#the worst natural disaster in American history?

[senatortedcruz]

Coming of age under Bush II builds character (ensures I will never vote Republican in my life)

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Gabe Fleisher at Wake Up To Politics:

A few weeks ago, after CNN published its bombshell report about North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, I was texting with a friend. Rumors had been flying around the political world all day about what the report would bring. Now that it had arrived, my friend told me he was unimpressed; it wasn’t as earth-shattering as he’d been expecting. “One day, when your grandchildren ask you what American politics was like in 2024,” I responded, “you can tell them that we learned a gubernatorial candidate called himself a Nazi on a porn website, and your initial response was to shrug.” [...]

The U.S. is currently grappling with two major hurricanes at once — trying to prepare for one while still recovering from the damage of the other. The latter, Hurricane Helene, was the deadliest hurricane to hit the mainland U.S. since Katrina in 2005. More than 200 people have been killed, mostly in North Carolina, but also in Georgia and South Carolina as well. Entire towns in western North Carolina were leveled; some residents have now gone more than a week without running water.

The former, Hurricane Milton, is expected to make landfall in Florida tonight. Forecasters suggest that it could hit Tampa Bay, which was also impacted by the devastation of Helene but has not been in the direct path of a hurricane since 1921. The city is considered uniquely vulnerable to natural disaster; analysts are already predicting damage upwards of $50 billion. Local, state, and federal officials have been pleading with anyone in Milton’s path to evacuate immediately. “I can say this without any dramatization whatsoever: If you choose to stay in one of those evacuation areas, you are going to die,” Tampa Mayor Jane Castor said on CNN earlier this week.

“Several years ago I asked [the National Hurricane Center] to show me what the worst case storm hitting Florida would look like,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) posted on X. “What they showed me back then is almost identical to the #Milton forecast now.” With both storms hitting the U.S. only weeks before a heated presidential election, it is not shocking that they has quickly been sucked into the political discourse. America has a long history of election-year disasters becoming talking points on the campaign trail, from Hurricane Andrew hurting George H.W. Bush in 1992 to Hurricane Sandy boosting Barack Obama in 2012. But the responses to Helene and Milton have been marked by something new: an unprecedented flood of misinformation and conspiracy theories. Don’t take it from me. Take it from FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell, who told reporters on a Tuesday conference call that the misinformation surrounding these two hurricanes has been “absolutely the worst I have ever seen.”

Many of the false claims have come directly from Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who has claimed that: the Biden administration is “going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas” (GOP governors have said otherwise); that “Kamala spent all her FEMA money, billions of dollars, on housing for illegal migrants” (FEMA’s congressionally-appropriated program to help local governments house migrants is completely separate from FEMA’s disaster relief funds); and that “we give foreign countries hundreds of billions of dollars and we’re handing North Carolina $750” (that is merely the amount of aid made available to hurricane victims immediately; over the long run, victims can receive up to tens of thousands of dollars in support). A slew of Trump allies, including X owner Elon Musk, have amplified several other conspiracy theories online. But the prize for Biggest Whopper goes to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who posted — on her official congressional account — this week: “Yes they can control the weather.” The supposed “they” was not immediately identified, although Greene previously suggested in 2018 that California wildfires that year were caused by space lasers linked to the Rothschilds, a prominent Jewish family that has long been the subject of antisemitic conspiracy theories. (Greene posted again about “lasers controlling the weather” this week.) In recent weeks, Hurricanes Helene and Milton have sparked a flurry of antisemitic attacks against Jewish officials involved in the response, including claims that they created the disasters.

In her initial post, Greene attached a video of former CIA Director John Brennan discussing geoengineering, an umbrella term for scientific research into manipulating climate systems in order to mitigate the effects of climate change. Geoengineering remains largely theoretical; it is not possible to geoengineer a hurricane, and the technology has no connection to anything that happened with either Helene or Milton. “Climate change is the new Covid,” Greene asserted in another message. “Ask your government if the weather is manipulated or controlled. Did you ever give permission to them to do it? Are you paying for it? Of course you are.”

Other right-wing influencers advanced the argument. “The weather can and is being manipulated,” Georgia Republican Party official Kandiss Taylor posted to her nearly 60,000 X followers, adding: “[Georgia] voting has been compromised and don’t know if we will be able to get all our early voting days in. Now, a hurricane is coming straight for Florida. These two states are necessary for a Trump victory! No coincidence.” Taylor’s message has received more than 3 million views on X. The theories became popular enough in right-wing circles that Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-NC), who represents Asheville and most of western North Carolina (the area hit hardest by Helene), issued a press release on Tuesday to reassure his constituents of the falsity of various claims. Near the top of the list? “Nobody can control the weather,” he wrote. The statement, in its entirety, is a fascinating historical document — showing the types of claims that a Republican congressman felt he needed to fact-check in 2024, partially due to misinformation spread by his own colleagues and his party’s presidential candidate.

This piece in Wake Up To Politics by Gabe Fleisher is a must-read on the misinformation/disinformation crisis regarding Hurricanes Helene and Milton, thanks to Donald Trump and MAGA-aligned figures (especially in the right-wing media apparatus).

See Also:

MMFA: On The Victory Channel's FlashPoint, pro-Trump prophets suggest Hurricanes Helene and Milton are “spiritual” and that “God did say in the prophecies that these storms would be sent to interrupt the flow of our election process”

[firstprincehornyramblings]

WEEEEEEEEEEE Hello, I hope everyone is having a lovely Sunday. I feel like I haven't done a Sentences Sunday in years! Thrilled to be back, with Sugar Baby Alex, AND a new WIP. Things are under the cut so this isn't the longest post in history.

-

Let's get into it with Sugar Baby Alex first, shall we?:

“Alex, I am not ‘putting you off’, I am thirty-eight years old, I do not have that glorious refractory period you have, anymore,” the blond huffed, “As much as I would love to go again right now, and believe me, I would, it’s impossible. So, surely you can wait until this evening when we can both get hard, hm?” “Damn,” Alex whispered, “That fucking sucks actually, I didn’t know fucking an old dude would have drawbacks. So, like positive is that you can make me cum like never before but negative is that your dick has a tim-MMPHM!” That sentence was cut short by Henry picking up a pillow and pressing it into the brunette’s face, holding it in place for a moment as Alex flailed, “Such a mouth on you, I’m almost certain I liked it better full,” he teased before lifting that pillow, “Don’t make me confirm your sister and friend’s worst fear.” “Oh baby,” Alex laughed, smiling so wide now that he was free of the pillow, “Killing me with a pillow is so intimate though, that’s incredibly sexy of you.” “Shut up, Alex!” “Make me!”

