electric fences, and works well for smaller enclosed herds.

While some ranchers try new methods, others have stuck with a couple of old standbys that scientists still encourage. Range riders, people paid to travel alongside free-grazing herds on horseback or ATV, can cover more area than electric fences usually surround. In addition to just supervising cattle, range riders encourage wolf-resistant behaviors: grazing as a dense cluster, keeping newborns with moms and moving injured cattle to safety. And guardian dogs, such as Great Pyrenees, can also travel with livestock beyond fence lines. A 2010 study from Central Michigan University proved their ability to dramatic reduce wolf activity, protecting sheep, goats and cattle. At several cattle farms randomly assigned guardian dogs, wolf visits dropped from about once per month to zero visits in three years. Brown says, however, that ranchers with many acres need many dogs—each costing thousands to feed and maintain.

“Every part of this is about having the right tool and using it the right way,” says Stone, pointing out that some ranches require multiple tactics at once. In 2017, Stone published findings from a seven-year case study comparing sheep killings in a lethally controlled area to one protected by range riders, turbofladry, guardian dogs and other nonlethal deterrents. The nonlethal controls led to 3.5 times fewer dead sheep—just .02 percent of the total population.

Switching from lethal to nonlethal measures widely, however, is tough without more buy-in from government and ranchers. More than half of ranchers surveyed in one study wanted to learn more about nonlethal techniques, but funding to foster that desire is lagging. Some states, such as Oregon, do provide grants to help cover costs for nonlethal controls though. When Colorado welcomes wolves back after passing a reintroduction bill in November, Stone hopes policymakers will learn from that evidence, and encourage the suite of nonlethal solutions for protecting livestock and wolves, rather than the lethal measures which endanger both.

For now, the best approach to deter gray wolves’ from attacking livestock is to combine multiple nonlethal methods, and encourage biologists and ranchers to keep innovating. “People often want a silver bullet: they buy this technique, they install it, it works forever,” says St. Clair. “It’ll never be like that. Animals will always be testing, especially animals as smart as wolves.”

#Nature

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tacophish · 7 years ago

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Liu Xiaobo, I have no enemies: my final statement*

June 1989 was the major turning point in my 50 years on life’s road. Before that, I was a member of the first group of students after restoration of the college entrance examination after the Cultural Revolution (1977); my career was s smooth ride from undergraduate to grad student through to PhD. After graduation I stayed on as a lecturer at Beijing Normal University. On the podium, I was a popular teacher, well received by students. I was at the same time a public intellectual. In the 1980s I published articles and books that created an impact, was frequently invited to speak in various places, and was invited to go abroad to Europe and the US as a visiting scholar. What I required of myself was: both as a person and in my writing, I had to live with honesty, responsibility and dignity. Subsequently, because I had returned from the US to take part in the 1989 movement, I was imprisoned for “counter-revolutionary propaganda and incitement to crime”, loding the platform which was my passion; I was never again allowed publish or speak in public in China. Simply for expressing divergent political views and taking part in a peaceful and democratic movement, a teacher loses his podium, a writer loses the right to publish, and a public intellectual loses the chance to speak publicly, which is a sad thing, both for myself as an individual, and for China after three decades of reform and opening up.

Thinking about it, my most dramatic experiences after June Fourth have all linked with courts; the two opportunities I had to speak in public have been provided by trials held in the People’s Intermediate Court in Beijing, one in January 1991 and one now. Although the charges on each occasion were different, they were in essence the same, both being crimes of expression.

Twenty years on, the innocent souls of June Fourth do not yet rest in peace, and I, who had been drawn into the path of dissidence by the passions of June Fourth, after leaving the Qincheng Prison in 1991, lost in the right to speak openly in my own country, and could only do so through overseas media, and hence was monitored for many years; placed under surveillance (May 1995- January 1996); educated through labour (October 1996 – October 1999s), and now once again am thrust into the dock by enemies in the regime. But I still want to tell the regime that deprives me of my freedom, I stand by the belief I expressed twenty years ago in my “June Second hunger strike declaration”— I have no enemies, and no hatred. None of the police who have monitored, arrested and interrogated me, the prosecutors who prosecuted me, or the judges who sentence me, are my enemies. While I’m unable to accept your surveillance, arrest, prosecution or sentencing, I respect your professions and personalities, including Zhang Rongge and Pan Xueqing who act for the prosecution at present. I was aware of your respect and sincerity in your interrogation of me on 3 December.

For hatred is corrosive of a person’s wisdom and conscience; the mentality of enmity can poison a nation’s spirit, instigate brutal life and death struggles, destroy a society’s tolerance and humanity, and block a nation’s progress to freedom and democracy. I hope therefore to be able to transcend my personal vicissitudes in understanding the development of the state and changes in society, to counter the hostility of the regime with the best of intentions, and defuse hate with love.

As we all know, reform and opening up brought about development of the state and change in society. In my view, it began with abandoning “taking class struggle as the key link,” which had been the ruling principle of the Mao era. We committed ourselves instead to economic development and social harmony. The process of abandoning the “philosophy of struggle” was one of gradually diluting the mentality of enmity, eliminating the psychology of hatred, and pressing out the “wolf’s milk” in which our humanity had been steeped. It was this process that provided a relaxed environment for the reform and opening up at home and abroad, for the restoration of mutual love between people, and soft humane soil for the peaceful coexistence of different values and different interests, and thus provided the explosion of popular creativity and the rehabilitation of warmheartedness with incentives consistent with human nature. Externally abandoning “anti-imperialism and anti-revisionism”, and internally, abandoning “class struggle” may be called the basic premise of the continuance of China’s reform and opening up to this day. The market orientation of the economy; the cultural trend toward diversity; and the gradual change of order to the rule of law, all benefited from the dilution of this mentality of enmity. Even in the political field, where progress is slowest, dilution of the mentality of enmity also made political power ever more tolerant of diversity in society, the intensity persecution of dissidents has declined substantially, and characterization of the 1989 movement has changed from an “instigated rebellion” to a “political upheaval.”

The dilution of the mentality of enmity made the political power gradually accept the universality of human rights. In 1998, the Chinese government promised the world it would sign the the two international human rights conventions of the UN, marking China’s recognition of universal human rights standards; in 2004, the National People’s Congress for the first time inscribed into the constitution that “the state respects and safeguards human rights”, signaling that human rights had become one of the fundamental principles of the rule of law. In the meantime, the present regime also proposed “putting people first” and “creating a harmonious society”, which signalled progress in the Party’s concept of rule.

This macro-level progress was discernible as well in my own experiences since being arrested.

While I insist on my innocence, and that the accusations against me are unconstitutional, in the year and more since I lost my freedom, I’ve experienced two places of detention, four pre-trial police officers, three prosecutors and two judges. In their handling of the case, there has been no lack of respect, no time overruns and no forced confessions. Their calm and rational attitude has over and again demonstrated goodwill. I was transferred on 23 June from the residential surveillance to Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau Detention Center No. 1, known as “Beikan.” I saw progress in surveillance in the six months I spent there.