AND new WIP time, Doctor Alex :)

What Henry was not expecting was for the door to open and the most beautiful man he’d ever seen in his life to walk in. He was fairytale prince level tall dark and handsome. Even in the scrubs, his physic was broad and built, and the long-sleeved shirt under his scrub top fit tight around wide biceps. He had coal colored, luxurious curls, high cheeks, and obscene lashes over gorgeous brown eyes. His jawline was sharp, covered in a few days’ worth of stubble. Miles of tanned skin, the same dark hair on his forearms, large hands that he was currently slipping into gloves. The few inches of exposed wrist from slightly pulled up sleeves made Henry feel like he was seeing something pornographic. But anything to keep himself from locking eyes on those incredibly soft looking lips. “Hi, I’m Alex, it’s nice to meet you.” Ah, Henry remembered reading something about Alexander the Great being the son of Zeus. Yes, a demigod, right here in Oxford, that made sense. No, wait, that accent- “You’re American?” Henry blurted out before he could stop himself. If asked, he would blame it on this man’s, well- everything. “Yeah, sorry,” Alex laughed, “Always forget that catches ya'll off guard, I’m from Texas. I’m going into clinical medicine, but I’d like to travel, work with the Red Cross and do outreach things; help with natural disasters and pandemics. It’ll be easier for me to break into that if I do the rest of medical school and residency in Europe.” “Oh.” “But that’s not why you’re here, hm, Mr. Fox? May I touch you?” the brunette asked stepping closer to the exam table Henry was sitting on. “Please. Erm, I mean, uhm, yes please, go ahead.”

-

🏷️(no pressure tags darlings)

@taste-thewaste @onthewaytosomewhere @henrysfox

@mikibwrites @eusuntgratie

@softboynick @catdadacd @sheepywritesfics

@henryspearl

@basil-bird @caressthosecheekbones

@henfox @anti-homophobia-cheese @redlipstickandglitter

@thesleepyskipper @tailsbeth-writes @thighzp @lfg1986-2

+ literally anyone else I'm tired and forgot. (Im queueing this at 2am) or anyone who sees this and wants to tag me, I love reading yall's stuff. <3

[rjzimmerman]

Climate Migration Will Be the Global Challenge of a Generation. (Sierra Club)

Extreme weather events in South America are driving more families to abandon their homes and undertake a risky, sometimes dangerous journey toward the US border. Changing precipitation patterns mean that once arable land is increasingly barren due to drought, while other areas, like southern Brazil are increasingly prone to cataclysmic flooding.

“Climate change acts as a multiplier for other factors,” said Michael Nash, a filmmaker and researcher who spent two years traveling the world talking to climate migrants as part of a film on the subject. “As regions around the world increasingly suffer from its effects, economies and infrastructure are also damaged as well. People fleeing these situations are often referred to as economic migrants, but the truth is much more complicated.”

“There is no process currently to deal with someone who is coming to the US due to crop failure or natural disaster,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy director at the American Immigration Council. “This is an ongoing challenge [for all nations] in the modern era, something we critically need to develop.”

The number of refugees who have been forcibly displaced globally has dramatically increased in the last decade, nearly doubling in size, and migration overall is increasing as well. The principal drivers are economic or related to conflict, but climate change increasingly plays a role, according to data from the United Nations International Office on Migration (IOM). 

Most of those who have been displaced migrate internally—to another region within their birth country—but the number of those choosing to cross borders in search of a better life is increasing as well. The IOM has cited estimates of as many as 1 billion climate migrants in the next 30 years. Other projections point to 1.2 billion by 2050, and 1.4 billion by 2060. Those migrants will largely flee equatorial zones, which will be the hardest hit by global warming, though they will not be the only regions affected.

Some regions, particularly in the Global South, are projected to experience significant changes in temperature, precipitation patterns, sea level rise, and other climate-related factors. Less than 1 percent of the world is currently considered borderline inhabitable. By 2070, that number is expected to rise to 19 percent.

Precipitation patterns are shifting, temperatures are rising, and some areas are experiencing changes in the frequency and severity of weather extremes. The impacts range from melting Andean glaciers to devastating floods, to collapsing forest ecosystems to region-wide droughts. Honduras and Guatemala are already seeing crop failures on previously fertile land. Mexico City and Bogotá both currently suffer severe water shortages that have led to rationing. Brazil in May suffered the worst floods in the country’s history; studies on precipitation patterns suggest floods in the future are twice as likely due to the burning of fossil fuels. Venezuela this year saw the last remaining glacier in the country downgraded in status to an ice patch. Guajira, an Indigenous region that stretches across the borders of Colombia and Venezuela, has experienced desertification due to long-term droughts that have left residents without potable water, and made growing crops impossible.

Climate change also affects basic infrastructure that produces and transports clean water, food, and electricity. Due to droughts in Colombia, which relies overwhelmingly on hydroelectric power, the country this year temporarily reduced the sale of electricity to Ecuador, exacerbating drought-induced power shortages there.

[oww666]

As you read this, Republicans are preparing to hold California families reeling from the impact of deadly wildfires hostage unless Democrats vote to pass tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

They are saying, no federal aid for recovery unless Republicans get what they want.

Do not just take my word for it, here is Donald Trump himself:

"They want the money to go out there so badly and I don't think we should do a bill until Los Angeles is included and when Los Angeles is included we get everything we want." - Donald Trump

Yesterday, I sent out a letter to Congressional leaders urging them to provide immediate disaster aid to assist our ongoing response and recovery to these wildfires and to ensure aid is not subject to partisan negotiations.

Republicans have a slim majority — and we just need to find two or three who recognize that in times of emergency and deep need, Americans stick together regardless of political party.

And as you read this, we have a separate campaign happening in districts in California with Republican representation. We’re going to make sure their constituents know whether they stand with their neighbors — or if they are with Trump and his desire to hold them hostage unless he gets what they want.

Today, I am asking you to make your voice heard.

Please sign my petition calling on Congress to pass immediate disaster aid that is not subject to partisan negotiations. Add your name here

ADD YOUR NAME

This is critically important to Californians recovering from his disaster. Thank you for adding your name.

- Gavin Newsom

ADD YOUR NAME

Here is a copy of the letter I sent to Congress. It not only talks about the need for aid, but also addresses some of the lies we’re seeing from the right about our preparedness and water availability.

Dear Speaker Johnson, Leader Jeffries, Leader Thune, and Leader Schumer,

California is facing one of the worst natural disasters in our history. On Tuesday, January 7, hurricane-force winds in Los Angeles County fueled a firestorm that has left at least 25 people dead and burned to the ground thousands of homes, businesses, schools and churches. Even with the state prepositioning assets — and the quick deployment of the mightiest firefighting force in the country — the 100-mile-per-hour winds fueled unimaginable conditions that grounded our aerial fleet and created a firestorm that swept through whole neighborhoods in a matter of hours. California is working tirelessly to extinguish the embers and begin the process of rebuilding. But we cannot do this alone — this crisis demands a united and immediate federal response.

Californians urge you to provide expedited supplemental disaster aid to assist the ongoing response without conditions or prolonged negotiation. Doing otherwise would delay the assistance our communities desperately need. Families who have lost everything, firefighters and emergency responders who have worked tirelessly to save lives, and local governments overwhelmed by the scale of this disaster are counting on swift federal support.

In times of natural disaster — from Hurricane Katrina to Hurricane Helene — Americans have always stood together, setting aside politics to extend a helping hand to those in need. Historically, federal disaster aid has been provided without conditions, recognizing that political calculations or regional divides should not encumber relief efforts. Our long national history of responding to natural disasters, no matter where they occur, has always been Americans helping Americans, full stop. This principle of unity is at the heart of our nation’s resilience.