I spent time in the old Beikan (Banbuqiao) in 1996, and compared with the Beikan of a decade ago, there has been great improvement in the hardware of facilities and software of management.

In particular, Beikan’s innovative humane management based on respecting the rights and dignity of detainees, implementing more flexible management of the will be flexible to the detainees words and deeds, embodied in the Warm broadcast and Repentance, the music played before meals, and when waking up and going to sleep, gave detainees feelings of dignity and warmth, stimulating their consciousness of keeping order in their cells and opposing the warders sense of themselves as lords of the jail, detainees, providing not only a humanized living environment, but greatly improved the detainees’ environment and mindset for litigation, I had close contact with Liu Zhen, in charge of my cell. People feel warmed by his respect and care for detainees, reflected in the management of every detail, and permeating his every word and deed. Getting to know the sincere, honest, responsible, good-hearted Liu Zhen really was a piece of good luck for me in Beikan.

Political beliefs are based on such convictions and personal experiences; I firmly believe that China’s political progress will never stop, and I’m full of optimistic expectations of freedom coming to China in the future, because no force can block the human desire for freedom. China will eventually become a country of the rule of law in which human rights are supreme. I’m also looking forward to such progress being reflected in the trial of this case, and look forward to the full court’s just verdict ——one that can stand the test of history.

Ask me what has been my most fortunate experience of the past two decades, and I’d say it was gaining the selfless love of my wife, Liu Xia. She cannot be present in the courtroom today, but I still want to tell you, sweetheart, that I’m confident that your love for me will be as always. Over the years, in my non-free life, our love has contained bitterness imposed by the external environment, but is boundless in afterthought. I am sentenced to a visible prison while you are waiting in an invisible one. Your love is sunlight that transcends prison walls and bars, stroking every inch of my skin, warming my every cell, letting me maintain my inner calm, magnanimous and bright, so that every minute in prison is full of meaning. But my love for you is full of guilt and regret, sometimes heavy enough hobble my steps. I am a hard stone in the wilderness, putting up with the pummeling of raging storms, and too cold for anyone to dare touch. But my love is hard, sharp, and can penetrate any obstacles. Even if I am crushed into powder, I will embrace you with the ashes.

Given your love, sweetheart, I would face my forthcoming trial calmly, with no regrets about my choice and looking forward to tomorrow optimistically. I look forward to my country being a land of free expression, where all citizens’ speeches are treated the same; here, different values, ideas, beliefs, political views… both compete with each other and coexist peacefully; here, majority and minority opinions will be given equal guarantees, in particular, political views different from those in power will be fully respected and protected; here, all political views will be spread in the sunlight for the people to choose; all citizens will be able to express their political views without fear, and will never be politically persecuted for voicing dissent; I hope to be the last victim of China’s endless literary inquisition, and that after this no one else will ever be jailed for their speech.

Freedom of expression is the basis of human rights, the source of humanity and the mother of truth. To block freedom of speech is to trample on human rights, to strangle humanity and to suppress the truth.

I do not feel guilty for following my constitutional right to freedom of expression, for fulfilling my social responsibility as a Chinese citizen. Even if accused of it, I would have no complaints. Thank you!

Liu Xiaobo (December 23, 2009)

#liu xiaobo #quotes

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kakoliberlin · 6 years ago

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Welcome to the Year of Coexistence

I’ve spent my career — actually most of my life — advocating for and practicing wildlife conservation. In that time, I’ve seen remarkable progress. We still have a long way to go, but one of the highlights of my journey has been watching the evolution of human-wildlife coexistence.

Too many species were completely eradicated or pushed to the brink of extinction for numerous reasons, including intolerance, habitat destruction, overhunting, and a lack of understanding of our impact on ecosystems. Luckily, we realized that so goes nature, so goes us, and we passed landmark conservation laws like the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act. We began captive breeding programs, expanded research initiatives, and started reintroducing animals to their native habitats — wolves, California condors, black-footed ferrets, and whooping cranes are now on the path to recovery. But just as importantly, we have also started to change our attitudes and approaches toward living with wildlife.

Simply put — coexistence is helping people share the landscape with wildlife and using innovative tools to reduce the conflicts that often occur with wildlife in their natural habitats. Defenders has been at the forefront of these efforts for decades, and we have pioneered transformational approaches and tools that successfully build social acceptance for wildlife in communities from Alaska to Florida to the desert southwest to northern Rockies and numerous places in between.

With all the challenges for wildlife these days — habitat loss, climate change, invasive species, overhunting, etc. — it’s important that we take the time to focus on the positive impact of our work and the valuable partnerships we have with some amazing people. We are working hard to protect and to celebrate valued partnerships we’ve developed, and to honor our incredible wildlife, Defenders has declared this the Year of Coexistence. Over the course of the coming year, we’ll highlight how far we’ve come and the innovative ways that people are sharing the landscape with wildlife. Throughout this Year of Coexistence, we’ll be discussing living with wolves, bears, and panthers, as well as bats, tortoises, ferrets, bison, and orcas. We’ll also feature some of our partners who recognize the importance of working together to save wildlife.

Coexistence takes on many forms depending on the species of wildlife, where they live, and how people are also using the landscape. For example,

Proactive non-lethal management interventions, like turbo-fladry, range riders, electric fencing, and livestock guardian dogs, can reduce carnivore depredation on livestock;

Infrastructure improvements such as wildlife crossings over or under roads and highways are proven to reduce vehicle collisions and increase habitat connectivity;

Education programs like our newly launched Orcas Love Raingardens initiative increase awareness of the impact of our society on wildlife while making the environment healthier for all;

Financial incentives, like livestock loss compensation and ecotourism, increase people’s social acceptance of wildlife; and

Selecting “Smart from the Start” renewable energy site locations can minimize negative impacts on wildlife and their habitat while helping to fight climate change and keep our world green.

Top row – Deterrents like fladry and livestock guardian dogs; Middle row – infrastructure improvements like an overpass in Colorado and a salamander underpass in California; Bottom row – raingarden installation in Tacoma, Washington

I am incredibly proud of the milestones that Defenders has achieved over the past 35 years:

1984 — Defenders secured congressional and state funding for the US Fish and Wildlife Service to expand a livestock guardian dog pilot program to test their effectiveness deterring coyotes in Oregon and Texas and wolves in Minnesota.

1987 — Defenders established the Defenders of Wildlife Wolf Compensation Trust (renamed in 2000 as the Bailey Foundation Wolf Compensation Trust) and made the first livestock depredation compensation payment for wolves in Montana.

1993 — Defenders opened its Florida office to begin work on Florida black bear coexistence.

1995 — Defenders’ compensation program, expanded in the early 1990’s, helps le ad to the successful reintroduction of gray wolves in Yellowstone National Park.

1998 — Defenders established the Bailey Proactive Carnivore Conservation Fund to train ranchers on using nonlethal interventions to protect livestock from wolves, grizzly bears and other predators in the northern Rockies.

2004 — Defenders launched its Florida panther coexistence program to reduce depredations on livestock and pets.

2007 — Defenders began its livestock enclosure program to reduce Florida panther depredation on domestic animals.