Some have suggested that California did not do enough to prepare ahead of this catastrophe, so allow me to set the record straight. Under my administration, California has taken historic action to strengthen wildfire resilience and emergency response. The number of CAL FIRE personnel has nearly doubled since 2019, growing from 5,829 to 10,741. CAL FIRE’s budget has also nearly doubled in that time, increasing from $2 billion to $3.8 billion. We have expanded the budget for wildfire and forest resilience tenfold — from $200 million annually in 2018 to $2 billion in cumulative investments alongside the ongoing $200 million yearly commitment. These measures represent California’s commitment to mitigating wildfire risks. Further, water reservoirs in Southern California are at near-record levels, and there is no shortage in the region. Let’s be clear: Extreme heat, sustained hurricane-force winds, and dry conditions created an unprecedented challenge for Los Angeles — conditions that allowed any ignition to explode into a firestorm.

To better understand the gravity of the situation, I echo Representatives Sherman and Chu and invite you to visit the affected areas with me and witness firsthand the devastation Californians are enduring. Touring the communities and meeting with the countless Americans who have suffered extreme trauma will give you a deeper understanding of the need for unconditioned and immediate federal aid.

Our challenges are not unique to California, as natural disasters have intensified and grown in number across the country. This issue transcends party lines and state boundaries. By working together, we can ensure that all Americans — whether in Louisiana, Florida, California, or anywhere else — receive the assistance they need when disaster strikes. I stand ready, along with the full weight of our Congressional delegation, to work with you to secure the necessary aid for California and every American state impacted by disasters.

Respectfully,

Gavin Newsom

ADD YOUR NAME  

newscum continuing his campaign of lies to shift responsibility away from himself

[darkmaga-returns]

We owe to the Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus the immortal image of the Emperor Nero playing the fiddle while Rome burned.

In actual fact, according to Tacitus, Nero didn’t play the fiddle as flames engulfed the city. He “mounted his domestic stage and sung of the extirpation of Troy, assimilating present calamities to olden disasters,” Tacitus says.

If an instrument he played, it was probably a lyre or cithara—something like a small harp, rather than a fiddle, which was a later invention. Tacitus was also careful to note that Nero’s impromptu musical performance, while certainly in keeping with the rest of his despotic, debauched reign, was only a rumour and not an established fact.

Fiddle or no, I couldn’t help but think of Nero when I read—and wrote—the news today that California Governor Gavin Newsom had decided, in the midst of one of the worst natural disasters in American history, in his own state, to set up a special website to combat “misinformation” about his role in the calamity.

Shouldn’t putting out the fires be the first priority—protecting lives and property—not the governor’s reputation?

Apparently not.

[chronically-ghosted]

History of the American Dust Bowl

The series of intense dust storms, starting in 1930 and affecting the southern plains of the United States, has been called the greatest ecological disaster ever to happen on American soil. Over the next decade, tens-of-thousands of people were forced to leave their homes under apocalyptic conditions: rolling storms that blocked out the sun, wind laced with particles sharp enough to blind, dust filling up and choking the lungs of the young and old. 

Starting with the trade embargo on Russia during World War I, the value of wheat in America and around the world sky-rocketed. The US Government made offers, real estate agents made promises, and an unusual wet season strengthened conviction: come to the prairie, grow wheat for our soldiers – there’s money to be made. 

As large-scale farming expanded on the Prairies, inexperienced farmers or “sodbusters” replaced indigenous grasses with wheat crops. In less than ten years, over one hundred million acres of prairie land – overused by mechanized equipment and exacerbated by a severe drought – lost its topsoil and became an instant target for wind erosion. The country’s financial bedrock had been bled dry and now the land had been wrung out too. 

In April 1935, on a day that became known as Black Sunday, around 4PM, a rapidly moving “black blizzard” hit Kansas. High winds at 100 miles an hour reportedly displaced 300,000 tons of topsoil. The rolling cloud was over 1,000 miles long, and covered 800 miles by the time it dissipated. Drivers were forced to take refuge in their cars, while other residents hunkered down in basements, barns, fire stations and tornado shelters, as well as under beds. 

Folksinger Woody Guthrie, then 22, who sat out the storm at his Pampa, Texas home, recalled that “you couldn’t see your hand before your face.” Inspired by proclamations from some of his companions that the end of the world was at hand, he composed a song titled “So Long, It’s Been Good to Know Yuh.” Guthrie would also write other tunes about Black Sunday, including “Dust Storm Disaster.”

This was by far the worst storm suffered by those in the southern plains (an area reaching from the north of Texas, up the Dakotas and out to Kansas and Oklahoma), and as a result 17 people died, and three suffocated from the dirty wind. As a direct result of American greed and disregard for the natural world, the very skin of the Earth had been ripped up, leaving behind loose, dry soil – abandoned with no concern for conservation and regrowth. All of this, on top of a financial downturn that left over three millions of Americans without jobs, a home, or income. 

For many, the Dust Bowl was the closest they ever got to the end of the world, nature’s apocalypse. Much of the Red Cross relief and FDR’s conservation efforts were focused on regrowing that topsoil and putting thousands of out-of-work farmers back on the land. By working in harmony with the land, the southern prairie was rebuilt, the dust storms died down, and the economy righted itself in the face of a new world war. 

Apocalypse averted.

In 2023, global weather conditions are changing again due to man-made intervention and ecological carelessness. Year after year, heat records are broken and droughts last longer and longer. The earth is adapting to fit rising temperatures and expanding greenhouse gasses. It is evolving, much like a fungus, to meet its needs in a new climate. 

Hopefully, this fic feels as foreign as an AU can, but as familiar as the show’s concern for global warming. There are no blind, clicking zombies in this fic, but there are monsters. 

There are always monsters at the end of the world.

[mightyflamethrower]

In 2021, Joe Biden was elected after a bitterly fought campaign that deposed the incumbent Donald Trump. Democrats eventually captured, for a time, both the House and Senate, ensuring the most left-wing government in modern American history.

Americans were then set to witness a great experiment. For the first time in their lives, a truly radical socialist program would supposedly fundamentally transform the way America dealt with the border, immigration, the economy, race relations, foreign policy, energy, law enforcement, crime, education, and social questions such as religion, gender, abortion, and schooling.

In a sense, we were all to be lab rats of sorts, to be experimented on by the radical left and their various critical theories. Now in the last year of the Biden term, we can see the results of that experiment—and the unfortunate disasters that followed.

But first, how was such a radical move to the left even possible in a center-right America?

The Democratic nominee, Biden, had earlier united the left, but only through a Faustian deal. The handlers of a nearly non compos mentis Biden had ushered all his 2020 primary rivals out of the primary races in unison.

But in exchange for their exits that ensured Biden the nomination, the left took over his general campaign��in which Biden was virtually relegated to his basement—and then set his agenda.

Who was running things?

The mysterious architects of White House ideology included, inter alia, the omnipresent, now-Washington-DC-dwelling Obamas, the old socialist gadfly Bernie Sanders, the fossilized tribunes of the black and Latino congressional caucuses, the DEI firebrand Squad, and the neo-socialist scold Elizabeth Warren.