2008 — Defenders launched the Wood River Wolf Project in Idaho to reduce wolf depredations on sheep.

2010 — Defenders introduced the Electric Fence Incentive Program as an effective way to prevent conflicts between grizzly bears and landowners.

2017 — Defenders started its Orcas Love Raingardens program to promote raingardens at public schools and parks, mitigate stormwater pollution, and protect orcas in the Salish Sea.

We have learned so much over the past 35 years; we believe strongly in coexistence and we won’t give up. Sometimes while we are working to protect wildlife and respect peoples’ livelihoods, priorities conflict. Habitat protection, innovative technology, targeted legislation, and education of corporations, community members, and governments are all important as we work tirelessly to change negative attitudes towards wildlife and demonstrate the relatively simple fixes that allow humans and wildlife to share the landscape.

I am proud to lead Defenders as we are a driving force for coexistence efforts around the country and we look forward to sharing our successes with you throughout the year. Defenders is fully committed to reducing the conflict between humans and wildlife. Coexistence starts with us — the people in that equation. We all have a stewardship responsibility to ensure plentiful wildlife by working to sustain natural ecosystems, protect essential wildlife habitat and restore populations of imperiled species. Defenders’ passionate members and supporters are an integral part of our team, and we wouldn’t succeed without your support.

Stay tuned throughout the year for more about all of our coexistence work! Follow us at #YearOfCoexistence

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ntrending · 6 years ago

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Here are 10 animals that might have gone extinct without the Endangered Species Act

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Here are 10 animals that might have gone extinct without the Endangered Species Act

Last Thursday, the Trump administration announced a proposal to cut provisions in the Endangered Species Act (ESA)—the law that for almost half a century, has protected plants and animals at risk of extinction. The law has broad and bipartisan support across the country, with around 80 percent of Americans expressing their support for the law.

Announced jointly by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—the two agencies that govern the ESA—the proposed changes aim to “improve collaboration, efficiency, and effectiveness,” but those opposing the proposal argue that it may leave some plants and animals more vulnerable.

For conservationists, one of the most concerning changes is striking out language that previously prevented economics from factoring in on decisions to protect species. As the act stands now, how to best preserve a vulnerable habitat is based purely on scientific data, not cost. Some worry that removing this rule could give businesses the go-ahead to develop near protected habitats. In addition, the new proposal means threatened species would no longer be extended the same protections as endangered ones—threatened species would be assessed on a case-by-case basis.

“Species are literally of infinite value, they’re priceless. It shouldn’t be a question of cost,” says Bob Dreher, senior vice president for conservation programs for the nonprofit organization Defenders of Wildlife, regarding the allowance of economic consideration into the fate of a vulnerable plant or animal.

“Although a number of these regulatory changes may be fairly minor and may make sense, there’s virtually nothing we see in this package that actually enhances protection of endangered species,” he says. “And there are a number of provisions that may leave species exposed to threats. It really isn’t a package of regulations an administration that really cared about endangered species would be putting out.”

Right now, the ESA protects more than 1,600 plants and animals at risk of extinction, or at risk of becoming endangered. The act has been criticized in the past for delisting animals who still may be in need of protection, but the act has also helped more than 50 endangered or threatened species recover by protecting and restoring habitats, monitoring at-risk species, creating captive breeding programs, and reintroducing animals into the wild.

Here are 10 plants and animals the ESA has helped pull back from the brink.

These wide-winged birds of prey were plentiful in 1782 when the U.S. first adopted the animal as our national symbol. But the bald eagle population plummeted after World War II when the highly toxic DDT pesticide was introduced. Birds were inadvertently ingesting DDT, weakening adults and causing them to produce feeble eggs. By 1963, only 417 breeding pairs were left in the lower 48 states.

The bald eagle was one of the first species protected under the Endangered Species Preservation Act (a precursor to today’s ESA). In 1972, the Environmental Protection Agency banned DDT. The ESA was officially in place the following year, and the federal regulations protected nesting sites and helped repopulate the species through captive breeding programs. Bald eagles were taken off the list of threatened and endangered species in 2007. There are now almost 10,000 breeding pairs in the lower 48 states today.

It’s hard to imagine a predator at the top of the food chain threatened by anything. But in 1975, grizzly bears living in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem—spanning parts of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho—were listed as a threatened species.

Decades of logging, mining, and land development destroyed bears’ habitats, and the great creatures were often hunted for sport or killed when spotted on human land. By 1975, there were less than 200 bears left. Conservation efforts have brought the grizzly population in Yellowstone National Park back up to 700. After 42 years on the threatened species list, the bears were officially deemed recovered and delisted in 2017. But with no protections outside national parks, critics of the delisting have argued bears will be susceptible to all the same dangers that cut down their population in the first place.

Like grizzly bears, gray wolves struggle to coexist with humans. At one time, wolves were as common as domestic dogs are today—sadly, these pack animals were always considered villains, not man’s best friend.

Although wolf attacks on humans were rare, the yellow-eyed canines would pick off unsuspecting livestock during the night, infuriating ranchers. Wolves were trapped, poisoned, or shot, hunted almost to extinction. By 1920, there were less than 40 left, and only a few packs persisted in Minnesota and on Isle Royale in Michigan. The species didn’t receive protection until the ESA was enacted in 1973.

By the ‘90s, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had brought wolves in from Canada to begin reintroduction. Wolves were delisted in 2008, but a surge of wolf shootings in the Rocky Mountains just two months later resulted in a federal lawsuit to put wolves back under the act’s protection. The courts ruled in favor of the wolves, and by fall of 2008, they were back on the list of endangered and threatened species. In 2017, the wolf population was considered recovered, and delisted for the second time.

Known for their melodic whale songs and beautiful breaches, the openness of these colossal creatures may have led to their demise. Because of their massive size and tendency to lounge near the surface of the water, humpback whales were easy prey.

The commercial whaling business almost wiped out these sea creatures completely, leaving only a few thousand alive worldwide. In 1966, hunting humpback whales was banned, and a few years later, the species was listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Conservation Act, another law that preceded the ESA. Humpback whales were delisted in 2016, and around 20,000 are singing under the sea today.

When we think of endangered species, it’s easy to focus on all the beloved animals that roam the earth. But there are many wild plants at risk, too. In 1997, Helianthus eggertii—a bright, yellow flowering plant indigenous to Tennessee, Alabama, and South Carolina—was listed as a threatened species.

What jeopardized this tall flower’s survival is also a threat to human habitat: wildfire. Because these plants grow in such barren environments, they rely on wildfires to propagate. But of course, raging outbursts of flame are no good for humans, and fire suppression efforts made it difficult for these already rare plants to persevere. Put under the ESA’s protection in 1997, the species was able to recover through restorative burns in secured areas. Now 287 populations of the rare sunflower exist, and the plant was listed as recovered in 2005.

Alligators managed to survive and thrive for millions of years—until humans came along. Like wolves and whales, alligators were almost hunted to extinction. Found in the swampy, southern states, the alligator population was almost decimated due to unregulated hunting. In 1967, alligators were listed as an endangered species, and alligator hunting was prohibited under the newly formed ESA in 1973.

Twenty years later, the alligator recovered, making one of the act’s quickest comebacks. Now a species of least concern (there are around five million gators in the U.S. today), alligator hunting has been made legal again.

Tennessee purple coneflower

This striking daisy-like flower was the second plant (following the evening primrose) to be put on the endangered species list in 1979. It only existed in one place in the world: a 14-mile stretch of limestone cedar glade (also an endangered ecosystem) near Nashville, TN. Ripe with aromatic red cedar trees growing atop a bed of limestone, this otherworldly area is full of fissures where the purple coneflower grows. As Nashville developed, the species and its habitat became threatened. A conservation plan was implemented, and through protections of the ESA, the plant was recovered in 2011. This plant is now plentiful, and you can even buy seeds and try growing it yourself.

The story of the fastest bird in the world parallels the one of the bald eagle. Falcon numbers were already on the decline due to loss of habitat, hunting, and egg collecting, but it was the pesticide DDT that really did in these kings of the air. By the ‘60s, no peregrine falcons existed in the eastern U.S., and in 1970, the species was listed as endangered.

Protected under the ESA, the birds were successfully bred in captivity and reintroduced into the wild. The peregrine falcon was delisted in 1999, and there are around 3,000 breeding pairs in North America today.

It’s not just animals on American soil the ESA has helped recover. Found in Australia, the red kangaroo is sought after for its meat and hide. Now, the mammoth marsupials are so plentiful that kangaroo hunting in Australia is considered sustainable. But in 1974, excessive hunting put the them on the endangered species list. Shortly after, the ESA aided conservationists overseas by putting a ban on all imports of kangaroos or kangaroo-derived products. The species moved from threatened to recovered, and was delisted in 1995.

It seems like squirrels are always just a stone’s (or perhaps peanut) throw away, but those that fly through the air at night are rare. There once was no shortage of coniferous tree tops in the Appalachian Mountains to glide between, but deforestation quickly pushed the squirrel species to near extinction.

Put on the endangered list in 1985, the flying squirrels were thought to have recovered in 2008, but were put back under protection in 2011. In the months after its reinstatement, conservation efforts made to regenerate forests led to a restoration of the species, and by 2013, the flying squirrel was officially declared recovered.

Written By Anna Brooks

#Animals

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technicalschoolsnearme365 · 6 years ago

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On Being Ill in a Room of One's Own

On Being Ill in a Room of One's Own Marakana and Lonmin are all over the news.

When I was six feet under Johannesburg I felt as if I was moving through the world and the world was a dream. I could explore the surface valiantly but my thoughts were no longer precise. I was cut off from people even though thought traffic and crowds surrounded me. In the city I found a barren wilderness, fierce people, breathed it all in, and compared myself to others. It filled me with the bitter seeds of sorrow and I felt like a skinny bird again, a child in time considering all the spiritual in nature. It is cold and I hope that soon this cold will go underground. I loved appliances houston the smoke. I loved the raw, electric smell of pollution in the air, the rubbish in the streets, the wretched poor. One way for survival in the city is to grow old (you will grow old quickly and weary, tired and hurt from what you experience). Wisdom will fill you from your head down to your toes as you observe everything around you; the weight of life and suddenly what seems familiar will no longer feel familiar to you in the way it once did. For survival lots of things will have to happen to you. You will have to lose that pure innocence about you. You will not age gracefully. You will forget and there are sometimes things that you won't forget.

For some people another car dealerships in houston person's misery is their ministry, and they believe that that is their journey and mission that they have been called up to act upon for the rest of their lives. Family should be close and a brother and sister closer. From there I always wondered where the dead go when they die. Is it enough to remember them in passing, lay flowers on their grave, or to let go of the thread of how simple life is when compared to the complex nature of physics, biology and mathematics.

The cemetery is paved with the flame of memory. I was always the girl, the woman who stood alone in the rain with a bunch of flowers in her hands. I can say this now. I am no longer opposed to it. In fact it makes me feel emancipated. I've turned the pressure washer dryer clearance on its head and called it something else, vitality. All my life I have felt connected to nature, the fog, and fields, the farms that belonged to my family. There were always faces of aunts and uncles at funerals that disoriented me because I could not place them. And I would say like a mantra as I stood at a grave or while I attended a wedding, 'To all the ghosts dead or living from my past in the spirit of writing this I best shapewear let go of you all.'

As a child my brother retreated into sports and it was a luxurious time for him, being an Maternity Shapewear athlete with his limbs taking on a life of their own. But for me that period in time glittered with falsehoods, formidable isolation and neglect. Writing had not become my religion yet.

Sometimes I could touch the silence that I held inside of my heart. It didn't have an ego (this shell made of glass) and it didn't tell me to go to hell. It didn't damn the precocious child in me.

It was from him that I learnt how not to compare myself to other people and to question whether or not it (raising comparisons) was an experimental construct from youth or the life and death of miracles taking place in front of me. Or was it the natural coexistence of human nature next to an animal one? There is something poetic, something about the futility, the loneliness of the latitudes and longitudes of shore life. I longed so much for it that I began to write about the ocean that I had come to know as a child. I would spend a day on the beach with the warmth of the sun sucked inside of myself. Port Elizabeth is not Athol Fugard's Port Elizabeth anymore. It's become a moral dilemma. The youth have their own song, ambiguity, and their own fired up intensity about politics and the police. We are still digging for bodies that went missing years ago during apartheid. We are still digging for bodies that went missing last week. Life and death and always the heartache of it and the genuine moving sensation of pain that comes with suffering has become as natural as breath. In my shadow stood lone Brother Wolf and in my head I found the source of therapy in his song. When he sang the blues (of course he was just playing his radio in his bedroom but that was just his subconscious talking, driven to face reality, the truth, all the letters in l-o-v-e, all the words, the sticky fingers of 'I love you') it reminded me of the ocean. How tranquil it was just to stand there in front of all its majesty, to observe the color of it, how it just seemed to go on and on and flow into infinity. It was magical and transparent all at the same time. The people seemed to be all patchwork and one-dimensional. When I took off my glasses they didn't seem to be defined anymore by their limbs. They just seemed smudged and blurry effigies. Children bent on building castles, standing precariously in and around rock pools while fishing in them. I haven't had an organic idea for a long time and by that I mean a fresh and new idea that had a sensibility of place and size. Everything happens in the city. People happen upon each other there. I did not see how I could love like our mama had loved us with her maternal instincts. Her love would come as a feast served up on plates instead of a therapist. Mama was formidable, a thinker and a doer. Her flesh felt like a hook, line and sinker, something brutal, otherworldly. I became a bird without wings, without a cage, without vital seed. In the light of the day was Mama's garden and the extraordinary work she put into it. Mama liked to kill every thought of the hard work that I put into anything, every collective thread that I wanted people to remember me by, my cultural manifesto, and the legacy of my creative gifts. But Brother Wolf taught me that perfection comes with hard work and separation anxiety. He never spoke in so many words. I had to watch and learn from his fixed and focused psychosomatic drive to achieve, to be brave, to see phenomena and vision indiscriminately where others could not. I have come to this beach today to remember, to see, to think, not to wallow even, not to drown as I once did with my head inside the development of a manuscript, divided siblings with their hearts raw, anguish bleeding figuratively into the contact they had with other people. In Port Elizabeth I learned to battle, sometimes weeping about the state of the nation and its upheaval and then came Marakana and Lonmin, the gold and platinum mines, workers striking for more pay. It had to affect me like any poet, writer, teacher or intellectual.