As a result, for one of the few times in American history, the hard left now had undreamt of power. And it was enhanced by a chorus in our compliant media, academia, corporations, the administrative state, foundations, entertainment, and popular culture.

So we were all to embark on a great adventure led by the foot soldiers of DEI, the Chicken-Little green extremists, the critical race and critical legal theory crowd, the modern monetary theorists, the woke commissars, the transgendered zealots, Antifa, BLM, the hate-Israel lobby, and the Trump Derangement Syndrome media sorts.

Ostensibly, America was to be reset financially, economically, socially, culturally, militarily, and politically. The nation would be arbitrarily divided into oppressors and oppressed—with one caveat: hyper-rich, left-wing white architects had to be exempt from the damage inflicted on those they targeted. Thus, like Orwellian pigs who walked on their two hind legs, they were free to fly their private jets, get their kids into racially quota-bound Ivy League schools, burn lots of fossil fuels to heat and cool their massive homes, and be protected by their walls, security details, and zip codes from the crime wave they would soon unleash on others.

Now, as we enter the fourth year of the great experiment, America is $35 trillion in debt, borrowing $1 trillion every 100 days. Home mortgages are at 7 percent. Key prices for food, insurance, rent, and fuels are 30-40 percent higher than when Biden entered office.

The nation has been humiliated and emasculated abroad. Racial relations are the worst in a half-century. The military is in virtual receivership. Biden is polling about 40 percent approval and is behind in key swing states in most of the 2024 polls.

As a result, the Biden administration is furiously trying to find a way to release more of its hated oil and natural gas on the world market. It stopped refilling the strategic petroleum reserve that it had earlier drained to lower gas prices before the 2022 midterms.

So it will quietly pump more oil and gas, appease Iran in fear of a war in the oil-producing Middle East, plead with the once “pariah” Saudis, and order the Ukrainians not to hit Russian oil installations—all to get more oil produced to lower November 2024 gas prices.

It will head nod to eliminating fossil fuels, mandating EVs, banning natural gas stoves, and subsidizing more inefficient wind and solar farms. But it now realizes that its green agenda on its watch will wreck the United States economy and throw the left out of power. So it pivots to an old-fashioned “Drill, World, Drill” mantra—at least until the election is over.

Biden fulfilled his agenda of getting 10 million illegal aliens into the United States by destroying the southern border. The point was to swarm America with poor, unaudited migrants, all in need of massive federal and state assistance, all supposedly now loyal to their entitlement benefactors. Who could stop them from voting as repayment to their enablers in the new age of 70 percent mail-in ballots, same-day registration, inadequate authentication and audit of ballots, third-party vote harvesting, ballot curing, and Zuckbucks pouring into key precincts to absorb the work of the registrars?

Most of the illegals went to Texas and Florida, key swing states that the left still thinks it can flip to blue status. Long term, the 10 million will recalibrate congressional districts to favor neo-socialist agendas. Short-term, millions of new arrivals unlawfully may still try to vote in 2024.

Any who object to or publicize this agenda will be dammed with boilerplate smears of “election deniers,” “voter suppressions,” “racists,” and “xenophobes,” Yet all that said, the administration is now desperately trying to distance itself from its greatest “new Democratic Majority” border success, given that public opinion abhors what Biden had done at the border to the country at large.

So it floated a phony “bipartisan border security” bill in hopes of luring naïve Republicans to support a stealth de facto amnesty agenda that would have still allowed 5,000 illegals in a day rather than the now customary 10-15,000. The hope was that when it failed (and the left knew it would), to blame Republicans for what the left had wrought.

Biden knows destroying the border will ruin America for generations to come, costing billions of dollars in subsidies and legal and policing costs to integrate the massive influx. So until the election, it is thrashing about, claiming that it never did such a thing at all. Its duplicity is again proof that the open borders agenda was hated by the public, a human catastrophe, and not sustainable before an impending election.

Biden’s foreign policy is also in ruins. Biden destroyed deterrence in an effort to beg, appease, and buy off America’s enemies to behave and not cause an election-losing war. But the more it fled from Afghanistan in humiliation, the more it appeased Russia as it massed on Ukraine’s border, the more it snored as a Chinese spy balloon traversed the United States, the more it put early holds on aid to Ukraine, the more it assured Putin a “minor” offensive into Ukraine would not elicit a US response, so all the more it convinced Putin that he could take Ukraine without an American pushback, the Chinese to threaten Taiwan, and Hamas to prepare for massacring Jews.

So here we are in Ukraine with nearly 800,000 dead, wounded, and missing Ukrainians and Russians. The administration has no clue how to stop the Verdun that its appeasement birthed. The entire therapeutic approach to foreign policy lies in ruins.

Ditto the Middle East. National security advisor Jack Sullivan’s “quiet” portfolio that he inherited from the Trump administration simply blew up. Biden is now scrambling to stop the Israeli response to the encircled Hamas remnants, trapped in their last redoubt in Rafah.

Biden is now replaying the 1950s CIA-stereotype of the “Ugly American,” as he does his best to overthrow the Netanyahu government, and to allow the trapped Hamas remnants to escape and claim they defeated the Zionist entity, despite butchering more Jews in a single day than any time since the Holocaust. No matter: the Biden administration is stealthily communicating with the Israeli opposition concerning the best joint strategies to force Netanyahu out. Mass protests in the streets of Tel Aviv attest to the success of destabilizing the current Israeli government.

Team Biden whispers to the media about slow-walking or stopping key arms shipments, abdicating America’s once protective role in the UN, or encouraging the “international community” to go after Netanyahu for “war crimes” for accidentally hitting a civilian team in Gaza. (By such logic, are Biden and Gen. Mark (“righteous strike”) Milley equally culpable for being in charge when a US strike in Kabul blew up 10 innocent civilians by similarly mistaken targeting?). Meanwhile, Biden keeps courting Muslim-American Michigan voters, who repay his appeasement with cries of “Death to Israel! Death to America!”.

The release of violent criminals and an uptick in property crimes, murders and assault follow a similar script. The Biden administration outsourced criminal justice to defund the police/critical legal theorists at the federal, state, and local levels. No bail arrests led to violent offenders released the next day. Thousands were let go from jails and prisons.

The word spread in the criminal community that in the new Biden years, there were no real consequences, no serious punishments for violent assault or major felonies.

So in 2021-2023, crime exploded. When it reached the point of making life unlivable in the major cities and began to max out, the administration declared “crime is declining”—in the same way that hyper-inflation supposedly did so on the economic front.

After spiking the prices of key food staples, insurance, fuel, and interest rates, such hikes could not go too much higher without destroying outright the American way of life. So as the rate of inflation slowed, Biden bragged about “lowering inflation”—but not the 30-40 percent higher food prices since his own inauguration.

The common denominator for these disasters is the embrace of left-wing “theory.”

Critical legal theory mandates that jurisprudence is a construct. Laws have no morality since they favor the powerful. The latter use “white privilege” arbitrarily to invent crimes and punishments to protect their own power hierarchies. All that nonsense has now led to a pre-civilizational free-for-all in our dirty, dangerous, and dysfunctional cities.

Modern monetary theory—printing lots of money to spread around to those who have none while diminishing the value of money of those who have it—only led to hyperinflation and high interest rates.

When DEI theories were unleashed on the military, potential recruits hesitated, and thousands quit. After Pentagon grandees virtue signaled their fear of “white rage” and “white privilege,” after DEI made promotions and assessments often contingent on race, gender, and sexual orientation, and after the new military was humiliated in Afghanistan, it found it could no longer deter the enemy, recruit sufficient soldiers, or win back the confidence of the American people.

In all these cases, the woke genie left the bottle—and won’t go back in. So it will be hard for the administration to assure a long-suffering public that things are just wonderful, much less to reverse these policies, if indeed they are reversible, before November.

Expect instead nonstop distraction as the left beats the January 6 horse to death, calls for abortion on demand, and waits for its underling judges, prosecutors, and juries to jail or bankrupt Trump and therefore do what balloting cannot.

In other words, the long-awaited Great Fundamental Transformation finally got its moment, crashed, and now has torched the nation—middle-class Americans most of all.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 6.16 (after 1910)

1911 – IBM founded as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company in Endicott, New York. 1922 – General election in the Irish Free State: The pro-Treaty Sinn Féin party wins a large majority. 1925 – Artek, the most famous Young Pioneer camp of the Soviet Union, is established. 1930 – Sovnarkom establishes decree time in the USSR. 1933 – The National Industrial Recovery Act is passed in the United States, allowing businesses to avoid antitrust prosecution if they establish voluntary wage, price, and working condition regulations on an industry-wide basis. 1940 – World War II: Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain becomes Chief of State of Vichy France (Chef de l'État Français). 1940 – A Communist government is installed in Lithuania. 1948 – Members of the Malayan Communist Party kill three British plantation managers in Sungai Siput; in response, British Malaya declares a state of emergency. 1955 – In a futile effort to topple Argentine President Juan Perón, rogue aircraft pilots of the Argentine Navy drop several bombs upon an unarmed crowd demonstrating in favor of Perón in Buenos Aires, killing 364 and injuring at least 800. At the same time on the ground, some soldiers attempt to stage a coup but are suppressed by loyal forces. 1958 – Imre Nagy, Pál Maléter and other leaders of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising are executed. 1961 – While on tour with the Kirov Ballet in Paris, Rudolf Nureyev defects from the Soviet Union. 1963 – Soviet Space Program: Vostok 6 mission: Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova becomes the first woman in space. 1963 – In an attempt to resolve the Buddhist crisis in South Vietnam, a Joint Communique was signed between President Ngo Dinh Diem and Buddhist leaders. 1972 – The largest single-site hydroelectric power project in Canada is inaugurated at Churchill Falls Generating Station. 1976 – Soweto uprising: A non-violent march by 15,000 students in Soweto, South Africa, turns into days of rioting when police open fire on the crowd. 1977 – Oracle Corporation is incorporated in Redwood Shores, California, as Software Development Laboratories (SDL), by Larry Ellison, Bob Miner and Ed Oates. 1981 – US President Ronald Reagan awards the Congressional Gold Medal to Ken Taylor, Canada's former ambassador to Iran, for helping six Americans escape from Iran during the hostage crisis of 1979–81; he is the first foreign citizen bestowed the honor. 1989 – Revolutions of 1989: Imre Nagy, the former Hungarian prime minister, is reburied in Budapest following the collapse of Communism in Hungary. 1997 – Fifty people are killed in the Daïat Labguer (M'sila) massacre in Algeria. 2000 – The Secretary-General of the UN reports that Israel has complied with United Nations Security Council Resolution 425, 22 years after its issuance, and completely withdrew from Lebanon. The Resolution does not encompass the Shebaa farms, which is claimed by Israel, Syria and Lebanon. 2002 – Padre Pio is canonized by the Roman Catholic Church. 2010 – Bhutan becomes the first country to institute a total ban on tobacco. 2012 – China successfully launches its Shenzhou 9 spacecraft, carrying three astronauts, including the first female Chinese astronaut Liu Yang, to the Tiangong-1 orbital module. 2012 – The United States Air Force's robotic Boeing X-37B spaceplane returns to Earth after a classified 469-day orbital mission. 2013 – A multi-day cloudburst, centered on the North Indian state of Uttarakhand, causes devastating floods and landslides, becoming the country's worst natural disaster since the 2004 tsunami. 2015 – American businessman Donald Trump announces his campaign to run for President of the United States in the upcoming election. 2016 – Shanghai Disneyland Park, the first Disney Park in Mainland China, opens to the public. 2019 – Upwards of 2,000,000 people participate in the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests, the largest in Hong Kong's history.

[stephenjaymorrisblog]

Unnatural Law

We Must Protect Rich White Guys

Stephen Jay Morris

7/13/2023

©Scientific Morality

In Al Gore’s 2006 documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” he presented factual evidence of an upcoming catastrophe: the climate crisis. Not only did he discuss the urgency of the impending situation, but he offered solutions to prevent it. Solutions such as lowering your carbon footprint and avoiding fossil fuel.

So, what did the oil companies do? They threatened their Republican representatives with ceasing donations to the G.O.P. unless they committed to run a campaign against Al Gore and his “Ecological Army.” Fox News attacked Gore by discrediting him with claims that he used tons of gallons of jet fuel to fly to his speaking engagements. You know? Labeled him a hypocrite. Also in CHUD fashion, they wealth-shamed him and aired aerial photos of his mansion.

You see, to take a left wing view of anything, you must be poor. After all, all leftists must take a vow of poverty, as do Catholic priests and nuns. Donkey shit! If you are going to slander somebody, try not using paralogical arguments.

At any rate, that is a major tactic they use—personal defamation. That way, the focus is taken off the issue and spotlighted, instead, on the individual’s shortcomings. Libel replaces the facts about Big Oil’s destruction of the earth and its atmosphere. Al Gore’s movie was right on the money.

Meanwhile, as the CHUDS are calling Al Gore an alarmist, they are telling the world that transgender people are grooming kids to be homosexuals. These halophiles only want to drink liberal tears. What the fuck are they good for? Sucking off WASP billionaires? Then Trump goes to court and the Newsmax reporters show their ugly, dolorous mugs. They sound almost robotically monotone: “We must protect rich white guys.” “We must protect rich white guys.” “We must protect rich white guys.” Ad-nauseum.

Today, I heard on the radio that Texas hit 110 degrees and two days ago, the state of Vermont experienced unprecedented flooding after nine inches of rain fell in less than five hours. The weekend leading into July 4th saw the highest ever recorded global temperatures. The southern portion of America is experiencing an unrelenting “heat dome,” while the northern portion of the country is seeing tornadoes, hurricanes, violent storms, and other extremes. Any meteorologist will tell you this is not normal for this time of year. If the world unites, we can begin to stop this onslaught of natural disasters. But the conservatives think their money and profit is more important than the welfare of humanity! While farmers’ crops are drying up and blowing away in the wind, the rich are snorting coke off a prostitute’s ass! But leave it to the conservative propaganda machine to spew that these are dignified, American gentlemen who want a clean cut, Christian country.  

 The only way to fight against this crisis is to counter the CHUD propaganda with educational facts to the contrary. When a liar calls you a liar, you are winning the climate struggle. There is a global youth movement and they pissed to the max. They are willing to damage property to give notice of the planet’s destruction, as well as hold nonviolent resistance protests. We should all support their efforts.