I tried to help. I put the potatoes in the bag as quickly as I possibly could before anyone in the house could see me. It could be a meal. The first and last meal the family could have for the day, the week. Bless them. I hoped they would bless this food to their bodies. So many people came today to the door. Hungry and tired, their feet sore and covered in blisters from walking so far. Where did they all come from I wondered? How did they live? Oh, I always wondered that. What were the dismal circumstances they found themselves in and why couldn't they tear themselves away from poverty and need, want, desire? Why were they treated as if they belonged in a leper colony and not society? I could feel the sun's rays penetrating my fingers as I held them up and studied them meticulously. These were my mother's hands. I could see the bright halo of the sun. I felt warm and bright as if a tidal force of energy was moving through me in a rush. It spun through me as effortless as a wheel, constant and I was buoyed with hope.

Mama knitting, always knitting, and at the end of the storm in this house this is the crucial debate. She is the spectator left to drown in what her son, (my anchor and shield) Brother Wolf does not say. The only proof of all our worldly possessions lies in the material, as the soul hovers between earth and the eternal feeling, the intense call of paradise beckoning, on the threshold of a heavenly home. For all of my life my brother was home to me with his brown eyes, brown hair, brown skin in his clean blue jeans and white shirt. The two of us were a family coming together in a deep soulful exercise, of restoring peace in the home.

The jungle is out there somewhere but there are no monkeys hanging on trees only vast green fields. Everything around Wren was art. Every day felt like summer and when it rained it felt like summer rain. There was even a poetic energy and beauty about the hail when it fell. But it was only a year and when the year was over she went home with her tail between her legs.

Home. The first thing that she knew was wrong was when she could not sleep. She was drained. She felt exhausted, tossing and turning trying to rest, frustrated yet she could not sleep. She would be up all hours of the night. Insomnia made her feel as if she was living in a glass house.

The television was on in the family room. My brother liked having the television on in the afternoon even though nobody was watching it. He was eating a packet of crisps and wiping his salty fingers on his jeans after licking them one by one. Wren stood in the doorway sipping a cup of lukewarm black coffee.

Do you want to see my scars? When and where I've come undone. Nobody wants to see the scars, only how I've been anchored.

Here I come. Just another visit from the drowned girl. She sits at the end of my bed while I read. She wants to give my comic books to orphans and street children but they do not know what the word 'Marvel' means in my life. Sometimes I wish she would leave me alone with her sad, soft eyes. I know when she's been crying and it's usually about something that happened in the past. Melancholia shudders through me. I can feel the ripple pass through my body like a current or an inelegant spasm.

What Africa must learn from wars is you must let the clouds see you. You must let the skin of the tightrope of the blue-sky sink into you. The world is not my home. It is only borrowed temporarily. I remember a burst of radiance and how nature must then have seemed like a green acre on the farms we passed when going to visit my father's family from every mile. And so I come to Vietnam. Some have said that war has a purpose. It pours maturity into a boy's heart. But they forget what will happen to his soul. And so the world moved swiftly towards morality with a knot at the base of my throat. And on the battlefields lies depression. A picture of power and survival where hunger is just a bomb made from chaos and absurdity. I am glad war was not my fight, my purpose. Whoever does it bring meaning and value to?

Iraq was a sky bright with stars. A burning voyage into the land of saboteurs and destruction, an ancient one built on flames. All this talk of war would just reduce Wren to tears.

In a most far off northern city my sister's come undone (women and hysteria).

So what if I come undone again.

This time I've the one who has come undone but nobody really cared.

My grandfather (Joseph William George) a war veteran. Posted off to Kenya at the start of the Second World War and when he came back he was never the same again (no hero's welcome). He w luxury cars houston as given a bicycle and a jacket for the Coloured soldier. I did not live to see any of that (I was not born yet) but my father did and I guess my grandfather carried that humiliation for the rest of his life. Men are changed by war as are the women and children they leave behind. We stopped throwing birthday parties for Wren when she turned twenty. Only my friends came over and we hung out in my room sucking beer out of bottles and left the empties stacked high in the kitchen. I could sense Wren's disapproval. It was acute. She was fragile. She always was. Her nerves on edge, raw, sharp, fierce. Our love was like a sonnet. Our fear and trepidation for a future we would go out into the world on our own a haiku. Life and death is very succinct in a haiku. Most nights we'd stay in, and watch the news and eat spaghetti (proper family stuff). When I was in that almost fatal car accident (that nobody in the family ever spoke about) and I could sense the face of the road's blackness coming out to meet me head on before I could see it, I was not afraid. The car was a complete write-off but I walked away from the crash with minor injuries, scratches. The car had wrapped itself around a tree. It is madness to drink before you get into a car but I did it all the time way back then. Not because I thought it was cool but because I could get away with it. Wren if she had her way would want me to be a Buddhist monk. And if her world were perfect she would brave the New World around her as a nun. She would remain in a pure state, the one she had carried with her from childhood. Wren would be charged with innocence. She wasn't always a poet. Houston SEO Expert And she wasn't always very nice to me. Issues, issues, issues, burning ones, diaries and notebooks filled with scribble from top to bottom, pictures she painted, photographs she took revealed her genuine person. And so she became something much more authentic that I could relate to and I could love her again. I did not know about the love affairs she had. She never exposed that side of her. At home she was a killer Monopoly and Scrabble player. Maybe that's all we knew of each other, that we were killers when it came to playing board games and little else. I know nothing of the much older men she fell in love with. How lost she felt sometimes, that she created boxes in her mind's eye where she put their lone shadows at rest, her suffering in silence, storing tiny details about their beauty and strength that she accumulated across weeks and months of going from one relationship to the next. The sister I know helped me cook the Christmas lunch with velocity and there were plenty of smiles when the chicken came out perfectly. The roast potatoes, the pan glistening with fat and runny juices it was not just something for the two of us to do, to pass the time like any other family would on a special holiday, we spoke but not in so many words. She would watch me carefully with her eyes catching every move I made but that she was sometimes slow to react to. I think most of all she wanted to be seen as serene and graceful, a lady who had sky-high standards but sometimes she failed at that. We all became really good at composing ourselves and to project what the outside world wanted to see of us, which was a modern family. A family of productive thinkers, doers, intellectuals, connected to the SEO Company Toronto culture of creativity and linked to charm, and charisma. Every year our holidays would turn into pilgrimages and those times were when the core, the heart of our family system was the strongest. When things changed for the worse, for the better, it happened like a swinging pendulum. Wren was at the centre of it, always at the centre of it. And there was nothing that anybody could do about it. If I do not write home about its adversity from my unique perspective then who will, that sweet, poetic stagnation of bipolar. Wren and illness, her illness, all the sorrowful angles staring up at the face of the sun but could she even feel it, that sensation of electrifying warmth on cool skin when you've just come outdoors to feed the dogs or throw a ball around. The word 'suicide' was strictly outlawed in our home.