Meanwhile, the political Right is in shambles. The Religious Right is living their “End Times” fantasy, the fossil fuel companies are panicking that their great grandchildren will have to get jobs, and the White Power creeps are worried that all food will become kosher. The Republicans will build a giant tomb in Washington D.C. for Trump after he dies from a massive heart attack.

After Florida submerges into the Gulf of Mexico, oil drilling rigs will be above sea level because human remains become dirty energy. It’ll be better than dead dinosaurs!

America has the worst conservative movement in the history of the world!

[voice-freedom]

How Do Natural Disasters Destroy Climate Models? | #8

An ALLATRA volunteer reveals shocking true facts about the climate situation, particularly the Los Angeles wildfire

2025 began with red skies. No, this is not a metaphor. On January 1–2, so-called red auroras covered Europe, Russia, America, and Asia with some people witnessing the phenomenon on New Year’s Eve. Then on January 7, a 7.1-magnitude earthquake struck Tibet, with 126 dead, 646 aftershocks, and a fault line on the border between southern China and Nepal, now visible in satellite images.

At the same time, Mecca and Saudi Arabia faced catastrophic flooding, while California endured massive wildfires that have already consumed about 40,644 acres (about 16,448 hectares) in Los Angeles County, with damages reaching over $250 billion. These disasters are just a fraction of the global climate catastrophes during the first week of 2025.

How Do Natural Disasters Destroy Climate Models? | #8

In my previous video, I shared a detailed summary of the climate anomalies and records set in 2024.

To recap, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) officially confirmed that 2024 was the warmest year on record, surpassing 2023. The global ocean also reached record-breaking temperatures in 2024, becoming the hottest in recorded history not only on the surface but also at depths of up to 2,000 meters (1.24 miles). Overall economic losses from natural disasters worldwide reached US$320 billion in 2024—about a third higher than the previous year.

The pressing question for both the public and scientists is: What is happening to the climate, and what can be done about it? Excuse me for asking this, but haven’t we talked about this before? Haven’t we, as ALLATRA participants, tried to reach out to you and convey what’s happening with the climate and the consequences these processes will have in the coming years? Did you never come across the videos of ALLATRA volunteers, desperately trying to explain in simple, human terms the causes of climate change, supported by facts, data, and projections from the climate model by ALLATRA scientists?

How Do Natural Disasters Destroy Climate Models? | #8

While ALLATRA has already presented its climate report containing forecasts and a comprehensive analysis of current and future climate changes on Earth, at two major international climate conferences COP29 and COP16, and even during an audience with the Pope, global media ignored these facts. Instead, a prominent American publication ran an article discussing climate models and the work of independent researchers, but, for some reason, they completely forgot to mention the ALLATRA report.

Allow me to quote a statement from the article that particularly caught our attention:

“Fifty years into the project of modeling Earth’s future climate, we still don’t really know what’s coming. Some places are warming with more ferocity than expected. Extreme events are taking scientists by surprise. Right now, as the bald reality of climate change bears down on human life, scientists are seeing more clearly the limits of our ability to predict the exact future we face. The coming decades may be far worse, and far weirder, than the best models anticipated.”

This raises the question: What do they mean by “the best” climate models? If these “best” models claimed that climate change would stabilize on its own or that any critical changes wouldn’t occur for another hundred years—giving you plenty of time to live your life while leaving the burden of solving climate problems to your great-grandchildren—then it’s no wonder they ignored the ALLATRA model. From their perspective, our model is “the worst.”So, their models are “the best” because they have misled you for 50 years, while our model is “the worst” because it’s real and has proven accurate. Unfortunately, all the forecasts about climate changes made in our model a decade ago are now coming true.

How Do Natural Disasters Destroy Climate Models? | #8

While articles like these claim that climate modeling requires “100,000 times more computing power than we currently have,” and that they lack the resources to achieve this, we managed to do it. No, we don’t have powerful servers like Google, but we have thousands of dedicated individuals worldwide with their computers. Together, we were able to compile data, analyze facts and charts, and confirm that the progression of disasters is indeed accelerating. We also identified safe zones that will remain habitable for some time and shared this information long ago. However, much of our research remains unpublished and undisclosed. Why? We just don’t want to mess with people’s heads. Because without addressing the core climate threat, what’s the point if someone survives an extra year or two? You can’t imagine what it’s like to anticipate the end.

Learn more here: How Do Natural Disasters Destroy Climate Models? | #8 on canal Voice of freedom

climate report 'On The Progression Of Climatic Disasters On Earth And Their Catastrophic Consequences).

[oww666]

"Los Angeles, where we are watching fires still tragically burn from weeks ago without even a token of defense." - Donald Trump.

Without...

A...

Token...

Of Defense...

It’s nonsense. But it’s also insulting.

The bravery and heroism of firefighters from across California, the United States, and even across North America — saved a tragic wildfire from becoming something absolutely unimaginable for many more families.

In the face of one of the worst natural disasters in America’s history, this moment underscores the critical need for partnership and a shared commitment to facts.

I look forward to President Trump’s visit to Los Angeles and his mobilization of the full weight of the federal government to help our fellow Americans recover and rebuild.

Gavin Newsom

 Wait... Before you go! 

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Please use this link to contribute to the California Fire Foundation today.

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[newstfionline]

Sunday, January 12, 2025

The Unfightable Fire (The Atlantic) Urban fire in the U.S. is coming back. For generations, American cities would burn in era-defining conflagrations: the Great Chicago Fire in 1871, the San Francisco fires of 1906. Then came fire-prevention building codes, which made large city burns a memory of a more naive time. Generations of western firefighters turned, instead, toward wildland burns, the big forest devastations. An urban conflagration was the worst-case scenario, the one they hoped they’d never see. And for a long time, they mostly didn’t. Now more people live at the flammable edges of wildlands, making places that are primed to burn into de facto suburbs. That, combined with the water whiplash that climate change has visited on parts of California—extraordinarily wet years followed by extraordinarily dry ones—means the region is at risk for urban fire once again. And our ability to fight the most extreme fire conditions has reached its limit. The Palisades Fire alone has already destroyed more than 5,300 structures and the Eaton Fire more than 4,000, making both among the most destructive fires in California’s history. When the worst factors align, the fires are beyond what firefighting can meaningfully battle. The start of the Palisades and Eaton Fires was a case of terrible timing: A drought had turned abundant vegetation into crisp fire fuel, and the winter rains were absent. A strong bout of Santa Ana winds made what was already probable fire weather into all but a guarantee. Something—it remains to be seen what—ignited these blazes, and once they started, there was nothing anyone could do to stop them. The winds, speeding up to 100 miles an hour at times, sent showers of embers far across the landscape to ignite spot fires. The high winds meant that traditional firefighting was, at least in the beginning, all but impossible.