I was always mor what career is right for me e at home at the end of the sky, the outdoors and by outdoors I mean stepping out into our mother's garden that smelled like jasmine and lavender and incense burning. It was years before we found out that not everyone lived, looked, thought the way we did. And by 'the end of the sky' I mean the world of her imagination. I think my sister Wren has always wanted to touch people's lives in a meaningful way and that even though our childhood was brutal in some ways we had to leave a trail of breadcrumbs behind if we ever got lost on the trail in that dark forest at night.

Now I am a changed person, a changed woman. No longer a stranger or estranged from readying herself to take up her place in the world. There it was. What more could be said about the end of the damned affair. Love me. Choose me. But I did not speak those words, nor could I find it in my heart to bring myself to say them. I had enough of being left behind, being told what to do, think and feel. I was tired early childhood development of being engaged in that useless interaction.

Our clothes had grass stains on it. The sun shone in our eyes while we blinked madly (maybe they were tears). There we were. Wolf and Wren playing together, laughing, talking, watching, observing the other 'patients'. What was wrong with them? They seemed to be perfectly all right. Daddy is smiling and he kisses mummy on the lips and we all say, 'Ooh, daddy and mummy is in love.' If mummy is sad she doesn't show it. It is me who is left to wonder at the complexities of grown up behaviour, human nature. It's Wolf who is perfectly normal here. We lay on our backs business analyst certification but there weren't any clouds. We played at making a fire. The rock, paper, scissors game. We had come to visit daddy. On the way to the clinic mummy didn't play the radio. The ride there was quiet. Wolf looked out the window and I sat up front like a grown up next to mummy. I don't want this for my brother's children and I don't want this for my own. Daddy says he is well. He is painting. He even finds time to read. I wish I could run away. I wished I could hold onto my brother's hand forever, that he could never, ever read my mind, and that I could protect him forever. Mummy wants another baby. She said that once. Daddy cannot see us waving. It's so heart-breaking. I don't want to be me. I turn around and look at my mother's profile. It hurts to breathe, to think, to mutter, or even to whisper anything. I do not know yet that grown up I will mostly have views of fertility and family, psychiatry and psychology in the world I live in. My sister will live faraway in another city, work hard in a bank and only come home once a year for Christmas or never.

All I see when I close my eyes is the flowers of night-time.

Their shade is black. Their eyes are black. Their shape is black. They're hideous with their claws clawing at me. They seem to want to drown. It is their livelihood. They've received our freedom and so must we. These have not been my best years so far. They seem all shriveled up as if they have died. I feel dried up inside up. I feel thirsty, let down, I need to feel the sun on my back, I need to learn how to cope, stand on my own and not feel let down by life, love, family, aunts and a sister all the time. I need to see you. How convenient for you that I have simply vanished into thin air. Your little doll, your plaything, your pretty baby doll. I have now some sizing up to do. I am marked for life or is it death. Hey, wait a minute now. There is more to this tale of loss and of love. There is no point in shortcuts babe, hey? (This is taken from a diary entry from that scene in Johannesburg where I caused many scenes).

After you left me (or is it the other technical schools near me way around) how do I justify misbehaving so badly? I was so savagely torn from what I believed in. I stood by my values.

Your cowardice up, no longer fastened on me, fascinated me. I wish I could say that I could love something. Stick to it.

Your words have always been a chicken soup for my spirit, my harvest, my shield, my river, my border, and the boundaries of the four walls keeping the good parts of my consciousness in. You have taught me to look the world in the eye. Your hands were the hands that were in the fire. And you were the one who pulled me from the wreckage (from the weight of a heavy burden of illness).

Now this city, Port Elizabeth is haunting. I miss Johannesburg. I seemed more at home there (curiously), more at ease, more myself, less exposed to the elements, the human A+ certification training elements and others. Swaziland is even further away. Now it just a memory. And I can't remember the pent-up desire to leave my childhood home. All this time I've been haunted by the past and while history surrounds us you move forward.

All my life I have imagined m brother lucid, intent on not struggling with your own identity. All my life I have imagined you as a luminous quiet treasure. The good toy soldier with war wounds a-plenty. Your dark hair that smelled of rain when you were a little boy eating fudge ice cream or a tuna fish sandwich with a serious and determined expression on your tiny curious face. And then there was still the architecture of the waterfall, the carnival, the splendid circus of my departed sadness, and that became my inheritance to you.

It came in a box, dry ingredients for the Red Velvet cake all the way from America from a cousin who was staying there now. A cousin who had two boisterous children under the age of five and an American husband, and it also came with a tub of frosting that did not have to be refrigerated. There had been a lot of cakes made, bought, and decorated in that house as well as memories that burned, that would send you to an early grave (I'll never forget the mass graves discovered in Herzegovina-Bosnia that I watched on television when I was in high school). But eating birthday cake you'd soon forget all about that. You'd lick the icing off the spoon, drink tea like a grown up out of teacups decorated with flowers and pink blooms. Kiss and greet family at your birthday tea party like you haven't seen them in years. Life gets heavy if you don't have them around you to protect, to keep you safe from harm. Why would I want to go to Alaska? It's cold for one. To be near something, some place that doesn't remind me of the sun but at the end of the day it isn't the destination that becomes important. It's who you are with the people you're with, the significant and important people you love. This feels like a distant and remote thing for me, love, and the art of loving. And the art of loving one genius in a family is never enough even if it is done from faraway. The ones left in the shadows they too have their roles to play even if it takes their entire lifetimes to realise it. Poetry is such a comfort and if I had a scarcity of it in my life I think there is a part of me that would not feel entirely whole. I would be the half-hearted experiment making an attempt to live an exemplary life like Ingrid Jonker, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Anne Sexton and Norma Jean Baker. Not just names and faces but also icons in their field. Women ahead of the times they were born into and who would lead the next generation. And I would be a poet, that poet with the seasons all a flutter inside her head while butterflies danced, nerves whirling into algorithms until both could not be discriminated. These would be all my rituals. To eat, to meditate, to feast, to remember ch plus size shapewear ildhood anxieties, what I anticipated around every corner, the fudge my mother used to make, how my grandmother's, the matriarch of the family cheek felt like porcelain, smelt like powder after I kissed her. I knew I had inherited some of that from her, cold, calculating recipes and the baking of bread that would turn into disasters in my hands. She taught me to realise self, selfhood and what would challenge me later in life and if it was going to be illness that I was going to live with it for a very long time my life had to be a wonderfully epic one. I had to make it a legend of flirting with falls, of standing up and of letting go of the world. Instead of wondering why half the time mental illness was so unquiet.

It starts with me first. The angel's tongue, volcano, fireflies, philosophy singeing my dopamine and me asking myself, 'Where are you going to,' and later, much later, 'How on earth did you get here?'