What Wildfires Mean for America’s Home-Insurance Bills (WSJ) You may live hundreds or thousands of miles away, but the wildfires tearing across Los Angeles and other natural disasters stand to raise your home-insurance bill. The wildfires are estimated to have caused insured losses of as much as $20 billion or more. Insurers have tended to raise rates on homeowners in regions where disasters strike. But researchers say the scale of losses leads companies to tap faraway customers to recoup their money. A Harvard Business School study found that expensive disasters in some parts of the country affect insurance rates in others, as insurers bump up premiums for homeowners in other areas to help cover big losses. “It’s spread all over the country, and it spreads in a disproportionate way, where some people are bearing an overwhelmingly higher cost,” said Ishita Sen, a co-author of the study.

Powerful winter storm that dumped snow in US South maintains its icy grip (AP) winter storm that dropped heavy snow and glazed roads throughout the U.S. South was maintaining its icy grip on much of the region into the weekend. Power outage numbers around Atlanta crept up Friday night as meteorologists warned of accumulating freezing rain. More than 110,000 customers were without electricity, mostly in the Atlanta area. Snow and ice was also forecast to continue in the Carolinas, Virginia and the Ohio and Tennessee Valleys. Earlier this week the storm brought heavy snow and slicked roads across much of Texas and Oklahoma before moving east. Arkansas and North Carolina mobilized National Guard troops for tasks such as helping stranded motorists, and governors in multiple states declared states of emergency. School was canceled for millions of children from Texas to Georgia and as far east as South Carolina, giving them a rare snow day. The storm piled up more than a year’s worth of snowfall on some cities.

Border Crossings Continue to Drop Before Trump’s Second Term (NYT) Illegal crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border have slowed significantly as President Biden prepares to leave office and as President-elect Donald J. Trump, who promised to crack down on immigration, is days away from retaking power. More than 46,000 people crossed the border illegally in November, the lowest number during the Biden administration. Though overall crossings ticked up slightly in December, the daily averages were the lowest since summer 2020, according to a senior U.S. Customs and Border Protection official who spoke on the condition of anonymity and was not authorized to speak publicly. “The border is quieter than it has been in years,” said Adam Isacson, a border security expert at the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights advocacy organization. “The number of people entering Border Patrol custody is as low as the first months of the pandemic. And for the first time ever, more people are making appointments at official crossings—an orderly process—than are being captured in between.”

As Panama remembers bloody past, a message for Trump: the canal is ours (Reuters) Hundreds of Panamanians marched on Thursday to mark the anniversary of a deadly uprising against U.S. control of the Panama Canal in 1964, with some protesters burning an effigy of President-elect Donald Trump who has threatened to retake the vital global waterway. More than 20 Panamanians, many of them students, died during violent clashes across the country in January 1964, which escalated after U.S. security forces opened fire in response to mass demonstrations against the U.S. presence in the country and control of the canal. At least three U.S. soldiers also died. The incident, remembered every January 9, is regarded as paving the way for the eventual transfer of the canal to Panama in 1999. It also serves as a reminder of a bloody past that still dominates national feeling over the canal in Panama, at a time of rising tension with Trump. "Today is a day to remember the sacrifice of our martyrs, but also to say to the world that Panama is sovereign and the canal is ours," said Sebastian Quiroz, an 84-year-old retired unionist who was a student during the uprising.

Baltics Count Down the Days to Leaving Russian Energy Grid (Bloomberg) On the bank of the river Neris across from Lithuania’s old town of Vilnius, a two-story digital clock is counting down the minutes until the Baltic countries sever their remaining ties to Russia’s energy infrastructure. Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, which share a 1,015-mile-long border with Russia and Belarus, have been among the most vocal countries in the European Union about the threat posed by Moscow. Following the invasion of Ukraine, they stopped importing Russian crude oil and natural gas. Now, they’re taking the final step: disconnecting from Russia’s electricity grid. That will happen on Feb. 8, when the clock in the Lithuanian capital finishes its 100-day countdown. At that point, the Baltics will turn off the six remaining high-voltage power lines linking them to Russia and Belarus. They’ll then operate autonomously for a day-and-a-half before switching to the continental European grid. “We basically rewired ourselves completely,” Tomas Jermalavicius, a researcher at the Tallinn-based International Centre for Defense and Security, said by phone.

International sanctions have left Syria’s health system on life support (Washington Post) The baby was dwarfed by her hospital bed, looking much smaller than her 11 months. Her growth stunted and her breathing labored by a congenital heart defect, she had been on a surgical waiting list for most of her life. The cardiologists in this Damascus hospital stopped by little Rayan Daher’s room from time to time this week, to reassure her mother, Hind, that an operation to close the hole in the baby’s heart would be scheduled within days. But the nurses next door weren’t so sure. American and European Union sanctions aimed at punishing the regime of President Bashar al-Assad have weakened the medical system that millions of Syrians rely on—preventing hospitals from maintaining or importing lifesaving diagnostic machines and making it more difficult to provide timely treatment to the wounded and the sick. In Damascus University’s cardiology center, where Rayan’s family was waiting, half of the scanning devices for her condition were out of service, and the final machine was on its last legs, according to Mohammed Bashar Izzat, the hospital manager. Just one operating room was fully functioning; the facility had enough anesthetists to conduct only three procedures a week.

Gaza war death toll could be significantly higher, researchers say (BBC) The Palestinian death toll from the war in Gaza could be substantially higher than official figures reported by the Hamas-run health ministry, research published in The Lancet medical journal suggests. The UK-led study covered the first nine months of the war, which began when Hamas gunmen attacked Israel on 7 October 2023. It used data from the ministry, an online survey of relatives reporting fatalities, and obituaries. It estimated that up until 30 June 2024, 64,260 Palestinians died from traumatic injury, meaning an under-reporting of deaths by 41%. Israel is not allowing international journalists from media organisations, including the BBC, independent access to Gaza, making it difficult to verify the facts on the ground.

Israel launches new strikes on Yemen’s Houthi rebels (AP) Israel’s military says it carried out new airstrikes in Yemen against what it said were Houthi rebel targets. Its statement Friday said fighter jets struck “on the western coast and inland Yemen,” a day after the Houthis launched three drones at Israel. The U.S. military bombed Yemen earlier this week. Houthi-controlled media reported one worker dead and six people wounded at the Ras Isa port. The Houthis said the strikes occurred while Yemenis were rallying in the capital Sanaa in support of the Palestinians in Gaza.

More than 100,000 people displaced in eastern Congo since the start of the year, UN says (AP) More than 100,000 people have been displaced since the start of the year in eastern Congo as a result of a new rebel offensive, according to a United Nations report released Friday. M23 rebels captured the town of Masisi on Monday, leading to a mass exodus of people in the face of a new offensive by the rebel group that saw them take over two strategic towns in the east of the country in less than a week. The newly displaced people add to the 2.8 million already displaced in the province of North Kivu, more than a third of the province’s population, according to the U.N. M23 is one of more than 100 armed groups that have been vying for territory in mineral-rich eastern Congo near the border with Rwanda, in a conflict that has created one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises.

[swldx]

BBC 0513 30 Dec 2024

9410Khz 0458 30 DEC 2024 - BBC (UNITED KINGDOM) in ENGLISH from ASCENSION ISLAND. SINPO = 45233. English, s/on @0458z with Bowbells int. fb ID, pips and Newsday preview. @0501z World News anchored by male announcer. § Joe Biden and Donald Trump have led tributes to former US President and Nobel Peace Prize winner Jimmy Carter, who has died aged 100. Carter, who lived longer than any president in history, died on Sunday afternoon at his home in Plains, Georgia. Biden described him as "a man of principle, faith and humility," while Trump said all Americans owe Carter a "debt of gratitude". § South Korea's acting leader has ordered an emergency safety inspection of the country's entire airline operations, a day after 179 people were killed in the deadliest plane crash on its soil. The Jeju Air plane burst into flames as it crash-landed in South Korea's Muan International Airport, killing everyone onboard save for two victims. § Incumbent president Zoran Milanovic won the most votes in the first round of Croatia's presidential election on Sunday but fell just short of a majority and will have to go to a second round, results from the State Electoral Commission showed. § France’s president and prime minister managed to form a new government just in time for the holidays, with handover ceremonies taking place on Tuesday. Manuel Valls has taken over from François-Noël Buffet at the Ministry for Overseas Affairs. Valls, a former Prime Minister under François Hollande, mentioned the cyclone-ravaged French territory of Mayotte, in the Indian Ocean, as a “priority”. Another challenge awaits the new overseas affairs minister and the incoming Cabinet in the restive French South Pacific territory of New Caledonia, where the government collapsed Tuesday in a wave of resignations by pro-independence figures. § Families and teachers protested in Valencia on Saturday to demand action over schools damaged by the deadly floods that killed over 220 people in eastern Spain and affected thousands of children's education. Holding posters demanding the resignation of Valencian leader Carlos Mazon, protesters marched through the Spanish city almost a month after the country's worst natural disaster in decades on Oct. 29. § Kaamya Karthikeyan, Class XII student at Navy Children School, Mumbai, has become the youngest female in the world to scale the seven highest peaks across the seven continents. The young student, who scaled Everest this May, has now reached the summit of Mt Vincent/Vinson in Antarctica, along with her father, S Karthikeyan, who is a Commander in the Indian Navy. § Chess great Magnus Carlsen will return to the World Rapid and Blitz Chess Championships in New York after initially quitting following governing body Fide’s decision to bar him from a round for wearing jeans. @0506z “Newsday” begins. 100' (30m) of Kev-Flex wire feeding "Magic Wand" antenna hanging in backyard tree w/MFJ-1020C active antenna (used as a preamplifier/preselector), JRC NRD-535D, 125kW, beamAz 27°, bearing 103°. Received at Plymouth, MN, United States, 9763KM from transmitter at Ascension Island. Local time: 2258.

[templardom]

The Celestial Vendettas

Calamity will surely destroy the wicked, and those who hate the righteous will be punished. Psalm 34:21 (NLT) 

I will not look on you with pity, nor will I spare you, but I will punish you for your ways and for the abominations among you. Then you will know that it is I, the LORD, who strikes the blow. Ezekiel 7:9 (BSB) 

People didn’t realize what was going to happen until the flood came and swept them all away. That is the way it will be when the Son of Man comes. Matthew 24:39 (NLT)

The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many people died from the water, because it had been made bitter. Apocalypse 8:11 (ESV)

For behold, the LORD will come with fire—His chariots are like a whirlwind—to execute His anger with fury and His rebuke with flames of fire. Isaiah 66:15 (BSB) 

Why has the wicked man renounced God? He says to himself, “You will never call me to account.” Psalm 10:13 (BSB) 

Calamity will surely destroy the wicked, and those who hate the righteous will be punished. Psalm 34:21 (NLT) 

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 4.14 (after 1930)

1931 – The Second Spanish Republic is proclaimed and king Alfonso XIII goes to exile. Meanwhile, in Barcelona, Francesc Macià proclaims the Catalan Republic. 1935 – The Black Sunday dust storm, considered one of the worst storms of the Dust Bowl, sweeps across the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles and neighboring areas. 1940 – World War II: Royal Marines land in Namsos, Norway, preceding a larger force which will arrive two days later. 1941 – World War II: German and Italian forces attack Tobruk, Libya. 1944 – Bombay explosion: A massive explosion in Bombay harbor kills 300 and causes economic damage valued at 20 million pounds. 1945 – Razing of Friesoythe: The 4th Canadian (Armoured) Division deliberately destroys the German town of Friesoythe on the orders of Major General Christopher Vokes. 1958 – The Soviet satellite Sputnik 2 falls from orbit after a mission duration of 162 days. This was the first spacecraft to carry a living animal, a female dog named Laika, who likely lived only a few hours. 1967 – Gnassingbé Eyadéma overthrows Nicolas Grunitzky and installs himself as the new President of Togo, a title he will hold for the next 38 years. 1978 – Tbilisi demonstrations: Thousands of Georgians demonstrate against Soviet attempts to change the constitutional status of the Georgian language. 1979 – The Progressive Alliance of Liberia stages a protest, without a permit, against an increase in rice prices proposed by the government, with clashes between protestors and the police resulting in over 70 deaths and over 500 injuries. 1981 – STS-1: The first operational Space Shuttle, Columbia completes its first test flight. 1986 – The heaviest hailstones ever recorded, each weighing 1 kilogram (2.2 lb), fall on the Gopalganj district of Bangladesh, killing 92. 1988 – The USS Samuel B. Roberts strikes a mine in the Persian Gulf during Operation Earnest Will. 1988 – In a United Nations ceremony in Geneva, Switzerland, the Soviet Union signs an agreement pledging to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan. 1991 – The Republic of Georgia introduces the post of President following its declaration of independence from the Soviet Union. 1994 – In a friendly fire incident during Operation Provide Comfort in northern Iraq, two U.S. Air Force aircraft mistakenly shoot-down two U.S. Army helicopters, killing 26 people. 1997 – Pai Hsiao-yen, daughter of Taiwanese artiste Pai Bing-bing is kidnapped on her way to school, preceding her murder. 1999 – NATO mistakenly bombs a convoy of ethnic Albanian refugees. Yugoslav officials say 75 people were killed. 1999 – A severe hailstorm strikes Sydney, Australia causing A$2.3 billion in insured damages, the most costly natural disaster in Australian history. 2002 – Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez returns to office two days after being ousted and arrested by the country's military. 2003 – The Human Genome Project is completed with 99% of the human genome sequenced to an accuracy of 99.99%. 2003 – U.S. troops in Baghdad capture Abu Abbas, leader of the Palestinian group that killed an American on the hijacked cruise liner MS Achille Lauro in 1985. 2005 – The Oregon Supreme Court nullifies marriage licenses issued to same-sex couples a year earlier by Multnomah County. 2006 – Twin blasts triggered by crude bombs during Asr prayer in the Jama Masjid mosque in Delhi injure 13 people. 2014 – Two bombs detonate at a bus station in Nyanya, Nigeria, killing at least 88 people and injuring hundreds. Boko Haram claims responsibility. 2014 – Boko Haram abducts 276 girls from a school in Chibok, Nigeria. 2016 – The foreshock of a major earthquake occurs in Kumamoto, Japan. 2022 – Russian invasion of Ukraine: The Russian warship Moskva sinks. 2023 – The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) is launched by the European Space Agency. 2024 – Flooding in the Persian Gulf starts, killing 19 in Oman.