And then I met Julian and the origins of the universe tasted sweeter. Life can be sweet, bittersweet, taste like American fudge, caramel, butterscotch, or liquid vanilla. (He was beautiful). He had dark hair, long dark hair (and I can remember threads of it lying across his back), wearing blue jeans, a denim shirt and him carrying a guitar. For now he is my Saviour because we talk all the time for what seems like hours with the brushstrokes of quality not quantity. Our conversations, our heated debates about the food served in the canteen, even our silences take us both on a Zen-like spiritual expedition. I think we were both at a point in our lives where we wanted answers, elegant solutions as to why this had to happen to us. And then he opens up. Another passage, rite and pilgrimage for me. He decides to talk about his schizophrenia. He is my first friend in this hospital of both fun and hell and I want to protect him from the world around him, the world at large and me (some of me, the internal struggle that has no coherent voice, cohesive exterior). I want to shelter him from society that extracts and distils the intelligence of a child, man or a woman that has mental illness and calls it 'madness'.

I wanted to travel when I was younger but now there seems to be no time for that. I've read Tolstoy and Nabokov and now want to read Pasternak (all Russian writers). I wanted to study in Europe and America but what's the point when you really can't time or pinpoint when you're going to be 'flying off the rails', hallucinate disco beats in Technicolor, when you've imagined that you are not 'you'. 'You' are just wasting away in a room not far away from where people actually live. In a bedroom that your mother made pretty by putting flowers, actually roses now that you used appliances houston come to think of it, in a vase to make the 'sadness' pretty. After all you're still a girl and girls love pink and pretty, dresses and shoes, flowers, anything beautiful. It is your mother that comes to your room in the morning first thing and opens up your curtains. Who will tell you to clean your room when you're thirty something, that she's doing the laundry, 'where are your dirty clothes and I need those sheets too'. It is your mother who will want to lift your spirits, the same way you wanted to lift hers when she listened to the dialogue on the television when you were little. When you were thinking that she was tired and resting on the sofa, with her eyes closed while you watched the curve of her bottom lip and her mouth slightly open while she breathed in and out.

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rjzimmerman · 4 years ago

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Excerpt from this press release from the Center for Biological Diversity:

A coalition of wildlife conservation groups today notified the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service of its intent to file a lawsuit challenging the recent decision to strip gray wolves of Endangered Species Act protection across nearly all the lower 48 states.

Six conservation groups represented by Earthjustice — the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, Sierra Club, Oregon Wild, National Parks Conservation Association and the Humane Society of the United States — sent today’s notice letter.

The challenged delisting rule, which becomes effective Jan. 4, will permit trophy hunting and trapping of wolves again in the Great Lakes states. Delisting will slow or completely halt recovery of wolves in most of their former range. The new rule excludes Mexican gray wolves, which are listed separately under the Endangered Species Act.

“The Trump administration shut the door to wolf recovery, even as the science shows that wolves are too imperiled and ecologically important to abandon,” said Collette Adkins, carnivore conservation director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “We’re taking the fight to the courts, and I’m confident we can restore the Endangered Species Act’s lifesaving protections for gray wolves across the nation.”

“The decision to remove critical protections for still-recovering gray wolves is dangerously short-sighted, especially in the face of an extinction and biodiversity crisis,” said Bonnie Rice, senior representative for Sierra Club's Our Wild America Campaign. “We should be putting more effort into coexistence with wolves and reinstating endangered species protections critical for their full recovery.”

Today’s notice letter states that removal of the gray wolf’s federal protection is unlawful because the species has not recovered in the Pacific Northwest, the southern Rockies and elsewhere that scientists identify as “significant” habitat for the wolf.

The notice letter also asserts that the Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision contradicts the most current science regarding wolf conservation and taxonomy and ignores concerns raised in peer reviews by the nation’s top wolf scientists.

“It’s perverse to declare wolves fully recovered when they exist in only a fraction of their historic range,” said Adkins. “I’m hopeful that the court will set things right, but in the meantime hundreds of wolves will die, and it will take years to undo the damage done. It’s heartbreaking and senseless.”

The Endangered Species Act requires that the coalition now wait 60 days before filing its lawsuit with the court.

#wolves #Endangered Species Act #trump

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kakoliberlin · 8 years ago

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Wildlife Weekly Wrap Up – 04/07/17

Your weekly roundup of wildlife news from across the country.

WildSights:

“Northern Harrier, Middleburgh NY” From Vic DiSanto

“Black squirrel in our yard in West Bend, Wisconsin.” From Laura Hetzel

From Laura Hetzel

“Onderwaterwereld Thailand was prachtig!” From Oliviane Vanbrabandt

“Caught Wiley out back again this morning!” From Vallee Johnson

“Achteraf bekeken ,eigenlijk te dicht om echt veilig te zijn!” From Oliviane Vanbrabandt

“Cooper hawk” From Liz Coakley

“Rosette Spoonbill - Ten Thousand Islands” From Randy Traynor

“Red Tail Hawk - Big Cypress National Preserve” From Randy Traynor

“A female cardinal” From Sherry Powers DeClercq

“And a male cardinal.....” From Sherry Powers DeClercq

Wild stories from the Week:

Devil rays are harvested by the thousands for their gill plates – the part of the body they use to filter food from the water. At last year’s CITES CoP meeting, Defenders and other organizations joined with nations from around the world to advocate for this species’ survival. Now, as of April 4th, devil rays are protected under CITES strict trade controls. This is an important victory for the endangered species! Learn more about the importance of CITES: http://dfnd.us/1QbVIA7

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is one of America’s last truly wild places. Now is the time to protect it from destructive oil drilling once and for all. Congress should support newly introduced legislation to designate the Coastal Plain of the Arctic Refuge as wilderness! Click here to learn more about this iconic place and to sign up to take action: http://dfnd.us/1TaOn1Q

A major win for this fierce little bird gives it a new chance for endangered species protection. This decision marks not only an important victory for pygmy-owls, but for the Endangered Species Act as well: http://dfnd.us/2p2dwUI

Our Defenders in Action:

In the Southeast:An important part of Defenders’ outreach work involves connecting with future generations of wildlife advocates! Heather Clarkson, Southeast Program Outreach Representative, joined a team of educators, attorneys, and conservationists at the University of North Carolina School of Law’s Student Animal Legal Defense Symposium to present and discuss with students how organizations like Defenders use the law to advocate for wildlife and wildlife habitat.

In the Rocky Mountains and Great Plains:Our Rockies and Plains Field Conservation Associate, Russ Talmo, spent a day in the field with our partner, the Tom Miner Basic Association (TMBA), to install turbo-fladry around calving grounds, one of the simplest yet effective coexistence tools. These flapping flags are a novel scare device that deter wolves from approaching. Though these flags seem more like something you would expect at a used car lot, they are very effective at keeping wolves out of vulnerable areas for short periods of time, like at night or during birthing season. This installation project welcomed an impressive cast of characters to assist with the installation. In addition to TMBA staff, we had the local Wildlife Services agent, the regional Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks Wolf Specialist, and a youth group from 2 local chapters of Future Farmers of America all pitching in. For more information on fladry, visit http://dfnd.us/2nltSeI

In the Southeast:Through his local Chamber of Commerce, Michael Adams, our Florida Senior Representative, hosted a two-day Environmental Leadership academy on his own private conservation area outside of St. Augustine, FL. The first day was tailored for high school students and more than a dozen attended to discuss imperiled wildlife, environmental and conservation education as well as career opportunities within the conservation field. The second day was geared for adult environmental leadership topics such as wildlife corridors, habitat conservation, longleaf pine and wetlands restoration, which were presented and discussed on site to the large group of participants.

The post Wildlife Weekly Wrap Up – 04/07/17 appeared first on Defenders of Wildlife Blog.

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kakoliberlin · 8 years ago

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California and Nevada Record First Wolves in Nearly 100 Years

Gray wolves begin to rediscover the lands they once called home.

Credit: California Department of Fish and Wildlife Services

In the summer of 2015, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife made the thrilling announcement that a family of wolves had made their home in the Golden State. The announcement was spurred by sightings of the first pack of wolves to be spotted in the state in almost a century.

Named the Shasta Pack because of their discovery in southeastern Siskiyou County near Mount Shasta, the family of gray wolves was made up of two adult parents and their five pups.

Through DNA analysis of scat samples, scientists determined that both adult wolves were members of the Imnaha Pack in northeast Oregon and related to OR-7, who after his visits to the state, settled in southern Oregon and started the Rogue Pack.

The excitement over a new pack of wolves having taken up residence in the state was quickly overshadowed by their abrupt disappearing act.

A Shocking Development

Alarmingly, the Shasta Pack went missing and has not been seen since May of 2016, when an image of a single juvenile was capture by a remote trail camera. California Department of Fish and Wildlife officials don’t believe any foul play is involved in their having gone off the radar, but their abandonment of their breeding grounds is unusual for an established pack. Officials continue to search for the missing pack. Unfortunately, none of the Shasta Pack is collared which makes the search all the more difficult.

However, a spark of good news was announced just this week that one of the young wolves was spotted in an unlikely place: northwestern Nevada. DNA tests of scat left in the area near Fox Mountain, about 20 miles east of the border with California, recently confirmed that a young male from the Shasta Pack was in Nevada last November.

The whereabouts of the other Shasta Pack members remains unclear, but news of a spotting in Nevada carries hope that the pack is thriving and that some members have even made their own journeys to new territories.

The sighting in Nevada is similarly remarkable for a state that has also been without a confirmed wolf in nearly a century. Whether or not the male wolf came alone, which is most likely the case, the trek shows the drive gray wolves have to disperse to suitable areas to call home and the need for states to be able to address and protect these sojourners upon their arrival in a new land.

Reestablishing the Pack

Discovery of the Shasta Pack demonstrates that the efforts to restore wolves to the Pacific West are gaining ground—literally and figuratively.

While the historical extent and numbers of gray wolves in California are not known for sure, there are accounts of wolves in several areas throughout the state. What is more certain is that the species was driven to extinction in the state when the last known wild wolf was killed in Lassen County in 1924. Other populations across the U.S. followed suit suffering near destruction by the mid-1930s. In 1974, the species was officially listed under the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA).

In an effort to bolster the wolf’s recovery in the wild, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) reintroduced gray wolves into Yellowstone National Park as well as central Idaho in 1995 and 1996.

The Shasta Pack, like the other packs of wolves originating in Oregon and parts of Washington, are descendants of the population reintroduced by the FWS into central Idaho. Their discovery in California signals these reintroduced populations are on the move and naturally dispersing throughout their historical range. The significance of the Shasta Pack to California’s efforts to protect endangered wolf populations as they naturally disperse throughout their native ranges cannot be understated.

The Call of the Wild

The call of the wild is a very real impulse for pack animals like the gray wolf. The need to move away from their birthing grounds to start a new life in a new land is not merely a voyage of discovery and a testing of one’s mettle, it is a natural instinct that serves many purposes for a species’ health and survival.

Dispersal is an inherent response to competition over food and mating opportunities, environmental disruptions, social aggression and habitat availability. It is important for population regulation and diversity, social organization and colonization.

Wolves require large, continuous areas to move around in that include forests and mountain terrain. Suitable habitat must have sufficient access to prey, protection from excessive persecution, and areas for denning and taking shelter. As their populations in the Northwest and Rocky Mountain regions continue to recover, wolves will naturally disperse into territories they once inhabited or new areas that have become suitable for their survival.

Like California and Nevada, most of these places will not have seen wolves in decades. It is critically important that states with the potential to see dispersing wolves entering their borders, like Colorado and Utah, are prepared to protect these endangered animals and have clear plans in place for how to deal with visiting and homesteading wolves, as well as educational outreach for citizens and ranchers on how to coexist with this returning neighbor. Defenders has been at the forefront of important coexistence work for decades, and we stand ready to help state wildlife management agencies and other interested stakeholders employ nonlethal tools and methods to reduce conflicts with wolves.

Protecting Gray Wolves Throughout Their Natural Range

In both California and Nevada, the gray wolf still retains its federal protection status under the Endangered Species Act. It is therefore illegal to harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture or collect wolves (or attempt to do any such acts) in these states and in other areas where wolves are fully protected by the ESA.

Federal protections under the ESA in several states, including Idaho, Montana and Wyoming have been rescinded by federal legislation and court decisions. Other states, including Utah, Oregon and Washington, only have federal protections in certain areas of their state.

If gray wolves are ever going to recover, they need to be assured of protection under the ESA. In 2013, there was a regulatory proposal to delist gray wolves, except for the Mexican gray wolf subspecies, in the lower 48 states under the federal statute, but so far no official decision has been made. A premature federal delisting could spell tragedy for a fragile species on the rebound. A ruling to delist gray wolves would mean turning over management decisions to the states, some of which don’t have state plans in place to protect these endangered species.

Preserving the Endangered Species Act

Not unlike the wildlife it seeks to protect, the ESA has been under intense threat. The ESA was the target of more than 130 legislative attacks during the 114th Congress, a trend we are already seeing continue into the first session of the current Congress. Last month the Senate held an oversight hearing on the need for so-called “modernization” of the ESA. Historically, calls for “modernization” have been little more than veiled attempts to weaken and undermine statutes. Just this week Defenders testified before the House Natural Resources Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee on the implementation of section 7 of the ESA, which had been attacked as ineffective. Defenders staff testified to the strength of the act and its effectiveness at meeting its mission. They argued that the only shortcoming of the ESA is the fact that it is hamstringed in its efforts by a lack of funding and the best way to improve its function would be for lawmakers to commit to fully funding it. The ESA is America’s premier law for protecting and preserving endangered and threatened species and we must defend it for wildlife everywhere.

Defenders is working tirelessly to combat these incessant attacks against the ESA and our nation’s at-risk wildlife and you can, too. Sign up for our emails to receive the latest news and action alerts in the fight to protect endangered species. In the meantime, we will keep up the fight to protect these endangered wolves as they continue to recover and rediscover the historical landscape they once called home.

The post California and Nevada Record First Wolves in Nearly 100 Years appeared first on Defenders of Wildlife Blog.

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